Go Away Home

by Carol Bodensteiner

  She looked at the Kodak folding camera from all angles. She extended the bellows, shifting it to frame images horizontally and vertically. Her palms warmed to the touch of the leather case.

  “It’s the latest model. With the best lens.” Joe hovered by her side, pointing out the features as though he’d made the camera himself. “You can use dry plates or roll film.”

  She hadn’t realized he even knew the difference. “How did you know to buy this one?”

  “I wanted you to have the best,” he said. “And I had a little help.” He gestured around the living room where the family had gathered to open presents, waiting for Christmas dinner to settle before they returned to the table for mincemeat pie.

  “I remembered you said a Kodak dealer used to come to Mr. Littmann’s studio,” Mama said.

  “I tracked him down at Cundill’s Studio when I was in town,” Joe explained.

  “He had it shipped to our house.” Minnie clapped in delight.

  “A group of conspirators.” Liddie shook her head.

  “We still want you to take our family photograph,” Minnie said. “Don’t we, Vern?”

  “Long as we don’t have to show it to everybody in town.”

  Minnie cuffed him on the arm.

  “As soon as I get film, I’ll do it,” Liddie said.

  “Maybe we could use this.” Joe reached into the branches of the Christmas tree and pulled out another package. “I got two rolls. Remember, you said the cheapest thing is film.”

  She gazed up at him, recognizing this camera for the make-up gift that it was, knowing it made all the difference that he’d decided the timing, loving him for loving her.

  “Could we do it today?” Minnie asked. “We’re dressed up. The girls are being good. Please say yes.”

  Liddie looked around the parlor, gauging the light, thinking about composition. “We’ll need to move some chairs.”

  “Vern and I are at your service,” Joe said. “Tell us what to do.”

  “No time to sleep off the ham?” Vern asked.

  “You can do that later,” Minnie said.

  They spent the afternoon rearranging furniture and composing family groupings. Liddie piled up books as a makeshift camera stand. She drew back curtains to bring more light into the parlor. In a moment of inspiration, she used cookie sheets to fill in the light. Holding a camera again made her float with joy.

  At one point, Liddie looked up before taking a picture of her mother with Vern’s family. She noticed Joe leaning against a door frame, watching her. “Thank you.” She smiled. He nodded. She was home in so many ways, and it felt so good.

  Chapter 44

  “What are you up to today?” Joe asked. He cradled Rose in his arms as he did most mornings while Liddie fixed breakfast.

  Liddie stirred the pot of oatmeal and put the lid back on. “It’s the day to clean the lamp chimneys. Mama never lets me forget that.” She sliced a loaf of bread and put it on the table with butter and jam, then stuck her head in the living room and called to her mother. “Mama! Breakfast is almost ready.” She returned and finished setting the table. “How about you?”

  Joe settled Rose in the cradle they kept by the table while they ate, then buttered a piece of bread and chewed as he talked. “I want to check out the planter. Make sure the check chain is working right. We’ll be planting soon enough.”

  Liddie enjoyed these morning chats she and Joe had. Her mother had taken to staying in her room until breakfast was ready. At first, Liddie had thought she did it to give them some time alone. Finally, Margretta had admitted she enjoyed sleeping in and having a little extra time to herself in the morning to read her Bible.

  Liddie lifted the lid on the oatmeal again. “Looks like it’s ready,” she said. “I’ll see if Mama’s ready to eat.”

  She knocked gently on her mother’s door. Generally, Margretta was up, dressed, and reading by the time Liddie called her for breakfast. This morning, she didn’t hear movement, so she knocked again and opened the door wide enough to peek in. Her mother was still fast asleep, one arm under the covers, the other flung up on her pillow, her fingertips resting against her temple.

  “Mama?” she whispered. She didn’t want to startle her mother awake, so she stepped softly up to the bed. “Mama?” She touched her mother’s shoulder. “Are you going to have breakfast with us?” She shook her mother gently. Her mother did not respond.

  Liddie snatched her hand back as though she’d been burned. She stepped backward, a lump growing in her throat. “Joe!” she called. “Joe, come here. Something’s wrong with Mama!”

  Joe rushed in. “What?” He stopped short when he saw Margretta’s face. He went to the bedside, leaned down, and touched his hand to Margretta’s neck.

  A coldness crept over Liddie’s shoulders as she watched him, and she folded her arms tight against her chest. Without realizing it, she stepped away until her back touched the wall.

  Joe took Margretta’s hand and held it for a minute before tucking it gently under the covers. Then he straightened up and held out his hand to Liddie.

  Liddie shook her head, her eyes fixed on her mother’s face. “She was fine last night.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She stared at him in disbelief. “She can’t be gone.” She shook her head again. “She can’t.”

  He held out his arms to her. Her eyes filled with tears, and she buried her face in his chest.

  January 10, 1918

  Dear Amelia,

  It was good to hear your voice. I’m glad you live close enough to Lusk for the man at the mercantile to get you to the phone. Mama really did go peacefully. I think I told you the last thing she said before she went to bed the night before was, “I’ll see you children in the morning.” I wish you could have been here for the funeral. There was a crowd at the cemetery and at the house after. She’d be happy we had the funeral back at the home place. Even though she settled in with Joe and me just fine, I know she missed the farm.

  Aunt Kate went back to Ohio after only a week. It was good to see her. I remember when Papa died, she said crying wouldn’t bring him back. At the time, I thought she meant it was wrong for me to cry for him. Now I think she meant we grieve, but we have to keep on living. Really, what other choice is there?

  There were times I felt differently, but now I realize I was lucky to have Mama living with us this past year. We cooked and sewed and talked. I walk into the kitchen now and still expect to see her there holding Rose. She often said she wished she could rock your babies for you.

  Seems like we hear every day about more boys gone off to the war. You’d remember Harold Dirks, Morris Blake, and Carl Mason. Last week, they went to Camp Dodge for training. From there, they head to Europe. I don’t know how their mothers sleep at night. The Shiflers’ son, Angus, was killed in action.

  Rose is growing up fast. She sits up on her own. She and Pearl play so nice together. Pearl can pull herself up using chairs. The four-month age difference shows how much they change in a short time.

  I will close and get this in tomorrow’s mail. Joe and I send our love.

  Liddie

  Finished with the letter, Liddie leaned back in the chair and pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. Outside the amber circle of lamplight, Joe slept in his chair, a newspaper crumpled in his lap. As much as she liked to end her day talking with him, she let him rest. Seeing him sleep reminded her of her father, who’d often fall asleep after a hard day of work.

  If she weren’t such a night owl, she’d be asleep herself. She lifted her chair as she slid back from the table so as not to make a sound and went to the window. The moon was rising and the reflection off the snow was so bright she could see almost as clear as day. Nights like this were so peaceful, Mama always said.

  Liddie was grateful the images that came to her
most readily at moments like this were of her mother alive—peeling potatoes, writing letters, holding Rose. Her reaction to her mother’s death haunted her. She had struggled to touch the body, and irrational fear had gripped her each time she went close. Only with Joe there had she been able to do it. Now she wished she could hold her mother’s hand again.

  Snippets of comments her mother had made in her last weeks came to Liddie’s mind often, and she wondered if Margretta had sensed she didn’t have much time left. Regardless of what she’d said about not knowing the day or the hour, it appeared her mother had been tying up loose ends.

  She left the window, moved the lamp closer to her rocking chair, and turned up the wick for a brighter flame to sew by. As she searched in her basket for the darning egg, she spotted the quilt square with the oak leaf and reel appliqué and smoothed the square out on her lap. She so rarely found time for that kind of fancy work anymore. When she’d started the project, she surely hadn’t imagined this was where she’d be five years later. She chuckled to herself as she put the appliqué square back in her basket and pulled out a sock.

  With the threaded needle in one hand and the sock pulled tight over the darning egg, Liddie made the stitches to get months of additional wear. The tiny stitches she had perfected under Mrs. Tinker’s tutelage worked as well for darning a sock as they did for sewing a fancy dress. Joe wouldn’t feel the patch.

  Sewing was, indeed, a skill she could always use. Looping the thread around the needle twice and then sending the needle back through the first loop, she tied off the yarn. This was one of her special “love knots” that caused little bulk and never came loose.

  “There.” She touched her lips to the knot and blew a kiss toward her sleeping husband. “You’ll have my love with you every step of the way.”

  Liddie left her mother’s bedroom untouched. After the funeral, she had laundered and ironed her mother’s apron, dress, and stockings and returned them to the bedroom as though they would be worn again. The old family photo, the one taken before Liddie was born, sat on the dresser. Her mother’s shoes were under the straight-backed chair, where she put them when she undressed at night. Letting go of the things in her mother’s room felt like letting go of her mother. And she just couldn’t.

  One day Joe came upon Liddie standing motionless, staring at the bedroom door as though her mother might walk out. “I miss her, too,” he said.

  She blinked back tears as she rested her head against his shoulder.

  When the photos they’d taken on Christmas Day came in the mail, the Kodak insignia evoked both excitement and dread. She didn’t open the envelope. Instead, she propped it against the saltshaker and set to making bread.

  Throughout the day, her eyes landed on the envelope. Finally, she picked it up and slid a fingernail under the flap. When she saw the photos, she gasped a breathy “Oh.”

  She hadn’t been prepared to see her mother looking back at her. So real. So alive. Scooping up the photos, she ran to her mother’s bedroom, threw herself onto the bed, pressed the photos flat to her stomach, and sobbed.

  When Joe came to the house for supper, he found her sitting on the bed, legs curled up under her. She held Rose against her shoulder as she looked at the photos spread out before her.

  “The Christmas pictures were in today’s mail. Take a look.” She scooted over so he could sit.

  “There’s a good one.” He picked up the picture of Margretta holding both her granddaughters. Liddie and Minnie knelt on either side.

  “Of course.” Liddie laughed, nudging him with her elbow. “The one you took.”

  “I only pushed the lever.” He lifted Rose from Liddie’s arms. “It is a good picture, don’t you think, little girl?” Rose giggled. “See? She agrees with me.” He settled the baby in the crook of his arm.

  She picked up the photo of Minnie standing at the window holding Pearl. Vern faced them, his hand resting lightly on Pearl’s head. “I like this one. But it could be printed better.”

  “It looks fine to me.”

  “Fine, yes. But when I had the darkroom, I would have worked to get more gradations.”

  Joe laughed. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “Hmm.” Liddie picked up another picture of her mother. “If I could have printed these myself, Mama could have seen them.”

  “Mama was happy holding her grandchildren. A picture wasn’t going to make her happier than she was right then.”

  “I know you’re right. Still, I’m glad the girls will see her holding them.” She placed the picture on the bed. “She asked me once why I couldn’t do both.”

  “Do both what?”

  “Be a farmwife and a photographer.”

  “You’re already that.”

  “Yes. But I could do more. Set up a darkroom and print our pictures. Take pictures for neighbors.”

  “Whoa! Where did that come from?”

  “You don’t think I could?” she bridled, recalling how Littmann had challenged her when she suggested something similar.

  “I didn’t say that. You took me by surprise, is all.”

  Liddie scrambled off the bed. “Are you willing to let me try?” She tugged his hand. “Come to the kitchen. I baked bread today. We can talk.”

  “Have you ever noticed that you always bake bread when you want something?”

  Liddie pulled plates out of the cupboard. “Here are some potatoes. Mash them up and see if Rose will take a nibble while I get supper on. I was so caught up in the photos, I let myself get behind.”

  “What do you think, Rosie?” Joe asked as he spooned a bit of potato into the baby’s mouth. “If your mama had a darkroom, would we always wonder if we were going to eat?”

  “With a darkroom right here in the house, I could work while Rose sleeps. Or at night. Besides, it’s just our photos, so it wouldn’t take long. With a black cloth over the window and door, Mama’s room could be a darkroom.”

  “You’d take your mother’s things out?”

  Liddie worked silently at the stove. The pictures had jarred loose the grief she’d held inside, made her remember her mother’s words as well as her own joy in making pictures. “She put the idea in my mind,” she said at last. “I think she’d be happy with it.”

  “What about equipment?”

  “So you’re not saying no?”

  “I’m not saying no. But we can’t spend money willy-nilly.”

  “I understand.” Liddie bent as she passed the table and kissed his forehead. “No willy-nilly.”

  After supper, she got out the catalog that came with the camera. Together they made a list of materials that would equip the most basic darkroom. Even that added up. She had nowhere near enough in her egg-money jar. Her shoulders slumped. “I guess we can’t do it.”

  Joe studied the list. “Maybe we can. We kept back money from your inheritance.”

  “That was for emergencies. A darkroom is hardly that.”

  “This is your dream, Liddie. We’ll make up the money somehow.”

  “Really?”

  “We’re having a good year with the pigs.”

  “You are a wonderful man, Joe Bauer.” She leaned over and hugged him. “If I did something for neighbors from time to time, I would make some of it back sooner.”

  “Stop worrying so much.” He pulled her onto his lap. “And kiss me, Liebchen.

  April 13, 1918

  Dear Amelia,

  I cannot tell you how concerned we were when we received your letter saying that Fred had disappeared. We were beside ourselves wondering if he’d been in an accident and couldn’t let you know, or if something worse had happened. You must have been so frightened. How relieved we were when the telegram arrived. Your latest letter was even more reassuring. We are happy you are well and a family again.

  My friend Mrs
. Tinker was down with influenza in February. She was so sick with fever and chills her sister called the doctor to come twice. He administered salts of quinine and recommended what we already know—bed rest, liquids, and aspirin. He also suggested Vicks VapoRub. She got a jar and said it did help her breathe better. Fortunately, she is now right as rain again.

  Joe is helping me set up a little darkroom in Mama’s old room so I can make pictures. Ever since the idea came into my head, I’ve been so excited I can barely sit still.

  Pearl has taken steps on her own. Rose gets around by flipping over and over. She’s so funny to watch. Are the twins walking yet?

  The war fills the news here, and the battles aren’t all in Europe. The body of a soldier who died in battle was returned to Iowa for burial. The minister preached part of the funeral service in Swedish so the dead man’s grandparents could understand. For that, the minister was put in jail. I don’t know what we are coming to when human kindnesses are made to seem unpatriotic.

  I must get supper on. Amelia, we truly are so thankful things turned out well. If you need anything, you will let us know, won’t you? Write soon.

  Your loving sister, Liddie

  Liddie did not want to read trouble where there was none, but she wondered how Fred could have been “detained on business” for three weeks without getting word to his wife.

  The whole thing did not feel right. Still, it might be as Amelia explained. And it was not her business to question.

  Chapter 45

  “Oh, don’t you love days like today?” Liddie stretched her arms up to the sky and then lay back on the blanket, her hands clasped behind her head, her eyes closed as she soaked in the sunshine.

  “June is my favorite month,” Minnie said. “No more cold, but it’s not so hot yet.” She turned onto her knees and crawled to the picnic basket. “How about a pumpkin biscuit? I’m trying recipes that don’t use wheat flour.” The Food Administration list of ways women could contribute to the war effort by conserving, preserving, and flat-out eliminating food was impressive.