And then the judge turned to the lawyer. “And you, representing deserters and Negroes and wild Indians.” The judge shook his head in deep disappointment. “And didn’t I see you in here trying to work up some nonsense about women’s property rights? I don’t know where you think you are or who you think you’re talking to, but this here is Minnesota, an infant state but fulla experienced men who know more than a little bit about governing. You better watch yourself and put down those rebellious notions.” Then he pounded his gavel and farted.
5
Angel and Big Waters
ON THE DAY THE LOGJAM unraveled, downriver a short way Angel Hatterby Lawrence and Big Waters passed each other on a path. Angel wore a dress of lavender silk, splattered with blood drops, and white side-laced boots, caked in mud. As she raced away from the death scene, she worried over having to ask Thomas for the money for a new gown and another pair of boots. He would ask many questions. She carried a quiet cygnet in her dainty palm.
Big Waters hobbled along, slowed by old age, and blood spots bloomed through her animal-skin slippers. In her arms she held the dead mother swan, its neck broken in the blast. She had picked it up downstream from under a branch. The beautiful bird reminded her of the many stories she knew that no one was interested in hearing anymore.
When they met, the two women understood each other and swapped the animals, so that Angel took the dead fowl for its beautiful feathers and Big Waters took the living cygnet, for it needed a willing mother. Each woman fiercely disliked the other, but they accepted that their lives, through Clement, were entwined.
“The trapper is dead,” said Angel.
“It is for the best,” said Big Waters. She looked hard at the young woman, remembered those same fierce eyes in the face of a robust infant, long ago.
“Keep Clement away from me now,” said Angel.
“You are all he wants, but I will try,” said Big Waters. “Your debt to him is now paid.”
“I never owed him anything,” said Angel, knowing the words to be false.
PART II: MOTHERS
6
The Reluctant Mother
STILLWATER, MARCH 1840
LYDIAN, RUNAWAY WIFE of Beaver Jean the trapper, lay in the thin, stiff bed of Stillwater Home for Orphans and Infirmed, repeating, “Whoo-whee, whoo-whee,” and sighing loudly. Her newborn twins lay right next to her, nestled stomach to back, the girl screaming, the boy sleeping through the racket his sister raised a mere breath from his ear.
“I can’t believe I lived through that,” Lydian said. “If that’s how birthing feels, I can’t believe any woman alive would suffer it knowingly.” Lydian patted the head of the crying infant a bit too hard, and she squalled louder.
“You don’t know what I’ve just done for you,” she said to the babe. She rubbed the child’s chest. “If you knew, you wouldn’t cry at me like that.”
Lydian thought of the four births she’d witnessed in her seventeen years: a standing cow who plopped her offspring onto a shit patty and commenced grazing lackadaisically while her calf struggled to stand on its trembling legs, a dog that licked the slick membrane off her pups and then snoozed lazily while they yanked at her teats, a garter snake that squeezed out a hundred or more baby snakes and then turned up on her back and died while they dispersed into the grass, and her own stepmother, who popped out Lydian’s little sister.
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “I can’t believe there’s a body on this world at all if that’s how it feels for all ladies squishing out babies. No right-thinking woman would ever let that baby get in her to begin with.”
“It wasn’t so bad as that,” said the woman who’d delivered the twins. “If you’re a married Catholic woman, bearing babies to be baptized into the Holy Catholic Church is your duty.” The woman tried to put a rolled-up cloth soaked in water into the crying baby’s mouth, but she wouldn’t take to it.
“You’re too old now,” Lydian asked the woman, “but did you have some children like I just did? Did you push out some babies back in the old days who are grown now?” Lydian tried to imagine this woman lifting up her skirts and birthing a baby the way she had just done. She wondered if the woman would have had the same tight-lipped look to her then.
“I’m not yet thirty years in this world, girl,” said the woman. “But I’ve not had any children. I made a vow to the Lord. I’m a bride of Christ.” The woman made clucking noises at the baby.
“You took up the nun life?”
“I did. The sister’s life, more accurately. Nuns are cloistered. Sisters do good works in the world. You can call me Mother St. John.”
Lydian wondered why all the nuns she’d ever encountered always talked about women’s duties. She wondered if it was because they couldn’t have any woman’s duties of their own and coveted woman’s natural ways. But from where Lydian was positioned, the life with no rutting husband nor crying babies looked easier. So then she wondered if the nuns always talked about women’s duties in order to keep girls like her from flooding the convents and becoming brides of Christ. Maybe there wouldn’t be enough room for all the girls who’d want a nun life if they knew how nice it was with no big belly and baby sickness and then the deathly birthing and then the loud crying with no relief in sight. And that’s not even mentioning the leg-spreading to endure. The nun life sounded like the life to live.
“Do all babes yelp so noisy?”
“No,” said Mother St. John. “This one seems a bit fussier than most.”
Lydian very much longed for the moment she could creep from this bed and out the door away from here, far from these babies and anyone who’d ever known her. Above all else in the world, she wanted to find a nice, warm place where the folks ate sweet food. But she’d have to bide her time.
The girl child was as heavy as a sack of coffee and had a head full of black hair, while the boy was much lighter and bald as a new possum. When the babies opened their eyes, slate gray irises big as coins peeked out. And though Lydian would not be there to see the change, in the coming months, the eyes of the girl would darken to mink brown. The boy’s left eye would match his sister’s color, but the right eye would live a blue life all its own, like a little pool of water.
Lydian was worn through from the journey, labor, and delivery, but the woman who had delivered the twins said that she would be up and moving about in a few days. She told Lydian to think of all the women who brought children into the world in dark, cold, and lonely places with a lot less fuss than Lydian had made.
“You scared away the turkey I was going to butcher for supper,” she had told her. “When your husband arrives, he’ll have to pay for it.”
“Maybe you should have tied that tom up if he was the kind to run off.” She pulled a greasy strand of hair over her mouth and sucked on it. “Maybe I’ll just clean up and be ready for when he gets here, my husband.”
“Soon enough,” the woman said. She patted Lydian’s leg. “The babies are not ready to travel quite yet. I’d like to see them each latch on proper before you’re off.”
“Just a little while perhaps,” said Lydian. “Do you have any sugar here?” She looked out the window at the snow coming down and was happy to think of her tracks being covered. She sucked harder.
“Spit that out,” said the woman. “It’s a dirty thing to do.”
“Hmm?” said Lydian. “Sure is snowing.”
“Yes,” said the woman. “We should say a prayer that your husband will find us quickly and safely.”
Lydian thought of Beaver Jean, hairy as a goat and lumpy as a turtle shell. She supposed he’d be eager to bring a wagon to gather his wife and babies, if he knew where to find them. But when the laboring pains began several days ago, Lydian had sneaked away to the one place she knew he’d not look for her first. He’d come here second or third perhaps, but not first. He’d first go to her stepmother’s and look for her there. But that gave her only a two-day start on him. He’d eventually think to come to the
infirmary, though Beaver Jean tried to avoid the religious sort. He said their eyes gave him nervous fits and put his stomach in a weasely way.
Lydian had lived with Beaver Jean and his two squaws, who hated her, for nearly two years, since the day Lydian’s stepmother had sold her to the trapper for a couple of pelts. Before Beaver Jean had even gotten Lydian back to his cabin, he’d bent her over and staked her like a landmark, grunting throughout the ordeal. After that, he pushed his groin against her in daylight and dark and created a mighty racket as he thrust about until he collapsed in a smelly heap and fell asleep. He was never-endingly kissing and touching her hair. And when she’d crawl out from beneath his massive body or entirely escape his affections, the other women he lived with as wives beat her with their bare fists and pulled her yellow-red hair. The squaws tried to do away with the life that had grown in her belly by starving her when Beaver Jean was away from the cabin.
When the laboring pains had started days before, in short tight coils every few hours or so, Lydian waited until nightfall and then crept out into the night, fleet-footed, considering her condition. When it was all over, she wanted to head toward Mexico, where she heard ladies could wear lace in all colors, even red, and where it never snowed. She’d marry a Mexican cowboy and raise colorful roosters on a farm and drink coffee like a lady. But first, Lydian turned north and went to the place where she knew she could deliver and leave her baby. She’d heard some farmers had gone there to adopt a boy for their own family. Lydian supposed someone would adopt hers too.
Lydian was thinking of Mexico, its red sun and red soil, when the girl baby started screeching again as if an owl had torn her skin with its talons. Lydian panted, shallow breaths. She felt faint. She looked again to the babies on the bed beside her and stroked their heads. She once had a bitch that had birthed two pups and protected them like they were bricks of gold. Lydian wished she had a brick of gold.
She picked up the girl child, the one who cried. The baby’s lips opened and her head shook back and forth, seeking the breast. Lydian indulged the girl, who latched on ferociously.
“Ouch, you greedy little thing,” Lydian said. The baby tugged and swallowed.
Lydian’s belly cramped and relaxed, already working to put her middle back to trim, and with that pain all she wanted to do was to place these babies on someone else’s lap, curl into a ball, and sleep. Her thighs pounded with aches, and they sometimes shook with powerful chills. Bouts of nausea came and went with each cramp. The very thought of all the blood she passed from her body onto the rags under her bottom nearly sent her into a faint. All her seventeen years she’d trapped and hunted, skinned and gutted, filleted and butchered carcasses of every sort. The ground behind her father’s shack was stained red with the blood of the animals she’d prepared. And never had the sight, smell, or thought of that blood made her ill. She put her finger in the corner of the baby girl’s mouth and released the suction. Then she placed her next to her brother. Lydian put the girl’s own fist to her lips to suck, which the baby did.
“I’m feeling quite sickly,” she told the stern woman. “Maybe you could put these babes on another cot for a bit so I could rest a spell.”
“Look around here, missy,” said the stern woman. “I got orphans and sick ones and old ones in every nook and cranny. I don’t have a bed to spare.”
Lydian fought to keep her thighs steady and her teeth from chattering and breaking off into little bits. She’d often had troubles with her teeth and couldn’t afford to lose even one more. Willing herself to control her body, Lydian focused on how nice it would be to not be pregnant anymore but couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt so cold and so pained. She recalled how her stepmother had given birth at the cabin and how she’d been up and frying griddlecakes for supper a few hours later. Lydian remembered the strange smell of the woman, blood and milk and earth and animal.
A jumble of thoughts and feelings kept her from a peaceful snooze. The babies would stay here. She knew that. She would be crawling out from under the warm blanket and off the worn straw mattress at the first opportunity. She’d pull her boots from beneath the bed and carry them out the door. She’d put them on outside and walk away.
But as she looked at the babies, she couldn’t deny the feelings of . . . what? Care? Tenderness? Affection? Or love? She’d hardly ever heard that word used, except when her stepmother would say, “I love syrup!” as she tapped the maples and licked her fingers clean like a raccoon, or when Beaver Jean would say, “I love an Indian on firewater!” and then hurry away from the tribe, tripping under the weight of the pelts he’d swindled from the drunk ones and not paying any mind to the plight of the Indian woman looking for a scrap of food or a covering for the little ones. Lydian didn’t know, for certain, what the word love meant. The sight of these babies’ little lips made her throat feel like her tongue was swelling up and choking her.
Lydian wondered if at some time someone felt for her what she now felt for these babes, which was an odd urge to ladle them up and lick them. Doubtful that such a thought had ever crossed the mind of the ma who birthed her, her pa, or the stepmother who raised her and then sold her to Beaver Jean, Lydian did scoop up first the boy and then the girl and licked them both on the cheek. Neither seemed to mind. She lay them back on the bed.
Lydian realized that the stern nun must’ve given up her own bed for Lydian and the babes. Above the bed hung a picture of the Virgin Mary wearing a blue gown, with her heart exposed and circled in roses. A strand of praying beads lay on the bed table, and a crucifix lorded over the fireplace at the foot of the bed.
She heard, coming from another room, Mother St. John telling a story about a little man named David having a quarrel with a Philistine giant who wanted to kill him and enslave his people. She heard one child ask, “Was it a sin for David to kill Goliath?” She heard Mother St. John answer, “Yes. I suppose it was. But we have to think about how many good Catholics Goliath would have enslaved and murdered, had David not killed him. And I’m sure David offered his confession shortly afterward.”
Lydian puzzled on that.
“What do you do with all those children?” she asked Mother St. John when she came to change Lydian’s rags.
“Baptize them,” said Mother St. John. “Keep some. School some. Sometimes farm families come looking for children too. So sometimes we find them families, which is what we prefer, of course.”
“Do some of them go to rich folks sometimes?” Lydian asked. “Or folks who have a mother who can make sweets?”
“Sometimes,” said Mother St. John. She looked at Lydian oddly, then left to tend to the children’s bedtime rituals.
This was where Lydian would leave the twins. So these moments offered Lydian her last chance at holding them both, cradled in complete innocence. But for now, Lydian was overcome with the pain in her own body and with the strange things happening to her womb and her breasts and her heart, which was full of an ache she could not explain. She had to get away. She had to get out of the infirmary before Beaver Jean found her and dragged her back to his affections and the squaws’ wrath. Perhaps, Lydian told herself, the children would be adopted by a nice family. More and more, men were dragging women to this remote part of the country and sticking up wood houses or stacking together soddy huts in the middle of the forests. Towns grew up here, with proper churches and schools for children to be raised in a civilized way. Lydian knew of orphan wagons that brought little children from far away to the farmers here, who would adopt them. People here wanted children.
7
Beaver Jean the Trapper
IF THERE WAS ONE THING Beaver Jean had learned from his pappy, it was that there was a wrong way to do something and a right way to do something. “It’s the wrong way, the way yer doing that” was what his pappy would say to Jean if he was baiting a fishhook or tying a knot or eating an egg. “That way too is not right,” his pappy would say when Jean would attempt a correction. “Watch me, and learn ye the righ
t way,” his pappy would go on.
No matter what it was, his pappy would do the task as quickly as possible, his back to his boy, and in a way that was hovered over, almost as if he didn’t want Jean to see and learn at all. So, if the task was pulling a rotten tooth out of a calf’s head, he’d place Jean behind him and tell him to “watch and learn if ye can.” His pappy’s arms, from behind, would look like lightning bolts flashing here and there. Then his pappy would turn around with the rotten tooth in hand and say, “Easy as pie,” which was strange because making pies didn’t come easily to Jean’s mother apparently, as Jean had seen his pappy take bites of a hundred pies baked by his mother, spit each one out, and say, “Something has gone terribly wrong here.” If, after watching his pappy’s demonstration, Jean still didn’t get the task right, his pappy would say, “Go on up to the house with yer mother before ye cause all sorts of ruination on a biblical scale.”
His mother spoke only French, which was a language Jean’s father thought to be flashy and fussy and the wrong way to talk. Though Beaver Jean rarely spoke with his mother, he preferred her over his pappy. She was a gentle woman and often petted his hair and stroked his earlobes. Jean loved his mother very much, and she doted on him until the one day when, even though his pappy had told her a hundred times that lighting the stove while wearing hoops beneath her skirt was the wrong way to do it, she did it the wrong way, and her skirt hem caught fire. Before Jean’s eyes, she blossomed into a pillar of flames. She hustled outdoors, which his pappy later said was the right thing to do and a miraculous display of wit from a woman who would pick up the wrong end of a snake. Her right-minded thinking saved the house from burning down. She ran to the horse trough and dived in, putting out the fire but suffering a terrible sight of black, peeling, pus-oozing wounds all over her legs and belly.
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