“Bella.” Edvard stumbled onto the floor, crossed it in just a few strides, and then he was upon me.
“No.” I tried to push him off. He reeked of liquor and sweat.
He did not reply but tugged at my blanket; his forehead was creased, his breathing labored. I tried to laugh and pretend it was in jest, while I fought to pry his fingers off the covers. Then suddenly I could smell it again, the water of Selbu Lake lapping at the shore; I could feel the pebbles burrowing into my back and the pounding pain of a shattered tooth. “Stop,” I muttered between clenched jaws. “Stop it!”
He did not even hear me but kept pulling at the blanket. His breathing became even heavier than before. I was wriggling by then, trying to toss him off, but he was far too heavy.
He managed to wring the blanket from my hands and peeled it off my body. His knee landed between my legs.
“No.” I was firm. “No!”
“Why?” His weight was heavy upon me. “I can be sweet to you, Bella. You let me kiss you before.”
I did not answer, did not move at all while he kissed my neck and squeezed my breasts through my shift. The fear in me subsided some and turned into a cold sort of rage: Who was this man to think he could best me? I would never be at a man’s mercy again. My arm moved, dropped down to the floor where the basket of mending stood by the bench. My hand found the rim, felt its way through folds of fabric, rows of needles, spools of thread, and landed on the scissors at the bottom. I lifted them high in the air and he saw them gleam just as they came down, and he tried to escape by twisting around. The scissors went through the fabric of his pants and lodged in the backside of his thigh. They protruded there even after I let them go. He bellowed. I shouted. He got a hold of the scissors and pulled them out with a gush of blood. The door sprang open and John was there, Nellie too, and half the party. They led the wailing man outside with much fuss and looks in my direction. Not Nellie, though. She sat down on the lip of the bench, pulling up my covers. There was blood in my bed, on my hands. My poor jaw throbbed with ache, just as it did after the lake, though no blow had landed there this time.
“He tried to force me,” I muttered, “so I stabbed him.”
“Yes.” Nellie sounded faint. “Yes, I believe you did.”
* * *
—
“You didn’t have to hurt him,” they told me later, the chattering women on the stairs. “You shouldn’t have led him on if you didn’t want him to come.” I never replied but lifted my chin and pressed my lips hard together. Underneath the shield of my apron, my hand curled into a fist.
“You will never get married this way,” Nellie said too, with her head bent over the mending in her kitchen. “I worry for you, Bella, I do. What happened to you back home? I know there was an attack, but no one ever told me more than that.”
I shrugged and bent my head over the torn pants in my lap; the needle went in, came out. “There’s no use talking about that now—and don’t you go asking Mother.” It would not do if Nellie knew. I had left it all behind.
Edvard from Bergen never spoke to me again, knowing perhaps that I would gladly have followed those scissors with something worse. I thought about it often: what I would do to him if I could. Sometimes it was Anders I saw in my head: skin slashed and teeth crushed. It was seething, that anger, restless and aching.
I liked Edvard well enough before that night, and had I been anything like Nellie, he could have been a good fit for me. I would gladly have taken him into my bed and never known his true nature—and neither would he have known mine. I did not want that for myself, though, being a carpenter’s wife. Did not want to be another woman on those stairs. I thought of that night by the lake while lying on the bench at night, and knew I was not done with the spite. I had survived—just to spite—and I would rise in spite as well. Even though he would never know it, I would marry even better than Anders, only to prove that I could.
It would have been easy to slip in those early days, falter and settle for less. Those scissors in the drunk man’s thigh was the best thing that could have happened to me. None of the Norwegian men who danced and drank in the backyards would even look at me after that. I had to look elsewhere to find a husband, and I had ideas.
11.
Nellie
It was unfortunate what happened with those scissors, especially since Bella had still not made many friends at the tenements. There was talk on all the stairs and rowdy laughter, and whatever hope there had been of seeing her settled with a man from our circle was waning by the day as the word spread. Who would want a wife who had bodily attacked a suitor and lodged a sharp weapon in his flesh? Not only would he live in peril of suffering the same fate, but he would also have to endure a lifetime of ridicule from the other men.
It was just how it was, and there was nothing to do for it.
For the longest time I thought that bloody night on the bench was what had sent Bella running to church.
It turned out I was wrong.
John and I belonged to the Norwegian Lutheran Church, and Bella joined us there when she arrived, but we were not zealous Christians. Our days did not have the hours for it, and though we said grace and John did a little loud reading from the Bible on Sunday nights, our concerns were mundane ones. We were at peace with God and aimed to keep it that way, but he did not fill our every waking moment. I wished for a house of our own and healthy children, and had little time to worry about our souls.
Little Brynhild had been pious at various times as a child, but I had never thought it anything more than a way of getting by. She had an excellent mind—it was almost uncanny the way she could recite Bible verses from memory, or remember whole passages of text having read them only once. It served her well in school and in church too. For a child who did not always know how to behave in an endearing way, who was often teased and taunted, her ability was a strength, and it made her appear very serious about the Bible—as if she had read the whole book ten times over, when all she had done was glance at it once. The adults made a game of it, outside the church on Sundays, asking her questions and having her recite verses from memory. People like that sort of dedication in a child; they think it is sweet.
That was why it made sense to me that Bella would seek out the church to find solace after the whole scissors affair. Religion had helped her rise before when people had given her a hard time. A vast knowledge of verses and psalms could come in handy even as an adult. I knew she would not have a problem getting along with the very religious, black-clad matrons of the congregation; her sullenness could easily be read as a sort of piousness. It did not suit me, though, this sudden interest in the church.
My back was worse than ever after my daughter Olga’s birth, and some days I had to lean on furniture just to move around in my apartment. Bella being out all the time to meet with her new friends doing all sorts of charitable work was inconvenient at best, and her occupying the bench meant that I could not ask someone else to stay with me either. I needed her at home, and told her so, just a few weeks after my bed rest ended.
“Maybe I need God right now,” she said in reply. “Maybe I find it hard to be new in this country with no husband or children of my own. Maybe it is a comfort to me to hear God’s words in my mother tongue.” She was sitting on a chair by the table, sorting through my needles. She was wearing a dark brown cotton dress, and her hair was hidden under a graying headscarf. Behind her on the stove, the water in the pot slowly came to a boil.
“We hear them well enough on Sundays.” I was in pain and my mood was dark. “I don’t see why you have to be so involved. They can care for the orphans just fine without you. Those old women with no chicks in the nest have nothing better to do with their time.” I was biting my lip against the ache. I had taken a powder, but it had yet to work. My hand was busy rocking the cradle, where little Olga blinked against the light.
“It’s a charitab
le thing to do. Not everyone has a kind mother like little Olga here.” Bella smiled and reached out to pat the worn cradle. “They need young bodies with strength and conviction. The older women can’t do that much.”
“My back hasn’t been good since the birth. I sure could use your help too.” I hated the sullen complaint in my own voice.
“If John earned a little more, you wouldn’t have to work so much.” Her eyebrows rose a little.
“He earns what he earns and works late hours to keep us all fed.” It just was not fair to lay it on him.
“What would you have me do then, Nellie? Stay at home every day as your maid?” She did not wait for my reply but rose from the chair and went to fetch the boiling water. It would go into a dishpan on the table and be used to clean our dirty cups.
“No.” My temper suddenly flared; my pain was such that I could not help it. “I want you to do your share of the work, not spend all your time with the women from church! Better still, you could find yourself a husband! I’m sure they have forgotten about the scissors by now.”
“He shouldn’t have come to the bench.” She lifted her chin in that stubborn way that I knew so well.
“Well, I don’t see why not. You could have been married by now,” I snapped, then regretted it in the next moment. Of course he should not have come to her like that, but perhaps the prospect of marriage should have stayed her hand? It bothered me how she could not see that such was a poor woman’s plight. We had all had to suffer indignities to arrive at a place of safety. We were not ladies with perfumed handkerchiefs who could pick and choose among powdered suitors. We did not have the luxury of fainting when faced with men’s baser nature but often had to suffer to achieve our goals in life. I had been lucky with John—and I knew it—but my life before him had been painful enough. A girl without means had little worth in the eyes of the world.
“I didn’t want to marry him.” Bella snapped right back in my face. She poured the water so abruptly that it splashed onto her fingers and would probably leave blisters.
“Well, who then, Bella? Who is good enough for you?”
“Not a carpenter from Bergen.” She dropped the dishes into the dishpan so fast and hard that a china plate chipped. It broke my heart to see it—I loved my few pieces of china.
“He was a little hard on the bottle, but they all are.” I sighed, struggling to make her understand.
“Not the men at church,” she replied, and added a triumphant smirk.
Understanding dawned on me; my hand on the cradle stopped. “Is that what you’re doing?” I could not believe it. “You want to marry some upstanding member of the congregation?”
“I would think my chances of finding someone suitable are better there.” She said it so calmly, as if it were just a matter of fact.
“Do you think you’ll find someone?” I could see those men in the front rows so clearly in my mind: clean shirts and waistcoats, hats free from dust.
“There are a few, widowers mostly. They will be looking for a woman to take care of the house.” She poured cold water into the dishpan to dilute the scalding heat.
“But would that make you happy, Bella? To walk in a dead woman’s shoes?” It was usually not what young women craved—though there was the matter of convenience, of course.
“If not, I could afford some caramels,” she replied, with just the tiniest of smiles. She soaked her hands in the warm water and did not even flinch when it touched her fresh burns.
“Oh, John would be pleased, then, if you found yourself a man.” I spoke without thinking—I should not have done so.
“He wants me gone, then?” She did not look at me but busied herself with the hard, red soap, diluting it in the water.
I could feel my cheeks turn red. “He thinks it’s time—but not to worry, he would never put you out.” He had not handled the affair with the scissors well and had been wary of Bella ever since. I had done my very best to reassure him, but I could tell that he did not trust her. He rarely spoke to her anymore and his mood had been dark, even after Olga was born—the daughter he had so longed for. It had bothered him in particular that Bella staying with us meant we could not have his sister come from Minnesota to visit after the birth. He felt, and rightly so, that she would have been a better help to me.
“Don’t worry, Nellie.” Bella still did not look at me. “I will be gone before you know it.” She set to scrubbing a hardened crust of gruel off a plate. “And then I will never go hungry again.”
“I’m glad you are so hopeful.” I felt a little faint. “None of us bears you any ill will. We saved every cent we could to have you come here—”
“I know, and I will pay you back.” I could tell that her jaw worked under the skin.
“No, Bella, just be happy,” I said in a voice that seemed to have lost all power. “That is the best way to pay me back.”
And yet, as I was looking at my sister, her skin glistening in the heat that rose from the basin, I could not help but wonder if happiness was something she was even able to achieve.
If she would even know it if she had it.
12.
Bella
Chicago, 1884–1886
My future husband’s name was Mads Sorensen. He was a night guard at the Mandel Brothers department store and brought me there one day to browse the silk handkerchiefs, taffeta dresses, and pearl earrings on display. It was good work at a fine establishment, and I would not mind tying my name to such a place.
Better still, he had a three-bedroom house in a pleasant neighborhood, far away from the tenements and the things that were being said about me.
He was not, as Nellie feared, a widower who had spent all his love on his first bride. He was a hardworking man with trust in God and wise with money. I did not care much for his looks; he was a short, stocky man with an unflattering mustache and was already losing hair, but that did not deter me. There was too much to like about a man with savings and prospects, and he was meek and gentle enough that I felt sure he would never raise a hand to me.
Love, though, it was not.
I was flattered that he had seen me at all and asked to escort me home after church. As the weeks moved by, we went for walks, and he bought me tea at an expensive teahouse. After learning about my sweet tooth, he always made sure to have a paper bag ready with pieces of candy of all flavors. Soon we had an understanding, and I knew he expected us to marry.
He spoke of it first when he walked me home one night.
“It must be cramped up there with two children and only one bedroom.” He was looking up at the windows of Nellie and John’s building. The street around us was mostly deserted, but a filthy man was sleeping with his back against a set of stairs and a scrawny dog was sniffing at debris. The brick pavement, running in shades of salmon and cream, was littered with vegetable peels and cleaned bones, brown-stained saliva and empty bottles. I could not wait to leave it behind.
“It is.” I answered his question. “It was all much better back home. It’s new to us, living like this.” I looked around at that loathsome street.
“I suppose you had room enough on your father’s farm.” There was a twinkle in his eyes that made me unsure if he knew I was lying about my origins.
I stood my ground. “Yes we did, on our father’s farm.” If I said it enough times, perhaps I would forget that it was only a lie.
“Well, I have a different problem. I have a house full of empty rooms.” He smiled as he said it, as if apologizing for his good fortunes.
“But many offers to fill them, I’m sure.” Men are so fond of flattery.
“Not one I have accepted yet. It takes a special kind of woman to fill a house with warmth: someone kind and caring with a strong Christian faith.”
“Are such women hard to come by?” I smiled my best smile, averted my gaze, and acted coy. I pretended that I wore
a thick coat of the finest fur, not a threadbare thing of simple wool. Instead of my headscarf, I imagined a hat, bold and bright with an impressive plume. I found it gave me courage to imagine things like that—to see my future clearly before me.
“Tell me, Bella, what would you do with a house like mine?” Mads’s cheeks reddened and his eyes shone toward me.
I thought for a moment and then I drew a breath. “I would make sure it was always clean and tidy, keep chickens in the yard and a boar in a pen. I would hang sheets to dry in the breeze, make jams and marmalade and wholesome dinners. There would always be something sweet for dessert.” My gaze snagged his. “The man in the house would never want for anything. His clothes would be neat, his belly full, and his home would be a cheerful place where God was given rightful due. In time there would be children—”
“Bella.” His hands caught mine and his voice was thick when he spoke. “Say you will be my wife.”
I looked away and bit the inside of my lip until my eyes watered. It seemed right to shed a tear in that moment. “Yes,” I said when I could stand it no more, “I do want to be your wife.”
And so it was settled between us, right there on that filthy street reeking of rot and misery, with only a stray dog as witness.
* * *
—
We got married at the Evangelical Lutheran Bethania Church on Grand Avenue and Carpenter Street early in 1884. Mads gave me gloves to hide my red, callused hands. They were soft and supple, made of leather. He gave me a well-stocked pantry too, and dollars to spend—but he could not fill those empty rooms.
Could not fill my womb.
I thought little of it at first. I was far too busy settling into my new life on Elizabeth Street. It was a fine house on a quiet street: two stories, a coal cellar, and a backyard bursting with apple trees and lilacs. It was a sensible house rather than beautiful, and I had most of the furniture changed on my arrival. Mads had never given much thought to such things and had merely kept what was in there when he bought it. Now I brought in comfortable chairs with wine-colored seats, crowned with carved flowers and polished to a shine; bow-legged tables of oak and chestnut; feisty rugs with exotic patterns; a mantelpiece of marble; and a floor-standing clock that measured out our happy hours. I had the kitchen repainted in the softest shade of blue and bought a sturdy new table with six wooden chairs, as white and smooth as ivory. It was easy back then to have Mads open his purse. He thought me so soft and sweet, so lovely to touch at night.
In the Garden of Spite Page 9
