“Help, please?”
He wasn’t Danish, that was clear. But his request was plain enough, and shy though I was, there was nothing for it but to run over and grab his arm. I helped him hobble to the armchair that had been brought up for him, settled his bad leg on the footstool and then set to work.
The first trills made me stop.
“Is it all right?” he asked, gesturing at the small metal flute—not much more than a whistle, really.
I smiled. “Yes, please.”
So he whistled while I worked, and somehow that put me right at ease. By the time I was done, I didn’t hesitate at all to offer to help him back to the bed, but he shook his head.
“I stay here some.” Another smile. “Sorry—my Danish is small.”
“Where are you from?” The words came out of me before I could stop them.
“Ireland. I am a sailor.”
“What happened to your leg?” I pointed, in case he didn’t understand.
Another grimace, and he mimed snapping a stick. “A storm.” He shrugged with a rueful look. “Now I am on land for long time.”
“Your music is lovely.” I couldn’t believe my own cheek. I never spoke with customers this way. But there was something about this young man that drew me in.
He was there for three months all told, and by the time he set sail again I wasn’t even finding excuses to visit his room—I was sneaking in every chance I got. I loved him madly; that’s the long and short of it. He was merry and quick to laugh, so unlike my own stern father, and he made me feel—oh, like some rare and lovely creature. Donal’s Danish became better and better, thanks to me, and on the day he got his splint removed and his leg pronounced sound, he asked me to marry him. Though there was more to it than that: “Will you marry me, Sigrid, and come with me to America?” He said the New World was a place where a young couple could make a good life. With work on a trans-Atlantic ship, he would make enough from two crossings to book my passage.
America. The very sound of the word was foreign and frightening. But Donal was right when he said we would never be anything but lowly in Copenhagen. And he gave me courage.
There wasn’t much fuss about it. I said yes, and he promised to come for me as soon as he could.
But first would come the leaving, and vast ocean voyages, the distances beyond my imagining. We had just two more weeks while Donal built up the strength in his leg, and the thought of parting made me reckless, I suppose. We became lovers, and although it was furtive and hurried, our first time was the sweetest day of my short life. That night I lay awake, for once not minding the baby’s cries or my sisters’ squirmy bodies pressing me to the edge of the bed—just holding the happiness of it to my heart.
And then he was gone.
I recognized the early signs. Hadn’t I seen them often enough with my mother? But I managed to hide them. And of course I was scared—I was facing so many unknowns already, and here was one more, before I was ready. But I wasn’t terrified or despairing, because I knew my Donal was coming for me. It never crossed my mind that I could be ruined.
The mean streets of Copenhagen were littered with them, the unwed girls who’d borne babies and been cast off like rubbish. They sold themselves for a few coins or some food, sometimes with their children clinging to their skirts. The children were dirty and pale, with the drawn look of illness stamped on their little faces. I remember passing one of these women with my mother on the way to market once. Her little boy’s hair was thin and patchy, mottled with bald spots, and I asked Mama what was wrong with him. She glanced askance, as though he were some malignant growth sprouted from the ground.
“Don’t look at them,” she hissed, and yanked on my hand to keep me trotting. “There’s nothing can be done.”
But that would not be my fate. It was not so unusual for babies to be born a few months after the wedding. My Donal was coming for me, and if he found good ships and fair weather, with a month for each crossing he might be back before anyone noticed my condition. I did not let myself think of the perils that lay between his leaving and our reunion.
I was about four months gone, expecting news of Donal any day, when my mother’s eyes proved too sharp for me. “Sigrid, reach up and get me that crock of lard,” she said. It was my day off, and we were making the pasties my papa took to work for his supper. I heard the hissing intake of her breath as I stretched toward the shelf. Ever thrifty, Mama waited until I had safely settled the crock on the table. As I turned, she slapped my face so hard I felt the imprint of her hand burn my skin like a brand.
“Slut.” When I risked a glance, her face was a mask of fury. Then it contorted, and she sank into a chair, her face in her hands. “You stupid girl. What have you gone and done?” I heard the fear in her voice, and that was worse than her anger.
I knelt beside her. “Mama, it’s all right. I will be married soon—I won’t shame you.”
“You have already shamed me.” Still, I saw hope flare in her eyes. “So. This man—this man you have taken up with without our knowledge or say-so—will marry you. Who is he then?”
I began to tell her about Donal, and her mouth puckered up with bitterness. “A foreigner—and a sailor! Could you be any dimmer! And where is he now, this sailor?” The word spat out, as though Donal were a cutthroat or thief.
“He is working to earn—”
“He has sailed away, you mean, leaving you here, full of his baby!”
“He will come back for me. Soon now.”
“Did I raise you to be an idiot?”
“Mama, no. He wants to marry me. He will come for me. We are going to America.”
That earned me another slap, though this one was halfhearted. “America. Did he give you a written vow? Are there witnesses? Do you even know where he lives?”
I stared at her. “No, Mama. Why would I need such things?”
Her shoulders slumped. “You have nothing, girl. Nothing. Every destitute woman on the street has been told the same tale.”
Tears stung my eyes. “Donal will be true to me—you’ll see!”
Mama tightened her mouth even further and said nothing, just heaved herself up from the chair and went back to her work.
TWENTY
LUCY
I was so caught up in Sigrid’s story that I jumped at the ping announcing a text. Feeling a little disoriented—like, What am I doing here in the twenty-first century?—I bent over the couch and groped at the phone where it was tethered to the wall outlet. Jack’s text read r u still up? All wrapped up in Sigrid’s love story, I felt a wave of longing for Jack. My battery reading was a measly 14 percent, but it would do for a short call. I pulled the phone out of the charger and dialed.
JACK
It was so great to hear Lucy’s voice. I was kind of embarrassed at how strongly I reacted, actually. I mean, it wasn’t like she’d been gone a month or anything. And to my surprise, she sounded all excited about something.
“Jack, you’ll never guess what I found at my grampa’s.”
“Um…a skeleton in the closet?” Too late it occurred to me that this was a horrible thing to say when someone has actually died. But Lucy just rattled on.
“You’re surprisingly close. I found this old journal, kind of—well, it’s the story of my great-great—God knows how many great—grandmother. It’s this incredible account of how she fell in love with an Irish sailor and went to America. And Jack, she was Danish. Her name was Sigrid—wait, let me check—yeah, Sigrid Larsdatter.”
I confess I’d zoned out a bit, not being that fascinated by some dusty old family history, but that name jolted me right into a hyperalertness that was almost painful. I actually felt like my brain was buzzing, madly trying to connect these wild dots.
“Lucy, stop.”
There was dead silence on the line. Then, quietly and a bit ominously, like you’d better have a good reason to have been so rude: “What?”
“Sigrid Larsdatter? Seriously, that was her name?”
“Yes. Jack, what’s this about? I could hardly make up a name like that.”
“No, it’s just…sorry, my mind is kind of exploding here. Just wait, okay? I have something important to read to you.”
When I’d finished reading the passage from Andersen, neither of us could speak for a while. The silence stretched out between us as we tried to take in the implications. Then Lucy plunged in.
“So…the Match Girl was Sigrid’s daughter, and Sigrid was my direct ancestor. And Sigrid went to America and left the little girl behind? Dear God.”
There was a tinny beep and a surprising vicious expletive from Lucy. “Jack, I have hardly any battery. I have to go and finish reading this. I’ll call tomorrow…”
Her voice disappeared into crackling and a dial tone, but I thought I caught the words “love you” before it died out for good.
I was afraid my father would beat me, but he did not even say one word about it. The only way I knew my mother had told him was that when I arrived back from work a few days later, he did not greet me or even look at me. He acted like I did not exist all evening, and at first I was relieved. After all, my father and I already saw each other little and spoke less. But you’ve no idea how painful being invisible eventually becomes.
When a week had gone by and no more was said, I thought I had seen the worst of it. I would continue to work, save what I could of the few coins I had of my own, endure my father’s silence and my mother’s hard looks, and wait for Donal. I could not have been more wrong.
“Sit down, Sigrid, your father has news.” I had barely stepped in the door when my mother hustled me to the table. I looked from one to the other, trying to read their moods. Certainly my mother seemed to have lost some of the grim bitterness she had been carrying all week. My father looked like he always did after work—tired and dirty.
“I have found you a match,” he said. “You will marry Iver Henricksen ten days from today. He is widowed with no children, so he will accept the child.”
“I have a match!” Though I had never raised my voice to my father, I was all but shrieking now. I could hardly hear myself, my head shrilled so with panic. “I am marrying Donal Sullivan, and we are going to America!”
The table jumped with the weight of my father’s fist. He stood, eyes blazing, his lips pulled back in a sneer, and pointed a thick finger at me. “You are just another girl with a baby in her belly from a foreign sailor who found some sport on his layover. You think anyone will take you once you’re fat with another man’s brat?”
I was on my feet now too, half ready to run blindly out the door. “Mama!” I was crying, hating myself for it because I needed to make them understand. “Please! I can’t…I must marry Donal! I’ll die if I don’t!” Stupid thing to say.
It was like begging water from stone. My mama turned cold eyes on me. “You want to talk about dying, girl? How long do you think you’ll last with the street filth?” When she pushed back her chair and rose heavily to her feet, it wasn’t to join in the shouting but to end it. “Your father has saved you. You will obey him, and be grateful.” Then she turned her back and busied herself at the hearth, her own belly so big with child that she had to stand sideways to the stove.
My father lumbered over to his bed and eased off his big boots. “Here, Hans, can you take these for your papa?” he said. “Greta, go help your mother with the dinner.” Once again, I had ceased to exist.
I lay rigid in my bed all night, my mind racing but arriving nowhere, filled with defiance that had no outlet and, on its heels, a mounting fear. At work, exhausted though I was, there was no end to it, my brain scurrying round and round the same useless plans. I would leave my family and live on my own wages. (Yet I would be fired as soon as my condition became obvious.) I would run away. (Where?) I would send a message to Donal, and he would come for me. (How?) I would steal the passage money and go to America on my own and… (And what? Starve in a strange land?)
I had not thought my father a man to force his daughter to marry, but he believed he was saving me from far worse. A potent mix of love, shame and anger fueled him against me. Yet my mind still fixated on escape. I could not believe it would come to actually marrying Henricksen—a laborer known for his angry temper and hard drinking, a man nearly as old as my own father. A man who would bring me misery, even if I hadn’t loved another.
When I arrived home from the inn that day, my mother was in labor. It went hard, leaving her whey-faced and weak, so that I had to take off work to help Greta manage everything. And the baby—he was a scrawny thing, slow to the suck. The air was thick was unspoken worry.
The days unreeled one after the other, and all I could seem to do was watch helplessly as they flew by. I never returned to work; my father had terminated my position. I was kept busy cooking and watching over the children and tending to Mama. She was too ill to burden with pleas and arguments, and my father was rarely even at home. I prayed every night for God to send Donal back to me, but with dwindling hope, until, impossibly, there were but two days left before the so-called wedding. I’d been on a long slide to a cliff, with nothing but weeds and sticks to grasp at, and now I was pitching headlong to the edge. I clutched at my father.
Weeping, wild-eyed, I begged him, but his face was stony. Before long, seemingly unable to stand me any longer, he strode out the door. How I wished I could do the same.
“Mama!” I fell to my knees before my mother’s bed, where she still rested much of the day.
“For the love of God, leave off, Sigrid.” She looked at me bleakly. “We cannot keep you. Even if we wished it, there simply isn’t enough to go around.”
I was hauled off to the pastor to have some sense talked into me. I was made to sit in a low chair, a child’s chair almost, while he pursed his lips and steepled his fingers and gazed at me coldly in silence.
“You have sinned against God.” His voice boomed out in the silent, chilly room. “You have sinned against the Church, against your community. You have shamed your parents, who work hard to provide for you. You could have been a help to them in your mother’s illness, and instead you add to their burden. You have conceived a child from this sin, and still your father provides. He hands out salvation to you, and you spit on it. One might think the Devil himself has claimed your heart.”
Oh, he made me feel like the worst creature that ever lived. I had sinned with Donal and burdened my mother—no wonder God had not answered my prayers. My words dried up in my mouth, and when he asked what I had to say for myself, I could do nothing but bow my head under his accusations.
“So, then. You will give up this attachment to a man who led you into sin, and obey your father as God commands us. You will pray for forgiveness from your sin, pack up your things and prepare yourself for the life of a dutiful wife. You will come meekly to the church to marry Iver Henricksen, and be grateful for this chance at redemption.”
The words were like clubs, beating me deeper and deeper into my chair, so that I didn’t realize he’d risen and approached me until I felt his hand on my head. My head jerked up; he gazed down at me, his mouth quirked at the corner. Compassion or disdain? I couldn’t tell.
“Go in peace, my child.”
And so I was married in a desolate and brief ceremony, followed by a desolate and blessedly brief consummation. Afterward I lay in my strange bed, in a groove made by another wife and with the musky smell of Henricksen surrounding me, and in my mind’s eye I set fire to every beautiful moment I could remember with Donal. I burned them one at a time and watched them float to the ground like flaming leaves and crumble into ash.
I can’t say there were any big surprises in my new married life. Henricksen’s two rooms were small, dark and grimy. For the sake of the baby—Donal’s baby, I reminded myself—I did my best to set them in order. I don’t suppose anything had had a good cleaning since his first wife died.
He was a hard man and not inclined to sympathy or tenderness on my account. But he w
as only mean when he was drinking hard. Then the least thing would provoke a violent rage.
The first time he took his fist to me, I wept all night and ran to my mother at first light. Her face fell when she saw the bruise blooming across my cheekbone, but when I fell sobbing into her arms, she stiffened and held my shoulders at arm’s length. “He’s your husband,” she said. “You must learn to manage.”
“Can I not stay awhile?” I begged.
“Better not. It will just keep you thinking that this is home. You have your own home now.”
And so I did learn to manage, though Henricksen’s dingy rooms would never feel like home. I kept his house and made his meals and let him have his way with me in the night. I tried to become invisible when he hit the bottle—no easy feat in a tiny place. I stopped up my tears, dabbed witch hazel on my bruises and kept my troubles to myself.
I had a hard time loving the little one inside me at first. That baby, I thought, was the cause of all my misery. If there had been no baby, I would still be at home, working at the hotel and saving for the day when Donal came for me. Instead, I had a rough old man, an ugly life and a river of sadness. But as I grew big and the baby began to tumble and squirm in my belly, my feelings changed. The baby became the bright spot of joy in the grayness of my days. He was a bit of Donal, and if nothing else, we would have each other. By the time I felt the first tightening pains that told me he would soon be born, my love was as fierce as any mother’s.
I say he since that is how I thought. But it was a little girl I birthed. My mother came to me, bossing and bullying me through when the pains came so close together I panicked and cried out that I could not go on. Nonsense, she said briskly, of course I could go on, just as all the women before me had. And because she was my mother, I did what she said and, sure enough, before long I was grunting and straining like a big old sow, and my little Klara came howling into her grandmother’s arms.
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