“How did you even know who it was?” I squinted toward him in the dim lighting, searching for some sign of dishonesty on his face, proof that he spoke in jest, but found none.
“Words travel fast, and that story about the scissors was well known. It was nothing.” He took a swig from the bottle. “From Bergen, was he? That little rat?”
I admired the button with a new appreciation. “He truly is dead, then?” I could not yet believe it, that James had done that for me.
“Yes, quite . . . I left him in an alley behind his boardinghouse.” He sounded smug.
“Are you sure no one saw you?” It would not do to lose my friend to the law.
“Of course, and I didn’t look like me when I did it. I’m clever in that way.” His laughter was easy; he was pleased with himself.
“I’m sure.” I laughed a little as well; I held the button up to the light to let the flame ignite its luster. It needed a bit of polishing for sure, but it was a pretty thing. A dozen butterflies swarmed in my stomach when I thought about Edvard’s death; it was only right—what he deserved. This justice was long overdue. I glanced at James again, his proud face when he looked at me. If I had been in jeopardy of losing myself to him before, this little piece of pewter certainly sealed my fate. Never before had I met a man who would do what needed to be done for my satisfaction. He saw me so clearly—saw me as I was.
“The news will get out soon enough.” He took another swig of the bottle. “It seemed too gentle to let him off with just a scar.”
“Well, this certainly seals our friendship.” I dropped the button into the pocket of my apron. I could not stop smiling, could not quench the sense of triumph that had my heart racing.
“Seals a little bit more than that, I hope.” James rose to kneel before me on the step. He took my hand and kissed it, then leaned over me and kissed me on the lips. I had waited a long time for that kiss, and when I finally had it, it was even sweeter than imagined, leaving me tingling and heady with want. James pushed me down on the stairs. Not rough yet, but almost gentle. Then his arms locked around my waist and his teeth sank into the soft skin on my neck, biting down. I hissed from pain but from pleasure too. “Let’s celebrate the death of a rat,” he whispered.
Not before long, James’s fingers were tugging at my skirts, hiking them up over my hips. His fingernails scratched my thighs as he fought to get between them. He fumbled with his suspenders and dropped them off his shoulders. I know I helped him pull down his pants and was satisfied to feel him firm in my hand. Then he was inside me, pushing hard and careless. He hid his face against my shoulder to muffle his ragged moaning, held on to me like a drowning man to quench the shivers that ran through him. Soon I was shivering too. The moon shone brightly on the velvet sky; the frog still sang in the distance.
Not once did I think about the lake.
When we were quite done, we had drinks in the kitchen. I fried sausages and onions in the pan. I could not remember ever feeling so starved as I did that night; it was as if I could not get enough. My back was bruised from lying on the stairs, but I barely felt it; I was too excited.
James came up behind me as I flipped the second serving. His hand grabbed between my legs through the fabric of my skirts. His mustache was wet with brandy; it stung the torn skin on my neck.
“Yes,” he said into my ear, “we truly are the same, you and I.”
The next day I found a chain for the pewter button and hung it around my neck. I carried it with me always, tucked away under my shirtwaist. When Mads asked, I said it had belonged to my father and reminded me of home.
It was as good as a wedding band to me, that button.
Meant more than the gold on my hand.
16.
Nellie
Iwas so relieved when Bella took in those girls. Her asking to raise Olga had driven a wedge between us that I had found it difficult to overcome, and so I had stayed away for a while.
When she had other children to care for, it was easier.
John had not shared my strong feelings in the question’s wake but had thought it all very reasonable—generous even. “They only want to help,” he had said one night, propped up next to me in bed, “and help themselves besides. It is hard for them not to have children of their own.”
“If we had seven of them I would have seen the point of it,” I replied, “but we only have the two, and so it seems strange that they would offer such help.”
“Soon there will be three.” John patted my belly through the blanket, though I barely showed.
“If we are lucky.” I harbored even more doubts than usual. Not only did my body ail, but I was growing old too. If I carried to term, the birth would be hard—too hard perhaps. Age was no one’s friend in such matters, and a sunset child was rarely a joy, at least not for the battered mother. Little Brynhild had been such a child, born after Mother had thought she was too old.
“Mads knows very little of poverty.” John tried to soothe me by stroking my cheeks with the back of his hand. “To him, we might seem poorer than we are, and in dire need of charity.” He tried to laugh it off, but it did not reach his eyes. It hurt his pride, I could tell.
“But Bella, though. She ought to know better.”
“Ah, you know how she is.” He rolled over on his back. “She only sees her own needs, not others’.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I do.” He said it in a thoughtful manner. “She would want Olga for herself, not because it was best for the girl.”
“You do not know her as I do,” I huffed, and rolled over as well. Through the open door, I could just make out the bench in the kitchen where both of my children lay sleeping. I closed my eyes and made to sleep as well but could not stop thinking of what he had said. “Why do you think her so selfish?” I asked in the darkness.
“Oh, it is only from the way she treated you when you were carrying Olga, and the way she behaves toward her husband. She only took him for the money, that much is clear. She only wants what she can use to feel a little better.”
“You should not speak such harsh words about my sister.” My voice had turned cold, yet my heart was racing in my chest.
“No? Then why is it that you will not forgive her for asking to raise your daughter?”
To my own great chagrin, I could not answer that—could not figure why it wounded me so, why it made me want to hold my little girl tight. I felt as I had that time on the riverbank, before the snarling dog, when I snatched Little Brynhild up from the ground to save her from the danger.
That was how I felt—as if Olga were not safe.
Perhaps it was the memories of Mads’s colorful bruises and our father’s large fists that made me feel uncertain. Perhaps she reminded me a little of the latter sometimes, the way she raged and lashed with her tongue, and how she carried old grudges like painful pearls around her neck. It was not her fault. None of us who grew up at Størsetgjerdet escaped that place unscathed; some of us turned out meek and better, but others were too deeply wounded for that, or carried too much of that tainted blood—the kind that made you mean.
She did try, though; I wanted to believe that she did. I wanted to think that it bothered her conscience and pained her soul whenever that wicked streak surfaced. I would not believe that she looked at the markings she had left on Mads’s skin and did not feel a thing. Her temper was a challenge, but surely she fought it! She, too, had to remember those nights after a beating, when she lay in the loft at Størsetgjerdet and wept into the hay, overcome with anger and humiliation. So much anger that had nowhere to go but into that musty mattress.
She would never do that to another, would she? She would never want to see another person so bruised. Not if she could help it—which sometimes she could not—but surely it pained her when she failed!
Perhaps I feared what would happen if my daughter w
as there the next time that wickedness burst forth. Perhaps that was why her request to take Olga had touched me so deeply and wounded me so.
Her foster daughters changed that, though, and after my first visit after their arrival, I could not even think what foolishness had possessed me to think such dark thoughts about Bella.
It was a clear day in fall; the trees had just let loose a torrent of colorful leaves, but the sun was still hot enough to warm the air. We let the girls out to play in Bella’s backyard while we did her mending on the steps. Anne stayed close to our skirts, wandering about on stubby legs and filling her hands with leaves, while Lizzie, a little older, ventured all the way to the lilac on the other side of the yard to pick the leaves directly from the tree.
“Do not eat it!” Bella called across the distance, though it was doubtful that the child paid any attention. “I have to keep my eyes on them at all times,” she huffed, but her gaze was sparkling and her movements were light, as if she had become a girl again herself, just from being in their youthful presence. I could tell of her joy from their appearance as well: the neatly combed hair and the ironed dresses, the thick, blue coats that cocooned their round bodies.
“One light and one dark,” I noted, looking at their heads. “Surely you must be pleased.”
“Oh, they are such treasures.” She smiled down at them. “I only wish that they were mine for real.”
“You never know with such things—perhaps their mothers will never recover.” I did not say this to be cruel but because it was the truth. I also said it because I dearly wanted it to be so, that Bella would be able to keep them.
“That’s certainly something to wish for.” Bella put the mending down in the basket between us and strode out in the yard. “Come closer, Lizzie! Come closer! I will not have you walking behind the shed!” She took the girl by the arm and guided her closer to the other. “Isn’t it fun with all the leaves?” she cooed, then filled her hands with the yellow downfall and threw them up in the air. “Look,” she called, “it’s raining leaves!” She scooped more of them up from the ground and let them drizzle upon the girls’ delighted faces. Soon she was spinning each of them around in turn, stood there in the backyard with her brown dress and her apron, lifting each girl high up in the air to twirl with them in her arms, looking much like a goddess of fall when her skirts sent the leaves spinning too.
After several of these twirls, she showed the girls how to drizzle the leaves upon each other, and soon Lizzie was at it with much vigor, showering the younger girl in fall’s gold. Bella kissed their little heads before coming toward me; her cheeks were red and her eyes were sparkling.
“Are you wearing your husband’s shoes now?” she asked me as she neared the stairs, raising her eyebrows a little. She had noticed the much-mended foot attire that peeked out under my skirt.
“Ah yes, my feet are so swollen.” I added another two stitches to one of Mads’s shirts. “I can barely walk in my own shoes. It is worse this time, far worse.”
“I offered to take some of the burden off your hands.” She saw fit to remind me of it, and a bit of a sting erupted in my chest; I would rather not speak of that. Would not feel that darkness again.
“It will be better as soon as it’s born.” I made an effort to keep my voice steady and calm. “Besides, you have filled your house just fine without my help.”
“Yes, haven’t I just.” She laughed and paused to thread her needle. “They certainly keep my hands occupied—and I might even take on yet another.”
I laughed too. “I admire your heart, Bella. Even if the mothers do recover and they leave, it is a good thing you do, taking care of them while their mothers are sick. They are such small girls too, and no help in the house. Not many women would do that.”
“Well,” she chuckled, “it certainly impresses the women at church, but that is not why I do it, of course. I just cannot think of them suffering at some orphanage.”
“What is that?” I motioned to her neck with the needle; a large red bloom marred the side of it. “That is a nasty sore. What happened?”
She lifted her hand at once to press two fingers against the mark. “Oh, nothing—I was careless with the iron.”
“You burned your neck?” That sounded most peculiar. Why would she lift an iron to her neck?
“I was sloppy and distracted.” Her good humor had suddenly clouded over with annoyance. I hated when that happened, as I never knew whether I would be able to coax her good cheer back again.
“Indeed.” I tried not to, but now that I had seen it, it was hard not to look at that mark. It looked almost like a love bite, and I briefly wondered if the girls’ arrival had reignited something between her and Mads, but then I thought that was unlikely. Mads was not the sort of man to leave shameful bruising on his wife. “You have to be careful, you have children to look after now.” And I did not mean only with the iron. I had never thought of Bella as the type to chase men, but one never knew, and things had certainly not been easy between her and her husband. I just did not want her to ruin it now that things were going so well, and she had the little ones to fill the empty space around her.
“Did you hear about Edvard?” she suddenly asked. She did not look at me but at the girls.
“Edvard who?” I did not remember at once.
“Edvard from Bergen, the one I stabbed in your kitchen. He is dead.” Her voice was very calm.
“What?” My mouth felt dry.
“Yes, he was killed.” Bella’s voice rose a bit. “He was gutted like a fish, right behind his boardinghouse. It was in the newspaper and all.” She finally turned her gaze on me, brimming with astonishment.
“Oh, that’s terrible.” And I wished she had not told me. Why ruin such a beautiful day with talk of past quarrels and dreadful murder? “Do they know who did it?” I asked, only because I felt like I had to, and not from any real curiosity.
“No . . . they say it was a robbery”—she lifted her chin—“but I cannot figure how any thief would be foolish enough to think he’d have anything worth stealing.” A mocking sneer appeared on her lips and lingered for a moment before it went away, as if it had never been.
“No,” I agreed, feeling faint. “There is that.”
“Maybe it was some drunken quarrel,” she mused.
“That certainly sounds likely,” I agreed. “I cannot say I mourn him, but it’s a sad way to go.”
“Yes, isn’t it just.” Bella’s lips twisted up again, as if she could barely withhold the glee.
It pained me to see it, so I looked away.
17.
Bella
Chicago 1887–1893
For the first few years of our acquaintance, James was a fever I could not shake. He would often come to my door just as Mads left for work, and rap at the wood with his clever fingers, and I did not tarry in letting him in.
If I suspected he would come, I gave the children a little laudanum in their milk so they would sleep while James and I made use of the bed in the empty room. Our trysts were never quiet, never calm, but they never brought me back to the lake. Perhaps because I gave as much as I got. Often I would find myself on top of him, pinning his arms to the bed while I rode him; other times I would find his hand around my throat. I would force his head between my legs; then he tied me to the bedposts. It was shameless what we did, but in the end, it was just a game without a victor. I never felt bested with James Lee; he never aimed to make me feel small, and I found that I enjoyed our fight on the sheets. It made me feel alive. James could make me feel more in a night than Mads could in a lifetime.
When James was not there and the house felt dark and empty, I would sometimes slip inside that room with its walnut bed, and curtains of green damask drawn before the windows, just to take in his scent and savor it. It was like a whiff of summer on a rainy day, a taste of sweet caramel when all you had to eat was unsa
lted gruel. I felt that I cheated the house of my misery by keeping that room for us two.
I could have tolerated the endless cooking, the washing and the ironing, the sweeping and the folding, if Mads could have only been quiet. I had no quarrel with wifely duties—I knew what was expected of me—but I could not stomach his constant complaints. The words he whined at me whenever he saw fit, to spend less when he never earned more, our pantry void of fresh meat. I had not married him to live like a poor woman, and I had told him so many times, yet he never as much tried for a better position. Never even reached for a grander life than he had. How could I be blamed for losing my temper?
The meekness I thought I wanted when I accepted his marriage proposal served me no good in the end. He was weak—that was what he was—but still he felt it in his right to judge me. The resentment grew in me like a boil. Had it not been for James and the relief he brought, it might have come to proper blows. As it was, I was sometimes moved to hurl something at him, or land a hard slap on his cheek.
I was still a respectable churchgoing woman, though, and did not want it any other way, even if Mads was a disappointment. I had worked so hard to leave my sorry past behind, to climb as far as I had come, and I was not about to abandon the fruits of my labor, even if I despised my husband with his crisp shirts and polished shoes, his relentless demands, his whining and sulking. I wanted the house, even as I loathed it, even the mold-infested pantry. I had sworn to be a woman to admire—just to spite—and that was what I would be.
James Lee did not understand it.
“You should elope with me,” he said one day at my table. His eyes were mischievous, his voice honey sweet. “Just think of what we could accomplish.”
I snorted. “The two of us could never build a wholesome life together.”
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