Including lust.
Including God.
Past the sheep and the stench of sheep Sister Elinor pedals. Fur and grass and shit—something satisfying about that smell. Two old sheep kneel on their bent front legs, muzzles to the earth, ripping and chewing and worshipping while the Holy Spirit breathes into all that exists. You don’t see the Spirit, only His handiwork: these lines of trees bent forever to one side; these sheep on their knees; these geese flying low above the Nordsee.
* * *
The toymaker arrives while we’re packing to leave Nordstrand. Smudges of gray beneath his eyes. Right away he helps load and secure our wagons—we don’t have to tell him. He notices what needs to be done.
When he rips the front of his shirt, I offer to mend it for him.
“No, thank you.” He smells of new wood and new sweat.
I can tell he’s accustomed to being settled because he carries displacement in the slope of his shoulders. “I repair clothes for everyone here.” In my wagon I slip a needle from my pincushion. Lightly, I touch his shirt. Heat through my fingertips.
“My wife would be embarrassed … to send me off like that.”
“Did she have a choice?”
He blinks, startled.
I cut the thread—
“Good,” he says. “My wife bites the thread. I worry she’ll ruin her teeth.”
“How considerate you are.” I push the thread through the eye of the needle.
“Bees.” He tilts his head. “In your walls. I hear bees in your walls.”
“We don’t have bees.”
I could tell him that bees have chosen to build their hive in the ceiling of our Annunciation wagon, but I don’t. I don’t want to. Heike adores our bees. Too respectful to sting us, they prove their gratitude with honey that trickles from above so we can set out bowls and feast on the freshest honey without getting out of bed. Our skin has turned golden as honey, and our bodies move like silk to their humming. My daughter and I grow light-headed at the scent of honey, swoon. It was good until a month ago when the balance of bees and humans shifted: we’d awaken with honey in our hair, honey on our sheets, and when we’d arise, our feet would stick to the stenciled floor.
“Should I take off my shirt?” Kalle blushes.
“All you need to do is stand still.” My needle pricks his skin.
A sharp breath. He doesn’t complain.
I don’t say I’m sorry. Because I’m not.
“My neighbor is a beekeeper.”
“I know. He was just a boy when I first met Lotte.”
“She trades him marmalade for honey. Our children don’t get ill because we eat honey that comes from blossoms in our neighborhood.”
Our children. He has forgotten, I think. For one merciful moment he has forgotten the freak wave, the horses’ strong-muscled movements. But I’m forever running across the flats to search for his children while bellies of clouds grow weighty and heavens turn crimson laden with gray. One woman says the colors in the sky are a sign the children are alive. Or proof of their deaths, another says. Red sky at night sailor’s delight, a man says and then cries because there’s nothing delightful about this sky.
“But you—were there.” Tears in Kalle’s eyes.
I nod.
“My children—”
“We all searched, you and the beekeeper by boat.”
He picks up the satin bodice I’ve pinned for Luzia The Clown. Sniffs it. “Honey—even here.”
“Careful with the pins.”
“Sticky.” He taps his index finger against his thumb. “When we get to Nordstrand I’ll ask the beekeeper to take your bees away.”
“We don’t have bees.” I prick him again. Because I’m furious how easy it is for men like him and The Sensational Sebastian to run away from their women and children, afraid they’ll turn to stone if they stay too long.
* * *
Lotte closes her shutters against the rumble of the Zirkus wagons. Within an hour, neighbors enter her house to comfort her with food and commiseration.
“Your husband will be back,” they say, voices prim with disapproval.
“He and you have such deep love—”
“Bottomless love, I mean. Oh—”
Flustered, they’re flustered. Agree that Kalle is devoted to her.
“He is devoted to you, Lotte.”
But he ran away—
“He will be back.”
Lotte holds herself tall—drawing on rage and guilt—until Sister Elinor and Sister Ida pull up in the carriage to take her and Wilhelm to the St. Margaret Home. When they lead her into a chamber on the second floor where the Sisters live, Lotte collapses on the narrow bed.
“Wilhelm—” she cries.
“We have him in the Little Nursery with the other children and the Girl who nurses him.”
“Just for now. Until you are strong again,” says Sister Elinor.
Lotte sleeps. For twelve hours she sleeps. Is roused by Sister Ida who feeds her soup. Sleeps again.
* * *
The St. Margaret Girls adore Wilhelm, and he adores them right back, most of all Tilli whose smile glows when she carries him or nurses him or washes his hands cupped within hers. Wilhelm. Who became hers when her own girl was taken from her. Destined. Seamless. Wilhelm. Sometimes she locks her eyes with him, wills him to always remember her. Always. Even if she starts out sad, he takes her into bliss. Sometimes, alone in the dormitory, that bliss gets to be so much that she’s afire and must press her bare breasts against the window, let the cold glass mirror her to herself, and she is glorious.
Sister Franziska says, “Two other Girls have milk now.”
Tilli bounces Wilhelm on her hip.
Sister Franziska says, “Any time the nursing gets too much for you, I’ll ask—”
“It’s not— It’s not too much.”
“—the other Girls.”
“Wilhelm won’t drink from anyone else.”
“That’s a good reason to try.”
Tilli says no. “Please no,” she says.
Wilhelm’s eyes move from her to Sister Franziska and back. His lower lip quivers as if he understood every word.
Still, Sister Franziska arranges for two other Girls to nurse Wilhelm, and he fights the unfamiliar smells and breasts. Tilli feels vindicated when Sister Franziska returns him to her. He nuzzles his face into the dip between Tilli’s neck and shoulder, but she’s careful not to show how much she loves him because Sister will pry him off, gently, and send Tilli to help with bigger children, the four- and five-year-olds.
7
For Medicinal Reasons Only
The Old Women share meals and medical advice but compete with one another to become the Oldest Person. Knee-bends and toe-touches and jumping jacks. Two can still do a handstand and one practices ancient Chinese eye exercises she got from a visiting missionary for a donation.
They didn’t become Old Women during the same decade or century: it’s rather that their circle replenishes itself as girls become women and women become Old Women who pass through lives, generations, floods.
They drown in great floods.