Gifts of the Spirit

by Patricia Eilola

  “You’ve done good, girl,” he told me as he whipped the horses with the reins to get them going along his route.

  I blushed.

  The comment from Mother was even more welcome. “Welcome home, daughter,” she said, giving me a big hug. “You haven’t lost your touch with making things not only clean but also pretty.”

  “You’re the one who has made everything look beautiful,” I said, leading her from the kitchen into the living room. “I love everything you’ve done here! And the ‘secretary’—how did you manage to buy that?”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, Mr. Hauala had actually ordered it to give to Elsie as a wedding present, but her wedding fell through—that’s another story I’ll have to tell you about—and so, since he already had one in his living room, he put that one up for sale at a decent price. I bartered him down some,” she admitted with a kind of shy grin, “with a promise of fresh butter and cream and milk. His daughters have never learned quite how to handle the milk that he brings in from the barn. I don’t think that they get their separator completely clean. Anyway,” she went on, “he really likes the taste and smell of our milk, butter, and cream. And so…” she smiled again, “we managed to arrive at a price I felt was fair, and so did he, and… here it is! And, of course, I was grateful for the money you sent home, which helped a lot.”

  “I’m glad. It is so beautiful!” I gushed, knowing I was doing it, but unable to stop myself.

  “Yes, it is,” she said, rather complacently, I thought.

  “And look at you!” she said, drawing back and making me turn around to show her my hair, “you’re gone and gotten your hair bobbed! I quite like it! It’s too bad you didn’t inherit your father’s curly hair like Ronny and Eino did, but the bob suits you.”

  I was grateful she hadn’t fussed about the loss of my hair, which had hung almost down to my waist.

  “And suddenly you’ve begun to look so grown up!” she said. “Why, you left a young girl and have returned a young lady.”

  I hoped that she wasn’t over-emphasizing the word “lady.” because of the change in my voice and my manner of speaking.

  “You sound like the ‘kerma kerros,’” she said, but laughingly. “I suppose you have become ‘one of them’ now.”

  “No, Mother,” I replied, laughing, too, “I did learn to read and write Finnish and improved my English enormously while I was there. I’m sorry,” I faltered… letting my voice trail off.

  “Oh, never mind, child,” was her answer. “We’ll try to learn some of your ‘new ways’ as we go along, and no doubt you’ll re-learn some of ours. It doesn’t matter how you say things. It’s what you say that counts, and I hope that you will be happy to be home at last.”

  “Oh, I am,” I said, without a qualm. “I loved being with the Lappalas and enjoyed my time with them, but it was time for me to come home!”

  “I take it you’ve seen some of our ‘improvements,’” she said.

  “Yes. I think the new summer kitchen is just the ‘cat’s pajamas’!” I tried out one of the new slang phrases I had learned from Risto.

  “Well,” she smiled, “I guess it is that. And now it’s time for me to have some of that pulla Mr. Christensen thought was so delicious.”

  We sat down at the table together, happy to share the moment as well as the coffee and the pulla.

  “What happened to Elsie Hauala?” I asked.

  “During a dance at the Hall, she got herself involved with one of those CCC boys—one of the guys from the CCC camp near Big Fish Lake. He had talked about marrying her, but she came to find out, he was married already and had a couple of kids. She was lucky to find out in time.”

  “How awful!” I meant it, too. Elsie Hauala had never been a particular friend of mine, but to plan a wedding and then find out… !

  “Yes. And the news was all over Alango, Sturgeon, and Korvan Kylla, too, because everyone had been invited to the wedding. Mr. Hauala had to eat his invitation,” she said with a hint of humor.

  The Haualas had never been especially grateful for all I had done for them during the influenza epidemic, never thanking me, never recognizing the fact that I had virtually saved Elsie’s and Violet’s lives, never expressing any gratitude for the way I handled the dead boys and their mother. That lack had been noticed by everyone in our family—not only me and Mother but Ronny and Aini and Eino, too.

  “And how is Aini doing,” I asked, anxious to move the conversation on.

  “Oh, she’ll do all right.” Mother’s voice was a bit… condescending?… as if she were qualifying her comment.

  I refrained from asking more, waiting for her to continue.

  “She thinks she’s the only woman who’s ever gone through child-birth,” Mother scoffed. “And she’s letting Karl know how she suffered in no uncertain terms. The fact they have a boy might just mean they never have any more children, which would be a great loss to both of them,” she said.

  “Thank goodness, Ernie is a good baby,” she said. “He took to his mother’s breast right away, and she had plenty of milk.” There was a rather long pause. “I hope she’s going to be able to keep up with caring for him and with all of the rest of the work she has to do on that farm.”

  “Should I go over to help?”

  “Goodness, no, child,” was her answer. “You’ll have all you can do to readjust to the way we do things here. You’ll have to take your turn at milking, go back to cleaning the separator (smiling at my grimace), and help around the house—with the cooking and baking and washing and scrubbing. I suppose you learned a bit about cooking and baking while you were there.”

  The words were said with a strange quality—as if she didn’t quite believe I had had to work for my keep.

  “Oh, yes,” I said, answering an unasked question, “after Grandmother began to decline, I was responsible for planning all the meals and organizing the house-work, including the washing, ironing, dusting, mopping, scrubbing, and general cleaning. I’m much more prepared to help than I was when I left,” I added, laughing.

  “I don’t suppose you’ll want to go to dances, too, with Ronny,” she asked.

  “Dances?” I was taken aback. I hadn’t even considered that option. Of course, there would be dances at the Alango Hall and at the Linden Grove Town Hall and at the Idington Hall, and of course I was old enough now to go… with Ronny.

  Oh, my, I thought, maybe I’ll get to wear the fancy dress Milma picked out for me from Ketolas—the one that I didn’t think I would ever wear out here in the country—after all.

  Little did I know what awaited me.

  16: Arvo

  Dancing! I had completely forgotten how much fun it was to go to the Alango Hall on Saturday night after sauna to dance. No matter what age, everyone seemed to attend—from the grandpas and grandmas to the just-born. By tradition, the women all sat on the chairs set around the edge of the hall, and the men gathered around the back door. I was aware that, for some of them, it was an excuse to get outside to drink some moonshine, but others just stood there between dances, eyeing up the possibilities.

  I was so excited that Saturday that, I must confess, I wasn’t much help to Mother. I did clean the separator (to which job I had again been relegated) and made a batch of pulla (just in case we had sauna company). But otherwise all I could think about was the chance to dance!

  I had the one good dress Milma had bought me. I would wear it to the dance and fix my hair. Bobbed hair could easily be formed into waves that went from the front across from the part and down the side. I managed to get those waves in and to get some on the other side, too.

  Ronny, too, got spruced up in order to go to the dance. He had me cut his hair, which I did with trepidation, but he was happy with the way it turned out, so I was relieved. Instead of putting on his old work jeans, he put on
some dress pants I didn’t know he even had, a white shirt I had to iron, and a tie!

  Both of us were ready to go by about 8:30. The Hall was almost exactly two miles away so we both wore work shoes and carried our “dancing shoes”—the ones Milma had insisted I buy to go with the dress. (I had a matching hat, too, but I didn’t think it would be appropriate to wear to a dance.)

  We got to the Hall about a little before nine, and I was immediately surrounded by friends I didn’t know I had—not only Elsie Hauala, whom I knew from school, but also Helen Maki, whom I had seen when we went to the Alango Church with Milma, and Doris Hokkanen, Sigred Leinonen, Ellen Stephenson, and Eleanor Rinne Perala. Sigred, Doris, and Eleanor were all relatively newly married, but they had been married, it seemed, by a justice of the peace instead of going to Milma, which I thought strange, but I kept my mouth shut as their news spilled out, each one talking over the other so I had some difficulty keeping straight who had done what. But the important thing to me was that they were all very welcoming.

  In fact, a couple of the older ladies, my mother’s age, came to tell me, “We have found our Rosie! Have you done any acting? Will you take a part in the new play we just received from Finland and are going to put on in a few months? Please, please, please. You’ll be perfect for the part.”

  And then, in whispers, “It’s the lead!”

  I was so taken aback by all of the attention I was happy when Walter Alt began to tune up his accordion as a sign the dancing was going to begin. All of us hurried toward seats on the side of the Hall, the other girls making sure I was in the middle of the group, and we waited for someone to ask us to dance.

  I knew a large part of the attention I was receiving was due to my new hairdo and the beautiful dress that outshone all of the others’ outfits. Suddenly I had become the Lead, the One to Follow, the Prettiest, the Best Dressed, and the Most Important.

  The amount of attention made me shrink into myself. At first, more than anything, I wanted to be back home again, in my housedress, serving coffee to those who came for sauna. I knew I was a sham. I wasn’t the Lead! The only reason I had been awarded such attention was that I was new. Unlike the others, who had been seeing each other at dances for years, I had been Away. I had been Living with the Lappalas. I was Special. In their eyes I had become Someone to Emulate.

  If they only knew! I thought. If they had any idea of how strange everything felt, how hard it would be for me to “fit in” and how much trouble I had always had when I was the center of attention… they wouldn’t be surrounding me!

  But then the dancing started, and right away I was besieged with offers. The Leinonen boys, the Peralas, the Makis, the Rahikainens—all asked me to dance. I had a terrible time singling out one so I took the one who seemed the least frightening—the Leinonen boy, who had stood back, rather shyly, waiting. I steered my way toward him, past the others, and we joined the circle in a rousing schottische. I was so happy I had not forgotten the steps, and even though he wasn’t the most adventurous of partners (He didn’t, for example, offer to hold hands with the couple behind us, and raise ours so they could go underneath and we would turn and become the back ones, or we could simply part and rejoin hands behind the other couple. I longed to do that kind of schottische, but it was a kind of relief to go along with his rather stumbling version. It brought back the steps to me immediately, as if I had never left.)

  Once the trio of schottisches was complete, he led me back to my seat, leaned over to try to kiss my hand, which I turned into a simple handshake, and left. Right behind him stood one of the Rahikainen boys. Veiko I think he was, although I had always had difficulty figuring out which one was which since they all looked alike, dressed alike, and talked with the same backwoods Finnish drawl.

  He led me into a real Finnish polka. I absolutely loved it! In spite of his reputation for going outside to drink moon, he knew how to dance, and we circled the floor doing the Finnish hops so singular to the polka. I was breathless after the first round, but he kept me with him through all three of the dances, and I loved every minute of it.

  When he said, “T’ank yu,” I responded, “Thank you! I really enjoyed that dance.”

  He marched off as if he had won the door prize, his shoulders back, and his arms swinging with the beat of the next dance, which was a waltz.

  I had hoped for some respite, but Toivo Maki appeared in front of me and, with a kind of bow, asked if I would waltz with him. He knew the two-step, and we waltzed circles around the other couples. Again, I was in heaven when I was on the dance floor, even though he tried to hold me closer than was polite, and I had to kind of push him away a few times, using the hand that was supposed to be on his shoulder. At last he took the hint, and for the rest of the trio, he was a gentleman. And could he ever waltz!

  Everyone, it seemed, had been going to dances all the while I had been at Lappalas, and everyone had perfected the art of every single movement.

  The next schottische I danced with another one of the other Rahikainen boys, and he obviously loved to do the more intricate steps as I had remembered them. We joined hands with the couple behind us, lifted ours so they could go through with us twisting around so we, too, were facing forward. Then they let go of each other’s hands, turned toward the back, and we took the front place. It was great fun! I was relieved I had not lost my dancing shoes even though they were brand new and I had worn them only in the train on the way home.

  When it was time for a break, I noticed the Rahikainen boys heading straight outside, and some of the girls who had greeted me with such enthusiasm were heading that way, too.

  Not I, I thought, and was grateful when one of the young mothers, Irma Lofgren, a neighbor of ours, came to invite me downstairs for coffee and goodies.

  We sat down and began to talk about the neighborhood, about Mother and Father and their struggles, about which she had known and about which Mother had evidently shared the details,

  In return I told her a little about my life with the Lappalas, fixing mostly on the children and on Grandmother. “We went to her funeral,” Irma said. “Milma did a beautiful job with what must have been a very difficult time.”

  I agreed with a nod and appreciated being served a cup of coffee and a plate of yellow cake with seven-minute frosting by one of the ladies who had accosted me about the play. “You won’t forget,” she admonished me, as she filled the cup she had brought me. “We are counting on you to play the part of ‘Rosie.’”

  Irma smiled at her and at me. “I’m so glad you’re going to return to life as we live it out here in the country. That play’s very important to everyone. That you’re going to be in it will stand you in good stead with the whole community.”

  “I’m glad,” I said, hoping I was telling the truth. At least I was telling the truth about wanting to be a part of the community again.

  “Will you and your family be going to church the next time Milma preaches?” she asked. The arrangement had been that Milma would come to the Alango Church every fourth Sunday.

  “Of course,” I said, again hoping I was telling the truth. I knew that Mother and Father had been charter members of that church, but I had not seen Mother and Ronny and Eino and Aini there when I had attended with Milma.

  “It’s hard,” Irma admitted. “With cows to milk, butter to make, a veritable constant stream of visitors from the city, your mother barely has time to take a deep breath much less to take a whole day off to go to church.”

  “Oh,” was all I could say. Mother had not said a word about company from town. I had hoped that had ended when Father died, but according to Irma, it hadn’t.

  “They come for milk, cream, butter, and eggs mainly now,” Irma explained. “But if your mother has any baked goods—like pies or sweet breads or even just her bread, they’re always willing to buy whatever she has available. I remember during blueberry season
last year, I think she sold at least a hundred pints of blueberries and almost that many wild strawberries and raspberries.”

  “I… didn’t… know… that.…” The words came out slowly, experimentally, as if I were trying them on for size.

  “You’ve seen the improvements she and Ronny made to the house and the farm in general. Have you been into the barn?”

  I had to confess, “No. Mother and Ronny have been doing the milking.”

  “Well,” she said, “when you go, you’ll be in for a big surprise. They’ve built new stanchions and a new wooden kind of ‘sidewalk’ behind the cows so it is easier to shovel out the manure. It’s quite the invention! My Ed’s thinking about copying their idea and redoing our own barn.”

  I just sat there, marveling. What else had happened on the farm that I wasn’t aware of? Mother and Ronny and Eino had really been busy while I was gone. I should have known that, I thought. With Father gone, they’d have had a free hand to make any improvements they could. And they obviously had.

  When lunchtime was over, we went back to dancing, and again I had a line-up of partners waiting for me for every single dance.

  “It’s too bad that the CCC boys aren’t here tonight,” Doris Hokkanen said when we had a brief chance to talk between dances. “They are the most fun!” There were exclamation points all over that statement.

  I asked, “Where do they come from?” I wasn’t aware of any CCC camp in the neighborhood.

  “They walk here from the Big Fish Lake Camp. It’s about nine miles, so they usually don’t arrive until after the dance has started, but they are so much fun and so handsome!”

  I remembered what had happened to Elsie Hauala and kept my mouth shut. She had joined the boys who went outside during the break instead of heading downstairs with Doris, Eleanor, Sigred, and me. Maybe she had been asking for trouble, I thought, and then regretted the thought immediately. What she did or didn’t do was her business, not mine. But I considered myself warned. No CCC boys for me, I vowed.