Gifts of the Spirit

by Patricia Eilola

  That night we finished what we had begun the night before, and it was so wondrous that words fail me. Before we lay down, after we had taken our clothes off, Arvo looked down at me, and said, “If this begins to hurt at all, I want you to tell me, and I’ll stop. The last thing in the world I want to do is hurt you. Oh, there might be a moment… but I’m hoping by then you’re so ready for me it will pass in a flash….”

  He was right. After kissing me over every single part of my body and I did the same to him, we found ourselves seeking more. He encouraged me to hold what he called his “penis” and to stroke it. I did, and he seemed to enjoy that as much as I enjoyed his touches. By the time he touched my own most private places, I was wet and moving against his hand, desiring… wanting. He positioned himself above me as I lifted my hips to open myself to him.

  When his penis entered me, I felt as if the stars had moved and the moon had turned up its light just for us. He brought me to paradise at least twice right away—and it didn’t hurt much at all. By the time he had himself entirely within me, I was aching so hard for more, and urging him on with my hands and with my whole body, that the second of pain passed by in the tumult of the whole. When we were through, when he had “spilled his seed” into me and both of us had reached fulfillment, I told him, rather shyly, that, had I known this awaited me, I would never have postponed saying “Yes”!

  He grinned down at me. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, babe,” he said, quoting from a motion picture he had seen and promised to bring me to see. It had been a silent picture, but there had been subtitles written below the pictures and that had been one of them.

  We lay cuddling for a long while before he got up and built a fire. I was amazed. He just put together some pieces of birch bark, some small branches with some larger ones atop, lit a match, and poof! There we had a fire. It was actually too warm that night to need one, but it felt so cozy sitting there that we kept it going until we finally went to sleep after making love again.

  I teased him about his expertise, and he told me honestly about the girls he had dated on North Side in Virginia and about how willing and easy many of them were. “And now I’m glad,” he told me, “because I’m not a clod in the bedroom as your brother-in-law Karl must have been.”

  I had told him about Aini’s pain, and he had shaken his head and said, “That’s the way it is for a lot of farmer boys. They’ve been so used to watching bulls mount cows and stallions mount mares they think that’s all there is to ‘making love.’ It sometimes takes awhile for them to get the idea. Obviously that was the case with your sister and her husband.”

  “Then I’m glad you had experience,” I said fiercely. “I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to go through what my sister Aini did. I guess somewhere along the line someone must have sat down to talk with Karl and told him a few things because she seems happy now. Just as I am,” I said, snuggling closer to him.

  I loved to look at his body. Because he had grown up working so hard, his shoulders and upper arms were filled with muscle that tapered down to his waist and repeated themselves in his legs. He was a beautiful man.

  “And you are one gorgeous woman,” he told me over and over until I nearly believed it myself!

  I knew underneath I was just a plain country girl, but I was happy that, in his eyes, I took on a different look. He saw me through “rose-colored glasses” (I later learned the phrase).

  We had to be careful once we moved back into the house the next day to take our pleasure when there was time—when Mother was working the separator, for example, or churning butter and the boys were outside. Or in the sauna. We used that sauna dressing room floor for a lot of loving that year.

  Mother had once said, “Whoever enjoys the marriage bed soon has another mouth to feed.”

  That became true with me. I must have gotten pregnant during that first night, because I missed my periods after that and soon felt nauseous in the morning. Sometimes I threw up, but usually if I could just stay upstairs and not have to smell the usual breakfast smells, I’d be okay.

  That pregnancy brought us closer than ever. Arvo loved to lie next to me with his big hand on my stomach, talking to the baby. “If you are a boy,” he’d say, “I’m going to take good care of you. No beatings in this house or with this family,” he amended because by then we were looking for a place. Just a little place was all we’d need, we said. But Arvo had trouble finding a job. It may have been the “Roaring Twenties,” but that didn’t reach Korvan Kylla or Sturgeon, and Lindon Grove was too far for him to continue to work for his brother-in-law.

  Once in a while he’d disappear for a night, and when I asked him where he was going when he packed up, he just said, “It’s better if you don’t know.”

  I found out later that he was taking a turn driving a motorcar over the border into Canada and bringing back booze the bootleggers, one of whom lived near Lake Leander, could sell for less than the cost on the market.

  He worked like a dog on our farm, twice as hard as Ronny and accomplished four times what Eino could. He made hay out of every bit of field Father had cleared. That fall he planted a combination of timothy and clover in place of the regular hay. The spring crop was bountiful, thanks to a relatively mild winter, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

  Perhaps I’m doing that intentionally to prevent having to tell you about the birth of our baby, because it was truly terrible. Aini had complained about Ernie’s birth. Our boy’s was at least twice as bad, and of course I went into labor during a major snowstorm so Arvo couldn’t get to a doctor.

  But that’s another story. I’ll wait awhile and then give it a try.

  20: Pregnancy

  As soon as he could get approval from Ronny and Mother, Arvo started making some changes in the farm—improvements. First of all, he bartered a week of cream, milk, and butter with Mr. Hauala to get a young pig—a sow, which Mr. Hauala insisted was pregnant. Arvo’s dinner-time conversation was always about the farm.

  How Arvo found out about the piglets is a mystery to me. Perhaps he got Mr. Hauala to talking during a break in the Saturday night dance at the Hall—or perhaps even at our wedding dance.

  Our wedding dance at the Hall, scheduled for the Saturday following our wedding, was one of the biggest that had ever been held because everyone seemed to know Arvo—from the CCC camp to Sturgeon and from Angora to Korvan Kylla. And everyone came. Most of them donated money—a dime or a quarter, sometimes even fifty cents or a dollar to “get us started.” Walter Alt and his band played, and we danced all night with each other—this time with no one even trying to cut in. It was heavenly. And Mrs. Victor Maki had made a special cake to serve downstairs during coffee time so that was special, too.

  When we left that night, the evening’s proceeds in hand, we could hardly wait to get home to count it. We had made $10.00 in all! That seemed to us to be a princely sum, and we immediately set about trying to think of how to spend it wisely. The pig was offered as an alternative, but Arvo was ahead on that one. A horse would also be a huge help. It could pull the plow and the sickle to cut the wheat, which Ronny and Arvo could then pull into shocks. Of course we couldn’t even begin to make a down payment on a threshing machine, and Arvo said he’d barter his time with Mr Hauala—a week’s worth of help with the threshing for one of his new foals.

  Mr. Hauala made a hard bargain with that one. He insisted Arvo help him all through threshing season, which caused me no end of fear. The threshing machine, with its huge engine and its pulleys, seemed fraught with danger, and in fact one of the Rahikainen boys had lost a finger the previous summer when he caught his hand between one of the pulleys and the edge of the engine. “But he was probably drunk when that happened,” Arvo protested. And he was probably right.

  At any rate, once our own wheat was shocked and ready to be threshed, Arvo joined Mr. Hauala’s crew, going from farm to farm. Mr. Hau
ala was the “team engineer” who set up the threshing machine wherever the farmer wanted to have the straw blown. Then he belted up the steam engine to the threshing machine while a team of workers—including Arvo—went out into the field and loaded shocks into a horse-drawn wagon. After the wagon was filled, the bundle haulers brought it up to the spot where the threshing machine was set.

  Once the machine had started, men on top of the wagon pitched down the grain bundles into the machine’s bundle feeder. The conveyor belt of the bundle feeder then transported the grain bundles into the threshing machine cylinder, where most of the grain was separated from the stalks. The separated grain fell to the bottom of the threshing machine while the chaff and dust was removed by a fan as it descended. An elevator on the threshing machine then transported the loose grain into a grain wagon parked nearby or into individual bags, depending on what the farmer preferred. After the straw went through the cylinder, it was continually battered as it progressed along, ensuring that all the grain was removed from the stalks. At the rear of the threshing machine, after the straw had passed over the straw “walkers,” it was deposited into a fan-housing which propelled the straw through the blower and into the straw stack. There was an enormous amount of work involved in the use of the machine, but it drastically improved the efficiency and capacity of the threshing.

  My problem was with the men on top of the wagon pitching the grain bundles into the threshing machine cylinder. It would be easy for one of them to slip and fall, and the machine just kept on running regardless. We had heard of men being carried through the whole process, and their bodies cut into small pieces. I was terrified for Arvo, who reassured me by explaining the whole process time after time so I would understand. Once I understood the whole process, however, my fear about the task of those on the wagon increased. What if Arvo slipped? What if he fell?

  I was inconsolable. Mother sat me down. “You had better get used to the fact that your husband is not afraid of doing a little hard work. Even dangerous and difficult work,” she added. “Be proud of him instead of sitting here wailing.”

  I was wailing, but I had double reason to wail. By August when the threshing season began, I had already missed three periods and was feeling nauseated in the morning. I was absolutely sure I was pregnant, and I could tell Mother had been counting the weeks, too.

  Finally, when Arvo was out with the thresher, she set me down at the table and addressed the whole business. “You know what it means when you’ve missed your periods, don’t you?”

  Of course I knew. But I had been avoiding the whole subject, hoping it was just the newness of the whole business of… making love… and that my body was becoming accustomed to the increasing number of times we found ways to do that. In the morning, quickly, sometimes in the afternoon, quickly and quietly, and always in the evening. Arvo had taken to warming the sauna every night so we had a chance to be alone for a while. Ronny and Eino had teased us some about it, but neither of them had caught on to the real reason for the increase in the use of the sauna. But Mother had. She always gave us a private smile when we finally returned to the house, our faces red not just from the sauna heat, our dirty clothes and towels in hand.

  Once in awhile Arvo had been able to “spill his seed” outside, but mostly we couldn’t stop once we started, and the “seed” became firmly implanted in my body. Over and over again.

  Aini noticed first, possibly because she was on the alert always for signs that she herself was pregnant again. “Your tummy is growing a bit,” she said to me one Saturday night after sauna but before we left for the dance. “Is there a baby there?” Aini tended to be blunt, especially in her treatment of me, and she didn’t mince any words that night.

  “I’m not sure…” I said. “I have missed a couple of periods, but…”

  “Have you felt sick in the morning?”

  “Well… yes… a little… sometimes.”

  “Mother, I think our little girl is carrying a baby,” she announced.

  Mother just nodded and turned back to serving the coffee and cutting pulla ready for Saturday night visitors.

  ”Are you going to go to the dance anyway?” Aini asked.

  “Why not?” I asked, all innocence.

  “Because it’s dangerous for the baby during the first three months. If you strain yourself by doing anything too hard, you could lose it.”

  “Is that true, Mother?” I asked, worried.

  “Well…” she paused, “sometimes it does happen. But I have a theory about that.” And she proceeded to share it with us. “I think if a baby is too weak or has something wrong with it, it’s better it be ‘born’ right away. So, if I were you, I’d go about doing whatever you normally do—including dancing. If the baby’s strong, and we hope it will be, it won’t be ‘jarred loose’ by any thing you normally do.”

  “So I can go to dances?”

  “Yes, I think so,” Mother said. “But then I’ve only had four babies so I’m no expert. You ought to ask Mrs. Juntunen. She’s had at least ten already, and is no doubt pregnant again. Ask Irma if you really want to know. She’s the closest thing to a midwife we have in Korvan Kylla. Or Sally Rahikainen, who lives in Idington. She’s a well-known kuppari.”

  I laughed. “I’m willing to take your word on the subject.”

  Before I knew it, I had to let out the gathers that held the skirts to the blouses of my house-dresses. And finally I had to make myself a couple of new dresses. As my pregnancy advanced, I became all tummy. I was still as skinny as a grasshopper above and below it. The breasts Arvo loved to play with so much had never been large, but they, too, expanded a bit as my waist did. Otherwise my body stayed very thin no matter how much I ate.

  And once the morning sickness passed, I seemed to be hungry all the time. I devoured five pancakes at breakfast whereas before I’d only managed two. I had second helpings of mashed potatoes and baked partridge and downed more than my share of strawberry short cakes and blueberry pies.

  Right before threshing season came berry-picking time. I was not excused just because I was pregnant, nor would I have wanted to be. I loved picking berries—blueberries from near the ground that grew in bunches so it was as if I were stripping off berries instead of having to actually pick them. The raspberry crop that year was bountiful, too, and we had a lot of wild plants Father had allowed to grow—even working around some of them as he cut trees and tilled the soil. We filled a washtub with blueberries the very first day we went. That night Mother and I were kept busy canning them—quarts and quarts of them—until finally I had to admit my back was sore and I was exhausted. Mother, who understood exactly how I felt, said I should just go to bed, that she’d finish. Arvo asked if he could take my place, and he did. Mother said the next morning he had done as good a job as I had. She said she had appreciated his help especially when it came time to lift the quart jars out of their hot-water bath. He was so strong he had no trouble raising the jars out of their tin holders—or I should say lifting the tin holders because when they were filled with quart jars, they were really heavy.

  After that, it was taken for granted Arvo would be by her side when she worked with her canning and preserving. I helped, of course, but it was a relief sometimes just to be able to sit down and know someone would be there to take my place.

  I think—all told—Mother and Arvo and I put up over a hundred quart jars of blueberries and at least that many of raspberries. In addition, we enjoyed pies and muffins filled with blueberries and a cake Mother topped with raspberries and then chocolate frosting. It was her own invention, and it was absolutely delicious.

  As the weeks went by, my tummy grew. When the time came I could no longer scrub the floors comfortably, Arvo took over that chore just as if he had done it all his life, and Mother said how much she appreciated his help.

  Mother kept doing the cooking and baking. As I got heav
ier, my ankles swelled, and she had me sit down every afternoon to sew baby clothes. I had never been good with a needle—not like Mother or Aini, whose stitches were so small and tight they were interchangeable with the ones that appeared using Aini’s new sewing machine. She did make a lot of baby clothes—dresses mostly—some with beautiful embroidery and tatting and crocheting. She was as clever as Mother with handwork.

  Mother, too, had started knitting almost right away, and I was able to make soakers pretty well once she got me started. It was changing from two needles to four for the legs that continued to be a mystery to me until Mother finally gave in, sat down beside me, and provided me step-by-step instructions. Once I learned, I was able to make almost a soaker a week, which meant I would have over a dozen by the time the baby was born.

  By Christmas Mother had made at least one entire outfit for the baby—a cap, a knitted sweater with patterns of hearts, matching snuggies and booties. She had also stitched a quilt out of pastel colored pieces of material she had collected. It was so adorable I vowed I’d keep it forever (and I have!). From her needles also came a series of crocheted and knitted baby blankets, and one-piece “outfits” that would keep him or her warm even during the worst of winter.

  November came with a big snowstorm that cut us off from the rest of the world for at least a week—even from the closest neighbors and the Lofgrens. Thank God Ronny had strung a clothesline from the house to the barn in early November—just in case, he said. Well, the case came, and we blessed his forethought because the blizzard was so bad it would have been impossible for him or Arvo to find the barn. Either one of them—or Eino—could have been lost in one of the snowdrifts that piled so high it took Arvo several tries just to get the front door open, and a trip to the sauna was out of the question. During that week I was relegated to very easy duty. I think both Mother and Arvo were concerned about how big the baby was getting and worried it would come too soon. I remained happy and healthy, however, except for the swollen ankles, and I had to admit I enjoyed the extra attention the baby and I both received.