Speak Through the Wind

by Allison K. Pittman

  “I’m fixin’ to holler at you now,” Jewell said, reburying her smeared face in her pillow.

  Mae’s only response was to hop out of bed, run downstairs, and put a kettle on lest anyone need tea later.

  Kassandra had also instructed Mae to put a lit candle in at least one window in each wall of the house. She was now wearing the big bearskin coat, and her boots crunched twenty paces out from the house. Turning west, she began walking in what she hoped was a consistent circle around the house. If she found nothing when she got back to this point, she would take twenty more paces out and repeat the cycle. All the while, she swung the lantern out in front of her, calling, “Hello? Is anyone there? Do you need help?”

  She was making her third widened lap when the light from the lamp revealed a dark form in the snow, covered with a light dusting of flakes. She set the lamp down and bent beside the figure. Long skirt, long, loose hair. It was a girl, not little but young. Kassandra bent over the face, pale in the lamplight but not blue. Yet. She looked to see if any puffs of steam came from the girl’s opened mouth and saw none. Ripping the glove off her hand, she gently patted the girl’s face, but got no response.

  “All right, little one,” she said, scooping the girl into her arms. “Let’s take you home.”

  Kassandra had lifted sacks of flour that weighed more than this girl did, but she couldn’t carry both the girl and the lamp. Luckily, she could still see the dim light of the candles burning in Jewell’s windows, so she left the lamp to be retrieved after the thaw and headed back toward the house.

  Jewell met her at the door. “Now what is goin’ on here? You’ve got Mae worked up into an absolute fit.”

  Kassandra pushed Jewell aside and carried the tiny form to the parlor sofa. The girl was pale—whiter than any living person Kassandra had ever seen—with the faintest tinge of blue around her lips. Whether or not that blue came from exposure to the cold was impossible to tell, however, because the little face was covered with one bruise fading into another. Her hair was wet, and spread a damp circle on the cushion underneath it. Her dress was wet, too, with rips on the front of the skirt. She’d been crawling.

  Kassandra had seen girls like this before; they turned up regularly on the sidewalks and in the alleys between the tenements back in New York. She reached out and touched the girl’s cold, cold face, letting her fingers linger just under the nose to feel for breath.

  “Who do you suppose this is, Jewell?”

  “Oh, my word. Tell me she ain’t dead.”

  “Where could she have come from?”

  “I thought I heard somethin’. Cryin’ and such. Ah, Sadie, is she goin’ to be all right?”

  Kassandra took her eyes off the girl and looked at Jewell. In all the years she’d known this woman, she had never seen her so distressed. Even when Kassandra lost the baby, Jewell had been rather detached and practical. But now she stood actually wringing her pudgy hands. Had she not known better, Kassandra would have sworn that the woman was praying.

  “She is alive, but she is very, very cold. We need to get her upstairs. You and Mae need to build up the kitchen fire and get the warming pans out of the beds. Heat up some water—not too hot, just warm. Bring it all to my room. I will take her upstairs and get her out of these wet things.”

  Kassandra scooped the girl up in her arms and took her to her own room, pleased to see bits of movement coming from the slight, sleeping form.

  “You are going to be all right,” Kassandra said, smoothing the bruised brow.

  She laid the girl—child, almost—on the floor so as not to dampen the bedding. She first tugged off the wet boots, then the damp stockings. The child whimpered and made a feeble attempt to pull away, but Kassandra made soft, soothing sounds. She lifted the girl to a sitting position and began unbuttoning the bodice of her dress, only to find that many of the buttons had been torn away and the front of it merely wrapped one side over the other. It fell open at Kassandra’s touch, as did the heavy woolen chemise under it. This girl was years away from needing a corset.

  Kassandra peeled away the wet clothing and saw clearly what she had feared. Bruises, deep and black, shaped with such perfect symmetry Kassandra could imagine the strength of the hands that left them behind. Still holding the girl upright, she eased the fabric off one thin shoulder, then the other, revealing open, raw-red bite marks in the hollow of her neck.

  The skirt was a high-quality wool—perhaps blue, but the wetness of the material and the darkness of the room made it impossible to tell for sure. It was fastened by a single button at its back, and Kassandra lifted the girl off the floor just enough to reach underneath her to unfasten it. She knew what she would see before moving the skirt even an inch, but the foreknowledge could not prepare her for the sight. The girl wore a soft wool petticoat under the skirt. Kassandra found the tie that fastened it around the barely defined waist and pulled the skirt and petticoat off in one gentle motion.

  Her legs were thin and, like the rest of her body, they were ghostly white and bruised. There were finger marks here, too, and deeper, darker marks accented by the dried blood on her inner thighs. Kassandra had seen wounds like this before, on her own flesh that morning in the alley.

  Oh, mein kleines” she said, drawing this little one up in her arms. “Who has done this to you?”

  But the girl said nothing, not even a moan, and as Kassandra felt the chill of this tiny body seeping through her clothes, she knew how imperative it was to get her warm. She wrapped the girl in her own flannel nightgown, laid her on her bed, and hollered downstairs for Jewell and Mae to hurry with the warming pans. In the meantime, she worried especially about the girl’s hands—hard and waxy. She held them in her own, careful not to rub, and waited for the warm water.

  “Here’s the first one,” Mae said, bringing the bed warmer into the room. Kassandra lifted the girl up again, holding her aloft as Mae ran the hot iron pan between the sheets.

  “I’m not sure if it had time to get hot enough,” she said.

  “It will be fine,” Kassandra said. “We can bring up the others later.” She laid the girl back down on the mattress and tucked the sheets tight around her. “Go ask Jewell about that water. Get some towels and soak them in it, but not too hot, remember. Bring them up here to wrap her hands and feet.”

  “What do you think happened to her?” Mae asked, her voice wide with awe.

  “We will ask her when she wakes up.”

  “And you think she’ll be all right?”

  “Go see to the water, Mae. Getting her warm is the first thing.” Mae paused just long enough to touch the girl’s brow before nearly running out of the room.

  The girl’s hands were already showing signs of blistering healing just from being covered by the warm blankets. When Kassandra reached under the covers to check the rest of her body however, she was worried to find it still so cold. She took off her own damp clothing and wrapped herself in her softest woolen robe. Then, she lifted the covers and crawled into bed with the girl, reaching an arm around and drawing her close, willing the warmth of her own body to reach into this other cold one.

  “Get warm, little one,” she whispered into the girl’s ear, mere inches from her lips. “Get warm, but keep sleeping. Sleep as long and as deep as you want. Because nothing will be the same when you wake up.”

  he girl did wake up, though she didn’t speak. Not for days, then weeks on end. She made no sound to tell them that the blisters on her hands were uncomfortable and oozing. They never knew when she was hungry; she simply ate when she came into contact with food. They never knew if she was in any pain; she simply allowed her body to be manipulated in the bed, then out, then walking, leaning heavily on Kassandra’s arm. They never knew her name, but Jewell declared she would not go around calling her “girl” all the time.

  “You’re a tiny little thing,” she said one morning after the girl had been led—without protest—to join them for breakfast in the kitchen. “I’m gonna call you Bid
dy.”

  “No, Jewell,” Kassandra said. “This one isn’t yours to name.”

  “Well, we got to call her some thin’.”

  “She is not one of your girls.”

  “It’s all right.” They almost didn’t hear the voice; it was almost as small as the girl. “I like that name.”

  “There, you see?” Jewell spoke through a mouthful of porridge and reached across to tap Biddy’s hand. “She likes it.”

  Mae dropped her spoon and clapped her hands.

  Kassandra just smiled. “Well, then, that is who you shall be.”

  As far as Kassandra was concerned, every man in the vicinity was a suspect in Biddy’s rape, and because of that, she had insisted that none of them be admitted to the house.

  “Now, that is just ridiculous,” Jewell had said. “I ain’t never in my life seen a bunch of men so uninterested in sex. Mae can’t hardly get one to go on up with her.”

  “Trust me, Jewell,” Kassandra said. “I’ve known a lot of good men who were quite capable of terrible things.”

  “No, you trust me. I’m gonna find out who did this. And when I do, I’ll see to it he ain’t never gonna walk again.”

  With the onset of spring came the final thawing of the snow, and an onslaught of new men ready to try their luck at striking silver in the Wyoming mountains. More and more tiny shacks were being built up the side of the hill, and pack mules loaded with supplies became a regular occurrence.

  These events brought the whole settlement together. Jewell set a plank across two whiskey barrels and opened up a bar in the yard. Having decided there were two things a man would pay for—and the other one was food—she bought up as much of the foodstuff as she could to assemble into meals to sell to the hungry miners before the next shipment arrived.

  Biddy watched from the safety of an upstairs window, with Kassandra’s arm firmly around her.

  “Is that him?”

  “They won’t come back here.”

  “Just look.”

  “It’s not them.”

  From the yard, Jewell caught Kassandra’s eye. “Psst! Sadie! What about that one there?” She pointed none-too-subtly to a tall man at the edge of the yard. His hair hung long beneath his hat, and he seemed to keep his distance from the other miners.

  “MacGregan? What about him?” Kassandra said, feeling silly trying to whisper from another story

  “Remember him? He was in prison when we was in South Pass. Killed a guy.”

  “So what?”

  “So, maybe he’s the one—”

  “It isn’t him,” Biddy said quietly to Kassandra, who relayed the message to Jewell.

  “Is she sure?”

  Kassandra looked at Biddy who was nodding emphatically. “She is sure.”

  Jewell shrugged her shoulders and walked back to the crowed of men gathered around her newly purchased keg of beer.

  “I’ve told you,” Biddy said. “They won’t come back.”

  “We just want you to be safe, little one.”

  Their surveillance complete, Kassandra and Biddy returned to the task at hand. The room they were in was to be Biddy’s, who finally felt secure enough to venture away from sharing Kassandra’s bed. A new mattress stuffed with clean straw had just been brought up and laid on the bed frame, and a pile of linens freshly hemmed by Mae lay folded on a straight-backed chair near the window

  “I’m not worried,” Biddy said, taking the first sheet and spreading it over the ticking. “The Lord will keep me safe.”

  “How can you say that, knowing where you are?” Kassandra moved to the other side of the bed and tucked under the corners of the sheet.

  Biddy smiled for the first time Kassandra could remember.

  “Don’t you realize, Sadie? He brought you to me.”

  “Me, you can count on. God? I am not so sure.”

  Kassandra picked up the second sheet and unfolded it with a snap. She looked over to see Biddy’s eyes gone wide in her face, her expression grave.

  “Oh, Sadie, we should never doubt that we can trust in God. If we doubt, what else do we have?”

  “How old are you, Biddy?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “I had faith like yours when I was fourteen, too.” Kassandra busied herself spreading the second sheet on the bed, reaching across the mattress to smooth it on the opposite side. “I knew God as my Savior. Prayed to Him every night.”

  “What happened?”

  “I trusted Him,” Kassandra said, standing upright, barely able to keep the sneer out of her voice. “I trusted that He would watch out for me. That He would take care of me, no matter what. I left my home hoping He would show me that my decision was the right one, that He would make it the right thing to do.”

  Biddy smiled a little, then seemed embarrassed and turned to take the covering quilt from the chair and, keeping her back turned, slowly unfolded it.

  “What?” Kassandra asked, defensive.

  “I’m sorry,” Biddy said, still fighting the smile that curved at the corners of her lips, “but that sounds a little silly.”

  “Silly?”

  “You can’t just make your own decisions and then hope that those were the ones God wanted you to make. The first time my Daddy decided he wanted to move out west, he practically started loading the wagon that same night. He said all those trails opening up had to be a sign that people were supposed to head out to Oregon. But Mother? She just told him, ‘Everybody isn’t us, Robert, and we’re not budging an inch until we know what God wants us to do.’”

  Usually, when Biddy spoke about her family, her voice became even softer and smaller. But this time there was a powerful wistfulness to her words. She didn’t look away, keeping Kassandra’s eyes locked with her own.

  “I remember praying every night for months, until both of my parents were sure that this was what God wanted them to do.”

  “And where are they now?” Kassandra asked softly.

  “They are with the Lord,” Biddy said, her voice a bit less confident.

  She handed two corners of the quilt to Kassandra, and together they spread it over the bed. Kassandra recognized it as one Mae had pieced together over the winter, some of the swatches cut from the tattered remains of the skirt she had worn on her voyage to San Francisco.

  “And do you really believe that is what God would have wanted for your family?”

  Biddy ran her hand over and over the quilt, tracing the pattern as if trying to choose her words carefully.

  “I didn’t ask for what … happened to me. None of it was by my own decision, or my own choice. None of it.”

  “I’m sorry Biddy. I did not want to make you—”

  “So that means,” she said, holding up her hand to cut Kassandra off, “that means I must have been in His hands.”

  “Why would His hands drop you here?”

  “That’s just it,” Biddy said, beaming again. “That’s exactly what it’s like. It’s like waking up and wondering, ‘How did I get here?’ Do you ever feel that way?”

  “Sometimes,” Kassandra said. “But I know exactly how I got here. I can remember every single step.”

  “You see?” Biddy said. “I can’t. I really don’t remember … much.”

  “So how can you still trust Him?”

  There was a single pillow stuffed with all the goose down collected last fall. Biddy picked it up, fluffed it, and handed it over to Kassandra to slide into its case.

  “There’s a verse of Scripture,” she said. “I can’t remember it exactly, but it talks about how God cares about even the most worthless sparrow—”

  Kassandra could not contain her laughter then, and surprised herself at its bitterness.

  “What’s so funny?” Biddy asked.

  “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.”

  “You know it?”

  “You seem shocked.” She tossed the pillow onto the bed. “I just
…”

  “Somebody very special taught me that verse. He used to call me his kleiner Spatz. Little Sparrow” Kassandra’s entire body warmed with the memory.

  “Your father?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Then, see? God is my father, too.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And yours.”

  “He used to be.”

  “He still is. My mother says we can never stop being God’s children. No matter how far away we go, He always hears us.”

  Kassandra could not imagine how so much faith could reside in such a small person, and she cringed in a mixture of envy and shame. How far away had she gone? The city. The ocean. The mountains. And each time God’s voice got dimmer and dimmer, until now, even when the woods were thick with silence, she could hear nothing at all.

  “I do not think He would hear me.” She sat on the bed to ensure its comfort and patted the mattress, inviting Biddy to sit next to her. “Not anymore.”

  “Of course He would,” Biddy said, sitting down. “You’re just not talking to Him.”

  ewell spent most of the summer in a bad temper, much to Kassandra’s amusement. When the days grew crisp, Kassandra prepared to buckle down for another long winter. Most of the miners packed up what belongings they had, along with whatever money they’d been able to keep, and headed for a warmer climate. Others crammed together in their little makeshift cabins to ride out the cold.

  Jewell had ordered an ample amount of booze to be delivered in the final supply drop-off, and the downstairs parlor became a makeshift saloon. To Jewell’s continuing consternation, however, the men who stayed behind refused to make her red-roofed house into any kind of a bustling brothel, preferring the company of each other as they gathered around makeshift tables to play cards.

  “You could always go back to California,” Kassandra would tell her whenever she was in the midst of one of her pouts.

  “Life ain’t about goin’ backwards,” she would reply. “That’s why God made our toes stick out front.”