The Memory Weaver

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  The stories were told with too much detail. They were still under the influence themselves, I decided, or they never would have been so open with their words. They were in the enemy’s camp sharing secrets and they didn’t even know it.

  My sisters sat wide-eyed, listening, patting a leavings doll. I’d have to explain later what all those stories meant and ask that they not repeat any of this to our father or Rachel or they’d be whisked from my care in a second.

  Andrew’s friends left after eating their fill, glad to see “Warren’s in the tender hands of such a lassie.” I fed the girls and myself then, checking on Andrew, whose snores rumbled like water over river rocks. I attacked my own chores, cleaning the griddle, heating the irons. Cooled, the iron’s weight might keep the bone pressed so it would mend. I thought I’d seen my mother do that once with a young Nez Perce boy. I chopped wood for the fireplace, brought in an armload to put in the firebox beside the woodstove. At least we’d be warm.

  Together the girls and I slopped the hogs, fed our two sheep, opened the paddock so the oxen could meander in the fenced pasture. Back in the barn, I filled the manger with loose hay for the horses.

  That’s when I noticed I’d lost my wedding ring.

  Frantic, I pushed back grass hay, dug into the manger. Nothing. I might have lost it anywhere. I stomped back into the house to heat water for our Saturday baths. Abby sat on the porch, brown eyes pleading.

  “Dogs aren’t allowed in the house,” I told her.

  But when I opened the door and smelled the liquor and the laudanum, thought about my ring lost to the hard labor, I turned back. “Dogs might not be allowed in the house, but if drunks are, then you are too.”

  In the afternoon, Andrew roused. I wasn’t aware he had wakened until he moaned. “What have I done, ’Liza? What have I done?” His faced flushed red, chin dropped to his chest. His shame pricked my heart toward softness. It didn’t last.

  “’Liza, darlin’—”

  “Don’t you ‘darlin’’ me! You, you’ve lied to me, misled me, you’ve been drink—”

  “I have not.” His voice rose. “Last night, the first time in a long time and I am sorry. I am real sorry.” He rubbed his forehead with his fingers.

  I wasn’t ready for apologies. “Sorry? Sorry that you’ll be laid up for weeks, if not months? Sorry that you brought men into our home and asked me to feed them, also drunk, I might add, in front of my sisters? Sorry that you what, aren’t free to do what you want without a little . . . guilt?”

  “You’ll always best me with words, ’Liza. Mine are small. Just, I’m sorry, for everything.”

  “Everything? For marrying me?” I jabbed at him. “You were baptized. You took a vow.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me.”

  “But why? You’re smart. You’re inventive. You’re a hard worker. Why?” I paced, paused to look at him and saw tears pooling in his eyes. “What is it? I want to know . . . even my . . . my part in this.”

  “You have no part. Well, you’re in the hope I had for healing an old wound, but I seem to keep opening it with liquor and the rush of card playin’. Or maybe I’m trying to drown it.” He looked away. Embarrassment. That’s what I saw in my husband’s eyes.

  “Tell me.” I sat beside him on the feather tick and he winced. His physical wound demanding we remember. Is it the laudanum speaking? I didn’t know. “Just tell me why you do this. Do you even know?”

  His shallow breathing filled the silence. Then, “The same reason you try to control the world, ’Liza, or disappear inside your mind where no one can reach you. I do it to stop the pain. And so do you.”

  “What pain?”

  But all the wishing and probing brought nothing. Instead of relieving his burden, he returned to sleeping, the bridge to our healing broken. No laudanum could remedy that.

  14

  Learning the Language of Marriage

  We managed the summer, neighbors helping as they could. The O’Donnell brothers—I’d learned their names—showed up, sheepish but willing to haul in water, chop wood, while Andrew healed. The doctor said it was my nursing that accounted for his progress; nursing and taking on the tasks my husband simply couldn’t do. Oddly, once I let go of my anger, accepted the challenge before me, we became a family, of sorts. Andrew said I was happy because I controlled the household and him, knew where he was each moment. He said it with a smile, but I heard truth in that.

  In the evening we read Scripture and the dictionary, too, learning new words together. Extenuate. Lassitude. Fortuitous. My sisters giggled and didn’t even realize they were learning too. We made the best of our turmoil.

  “You do what you have to.” That’s what I told Nancy when she brought me a wooden box of staples from the dry goods store. I didn’t get to town much now. “Remember when I wondered how Andrew spent his time? Well, he rode, trying to keep the cattle close where he could see how they fared, pushed them through trees, hoped to keep them from a wildness gained from never seeing humans.”

  “And kept wolves away? I hear them howl, even in town.”

  “Yes, especially during calving. I’m suddenly an expert in cattle-raising though I’m not very good at it. There are wolf signs. I wonder if I should carry a gun.”

  “You’re riding astride?” Nancy placed the bolted flour in the bin, wiping up the slightest dust of it before she took the salt from the box and put it in the cupboard. “Would you mind if I straightened up your shelf?”

  “Mind? No. I just haven’t had time. And yes, astride. I can’t believe my mother rode sidesaddle all across the continent. Of course she wasn’t riding while carrying a child, but still.” My father’s mention of “babies” before I arrived made me wonder if what I’d just said was true.

  Nancy chattered on about her brother’s latest love, how her mother had pneumonia but had recovered with the summer heat. Her father said there was talk of bringing a woolen mill to the area. “They’d employ a lot of people, girls too. I might get a job there.” Nancy was sixteen and pretty with that flaming red hair. I said as much to her as she finished up organizing my shelves.

  “Oh, maybe I am.” Then, “I’ve met a lad.” She blushed.

  “Of course you have. It was only a matter of time.”

  “His name is Andrew too. Andrew Kees. He came from Pennsylvania. I told him about what happened and how I absolutely seem to take so long to do things. He said he didn’t mind ’a-tall.’ That’s how he says ‘at all.’ A-tall.” She looked wistful, her busy hands stopped as she spread the words out with her fingers as though writing them in the sky. “He’s a cooper. A good one. He has contracts for barrels with the store and blacksmith too. The only thing is . . . he’s nearly forty.”

  “Forty years old?”

  “Next year.” She fiddled with her red curls. “But he’s really good to me. And when I told him what happened, how frightened I’d been and how we survived, he said I was very brave to keep on living, to not let that past tragedy hold me like the hostages we were, that life happens and we have to move on.” She sat down, straightened the chair pillow, but this time let our teacups rule the table without intervention. “He says sometimes, after a bad time, we form new habits. That’s what my organizing is.” Her fingers reached to turn the teacup handle toward her, but she stopped, put her hands on her lap. “It’s just a way to fit things into tight places, when I’m not sure I can. So I look for things I can do. That’s what my Andrew says.”

  “He sounds very wise. And kind. Absolutely kind.” I grasped her hand, squeezed it, let it go. I wondered if I might find another way to control my life besides imagining terrible things, being a shrew to my husband. My efforts to control the world weren’t really working anymore. And being self-righteous with Andrew didn’t advance our marriage either.

  “When you lose things, kindness fills the spaces, he says,” Nancy continued. “He lost a wife and child already. And his farm back in Pennsylvania.” She straightened the handle on the sug
ar pot. “We have nice conversations. He hasn’t said anything of marriage. I mean, we’re just friends.”

  “Friends make the best marriages.” I knew I sounded wistful.

  “Any more sassafras tea, darlin’?” Andrew shouted from the front porch where I’d helped him hobble, placed his leg up on a pillowed chair, and handed him his leather-working tools and the saddlebag he worked on, stamping roses in the leather with his mallet while Nancy and I tended to things inside.

  “I’ll get it for you!” This was Martha Jane who swooped in and brought him a cup of the cooled tea I’d taken from the spring just before Nancy arrived. The best thing about Andrew’s recuperating was that the girls entertained him, scurried to get him water when he was thirsty, made him sandwiches when I was out for the day on horseback, even stewed a hen we’d have for supper. Andrew was good with them, complimenting their cooking and baking. He didn’t bark at them the way he did at me.

  “Can you feel the baby move?” Nancy brushed away crumbs from the tablecloth. I nodded. “Isn’t it funny? We were just girls not so long ago and soon you’ll be a mother. Your mama would be proud.”

  “I could never be the kind of mother she was, so loving and a good wife too.”

  “Sure you could. She was your model. You’ll do good, I know it.”

  “I’ll do well.” I laughed when she frowned. “Ignore me, Nancy. Grammar is a specialty of mine. And forgive me. I just have to correct, fix things whether they matter or not.”

  “I’ve been in that horse race.” She grinned.

  Nancy rose to leave and I hugged her, grateful to have a friend who didn’t need explaining to. After she left, I sat for a moment on the porch beside Andrew. The girls and I had picked blackberries in the late July morning, and I could smell their ripeness even though the branches we’d plucked were well beyond the barn. I kept them chopped closer to the buildings, as they took over a place. I wished more than once that the Molalla and Kalapuya Indians, who had been on this land first, still burned the underbrush. But with split rail fences marking “territory,” the settlers forbade it. Instead, we chopped vines and shrubs, working twice as hard than if we’d monitored flames doing that work for us.

  The doctor came and I rose to bring him coffee.

  “Andrew’s bone’s healing well, thanks to you. First signs of civilization are healed bones, I always say. Someone had to bring food and water so that bone could rebuild. Kindness. Had it back in ancient times when we still lived in caves. A good thing our ancestors brought with us. You remember that, Andrew Warren.” He nodded toward me. “Be kind to your wife here. She’s got her hands full.”

  “And I gave her most of that full house she’s holding.”

  A fire hit my face, hot with his reference to gambling and his claim that all we had was what he’d brought about rather than my having any part to it.

  “And I’m sorry I did that to you, Eliza. Sorry for this happening and truly grateful for how you’re keeping me from . . . bad things.”

  I frowned, realizing he hadn’t meant that the good things I held had come from him but rather that these challenges that consumed my daily efforts were his fault: his wound, my need to care for him, bringing in wandering cattle. Maybe even him wanting my full attention whenever he came back to the house. He gave me great power, maybe too much. Does he think it’s me who keeps his lips from liquor instead of Who it really is?

  The doctor left, and Andrew and I sat together, the girls with their little leavings dolls playing in the dirt in front of the porch. My belly swelled and the baby kicked. I placed Andrew’s hand on my abdomen. “Feel that?” He nodded. “New life. We’ll get you through this, and we’ll have a new life to care for. As his papo you’ll do him proud.”

  “You’re sure it’ll be a boy?”

  “Some things can’t be known nor planned for. They just are.”

  He patted my belly. “It’s been five months. Maybe I’m done with drink for good.”

  “You’ve been counting too?”

  He nodded. I thought maybe in this closer moment he’d tell me of that pain he carried. But he didn’t and this time I wisely didn’t try to force it from him. I kept my counsel and enjoyed the present moment, another part of the language of marriage I was learning.

  We named the baby America Jane. She was born November 7, just a week before my nineteenth birthday, in 1856. How I wish my mother could have met her! That same dark hair, those brown eyes wide to the world, taking in the lantern light, my face. I had sent Martha riding on Maka for Nancy and the doctor on that unusually mild November morning. Nancy arrived first. By the time the doctor arrived America Jane was waiting.

  “I named her,” Millie told Nancy. “America.”

  “America Jane,” I added. “We’ll use her full name as it’s so lovely.”

  “Rachel calls herself Jane too,” Martha noted.

  “That she does. So our little girl’s name will represent many good girls.”

  I gasped as Nancy handed my baby to me.

  “What?”

  “I . . . I just saw my mother’s hands through my own on this child’s chest.” A grandchild for my mother. And my father. “He would have wanted her named Eliza, and if a boy, Andrew.” But I wanted each of what I hoped was many children to have their own name, make their own way. A flood of warmth filled me as I let those tiny fingers like butterfly kisses brush my palm. My child. My very own child.

  “I’ll bake a cake for her.” Martha was our little baker, and though she was but eleven she was handy with the cookstove.

  “I’m pleased the delivery went well. You helped so much, Nancy.” To share this moment with a friend brought our Savior’s love to the occasion.

  “All that riding and chopping wood, doing Andrew’s work, kept you healthy. It’s no wonder this baby took little time to get here.” Nancy beamed with our success as she cut the cord. “She knew you had things to do and didn’t want to keep you from it!”

  I was once again so grateful to have a close woman friend. Was Matilda a friend like that to my mother? Did she midwife and cut my youngest sister’s cord as Nancy did?

  The Nez Perce kept the umbilical cord, put it in a pouch. I remembered then that Matilda had said it would keep a baby close to its mother for life whether in a pouch at the baby’s throat or with the mother.

  I put my child’s cord in the leather pouch that Andrew had given me years before, feeling a twinge of guilt with my mother’s wedding ring still there too. I wasn’t sure why I kept the Nez Perce ways in some things. Nancy took the afterbirth outside and buried it deep enough that the animals wouldn’t dig it up, upsetting Abby who had trotted after her. Millie brought the dog back inside.

  Nancy had relegated Andrew to the porch, but he’d come inside when Millie skipped past him with Abby in tow. He laid his cane beside the chair and reached out for our baby. I handed America Jane to him, swaddled in a quilt. He held the child in his arms.

  “She has your chin,” I said. “Firm.”

  “I hope she has your strength.”

  “Mine? No, more like her grandmother’s. She was the strong one who kept things going.” She and my father worked so closely together. I suspect they never had a moment of doubt in their lives about their ability to raise a child, make a life, or of God’s place in a challenge or even about how to live with uncertainty or the lack of ability to influence one’s own life. She was solid, through and through. Firm. I believed that about her and their marriage and how things were supposed to work. I wanted to be like her, her family and faith giving meaning to her life. I had a purpose: raising a child, making a marriage work. Of course, marriage is like a language, and as with any language, it was easy to misinterpret.

  The Diary of Eliza Spalding

  1850

  My children give meaning to my life. I imagine Eliza working with her father who one day might get our mission back. He writes such passionate letters to the Mission Board, makes such a strong case to continue the wor
k we did there. We should just return. The trial is over and there’ve been no new uprisings. My thoughts toward the Board are full of disappointment. The “shoulds” of what they should have done are weights around my heart. I remember a letter S showed me, one of recommendation when we sought the mission field. His professor had said S was an “average student,” in fact lacked “common sense,” but that I was an “exceptional student who would make the most superb missionary wife.” S wasn’t fazed by this affront to his abilities. He said he knew God was with him by bringing me to his side, to fill in his “lackings,” and I should be proud to know our professors saw such gifts in me.

  He also said common sense was overvalued.

  It was his passion for a cause, a dream—that’s what saved those who might act in ways others thought lacked common sense. He reminded me we would not be here, would not have had the many souls brought to Christ, would not have printed those gospel books in Sahaptin, the Nez Perce language, if we’d listened to the “common sense” of those who said women couldn’t cross the continent and survive. We’d survived and thrived. I was glad S told me that. I could see purpose in our work and know that Eliza working with him after I am gone will continue to bring meaning to my life, long after. And I forgive S for the slights, the times he left me behind. It grew my character, those times of dark uncertainty.

  I wish Matilda was with me so we could talk about those days. She learned English so quickly and then Scripture, speaking Psalms in English and then in that lilt of clicks and swooshes that marked the language of The People, as though the very earth with its waterfalls and wind-swept ridges had given up its secrets to create the language of Nez Perce. I miss her counsel about children. I miss her brokering our lives, being that go-between for when S did something that offended or when I did. Once I held a Nez Perce toddler in my lap and pointed to her image in a slice of mirror, hearing the gasp of her mother as she whisked the child from my arms. It was Matilda who told me that a Nez Perce child is not permitted to see her own reflection until her soul is fully formed for fear if she sees that image she will search forever for that other self. “We even swirl the bath water,” Matilda told me. Such is not our belief, of course, but how to explain the nature of the soul with no way to lose it but by action or behavior. More importantly, she aided my understanding that the way I saw the world was not the only way to see it. I put away the mirror and once again was so grateful for her presence. She taught me use of local herbs, of plants that gave up inks and healing. And when once I was nauseated from my being pregnant, she held my head and told me to “pant like dog.” I laughed but did it and it worked. I so wish she could have come with us. But she would have been reviled here, even though her people kept us safe, were like family to me and always will be. Like the Mission Board, people here have trouble distinguishing between the many tribes.