The Children's Blizzard Read online

  Tiny’s parents never wrote, however. Her parents never spoke his name. She couldn’t allow herself to, either, for fear she would let slip the damning truth behind her actions that day and kill her parents on the spot.

  Sometimes she let her imagination loose, picturing herself older, odder every year that she remained here. Children would make up songs about her, cruel songs. They would sneak around at night to see if they could catch a glimpse of her—afraid but excited, too, to see her face. They would shriek and run off in the night when she came to the window to see who was throwing pebbles at it. In their telling, she would grow uglier and crazier each year, until she was a witch, an ogress.

  But also in her imagination, she sometimes saw herself curled up on her bed, shrinking with the passing seasons. Doing her best to take up less air, less space. Withering away until she was like one of those creepy apple-head dolls that Mrs. Kristiansen made, dolls with wizened, wrinkled faces as if all substance had been sucked from them.

  “Gerda!” Raina had crept into the barn while she’d been arranging herself—not an easy thing to do—on the low milk stool, preparing to wait out the party. “Gerda, you are trying my patience—oh, there you are!”

  There was scolding in Raina’s voice. And other things—adult things, maturity and weariness and resoluteness, too. No nonsense. This was not the slightly singsong voice of the little sister she’d last seen months ago. Gerda steeled herself to look up into her sister’s face.

  There was no accusation in it. No hate. A steeliness—new—in her eyes, but it didn’t obscure the love she’d always seen there. Her sister would never look up to her again, but she would still love her. And Gerda assumed that burden, too—just when had her family’s love and care started feeling like the worst punishment she could imagine?

  “Gerda, why are you hiding away? And oh—how thin you are!” Raina clucked like a mother hen; she shook her head. She was dusty from the trip, her braided bun slightly undone, she hadn’t even paused to splash water on her face. But she looked well; she looked pretty—prettier than she had when she left, her cheeks less full, her cheekbones more pronounced. She looked somewhat guarded, too; it was evident that she had not come through these months unscathed emotionally. Gerda remembered her odd letters when she first left home, and she wondered.

  Raina looked tested, that was it—and she’d obviously passed that test, spectacularly. The two of them had never been equals; Gerda had always been the leader, Raina the docile follower. But now their positions were reversed, their relationship redefined, and Gerda frankly didn’t think she had the strength to adjust to its new parameters.

  “I’m not hiding, I’m—” But then Gerda sighed. “Yes, I’m hiding.”

  “Not from me, I hope?”

  “No, but from the others. You know Mama invited some neighbors to welcome you home.”

  “To show me off, you mean.”

  Gerda had to laugh. “Yes, that’s what I mean.”

  “Ach, I thought I was through with all that, once I came home.” And Raina slid down next to her sister, not caring that she was sitting in murky straw. She even took a piece of straw and began to suck on it, just like she used to when she was small. “I am tired of it, these people looking at me like I’m some saint. When all I did was what anyone would have done—” Then she stopped, and looked away.

  “Why did you send them home, Gerda?” Raina finally asked the question that no one else had dared. In all this time, all the accusation and anger, no one had asked her why she’d let the children out early; they all just assumed she’d gotten confused in the storm and made the wrong decision, and that was bad enough.

  But Gerda had been carrying the answer around in her stomach like a heavy stone; it weighed her down, it filled her up so that she couldn’t eat, couldn’t do anything but be aware of it, always. Here was a chance to give it to someone else, at least for a brief moment—and she took it, almost crying with the relief of unburdening herself.

  “Oh, Raina—it was because of Tiny! I wanted to be alone with him, and I knew that the Andersons were going to be gone for the day, it was so nice, so much warmer than it had been—remember?” And Gerda shut her eyes and felt, again, the surprising gift of the soft air that morning, bearing with it promises. Promises of the future. “I told Tiny, that morning, that I was going to let school out early and he should come for me and the girls, and then the storm came. So suddenly! But the children were already wearing their cloaks and had all their slates and pails—I’d already rung the bell. I told them to run. As if they could have, those little things. Then I jumped in the sleigh with Minna and Ingrid and Tiny and we went off. Laughing—laughing, Raina! It seemed exciting, in that moment, to outrun the storm. But I did turn back, once. And I saw that the children had already disappeared in the snow and wind, and I worried, then. I wondered if I should make Tiny turn around so we could call them back. But I didn’t. I told Tiny to keep going, I didn’t want to spoil my plans. And that is why I am a criminal. A murderess.”

  “Oh, Gerda.” Raina looked as shocked as a person could, and Gerda was glad. She’d longed to tell someone, but the only people around were Papa and Mama, and she just couldn’t hurt them any more. But now that she had told Raina, she was strangely relieved and free.

  “So you see, Raina, I am not like you, I’m not like anyone. I am evil. I am lost. I haven’t told Papa and Mama this—about Tiny. I haven’t told anyone. Just you. You’re the only one who knows the truth about me.” Gerda shifted on her stool; her lower leg ached in this position, but she welcomed the pain.

  “It’s good that you told me, you needed to tell someone. You’re not bad, Gerda, you just let—you just let a boy turn your head for a minute.” Raina seemed thoughtful; she tucked her legs up and hugged them against her chest. “That could happen to anyone.”

  “Not you. You wouldn’t have endangered those children for a man.”

  Raina took a very long time to answer this. She opened her mouth to speak, shut it, then finally lay her head in her hands before looking at her again. “No, you are not evil. I—I almost ran off with a man. The husband of the family I boarded with. I tell you, Gerda, it was awful in that house, he paid me too much attention and I was a fool, I let him. The first man to give me flowers, I put all my heart in his hands. And one night, right before the storm—when it had been so cold, remember? And we couldn’t leave the house for days, I thought I might go mad. He came to me and he told me we would leave, just the two of us. And even though he was a man who would leave his wife and family alone on the prairie—God help me, Gerda, I would have gone with him. I might have, I think. All that time in that house—those terrible weeks—I always asked myself, ‘What would Gerda do?’ Because you were the strong one, you always told me what to do, my sister.” Raina reached for Gerda’s hand.

  “Why—what stopped you?”

  “His wife. She came at him with a knife.”

  “Good Lord! I had no idea—your letters were odd, but I had no idea you landed in such an evil place.” The two Olsen girls sat hand in hand for a long while. Gerda remembered their uncomplicated childhood, being loved, being wanted. How had these two, raised in such a manner, ended up here—both of them wracked with guilt over a man?

  But just like a fairy tale, one sister remained good, while the other was branded forever.

  “You didn’t go,” Gerda reminded her sister.

  “I might have.”

  “You didn’t. For whatever reason, you didn’t.”

  “And then when the storm hit, I thought he would come for me and the children at the schoolhouse. I waited, hoping he would. But of course, he didn’t.” Raina raised her head and stared at the barn wall, tracking the movement of a small brown mouse that had poked its head out from a hollow in one of the slats. “Only when the wind blew the window out did I finally act on my own. I might have waited the
re all night, letting the children freeze to death.”

  “You didn’t. You did the right thing in the end. Don’t forget that, Raina. Don’t ever forget that. I did not.” Gerda embraced her guilt once more, returned to its rightful place in the pit of her stomach. Raina would walk around with little bits of it—the jagged, painful edges of knowledge—but this stone was hers alone.

  “What do you plan to do now?” Raina asked after a long moment. “Teach again?”

  “Not here, no. I can’t. No one would hire me.”

  “You could—I could help you—let me help you!” Raina looked up, her eyes sparkling. “I could take you to Lincoln with me, help with your education. You could go to college, too!”

  “No!” Gerda didn’t mean to shout, but she couldn’t bear this—her little sister so eager to help, to give her absolution. “No, Raina, no—you don’t understand. I cannot stay in Nebraska.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I am outside now—an outcast. This community, they will not have me, nor should they. There’s a pact out here, I’ve come to believe. Unwritten, but still. You don’t think of yourself first. And you don’t want too much. The people here—good people, don’t get me wrong—they abide by these rules, they never ask for more than what Providence has given them. Other than sailing across an ocean to take a piece of the earth as their own, they have never asked for more. They have never thought of themselves first. But I did, you see. I broke the pact. I can’t stay here.”

  “So where will you go, Gerda? Not too far away?”

  “I have a plan, I think. I’ve written to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Do you remember that school we visited long ago, where the little Indian children were? With Papa?”

  “Yes, and Papa got so angry?”

  “There are other schools like it. Out west—I mean to go west. Tiny always wanted to—” Gerda felt tears threaten. It did not help that Raina immediately scooted over and put her arms around her; Gerda stiffened, tried to push her sister away, but Raina refused to let go and finally, Gerda dissolved into tears for her beau, missing him so much, more than she had thought she would. She missed the children, of course, but Tiny—the thought of him dying out there alone; they’d found his body up against a fence post, far from his pony’s, he’d never even gotten close—caused her to muffle a scream of agony, feeling everything he must have felt. Terror, confusion, pain. Love and worry for her, too. She hoped.

  The two sisters sat in this embrace for a long while, and finally, Gerda felt the last tears drain from her. She was cleansed, although this feeling wouldn’t last. She would fill up again with the guilt and the grief and the shame, always the shame. As long as she had to look at her mama and especially her papa. So she had to leave. And live—alone.

  How do you grow old on the prairie?

  She wouldn’t stay around long enough to find out.

  “Raina? Raina!” Their mother was calling. Both sisters registered that she was only calling one of their names; Gerda smiled ruefully, already used to being forgotten. “Come, people are arriving!”

  “Oh, I don’t want to go!” Raina let go of her sister, and Gerda was amused to see her face in a familiar, childish pout.

  “You have to,” she admonished, for the last time the big sister scolding the little one; she wiped Raina’s dusty face with her apron, tried to corral the loose locks about her face, tucking them into the braided knot at her neck. “Now stand up, wipe your eyes, put on a smile. Mama and Papa are waiting for you. You have to do this for them. For me.”

  “All right,” Raina said reluctantly, scrambling up. “I must look a fright.”

  “You do, but such a pretty fright! And no one will care. They’ll see what they want to see—the heroine of the prairie.”

  “Still, I need to wash up. You’ll come in, too?”

  Gerda shook her head firmly; she picked up a book and held it up. “They don’t want me. They want you. I’m fine out here, believe me—content, even. In my own way.”

  “Well…” Raina looked doubtful.

  “Raina!” It was Papa’s booming voice now, and there was something in it that Gerda hadn’t heard since she’d been home—pride.

  “Go—go!” Gerda shooed her little sister away like she was a mouse. “You’ll see me at supper.”

  Raina nodded, brushed the dust and hay off her dress, looked at her dirty hands with a shudder, and ran off to be welcomed back home—to be admired and petted. To be the joy of Mama and Papa.

  Gerda returned to her book, settling down in her little corner.

  Outside.

  CHAPTER 37

  •••••

  ANETTE HAD NEVER BEEN SO overwhelmed in her life. Not even when Mama took her to the Pedersens’ and left her there had she been so bewildered.

  But this was different; this was a treat, she’d been told. A holiday! Anette had no idea what a holiday was, but evidently it was this—taking a train for the first time and oh, how terrifying it was! That great engine snorting and hissing and belching black steam into the air. Told to step up and into that live, sputtering monster, she hung back, frightened, but Mr. Woodson took her hand and helped her in. They picked a seat and he told her she could sit by the window as if this was a prize, although she didn’t really want to. But she did, to please him.

  The train started up with a shudder and more hissing, more steam, and it took off, the wheels clacking, jolting her in her seat as the car swayed from side to side. So fast! Too fast! The landscape out the window started to rush by in a dizzy, colorful blur. She didn’t know which direction they were going, forward or backward, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Then she opened them, and the land rushed by her again, greedily, but this time she kept her eyes open. Those tall poles—the telegraph, Mr. Woodson told her—seemed so close to the train, she was afraid they would hit them. There were times when the train slowed, then stopped, then other people got off or on before it sped up again, too soon. It kept going for a long time in this way—starting and stopping, starting and stopping, until they got to a great place with many tracks going in different directions, and other trains at rest but still steaming, and this was Omaha, Mr. Woodson said.

  He got their bags—Anette only had one, because he said there would be things waiting for her at the house where she was going to stay until school started—and he helped her climb down the big steps. It felt strange to walk on ground that didn’t move beneath her feet and for a few minutes she felt a little off-kilter. They walked toward a big house—it was the depot, he said—full of people. So many people! Anette had never seen so many people in her life.

  Once, Mr. Woodson stopped and pointed to a cluster of families, all looking weary and defeated, waiting to get on one of the trains. “Homesteaders,” he said, almost sadly. “Giving up, going back East or across the sea. A lot of them go back, you know.”

  Anette didn’t know. She’d never been told how her mother had come to this new land, and she herself had been born here. That you could leave it had never seemed possible to her, until now.

  When they exited through the doors of the crowded depot—people bumped into her, stepped on her feet, jostled her wooden hand, so she kept it close by her side—they got on what Mr. Woodson called a horsecar. It was a big train car only with wagon wheels, pulled by a horse, and it made many stops. It was full of people, too, mostly speaking English but so quickly and loudly that Anette couldn’t quite keep up with it. There were other languages, though, mixed in; she did recognize a few snatches of Norwegian but then there were different words, with harsher accents, that she didn’t recognize at all. And the people were all pressed together so tightly! She smelled their odors, some with food smells clinging to them that were unfamiliar to her—very pungent, sharp, some exotically sweet.

  Then Mr. Woodson took her hand again, and they stepped down out of the horsecar and got o
n another, but this one was attached to some wires running overhead, and it went so fast! Not as fast as the train, but almost, and he said this was a cable car; it was new, Omaha was very proud of it, but back where he came from—New York City—they had many of these, he said so casually. As if it were not the most miraculous, terrifying thing he had ever seen! But by now, her senses were so overwhelmed all she could do was nod dumbly and hope that soon everything would stop and she could go somewhere quiet and sleep.

  And that’s what happened; they got off the cable car and walked a little way to a neighborhood with houses so close together, Anette marveled, and it made her uncomfortable. Was she supposed to live in a place like this, so close to other houses that you could see inside them? See how happy they were, all these fancy people?

  These houses were so enormous, many families must live in them together—they had one, two, three stories! They even had large outdoor rooms stuck on them that Mr. Woodson, noticing how she stared at them, called verandas.

  “Verandas,” she repeated; it was such a pretty word, and she wondered if even Teacher knew it.

  They went up the steps to one of these homes with a veranda that stretched around the corner of the house, maybe clear all the way around, she couldn’t tell. They were welcomed inside by a man and a woman and the woman knelt beside Anette very tenderly, but she didn’t put her arms around her, which Anette appreciated. Because she just didn’t think she could stand one more unfamiliar sensation right then.

  These people, the Johnsons, were what Mr. Woodson called her guardians, and when he said it, Anette caught a sadness in his voice. He had explained it to her when she’d asked why she couldn’t live with him if she had to go to the city.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t want to live with an old bachelor, a working stiff like me,” he’d sputtered, but he also looked pleased that she’d asked. “I have no business taking care of a little girl!” But he promised he would remain in Omaha for a while and show her all the sights before he went back to New York, so she would still see him. For a few weeks.