Together Apart (3 page)

If Eliza hadn't shown me around earlier in the day, knowing which of the room's doors to choose would have been akin to finding the pea in a fast-handed shell game. A door on one side wall opened on the bricked drive. The back yard was gotten to by a door on the other side. Two more doors flanked the raised floor. The first of these led to a room used for washing clothes; the other led to an indoor necessary. Each of these smaller rooms had yet another door, both opening into the kitchen of the main house.

I picked the door to the indoor necessary, thinking maybe I'd try it out, but sniffed smoke so hurried on through and into the kitchen, where I spied the culprit. I didn't see an oven glove, so I unbuttoned my shirt, wrapped it around my hand, and then yanked the roaster pan out of the oven. Into Eliza's fancy, hung-off-the-wall sink it went, charred chicken and all. My stomach was mighty disappointed.

I
REMOVED THE PAN OF GOLDEN BROWNED BISCUITS FROM THE
oven and then turned to the table where my papa and brothers, their faces and hands freshly scrubbed, had just sat down. Our table wasn't large enough for everyone to eat at once, so the menfolk ate first, followed by Mama and us girls. I served Papa his two biscuits, then Jake, eighteen, and James, eleven, and then moved quickly past the two empty chairs to where Joey sat. Joey looked up and smiled. Joey's was the only smile given in trade for a biscuit. Jake and James wore the same tired expression as Papa.

Hester was dishing up the stew when Joey said, "Hannah took us to a castle."

I froze.

"Hannah," Papa said, "I thought I told you to stop filling the boy's head with your make-believe foolishness."

I'd wanted to wait until after supper to share my news, but Joey had opened the door, so I figured I might as well step through it. I smoothed out the handbill and laid it next to Papa's bowl. "Sir, the castle isn't make-believe, it's a big brick house in town, the home of the Widow Moore, and I applied for a position there today, and she has asked me to return tomorrow morning to stay and work there through the end of the week, and if she finds me acceptable and asks me to stay on, I will bring home every penny of my wage."

Papa picked up the handbill and began to read. Mama wiped her hands on her apron then hurried to look over his shoulder. Hester and Lila's eyes grew to the size of hens' eggs. Jake stuffed his mouth with biscuit; James filled his with stew.

When Papa finished reading, he returned the handbill to the table, took up his spoon, and began to eat. One mouthful, then two, the air in the soddie growing more taut with each lift of his wrist. So taut that, if I waited through another mouthful, I was afraid the air would snap and I would fly apart. I braced myself, hiccupped, then asked, "Do I have your permission, sir?"

Papa took his time swallowing then said, "You told this Moore woman you'd come?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then I'd say it's a little late to be asking my permission."

I should have been relieved, but I wasn't. Papa used a tone meant to hurt, as had become his habit when he was required to speak with me.

Mama returned to the stove, her back to the table, wiping at her apron as if there were something dirty she couldn't get off her hands.

When Papa and the boys had finished their supper and gone out to the barn to tend a sick calf, Mama told my sisters to fill their plates and carry them outside. They didn't fuss. Then it was just me and Mama. Her eyes showed the same worry I'd seen there so many times before—when I'd come home from wandering too long on the prairie. She laid one hand on my shoulder and asked, "Why, Hannah?"

Why?
I'd been asking myself the same question, over and over, since the blizzard.
Why
had Jon, Jacob, and I been the only three of my brothers and sisters to wake without scratchy throats that morning?
Why
had the morning air been so deceitfully balmy when the three of us had set out for school—the falling snow so pretty?
Why
hadn't I read the signs in the noontime sky?
Why
had the prairie drawn me in that day?
Why
had I wandered so far?
Why
hadn't I heard the school bell?
Why
had the prairie I'd so loved turned against me?
Why
had I been the only one to ever make it home?
Why?

"Is it your papa, the way he's been treating you? Is that why you want to go away?"

Again I had no answer. Papa was part of it, the harsh way he often spoke to me, the way his eyes avoided mine. The daily reminder of the two empty chairs was part of it, too. But there was more to it than Papa and empty chairs. I'd been circling the questions like a cat chasing its tail. I knew only one thing. I wouldn't find the answers there in our house. Wouldn't find the answers surrounded on all sides by too much prairie.

"Your papa doesn't blame you, Hannah. Men keep their grief bottled up inside and once it's in there it gets mixed up and doesn't come out the way they mean it to. And all that talk about you shaming yourself, he doesn't mean that either. You just need to give him more time."

Tears rushed to Mama's eyes then. "And you need to give me more time. I've known from the time you were little that you'd go away from me one day, but I'm nowhere near ready to lose you yet."

"I'm not going far, Mama. Only into Prairie Hill. If Mrs. Moore hires me, I'm sure she will allow me to spend Sundays here with you, and I'm also sure she wouldn't mind if you visited me whenever you are in town."

Mama threw up her hands. "You know yourself how hard it is for me to go into town. There's no decent place to feed the children and all I can think of is the work going undone at home. And, Hannah, have you so easily forgotten the winters when the roads are buried in snow? How many Sundays do you think you'll be able to come home then?"

"I'll find a way, Mama. I promise."

Mama began to weep then, but no tears visited my eyes. I hadn't cried since before the blizzard. When I didn't cry at my brothers' funeral, Hester had accused me of being cold-hearted. She'd been more right than she knew. My heart felt as if it had shattered into a hundred jagged, icy pieces.

Hester, who must have been listening at the window, came into the house just then. She shot me one of her "now you've done it" looks, then guided Mama to her bed and stayed there with her, mumbling comforting words.

Later, after Lila and I had done up the supper dishes and I'd rinsed the mud from my clothes and hung them to dry near the stove, I stuffed a few things into a pillow cover that would serve as my make-do traveling valise. That done, I joined my sisters in our bed. Hester and I, being the oldest, usually slept at either edge. Lila slept in the middle and Megan crosswise at the foot. That night, Hester traded places with Lila. I expected that as soon as Papa had turned out the last of the oil lamps, she'd shame me for multiplying Mama's grief. I turned my face to the sod wall. Megan's breathing fell into sleep, followed in a moment by Lila's. The cornshuck-stuffed mattress tick crackled. I clutched a fold of the quilt. Hester's breath warm in my ear, she whispered, "I'm glad for you."

Her words were like a spring breeze. I rolled over and whispered, "Will Mama ever forgive me?"

"In time."

We whispered then, as we hadn't done for months. Hester wanted to know every detail of my day, how I'd learned of the position, what Mrs. Moore was like, wanted especially to know how I'd been brave enough to rap at her front door.

When Hester ran out of questions, I asked her one. "If suddenly you found yourself quite alone in the world, your only assets a grand house and quickly dwindling funds, what clever, yet tasteful, endeavors might you undertake to support yourself ?"

Hester was quick to answer. "I'd take in boarders," she said. Soon after she drifted off to sleep.

An answer to Eliza's question didn't come quickly to me, so I did the thing Papa had earlier said was foolishness. I made believe that I was there in Eliza's house, wearing her ink-stained apron. The carpet tickled my feet as I zigzagged from one side of the main hall to the other, peeking into one room after the other. Books lined the walls of a wood-paneled room; lush ferns decorated another. I stacked logs in all the fireplaces and sun-washed the windows. The kitchen drew me again and again, and I might have lingered there if not for the vision of Mama. Gossamer as a dragonfly's wing, she stood at the stove, her hands tangled in her apron.

Pulling away from the main house, I next explored the attached, one-story building. Like a ghost, I entered through a wall. The inside was bare. I added roosts and a dozen fat laying hens but removed them when a cocky rooster began his wake-the-whole-town crow. Next I nailed shelves to the walls. In a blink, I lined the shelves with dry goods; bolts of muslin and colorful calicos, skeins of yarn, shoes in every style and size, and rocking chairs pulled up to a potbelly stove. Then, quite uninvited, the grumpy clerk from Fowlers Emporium swept in and carted away all my lovely merchandise, leaving behind only the rocking chairs and stove. I imagined myself holding a cup of mint tea, sat down, and rocked—back and forth, the rhythm and creak of the chair like a lullaby. That's when the answer to Eliza's question began to take shape, slowly, like bread rising. I finally fell asleep.

***

I awoke to the scent of bacon and, to my horror, quite alone in the bed. I moved aside the bed sheet that curtained our corner of the soddie from the rest and shot a glance at the mantel clock. It read nearly six-thirty. Even if I chose to be unladylike and run half the way to town, I'd be late.

Mama came in from outside just then, carrying the morning's collection of cream. Needle-sharp jabs pricked my heart. Separating the cream from freshly drawn milk by straining it through a square of muslin had been one of my chores. Mama didn't look at me, not even when I dashed across the room and gathered up the clothes I'd hung to dry the night before. I'd planned to press these things, but it would take too long to heat and reheat the irons on the stove, so I ducked back behind the curtain and quickly dressed myself in wrinkles.

I was standing at the mirror, brushing out my hair, when the bed sheet fluttered in the draft of the door opening. "I didn't break a one," Joey said.

"How many eggs today?" Mama asked.

"Two hands plus these many fingers."

"That's one more than Megan gathered yesterday. Is Megan nearly finished feeding and watering the chickens?"

"Lila had to help her carry the bucket."

I was almost surprised to see my reflection in the mirror. To Mama I was already gone.

***

"I'll be home in time for church on Sunday," I said, lifting the door latch.

"Not so quick," Mama said.

I dared not turn to face her.

"If you must go, then at least make yourself presentable." She pinned a hat on my head. I knew the hat without looking. It was Mama's going-to-town hat, the navy one with the floppy silk rose.

"Mind you don't lose my hat," Mama called after me as I set off down the trail toward town.

Papa, Jake, and James were already working in the fields: Papa behind the breaking plow, busting sod like he'd done every day, save for Sundays, since the spring thaw. James was cutting and burning last year's corn stalks, and Jake was sowing timothy grass. Three sets of strong, hard-working hands. Joey would add his hands to the farm work one day, but Papa would forever be four hands short.

When out of sight of the farm, I hiked my skirts and began to run. I'd been wearing long skirts only since turning fourteen and hadn't yet gotten used to the bother they caused in all but the most mannered of movements. Fine for town living, maybe, but not for getting oneself there.

I made it nearly as far as the schoolhouse before I slowed to a walk. This was partly because I'd winded myself, partly because of a team and wagon stopped in the trail. At first I saw no one about. Then Mr. Richards, Isaac Bradshaw's stepfather, showed himself in the schoolhouse doorway. I hoped he wouldn't see me, but he did. "Wait up," he shouted, then started toward me.

Mr. Richards was not well liked in our district. More than once I'd overheard Papa speak of Mr. Richards's underhanded dealings. A healthy calf offered in trade, then replaced by a sickly one.

"If you've come here to consort with my good-for-nothing stepson, you're wasting your time." His breath reeked of corn liquor.

I took a step back.

"Ungrateful boy robbed me blind before he ran off. Went looking for my woodworking tools this morning and couldn't find hide nor hair of them. You tell him for me that I've just reported him to Sheriff Tulley. Better yet, you're going to tell me where he's hiding out, and I'll make him wish the sheriff got to him first."

I hiccupped, then said, "I'm sorry, sir, but I've not spoken with Isaac in several months. Now you will have to excuse me, for I have pressing business in town."

"That's a likely story," he spat.

I didn't reply, just spun away, hiccupped, and began again to walk toward town.

"You tell him to return my woodworking tools today or else," Mr. Richards shouted after me.

Moments later I heard the crack of Mr. Richards's whip and the hoof beats of his team pulling away. I tried to put Mr. Richards out of my mind but couldn't. I was glad Isaac had run away, glad he'd taken the tools. Mr. Richards's anger worried me, though. I vowed then and there that, if ever I saw Isaac again, I'd go against Papa's wishes and warn him.

Just then there were more hoof beats, coming on, not going away. I chanced a peek over my shoulder and was relieved to see that it was old Mr. Zeller.

He whoaed his team and asked, "Need a lift?"

"I surely do," I answered in my loudest voice, then climbed up and onto the seat next to him. I leaned close to his nearly deaf ear and asked, "How are you faring today?"

"Can't complain," he answered, and that was all the conversation he required.

S
LEEPING ON THE COT IN THE ROOM ABOVE THE STABLE HAD
been like sleeping on milkweed fluff. No crackle of corn-shucks, no stepbrothers' snores, no bony jabs to my ribs. I slept so good that first night that the sun was already hard at work when my eyes finally pried themselves open. I didn't need to take the time to pull on my trousers because I'd slept in them.