The Sisters Page 5

  The wedding hadn’t been anything like what she used to dream of, though life before Hans had been so long ago, she was finding it harder all the time remembering what her dreams had been. More than anything before or since, she’d wanted to marry Wallace. That much she knew. There wouldn’t have been the money for a grand wedding, of course, but they would have been married in the Emmanuel Baptist Church in front of everybody they knew, and when they kissed, everyone would have teared up, seeing such love.

  And afterwards? What was it she had wanted afterwards? They’d talked of children, lots of children, and Bertie had seen herself wiping small faces, had seen Wallace laughing beneath a tumble of little bodies on snowy mornings, had imagined year after year cupping a new tiny hand in hers to show just how far to poke a bean seed into the ground.

  Storybook notions of a foolish girl, those were. Even so, she would have liked to be able to say she loved Hans, that in six years she had come to love him, but she didn’t think that was true, not unless the warm, solid feeling she had for him was love. It was respect, she thought. And appreciation. But love? She’d loved Wallace, had felt a tingling and leaping inside her, and even now when she thought about him for more than a minute or two, that feeling came back.

  Of course she wasn’t sure Hans loved her either. He’d never said he did. He hadn’t even courted her, really. He was already one of the customers at the restaurant when she was hired on to wait tables, and at first she steered clear because she thought he was one of those men who played with girls’ feelings. He was always laughing and teasing with the waitresses and asking young women who came in by themselves or in pairs to sit down and let him buy them pie and coffee, but then Bertie started noticing how, when those same girls came in later and Hans was there, they’d nod or wave at him real quick, then look away. If he’d treated them badly, they would have pretended not to see him or they would have walked out. None of it made any sense—not until she saw him get up one day to pay his ticket. Not a minute before, Bertie had heard the girl who had sat down at his table agree to go to the pictures with him, but as soon as he stood up, she was falling all over herself to make up some excuse about just remembering a promise to help her mother. Hans had nodded, offered her his hand to shake, and then waited for her to scurry out the door before he moved painfully in his leg-swinging limp toward the cash register. Bertie felt so bad for him that the next day when he was in for lunch, she scooped up an extra-big helping of mashed potatoes for him, and before she knew it they were talking. She wasn’t allowed to sit down with him while she worked her shift, but when he asked her to the pictures, she said yes right off.

  He was friendly and kind, but there had never been anything romantic between them. That first evening, when he walked her ever so slowly home after the pictures, she’d reeled off her lie about being nineteen, which was probably the main reason he asked to marry her just a few weeks later. He was twenty-four—a whole ten years older than she was, if she had confessed to her right age—and ready to settle down. He’d made no secret of that. All his brothers and sisters, older and younger, had married—there were ten of them, counting Hans—and because he was the one left without a family, it had fallen to him to look after his parents, but they were gone now. She noticed he got fidgety whenever the picture at the theater was a love story, and when he told her how his own parents’ marriage had been arranged before they came over from Denmark, she understood he hadn’t come up thinking that people had to love each other to be married, only that they needed to stick together and help each other along once they were. He’d managed to save a bit of money, he told her, and when he finally did say, “I’d like to marry you if you’ll have me,” he added right away, “I’ll buy you a house, and you can stop working. I’d like us to have four or five children, but I’ll accept whatever the Lord brings.”

  She had almost told him about Wallace then, and Mabel, too, but she couldn’t think of how to say it. You had to really trust someone with your heart to tell them how your sister had betrayed you and bewitched your boyfriend into running off with her. Then if she told about that, she’d wind up telling him about Jim Butcher and all the talk about how it was Mabel’s fault he’d killed himself. She’d heard how the women whispered all through the wake.

  “Fool he might have been. A drinker. But she threw that boy in his face, sure as I’m sitting here. Her sister’s beau.”

  “Hard to believe that nice Hansford boy could be taken in like that.”

  “It’s the nice ones don’t have any strength against a tramp. Her mama hadn’t been dead a year when she started making over that poor man, turning his head—we could all see it, Emily, you the same as the rest of us. I expect deep down Jim Butcher felt so bad over it, he lost his mind, couldn’t see it was the best thing for that girl to run off.”

  “Too bad she had to pull Wallace along with her, though. Hurt her sister like that. And I’ve never seen anybody take on like his mother has these last couple of days.”

  If the chatter of gossips had been the worst of it, in time Bertie might have found a way to tell Hans, but it wasn’t. A few days after her stepfather was buried, she told Mrs. Small, the preacher’s wife, that she wanted to go back to the house for her things. Reverend and Mrs. Small insisted on going, too.

  “You go on and sort through your dresser, honey,” Mrs. Small said. “The Reverend and I will go into Jim’s room to look around for anything that might have belonged to your mama.”

  “If you see the stereopticon, I want that.”

  In her room, Bertie hurried to unload her dresser drawers and her closet into the washtub Mrs. Small had brought with her, but there was something else she was after. She left the filled washtub on the bed and stepped quietly into the hall. The Smalls were talking low, more gossip, but with their special tone of sorrow. Nobody else, Bertie was pretty sure, knew where Butcher had kept his money, and she wasn’t about to let those men from the auction house put it in their pockets when they hunted through what was left. It wouldn’t take a minute to slip into the kitchen and reach behind the whiskey bottles for the strongbox. Then there was a wild shriek, so near that Bertie, thinking she’d been caught, knocked a bottle to the floor and had to leap out of the way to keep the liquor from splashing her feet. In an instant, the wad of bills was in her pocket and she was back in the hall, following the sound of hysterical sobs coming from Butcher’s room.

  Reverend Small was lifting his wife from the floor into the hard chair where Butcher used to sit to put on his shoes.

  “What happened?”

  Reverend Small’s head snapped up, his face white, his eyes streaming. Bertie stopped where she was.

  The Reverend knelt beside his wife, clasping her hands in his. When he began to pray, Bertie bowed her head. That’s when she saw the stereopticon lying on the floor near the bed, a scattering of photo cards around it. One card lay closer to the door, close enough for Bertie to reach with her toe, while the Smalls clung to each other, eyes closed. In an instant she recognized the swing and garden background of Mabel’s birthday portrait, but she didn’t understand the rest. Not at first. A figure of a woman sitting on the swing, wearing nothing but a white half-corset and stockings, her legs spread wide to display thick hair darker than the long locks that draped her shoulders. Her head was tilted down, as if she were trying to hide her face. Bertie didn’t have to pick up the card to see that it was Mabel.

  How could she tell Hans about that? What, she wondered, would this nice man think of her if he knew she had a sister who could show herself like that? And what would he think of her if she told him that even though she thought Mabel was a tramp, worse than Jezebel, she was still glad Jim Butcher was dead? He might fear for what bad seed she could pass on to his children, and then he would take back his offer, and her chance to live in peace and to stop struggling on her own would be gone.

  Of course he’d kept things from her, too. He hadn’t told her that he thought whatever belonged to him belonged to e
veryone else in his family. She’d worn herself out that first spring and summer after they were married, digging up the ground behind and alongside the house, planting corn, beans, peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes—even onions and some dill. And when the harvest started coming in, she worked from early in the morning until way past dark, putting up quart jar after quart jar. She was just carrying the last of the beans down to the cellar when Hans came walking in with three of his sisters, each one of them carrying a crate. He marched them down to the cellar and waved his hand around at the full shelves. “Take whatever you want,” he said.

  To this day he had never understood why she was mad. That evening she’d yelled and cried, telling him and telling him it wasn’t right he should give away her hard work like that, but he just said, “That’s how we do things in my family” and “We would have never got through all that ourselves.” She’d made up her mind then and there he wasn’t going to do it again. When spring came, she didn’t plant a garden, and she packed up all the empty mason jars and sold them to a woman down the street.

  He hadn’t told her about the whiskey, either. She couldn’t abide drinking, even if he did get it legal instead of from a bootlegger like Jim Butcher always did. There wasn’t a thing she hated to do more than cry, but she just couldn’t help it when, right after bringing her back from the judge’s office and showing her around her new house, he pulled one of those flat bottles out of the kitchen cabinet and poured himself a drink.

  “It’s for my leg,” he said, but she kept on crying.

  “I hear men make all kinds of excuses for it.”

  “Really, Bertie,” he said. “The doctor wrote up an order for it. My leg aches so at night, it helps me sleep.” He tried to put his arms around her, but she pulled away and ran into the bedroom. He had enough sense not to follow her right then. She could hear him rummaging around in the drawers in the kitchen. When he did come in, he tapped her softly on the shoulder and held out a raggedy piece of paper. There was a doctor’s name printed on it, and a note she couldn’t read except for the word whiskey.

  She had to accept then that maybe the doctor did prescribe the whiskey like medicine, but it wasn’t until things got so bad and the mill closed and Hans was bringing in less money every week that she saw how he hurt without it. Prescription or no prescription, they couldn’t afford it, and night after night, he walked the floor, in too much pain to settle down. Deep inside, though, she couldn’t help feeling glad that there wasn’t any whiskey in the house.

  Now that the president had gone back on Prohibition, it didn’t matter so much that they didn’t have a lot of money. With liquor being legal again, it wasn’t so high, and it seemed like it was everywhere. On those nights when Hans got into bed and climbed on top of her, she had to hold her breath to keep from being sick when he breathed that nasty sweet smell into her face. It was worse the times he’d get impatient and not wait to see if one drink would quiet the pain. When that happened, she’d leave Hans at the kitchen table, pouring one drink after another, and she’d dig herself down into the covers, wrap her arm around Alma, and pretend to be asleep when he finally came to bed.

  Knowing how much she hated drinking men, because of Butcher, Wallace had sworn to her he would never take a drop. There was so much Wallace knew about her—more even than she’d ever told Mabel, especially things about Mabel, like how Bertie felt ugly standing next to her and how she was jealous of how smart and quick Mabel was. She’d even told him how she hated Mabel sometimes, like when she’d make up to Butcher the way she did. How could a person who knew so much about her run off like that? Mabel had made him somehow; Bertie didn’t doubt that. But every spell wore off in time, didn’t it? Why hadn’t he written to her to explain? Why hadn’t he come looking for her?

  Bertie sat down again at the table and poured out a new pile of buttons for Alma, sorting through them quickly to find the other rose. It was there. She snatched it up before Alma saw it and slid it into her pocket with the other one. She picked up the letter again and got up to stir the cabbage and turn down the fire.

  Wallace wasn’t going to write. The time had come to bury him, to bury it all. Bertie lifted the lid to the firebox, reached into her pocket, and tossed in one of the buttons. It popped in the fire, clattering against the walls of the box. Startled, she dropped the other back into her pocket—she’d find another way to get rid of it. For a moment, she held the letter high over the flame, feeling the envelope growing crisp in her hand, but she didn’t drop it in.

  Turning away from the stove, she opened the catchall drawer next to the sink and worked her fingers through a mix of old nails, pieces of broken dishes, and lengths of twine until she found a pencil. It was dull, so she scraped away at it with a knife, whittling a point. She would make the letters stop, once and for all. She wiped the counter dry before she laid the letter down and then dragged the pencil, blackening out the name and address the Juniper postmaster had written in. When she was satisfied that nothing about her Newman identity could be read, she sharpened the pencil again. Deceased, she wrote, drawing a line from the word and circling her name, her old name. Deceased, she wrote again at the bottom, along with the words Return to Sender.

  FOUR

  Like Shirley

  January 1937

  Newman, Indiana

  ALMA

  “EGGS, MILK, SODA CRACKERS. Eggs, milk, soda crackers.” At first Alma had said the list again and again so she would remember it when she got to the store, but now she chanted it and squeezed at the dollar inside her mitten to help keep her mind off the cold. It wasn’t working. The sky was as dark as smudgy pencil and snow had begun to mix in with the rain. Her cap was already soaked, the damp cold beginning to seep through her coat.

  When she’d gotten to school this morning, the teachers were standing outside telling everyone to go back home right away. Alma could see for herself that the river had risen enough to cover the school yard, and when she passed a cluster of older girls, she heard one of them say the water had gotten into the basement and that the principal was afraid the whole building would wash away. A boy in Alma’s class, Ricky Creech, jumped all around the girls, tugging at their scarves and hats, chirping, “No school! Flood’s gonna get the school! No school!” The girls looked at him soberly and the tallest one pushed him away and called him a silly, stupid child.

  Alma did go straight home, just like her teacher said to, but Mother made her go back out again when Alma told her there weren’t any soda crackers to go with her tea. “Better get some things while we can,” Mother said, taking a dollar from the baking powder can and handing it to Alma.

  “Will they send Daddy home, too?” Alma asked, but Mother just grunted and said her back was still aching from the baby and she needed to lie down again.

  Mother was mad at Daddy for going out with the men this morning. They’d come early in a big truck, knocking on doors up and down the street, looking for volunteers to come fill sandbags, build rowboats, and do anything else that was needed.

  Alma had followed Daddy onto the back porch and wedged into the corner where the dust mop leaned. Mother came out while Daddy was sitting on a bucket, pulling on his rubbers, and said, “Who are these men?”

  “I don’t know, Bertie, just men from the town. Everybody that’s able has to pitch in.”

  Mother stood right in front of the outside door, arms crossed and resting on the mound of the baby. “And who’s going to pay you for that work? That’s what I want to know. Who?”

  Daddy shook his head. “I’ve got to go.”

  “You tell them you can’t go on account of your crippled leg. You know you can’t hardly walk when it’s cold like this.”

  Daddy fastened the buttons on his rubbers and stood up. He reached out and tried to take Mother’s hand, but she stuffed it down tighter behind the crook of her arm. “I’ll be back before the water gets too high,” Daddy said. He was trying to use his patient voice, but Alma could hear the way it frayed out around t
he edges, just a little, like static on the radio. She was used to the sour sound of Mother’s voice, all turned in on itself, like it didn’t really want to come out, but Daddy didn’t get angry so much. “You’ll need to take care of things here,” he said to Mother. “Put up high what you can and pack a bag. Might have to leave in a hurry.”

  He held out his arms for Alma and lifted her up for a kiss. “You mind your mother, now. Do what she tells you.” Alma tightened her arms around his neck and held on, nuzzling her face in his coat collar. It was still wet from last night, chilled and mildewy at once. He’d be so cold if he went out in a wet coat, and she wanted to say so and beg him to stay, but Daddy didn’t hold with fussing and he might lose his temper if she cried.

  Daddy rubbed her back then tugged gently at her arm. “Have to go, sweetie.” He lowered her to her feet and faced Mother, insisting without any words that she move aside and let him pass.

  Alma followed her mother back into the kitchen. Mother sat at the table and put her head down. Alma stood beside her quietly, waiting to be told what to do, but Mother stayed still. Alma didn’t think she was crying, but she reached out to touch her mother’s shoulder, just in case, because that’s what Alma always wished people would do when she was sad.

  Mother jerked upright with the touch but didn’t turn her head to look at Alma. “You’d better go on to school.”

  “Daddy said I should help you.”

  “Daddy said for you to mind. Go on to school.”

  So she had gone to school, only to be turned around again. When she came back in the house, Mother was on the stepstool in the kitchen, making room on the highest shelf in the cabinet for the things she kept under the counter, but she wasn’t hurrying.

  “There’s water all around the school,” Alma said. “Teacher said we shouldn’t come back till it says so on the radio.”

  Mother grasped the lowest shelf of the open cabinet to steady herself while she got off the stepstool. She closed her eyes, rolled her head round and round, and rubbed at her back. “I’m going to lie down for a while,” she said. “Be a good girl and fix me a cup of tea to settle my stomach. And bring me some soda crackers with it.”