There was so much wrong with it, that she began to black out with the heaviness of it all. On top of the breaking of mores that humiliated her so, there was the appearance of her dugout. Having thought she’d put her material interests behind for simpler ideals, her shame at her home’s appearance took over her thoughts.
She sniffled as Templeton poked around for a cup and ladle.
She turned away from the sight of him, looking at her ill-equipped kitchen. She closed her eyes, hand over her forehead. “You’d think it’d be no big concern to lose your money, your things.” Jeanie spoke so quietly she didn’t think he’d even hear her. “As long as you had family and health and mind, and determination. But then you lose it, the silk dresses, shiny gold, glittery gems, a household staff, and you realize all of those things are actually part of who you are. I was a fraud without even knowing it.” Jeanie chortled, her throat scratchy. “How was I to know when I wrote those books, that my thoughts on keeping a home were entirely dependent on keeping my things. I really believed I was simply…”
“Shhh, shhh, shhh,” Templeton sat on the edge of the bed. Jeanie kept her eyes closed, let him lift her up and put the cup to her lips, water running down her mouth, over her chin. She opened her eyes and looked into Templeton’s face, his skin creased with his obvious concern. His grey eyes anchored his gaze into her soul, making her feel as though their private souls were slipping together, greeting one another in a way they couldn’t verbally do.
“You have to go,” Jeanie said. She searched his expression for evidence he’d heard what she said, that he didn’t think she was awful. She was further shamed that she cared what he thought.
Templeton hesitated then nodded and stood. He pulled the chair across the room and set it beside the bed where he laid the water cup. “I’ll find Frank. You shouldn’t be alone.”
Jeanie almost screamed for him to stay, to tell her she wasn’t a fraud. Please, tell me, she thought. Someone, please tell me… please, she thought. She wanted him to put his hands back on her, to touch her face. She was swimming with the same feelings that Frank had once brought out in her just by standing nearby.
“I can’t sleep,” Jeanie said. “That’s what’s wrong. I haven’t slept since the fire. If I sleep, I might wake and find out they died. I couldn’t live, I couldn’t.”
Templeton came back to the bed and sat down heavy, as though this was exactly the invitation he’d been waiting for. “You don’t have to be afraid to sleep. Everyone’s fine. This is reality, you’re alive, they’re alive. And, I think you would do fine under any circumstance. Even if you can’t imagine…it’s what people like us do. We’re pioneers, Jeanie, and it’s what we do. We live no matter what.”
Though convention demanded that she be humiliated at what had transpired in the room where she slept, with a man not her husband, Jeanie felt nothing at all. It was as though Templeton saw something in her that she didn’t, and unlike Frank who might have said those very same words to her, Templeton saying them meant mountains, as he wanted and needed nothing from her. Frank’s kind words were often the currency of manipulation to direct her actions down the path that would most benefit him.
Jeanie watched Templeton leave the dugout, put his hat on, straighten it before walking away. Jeanie’s body felt as though she were trapped in mud, she had never felt such fatigue, yet her eyes wouldn’t close, her mind wouldn’t stop and let her sleep. And Frank finally arrived looking hot and sweaty. Jeanie didn’t have a chance to inquire what he’d been up to because he began to tend to her as though she were his delicate angel, his greatest love, the way he used to treat her.
He mixed a drink and brought it to her. She looked at him, her heart beating with the surge of feelings Templeton had awakened, though now they were for her husband. She winced at the bite in the drink.
“Frank? What’s in this?”
“Just some herbs. From the Moores. Nothing…“
Jeanie fell back on the pillows and almost immediately her mind lifted and her spirit ran with lightness that was nearly a miracle and her question, whatever it was faded from her mind. She reached up to Frank and felt his face, seeing two of him, but remembering every single reason she ever fell in love with him. And it could be whittled down to a list of three things—his good looks dwarfed hers and made her feel as though winning at poker to have him love her as though she didn’t deserve to be with someone so handsome, but like any winner at poker, she could live with it once it happened. Two, his optimism that there wasn’t anything in the world he couldn’t do. And three, the way he loved their children, as though his life locked down in peace when they were born.
She finally coasted into sleep, feeling as though smothered in nothing but goodness, happy to be nothing more than Frank’s wife.
Jeanie raised her head trying to wake, the room blurred, the fuzzy figures and furniture shifted and she dragged her thick tongue around her mouth, feeling as though dirty rags were jammed in it. Voices filled the dugout, Frank’s strained while a woman’s was pleading. Greta? Yes, it was Greta.
Jeanie must have fallen back asleep because when she finally woke for good, she could make out the people and objects in the room clearly. Frank and Greta were convened at the cook-stove, Katherine sat on the floor with two-year-old Anzhela. It was the first time Jeanie could remember not seeing Anzhela attached to Greta’s body with clasped arms and legs.
“Mama!” Katherine hopped up and tumbled into bed with Jeanie.
“Now, Kath, don’t crowd your Mama, she’s not up to speed yet.”
Jeanie wrapped her arm around Katherine, squeezed her tight and kissed her forehead, smelling just washed hair. Roses.
“I got a bath at the Moore’s, Mama,” Katherine said, her eyes nearly dancing in her skull as the memory was clearly a decadent one for her. “They allowed me use of their big white porcelain tub, fit for queens, their shampoo—rose-scented, then a thick substance, apple smelling that they said would smooth the knots away after rinsing it, then they had me dry myself, put on a pinafore and they swabbed my arms and legs with the most wonderful rose-scented lotion.”
Katherine thrust her arm under her mother’s nose. “Isn’t that fantastic?”
The intense smell caused Jeanie’s stomach to tighten and shoot acid upward. She bolted up, covering her mouth. Greta dove toward Jeanie, shoving the water pail under her mouth where she vomited clear fluids, then nothing.
Katherine’s face crinkled with fear. She backed away, hiding in the corner where Anzhela was still playing with a doll. Greta climbed onto the bed, knelt beside Jeanie, ran her hand over the back of Jeanie’s head and down her back.
Jeanie’s breathing evened and she pulled her ankles in to sit cross-legged, handing the pail to Frank who appeared as horrified as Katherine.
“Come here Katherine,” Jeanie said, “it’s okay. With the baby my stomach is a little sensitive to smells. Those lotions and concoctions are something else. Why you’re a veritable farmer’s market with all the fruits and flowers emanating from your skin like that. It’s just my being pregnant.”
Frank flinched then snuck a glance at Greta who caught the gaze then looked away.
“What?” Jeanie said.
Greta and Frank stared at one another as though each was threatening to expose the other’s worst secret. Jeanie’d seen the expressions, the tension that gripped a person’s entire body.
Frank broke Greta’s gaze and shrugged. “I just gave you a little—”
Greta cut her hand through the air. “Not with the kids in here. Katherine, could you make sure Anzhela is under the care of Anna and the boys. Aleksey’s the most reliable, but see to it she doesn’t wander.”
Katherine nodded and pulled Anzhela to her feet and out the door. She took a final glance at Jeanie who nodded reassuringly before turning her attention back on Frank.
“What is it? Exactly how long have I been asleep? The baby?”
Frank shrugged. “Baby’s fine as far as we c
an tell. You had so much trouble sleeping after the fire that I just helped you a little, I put a little elixir in your tea, that’s all, just a little something to help you along to sleep. It wasn’t good for the baby to have you living on two hours sleep.”
Jeanie looked at her lap and let Frank’s words wrap around memories of other elixirs. “No, no you didn’t.”
“I had to, I didn’t know what else to do.”
“The baby, he’ll be slow or dead or—”
Greta grabbed Jeanie’s biceps. “Now listen to me, I gave Frank, who I barely know, let alone know well to tell him his business, but I gave it to him good, Jeanie, I told him not to give you any more of that or your baby would be born limp or stupid or dead. I’ve seen people with just one swig of laudanum, marry it until death comes way too early and ugly and wasted.”
“Okay, okay,” Frank said. His words were hissing, his face disgusted at what Jeanie knew he would consider theatrics on Greta’s part.
“Don’t speak to her that way,” Jeanie said. “Don’t you dare.”
Greta stood and ladled fresh water into a tin cup. She handed it to Jeanie and as the mug passed from her hands to Jeanie’s, Greta patted Jeanie’s offering comfort even though she knew she’d crossed the line into another’s marital bounds.
Greta straightened and doing so, came eye to eye with Frank. She scowled at him then disappeared through the doorway. Jeanie downed the entire cup of water. She pushed from the bed, staggering. Frank caught her weight and they held each other until she recovered her balance. Once she did, they dropped their arms from each other and stood, staring at one another.
She shook her head, not saying what she thought. She didn’t need to, she’d said the words to Frank once before, when he’d done this same thing when she suffered a late-term miscarriage. She’d said the words a million times about her father since she found out the truth about his lies. Frank knew better than to ever bring any form of opium into their home. And so they stared, silently posing arguments that if verbalized would have done even more damage than the act itself.
Jeanie pulled up her skirts and took the cup to the stove where she dunked it into the water, washed it and dried it. She hoped that Frank would have left the dugout, let her sort through her anger on her own. But there he was, behind her, making her hate him, breathing.
“Stop staring at my back,” Jeanie said.
“I’m looking at the ceiling.”
“I can feel your eyes burning a hole in my back. I’m not going to apologize or act like your regret is worth anything. I, right now, can barely stand the thought of you let alone the sight of you. So just go, Frank. Just give me some time to think.”
Jeanie’s verbal purge felt good while in the midst of it, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth she felt struck by her own venom. She hugged her midsection. This was not the time to make things worse, to push Frank away, to make him see her as weak and vixenish.
The image of the Moore sisters, indulging Katherine, popped to mind. The last thing she needed to do was spread her family out, she would lose them all, she needed to keep them close, and control them so to be sure they survived. Jeanie started to speak, to set things right with Frank when panicked voices wafted through the door. They both strained to hear then they looked at one another, questioning whether they really heard it.
Jeanie fled the dugout, shielding her eyes from bright sun as she did. The voices were coming from behind the dugout. She scaled the side of it, running toward the voices, behind the barn, then into clear land. She saw Greta lumbering over the land, wailing at the sky, her hands flailing, then tying her body up in her own arms before she ripped at her bonnet, her white blond hair that came loose from its bun and fell over her shoulders.
Whatever was happening to Greta, Jeanie could feel in her own bones. It had to be one of the children. Jeanie broke through her shock and ran toward Greta. She knelt beside Greta who had fallen to her knees, and pounded the ground, grunting at it. Jeanie unfolded Greta and pulled her into her arms repeatedly asking what was the matter. Greta choked on mucus and tears but then settled into a shuddering, quieter shock.
“Anzhela’s gone! She’s gone!”
By then the other Zurchenko children, Katherine, and Frank had circled the two women and were looking down on them.
“What do you mean? Let’s find her, come on, the children were watching her, she can’t have gone far, she’s but two. Let’s get up, we’ll find her, let’s go,” Jeanie said. She stood attempting to pull Greta’s six-foot frame from the prairie floor.
“She means Anzhela’s dead, Mrs. Arthur. Not missing.” Aleksey said.
Greta shuddered at Jeanie’s feet, jerking at her shins as Jeanie tried to make sense of Aleksey’s words.
“I don’t understand. She was with Katherine then, you, I thought, it was only for a bit, five minutes, how could…That can’t be right. It can’t be.”
But, Jeanie saw the Zurchenkos expressions fall, their eyes went to the ground as though in deference. Jeanie turned to see Nikolai standing behind her, holding Anzhela’s limp body, in his arms, her head, lobbing at the neck, her legs dangling, her arm flopped loose.
“She fell into the gully. The one by the tree,” Aleksey said.
Jeanie couldn’t respond. She didn’t believe her eyes, Anzhela’s matted wet hair, her skin bluish, but her face placid, appearing simply sleepy. Jeanie shook her head. Katherine came beside Jeanie and Nikolai. Katherine lifted Anzhela’s dangling arm up and laid it across her body, patting it so it would stay there.
Then she began to cry, apologizing for not watching Anzhela closer. She inhaled so fast and hard that her shoulders heaved and she fell to the ground, begging Mrs. Zurchenko’s forgiveness for losing track of Anzhela.
Jeanie’s heart stalled, she felt shaken as anger swelled her. How would Katherine be able to live with this? Jeanie bent down to her daughter and Greta. Jeanie pulled both of them into her body, rocking them. She looked up at Frank through her tears. How could he have been so stupid as to create a situation where the adults needed to talk privately? He was always trying to make things easier for him even if it made everyone else’s life so much harder. How could they have come to live in such a place where the land swallowed little girls up in flooded gullies when fires didn’t do it first?
Jeanie rocked Katherine for hours, leaving Frank to explain to James and Tommy what had happened. Somewhere between evening and night, Jeanie felt so out of control, so depressed that she almost asked Frank to mix laudanum for her, for the still trembling Katherine. Her body nearly begged for it and Jeanie began to understand why someone might use it, how easily the drug might become a reliable friend to charm one’s sorrows away. She was so saddened by the death of a child. She knew she could not survive what was ahead for Greta. She only hoped she could help her new friend manage the loss. So, in that darkness she held Katherine even tighter, thinking if she didn’t let go, she couldn’t get up and request Frank bring her opium to make her life bearable once more.
The funeral service was short and quiet. Jeanie didn’t make Katherine go and she charged James to care for her at home, to keep her still until she began to forget what she’d done. But, standing at the funeral, listening to Abby Hunt, Quaker opium-eater and by the looks of her poppy garden, opium-grower, Jeanie saw James slip into the circle of neighbors who’d come to say goodbye.
Jeanie couldn’t listen to the words Abby spoke. Her eyes kept shifting to the red, beckoning flowers, the way they bent in the wind, making Jeanie wonder what it meant that the entirety of the Zurchenko’s crops were overtaken in the fire, but the poppies were unharmed, as though they were saved by God. If there was a God. Jeanie reminded herself there wasn’t.
James edged over to his mother and whispered that Aleksey hadn’t been able to stay for the funeral, he couldn’t handle it because it had been his job to watch Anzhela with Katherine. Aleksey promised to watch over Katherine at the dugout. The rest of the stoic Zurche
nkos stood like sentries, faces showing none of the turmoil Jeanie felt inside. Greta stood, face red, bonnet blown off her head, her arms wrapped around herself, clutching Anzhela’s blanket to her chest as she’d held Anzhela herself for the balance of her life.
After the service Jeanie was hesitant to go to Greta. She didn’t know what to say, beyond adding to the pile of apologies she’d already dumped on her. Apologies that Greta didn’t want, that didn’t do anything but remind her that the Arthurs, in their short time on the prairie had changed the Zurchenkos existence for the worse.
So Jeanie became the friend she never wanted to be—a useless one, lost for words, unable to make someone’s life better. Jeanie hated herself, hated the prairie, Frank, her father. The thoughts shot around her head, making her body fill with a mixture of anger and sadness that was new in its depths.
And, as Jeanie headed home, with Tommy unusually quiet, holding her hand, as though for the first time ever understanding Jeanie, she knew her children were all that mattered, that with every minute on the prairie that they all stayed safe, they were just that much closer to tragedy. She wondered whether this pain, the pain Katherine would have to bear for the lot of them, would be enough pain to stave off further bad tidings, death, paralysis, blindness, whatever was in the universe to make their existence even worse than before. And in what Jeanie deemed a sickness because who could think such things, she hoped that Katherine’s pain would be enough to buy them all some freedom from more.
Chapter 9
1905
Des Moines, Iowa
Katherine laid a wet rag over Jeanie’s forehead and she found herself offering words of comfort, the same ones she might have uttered to one of her children when ill. Jeanie stirred and groaned. Katherine shushed her and straightened the bedspread. Yale stood at the door, arms full of a pile of letters and some books.
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