The Daughter's Walk (6 page)

“Mama go?”

“Soon.” Mama kissed her head, squeezed her, then handed the baby to me, her eyes moist.

The smell of Lillian's hair and the smoothness of her face against my cheek closed my throat.
How can she leave them? How can I leave them?

“I have a surprise for you, Lillian,” Mama said. She sniffed, then handed my sister a piece of Hardanger lace shaped like a heart, one Mama had stitched herself. She pulled a small pair of scissors from her pocket and cut the heart in two. “You keep this half of my heart. Keep it safe for everyone to have now and then. Put it under your pillow, then maybe Johnny's, then the rest. A different pillow each night.”

Lillian nodded, though I knew Ida would have to sort out who got that piece of Mama's heart and when. I looked at their faces, my brothers' and sisters', aching with such longing.

“Mama,” I offered. “Why don't you cut a little piece of your heart now for everyone to have?”

Bertha piped up, “Oh yes! Please do that.”

Mama looked at me. “All right. Lillian, can Mama have it back for a minute?”

Lillian hesitated but, by nature a generous child, she handed it to Mama, who cut off sections and then placed these in the open palm of each of my siblings, their pink skin showing beneath the squares and diamond shapes made by threads pulled back so carefully by my mother's hands over many hours.

“Do you have a small piece for me?” I asked as she gave Lillian back a little square.

“You're going with me, Clara. You certainly won't need one,” she said.

I thought my heart would break.

She cut her own half heart in two and shared this with Papa. He looked at it, didn't speak. Then she took Lillian's pudgy hand and rubbed it across the piece Mama would take with her. “I'll keep this one with me.” She held it to her breast with the child's hand. “My heart will be complete only when I come home again and all of you put your pieces together with mine. All the while I'm gone my heart will be smaller because I've left so much of it with you.”

Noses sniffled. Silent weeping shook Arthur's shoulders, Billy's too, though Arthur tried not to show it. He clapped his hands, and the dog romped to stand beside him. He petted him, pulling comfort from Sailor's presence.

One more good-bye and that was to Ida. Mama saved the hardest for last.

“Come here, daughter.” Ida slouched forward, a scowl marking her face. She'd stuffed her lace piece into her apron pocket. “I know this isn't what you want,” Mama said. “You are making a great sacrifice, and I will never forget that. You take my place now. Look after the little ones. Make sure Papa has his morning coffee. Read my letters when they come, out loud. You're a fine reader with good eyes, better than Hedvig's. Make sure Johnny eats his greens. He doesn't like them very much, does he?” Ida nodded. The scowl had lessened. “Good. Know that every night I will say prayers for you and every morning your well-being will be the first thing I think about, the first prayer I pray. I love you all so very much.” She hugged Ida, who clung to her. They rocked, with Mama's chin on Ida's head.

At that moment, I envied them all hearing Mama's clear expression of her care for them. I missed the intensity of their good-byes, the assurances
she gave of her love, her confidence in their ability to endure the next months. I longed for that assurance. I wanted to fit in with those blond heads lined up, those boys and girls who would have experiences very different from the ones we embarked upon.

After a moment, Mama peeled Ida free, pulled her daughter to her side, then opened her other arm to her flock. They dived toward her.

I stood off, closer to my father than my mother. He said nothing.

“I'm sorry, Papa,” I said, though I wasn't sure why I apologized. This was none of my doing, none of it.

My father reached over then and thumbed away the tears against my cheek. His tenderness surprised me; he so rarely touched me.

“Keep her safe, Clara,” he said. “Headstrong woman that she is.”

I nodded. I wished he would call me
daughter
, but he never had, never even introduced me to others as his daughter. I was always just Clara Estby.

“Well,” my mother said, “a handsome crowd you all are. We do this for each other.” Mama seemed to be memorizing their faces, moving from one set of blue eyes to another. “Come along then, Clara.”

Lillian's lower lip pooched out, and my heart pounded, and I watched as tears pooled in my mother's eyes and my own ache threatened my composure.

I said, “Let's all of you walk with us to the field, where we can say good-bye to Olaf.”

“I've already—”

“Arthur and Bertha, you set the pace. Everyone else behind. Mama and Papa and I bring up the caboose. Do you have one more piece of lace Ida can save for Olaf?”

“Yes, indeed,” Mama said and cut another piece from what remained. Ida took it with one nod.

They started out then with us following them. My father remained
on the porch. “March to the music,” I shouted and began to sing, “A mighty fortress is our God.” The children finished with the second line: “A bulwark never failing.”

“I never thought of that hymn as a marching song,” Mama said. She wiped her eyes with her handkerchief.

“It may become ours,” I said and motioned for us to slip away toward the rails while they sang.

We were abandoning them. That's how it felt to me, without a piece of Mama's heart to hold and call my own.

W
e walked quickly. I didn't want the dog to follow or the children to come running after. Still, I couldn't get our farewell out of my mind. Was it a premonition, this desire to memorize them? Olaf, so handsome and kind. Ida, brittle—no, fragile in her fear. Bertha, happy and giving. Arthur, animal-man with his dog beside him. Johnny, playful. Billy, a lover of music, always tender to another's sorrow. Lillian, the baby who smiled through everything because she didn't know there were things that might make her sad.

And my father. His slender frame, sloped shoulders, the pale mustache that twitched beside my cheek as I hugged him even though he didn't hug me back. I wished I'd told them all those little things I loved about each one of them, but I wasn't good with words. At least not when the eyes of those I loved stared straight at me.

“Let's say good-bye to Henry too,” I said as we started up the first hill.

“Go by the cemetery? All right,” Mama agreed and we headed up the dirt road.

The landscape, so vast and emerald, scooped me in its arms from the hilltop. Spring wheat thrived over the rolling hills and disappeared into the shallow swales. At the Mica Creek cemetery, wind whipped us as we stood over Henry's grave. Rheumatic fever, the doctor said, had caused my brother's death. Mama pulled at weeds around the stone, lost in thought.

“He wrote the sweetest letters to me when I was gone to Wisconsin,” Mama said. “I'm so glad I saved them. Glad we have his picture too. I wish I had a picture of Ole.”

“You have one of Papa,” I said. “Didn't you bring it?”

She looked confused, then looked at me. “No, I meant Ole. Our first son. He's buried in Minnesota.”

“I had a brother who died? Another brother?” Her words were like stones thrown into a still pond, disturbing in all directions.

“It was a long time ago,” she said. “Before you. Our firstborn. Son. I wish I had a photograph,” she said. She patted my shoulder.

“But you never said—never spoke of a brother. Older than I? Does Olaf know? Do the others?”

“No,” Mama said. “No need to tell you either, I suppose. But we have seven months to face together, so I imagine secrets will come out.”

In an instant I had a fleeting memory of an infant crying in our sod house in Minnesota, fuzzy lantern lights casting strange shadows on the earth walls, Mama crying too, hands to her mouth and a man holding an infant. Could that have been Ole? No, Ole was older, Mama said. The crying child must have been Olaf, sixteen months younger than I. Yes, it must have been Olaf I remembered crying, my now-big, scrappy brother. I had no memory of Ole, who'd come before me.

“What happened?”

“The sod house. So very cold. Pneumonia. It was why I wanted us
to leave there, come here. That and the cyclones that lit the sky like fireworks with booms and crackles. I hated them.” She shivered. “And the prairie fires. And the harsh winters with their snowdrifts.” She sighed. “Little Ole wasn't with us very long, but I still miss him. So,” she said in her changing-the-subject voice, “let's stop at the store and pick up a hard candy to help us commemorate our walk.”

I'd have to catch her in a thoughtful time to find out more.

Mama hesitated at Schwartz's store in Mica Creek.

“That's Martin Siverson's horse. Your father's best friend thinks I should listen to my husband and not take this walk.”

“Let's not go in then.”

The door opened as we turned to leave.

“I suppose you're off then, Mrs. Estby,” Martin said. He motioned to our bags. Mama paused and turned. “Such a crazy scheme. Shameful.”

“It's for good,” Mama said.

“So you say,” Martin said. “And Clara. You can't talk sense into your mother, then? Are you stubborn like she is?” He shook his head and crossed the street.

My face burned. His expression reminded me of Mrs. Stapleton's. Shameful. My mother's wish to save the farm brought shame to our family. Would success even wash it away?

“Let them say what they will,” Mama said. “I will prove them wrong. Don't you worry about a thing.”

Since I was going with her against my will, the least she could have said was “we.”

S
o much for God smiling on our venture. We walked through days of pouring rain. Mama said once we reached LaCrosse Junction, a Norwegian town in southern Washington, we wouldn't have to sleep on the hard benches in the train stations because people there were like family. We'd speak Norwegian and be treated with hospitality.

“Don't be ridiculous,” one woman said as we approached her house, drenched to the bone. “You should have stayed home with your children where a good Norwegian wife should be!” She slammed the door in our faces, so we slept on the benches again, only ninety-five miles from Spokane.

“I thought you said we'd be welcomed,” I complained.

“They don't understand,” Mama told me. “As we move east, we'll have a better reception.” We munched on hardtack in the depot and took turns watching the door so we could squeeze rain from our woolen coats by holding them in front of the potbellied stove. “At least we have
a roof over our heads,” Mama said, putting the bag under her head as a pillow. I slept that night wondering at my mother's ability to look for the good in things.

We decided early on not to stop to eat according to the sun—which we hadn't seen much of—but rather to be guided by our stomachs. Eggs were cheap and filling and could be eaten at any meal. Often when I ate them, I recalled Martin Siverson's comments, or the women who closed doors in our faces, and the food coated my stomach with new uncertainty. Rain greeted us in Walla Walla, Washington, but the
Walla Walla Union
ran a long article about our journey, mentioning Mayor Belt's endorsement and saying we were headed on to Boise City. We sold several photographs to sympathizing women and replenished our reserves, buying hard rolls and even a pat of butter because Mama said we needed fat to keep going. A family offered us a sweet-smelling bed above the horses in their barn. The sun came out one day and steamed our wet wool clothes. We slept mostly in the railroad stations, which were about nine miles apart. It was how we kept track of our daily distance. Well, that and the maps of the railroads we carried with us.