Until We Reach Home (5 page)

The train reached the city of Gothenburg late in the afternoon. Elin gazed out of the window at a city so huge it seemed to take forever to travel from the outskirts to the station in the city’s center. Kirsten had shoved open the window to lean out, but she quickly closed it again.

“Ew! Something stinks like rotten fish.”

“Well, the city is on the ocean,” Elin said. “Their fish market is very famous.”

Papa had once visited Gothenburg, and he’d described it so beautifully to Elin—the call of the seabirds, the sigh of ocean waves, the flavor of salt that was so heavy in the air you could taste it on your lips. But the city must have changed since he’d visited it. Elin didn’t hear any seabirds, only the shriek and rumble and hiss of the train. She couldn’t taste the salt, only the stench of fish and soot and fumes.

Kirsten stood up before the train stopped, clutching her bag as if ready to bolt. Elin waited until the coach halted, but even then she felt as though she were still moving when she rose to her feet.

“The White Star Steamship Line sent a wagon to meet your train,” the conductor told them as they got off. “They’ll transport you to a boardinghouse near the pier for the night.”

“See? Uncle Lars thought of everything,” Elin said. “And it’s all paid for, too.” She hoped to reassure her sisters—and herself—that they would be well taken care of.

The platform shook beneath her feet as another train chuffed out of the depot. Baggage agents had heaped everyone’s luggage on the platform, and travelers sorted through the pile for their belongings. Elin searched through the pile, too, but couldn’t find their trunk. Even after the heap of baggage had disappeared, there was so sign of it.

Panic tightened her chest. She walked the entire length of the platform and back again, examining every box and packing crate, but none of them was hers. What would they do without their trunk? It contained everything they owned and all of their food for the journey. She hurried back to where her sisters stood waiting.

“Our trunk is missing! Help me find it!”

For several endless, heart-stopping minutes Elin and Kirsten ran around in a panic while Sofia sank down on a bench, hunched with self-pity.

“Why aren’t you helping us?” Kirsten asked her.

“Because I hope we did leave it behind. Then we can get on the next train and go home.”

Elin wondered if Uncle Sven had kept it on purpose to punish her and to make certain they would return home. The thought infuriated her.

“We aren’t going back, Sofia. I’d rather leave everything behind and go without food for the next few weeks than turn back.”

But could they really leave everything behind? Elin sorted through the trunk’s contents in her mind, trying to recall what they had packed. They could replace their clothes and winter coats and bedding—although Elin had no idea where the money to buy new things would come from. She had also packed a few heirlooms from home, even though it meant sacrificing some other items to make space. The copper coffee kettle Mama had always used when they had guests was in the trunk, as was her book of hymns, along with linen towels and aprons and table runners that Mama had embroidered for her wedding chest. Elin had packed the wooden mortar and pestle that Papa had carved, a bowl painted with rosemaling, and a white linen tablecloth that had been their grandmother’s. There was nothing of great value, yet losing the trunk would mean one more loss after so many others.

“Here it is,” Kirsten suddenly shouted. Elin hurried over to find their missing trunk, hidden behind one of the White Star wagons. Her shoulders slumped with relief. She motioned to Sofia, who was still sitting on the bench.

“Come on! We found it!”

Sofia stood and dragged herself to the waiting carriage. Night had fallen, and it was too dark to see very much of the city as they rode to the lodgings that the steamship line had provided. Elin felt drained. She closed her eyes and listened to Kirsten and Sofia talking quietly beside her.

“Why don’t you want to move to America?” Kirsten asked Sofia.

“I just don’t. Uncle Sven said I should let you and Elin go without me. He said I could stay with him.”

Sofia’s words made Elin’s heart speed up. “He’s not as nice as you think,” she said in a shaking voice.

“He’s the reason Nils left home, remember?” Kirsten added. “And I heard him saying that Elin was going to be next. He was going to make her move out and get a job in town.”

“So instead, we
all
had to move out?” Sofia asked. “That makes no sense at all.”

“I give up, Sofia,” Kirsten said. “Be miserable if you want to.” They rode the rest of the way without speaking.

Their room in the boardinghouse smelled like stale perspiration. Kirsten tried to open the tiny window, but it refused to budge. The three of them stripped into their undergarments and, after carefully laying out their good clothes so they wouldn’t wrinkle, Sofia and Kirsten climbed into bed. But Elin was too upset to sleep. She turned off the gaslight and lit a candle.

“Do you mind if I write for awhile? I promise I won’t be long.”

“Just don’t set the room on fire,” Kirsten said before pulling the pillow over her head.

Elin opened her diary and began to write.

We are in a rooming house in Gothenburg after a long, exhausting day of travel. Our spare, narrow room with its barren walls and narrow beds seems fitting. Everything that once warmed and cushioned my life has been stripped away, and I’ve packed what remains of it into our trunk. I feel as naked and shivery as one of Papa’s sheep after it has been shorn. I tell myself that I am lighter this way, freer. I’ll recover everything I’ve lost someday, won’t I? I’ll have a home and a family again. Perhaps everything will take a different form, the way a lamb’s shorn wool returns as a pair of mittens or a scarf or a warm winter sweater, but I am determined never to feel so naked and lost again.

Tomorrow we sail across the North Sea to a city called Hull, in England. Then we’ll board another train and cross the English countryside to Liverpool. From there we’ll board a steamship for the two-week voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to New York in America. But our journey won’t end there. We must board yet another train and travel to Uncle Lars’ home in Chicago. I remember meeting him once, when I was a very small girl, and he was leaving our village to make his fortune in America.

She paused, wondering what else to add. Kirsten was already asleep, but Sofia was only pretending. She had buried her face in the limp gray pillow to muffle the sound, but Elin knew that she was crying. Elin wanted to crawl beneath the covers and weep, too, but she needed to remain strong for her sisters’ sakes. She drew a deep breath and slowly released it, trying to release her fear along with it.

Even though Sofia and Kirsten are with me, I feel lost and alone. If I’d had any other choice besides this long, inconceivable journey to a faraway land, I would have gladly taken it. But before Mama died she begged me to watch over my sisters, and the only way that was left to me, the only way that I knew how to do that, was to leave home and take them to America.

In some ways I feel like I’ve let her down, but I simply didn’t know what else to do and I had to make a decision. I hope I’ve made the right one.

Elin closed her eyes. She wished she could pray the way Mama used to, but a deep pit stood between her and God, filled with guilt and regret. He knew all of the terrible things she had done. Anger filled the pit, as well. Why hadn’t God protected her from Uncle Sven? Instead, Elin had been forced to find her own way to escape. If she hadn’t written to Uncle Lars and begged him to let them come to America, they never would have been rescued. She was the one who’d had to figure out how to start a new life for her and her sisters. And now she would have to figure out how to find the courage to do it. She bent over her diary again.

I wish I wasn’t the oldest sister. I wish someone would take care of me instead of being forced to take care of everyone else. If only I didn’t have to make all of the decisions and take the first steps and be daring and brave and resourceful. I understand how Sofia feels, because I long to get back on the train tomorrow and go home, too—home to the way everything was five years ago. All I want to do is sit in our stuga and knit socks in front of the fire and listen to Mama reading aloud from her little Bible as the aroma of baking bread fills the room.

But that life is gone. I am the oldest sister. Sofia and Kirsten are depending on me. We can’t turn back. Besides, I’m running away for my own safety as much as for theirs. I have no idea what we’ll find at the end of our journey, but it can’t possibly be any worse than what I left behind—can it?

She wiped a tear that had splashed onto her diary page, then closed the book and snuffed out the candle. She hoped that the bedcovers were warm, because she was so very cold. She couldn’t seem to stop shaking.

Chapter Five

A
CRASH OF THUNDER
startled Kirsten awake. She sat up in bed, gazing around the unfamiliar room, unsure where she was. Then a flash of lightning illuminated the whitewashed walls and she remembered arriving at the boardinghouse last night after the long train trip to Gothenburg. She and her sisters had followed the sour-faced proprietor up the stairs to this barren room at the top.

Thunder rumbled like a steam locomotive in the distance. More lightning flashed. Kirsten remembered saying good-bye to Tor yesterday, seeing him for the very last time, and the pain she felt was as though someone had carved him out of her heart with a filet knife. She had hoped that the ache in her chest would fade as she traveled farther from home, but this morning the pain felt worse than it had yesterday. Tor had looked away as she’d told him good-bye, not at her.

Another flash of lightning, another peal of thunder, farther away this time. Kirsten wished that a bolt would strike her and end her misery. She climbed out of bed and parted the heavy curtains. Dawn had come, but the storm that had blown in from the sea obscured it. The tempest lashed the windowpanes with wind and rain and raised huge white waves in the harbor beyond.

“Is it morning?” Elin asked, her voice muffled beneath the bedcovers.

“
Ja.
But I don’t think our ferry is going to leave today. You should see it outside!”

Kirsten had longed for adventure while growing up, envying her Viking ancestors who had bravely set sail to explore new lands. But even Erik the Red would have stayed in port on a day like today.

“Is it raining?” Elin asked.

“It’s pouring! And you should see how huge the waves are!”

Heavy footsteps clumped up the stairs outside their room. A loud knock rattled their door. “The ferry leaves in one hour, ladies.”

“Thank you. We’re awake,” Elin called back. She reached over to the other bed to rouse Sofia. “Did you hear that? Come on, Sofia. You need to get up and get dressed.”

Sofia responded with a moan.

A gust of wind whipped against the wooden building, whistling its way into every crack and rattling the window glass. Kirsten could feel the room shaking.

“Listen to that wind! I don’t even want to go outside in such weather, much less get into a boat.”

“Well, we have to do what the tour people say. Uncle Lars sent instructions—”

“So what? Why does everyone else get to make decisions for me? When will I get to decide for myself?”

Elin stood with her hands on her hips, wearing that bossy look that Kirsten hated. “No one ever gets to do whatever they want all the time. Not even adults.”

“Well, that stinks like dead fish!”

They got dressed, gathered their belongings, and ate a quick breakfast of bread and herring in the boardinghouse dining room downstairs. Kirsten wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and opened the door, bracing herself against the wind. Elin grabbed Sofia’s hand and pulled her through the door, following the other passengers into the storm.

“Our boat is going to sink!” Sofia shouted above the wind.

“We’ll be fine,” Elin insisted. “Sailors and sea captains know all about the weather and how to navigate the seas. They wouldn’t set sail if it wasn’t perfectly safe.”

“That’s a bunch of nonsense,” Kirsten said. “Ships sink all the time!”

The three of them linked arms, clinging to each other to keep from being blown away as they crossed the street from the rooming house and walked down the road to the dock. Ahead of them, seawater splashed across the pier and onto the walkway, reminding Kirsten of a cauldron of boiling water. Rows of wagons lined the harbor front, loaded with crates and barrels and trunks, all getting drenched in the cold, pelting rain. She wanted to sprint down the pier and board the ferry, but Elin stopped her.

“Wait here for me. I need to search for our trunk first and make sure it gets loaded. It contains everything we own. We can’t lose sight of it again.”

Kirsten huddled close to Sofia in the pouring rain while Elin consulted with the baggage porters. Ships of all shapes and sizes tossed and bobbed on the restless water until it made Kirsten sick to her stomach to watch them. The damp, fishy air was the foulest she’d ever smelled. Sofia pinched her nose closed.

The smell reminded Kirsten of the white-hot summer day when she had gone fishing with Nils and Tor in the lake where Papa had drowned. They had cleaned and gutted their catch afterward and tossed the remains on the compost pile, where they festered in the sun. Uncle Sven had been furious with them, swearing that the stench could reach all the way into town. Nils and Tor had laughed it off, imitating his tilting shoulders and crab-legged walk as soon as he’d turned his back to walk away.

The memory of Tor’s laughter struck Kirsten like a kick in the stomach. She glanced around for Elin, who was still searching for the trunk, and spotted the overhanging roof of the baggage porter’s shed nearby.

“Let’s wait under there. We’re getting soaked.” She and Sofia hurried over to stand in the shelter of the ramshackle building. They were no longer getting drenched but still had to endure the brunt of the wind.