The Personal History of Rachel DuPree (34 page)

Just before getting to the dry-goods store, I stepped into the tight alley that ran between it and the bank. There was something odd about the letter. The wind, trapped between the low buildings, blew all the harder. My dress and coat flapped; the brim of my hat lifted. I put my back to the wind. I tightened the hat strings under my chin and inched off my gloves and put them in my pocket, afraid they might blow away. The letter wasn’t my business; I shouldn’t be doing this, I told myself as I carefully opened my handbag, scared the wind might catch the tickets. I got out the letter, gripping it hard, and drew the bag’s strings tight. The letter wasn’t mine to read. Isaac wouldn’t like it. I almost laughed. Reading Isaac’s letter was a small thing when put alongside of me selling my wedding band and using that money to take the children to Chicago.

The sky was gray and low, and the light was dim in the alley. I ran my fingernail under the flap of the envelope, thinking that I could open it and then reseal it. I worked the flap loose, tearing it just a little on one end. With both hands, I held out the letter. I skipped down to the signature. Zeb Butler. My heart pounded. Zeb Butler in Sioux Falls what rented rooms, Zeb Butler what knew most of the Negroes in the Dakotas and beyond.

 

 

 

 

I leaned against the side of the dry-goods store, dizzy with disbelief. I read the letter again, the words spinning. I turned my face to the wind to clear my mind.

My hands folded the letter and put it in the envelope. Isaac had taken it to heart when on the night that Jerseybell died, I told him Mary was noticing boys, white boys. My hands tucked the flap inside the envelope. Isaac had said she was too young for such things. But he must have thought that over; it must have worried him to think of her admiring white boys. Like it had worried me. Only we had both seen it different. I wanted Mary to go to dances with Negro boys. Isaac wanted her married.

Mary had just turned thirteen. It was all I could think of. She was hardly thirteen. I put the letter in the bottom of my handbag. Come spring, I’d need it to prop up my courage.

I found my children where I’d left them by the depot office. Ignoring their questions, I picked up the carpetbag. “Come on,” I said, my voice hollow in my ears.

“Mama?” Mary said, holding Emma close to her. “What’s wrong?”

I waved her off and started walking, my footsteps loud on the planked boards. We went around the corner of the office and to the back where the tracks ran and where the water tank stood. There, on the backside of Interior, the whistling wind blew face-on with nothing for miles to break it.

I had written Mama and made it a secret. Isaac had written Zeb Butler and done the same.

“I’m cold,” Alise whined above the wind. “My feet are cold, Mama.”

Remember this,
I thought but did not say. All of you, remember the cold of the Badlands, how it’s a lonesome cold, one that you can’t get away from. Feel the ache in your lungs, feel how that ache turns into a burn. Feel your toes, your ears, and your fingers, feel how they sting with the cold. Feel how the cold turns you brittle.

And remember how it was when your bellies were empty, when your mouths were dry, how you cried from it. But don’t remember the well. Don’t remember what we did to Liz.

“Stomp your feet,” I said. “That’ll warm you some.” Alise did and Liz did too. But not Mary and John. They were looking at me, their eyes puzzled and worried.

Likely they thought me cruel, making them stand out in the cold that way. But I had to. That way when the train showed up, blowing its black smoke, they’d be glad. That way in the spring when they started thinking about coming back to the Badlands, their last memory would be of the cold. And the wind.

“Mama,” Mary said, coming close to me, Emma’s face tucked into Mary’s neck scarf. “You’re crying.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s the wind.” Married at thirteen, fourteen at best. Married to a man come down from North Dakota to look her over. Married to a man what needed someone to raise his children. Married to a man what didn’t care anything for her, what just needed another pair of hands to work his ranch. Married to a man what might not ever smile at her or touch her in a way to make her glad. I couldn’t bear to think of how it would be for Mary. I looked past her.

Spread out before me was the Badlands. When I was new to it, its bigness scared me. There wasn’t any end to it. There was nothing but canyons that cut the earth, knee-high prairie grasses that rippled and swayed like they were alive, and ranges of buttes rising sharp against the sky. The Badlands scared me, but as long as I was with Isaac, I was where I wanted to be. When the Indian squaw showed up with her boy and her swollen belly, I believed those children were Isaac’s but I had looked away from it. I forgave all things because I loved him. But not this.

If Isaac wanted to marry Mary off next summer, he was going to have to come to Chicago to get her. He was going to have to face me. And if Mary went back to the Badlands with him, she had to go knowing his plans for her. But I wasn’t leading her to it; I wasn’t leading any of my children to that.

I felt the train before hearing or seeing it. I felt it in my feet.
There will be dances for my children,
I told myself. I gathered myself and pinched the corners of my eyes with my gloved fingers. Then I straightened my shoulders as best I could and looked west, a trail of black smoke starting to show in the gray sky.

Few people write a novel alone. I certainly didn’t.

I am indebted to Judithe Little, Julie C. Kemper, Lloyd E. Elliott, Pam Barton, Laura Siller, Lois F. Stark, and Bryan Jamison for their careful readings, meaningful suggestions, and for pushing me to do better; to Marianne Mills with the U.S. National Park Service for granting me a writing residency at the Badlands National Park; to the staff and instructors at Houston’s Inprint, Salt Lake City’s Writers @ Work, and San Antonio’s Gemini Ink for their belief in writers; and to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference for its community of writers.

I am grateful to Margaret Halton for her support and counsel and to all the people at Viking who worked so hard to make this book shine. And last, my heartfelt thanks go to John Siciliano, my savvy editor, whose guidance and enthusiasm were invaluable.