Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction (35 page)

No, I had not changed then, because as the doctor lay my newborn baby in my arms, my first thoughts were the same as when I held my first porcelain-faced baby doll to my six-year old breast: ‘Mine, my own’. Its painted cheeks were etched in my memory as clearly as my breathing babies’ warm cheeks were. I felt no different, only that this was the next natural step.

Was it gradual then, this becoming a woman? Was it the days, the weeks, the months, the years, that added bits and pieces of womanhood, like the birds add to their nests, one twig at a time, until one day you realize, as you fly toward home with yet one more twig - can’t stop, must keep going! - you realize the round nest is there, intact, precariously clinging to its tenuous branch, for better or worse, in windstorms, and in sunshine. The nest is holding four babies, their faces turned up to you expectantly, dependent on you for food and protection. You must keep holding on. Is that what womanhood is all
about? Just keep holding on, going on, take your duties one twig at a time, don’t look beyond the task at hand. For if you saw the end of the day, and that this day and its efforts only brought night ... and your husband ... in the privacy of your bed ... more pregnancies to labor, more children to feed. An endless cycle. Why ... why would it be worth it all?

Afraid to make noise and disturb the sleeping beast I heard snoring behind me, I had held my bladder but could do so no longer. I slipped off the bed and tiptoed behind the screen to the chamber pot. Sitting down fully on the thin cold rim, I sat practically as naked as my plucked chicken from yesterday. I winced at my soreness and bruises. Merciful Lord, there was my robe hanging over the screen. I was never so happy to see any object. I put the robe on quickly before someone could stop me, could hold me tight as he’d done most of the night … and during the night, in the blackness, again, more demands …
spread, on your knees, touch
… another stranger, and me with no gown, feeling strange and detached like a mishandled rag doll. I hugged my sleeved elbows in the robe’s generous protection.

As usual, I would not wash and change until Robert had finished washing, had eaten his breakfast and left for the shop. Accordingly I tiptoed lightly to the door to prepare the morning meal. I could hear the boys’ footsteps above us.

“Ruby.”

My hand froze on the doorknob. I pressed my forehead to the door. Please dear Lord, he is not going to make me—

“Yes, Robert?”

“About last night,” Robert began, and then cleared his morning throat, “I have gotten past my anger and am thinking about some of the things you said to Preacher Paul. You made some good points. I watched in disbelief as someone else spoke passionately through my passive wife.”

I turned slowly around in surprise, to see him addressing the ceiling, his hands linked at his bare chest.

“I was disjointed,” he said softly, as if pondering it all. “Somehow unassociated with the only woman I’ve ever known, in the only home I’ve ever known. Odd. Very odd. Where did these ideas come from?
Ah yes, the parade of women! Well, I must put that all behind us now. You did go a bit over the edge though, when you directed your disfavor of wrongful doings toward Preacher, then toward I, but ... well ... in all fairness ... I reacted inappropriately.”

He was apologizing! My spirits lifted in spite of myself.

“Robert, could we talk sometime about – all that?”

The window light had not yet reached his side of the bed and he lay in a long shadow. He stretched and yawned. “I think I’ve heard all there is to say, haven’t I? There is more?”

“Much more.” My hopes moved up one more step.

He breathed in deeply and let his air out slowly. “Perhaps some day soon.” The same answer I’d given Bess.
Man’s dominion, steps of descending order
…

Robert sat up and ran his fingers through his hair. “Please heat some water for my bath. I wish to bathe before breakfast.” The sheet slipped away as he moved his bare legs over the side of the bed and I exited hastily.

The kitchen was too warm for summer as usual, the stove still heated from the night before, bubbles popping through the lid of the kettle of simmering chicken bones broth. I opened the window and shoveled red-spotted gray ash from the stove’s belly into my ash bucket, fed it more wood pieces, and then added coal to feed its never-ending hunger. I pumped water into the kettle and placed this on the stove. I walked out to the small scullery between the kitchen and backdoor and pulled out the large round gray bathing tub I stored beside the bricked and copper laundry tub. I sighed, hearing the grit of coal dust move across the floor under its heavy weight. I wondered once again if my mother-in-law and Robert had decided the right thing in installing the sink pump in the larger kitchen. This scullery was once used as a back kitchen for washing dishes, and a sink pump would have been handy to wash both dishes and laundry. I started a fire in the grate under the laundry tub to finish that chore.

As I poured boiling water into the bathing tub followed by cold water, he entered the room behind me. I flinched involuntarily in
memory to last night. I silently handed him his soap and scrub brush from the shelf above me, draped a towel over the tub and exited. He pulled the cotton curtain across the kitchen doorway and I heard his robe land on the floor.

“Now he is being modest!” I muttered under my breath, already in a bad mood from the heat.

“More cold water, please,” he called.

I pumped more water into the bucket and carried it through to the tub. His five-foot-four frame sat on his haunches in the tub, his knees drawn up to his hairy (beastly!) chest, his buttocks not yet touching the water. I didn’t wish to see more. I drew back the curtain at the backdoor window to look outside while I continued to pour.

There was Aimee out in her garden! It was so good to see her! She was bent over, appearing to attack the dirt viciously with her hoe, in between her rows of green leaves. Her one long yellow braid had fallen over her shoulder, its pointed end bobbing up and down, threatening to lick the dirt.

“I said, that is enough water!” Robert said from below. “For the love of decency, would you close the curtain? What are you looking at out there?”

I quickly obeyed. “Oh, I see our next door neighbor, Aimee.”

“Oh yes. She called to me from her fence one day,” Robert said. He was soaping his hands now, his knees still at his chest, his buttocks submerged. “She asked me where you were. She wished to speak to you. Why would that be?”

“We’ve become friends and visit occasionally,” I answered casually, not wanting his anger to flare in this heat.

“Yes, I am
perfectly
aware of your friendship,” Robert said.

Yes, all-knowing, all-seeing, I thought, sarcasm dripping like the water from his arms as he washed.

“A friendship that has led you right down the main street of town, parading yourselves in front of God and men alike. Scrub my back, please.” Agitation was returning to his voice as he spoke.

I didn’t want to discuss this any further but must get him bathed, fed and out of here. My day had brightened, just seeing her out
there in her bright yellow frock and large white apron. I exited to the kitchen, cracked eggs into the skillet, and returned.

I lathered his back, making note to trim the brown curls on his neck. “Ruby, you will not remain friends with Aimee. She is an angry woman and her husband is having difficulties enough as it is. I heard her shrieking again, only two nights ago.”

“We’re no longer friends, Robert,” I said softly.

“She will not spread her disease to her neighboring home and into my wife,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “I will not allow any more of this nonsense.” His skin flinched as I scrubbed a bit too hard on his lower back. “Do you understand me, Ruby?”

“I’m right behind you, Robert,” I answered softly. I dropped the brush in the water behind his back and left, drying my hands on my robe.
Just let him try to squeeze around in that narrow tub to reach the brush. If he says one more word, I shall surely shriek myself.

We spoke no more. Finally he was gone. Unfortunately, by that time, so was Aimee.
Not that it mattered
, I declared under my breath. I did not wish to speak to her, to be tempted again, yet, unwillingly I watched for her during my trips to the clothesline and garden.

It wasn’t until noon, while Bess, Pearl and I were slicing potatoes and breaking beans, and the boys were pushing the rusty grass cutter through thick grass, that Aimee reappeared on her backdoor step. With a glance toward us, she hesitated as if to go back in, but then squared her shoulders and headed toward her garden, a basket in hand. Our yards were narrow and long. From my working table, I could see Aimee’s right eye, swollen and purple, her lip puffed on the same side and bruised. A cut redlined her right cheekbone.

“Oh, Aimee, not again! This is the worst yet!” I cried before thinking, rushing over to the fence. Aimee stopped, quickly turned her left side to me and shrugged. She peered at her back door as if watching something significant going on in her window.

“I apologize, Aimee. I don’t mean to embarrass you.”

Bess joined me, partially hidden in my skirts.

Aimee smiled a lopsided smile. “Naturally you would notice,” she said with a lisp, her attention now on a stubborn weed, the toe of her
boot kicking at it. “The lavender here along your fence row smells lovely!”

I couldn’t walk away. This was just too much, to see my friend like this. I leaned forward over the fence, longing to hug and comfort, but Aimee only backed away a little. “Aimee, why does he do it?” I whispered. “What drives him to such – such violence?”

“I say it is because he is drinking hard liquor.
He
says it is because I am not a good wife. But this last one ...” she shook her head, “is because of your husband. I deplore you not to be angry with me.” She paused and reached for the fence for support. “Two mornings ago, I was bringing in some laundry, when I spotted your husband walking from your ...” she pointed toward our outhouse. “I hadn’t seen you since the parade, and I became worried. Silly me ran over to the fence, in a hurry to catch him. I was only asking him where you were. I suppose I shouldn’t have been so forward but...” She looked back toward her garden, refusing to look at me.

“I don’t understand the connection. Why would I be angry?” I said.

“I was talking with a man, other than my husband, and was dressed unsuitably, to boot.” Aimee explained, her tone parrot-like, like she was quoting another’s words. She kicked the weed harder and its roots became exposed. “
Your
husband, Ruby!” she emphasized, as if wanting to bring home the point that I could understand, and perhaps would then understand Aimee’s husband. “Look, it was morning and I was still in my robe. I was being far too bold.” She folded her arms across her chest and kicked the weed some distance away from her. “Do you suppose he was jealous?” Her tone sounded hopeful for some understanding, her own understanding.

“Humph,” I answered, also crossing my arms. I turned toward my own garden, not willing to see Aimee struggling so. I could not, would not, justify his drunken temper, no matter for what reason. “Jealous, indeed! Mercy, Aimee, why aren’t
you
angry?”

“I was ... I was, but not anymore.” She focused her attention on the fence, her fingernail chipping away at the cracked white paint on the fence rail. Her hand was red and chaffed.

I looked down at my own hand, folded across my opposite arm. No different, I realized.

“Yesterday morning,” Aimee was saying, “when he sobered and drank enough coffee to rid of his headache, he then noticed my face. I was pouring his coffee and he grabbed my wrist and just
stared
at me. I am a fright, I suppose. I backed away, spilling some, but it was he who apologized. He reminded me that it is partly my fault, for I
do
provoke him and do not always do as I’m told. Which is true ... of course.” She attempted a little laugh, but it sounded more like someone had pressed hard on her stomach and forced air out her mouth. “The ironic thing about it all was that if I had been advancing toward your husband with illicit thoughts, it would have been all for naught.”

“What do you mean?”

“Because your husband was rather ... un-neighborly. He stopped at your stoop there, and, I believe,
glared
at me! Then he answered, ‘Ruby has gone to her mother’s for a few days. When she returns, I suggest you remember that the fence is there for a reason. Please keep on your side of it, or I’ll report this to your husband!’”

I waved it away and shrugged my shoulders, trying to appear nonchalant. “Oh, he didn’t mean it!”

She looked at me in surprise. “Oh, but I think he did!” Then she stared. Then she put her hands on her hips. “And Mrs. Good Wife, why would there be a bruise on
your
cheek.”

I had forgotten all about my own situation whilst I was judging hers!

“Neither one of our husbands aim to misbehave, and we all shall live happily ever after,” I said.

We both chuckled without mirth, shaking our heads at the irony of it all. It was a fine line from crying.

“I’ll forgive you for flirting with my husband on one condition,” I finally said, swallowing hard. “Re-invite me to your afternoon tea.”