Ellis Island: Three Novels

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  Kristin, her clothes slapping heavily around her legs, stumbled along the path, the others following in her wake.

  Pappa thought the incident was funny. When Mamma explained what had happened, he chuckled and teased Kristin, “How could a nearly grown young lady be so clumsy?”

  “It wasn’t easy,” Kristin answered with a grin. She didn’t have the courage to admit to her parents what she had done. Maybe next time, she thought. In spite of just having had such a narrow escape, she fully intended to cool off in the lake again.

  “Did you bring a change of clothing with you?” Fru Berglund asked Kristin.

  Mamma answered for her. “No. She has nothing to change into. We had better return to the Lundgrens’.”

  “If we did that, we would lose half a day’s work, and time is expensive,” Pappa protested. “I have a better idea. Upstairs, in the largest bedroom, is a wooden chest filled with clothing. Kristin could go through it and see if there is something in the chest she could wear.”

  Mamma gasped, but Kristin said, “Mamma, if the clothing is clean, then there is no reason to be afraid of wearing it.”

  “The people who lived here …” Mamma began. “If there are spöken unable to leave this house, they may not like your wearing their clothes.”

  “That is possible.” Fru Berglund’s expression was as serious as Mamma’s.

  “We must return to work, spöken or no spöken,” Pappa announced. “The longer we waste time discussing this matter, the less we will accomplish. Kristin, go upstairs and see what you can find to wear.”

  Kristin dripped her way through the parlor and up the narrow stairway, breathing quickly as she glanced into the dim, empty rooms. But nothing shifted, nothing sighed. The floorboards creaked only under her own foot-steps. Pappa had to be right. Surely there were no spöken in the United States.

  Kristin easily found the chest and opened it. The clothes smelled slightly musty, but they were clean and neatly folded. Kristin pulled out a woman’s skirt, but it ended inches above her ankles, and she would never be able to fasten the waistband. The shirtwaist next to it was tucked with the tiniest of stitches, made for a small-boned woman who probably would have reached no higher than Kristin’s ear.

  So much for dry clothes. Pappa was going to be very unhappy.

  As she was about to close the lid of the chest, Kristin glimpsed a piece of rough, dark fabric—too heavy for a woman’s dress. She tugged, and out came a pair of men’s trousers. With the trousers was a rough, collarless work shirt, exactly like those her father wore. She held the pants up to her waist. The man who lived here had been small, too. These would fit her as would the shirt.

  A girl dressed in men’s clothing? It was unheard of. Mamma would be shocked! Mrs. Berglund would probably turn purple and collapse in a heap! Kristin grinned. She pulled off her shoes, dropped her wet clothing on the floor in the dust, and climbed into the shirt and trousers. A man’s cap lay in the chest, and Kristin clapped it on her head, winding her wet hair and tucking it inside the cap. She glanced into the mirror that hung over a tall dresser and met the eyes of the tall person who looked back at her through a streaked film of dust. Kristin took a few steps and found that she liked the freedom of the trousers and the loose shirt much better than the high-necked, snug-waisted dresses she was used to.

  She ran barefoot down the stairs and out to the yard, coming up behind her mother, who was watching Mrs. Berglund’s horses pull their buggy at a steady clip down the dirt road.

  “Jenny said to tell you good-bye, and she hoped she’d see you soon,” Mamma murmured, her eyes still on the buggy. “One of these days, I hope, our farm will be successful enough so that we can have a pair of horses and a buggy as fine as Fru Berglund’s.”

  Jenny leaned out of the buggy for a last good-bye, and Kristin waved. Kristin saw Jenny stare, then clap her hands over her mouth and almost lose her balance before she dove back inside the buggy.

  As Mamma turned and took a good look at Kristin, she shrieked. “Kristin! What do you think you are doing?”

  Kristin shrugged. “Pappa told me to put on dry clothes.”

  “But they’re men’s clothes!” Mamma put a hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. “Jenny saw you! What will her mother think?”

  “She won’t know,” Kristin said. “Jenny doesn’t tell her mother everything.”

  “Oh? Just how can you be so sure?”

  Pappa arrived at a trot from around the corner of the house. “Gerda, what happened?” He came to an abrupt stop as he recognized Kristin.

  “Pappa,” Kristin said, “the woman’s clothes were too small, but the man’s fit me perfectly.”

  Mamma clutched Kristin’s arm. “You cannot wear men’s clothing! The trousers … well, they show your limbs.”

  “It’s no secret that I have legs.” Kristin tried not to notice that Mamma’s face turned pink at Kristin’s use of such an unladylike word. “How else could I walk?”

  “Kristin! What will people think?”

  “What people? We’re the only ones here,” Kristin said.

  “Your mother is correct—” Pappa began, but Kristin interrupted.

  “If I wear my wet clothes, I might get a cold, but if you let me wear what I have on, I can get a great deal of work done. By the time we are ready to leave, my own clothes will dry again.”

  The worry wrinkles on Mamma’s forehead multiplied, but Kristin hadn’t finished. “I’ll be working inside the house, anyway. Even if Mrs. Berglund comes back, she won’t see me. No one will.”

  Mamma had opened her mouth to speak, but Pappa answered first. “That’s true. No one will see you, and the house must be cleaned. We have wasted enough time. We will all return to work.”

  Although Mamma’s lips were held tightly together in a thin line, she obeyed without further argument. Kristin rinsed the muddy streaks from her clothing and spread the garments in a sunny spot on the grass. Then, while Mamma attacked the wooden back and legs of the sofa with a soft, oily rag, Kristin worked with Pappa on taking the pegs from the beds and unlacing the ropes that crisscrossed the side boards as a support for the mattresses.

  As soon as the rooms had been stripped of furniture, Pappa took the mattresses and bedding far from the house and burned them, and Kristin carted a bucket of soapy water and a brush up the stairs.

  It wasn’t long before she needed to refill the bucket. As she stood at the pump behind the kitchen, vigorously working the handle to slosh water into the bucket, a boy near her own age stepped up beside her. He was broad-shouldered and muscular—no stranger to heavy farm work—and a good four inches taller than Kristin. His hair was a sandy blond, and his skin was tanned from the sun. She gazed back at him with interest.

  “I guess that Herr Swensen has already hired someone,” the boy said. “I thought I had the job.” He studied Kristin’s face with a puzzled expression. “You’re not from Great Rock Lake. Do you come from over Scandia way?”

  “I’m not from Scandia,” Kristin answered. “You can say I’m from right here. This very piece of land.”

  “You’re a Swensen, then? I heard they had a daughter, but not a son.”

  Kristin grinned and pulled off her cap, brushing her tangled hair to one side. “I’m Kristin Swensen,” she said as she held out a hand. “I’m Herr Swensen’s daughter.”

  “I’m Johan Olsen.” The boy shook Kristin’s hand politely, but she could see the surprise in his eyes. “I thought—uh—because of … I mean, even so I should have realized …”

  As his face grew red, Kristin smiled. “I fell into the lake,” she told him. “I had to change clothes, and these were the only clothes I could find that would fit.”

  Kristin could see that Johan was struggling to behave as though seeing a young woman dressed in men’s clothing was an everyday occurrence. She could feel her own face grow warm, so she quickly bent to pick up the bucket.

  “You’ll probably find either Pappa or Mamma around the other side
of the house,” Kristin said. She looked into Johan’s deep-blue eyes. “I hope you won’t tell them we’ve already met. I promised Mamma no one would see me dressed like this.”

  Johan grinned, and his eyes sparkled. “I won’t tell them,” he answered. “I won’t tell anyone. It’s our secret.”

  Kristin hurried up the stoop and into the kitchen as quickly as she could with the heavy bucket. She liked Johan’s grin. She liked that Johan hadn’t said anything terrible about a girl in men’s clothing.

  Kristin scrubbed the ceilings, walls, and floors even harder, her eyes stinging and her nose burning from the sour, acrid smell of the lye soap, and soon the two bedrooms were spotless. She tackled the storage room next.

  Kristin was on her knees, scrubbing the last few feet of space inside the door, when Mamma spoke to her from the stairway. “Here are your clothes, completely dry.”

  Kristin stood, her shoulders, arms, and legs aching, but made no move to take the clothes from her mother. “See what a good job I’ve done,” she pointed out. “I’ll do the hallway next, then the stairs, and soon the entire upstairs will be clean enough to suit anyone, Mamma.” She giggled as she said, “Even you.”

  Mamma smiled and put an arm around Kristin’s shoulders. “I’m proud of you,” she said, but she twisted to look into the far corners of the room.

  “If you’re looking for spöken,” Kristin teased, “you won’t find any. The horrible smell of the lye soap has driven them all away.”

  “Hush, hush! How you talk,” Mamma protested, but she sent a searching glance into the nearest bedroom.

  Kristin took her mother’s free hand and led her into the large bedroom. “This is a nice room,” she said. “It overlooks the meadow and stream. We could paint it the light, soft blue you love and put grandmother’s quilt on the bed.”

  Mamma paused as though she were visualizing the room as Kristin had described it, but she sighed and shook her head. “We cannot afford paint right now. Painting the house, both inside and out, will come much later. We have livestock to buy and crops to plant.” Her voice suddenly broke.

  Kristin was startled to see tears in her mother’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Mamma said. “We are very far from home, and I miss my mother.”

  “I miss Mormor, too,” Kristin said.

  Impulsively she wrapped her arms around Mamma and held her tightly. “I’m going to write to Mormor tonight,” she said. “There’s so much to tell her.”

  For just an instant Mamma sagged against Kristin’s shoulder, but she soon straightened, businesslike again, and said, “Don’t tell her about the mother and children who died in this house.” Her glance shifted again toward the corners of the room.

  “I know,” Kristin said. “Mormor would worry about spöken, too.”

  “And why shouldn’t she?” Mamma demanded. “Didn’t she see with her own eyes her best friend, Ruta, who appeared to her moments after death? And your great-uncle, Carl, when he worked in the palace, saw the vita frun coming toward him one dark night.”

  “Vita frun! As Pappa said, there may be ladies in white roaming the halls of the Swedish palace,” Kristin said, “but not in the United States. There are no castles or palaces here.”

  “Spöken can be anywhere.”

  For an instant Kristin felt cold chills along her backbone. “Don’t talk about spöken, Mamma. Please!”

  Mamma sighed. “I can only hope that the spirit of the mother who died in this house has left in peace along with the spirits of her babies. But if she still has ties here that are not broken, if she is searching for her husband—”

  “Mamma, don’t!” The sun was low in the sky, and Kristin found herself peering nervously into the shadows.

  “Let us hope the spirits will not bring us bad luck,” Mamma said.

  “Pappa says our luck is what we make it.” Kristin tried to sound convincing, at least to herself.

  The front door slammed, and they both jumped.

  “Gerda! Kristin!” Pappa called. “It is time to return to town. Are you ready?”

  Mamma thrust Kristin’s clothing into her arms. “It’s wrinkled, but it will serve,” she said. “Hurry and change. If your father’s young worker is still here, it would never do to let him see you this way.”

  Kristin took her clothes into the smaller bedroom and struggled into them. Compared with the shirt and trousers, the high neck of the dress was snug, its long sleeves binding. The yards of material in the skirt hung heavily around Kristin’s legs. Before she trotted down the stairs to join her parents, she draped the man’s clothing over a peg that had been hammered into one wall. She was going to enjoy wearing the clothes again—it had made her work so much easier.

  The parlor had been transformed. Its furniture had been put back into place, the wood gleaming as though it had known nothing but years of loving care. Once Mamma hung curtains at the windows and colorful hangings on the walls, the room would begin to look cheerful.

  In the front yard Kristin walked past the scattered pieces of furniture from the upstairs and met her father at the wagon. Johan had hitched the horses in place and stood next to them, holding the reins.

  Pappa introduced Johan to Kristin. As they formally shook hands, Kristin tried to ignore the admiration in Johan’s eyes.

  She climbed demurely up on the wagon seat and sat waiting for her parents. The cradle, its wood now gleaming, rested in the back of the wagon. It was filled with the contents of the chest. Obviously Mamma wanted those reminders of the previous tenants out of her house. To Kristin’s dismay, however, Mamma hurried through the front door with the clothing Kristin had borrowed and tossed it into the back of the wagon. Mamma sat on Kristin’s right with her no-nonsense look, and Kristin knew she had lost any chance of wearing those clothes again.

  “We will see you tomorrow, bright and early,” Pappa said to Johan.

  “When you’re ready to plow, I’ll bring my father’s team,” Johan answered. “The plowing should go easily, even though the land has lain fallow for over two years.”

  Pappa gave Johan a wave as he guided the horses across the drive and into the road.

  “Now let’s practice our English,” Kristin suggested.

  “We are all very tired,” Mamma answered.

  “But we’ll forget the language if we don’t use it.” She tried to enlist her father’s support. “Pappa, you are the one who insisted that we learn English.”

  “I know,” he said, “and I still believe it is a good idea to know the language. I just wasn’t aware that we would be living in such a large Swedish settlement.”

  “But if we speak English when we are together—”

  Mamma interrupted, and Kristin could hear the exhaustion in her voice. “Please, Kristin, be patient. Later … perhaps in the evenings.”

  “I am pleased with the young man I hired,” Pappa said. “Johan Olsen is a fine boy from a good family, I’ve been told. His father is strict, but his rules are fair. Johan will never get into trouble if he pays attention to his father. You can be sure of that.”

  Kristin twisted to face her father. “Pappa! Do you mean that Johan can only be considered a good boy if he does exactly what his father wants him to do?”

  Pappa let out a long, exaggerated sigh. “Kristin, I am too tired to argue,” he said.

  Kristin forgot about arguing as she took a good look at her father. “You’re wet!” she cried. “Your hair is dripping, and your shirt is sticking to your shoulders.”

  “While you and your mother were finishing your chores, I took the opportunity to rinse off in the lake.”

  “What a good idea. Tomorrow Mamma and I should do it.”

  Mamma gasped. “Kristin! It’s bad enough even to think of such a thing! It’s even worse to say it aloud!”

  “But if Pappa can rinse off in the lake, then why can’t we?” Kristin knew her words would be provoking to her mother—but she also knew her mother couldn’t resist an argument any more th
an Kristin could.

  “You should know by now that women cannot do everything that men do,” Mamma said. “It has always been so.”

  “Who made that rule? Once you think of it, you wonder why.”

  Pappa groaned, and Mamma said, “We will have no more discussion of these foolish questions and ideas. Forget about these things and be our loving, good daughter.”

  Kristin remembered the coolness of the water against her skin, the freedom of splashing in her own private pool. Why can’t women do the same things as men? she thought with disappointment. Wasn’t life supposed to be different in the United States?

  CHAPTER THREE

  THAT night, before she went to sleep on a pallet in a corner of the Lundgrens’ parlor, Kristin began a letter to her grandmother:

  Beloved Mormor, we have a house! And furniture! Everything was filthy and covered with more dirt and dust than you can imagine, but we have been scrubbing and polishing, and soon all will be beautiful—not as fine as our house at home …

  Kristin scratched out the words at home, substituting, in Sweden. A rush of homesickness for her grandmother brought tears to her eyes. As she rubbed them away, she glanced at the nearby table on which she’d placed the six-inch hand-carved wooden Dalarna horse Mormor had given her as a parting gift. The horse—resplendent in its shiny red lacquer and ornately painted mane, bridle, and saddle—had been given to her grandmother when she was a girl, so it was a special, well-loved treasure she had passed on to Kristin.

  In two days it would be Kristin’s seventeenth birthday. Mormor would have baked an apple cake or made a steamed pudding filled with raisins, and the entire family would have gathered around to laugh and eat and wish Kristin another year of happiness. No one could imagine how terribly much she missed her grandmother!

  As soon as we move into our house, I’ll put the little Dala-horse in a place of honor—somewhere I can see him each day, because he’ll remind me of you.