The Little Bride (31 page)

N
EAR the Missoury, the land changed. The ground rose into small hills and fell into steep valleys, and because the grass was shorter, and much of it still brown, the rippling slopes taken together looked like the hide of a great animal. The road followed the valleys for a time, where it was shaded and cold, then mounted hills for a view. But the river wasn’t visible until they were upon it, the pitching bluffs suddenly giving way to the wide flat of the water, which was brown with its spring running. They saw the railroad, ending like a broken stick. The town was Chamberlain, the street oddly quiet. It was Sunday, they realized.

A steamboat driver said he had nothing better to do and carried them across for a penny, talking about the railroad problem and the dividing-the-territory problem and the government problem, all the problems facing a steamboat man such as himself, and all the while he talked he asked nothing of Samuel or Minna, not where they were from or where they were going, so they were silent, and in the silence Minna felt a shift, a complicity, for they could have interrupted him, and announced themselves as themselves; they could have insisted that he hear their names, witness their titles, deliver them bound on the west docks as they’d been on the east. But neither of them did. Minna looked to Samuel but he stayed intent on the steamboat man, nodding as if he were a student of steamboats. On either side of his mouth, though, in the grooves there, which had grown deeper through the winter but no less impressive in their symmetry, no less something a man would choose to have if given the choice, here she saw, she was almost certain, the twitches of a smile. She leaned out over the gunwale and looked down at the water, which gurgled and spat as if at a low simmer, and she imagined the snow and rocks and sticks and parts of houses and animals and people and everything else the melt had sloughed off the land. The sun was on the back of her neck and she felt a kind of glory then, a gratitude, in being there on a vessel so outsized for their small purpose, in the press of her ribs against the gunwale and the thrum of the engine down her legs, in the frothed wake the boat sent as they left behind the town and the people in their churches who would know nothing of this crossing.

 

 

T
HE grass was shorter on the other side and the hills taller, and for a while they felt no sun and Minna was cold and chastened. She thought of her mother, that last morning, for it had been morning, just before sunrise, Minna’s aunts had made a point of telling Minna this, again and again, as if to warn her even of beginnings. The sky must have been the color of ink, Minna’s mother wearing only her dress, carrying nothing. Had she stopped, on the Out Bridge? Minna had kept herself from her mother’s leaving; she’d left it unquarried, an accident. But had she used the back door with the whining hinge, or the front door that scraped the porch? It was spring. What had her heart sounded like when her feet started walking? Did she think of herself as a woman leaving a husband, or as a mother leaving children, or as a wife leaving a house? Did she run at any point? And on the Out Bridge, had she stopped, in her dress, carrying nothing, the moon still waiting for the sun? Did she imagine turning back, slipping through the window again, closing it against the dew? She might be in the bed when the man woke and the infant started its howling again and the girl—Minna—what did the girl demand of her?

Or maybe the woman only stopped on the Out Bridge because she was cold and regretted not taking a shawl. And why hadn’t she? Had her heart been so loud she’d forgotten? Did she think herself bound for a place where all would be provided her? Or did she want, at least a little bit, to suffer?

Then it was warm again. The hills spread out wide, like fat, soft fists punching the skin of the earth; the road took a straighter course up and down the broad summits. There were flowers, blue and orange and purple and white, on tall stems that reminded Minna of straw, and lack of rain, and made her think of the dampness in the woods behind her father’s house, the snowdrops and fiddleheads deep in the undergrowth. You had to kneel to smell their thick, sweet scent. You would be wet all over. The tall, dry flowers here looked scentless, but they were beautiful, too. Minna could feel Liesl’s map laid out beneath them: the end of the grid, the opening out, the lack of claims. “This is Indian country,” Samuel said, as one might say, without thought,
that is grass
, or
those are clouds
. But they saw no Indians. If they existed, Minna thought, if they were out there beyond and beneath her line of sight, then perhaps they were far more civilized than anyone suspected. If civility was Jews shaving beards and women smiling and children wearing shoes, if it was the ability to disguise oneself, what greater civility could there be than not to appear at all?

Late in the day, Samuel stopped the wagon at the top of a hill. Down below were the colony’s sod roofs, and fields. In a large fenced pasture, animals passed each other, too distant to make out sheep from goats.

“That’s it?” Minna asked.

“That’s it,” Samuel said.

They looked.

“Maybe we should wait until morning,” he said. And when Minna said nothing, he turned the horse and mule around, drove them back a quarter mile or so, and tied up in the shelter of a small butte.

Samuel broke the last of their bread and passed Minna half. They’d spoken little the whole trip, not when they stopped seeing circus posters in the road, nor during the long days as they drove; not through the two nights they’d already spent in the back of the wagon, still as logs, a full body space between them.

They ate, watching the sun dip below the horizon, then the after-colors—red, orange, green—as they spread through the sky. Minna thought of the circus; of Jacob; she thought she had been too quick, when she first arrived, to detest the Sodokota sun. It was extraordinary, really, once it had disappeared.

The colors faded. Minna laid out the folded blankets in the back—his, then hers—their openings facing away. They drank water; they lay down. The sky was still light. The hawk was still circling. One star appeared, then another.

“I won’t abandon him,” Samuel said suddenly. “I’ll go back.”

Minna rolled her head slightly, to examine his profile. It was the same as always: straight brow, straight nose, strong chin—tinted blue, in the darkness. The charge in his voice caught her off guard; she was unsure if he was defending himself, or accusing her. He had no right to accuse her of what she hadn’t yet decided herself. Would she return to Max? The question was like a face she couldn’t bring herself to look at. What did she intend, this girl lying so straight next to her stepson that she must look, to the hawk, like a young, blameless, fallen tree? The bread had been stale. Her teeth ached. She had a choice. Which Minna used to think was the same as freedom: given choice, you were free to choose, and then you made—you knew how to make—the right choice. But she was coming to think that there were certain things you could only do if you did not quite know that you were doing them, choices you could make only by pretending you didn’t comprehend them. Her mother, for instance, on the Out Bridge, starting to walk again: her mother must have told herself,
I’m only going for a walk.

“You don’t believe me,” Samuel said. “I won’t leave him.”

“Of course you won’t,” Minna said. “How could you?” Though in her mind, she thought,
How could you not?
“You’re his favorite.”

“No. Jacob is his favorite. I’m the one he needs.”

“Is there a difference?”

“You know there is.” Samuel turned to face her. “If you knew I wouldn’t leave, why come along as my warden?”

Minna was silent. Samuel’s eyes glinted, but she couldn’t be sure she was looking at their center. Why come? What did he want her to say? Wasn’t he supposed to know better than she knew herself?

“You should have stayed with him,” he said.

“He didn’t want me.”

“That’s not true.”

“He didn’t.” Minna had told herself this so many times now, she almost believed it. They had both watched Max not wave as they drove off. They had watched him stand with his feet pointing north and west, his shoulders slumped, not moving, then they’d watched him turn his back and walk into the house. He was fasting, because they’d missed the Passover; he would fast until they returned.

“You wouldn’t have to do much,” Samuel pressed. “He would forgive you.”

“Is that what you want?” she asked.

“Say you’re sorry. Pray more.”

“Pray at all. I’m not what he sent for.”

A new star pierced the sky above them.

“You might be surprised,” he said.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Samuel shrugged. She felt and heard it—a shift in the blankets, a rasp against the floor. Even lying down, she thought, he shrugs. And in his shrug was everything she loathed, and desired, his fineness, his control, his beauty, his disregard. She rolled to face him. The blanket caught her. She felt his arm through the blankets, against her stomach.

“As in I
am
what he sent for? Or I might like praying after all? As in you think I’ve never tried? You think it would be good for my soul?”

“As in you want too much to be someone other than yourself,” he said.

Minna watched him. Her eyes had adjusted; she saw him more clearly than if in daylight, for the attention the dark required. He’d trimmed his sideburns again. His curls were short and neat, his cheekbones sharp.

“And you want to be no one,” she said.

Samuel smiled. “Well that makes sense,” he said, coolly.

“Half the time you talk, you make no sense!” Minna spat. “You might as well be talking to yourself!”

“That’s all anyone does. Haven’t you noticed?”

Minna thought she might punch him. Then he’d rolled toward her, grabbed her by the shoulders, pressed himself against her. Between them, the blankets bunched—Samuel pulled hers off. He pushed her onto her back, let his weight down onto her, bit her ear. Minna gasped. He lifted himself up again, and bit through her dress, first her collarbone, then her breast, hard enough she cried out. She felt his hand between her legs, the dampness there, felt herself urging her dress up her legs, one foot dragging it up the other calf. Even by herself, in privacy, she’d never felt so close to losing control. She seized him—stopped him—by the hair.

“You’re right,” she said. “I should have stayed.”

“Yes.” Samuel shook off her hand. “He barely knows how to cook.”

“He’s fasting anyway.”

Samuel propped himself over her, on hands and knees, his face so close to hers she couldn’t see it. He reached behind her neck, undid a button, broke two more, then pulled her dress off by the wrists.

“He’ll manage,” she said.

“Yes.” He bit her neck. “Or he’ll go mad.”

Minna laughed. She was thinking of a woman’s madness, of Galina and Ruth and of the women outside the asylum in their clean white gowns, their fingers painstakingly drawing Odessa’s air; and of herself, now, the laughing Minna and the Minna that wanted to cry and the one that hated Samuel and the one that wanted him; and of whether, and how, a man went mad: how Max, in his fever, had been entirely himself, only more so: more unified, more shameless. She thought of him pointing and shouting at the emptiness in her stomach. She could not stop laughing. She was so sorry. Samuel said, “You’re cruel,” and she grabbed his ears and said, “So are you.” Her dress was up around her thighs—Samuel reached for the hem. He lifted it up to her waist and in the same movement stuck his fingers inside her, just like that, no fretting or poking, and Minna wondered what women he could have known—or if he’d been practicing, in his mind, for this. She pushed him away with her knee, undid his belt, his trousers; she kicked them down around his ankles and pulled him toward her. Still his shirt was on, the work shirt he’d bought new, scratching against her stomach as he entered her.

Oh.

And like any moment one waited for, Minna did not experience it so much as she saw herself experiencing it, so that as soon as it was over, her memory of it was already made, and it had been brief, and somewhat violent, and he had made no sound. Even now he made no sound. He lay atop her, perfectly still; he seemed not to fear, like Max, that he would crush her. She took him by the ears again, lifted his head, found his mouth with hers. They had not kissed. But his lips stayed closed, and hard. He pushed off her, and rolled onto his back.

“Samuel.”

He didn’t move. She laid her head on his chest. His ear, she realized, was still in her hand, the felt of its back side against her fingertip, the rubbery lobe against her thumb.

“Samuel.”

She could hear the mule, breathing gently. The familiar buzzsong of insects, farther off. Her teeth ached. Her back ached where he’d pressed her into the floorboards. She ached where he’d bit her, and between her legs, and in her throat, where tears were rising.

She said his name again, but he barely seemed to breathe. He was hiding from her the way children in Beltsy were taught to hide from bears.