In the Garden of Spite

by Camilla Bruce

  “A woman sold them on the street,” he said as Olga’s small hands closed around the treasure, followed by a bright smile. “I simply could not resist.”

  My little girl thanked her uncle politely, and clutched the doll to her chest, old spools all forgotten. “You should not spoil her so,” I scolded lightly, though in truth I was pleased that he had such heart for my children. They rarely had new toys to play with.

  “It looks a little like her, don’t you think? It has the same light hair and the blue eyes.” He fumbled in his pocket again, and this time his hand held a small orange when it reappeared. “This is for Rudolph.” He placed it on the table, next to the empty dishpan. “I am sorry I could not find something of equal value to the doll. I’ll keep an eye out for something.”

  “You shouldn’t,” I said again but took the fruit and placed it on the shelf next to my tea box to give it to my son after dinner. Then I brought out a cup and poured some coffee for my brother-in-law. It was a bad day and I moved slowly, shuffling rather than walking across the floor. I was ashamed of the state of the apartment too, as I had not been able to clean it as I would have liked. In addition to the laundry, the bucket of slop smelled bad in the corner and tiny fingerprints marred the glass in my window. Not that I worried that Mads would wrinkle his nose at me; I had always known him to be generous.

  “So, what happened to your face?” I asked when we had settled at the table. I was thinking something might have befallen him at his work as night guard; perhaps a thief had come upon him in the dark.

  His face twisted up with pain before he spoke, though it did not seem to be of the bodily kind. He touched the marking gingerly with his fingertips, then drew his hand across his mustache. He gave a deep sigh. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “No? What is it that’s so hard?” I knew it even as I said those words—why else would he come to me with his plight?

  “She is completely out of bounds—out of bounds,” he muttered, not looking at me but at a spot on the papered wall where faded vines entwined with dusty roses. “She threw a bar of soap at me—can you believe it?” His gaze shifted to my face; there was no trace of the happiness from just a few moments ago. “She will not stop spending, and when I complain, she uses foul language and she hits me.” He said it as if he could not believe it, even with the bruise to prove it.

  “Oh no.” I had a plummeting feeling inside, as if all my hopes for my sister came tumbling down all at once. “I had been hoping she would be content.” It was all I could say; I found no other words. Disappointment and shame mingled in me. How could she do this—harm her own husband—who had been nothing but kind, to my knowledge? “Go play outside for a while, Olga,” I said to my daughter, who was back on the floor with the doll. For once, she did not tarry but obeyed me. She never much liked a tense atmosphere. “Don’t go far,” I called out as the door closed behind her.

  Mads sighed and wiped a sheen of sweat from his brow with a handkerchief, then his gaze settled back on me. “I will not fight, but I cannot overlook all her spending—she will bring us into ruin, Nellie, though she will not see it. What am I to do? Just sit there and let her have it all?” He sighed again and his lips tightened as he shook his head with an expression of anguish. “She seemed so sweet when we first married; such a soft and caring Christian woman. I cannot see that in her anymore . . .”

  “Oh Mads.” I reached out and covered his hand on the table with my own. “I wish I could tell you to be patient, that all will work out in the end, but I don’t know that it will.” It cost me to say those words, to give her up in such a manner, but the bruised and battered man at my table surely deserved some honesty. “She was always such an angry child, but I had hope that maturity and a home of her own would settle all that. I am sad to learn that it didn’t.”

  “She keeps talking of a child”—Mads swallowed hard—“thinking that it would somehow save us both, but we have been married for a while now, and God has not blessed us like that. I cannot help but think that perhaps it is for the best. That the Lord in his wisdom withholds that from us because it would not be safe in our home.”

  “No, Mads.” I shook my head and withdrew my hand. “Not that. Bella has always loved children—she likes them better than other adults, I believe. She would never hurt a child.”

  “Then why does her womb remain barren?”

  “It can be complicated for a woman.” The thought of my own struggles sent a shudder through my body. “We never had it easy in our family.”

  His brown gaze met mine across the table as his lips twisted in a sneer. “She lied to me when we first met. She said your father was a farmer with several acres. I used to think it was sweet how she was ashamed to tell me the truth, but now I can only think of how easily she lied. I should have known it then that she would make a poor wife.”

  Against my will, I bristled inside. I knew he was in pain and spoke without thinking, but whatever did he know about growing up in squalor? “She was merely ashamed—as was I when I first met John. I didn’t lie, but I can see why she did it. We all want to seem a little better than we are in times of courtship. Perhaps she wanted to forget it all; ours was not a happy home.”

  “Many immigrants come from poverty,” he scoffed.

  “She was always very proud,” I said. “I would not hold it against her. If anything, it means that she cares about your opinion.”

  He gave a short, bitter laugh on the other side of the table. His coffee was still untouched. “She certainly doesn’t seem to care. Whenever I speak against her she goes into a rage—and I have never lifted a hand against her, I will tell you that as well. I am not a violent man. Maybe I should be, though. Maybe a fist is the only cure for her folly.”

  I sat quiet for a moment trying to sort through my feelings, but they were not laundry, easy to place in one pile or another, and soon they became tangled in my mind. “It cannot be all bad,” I said. “She keeps a lovely house and is a good cook; your clothes are always clean and neat. If you ever have children, I know she will make a wonderful mother—just look at how kind she is to my children.”

  “Ah, yes.” He sighed again. “Perhaps a child truly is the answer,” he said. “I have heard that women can go mad without one. Their organs start to wander.”

  “Just give it a little more time,” I said, at a loss as to what else to advise him. “She has not always had it easy, but she has a good heart underneath it all. As you said yourself, she can be both soft and kind—”

  “As long as you don’t speak against her,” he interrupted, and gave another brittle laugh, brimming with both bitterness and bile.

  “I don’t know what to tell you.” I honestly did not. “I don’t believe that she meant to misguide you, but perhaps your marriage wasn’t all that she had hoped for either.”

  He touched his fingers to the bruise again. “That much is abundantly clear.”

  “Perhaps she’ll be better in time,” I said again, to convince us both.

  “Yes.” He sounded weary. “Maybe she will—or perhaps she’ll be the death of me. Who knows?”

  * * *

  —

  I was in a dreadful state for the rest of the day; not only was my back hurting, but I could not help but think of what he had said. I went through the motions of doing the laundry and preparing a stew with my head in a very different place. I had been hoping so dearly that Bella would settle into marriage and find an ounce of satisfaction, but clearly that was not the case.

  While washing potatoes and cutting carrots, I thought that perhaps I should have spoken to Mads sooner—before they even married—but what would I have said? That Bella sometimes got angry and did not like to be opposed, that our family’s way was to lash out? He would not even have believed me then, as all he had seen was her gentle side, and I had wanted to see her married, to a man with a house no less. No, there was nothing I
could have done—but what was she thinking? Why would she ruin it for herself in this way? What foolishness had gotten into her head?

  “Mama, is something wrong?” Rudolph sat by the table, reading his father’s newspapers. He had always been keen in that way, telling my mood with only a glance at my face.

  “Nothing more than usual,” I told him, gesturing to my back. “See if you can find your sister in the yard; I’ll call you in when the stew is ready.” It was better if they were not there while I had such dark thoughts swarming in my mind. Hitting her own husband—what a disgrace! Then, quite unbidden, just as the stew came to a boil, I recalled Mother and Father, how their fighting sometimes came to blows, and my cheeks reddened just by thinking of it. Maybe Little Brynhild did not know any better—but how could she not? She was brighter than the rest of us combined . . .

  John came home while the children were away, and the words came spilling out of me before he had even had time to sit down.

  “He cannot be very kind to her,” I said with tears streaming down my face. “She would not act in such a way if he were.”

  John sighed and regarded me calmly. “You know that isn’t true,” he said as he bent down to untie the laces of his shoes. “You know how she can be, not always guided by reason. Besides,” he added, “she is not one to suffer in silence. If Mads had been cruel to her, she would have said so.”

  I could not argue with that, as I knew he was right, but I so dearly wanted it to be different. “Perhaps I should have seen her more often—helped her out. It cannot be easy to suddenly have a whole house to care for.”

  John shook his head, looking about as weary as Mads had a few hours before. “You should talk to her,” he said. “No one else will, and her husband reached out to you for help.”

  I slumped down in a chair, still holding the wooden spoon I used for stirring. “I just cannot see what good it would do. She was never one to listen to advice.”

  But I knew that he was right.

  * * *

  —

  It took me nearly three weeks to work up the courage to seek her out. Olga and I went while Rudolph was at school. My daughter held my hand as we made our way down streets lined with elms and lilacs. She skipped and danced beside me on the dirt road, having not a care in the world. Her neat braid bounced on her back.

  “What is that, Mama?” She asked and pointed to some colorful flower or a strangely shaped pebble, as we passed between the white-painted houses with lace curtains draped across the windows.

  Oh, what I would not give to have a house of my own someday—like Bella had, though she seemed to be doing her very best to ruin her good fortune.

  We found my sister in the kitchen, where she was trimming the wicks of some twenty kerosene lamps set out on the table, filling them with fuel and cleaning the soot from the glass chimneys with a cloth. She seemed happy at first to see us, and had me seated by the table while she continued her work, and placed a lump of sugar in Olga’s hand, along with a kiss on top of her head.

  “You look well,” I said, as she did. She wore a burgundy dress with small white dots embroidered onto the fabric, which clung to her in a way that spoke of a new and expensive corset. Her hair was piled high on her head and pinned with tiny pearls. Though she was working and wore an apron, a cameo of carnelian rode upon her collarbone. Though Mads had means, he was not wealthy, and I could see why he was concerned.

  “How is your back?” she asked me while pouring coffee and offering me a slice of cake.

  “Well enough.” Now that I was there, I felt pained—unable to figure out how to broach the subject, but I let her tell me about the things she had bought: satin gloves and a velvet frock, cuts of veal and lamb.

  “Not that it makes any difference to Mads,” she sneered. “He doesn’t know a pig from an ox. I could serve him rats from the gutter without him knowing the difference.”

  I leapt at this chance but found I could not look at her while I spoke, and stared down at my coffee instead, rich and black in the delicate china. “You’re so hard on him.” I sipped the coffee, even if it was scalding hot. “Not very kind at all.”

  To my surprise, she did not try to convince me differently. “He is useless,” she huffed, still vigorously polishing glass with the cloth. “He won’t look for another job, although the one he has can’t keep us fed. He thinks I should settle for less.”

  I took a deep breath before I continued; my hand shook a little when I guided the china back onto the table. “He looked terrible the last time I saw him—his chin was all black! He said you threw a bar of soap at him.”

  “Only because he was cruel to me.” She did not even flinch.

  “I don’t believe that, Bella; I think you were the one who was cruel. Mads would never lift a hand to hurt you.” As I looked at her, standing there so carefree in that lovely, spacious kitchen, I knew in my heart that I was right. “You have to keep your temper in rein. It never brought you anything but misfortune.”

  Finally, something like pain crossed her features. She dropped the cloth onto the forest of lamps on the table and slumped down in a chair. Her gaze landed on Olga, who was playing with a set of whittled animals on the clean-swept floor. “It’s just so hard not having one of your own. I would be better then, if I didn’t have this hole in me.”

  I followed her gaze to my daughter, to the collection of barn animals before her; sloppily painted cows, pigs, and horses that Bella had bought especially for her. “Do you really think that a child is all it would take to make you happy?” I asked. Somehow, I was not convinced. I thought that if she had a little one, she would soon find some other dissatisfaction to occupy her mind.

  “Everyone has them. It’s hard being the one left out.” She moved restlessly on the chair and bit her lower lip, as if about to cry.

  “But look at what you do have”—I motioned to the room around us—“a nice home, fine clothes, and more food than you can eat. Who would have thought that a girl from Størsetgjerdet could have all that?” It annoyed me how she did not appreciate her stroke of luck but always complained about the things that were lacking.

  She snorted in reply. “I won’t have it for long, as he doesn’t make nearly enough. If we had a child, though—he would be better then, accomplish more. We both would be better then.”

  “It could still happen.” I motioned to my belly, wanting to remind her how hard it could be, how I had struggled to have mine.

  “No, I don’t believe that it will.” Her gaze slid away from me, back to Olga.

  “Just be patient,” I said.

  “You should let me have her,” she said, and it was as if a bolt of lightning struck my insides when the meaning of the words sank in. “You can always have another one,” she went on, seemingly oblivious to my shock. “Those few weeks she spent with us . . . she seemed to like it well enough and my cooking added some fat to her bones.”

  “You would take my daughter from me?” I could barely make my voice carry. My whole body tensed up and my heart raced in my chest. Olga stopped playing and looked up at me with alarm.

  “Not take, no.” Bella waved her hand in the air. Her gaze was void of malice but void of compassion too. “I want you to give her to me, to make me happy and give her a better life as well. We have a house and, even now, we have more means than John will ever have. She would have a good life with us, better than the one she has with you.”

  “Olga belongs with us.” I forced my voice to be calm, as not to further upset the child, who was still looking up at me, the cow in her hand all but forgotten.

  “Sisters and brothers may come along, and she must share what little she has . . . It will be cramped in the apartment.” Bella lowered her voice as well.

  “We won’t live there forever—”

  “Her hands will be callused from work before she’s even seven. If she stayed with me,
she would be well fed. Her clothes would be whole and neat—”

  “No.” The word cracked like a whip in the air. I sat ramrod straight, despite my back. “I won’t give you that, Bella—not a child.”

  “Mama?” Olga asked in a shivering voice, but neither Bella nor I minded her just then. Our gazes were locked on each other.

  “But why?” my sister asked. “Children grow up with their relatives all the time.” Her expression held no comprehension.

  “She is my girl.” She did not know what she was asking—could not know what she was asking.

  “You could still see her—”

  “No!”

  “Mama?” Olga asked again, seeking a confirmation that all was well. I gave her a brief smile, which was all I could muster just then.

  Bella looked down in her lap, where her hands fretted at her apron string. Her lower lip pouted slightly. “It would be better for us if we had a child. Mads would do better then. He would find another job for sure, and I wouldn’t be so sad all the time if I only had the love of a daughter—”

  “No.” I rose from the chair and reached out my hand to Olga, who dropped the wooden animal and came to latch her hand into mine. “Children are not cattle to be bought!”

  Bella laughed then, loud and shrilling. “Tell that to the little ones at the orphanages, delivered in the night, given up by mothers who want nothing more than to rid themselves of that terrible burden—”