“Be careful,” Pete said. “You don’t want to be getting that slave girl into trouble.”
I thought Pete was joking. What kind of trouble could Nanny get into? She wasn’t a real slave.
“You couldn’t pay me to be Prudence’s pretend slave. Or her pretend friend. She’s a total skank.”
Dad dropped his spoon and it clanked against the bowl.
“What?” I said. “Girls didn’t call each other names in the nineteenth century?”
The table remained silent as we finished eating, then the two helpers headed back outside with Carl behind them. Rusty stayed with us.
Dad said, “Thank you, girls, for such a wonderful lunch. I’m proud of you both.” He looked at me when he added, “Let’s remember how important it is to stay in character.”
Rebecca Lynn gave him a hug, stepped back, and put her hand to her nose. “Gross, Daddy. You stink.”
Dad laughed as if stinking up a room was the coolest thing in the world.
I watched him then, as he headed toward the door, stopping to pick up his wide-brimmed hat and putting it back on his head. He seemed tired, but at the same time, he bounced with extra energy. Like a basketball star who just made the championship shot in overtime. It was incredible to me that my dad had taken time off from work and traded in his PC and pie charts for an ax and a plow. We had everything back home. We each had our own rooms; real kitchen cabinets and an overfilled side-by-side refrigerator; unlimited electricity, hot water, four toilets to choose from, all of them inside; cell phone alarms instead of an annoying rooster; cable television; and a stove that didn’t need firewood.
As Dad left the cabin it occurred to me that maybe he was sick of all those things. That he liked the plow. And the suspenders. And the stink. Maybe all these things helped him forget a little of the previous year. Maybe he wanted to forget what our family used to be, the life we used to have. Maybe he was different from me in a way I never knew until now.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
In my dirty slip, I lay in the dark stuffy attic on my second night in the mid-nineteenth century, and I cried. I cried for my mom, who would have been a wiz in our country kitchen, who would have made our stay out here easier, and maybe even fun. I cried at the pitter patter of tiny feet which grew louder and closer in the dark as they scurried across the attic floor. I cried over Prudence Miller, with her perfect cinnamon-colored curls and pretty blue dress that matched her pretty blue house. I cried about how hard I would have to work every day for the next four months. The constant stream of work that would never end. I felt like that Greek mythological guy, Sisyphus, doomed to carry a boulder up a hill, but every time he makes it to the top, the rock rolls back down and he has to start all over again, pushing it up the hill, knowing the whole thing is pointless.
If every day turned out to be as endless as this last one, I would die.
Here are the things I did after lunch: I washed the dishes with cold water and a rag. Then with a rag tied to the end of a stick I mopped up the men’s muddy boot tracks. With help from my sister, I picked more apples, brought in three piles of firewood, and went to the springhouse two more times so the men would have water while they planted. Rebecca Lynn and I made cheese, boiling the milk until it curdled, separating the curd from the whey, ending up with a blob the size of a hockey puck. I mended the bottom of Rebecca Lynn’s dress when she ripped it on a nail sticking up out of a floorboard near the table, then I grabbed the Bible from the mantel, put it on top of the nail, and stomped my foot on top of it until the nail went back into place. I milked Gretchen again. After that, I brushed out Willow’s mane, even though it didn’t need it, but it was more for my own entertainment than hers. I brushed out Rebecca Lynn’s tangled hair, too, going slowly so she wouldn’t cry. Three times in three hours I re-bunned it and retied her bonnet.
I checked out the Handbook for Overland Expeditions for menu ideas. For dinner I made rice. Dad suggested I cut up tiny bits of bacon and dried vegetables, and by the time I added a little butter and some pepper, it tasted almost like the Number Six Rice Bowl from Golden Wok—only without the egg rolls. Or soy sauce. Or hot mustard. Or a fortune cookie. After dinner, I mopped the muddy floor again and washed out the filthy rag. A little while later, I sat in the outhouse, hiking up my dress, holding my breath, trying to go as fast as possible, knowing that not only my family had used the toilet, but the workers and the cameramen had as well. As I sat there, I thanked God my special rag was still clean and hanging on the nail.
So. Those are the things I did. Here are the things I did NOT do:
I did NOT watch America’s Got Talent and wouldn’t know who had won until after summer, and by then I wouldn’t care. I didn’t wash my hair with my expensive shampoo, file my chipped nails, check my Facebook page or update my status (“Totally awesome scraping the shit off my boots!”), like or dislike some viral Youtubes, throw some pics up on Instagram (“Showing off my brand new bonnet while yanking on engorged cow titties!”), or study for finals, which I was forced to take early and barely passed. I didn’t text Libby one hundred and twenty times, didn’t chill out with friends at her house, pass around the guitar, or sneak a couple of brewskies from the garage refrigerator. I didn’t cruise up to the Dairy Queen for an Oreo Blizzard. There was no twenty-minute shower, no putting on my Hello Kitty pajamas, no grabbing a bedtime snack of string cheese or a couple of Dove chocolates. I didn’t take inventory of my new summer dresses or bathing suits or sandals or earrings or ANYTHING.
As I rolled over on my side with my head against the flat stinky pillow, I fell into a troubled sleep where all I could dream about were the things I no longer had. Things like my Mad Men table lamps from Target, the IKEA candles in my own bathroom, my posters, my body pillow, my seashell night light. But the one thing I missed the most was the light blue comforter Mom had bought at Bed Bath and Beyond, the one that was way too childish and totally faded, the threads starting to unravel, that I still didn’t have the courage to donate to RCS. And right now I wished I could curl up inside my old comforter like a caterpillar in a chrysalis, until summer was over and this whole damned show was behind me.
Throwing a pity party for myself only made things worse. With my brain constantly reminding me where I was, I slept less than three hours, and when the rooster crowed outside our window, I wondered how he’d taste with gravy.
Dad sat up and pulled on his dirty trousers. He still stank from the day before, only now the smell had sort of settled into the air around him, like the cloud that hovered around Pigpen in the Charlie Brown cartoons.
“I want you girls to see our field,” he said.
“Will the men be here for breakfast?” I asked, wincing from the pain in my lower back as I sat up.
“No. They left early this morning.”
“What about Rusty and Carl?”
“They mentioned something about sleeping in.”
I pictured the cameramen, my only connections to the outside world, even if they didn’t do more than nod or grunt. Did they get their own rooms? Real beds? Sleep with Egyptian cotton sheets and fluffy pillows under their heads? Would they be pigging out on a huge Southern breakfast, one that Nanny cooked for them? Wiping their mouths with fine linen napkins?
After Dad went downstairs, Rebecca Lynn and I helped each other dress. It took us less time than the day before because my rib cracker stayed hidden under our mattress.
“What about your corset?” Rebecca Lynn asked, winner of the prestigious Hall Monitor Award.
“I’m a suffragist,” I told her.
“What’s a suffragist?”
“A woman who thinks wearing a corset is bullshit.”
We climbed down the ladder. Dad had already started the coffee.
“I want orange juice,” Rebecca Lynn said for the millionth time.
Dad poured two cups from the pot and handed one to me. “No oranges, remember?” He made my sister a cup of tea, then took his coffee cup to the table.
/> My sister and I cooked up a ham and egg scramble, which we inhaled like we hadn’t eaten the night before.
After breakfast, we followed Dad out to the field, Sully tagging along at Rebecca Lynn’s heels. As we stood on the edge of the dewy landscape, the sun was barely peeking through the forest, thin patches of fog hovering over the tiny mounds of freshly tilled dirt.
“I can’t believe you did all this in one day,” I said.
“One helluva long day,” Dad said. “But isn’t it beautiful? We’ve got eggplant over here, collards over there, and carrots and tomatoes over there…” He stood with his thumbs hooked beneath his suspenders like he’d been wearing them for years. “The soil here is like the stuff you buy at Home De—” He stopped himself. “Like the stuff you might buy at the local mercantile.”
“No cameras yet, Dad,” I told him. “I don’t think you have to worry about what you say.”
“I just don’t want to do anything that could—take me away from all this.” He turned back to his field.
“I’m going to start my chores,” Rebecca Lynn said. “Come on Sully. You can help me feed the chickens and collect their eggs and feed Bambi.”
“Who’s Bambi?” I asked.
“Our pig. And I named our rooster Clyde, so you’ll know what to call him.” She skipped away from the field toward the barn.
“I think your sister likes it here,” Dad said. “How about you?”
I shrugged.
“Brooke,” he said. “It’s going to get easier.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I just spent fourteen hours plowing and planting, I haven’t had a shower in two days, and I feel like I’m on top of the world. If you don’t fight it, everything will ebb and flow.” He bent down and touched the soil. “Now I know what they mean by God’s Country. Can’t you feel your mother out here? It’s like she’s all around us.”
No, I could not feel Mom out here in the middle of this God forsaken field. She was back at home. She was in the kitchen, baking her famous Amish cakes and sharing them with the women in her book club; in front of her vanity brushing through her dark wavy hair; in the SUV listening to NPR or some other radio program while patiently waiting for Rebecca Lynn or me to come out of school. She was screaming my name to the point of embarrassment as I soared over the hurdles. She was feeding the homeless down at the shelter or greeting guests as a volunteer at the History Center. Mom was home. Back in New Bern. And we had left her behind…
“Brooke?” my dad said, standing up and leaning his lower back into his hands. “You okay?”
“Just thinking of all the chores ahead of me.”
“Well, today’s your lucky day. I’m going to help you and your sister.”
“Help us?”
“So we have more time to spend in town.”
“Town?” I nearly jumped up and down with excitement.
“I knew that would make you happy.”
He was right. This news did make me happy. I barely felt my blisters as we headed back to the cabin.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
By the time Round Rusty and Skinny Carl had made their way down the Millers’ hill, our morning chores were done, and the wagon sat ready for town. Rusty was coming with us. Carl held a Nikon and planned to stay behind to take some still shots of the property.
“These are for shopping,” Dad said, placing two small baskets in the wagon.
Rusty sat up front with Dad, and Rebecca Lynn and I sat in the back. Dad shook the reigns and we were off. I figured sitting in the back of the wagon would be more comfortable than hiking alongside, but my body was tossed around like that ugly doll Rebecca Lynn slept with.
We passed by two farms along the way, the hillsides between them scattered with cows, sheep, and cotton. One of the homesteads on the right had a sign at the end of the dirt driveway: Doctor Hensel. A while later, we passed a small square building sitting in the middle of a pretty meadow. One of the trees next to the building had a small wooden swing hanging from a branch.
“Over there is the schoolhouse,” Rusty said.
I observed the tiny crooked structure, thankful it was summer.
Thirty minutes and a thousand bumps later, we made our way to the top of a rise. The wagon halted.
Dad shouted, “Girls, look!”
Rebecca Lynn and I rose to our knees in the back of the wagon and followed his gaze. Down in a valley sat a real life ghost town. A handful of wooden buildings lined up in a short row on one side of the dirt street, a narrow space between each. Like our cabin and the school and the farmhouses we’d passed along the way, each building was unpainted, so the town looked like a ghostly watercolor made up of grays. The sidewalk wasn’t a sidewalk at all, but a boardwalk that ran along the front of the shops, connecting one to the next. Across from the row of buildings was a field. Beyond the clay center street was a hill with a pretty white church halfway up the rise. The sun shone brightly on the bell hanging in the steeple, and clusters of leafy trees surrounded the building. The scene was straight out of one of those old-fashioned country calendars, the kind they sell at Mitchell Hardware.
Rebecca Lynn and I sat back down as Dad took the reigns and carefully steered the horse down the hill and onto the street. Up close, the buildings were more than just ghost town façades. Each one had a sign hanging from the eaves of the porch: Murphy & Sons Goods and Seed; Murphy & Sons Tannery; Wrightman’s Bakery & Confectionary; Sheriff’s Office; Blacksmith; and Sweet Sugar Gap Carriage Works.
Dad made a U-turn at the end and came back up the short street. In front of Murphy & Sons Goods and Seed, he directed Willow to a shady spot. Rusty panned the street with his camera while we got out of the wagon and Dad tied the horse to a wooden post where she drank water from a trough.
“Okay, girls. I want you to behave like mid-nineteenth-century women. No modern slang, no modern references, no modern anything.”
“Do we at least get to shop like modern girls?” I asked.
“One dollar each is your limit,” Dad told us as we grabbed our empty baskets.
I couldn’t imagine what in the world I would buy for a mere dollar. In the modern world, one buck might get me a half pack of Stride gum or a kid’s hot dog at the Moo Cow Café.
Rusty kept his camera on my face as we entered the store, and with good reason. As soon as I stepped over the threshold, my jaw nearly hit the floor. Move over Myrtle Beach, I had just entered a shopping paradise! The entire room was packed with more nineteenth-century crap than I ever knew existed. Large signs hung everywhere, pointing to baskets or drawers or shelves: Ladies Shoes, Men’s Work Shoes, Tobacco, Coffee, Horse Medicine. There were Spices from Exotic India, Real Haitian Sugarloaf, Best Ever Soap Flakes, Pipe Stoves: New and Improved! Some items weren’t priced, but other things were: Barrel Of Flour, 2 Cents; Cornmeal 100 lbs, 2 Cents; Bread One-Pound Loaf, 5 Cents; Coffee, 25 Cents; Tea, 47 Cents; One-Pound Bacon, 18 Cents; 60 Pounds Potatoes, 2 Cents; Dried Beans, 8 Cents….
Drawers labeled Nails, Small Farm Tools, Kitchen Tools, Rubber Stamps, Buttons, Colored Thread, and Sewing Needles took up entire walls behind the long cluttered counters. Chairs, lanterns, rakes, and other tools hung from the beams overhead. Glass front cabinets reaching as high as the ceiling were filled to the brim, the items on top crammed under the eaves. Each side of the room had a ladder on a track behind the counter to make reaching the higher shelves easier. One wall was dedicated to Fine Men’s Hats, Fine Ladies’ Hats, Fine French Parasols, Fine Fans, Fine Purses, Fine China, Fine Oriental Slippers, and Fine Hoop Skirts. If I’d used the word “fine” that many times in my essays at school, I would have flunked English.
Rusty stood next to Dad while he showed our list to an older man behind the counter, and Rebecca Lynn and I wandered around. We both spotted the candy right away, long sticks with swirls of green or red or brown: “Five for a penny!”
“Grab twenty,” I told her, my mouth watering.
As Rebecca Lynn pick
ed out her favorites, I stared up at the hoop skirts sticking out from the wall like reassembled skeletons: Thomson 20-Spring Heavy Wire, 62 cents! I let my eyes scour the fancy hats and parasols, then the items on top of and beneath the glass counters. There were rolling papers and pipes (for tobacco only, I assumed), a leather-bound pocket drug kit, Pinaud Talc, Mrs. Boyd’s Almond Oil Hand Cream, tiny round spectacles, matches, slates, white chalk, Gideon’s Bibles, and books like Lullabies for All Ages, Modern Homeopathy, The Hand Book of Etiquette, and A Guide to the Usages of Society with a Glance at Bad Habits. I saw a women’s magazine called Godey’s Lady’s Book, a deck of playing cards, postcards, parchment paper, and ink wells. There were dolls made of cornhusks and rags. Next to the dolls, pine toy soldiers filled a large wooden bucket.
With my basket in my hands, and working hard to keep my eyes from popping out of my head, I found myself amazed that even as far back as 1861, people craved this much junk.
I was standing in the middle of a nineteenth-century Walmart.
There were Dainty Ladies’ Gloves, stacks of ceramic ware, tin cups, silverware, and bottles of lamp oil. Mounds of bags containing salt, oats, grain, rice, and Rogers and Smith Chicken Feed were stacked five feet high in the back. There were candles, aprons, mousetraps, pails, canned and jarred goods, a tall wide barrel crammed to the top with giant green pickles, bins filled with seeds of all kinds, brooms, The One and Only Newly Patented Can Opener, straight razors like the one in my dad’s toiletries box, toothbrushes, “Love Among the Roses” perfume, pumice stones for nails, orange wood sticks for cuticles, and flowery soaps. There were pencils—“Now with Rubber Erasers Attached!”—slates, rakes, pails, aprons, calendars, hairbrushes, silver-framed hand mirrors, lace handkerchiefs, lace bonnets, shawls, mother-of-pearl combs, dried flowers in sachets, checker boards with wooden checkers. Bolts of Calico, plaid, and even silk fabric were displayed along one of the side walls. Against a glass cabinet leaned a pair of Tom Walkers, better known as stilts, and next to them a couple of wooden fishing poles. Under the glass I found clay marbles and one of those games with a tiny ball attached to a cup by a string. In front of one of the counters sat a wide metal bathtub: “Built For The Whole Family!” Next to the tub was a stack of washboards. Beside the washboards, a sign reading, “Dollies and Dashers to Make Laundry Agreeable!” offered freakish wooden devices to help me enjoy the sport of churning dirty socks and soiled petticoats.
Upside Down in a Laura Ingalls Town Page 10
