“Ach, Christian,” I said, wanting to curse him for not being there. I supposed that even if he’d stayed with me, he could have been in Steilacoom for the day or back at Fort Nisqually and not been able to help me now, but I wouldn’t let him off that uncomfortable hook when I saw him. I suppose I shouldn’t have been playing ball, but it seemed a harmless-enough occupation.
Nora rushed out of the house then, followed by Frau Flint and Frau Madeleine. An-Gie rushed too, carrying Marie.
“Ach, I’m such a bother,” I said. They each took an arm, and one got behind me to ease me up. “Ja. Good. Klose,” I said, nodding. I was still panting and lowered my head to keep the world from spinning. My mother said such behaviors often worked.
Nora on my right put her arm around my waist, Frau Flint did likewise on the other side, and with slow steps they took me to the side of the house, where Nora’s husband worked in the infirmary. She shouted something to Simmons, and he dashed from the porch, where he’d been staring, and ran through the door to his father.
The gut doctor held a towel in his hands, sleeves rolled up, and he frowned as the women led me closer. “I’m good,” I said. “gut.”
“Here,” he said and motioned the women to help me inside.
I tried to pay attention, listen to what he might try to tell me I should do to ease the motion sickness. His kind face and gentle hands helped lay me on the cot. “Good,” he said. “Very good.”
At last something was klose, and I hadn’t had to ask for help after all; it had been offered. It was the last thing I remembered before I fainted away.
16
Original Sin
I saw Christian’s face in dreamlike motions leaning over me with gentle eyes, caring globes of sky above me that I fell deeply into. I wondered how they’d found him, told him of my need to have him near me, sighed with relief that he’d returned.
But his voice had changed, and when I focused, these were not Christian’s azure eyes at all. The gut doctor stared at me instead. I pressed my eyelids closed against the disappointment.
Distant sounds of wind through trees rushed against my ears, so I heard little of whatever chatter there might have been within that room. The scent of Nora’s lavender soap drifted past me as she placed a cool cloth on my head. Someone brushed glycerin on my lips, a woman’s soft finger easing like a skater across my flesh.
I hadn’t fallen on my stomach, I knew this. I had protected my baby even in my reaching for Simmons’s throw. That was why my wrist hurt so. I’d turned it nearly backward to break my fall. I lifted my hands, opened my eyes to peek. Tiny bits of stone and dirt ground into the flesh of my palms, proof of how I’d kept my child free from harm.
Dirt on my hands.
My wrist throbbed. Nora washed my palms and then my fingers, massaging them, one by one. I flinched at the pain in my left hand, wondering why her touching my fingers should bring such pain to my wrist.
She replaced the cool cloth grown hot from my fevered head. The gut doctor left then, and Nora sat beside me, sometimes reading from her Bible words I couldn’t understand; sometimes sewing tiny stitches on a quilt square. Simmons came in once and leaned against her, asked a question. His mother gave an answer. He sighed and left. I so wondered what they said.
The day went on in dreamy states and, except for my wrist, I felt no piercing pains, but my body felt as though it carried a rock dropped inside my pelvis. My child kicked once, and my back ached as it never had before. I breathed words of gentleness to him, and he rested for a time.
But in early evening a kind of motion sickness interrupted what had felt like troubled sleep. I sat up, must have cried out, that rock sinking in my pelvis pushing to get out, stretching flesh and searing through my body in an effort to be free. An ache rolled over me more frightening than painful in its change. I was alone, though Nora must have lit the lamp beside my bed. “Frau Nora!” I shouted. What was this? It couldn’t be labor, could it? I remembered then our leader’s admonition that women experience pain in childbirth as a universal act of remembering our Garden sins. Perhaps Fort Steilacoom was too far from Eve’s Garden for God to care about my pain, this unusual pain. It was not as our leader foretold. I didn’t feel cut in two. I didn’t feel as though sin lay on me. I felt discomforted, yes. But it was pain hard to describe … distinctive. Unique. I panted.
I felt wetness beneath me, and then, as though I’d swallowed a horse, a burning pushed through my abdomen, but I swore I wouldn’t cry out again. My husband abandoned me. My mother lived months away. No stranger offered comfort.
But then Nora scurried inside the room, took one look at me and left, returned in minutes behind her husband, her skirts swaying. I motioned with my hand to my abdomen, wondering how I might ask for soda for the burning there. A sting of pain rose over me then, followed by a climbing pain that arched above me and made me want to push my insides out. My eyes throbbed like a heartbeat. “Is this it?” I panted. “Does my baby come?”
Before the gut doctor could answer, he threw my skirt onto my abdomen. The pain crested. I shouted loud, a wail almost, and then this aching stretching as though I’d ridden through a rock cleft to the wide clearing on the other side.
“Boy, Mrs. Giesy. Junge,” the doctor said.
“Es ist Junge?” I asked in German. “It’s a boy?”
In response, I heard a baby’s cry as he held the infant up for me to see. A twisting cord of flesh tied us together, and then I saw toes, then chubby legs and all the parts and hands and head that spoke of his completeness and perfection: our son. The doctor continued speaking, but all I really understood was Junge. Boy.
Heartburn. Stretching flesh. Not much to complain about. I lay stunned by the arrival of an infant with so little trouble. My wrist from the fall I took hurt more.
Our leader might say I’d slipped past sin.
As Nora laid the infant on my breast I sighed, so grateful, so amazed that I had given birth with so little fanfare. I felt no guilt at all, but rather joy that I had co-created with our Lord and brought new life into the colony!
The child’s dark fuzz brushed against my face. Nora rolled a quilt behind me so I could sit up a bit, then I nestled the boy in the crook of my arm. The size of a watermelon, he promised as much sweetness. I gazed into his face. He’d be tall one day like his father. His hands were large, his fingers long. He was full term, arrived when he should have. I’d tell them if I could. He wasn’t a month early, as the two medical men predicted. I’d love to tell them they were wrong, but it would have to wait for Christian’s arrival for that translation.
I wished my husband had been here. He’d missed his son’s arrival. Otherwise, this child appeared on time, in October, just as I predicted, without tragedy or unbearable pain.
I named him Andrew Jackson Giesy for the president that Christian loved so much. Christian’s grandfather carried the name too, but it was for the president I’d call our son. “A man of the people,” my husband called Andrew Jackson, “who fought the banking institutions and other powered men in order to bring better lives to those who worked so hard.” It didn’t matter that the Senate later censured him. That act was led by his former rival, Henry Clay. Jackson said the banks monopolized and therefore hurt each small farmer. Being censured for seeking truth, my husband told me, was a badge of courage. Experiencing challenge and distress in the name of virtue was a virtue itself.
The year of my birth, Jackson was nearly assassinated for his views. He became even more worthy in Christian’s eyes when he died ten years later, having never given up on his beliefs. I hadn’t followed politics all that much until I married Christian, but he’d said if our child was a boy, we should call him Andrew Jackson.
As a dutiful wife, when the child opened his eyes to me, I did just that.
I stayed in a daze of wonder throughout that evening, considering our leader’s predilections for my disaster. Except for my aching wrist, this childbearing had been an easy venture. Perhaps i
t was man’s duty to imagine the worst and woman’s duty to prove them wrong.
I slept with my son beside me, though I woke often to be sure he still breathed, those tiny lips like pumpkin seeds barely moving as air as soft as sunrise moved between them. I so wanted to share these moments with Christian, to have him see that I could do what he hoped: give birth without bother, tend to our child, and as Scripture advised, bring the baby up in the way that he should go so he would never depart from it. I’d begun that very morning saying prayers for Andrew—Andy, as I thought of him—someone firm and sweet and not needing the power of the former president, an infant basking in the love of his mother.
Andrew was the name of a disciple, too, the one who pointed out the boy with the basket of fish when our Lord gave His sermon on the hillside. An observer, that Andrew, and a good and loving man who noticed children and all they could contribute.
I showed my Andrew to Nora in the morning while he wore the long gown I’d made for him. Frau Madeleine tucked the blanket under his chest with her bony fingers, speaking in her high-pitched voice. Her words sounded joyous, and I heard her say “bright,” a word I’d thought referred mostly to a bold dye or the sun.
I kept him tightly wrapped when I met Frau Flint at the sewing time, not certain what her English words might say. She didn’t seem the least interested, merely lifted her glasses on her beaked nose to stare at him, grunted once, and returned to her stitching.
Nora brought An-Gie in. She looked at my child and smiled. “Tolo,” she said. “Junge,” Nora told me in German. An infant boy. Nora motioned for An-Gie to comb my hair. I’d purchased new combs, abalone shells that the sutler kindly said he would order in for the commissary store. I showed them to her, and An-Gie turned them over in her wide brown hands, then began the gentle tugging and pulling on my hair. I felt tended and closed my eyes and hummed as she worked.
Even Captain Maloney’s somber face at dinner could not dissuade the joy I felt, showing the seated group my son, who by now had begun to share his own voice with this company. I suppose every new mother thinks her child is the loveliest and best, but I was sure of this. I set aside the ache of knowing others saw his son before Christian did.
The second morning my body felt sore in places I’d never known it to be before. Worse, my child wailed and couldn’t be comforted for long, neither by my stroking his face nor planting tulip kisses on his brow, tiny smooches opening to larger ones if only he responded. Did children normally fall asleep even when they hadn’t sucked nearly long enough? He cried until he slept, then woke to cry again. I couldn’t comfort my son, though I walked him and patted him and changed him. I couldn’t help him find nourishment at my breast.
Instead of looking plumper as I thought babies did after a day or so of living, his face narrowed. His skin felt loose around his jerking, slender legs.
I winced when Andy tugged at me and at first Nora smiled, as though this sort of behavior from an infant could be expected. But by the end of the third day when he seemed to sleep more than even attempt to eat, I somehow conveyed my breast pain to Nora. She nodded, then offered poultices of grain. She made motions that I should pump my breast, and I felt my face grow warm. This was the work of milkmaids, with goats or cows, not healthy young mothers wanting nothing more than to nourish their child.
A pale liquid, nearly clear, left my body, but even I knew it wasn’t enough to nurture a life. I longed for my mother’s wisdom of what to do and chastised Christian beneath my breath for his absence, his missing words that would bring help. Then I cursed myself for not knowing what I should have known, what all mothers surely knew.
It was Frau Flint who, with gestures firm and clear, her hands cupped beneath her own ample breasts, brought out bristling behavior from Nora. Nora shook her head. Frau Flint pointed to Nora’s toddler and spoke. Nora dropped her eyes. They argued, at least the snapping of words, and the pursed lips in between them suggested an argument to me. Nora said, “No,” and I knew somehow that Frau Flint wanted Nora to nurse my baby. For some reason, this kind woman resisted, but she left and returned with a cup of milk.
Cow’s milk would rescue Andy, wouldn’t it? Frau Flint scowled, as though to say “a waste of time,” but Nora soaked a rag in the milk, then brought it to Andy’s mouth.
He licked, then spit up over and over again until he fell into an exhausted sleep.
Would my child starve? Could that happen? Surely not with a healthy mother and a doctor right there to advise.
Simmons brought me a book to look at while I rocked my limp child. I hoped the pictures would engage my mind on something bright and pleasant. Instead, the book had strange line drawings of an organ grinder and a monkey, a scrawny, narrow-faced primate that made me gasp instead. It looked too much like Andy.
I pushed back tears and vowed to stay alone, enclosed in my room, dipping into the cow’s milk to drip into Andy’s mouth, even though he spit it up; even though he slept now most all of the time. Some small nourishment had to reach him. Surely, my milk would drop soon. I’d hold him in my private, windowless room to protect him from what others might say while I was forced to watch my child die; I couldn’t begin to imagine what I’d tell Christian when he came back, if he came back.
Nora knocked quietly at the door and then entered. Her words were soft, and I could see she cried. She motioned that she’d take Andy, gestured she’d hold him to her breast. I’d seen Marie eat table foods, so perhaps Nora felt her toddler could survive and her milk was better given to Andy. But then I could see the tears in her eyes and somehow knew what Frau Flint didn’t: Nora had not enough milk even for Marie anymore. She’d been weaning the child. She had nothing to offer. That was the cause of her tears, not her resistance to share what she had.
I would always remember that moment when I knew my child would die. Nothing stirred the air. My mouth felt dry. I understood then what our leader forewarned: not the physical pain of childbirth; not the agony of sore breasts or healing from the infant’s passage from his watery world into our own; none of that was worthy pain to redeem the sin that Eve committed. But the searing wrench of powerlessness, of being unable to tend to one’s child, to keep those we love from suffering, such was the curse of a woman’s original sin. And I’d committed it.
17
Trees of Knowledge
How I longed for Christian’s presence, to shatter all my fears, make them unfounded, reassure me that God would intervene and save Andy’s life. Could God create a woman able to give birth without bother, but who then couldn’t keep her child alive? What kind of God was that? What kind of mother was that?
I tried to remember the verses my father read about children, of God’s love for them. Our leader adored children, gave them sweet treats when he met them on the street. He didn’t talk about them much, and I wondered sometimes if he thought little ones kept their parents’ eyes from him and he was envious of their interest going elsewhere. I chastened my thoughts. I couldn’t afford to offend God by decrying one of his chosen servants.
Andy stopped smacking his lips when I brushed water against them. He looked wizened as an old squash sinking into itself.
I could not stand this, I could not!
I raged into the front parlor, paced before the window, where I watched a light falling snow. Were there no goats here? We hadn’t tried goat milk. I pawed through the books on the shelves looking for a drawing of a goat so I could show them. What was the word in English? Might the sutler know of a goat? He’d been so helpful with all of my purchases; surely I could tell him what I needed.
I grabbed my mother’s cape and wrapped it around me, leaving Andy lying so still I leaned over him to make sure he breathed. “I’ll bring back what you need, I promise,” I whispered, then stepped outside, feeling the wet snow cold against my thin slippers.
The commissary stood at right angles to the officers’ housing and the doctor’s surgery. With my head down against the sleet, the mix of rain and snow, I nearly kn
ocked over An-Gie. With her, a young woman carried an infant in a board. They appeared headed to the commissary. This plump and round-faced child with large liquid eyes blew satisfied bubbles from its lips. I knew what I had to do—if only I could make her understand.
The girl carried her baby wrapped in a board decorated with shells and colorful beads. I could smell the cedar wood. She never looked at me, and it was torture staring at this plump baby, smiling while my child lay motionless. Could she tell that my heart split open at the sight of a healthy, fat child?
I tugged on An-Gie’s arm, motioned toward the young girl who might have been a granddaughter perhaps or a niece. I pulled her toward Nora’s house. The girl held back, but I urged both her and An-Gie into my room where Andy lay.
I picked him up, held his face to mine to feel the small intake of his breath. Then I motioned to the girl to take him.
“No, no!” An-Gie said, standing between us. “No omtz. No ho-ey-ho-ey. No trade.”
Trade? I knew that English word. I held Andy to my breast. Does she think I would give my son away in exchange for hers? I held the back of Andy’s head with my hand. He still moved, shuddered almost. “No ho-ey-ho-ey,” I said. “Muck-a-muck. Eat.” I made the motion with my hand and lips. “Cum’tux?” I’d heard Nora use this word to verify that An-Gie understood. She had to understand.
What kind of mother was I to ask a total stranger to bare her breast to my infant and keep him alive? A desperate mother. A strong mother, that’s what I was, doing something I had never imagined I would do.
An-Gie spoke to the girl, who at first shook her head. An-Gie clucked her words, repeated muck-a-muck, and eventually, the girl laid her baby down on the bed beside the shallow impression Andy’s feathery body had left on the quilt. She opened her skin jacket and untied the strings across her chest. Then An-Gie took Andrew from me and placed the baby in this girl’s arms.
A Clearing in the Wild Page 17
