Our Only May Amelia

by Jennifer L. Holm

  We should have told him before, Mamma says, worried.

  We did what we thought was right, Pappa says. I’m sure he’s fine Alma, he’s not a boy anymore.

  I ask Wilbert where he thinks Kaarlo has gone off to.

  He could’ve gone anywhere May. He could be halfway to Alaska by now, Wilbert says.

  Now I’m thinking I was pretty mean to him, that maybe he ran away ’cause he thought he wasn’t wanted or something. On account of me always saying he was no kind of a brother.

  The boys are feeling bad too. Ivan and Alvin are convinced it is their fault for playing pranks on him. Matti is debating whether or not he should go away to Astoria and believes that the whole situation is his fault. Wilbert thinks he should have been kinder to Kaarlo. Isaiah is avoiding all us children and is staying with his sheeps. Wendell says there’s no mending a torn heart, but he wishes he could.

  It is a bad time indeed to be a Jackson child.

  Finally, Aunt Feenie must return to Astoria.

  I miss Henry, she says. He’s been back in port nearly a week now and will be wondering where I am.

  But Matti doesn’t want to go until Kaarlo’s been found.

  Pappa says firmly, Matti, don’t let this stop you from going with your aunt. He’ll turn up, you’ll see. Pappa wants Matti to be successful.

  I help Matti pack his trunk. He’s just tossing clothes in, not folding anything at all.

  Matti, I wish you weren’t going, I say.

  It’s not very far, May, just Astoria.

  I’ll never see you.

  Don’t get all mopey, Matti says. I pick up one of the shirts that he’s bundled in a knot and fold it properly. All of a sudden I can’t take it. First Kaarlo and now Matti!

  Please don’t go! I say, hugging him and starting to cry. I promise I’ll be a good sister, I won’t get into any more mischief, you’ll see. Please don’t leave me here. I can’t bear it if you go too.

  Oh little May, Matti says, hugging me back tight and smoothing down my hair. You got a pack of brothers to look after you here. You won’t even have time to miss me.

  Yes I will, I say with a sniffle. You’re My Only Matti.

  Matti laughs.

  Just remember one thing, May, Matti says, rubbing away my tears.

  What?

  He gives me a bright grin and ruffles my hair.

  You’re My Only May Amelia.

  Jacob Clayton comes by our house after supper a few days later and visits a spell with Pappa. When he leaves he says, May Amelia, why don’t you give me a hand carrying these pies your ma made for me back home.

  Mamma has made three blackberry pies with berries Ivan and Alvin picked and given two to Jacob on account of him having no woman to cook for him.

  Sure Mr. Clayton, I say, I’ll help you carry these pies if I get a slice.

  On the way back to Mr. Clayton’s farm I tell him about Kaarlo running away and how bad I feel about it.

  Where do you think he went? I ask.

  Who could say May Amelia? Sometimes a body needs time to sort things out for himself.

  When I open the door to Mr. Clayton’s house, Kaarlo is right there, piling up wood by the fireplace.

  I cannot believe it. Kaarlo has been right here, next door, all this time?

  Come on, you two. Let’s sit on down and eat this pie your ma made for us, Mr. Clayton says, as if Kaarlo stacking wood by his fireplace was an everyday occurrence.

  Mr. Clayton carves Kaarlo and me a huge piece of blackberry pie. Kaarlo won’t look at me but digs right into his pie.

  I’m so nervous I don’t know what to do with my very own self.

  I try to take a bite of pie, but the words spill out of me.

  Kaarlo won’t you come home?

  Kaarlo just stares at me, looking grim.

  I know I was mean to you and I’m sorry, I say.

  I hang my head like Bosie when he’s been whupped. I ain’t been any kind of a sister to you, I say.

  Still Kaarlo doesn’t say anything. He’s never gonna say anything, he’s never gonna come home even though we are his only kin and it’s all my fault. I am remembering every mean thing I have ever done to him and when I get to the time I put lye in his bathwater I stop. It is too long a list.

  I get up and say, Thank you Mr. Clayton I guess I’ll head home now.

  I have nearly reached the front door when I hear Kaarlo’s voice.

  Wait a moment May Amelia, Kaarlo says. It’s dark out. I’ll walk you home.

  He gives me a ghost of smile.

  Thanks, I say, I feel safer having a brother walk me home.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Grandmother Tries Our Patience

  Everybody knows that I was the first girl to be born here on the Nasel, all the other mammas had boys including my own mamma who had six of them.

  Mamma says, I swear to you May Amelia there is something in the very water that breeds boys, you are Simply A Miracle.

  My grandmother does not think that I am A Miracle. That is, Pappa’s mother, Grandmother Patience.

  At breakfast Pappa says, Your Grandmother Patience will be coming to live with us on account of her getting on in years.

  I swear I don’t rightly understand why Pappa’s letting her live with us, she’s fit as can be, I say to Wilbert.

  None of us children likes Grandmother Patience ’cause she’s real mean and doesn’t care for children. I don’t know why she even had Pappa and Aunt Feenie and Uncle Aarno and Aunt Aili. She always says children are nothing but devils and demons.

  She has a silver-tipped cane that she uses to walk and one time she whacked Wendell so hard that he had a bruise on his cheek for a whole week and all he’d done was talk back to her. I haven’t seen sight of her since I was eight years old even though she only lives in Astoria. That time she yelled at Mamma, said she was no kind of a wife to my pappa, didn’t know how to do anything right let alone raise seven boys and one scrawny girl, and then she took Mamma’s favorite dish which Pappa had brought all the way from Finland and threw it at her and smashed it against the wall. After that Grandmother and Pappa had a real big fight and Grandmother Patience hasn’t come back until now.

  Wilbert tells me Grandmother Patience was poorly named.

  When Grandmother Patience arrives she looks at Mamma real hard, from the top of her head to her big belly, looks her up and down like she’s looking at a cow.

  Grandmother Patience says, Alma, it falls to you to care for me in my declining years even though you have got yourself with child again I see.

  Mamma sighs and says, Well, Mother Patience, you’ll be staying in the sewing room. May Amelia and the boys have fixed it up real nice for you, and I sure do hope you’ll be comfortable.

  My mamma is a real strong woman. She had to be to have homesteaded here with my pappa when it was still a wilderness and there weren’t any other families at all. But I don’t understand why she lets Grandmother Patience have at her. Wilbert says he overheard Pappa say to Matti that the oldest child must always look after the parents, and that it was his bad luck to be the oldest.

  Grandmother Patience walks back to the sewing room all slow with her wicked cane and looks into the room. Wilbert and I picked fresh flowers and put them on top of the dresser and a drawing I did in school of a cat is hanging on the wall, it is a good and decent drawing, even Miss McEwing said so. Mamma has put fresh linens on the bed and stuffed dried lavender under the mattress. It is a lovely room, smells real fine and has a window view of the Nasel.

  We all hold our breath as Grandmother Patience looks around.

  This room won’t do at all I’ll take the one on the far end of the hall, she says like she is the queen.

  Wilbert and I look at each other and he says Grandmother that’s me and May’s room don’t ya like this one none?

  Grandmother looks at Wilbert and says, I think it is a scandal that these two share the same room, boys and girls should not sleep together. From now on I shall
sleep in the end room with May Amelia. Now that Matti is gone, Wilbert can have his place in Kaarlo and Wendell’s room.

  I look at Mamma and sure enough she knows that my life will be A Living Misery if I have to stay with Grandmother Patience and besides Mamma knows that Wilbert is my favorite, that I love him best of all.

  Finally Mamma says evenly, Well Mother Patience, I suppose you can have the far room but the children will share the sewing room. I don’t fancy May Amelia sleeping unprotected, being a young girl like she is, and I’ve already told her how I want her brother Wilbert to keep an eye on her to see that she don’t go getting herself into mischief and he won’t be able to do that very well now if he isn’t sleeping with her.

  Grandmother Patience goes Humph and stalks off. Mamma looks at Wilbert and me and sighs.

  Well children, she says, I suspect we’re in for a real storm.

  My poor brothers are gonna be carting and carrying for the rest of their days.

  Grandmother Patience is insisting that they bring all her good furniture to our house and so they have to go down to Astoria and cart the furniture one half mile from her house to the boat, sail back to Knappton, cart it on a wagon and then onto the rowboat, and then finally carry it all the way into me and Wilbert’s old bedroom. She’s making them bring her heavy old rug, which looks like rats have been chewing on it, her own china, a big old bureau, a mirror, a night table, a washstand, pictures of her and Grandfather, and a small chair that she calls her settee.

  Grandmother keeps saying that Mamma’s furniture is No Good and that if she’s going to live in the wilderness she wants to have Nice Things around her. All her furniture is musty-smelling and dark-looking, nothing like the furniture Isaiah makes.

  I honestly don’t know how you live like this Jalmer, Grandmother Patience says to Pappa at supper.

  Pappa just grunts and keeps eating the fish-head stew, it is his favorite Finnish food. It tastes okay I guess, but I mostly try to avoid the eyes.

  And your daughter is just a hellion, says Grandmother Patience, fixing me with her evil eye. Why you wouldn’t even know there’s a girl under that dirt. She’s filthy.

  Grandmother looks me up and down.

  And she’s wearing trousers. It’s scandalous, she says.

  That’s because I’ve been mucking out the barn, I want to say but Wilbert kicks me hard under the table, a warning kick. There’s no arguing with Grandmother Patience. I bite my tongue.

  Jalmer, you should send this child to the Our Lady School to learn how to behave.

  All us children gasp, even Kaarlo.

  Mother Patience! Mamma says.

  The Our Lady School in Astoria is run by mean nuns. Every child knows that the nuns beat the children with switches and make them sleep in cold beds and eat only gruel.

  Pappa raises an eyebrow and says It’s a Catholic school Mother. I’m not sending my daughter to a Catholic school when we are Lutherans and besides even if I wanted to we can’t afford the fees.

  Well I see that you won’t listen to good sense so I suppose I must take it upon myself to school May Amelia in how to behave, Grandmother Patience says ominously.

  I do so know how to behave, I say.

  You are an ill-mannered slovenly girl. And you dress like a street urchin, Grandmother Patience says.

  Well you’re a Mean Old Witch! I shout before Wilbert can stop me.

  Enough! Pappa says, banging his fist on the table. I work hard all day and I want to eat my supper in peace! Not another word out of anyone.

  Grandmother Patience curls her lip meanly at me, and I just know that I am going to pay for what I said.

  Wilbert and I lie in bed and listen to Mamma and Pappa fighting about Grandmother Patience.

  Goddammit Jalmer, I do not want that woman in my house, Mamma says.

  Well she’s here and we have to make the best of it.

  That woman has been here two days only and she’s already turned everything upside down. She’s no help at all, just more work and another mouth to feed.

  She’s my mother and she’s staying and that’s final, Pappa says.

  Mamma says, Your mother is nothing but trouble.

  And then they lower their voices and we can’t hear them anymore.

  Do you think Pappa will send Grandmother away? I whisper to Wilbert.

  Nah, he whispers back, she’s stuck here like a cow in the tidelands.

  And we’re the fly on her back I think.

  Grandmother Patience is the devil. I am convinced.

  Grandmother Patience whacked me so hard on the shoulder with her cane that when I undress for bed there is blood all over my undershirt and under the blood a big old bruise the size of a hen’s egg.

  Wilbert says GoodLordMayAmelia, what the heck happened to you?

  I say Don’t you go cursing at me Wilbert Jackson, I just don’t wanta hear it.

  I am tired of being yelled at all the time now. Grandmother Patience says that I am No Good, that girls are Nothing But Trouble. I don’t know if she means all girls or me in particular. She says I am a wicked wicked girl and that I have spiteful eyes. I know in the Bible it says that it is a sin to wish for someone’s death but I cannot help but wish that Grandmother Patience would simply go ahead and die and leave us all in peace. I surely must have done something mighty awful to deserve her but for the life of me I cannot imagine what.

  Wilbert says, Come on May what happened lemme see your shoulder. Good Lord did some boy beat you up? Tell me who did this to you May and I’ll whup ’em good, me and the boys will get ’em I swear.

  I say, Wilbert you ain’t gonna be whupping nobody ’cause that mark is from the witch sleeping in our room.

  Grandmother Patience?

  Wilbert sits back down and shakes his head. His hair is all ghostly in the candlelight.

  What happened?

  I was in the kitchen by myself getting supper started when she came in and began saying she had some mending she needed done. I said I couldn’t do it, the boys were due home any time and I had to have supper on the table. Then she just whacked me. Said girls are meant to obey and that she’d whack me again the next time I talked back to her.

  He says, I cannot believe Ma and Pa let her live here and treat you the way she does, it ain’t right. I know we’re supposed to respect our elders but she doesn’t deserve a speck of respect, that mean old witch. Well I’m gonna do something about it.

  Wilbert sneaks upstairs in the still of the night and steals Grandmother Patience’s cane while she is sleeping and gives it to Bosie who I’m sure has it hid somewhere beneath this house and she will never find it.

  For every evil God sends to me he sends an angel and I know sure for certain that Wilbert is my guardian angel.

  A few days later Wendell and Wilbert and Ivan and Alvin and Isaiah and Kaarlo and me are downstairs minding ourselves. It is late, after supper, and Mamma and Pappa have gone over to visit with Lonny’s parents for a spell.

  The boys and me are all worn out from a hard day of bringing in the hay. We always bring in the hay in September and this year is no different. It is very hard work indeed because we have to wait for a day without rain. If the hay is wet, it will be no good and will rot. When we woke up today the sun was shining, so Pappa yelled at all us children to get a move on out to the fields. We even borrowed Lonny and Jacob Clayton to help and they will get some hay in return. Even so, we still have a lot more to bring in tomorrow.

  Wendell is helping me sew a new dress for my china baby doll, the one Aunt Feenie gave me. The doll is sitting in the rocking chair. We are trying to make an Indian dress but it is quite tricky and I suspect we will have to ask Jane for some help.

  Ivan and Alvin and Kaarlo are reading quietly. I have sewn together the pages of the Finnish newspaper, the Amerikan Suometar, so that it will not fall apart being passed around. It is the only Finnish newspaper we can get out here and it is fine indeed even though it is often two weeks late on account of how f
ar it must travel to get to our farm. Isaiah is snoring in the corner, he is all tuckered out after bringing in the hay and then checking on the sheeps. He works harder than all us children some days. Wilbert is trying to mend a shoe that Bosie got ahold of and chewed. It’s a real mess though and there’s no saving it I think. Bosie whines at Wilbert like he knows he did something wrong.

  Bosie you sure are a dumb dog, Wilbert says.

  Wilbert, I say, you can’t leave anything lying around.

  That was my good pair of shoes. Now I’ll have to borrow an old smelly pair of Kaarlo’s, Wilbert grouses.

  Kaarlo looks up from the paper and gives Wilbert the eye but even he’s too tired to start a fight.

  Grandmother Patience comes stomping down the stairs. She sits heavily on a chair and says, May Amelia, go on and fetch me some tea. She is fingering her new cane, a twisted rough-hewn stick. Where did she get that?

  I go on out and make up some tea for her.

  Here’s your tea, I say.

  She takes a quick sip and frowns. It’s not even hot, she says. Make me a new cup, this one’s no good.

  It is so hot I nearly burned my fingers. I want to say No! but Wilbert fixes me with a look, a look that says Just Do What She Says and so I go back into the kitchen anyway and make another cup. It is steaming hot this time, with a little trail of smoke.

  It’s hot, I say, handing her the cup.

  She takes a sip and purses her dried-up lips in a nasty smile.

  Didn’t you put any honey in at all girl? It’s not a bit sweet. Can’t you do anything right? Take it away and bring me another, she says meanly. I swear you are the most useless child in the entire house.

  The boys are watching us. Ivan and Alvin have stopped reading the paper. Wendell has put down his needle, and Isaiah is awake now and observing quietly from the corner. Wilbert is watching every word that comes out of Grandmother Patience’s horrible mouth and I think that even Kaarlo feels sorry for me. I wish Matti was here, he would never have let her do this to me.

  My blood is boiling like the tea water, I want to throw this cup in her face but Wilbert gives me a wink, a wink that says Pay Her No Mind. I swear I don’t know what I’d do without Wilbert. I go back on out to the kitchen and pour three whole spoonfuls of honey into the tea, the very last bit of honey in the jar. Mamma says that Grandmother Patience has eaten up every sweet thing in this house.