by Amy Lukavics
“Henry—” I start to protest as he rides away, but then I hear some sort of excitement behind me, a sudden crunch of twigs and leaves too loud to have been made by a squirrel or even a raccoon. Fear sparks to life in my chest.
Is it a wolf? A bear? How fitting it would be for me to get attacked and torn apart right here and now, just like I wanted my family to think happened when I ran away. Perhaps it’s a reckoning for me.
Or, perhaps...it’s the creature again.
With a racing heart and trembling lips, I turn to face the noise. My fists are clenched, although I don’t intend to fight. I open my eyes, ready to be devoured.
Oh, this is a reckoning, all right. Because it’s not a wolf or a bear or the devil standing on the opposite side of the clearing, staring at me with completely wild eyes and an open mouth.
It’s Emily.
It’s Emily, and from the look on her face and the way she turns to run away from me, I can tell that she’s heard and seen everything.
I sprint after her, calling her name, bellowing for her to stop so I can explain. She doesn’t stop or even look over her shoulder as she jumps over logs and dodges trees and bushes. I try to keep up, but the tightening in my belly and the gentle sear of pain across my groin slows me before I’ve even made it fifteen paces.
“Stop!” I yell again, and when that doesn’t work I give it one last try before I collapse on my knees in the dirt. Say whatever it takes to make her stop. “Let me explain! You owe it to me—”
That does it. Emily slides to a halt in the dead leaves and turns back to look at me, her delicate face twisted in fury. Before I can get up from the ground, she’s in front of me.
“Please—” I start, but I am cut off when Emily winds up and slaps me across the face, hard.
The blow knocks me back. The side of my face is buzzing, and my ear is on fire.
“I owe it to you?” Emily cries. Her hands are twitching at her side. Sweat glistens in small beads over her reddened face. “I owe you nothing! What have you done to yourself, Amanda? And how? Why?”
I don’t know where to begin. Because I’m no longer the sister that she once knew, perhaps? What would Emily think of me to discover that I pray for the death of baby Hannah so that Ma won’t have to? None of it makes sense to me except that I feel broken and corrupt, and because of that it was distracting and freeing to have such an intimate thing all to myself.
Before last winter, Emily and I didn’t have things to ourselves, not from each other anyway, and because of that, nothing I can say right now will make her less upset with me. Selfish filth.
“The lie never went away, did it?” Emily says. There is a brief pause. “At the end of the spring, you told me you were better. And now—”
“I was better, of course I was!” I cross my arms at her arched brow. “I am. I didn’t mean to hurt you, sister,” I say earnestly and mean it. I pull at the end of my braid. “This is all a mistake.”
I curse Henry in my mind for leaving me here, for forcing me to have this conversation with Emily now. I curse myself for taking something unbreakable with my sister and finding a way to shatter it into pieces. My sister sinks to the forest floor beside me.
“You were going to leave.” She says it in a near whisper, soft with a deadly undertone. “You were going to leave me here, you were just going to run away with some boy that apparently came out of nowhere. Really, Amanda, how did you even meet him? I didn’t even know you knew any boys.”
She laughs now, a sad and empty laugh, then wipes away a tear with a nod of astonishment. “So really, I do not know you at all. I do not know anything. You were going to leave me.”
Emily looks down. “It was as if the winter was only a warning for what was to come.”
I think of the past few months, of lying to Emily’s face so that I could be filled with Henry and feel ecstatic and in control and alive, of telling myself that I would stop when I knew deep down that I had no intention to. I think of the moment I first knew I was with child.
“Our lives were already falling to pieces without this, this—” Emily fades away and begins pulling weeds and pieces of grass from the ground. “This bastard child.”
Bastard. The word hits me like a dirty curse and sends my heart into a panic. My baby will be a bastard. An earthworm sprawls over itself in the freshly turned soil. It’s unfair, I consider as I watch it try to burrow back down. It has no way of comprehending what is happening to it. It thinks it might die.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I admit to myself for the first time, and cover my face with my hands. “I have ruined everything.”
“You have,” Emily agrees. “You truly, truly have. Ma and Pa are going to be sick over it.”
Just the idea of trying to inform Ma and Pa of their soon-to-be grandchild is enough to turn my guts into mush. I hug myself and start to rock back and forth.
“Please, don’t tell them, Emily,” I beg. “I need to do it. At the right time.”
Emily doesn’t bother to scold me that there is no right time for this particular announcement, even though I can tell she’s biting her tongue. She shrugs and lets out an aggravated sigh.
“I would never,” she says finally. “I wouldn’t wish such a task upon anybody, much less myself.”
“Thank you, sister.” I study her for any sign of possible reconciliation, but there is none. “I’m truly grateful for that.”
“Don’t be,” she says. “You won’t be grateful when you are reaping the consequences from what you’ve done.”
I start to cry, and Emily’s eyes scour my face in silence for a few moments.
“You’ve changed,” she whispers, and leans away from me to stand up. “This isn’t you.”
We start back toward the cabin after that, and Emily ignores me for the entire walk, staying at least ten strides ahead at all times. I want to tell her everything, about Hannah and Henry and the wanting to sin, but every time I speak she makes a point not to look at me or respond in any way.
Before long, the roof of our cabin becomes visible through the trees. The smoke from the chimney drifts up in wispy billows and sets the air alive with the smell of fire. Joanna and Charles are still gathered in the front clearing, playing with a toad and cheering and whooping as though nothing in this life is sour or wrong.
“Ma was looking for you, Amanda,” Joanna calls when she sees Emily and me emerging from the forest. “Something about Hannah.”
I start for the cabin, but Emily stops me.
“Amanda.”
I turn back, hopeful, desperate, and look into my sister’s eyes.
“I just want you to know something,” she says in a low voice.
“Yes?”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive you for this,” Emily admits. “Ever.”
I am alone again.
I feel as though there is always a buzz in the air, reminding me that reality has changed, that life right now might as well all be a nightmare. Emily stays true to her word and doesn’t mention the baby to Ma or Pa, and neither do I. Since I didn’t think they’d ever have to find out, I hadn’t even explored options on how to break the news, but after only a few days I decide that I will never tell them, I will just allow them to notice one day and then finally admit to my doings.
Or perhaps I can pretend that I don’t know how it happened?
The days pass like molasses in the winter. Pa makes weekly trips to the settlement on the other side of the mountain to trade his furs for supplies, and Ma and I tidy up the cabin or prepare the upcoming meal or read Bible passages to calm ourselves while Hannah wails with fits of incredible rage all throughout the day.
Since the disastrous conversation with Henry, I’ve been keeping inside with Ma during any free time instead of going on walks with
the children and Emily. It sort of becomes an unspoken agreement between my sister and me; we are civil to each other when required in front of our ma and pa, but other than that, we are nothing more than strangers who sleep in the same bed. I grieve for our sisterhood more and more with every ignored attempt to set things right between us.
Besides the heavy heart I always carry about Emily, I am also ever paranoid that Ma is going to sense that I’m with child, because aren’t mothers naturally equipped with a deep intuition about such things? And especially since she’s been making a point to pay closer attention to me after what happened last winter, like she blames herself for it, somehow.
Before the day has even begun, Hannah has fallen into a full-body tantrum. I can’t help but wonder why the Lord would want to put an infant through such anguish; what is the greater purpose of it, truly? With every day, the answer becomes less clear.
I keep praying for you to die, I think in shamed dismay as Hannah screams and writhes on the mattress, despite Ma’s every effort to calm her with the tip of her breast. A twinge in my belly brings tears to my eyes.
Pa is up before dawn to make another settlement run, and raises his voice over the baby to promise Joanna and Charles that he’ll bring them each a special treat upon his return, on account that it will be Joanna’s birthday soon and there won’t be another trip in until after it has passed.
Hannah doesn’t quiet down until he has been gone for an hour or two.
The children spend the day buzzing around like excited chickens, leaving Ma to Hannah and Emily and I to engage in our separate chores. Neither of us rush in an attempt to gather free time like we usually do, and Emily takes special care to make her daily chores stretch out the entire day. In the afternoon, it begins to rain.
Pa returns just as the sun is setting, dripping with mud and rainwater. He ties Rocky up to the post by the woodshed and starts unloading things—soap, cornmeal, molasses, fresh herbs and spices for Ma. Joanna waits for her gift at the table. She tugs impatiently at the end of her raven curls, the anticipation making her eyes widen by the minute.
Once Rocky is having his supper along with our other horse, Blackjack, and Pa has changed into dry clothes, he sits across from Joanna and produces a doll made from a dried corncob. It has no hair, just a dress made with scrap pieces of calico fabric that wrap around the lower half, and a blank-looking face set in with beans. My little sister couldn’t be happier.
Jo squeals in delight and runs to Pa, but I notice as he hugs her that something isn’t quite right with his face. He is smiling at Joanna’s excitement, but trouble lurks beneath his placid expression. Ma and Emily must sense it, too, because neither of them go out of their way to ask how his trip was.
After Joanna retreats to the back corner to play with her new doll, Pa pulls out a painted spinning top for Charles and offers it with a weak smile. Charles’s jealous frown dissolves in a moment, and soon he is sitting beside his sister testing out his new toy.
“I have some hard news to go over with you, Susan,” Pa says. “Amanda and Emily, you might as well hear this, too.”
My heart jumps into my throat. Perhaps he’s received bad news of one of our aunts or cousins from the settlement at the base of the mountain? Pa motions for us to sit around the table with him, so we all do, and wait quietly for him to begin speaking. Just before he begins, I have a flash of panic where I think, What if he knows about the baby?
“This winter is going to be bad.” Pa finally speaks after folding his hands in front of him on the table. He doesn’t look into our faces. “Very bad.”
“What do you mean, Edmund?” Ma says. Her voice is gentle, afraid, and she gets up to set a sleeping Hannah on her bed.
“I heard it while I was at the settlement today,” he says after she sits back down. “The farmers can all see it, clear as day. Apparently there’s a big ring around the moon, normal for autumn, but not this thick or this bright. Everyone was buzzin’ about it from the moment I got in. It marks a hard winter ahead.” He pauses. “The worst we’ve ever had, maybe.”
Worse than last year, is what he’s trying to say without saying it. How is that even possible?
“Excuse me for being so bold, Pa,” Emily says and shrugs ever so slightly. “But why can’t we simply stock up on supplies to better prepare this time? We’ve had to deal with much harder things than snow before.”
How vast an understatement.
“Do you think I have forgotten about last winter, Emily?” Pa’s voice rises. I notice from the corner of my eye that Joanna and Charles are both casting glances my way. When I turn to look at them, they quickly avert their eyes. “Any one of us could get ill like Ma did again, and with no safe way to travel for help. With this many people, it is too dangerous, plain and simple. There are seven of us living in a cabin built for three.”
Soon to be eight, I think, and Emily stares at me from across the table. I know she’s thinking the same thing.
Nobody speaks. I imagine being trapped in the cabin with my family when the discovery is made that I am with child. I imagine having nowhere to go to escape their wrath. I imagine giving birth and screaming in pain and losing my mind inside a cramped cabin of stale air and baby wails and arguing children.
Perhaps, with any luck, I won’t survive the delivery.
Pa gets up to take a peek at the storm after a low but heavy roll of thunder causes the inside of my ears to hum. “Even traveling in the rain here is difficult now,” he says, and closes the door to the cabin. “It didn’t used to be this way. We’d have one hard snow, maybe two, never amounting to anything more than a couple of lazy days inside.”
“You’re right,” Ma agrees. Her face is pale. “It seems as though each winter has gotten gradually worse.”
“There is only one thing we can do to protect ourselves,” Pa says and turns from the window. “We will need to settle elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere?” I say. “Are you talking about the settlement at the foot of the mountain? Where Aunt Charlotte lives?”
My chest tightens at the thought. While it sounds much better than spending the winter in the cabin, being surrounded by even more familiar faces to witness my downfall doesn’t seem all that wonderful either. At least there’d be room to breathe.
“No,” Pa says, and I exhale a small sigh of relief. “We need somewhere large enough to comfortably house all of us. This place is already too cramped, and it’s bigger than most of the cabins on or around the mountain. There isn’t enough time to build a new one, besides. No, I think we need to move someplace very different.”
“Like where?” Ma says what I am thinking.
Pa sits in silence for a few moments. “There is a big stretch of free land to the far south,” he says. “It’s a great distance away from the mountain—”
“Great distance?” Ma repeats with a hand over her chest. “Oh, Edmund. I can’t leave behind my sister, and her children...”
“You can, and you will,” Pa insists. Ma lets out a sigh and lowers her hand back down to her lap. “This is for the greater good of our family, Susan. I was told that this land is riddled with abandoned cabins. I wouldn’t even have to build a new one.”
“That would save quite a bit of time,” Ma agrees, then pauses to ponder. I see her look toward Hannah, then at me. Her cheeks deepen in color, and the corners of her mouth turn down. “I think we should leave, too. I don’t want for there to be a chance that last year could happen again.”
“It won’t,” Pa says and hits his fist on the table suddenly, causing Ma to jump. “Now, I’ve told you all plenty of times, and after this it is no longer up for conversation—everybody needs to forget about last winter. All of you continue to draw out the misery instead of choosing to recognize that the Lord blessed us all with survival. We could have so easily lost Ma and Hannah, but we didn’t.”
&
nbsp; He is purposefully leaving me out of it, just like the few other times he has tried to have this talk with us. Ma and Emily look uncomfortably into their laps. I realize that Pa may never treat me like he did before the storm again. It’s been months, and he still refuses to acknowledge my incident.
Is he ashamed? Or is he afraid?
“The cabin is too small for seven people,” he repeats now, and clears his throat. “It wasn’t healthy for any of us to be so close to each other for so long. It will not happen again, and you all need to forget about it. Thank the merciful Lord for what you have now.”
What I really “need” to forget about is Henry. Maybe going away will be a blessing. No more worries about bad winters, more room, a fresh start away from the monster post boy. Maybe being somewhere new will make the news of my baby easier for Ma and Pa to swallow.
Maybe.
Ma and Pa sit at the table, talking things through for a few hours. The idea of living anywhere but the mountain is so very strange to me. All I’ve ever known, all my siblings have ever known, is trees and mist and cool air and walls of rock.
When Joanna and Charles head to bed, each child with their new toy tucked protectively under their arms, I decide to follow suit rather than listen in on the exhausting conversation any longer.
“Amanda,” Emily says when she sees me changing into my nightshirt. “Wait a moment, please.”
She comes over to my side of the mattress after double-checking to make sure Ma and Pa are still deep in their talk.
“What is it?” I ask.
Emily leans in close so she can whisper in my ear.
“Do not say anything about the baby yet,” she says softly. “Wait until after we’ve settled.”
“You think?” I whisper back, slightly amused at her change of heart. “But, Emily, they have the right to know!”
