Sadie gave each child a hug long and hard enough to last for the two weeks they would be apart. She’d never gone so long without seeing them and was surprised at the powerful emotion it brought up. She walked away from her boisterous family to her quiet and orderly home.
“A nigger knocks on our door, makes a demand of your mother, and now you are traipsing off to Chicago?!” Heinrich practically shouted at her.
“Negro.” She corrected him in a calm voice. “The polite term is Negro. I repeat my request that you use that word when you are speaking to me.”
Sadie sat across from Heinrich over dinner at their mahogany Chippendale table. It could open to seat twelve but none of the leaves were in it. She was glad Momma had stayed for dinner at Sam and Diana’s and was not home to see Heinrich’s reaction.
Sadie rubbed the leaf carved into the arm of her chair. Those leaves had sold her on this set. They had ordered it all the way from Ireland, and it took months for delivery.
“Negro, nigger,” Heinrich’s tone was measured, but his face was still bright red. “It does not matter to me what they are called. I do not understand how you are leaving for Chicago tomorrow.”
“I have told you about Mattie and my mother’s fondness for her,” she reminded him.
“If my very own mother were dying, I would not return to Germany to her bedside,” he declared. “The old woman does not need you to be there to die. Death will come with or without you.”
“My mother is making the trip, and I cannot dictate her movements. I wish to accompany her,” she answered, hoping she sounded resolute and calm. “We will not be gone for so long. Four days’ travel to Chicago. I expect we will return a few days later.”
Heinrich clicked his tongue against his teeth, wordlessly expressing his objection to Sadie’s plan.
“How will I eat? Who will take care of the house?” he challenged.
“Diana’s cousin works as a housekeeper; she is available to take care of you,” Sadie explained.
“Diana,” he growled, not bothering to hide his contempt. He found Diana to be overbearing and mannish. “You expect me to pay for a foreign maid? For two weeks?”
Sadie’s confidence melted and her eyes welled up with tears.
Heinrich tsked his disapproval. “I am not meaning to be cruel,” her husband said. “I am a rational man. We Germans are a sensible people.”
Traveling to Chicago to see Mattie wasn’t practical, but not all of life could be decided by reason; some things were a matter of love. Heinrich didn’t agree or even understand that sentiment. The differences between them formed a persistent crack in the foundation of their marriage. She hid the fracture by keeping her family and her deepest beliefs from her husband, but this situation brought their disharmony into the open. She could not conceal a journey from him. It was impossible to simultaneously fulfill her obligations as a daughter and as a wife.
Sadie would not change Heinrich’s mind before the morning, so she did not argue. She hoped this would be like the palm tree in which he would make a strong statement but not follow through on his demand. She expected that as long as Lexi put food on the table at the right time and kept the house running, he would be assuaged.
Heinrich did not have the same devotion to family that she did. After her father died, Heinrich repeatedly rejected her suggestions that Momma move in with them—even though they lived in an eight-room house. In contrast, Sam and Diana welcomed Momma to join their larger family in a much smaller residence.
Heinrich was finally won over to the idea by the assertion that Momma would be a great help with their children. But in the intervening years, there were no living children to be cared for. Sadie was failing to do what other women did so easily.
Sadie’s hand touched her belly. Her monthly bleeding hadn’t come since January. A tentative and wary hope filled her, but she had little faith that this time would be any different than the others. Too many times she’d missed her bleeding, dreamed of holding a baby in her arms, only to be devastated a few days, weeks, or even months later, when bright red signaled the death of her deepest longing. Twice she’d kept hope alive long enough to see the beginning of a face in her failure.
She no longer informed either her mother or husband of her cycles. It was too painful to disappoint them as well as herself. Diana was the only other person who knew how often her body had let them down.
Sadie understood Heinrich’s resentment of her failure to bear him children. She shared it. Would he be able to accept her choice to leave him so that she could be with her mother on this trip? If he understood the possibility of her condition, he would absolutely forbid her from going to Chicago. Tonight she would be attentive to him to atone for adding the complication of her absence to his already-stressful work life. In the morning she would leave with her mother even if he was displeased.
And while she was gone, she’d pray for his understanding, or at least acceptance.
CHAPTER 3
JORDAN
Chicago
May 1894
Mama stared right at Jordan. Her clear caramel-brown eyes shone with wisdom and certainty. If Jordan looked only at Mama’s eyes, she wouldn’t believe she was lying in her deathbed. Jordan inhaled the warm and stuffy air. Mama’s comfort won out over Jordan’s desire for an open window.
“You been tryin’ to hide it from me, but I can tell you stopped talkin’ to God. Your spirit ain’t been the same since your Booker left us last summer.”
Jordan exhaled. She didn’t want to think about her husband’s death. She didn’t want to talk to Mama about faith. After all the hurt, she just couldn’t believe that God cared about her, so why have a conversation with Him?
“Maybe since before, when Margaret and the baby died.” Almost too quiet to hear, Mama stirred up that pain. Jordan’s heart twisted at the mention of her daughter and grandbaby, taken by yellow fever on April 5 and April 8 in 1892. Margaret had only been twenty-one, baby Grace not yet one.
“I’m fine,” Jordan lied, and they both knew it. “Don’t you worry about me. Just rest.”
“A mama always worries about her babies. No matter how old they get,” Mama declared, looking intensely at Jordan.
Jordan gave her mother a bittersweet smile.
“You know that, don’ you?” Mama challenged. “Or no matter where a mama is.”
Jordan nodded.
“Even if they gone from this earth,” Mama said.
Jordan took in a shaky breath. She had no response.
“I’m going to get you a cup of tea.” Jordan rose to leave.
Mama’s gnarled fingers grabbed Jordan’s hand. “Talk to the Holy Spirit, Jesus, God. You pick . . . but you gotta find your faith, Jordan, to get you through the hard times.”
“Mama, I don’t know what I believe in anymore,” Jordan confessed.
“You don’ have to know how or why faith work, you just got to find someone when you feeling lost,” Mama insisted.
Jordan swallowed. “How?”
“Start by counting your blessings, Jordan,” Mama whispered. “Never forget to count the treasures God gave you.”
Jordan stared at the small woman in the bed. Skepticism must have poured from her eyes; she didn’t feel blessed.