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The doctor came and I rose to bring him coffee.

“Andrew’s bone’s healing well, thanks to you. First signs of civilization are healed bones, I always say. Someone had to bring food and water so that bone could rebuild. Kindness. Had it back in ancient times when we still lived in caves. A good thing our ancestors brought with us. You remember that, Andrew Warren.” He nodded toward me. “Be kind to your wife here. She’s got her hands full.”

“And I gave her most of that full house she’s holding.”

A fire hit my face, hot with his reference to gambling and his claim that all we had was what
he’d
brought about rather than my having any part to it.

“And I’m sorry I did that to you, Eliza. Sorry for this happening and truly grateful for how you’re keeping me from . . . bad things.”

I frowned, realizing he hadn’t meant that the good things I held had come from him but rather that these challenges that consumed my daily efforts were his fault: his wound, my need to care for him, bringing in wandering cattle. Maybe even him wanting my full attention whenever he came back to the house. He gave me great power, maybe too much.
Does he think it’s
me who keeps his lips from liquor instead of Who
it really is?

The doctor left, and Andrew and I sat together, the girls with their little leavings dolls playing in the dirt in front of the porch. My belly swelled and the baby kicked. I placed Andrew’s hand on my abdomen. “Feel that?” He nodded. “New life. We’ll get you through this, and we’ll have a new life to care for. As his
papo
you’ll do him proud.”

“You’re sure it’ll be a boy?”

“Some things can’t be known nor planned for. They just are.”

He patted my belly. “It’s been five months. Maybe I’m done with drink for good.”

“You’ve been counting too?”

He nodded. I thought maybe in this closer moment he’d tell me of that pain he carried. But he didn’t and this time I wisely didn’t try to force it from him. I kept my counsel and enjoyed the present moment, another part of the language of marriage I was learning.

We named the baby America Jane. She was born November 7, just a week before my nineteenth birthday, in 1856. How I wish my mother could have met her! That same dark hair, those brown eyes wide to the world, taking in the lantern light, my face. I had sent Martha riding on Maka for Nancy and the doctor on that unusually mild November morning. Nancy arrived first. By the time the doctor arrived America Jane was waiting.

“I named her,” Millie told Nancy. “America.”

“America Jane,” I added. “We’ll use her full name as it’s so lovely.”

“Rachel calls herself Jane too,” Martha noted.

“That she does. So our little girl’s name will represent many good girls.”

I gasped as Nancy handed my baby to me.

“What?”

“I . . . I just saw my mother’s hands through my own on this child’s chest.” A grandchild for my mother. And my father. “He would have wanted her named Eliza, and if a boy, Andrew.” But I wanted each of what I hoped was many children to have their own name, make their own way. A flood of warmth filled me
as I let those tiny fingers like butterfly kisses brush my palm. My child. My very own child.

“I’ll bake a cake for her.” Martha was our little baker, and though she was but eleven she was handy with the cookstove.

“I’m pleased the delivery went well. You helped so much, Nancy.” To share this moment with a friend brought our Savior’s love to the occasion.

“All that riding and chopping wood, doing Andrew’s work, kept you healthy. It’s no wonder this baby took little time to get here.” Nancy beamed with our success as she cut the cord. “She knew you had things to do and didn’t want to keep you from it!”

I was once again so grateful to have a close woman friend. Was Matilda a friend like that to my mother? Did she midwife and cut my youngest sister’s cord as Nancy did?

The Nez Perce kept the umbilical cord, put it in a pouch. I remembered then that Matilda had said it would keep a baby close to its mother for life whether in a pouch at the baby’s throat or with the mother.

I put my child’s cord in the leather pouch that Andrew had given me years before, feeling a twinge of guilt with my mother’s wedding ring still there too. I wasn’t sure why I kept the Nez Perce ways in some things. Nancy took the afterbirth outside and buried it deep enough that the animals wouldn’t dig it up, upsetting Abby who had trotted after her. Millie brought the dog back inside.

Nancy had relegated Andrew to the porch, but he’d come inside when Millie skipped past him with Abby in tow. He laid his cane beside the chair and reached out for our baby. I handed America Jane to him, swaddled in a quilt. He held the child in his arms.

“She has your chin,” I said. “Firm.”

“I hope she has your strength.”

“Mine? No, more like her grandmother’s. She was the strong one who kept things going.” She and my father worked so closely together. I suspect they never had a moment of doubt in their lives about their ability to raise a child, make a life, or of God’s place in a challenge or even about how to live with uncertainty or the lack of ability to influence one’s own life. She was solid, through and through. Firm. I believed that about her and their marriage and how things were supposed to work. I wanted to be like her, her family and faith giving meaning to her life. I had a purpose: raising a child, making a marriage work. Of course, marriage is like a language, and as with any language, it was easy to misinterpret.

The Diary of Eliza Spalding

1850

My children give meaning to my life. I imagine Eliza working with her father who one day might get our mission back. He writes such passionate letters to the Mission Board, makes such a strong case to continue the work we did there. We should just return. The trial is over and there’ve been no new uprisings. My thoughts toward the Board are full of disappointment. The “shoulds” of what they should have done are weights around my heart. I remember a letter S showed me, one of recommendation when we sought the mission field. His professor had said S was an “average student,” in fact lacked “common sense,” but that I was an “exceptional student who would make the most superb missionary wife.” S wasn’t fazed by this affront to his abilities. He said he knew God was with him by bringing me to his side, to fill in his “lackings,” and I should be proud to know our professors saw such gifts in me.

He also said common sense was overvalued.

It was his passion for a cause, a dream—that’s what saved those who might act in ways others thought lacked common sense. He reminded me we would not be here, would not have had the many souls brought to Christ, would not have printed those gospel books in Sahaptin, the Nez Perce language, if we’d listened to the “common sense” of those who said women couldn’t cross the continent and survive. We’d survived and thrived. I was glad S told me that. I could see purpose in our work and know that Eliza working with him after I am gone will continue to bring meaning to my life, long after. And I forgive S for the slights, the times he left me behind. It grew my character, those times of dark uncertainty.

I wish Matilda was with me so we could talk about those days. She learned English so quickly and then Scripture, speaking Psalms in English and then in that lilt of clicks and swooshes that marked the language of The People, as though the very earth with its waterfalls and wind-swept ridges had given up its secrets to create the language of Nez Perce. I miss her counsel about children. I miss her brokering our lives, being that go-between for when S did something that offended or when I did. Once I held a Nez Perce toddler in my lap and pointed to her image in a slice of mirror, hearing the gasp of her mother as she whisked the child from my arms. It was Matilda who told me that a Nez Perce child is not permitted to see her own reflection until her soul is fully formed for fear if she sees that image she will search forever for that other self. “We even swirl the bath water,” Matilda told me. Such is not our belief, of course, but how to explain the nature of the soul with no way to lose it but by action or behavior. More importantly, she aided my understanding that the way I saw the world was not the only way to see it. I put away the mirror and once again was so grateful for her presence. She taught me use of local herbs, of plants that gave up inks and healing. And when once I was nauseated from my being pregnant, she held my head and told me to “pant like dog.” I laughed but did it and it worked. I so wish she could have come with us. But she would have been reviled here, even though her people kept us safe, were like family to me and always will be. Like the Mission Board, people here have trouble distinguishing between the many tribes.

Martha Jane comes to sit with me. She brings her doll, the one I made for her. The baby, oh, the baby “Millie” my last, who talks a streak at four and who thinks horses are big dogs meant for her to grab a tail and even walk beneath them. She has her ways. I think she is her father’s favorite as she is our last. My last. Before I am taken home. How I wish I could have been buried in Lapwai! But this Brownsville will do. Where our earthly bodies are planted is of no matter. We go where we are led by God and men whom God has placed in our lives. It’s where our souls soar to, a path of grace broken for me a long time ago. I am so grateful to have heeded the call. Grateful for my children. Grateful for Matilda too. When S was gone, it was Matilda who reminded me I was not alone.

15
Stretching through the Darkness

A year after the night when Andrew was returned by his friends, he did something lacking common sense. He’d been so faithful! But he left our cabin, left me alone, went out and “found himself at a game,” as though his body simply took control of his mind and his limbs. “Man has to have a little entertainment after being cooped up in a cabin with four women all year.”

Four women. Me, my sisters, and our America Jane holding her head up for just seconds while lying on her tummy. The kelpie stands beside her, vigilant, watching over the child. The dog takes on cattle at their noses, pushing them back, but with children, she is a guard dog, soft yet making sure that all is well. I seek a Kelpie for my marriage.

That Andrew would choose on his first outing on a late February day to be with his “friends” astounded me. What was the draw that led him to make a decision of such un-common
sense? Doing what he wished. Making his way regardless of the impact on others.

He came home without liquor on his breath, so my ire was not as fueled as it might have been. Maybe he did need a small diversion. He had no money with him though, so I hoped the game was but a friendly one, the exchange of jokes and stories more than coins. We still had cattle and the horses when he returned, and he’d arranged for drovers to round them up for branding in the spring. Perhaps as my mother often said, all will be well.

In time, Andrew worked back into his former tasks while I took on baking goods Martha Jane and I whipped up for the “Rachels” of the region. The new enterprise brought in revenue, and I found satisfaction in contributing income to the family. I discovered there were a number of women lacking yeast bread skills. They welcomed the chance to purchase or trade for baked goods already prepared. Each year more people crossed the continent and came farther south from Oregon City, seeking land not already spoken for. October and November were the most difficult times for new arrivals, and I found I could put some coins or other trade goods aside by bringing baked goods into town to sell at Brown and Blakely’s. Andrew watched me put money in the tin bucket I kept in the back of the cupboard. I had another stash, too, one Andrew didn’t know about—for a crisis if one happened. Planning for how to respond to a disaster was not the same as “imagining” one in hopes of keeping it from happening. Was it? As a young mother I had moved on from that bad habit, one Rachel had said invited trouble. Not imagining a dreadful future gave me room to see happier possibilities: America Jane growing strong, walking and jabbering sometimes recognizable words.