Fervent Charity (4 page)

“I went to my father’s study. I think I was hoping he would ask me to stay. Tell me that we would weather this thing, fight it out. I thought he could have done something to put an end to Peter’s nonsense if he had wanted to.” Gustie kept her eyes straight ahead and waved away a fly. Surprised at how sharp the pain of this memory still was, she said, forcing her voice to remain unbroken, “When I told him we were leaving, all he said was, ‘You are certainly of an age to do as you please.’”

She took back the reins and urged the mare forward again. As the wagon trail curved up a slight incline, they began to see the tops of the cottonwood trees that formed a patchy fringe around the lake. “Then he said, ‘I’ll have Fitszimmons’—that’s our banker—‘draw up an arrangement. You’ll need money...’ I didn’t let him finish. Something about the way he said that made me furious. I told him I didn’t want his money.” As they rounded the curve over the top of the rise, Crow Kills appeared, coolly mirroring the blue sky, shining like a mirage in the heat.

“It was the only time I ever showed him much feeling. I stomped out of his study. Slammed that big oak door behind me. Clare and I left the next day. That was the last time I saw him or communicated with him until I wrote him last November asking for a favor and for money.”

“How did you know he would help?”

“I knew he would try. It’s the kind of thing he can do. Respond to a letter. From a distance.”

The land surrounding Crow Kills could not rightly be called hilly. Ridges of varying sizes, grown over with wheat grass and buffalo grass, looked like the backs of great muskrats lying about the lake. The wind blew and parted the grasses one way and then another in a lazy kaleidoscope of color from brown to tan, and closer to the lake, from green to yellow green.

“What else do you think about your father?”

“I think he only wanted a wife. He didn’t want a child. And then he had both. And then, the wrong one died.”

They passed on their right a small mound, at the head of which grew a young cottonwood, transplanted there as a sapling by Gustie herself to mark Clare’s grave. Gustie would water it before she left. It had lived through four Dakota winters, but this was the driest summer Gustie had known since coming to this place. She did not want it to perish from thirst. If Dorcas or Jordis ever thought she was addled carrying buckets and buckets of lake water to pour into the ground at the foot of this tree, they never said a word. It was important to Gustie to keep the tree alive.

Lena had been this happy twice before in her life. The first time was her wedding day. The second had been the day she was sure that she was pregnant, before she had had a chance to think about the self-inflicted tragedies of the Kaiser family and been flooded with misgivings about bringing a child into such a bunch. Gustie had told her she shouldn’t think about the Kaisers, that she was making her own family. From that moment on, Lena had rejoiced in her condition, dreaming about and planning for Gracia’s baptism day, where after the service, the whole town would come to see her baby and congratulate her and Will on the start of their family. Now she knew that this
was
their family. Doc Moody had told her that there would be no more children. All the more reason to make the most of this day. Even though she and Will didn’t have much, she would have served coffee and pie, cleaned her house till it shone and worn her blue dress, and Gracia would have been in her long white lace baptismal gown that she had begun to sew as soon as she found herself with child. But after Gracia’s birth, Lena was slow to heal, slow to get her strength back. She couldn’t handle more than one pie. She couldn’t even clean her own house yet. The baptism couldn’t wait.

In passing, she had mentioned her disappointment to Mary Kaiser who had rushed to Alvinia and Gustie with a plan to give Lena what she had dreamed of. They both readily agreed to give Lena back this day, and Lena would be forever grateful, even though she hadn’t been sure about having it in Ma Kaiser’s house. Alvinia had made a good case for it. “Now Lena, you’ll need a big place because everyone will drop by. And it’s next door to me so I can go back and forth and still keep an eye on my chicks while we fix things up. It also might cheer Gertrude up to see some happy faces. You said yourself, Oscar and Nyla are sour pusses.”

“She’s never come to see her own grandchild but once.” Lena didn’t care one way or the other if Ma Kaiser was cheered up.

Mary said, “Well, you know Ma isn’t good with things like that.”

“She might not even let us use her house.” Lena scowled. “There’s been no love lost between the two of us, I can tell you.”

“She’ll let us use the house,” said Mary. “I’ll take care of that. I think she’ll like it, too. Yes. I think she will.”

Lena grumbled, “But that house is not clean. It’s so dark and dreary, like.”

Mary assured her, “Nyla and I’ll clean it up nicely.”

“I’m not the best cook, but I can swing a mop,” offered Gustie.

“Everything will be nice.” Alvinia patted Lena’s hand. “I promise, Lena.”

“Well…”

Alvinia put an end to the discussion by declaring that Lena wasn’t the only woman in Charity who could bake a decent pie or clean a house, for goodness sake. Lena was worried all the same.

When the day dawned with a bright sun in a cloudless sky, Lena didn’t care if the open house was not perfect. Her baby was perfect and nothing else mattered. Even though she was feeling better than she had in a long time, her friends hadn’t let her do anything. Not a blame thing. Just get yourself dressed and show up, they told her.

Gethsemane Church was full. At the end of the opening liturgy, Pastor Erickson called up the new parents and godparents to the front of the church. Lena and Will walked up the center aisle behind Alvinia and Carl. Will hadn’t been to church since his pa’s funeral. He was cleaned up, handsome, and looked happy to be there. Lena was proud of him. He hadn’t had a drink since the day Gracia was born. As they approached the smiling pastor waiting for them beside the wooden baptismal font, Lena was light-headed with joy.

Alvinia held Gracia while Lena and Will watched. The minister began to intone the words, “Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not…” Lena mouthed the words along with him. Then he cupped his hand and dipped into the water three times—for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—pouring each handful on Gracia’s head. She didn’t cry. Gracia never cried.

They returned to their seats for the sermon and the closing hymns, all but Alvinia who slipped away to the house where Gustie, Mary, and Nyla had been busy since early morning. The four of them had spent two weeks cleaning Gertrude’s house. The old lady had glowered a bit, but not complained. Mary had a knack for smoothing the old bird’s feathers.

Anxiety fluttered briefly in Lena’s breast as she entered the house of her mother-in-law. She was met by the aroma of coffee, fresh and strong, and under that, instead of the stale slop-pail sourness that she expected, was the pungency of strong soap and furniture polish, just enough to put a tang in the air.

As she progressed deeper into the house, the fluttering moth of anxiety in her breast transformed into a butterfly. All of Ma’s dark, thick drapes had been taken down and the windows hung with crisp, sheer white curtains. Bright July sun drenched every room. The mess was gone; even some furniture was missing, leaving space to walk around and room to breathe. The usually dingy antimacassars had been laundered, bleached, and starched.

Even Ma herself had been scrubbed and starched for the occasion and seemed the better for it. Lena wondered what they had done to get her to clean up. She suppressed a giggle at her image of a naked Ma Kaiser being thrown into a hot washtub, yowling like a cat.

The dining room table was covered with a snowy white tablecloth. In the center were fresh flowers in a glass vase, Mary’s vase. At one end, a stack of Ma’s heavy cream-colored dishes stood like sentinels over an array of matching cups and saucers and Ma’s German silverware, polished for the occasion. The huge table was also set with the coffee urn, milk jug, cream pitcher, an assortment of pies, cakes, cookies, bread and butter, and sliced ham.

In the living room, Gustie was arranging more flowers. She wore gray silk, a finer piece of work Lena had never seen. The dress was simple, but, a seamstress herself, Lena recognized the fabric and the cut as being not something she had picked up around here.
Why you couldn’t even get a pattern for such a dress around here. My!
The drape of the silk softened Gustie’s tall slender frame, and its color matched her eyes.

Lena just stood in the middle of the living room and gaped. Of course, the wallpaper was still dreary and short of stripping the walls, nothing could be done with it. Even so, the place seemed like a different house. “Who did all this work? Oh, my!”

“We all did,” answered Alvinia, pleased with Lena’s reaction.

“Nyla did the curtains,” Mary was eager to point out.

Nyla stood by in a green print dress that looked like it might have been new for the occasion but still did nothing to improve her lumpish figure or her sallow complexion. Oscar had probably let her buy only what was on sale at O’Grady’s. Lena thought,
Too bad they didn’t have a sale on shoes.

“Took me three days to do those curtains.” Nyla seemed more pleased than put out. It was hard to tell with Nyla.

Lena had known that they would do their best. She had had no idea just how fine their best would turn out to be. She swallowed and blinked back a tear or two. Then she said, “The curtains look swell, Nyla. The whole place looks just swell! Oh, my, look at the floors! I’ve never seen a shine on these floors. What did you do? And the rugs. They actually have colors…” The carpets had been beaten to within an inch of their threadbare lives by the Torgerson children and aired for several days. Alvinia thought it a blessing there had been no rain. They’d have disintegrated had they gotten wet.

People were already starting to arrive. Lena put Gracia down in her cradle and took a seat in the big overstuffed chair they had moved to the center of the living room: Lena’s place of honor.

Betty, Alice, and Alvinia kept the kitchen flowing with refills to the coffee urn, the milk jug, and the cake and pie plates. Mary and Gustie welcomed guests and made sure Lena’s plate was full and her coffee cup refreshed. The more that was eaten, the more the table was laden with fried chicken, cold beef tongue, potato salad, lefse, more donuts, cookies, pies and cakes, krumkake and rosettes, for nobody came empty handed. The people of Charity also had good appetites. Ma Kaiser stayed at the sink, washing dishes in the hot water kept in abundant supply by Malvern and Lavonne Torgerson. Both Lena and Mary tried to get her to come out of the kitchen and let someone else take over, but she just grumbled in German and kept on washing. They finally gave up.

Besides food, people brought gifts. Mary and Walter presented Lena with a silver baby cup engraved with Gracia’s name and birth date. From Alvinia and Carl, she got the matching silver spoon. Gustie’s gift was a hand-tooled leather bound book of fairy tales and children’s poems illustrated with intricate woodcuts. Lena, never having owned any book except her mother’s Norwegian Bible, was moved to tears, a frequent happening during the day as she unwrapped hand-made baby blankets, bonnets and dresses, removed the bow on a highchair that Morgan O’Grady carried in on his shoulder, and opened a plain white envelope containing the paperwork for a savings account in Gracia’s name with a balance of five dollars from Lester Evenson, president of the Farmers and Merchants Bank.

The most spectacular gift of the day was a quilt. Lena’s friends, the women from her church, and many others had each contributed a quilt square; the ladies of the Ruth and Esther Circle had put the quilt together.

Each piece was unique, reflecting the skill and interests of its maker. Charity’s women had plied their needles rendering every kind of flower and leaf in every color and stitch. There were sheaves of wheat, shocks of corn, trees and flying geese; red birds, blue birds, robins and a swan; the silhouette of Gethsemane Church done in appliqué; and one square that looked like rich brocade but was many tiny pieces of fabric from her husband’s old silk ties, stitched together in a miniature patchwork design by Edwina Moody. The center piece, embroidered by Solveig Erickson, the minister’s wife, was the Twenty-Third Psalm, in its entirety, in the tiniest, most perfect chain stitch Lena had ever seen. The quilt was a wonder, designed beautifully and made well, to carry Gracia through childhood and go with her to her own house to swaddle her own children. Gustie and Mary spread it out on the table in the living room. Even the men took time to marvel at its detail, and even though the initials of the maker were in the corner of each piece, people enjoyed trying to guess who had fashioned which square.

Gustie found Lena lingering over one piece in particular—the most unusual and deceptively simple in design. “I just love this one. I wonder who made it?” Lena couldn’t place the initials JMR.