“Seems to me that tongues are the least of her worries.” John looked at me with his soft brown eyes brimming with compassion for my sister. It made my heart fill with warmth to see his brow crease with worry for a girl he had not even met. He was a good man, my John. I was lucky to have him. “If they have beaten her as badly as the letter says, she should worry for her life.” He blew on the porridge in his spoon. “Won’t your father do anything about it?”
“Hardly.” I fetched some coffee for myself and slumped down in the chair opposite his. “He’s a broken man, my father, with no will to do anything at all. Ailments and loss have taken what little spirit he had. Mother is different, but she cannot protect Little Brynhild. They are not well respected in the valley, and those with more means will always have a louder voice.” I sighed and reached over the table to touch my little boy’s dark hair. He lifted his gaze—as dark as his father’s—and smiled at me with smears of porridge on his lips and chin. I wondered what I would do if someone hurt my child the way Little Brynhild had been hurt, and the mere thought of it made my chest contract and caused a sickening wave of anguish to spool out in the pit of my stomach. I certainly would not sit back and do nothing.
“I agree that she should leave Selbu.” John spooned more porridge into his mouth and dried off his mustache with a pristine handkerchief.
“Yes, she should,” I agreed. “She should leave and never return.” My gaze fastened on my coffee, lingered on the brown, murky surface. My brow knitted with a fresh bout of worry. “I just wish the letter said more about what happened.”
“It sounded like a terrible thing . . . bleeding from the stomach—”
“Hush,” I scolded gently, and waved my hand in the air. “Not in front of the child.”
“He is too small to understand,” John reassured me in a calm voice. “You would prefer for her to come here, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course I would. It would be safer for her, strange as that may sound.”
“She could save up same as you,” he suggested, not from any heartlessness but only because we did not have very much.
“Of course, but it took me a very long time.” Years of toiling, milking, and cleaning. Sleepless cold nights in a maids’ loft, and an ache in my back that I could not get rid of, and which only grew worse after Rudolph was born. I had paid for my crossing with pain as well as labor. “I worry that something more will happen to her before she has the money together or that the misery will eat at her and ruin her spirit before she arrives.” In my mind’s eye, I saw my mother’s scrawny form—still with no face—and the sense of hopelessness she emitted cut into my heart even across time and distance.
John’s warm hand came to cover mine on the table. Our gazes locked and he smiled. “I shall see what I can do. Perhaps I can work some extra hours . . . I know how much you care for her.”
I gave him a shivering smile in reply; I hated to burden him with more than he already had—we were hoping to have a house of our own—but it was true what he said, I cared about Little Brynhild. More than I did for any of my other siblings. Perhaps it was just because she had such a hard time getting along; she was born with all these sharp angles and thorns and got in her own way more often than not. I was thirteen when she arrived in this world, almost a woman grown, and Mother was already fading by then; her smiles had become fewer and her laughter scarce, while I still had some to go around. Little Brynhild was mine in a way, before I left her behind.
Perhaps it was guilt I felt that made it so important to offer her my help.
“I would have had a miserable life if I’d stayed in Norway,” I said, “but fortune has been good to me since I came to America. Perhaps the same will be true for her.” I rose from the chair and crossed the creaking floor to John’s chair, bent down, and pressed a kiss to his cheekbone. “I am grateful,” I told him, and smiled when he squeezed my hand. “I know it will take time for her to get the money together even with our help, but whatever amount we can spare is certainly of more use to her than my tossing and turning on the pillows at night.”
“Worry is a poor bedfellow,” said he.
“It certainly is,” I agreed.
* * *
—
When John had left, I hoisted Rudolph onto my hip and grabbed the rolled-up rug with my free hand. Together we made the perilous journey down the steep, narrow stairs that descended the outside wall to the yard below. My son rested his cheek against my shoulder and looked up at the cloudy sky above.
“Birds.” He pointed with his chubby hand. I could still see sticky flecks of porridge on his fingers even though I had dried them off. Small children are often a challenge like that, always filthy in some way, but my boy was worse than most. No matter how often I was at his face with my damp cloth, he always seemed to grow a mustache of grime above his upper lip. I thought that it might have to do with how we lived. It was not a clean house, dusty and infested with coal smoke. It did not matter how often I scrubbed the floors of our apartment when everything outside of it was filthy. I did not complain, though; it was better than what I came from—we even had a bedroom—but I could not help but dream of having a house of our own. A place where the dust stayed outside whenever I closed the door and I did not always smell the neighbors’ potatoes boiling on the stove. I knew, though, that in order to get good things in life, one had to be patient and plan ahead. Take stock and save—be wise. Paying for Little Brynhild’s crossing would certainly upset every plan I had laid, but then again, perhaps my son would not always be so grimy if I had a sister around to help me out. Perhaps my days would be better if I did not have to do all the work myself, and maybe—just maybe—I would not lose another child if I did not have to be so tired all the time.
We arrived at the bottom of the stairs and stepped out in the yard: a cramped, uneven space framed by fences of graying boards. On one side, outhouses and sheds stood huddled together like a flock of frozen sparrows. There was no pavement, only the trampled soil, and whenever it rained, puddles would form and the ground would turn muddy. Above our heads, laundry hung on taut lines that crisscrossed the space between our building and the one on the other side of the fence. The sheets and shirts moved with the wind like little sails. They made a rustling sound, like leaves, scraping against one another on the lines, stiff and hard but doubtlessly clean. A bright red skirt had bled excess dye down on the shirt that hung below.
I never much liked to hang my wash out like that for everyone to see. I always dried our own underthings in the apartment. It was different with wash I took in for money—I did not much care if my neighbors saw the mended pants and yellowing undershirts the unwed immigrant men brought in for me to scrub. My line was always full.
I put my son down in a patch of grass next to the outhouse, scanning the sparse greenery for hazards: rusted nails or pieces of glass, sharp edges of metal. I had performed the same survey the day before, but one never knew what people dropped. One day the summer before, I had found him squeezing a dead rat. Sometimes the older girls in the building looked after the little ones, but so early in the morning they would be busy helping their mamas or readying for school. I was on my own for another half hour at least before my friend Clara would come out with her small daughter, Lottie, having sent her posse of older children out the door. It was easier then, when there were more of us. I did not fret so much whenever I had to turn my back on my little one if there were other women about to keep an eye.