The Children's Blizzard Page 27

  Anette didn’t want to think about him leaving, not yet—so much had happened in such a short time! She was too tired to think—Mrs. Johnson saw that immediately while the two men stood chatting, and she rose with a cluck of her tongue.

  “Oh, you two! Can’t you see the little girl is asleep on her feet? I’m taking her up to her room now so she can take a nap.”

  As the nice lady led her up the stairs, suddenly Anette was seized with panic—who was this lady, really? Where was she taking her—to lock her up somewhere? She stopped and turned to Mr. Woodson and began to talk in Norwegian, forgetting he didn’t speak it.

  “You will come, too? Don’t let me be alone—I’m afraid!”

  But he seemed to understand her anyway, because he went up the steps to her and knelt down.

  “I’ll be back for dinner. It’s a celebration, Anette—for you! A party! Don’t be afraid of the Johnsons, they are very kind people and Mrs. Johnson only wants you to rest for a while. But I’ll be back, I promise.”

  Anette nodded; her heart stopped squeezing with fear, and she continued up the stairs to be shown a room that was so splendid, once more all she could do was gape. There was so much furniture! She’d never seen so much furniture in her life, many chairs and bureaus and what Mrs. Johnson called a dressing table, and also what she called a wardrobe, and then a bed so huge, Anette was afraid of it. She might be swallowed up in the middle of this ocean of a bed!

  She held herself perfectly still, afraid to move, her eyes taking in everything, but she still didn’t quite comprehend, even when Mrs. Johnson repeated it, that this was her room. She was still trying to make sense of it as the kind woman helped her change out of her traveling clothes. That’s what Mrs. Johnson called them, although to Anette they were simply clothes, but evidently rich people had clothes for different occasions. Then she was shown a wardrobe full of new dresses to choose from, and bureaus full of nightgowns, so she put one of those over her head and climbed into the bed for a nap.

  Oh, how nice it was! It was softer and smelled better than anything she’d ever known in her life—it smelled like flowers and rainwater. She arranged herself on her pillow and shut her eyes, so Mrs. Johnson could get the hint and leave her alone. But sleep didn’t come immediately.

  How was it that just this morning she had said goodbye to the Pedersens? Mother Pedersen had actually wept and held her close, which Anette had not liked at all. Father Pedersen had given her a little present of flowers to take on the train, which she lost somewhere along the way. Then she had been driven away from that house that she’d been told, once, to call home.

  And she would never see the other place—that dirty soddie that had once been home—ever again, either. Nor, probably, her mama. Who had left in the middle of the night as mysteriously as she had arrived.

  But Anette had not been surprised.

  Nothing really surprised her anymore. Too much was strange. Too much had happened to her. She ached with a longing for something, but she wasn’t sure what. This place, this grand palace, was to be her home now, and then the school in the fall would be another home of sorts—but she couldn’t bring herself to think of that. Although Teacher would be nearby then, in Lincoln, at something called a college, and she promised she would visit Anette often.

  But she felt lonely anyway, mostly, despite the fact that she had been surrounded by people ever since the blizzard. Missing something. Missing someone. Not her mama, not anymore—oh, yes, she’d been so happy to see her that day! But almost immediately, she’d waited for the bad thing to happen, because it always did. And when she was told that her mother had left in the middle of the night without a goodbye—just like the other time—it didn’t hurt as much. The wound this time was already inside her, it wasn’t being carved into her with a dull knife like it had been the first time.

  She would never see her mother again, but the difference was—she didn’t want to see her mother again.

  So it must be Fredrik she missed, then; Fredrik she thought of when she thought of “home.” But she could bring his memories with her wherever she went, that’s what Teacher had said to her once. So “home” would be that—anywhere she could think of Fredrik. But already his image was fading at an alarming rate; sometimes all she could remember of him were those dreadful moments when they were both crying, mad at each other, in the middle of the blizzard.

  Or sometimes, all she could remember was his body, sleeping so still beside her when she opened her eyes the next morning in the ravine, and she was so cold, she was beyond feeling.

  * * *

  —

  AS THE DAYS passed, Anette saw so many new things, experienced so many wondrous moments, she wondered if she would ever be able to remember them. She wished she was clever enough to write them down—in a diary, that’s what it was called. Mrs. Johnson had given her one the first night she was in Omaha, but she didn’t have the right words to explain all the images parading through her mind. She could see them clearly, but she couldn’t pin them down upon the page. Everything happened so quickly, one after another, an assault. But people meant well, they liked her, they were kind, Mr. Woodson kept reminding her whenever he saw her grow still, her eyes dull, retreating into herself.

  Take that dinner in her honor, when she had been the only child present. There were so many things to eat and it was evident she was supposed to try them all and make happy noises, but all she’d felt was sick by the time it was all over. And all those shining, grown-up faces turned her way! She’d squirmed, she’d wriggled, she’d wanted nothing as much as she wanted to run away right then, just sprint out of the house and keep running. But Omaha, she soon found out, was not a place for that; there were too many people and wagons and things called carriages and drays and cable cars, all going their own ways, taking turns crisscrossing the street, and Anette couldn’t figure out the pattern, so she couldn’t just run. She’d be hit by something, that was clear as day.

  They took many outings, she and Mr. Woodson, and he did try, very patiently, to explain what he called traffic to her. There were corners where everything had to stop, where some people and carriages were allowed to proceed while others waited, but she just couldn’t get the hang of it; she always wanted to cross when it wasn’t her turn.

  There were parties for her, where other children were all dressed up in party clothes, as was she; Mrs. Johnson had helped her understand, or at least try to, which clothes were supposed to be worn when. And every piece of clothing was only worn once at the Johnsons’ before it was whisked away to be laundered! By someone else, not Anette! Mrs. Johnson did sit her down and explain that the boarding school wouldn’t quite be the same; she would have a uniform and would wear it for a week before it was laundered, but again she wouldn’t have to do it herself, which seemed fantastic.

  At those parties, Anette was simply too shy to play any of the games the other children knew, games they seemed to have been born knowing how to play. What she’d heard someone call “playtime” was not anything she had been acquainted with, except for recess at school. While she wasn’t ashamed of how hard she’d once worked—one of the most amazing things was that her body no longer got stiff and achy when she sat too long, her back no longer throbbed, she didn’t get headaches anymore—she was sometimes filled with a sadness that she had missed out on what seemed an important part of childhood. At least childhood for girls and boys who had grown up in Omaha.

  The other children’s screaming—city children were definitely more excitable than prairie children—did make her ears ache, though; she hadn’t been prepared for how loud the city was compared to the prairie. All the voices in the streets and the wheels of the carriages and wagons and cable cars, outdoor clocks with bells that chimed, and not all at the same time, harnesses on storefront doors that jingled when the doors opened and closed, jangly music coming out of buildings Mr. Woodson wouldn’t take her to,
people shouting, selling things on every corner—

  Even Mother Pedersen at her most furious couldn’t have made her voice heard over all that noise.

  One day they went to what Mr. Woodson called a circus—P. T. Barnum’s circus, he said proudly, he’d seen it back in New York at something called the Hippodrome. It was all under a big tent, and there was a parade full of the oddest people she’d ever seen—giants and tiny people and what Mr. Woodson pointed out as clowns, people with funny faces who piled out of carriages and jumped around and hit one another with pig bladders and sacks of flour. And then there were the fantastic animals; he pointed them out to her, too. Elephants and tigers and lions, the most beautiful horses she’d ever seen ridden bareback by elegant ladies on their tiptoes. Anette couldn’t take her eyes off those graceful figures, she thought she might cry, she’d never seen such prettiness in her life. She was given peanuts and popcorn and something called spun sugar, and she ate it all and then got sick later, but Mr. Woodson didn’t mind. “That’s how you see your first circus,” he said, tickled. “I got sick the first time I went to one, too.”

  He took her to where he worked, once. An enormous building surrounded by even taller ones. It had a big sign at the entrance that read Home of the Omaha Daily Bee. He was very proud when he took her inside and introduced her to so many men and ladies; one man in particular Mr. Woodson called “the boss,” and he was very happy to meet her and shook her hand solemnly and said, “Thank you, little lady, for all the subscription renewals.”

  She had no idea what that meant.

  Her favorite part was when Mr. Woodson showed her the printing press, a monster of a machine, taller than any man—well, maybe not as tall as the giant she’d seen in the circus—with a huge roll of paper that continuously flowed over the gears and what Mr. Woodson called “the slug,” which seemed to be made of raised metal letters. The paper never stopped rolling over it, and then it was folded and cut into pages and it just kept going and going and going. The sound of it was like what she imagined a dragon sounded like. But she wasn’t afraid of it; she could have looked at that never-ending roll of paper being stamped and folded and cut, over and over, forever. When Mr. Woodson saw how much she liked it, he chortled. “Another Nellie Bly, by God!”

  She didn’t know who Nellie Bly was, of course, and he explained that she was a woman who did what he did, and that made her stand very still. The other women she’d met at the office had done things like fetching coffee and hanging up hats and coats and writing down things for the men. That a woman could go out in the world like Mr. Woodson did, all by herself, and write her own words that so many people would read—she couldn’t believe such a thing!

  Mr. Woodson also took her to another part of town to meet one of his friends. This part of the city was different; the buildings looked newer, they were closer together and not as grand as where the Johnsons lived. And the people who lived there had skin that was dark, brown and caramel and every shade in between. At first she was a little afraid of them, they looked so different even from the Natives she’d seen, these dusky people in regular clothes, and so she cringed walking among them. But Mr. Woodson tightened his grip on her hand and told her, in a half whisper, to behave herself. He didn’t seem afraid, but he did look a little nervous.

  They walked into a saloon—“If the Johnsons found out they’d have my head so mum’s the word!”—and Mr. Woodson picked her up and sat her on a stool in front of a long bar. Behind the bar was another dark man, and Mr. Woodson introduced him as “Mr. Ollie Tennant.”

  “Pleased to meet you, young lady,” Mr. Tennant said solemnly, holding out his hand.

  Anette looked at Mr. Woodson, who nodded. She held out her own hand, and Mr. Tennant shook it politely. Then she relaxed, because Mr. Tennant smiled kindly at her and gave her a glass of something called sarsaparilla, which was bitter at first, then surprised her with a smooth sweetness as it went down her throat. She liked it.

  “I have a little girl about the same age as you,” Mr. Tennant said proudly. “Melissa. She’s out playing with her friends, though.”

  “That’s nice,” Anette said. “Does she look like you?”

  Mr. Tennant seemed perplexed by this question, but then he smiled—he had a nice smile, it went all the way up to his eyes—and he nodded.

  “Dark as midnight,” he replied. “You might say it runs in the family.”

  Mr. Woodson chuckled at this, and then the two of them chatted a little—Mr. Woodson asked Mr. Tennant how business was on this side of town, and Mr. Tennant said it was good, better than it had been at the Lily, and that his wife was happier here. So was he.

  “We look after one another,” he said with satisfaction. “And we have some Negro schoolteachers here now, we’re building a fine new high school. You were always good to me, Woodson. You’re the only one of my old customers to stop by and say hello. I really appreciate that.”

  “I hear there’s going to be a newspaper for the colored population. You should try your hand at writing for it, Ollie. I mean that. You’re a well-read cuss, that’s for sure. And people on the other side of town know you, they might actually read it if you’re part of it.”

  “Maybe.” Mr. Tennant nodded thoughtfully, and Anette thought she saw a little gleam in his soft brown eyes that was still there when she and Mr. Woodson said goodbye.

  * * *

  —

  AS THE WEEKS raced by in this way, she discovered some surprising things. First of all, how dirty the city was! There was soot and grime everywhere, and animal waste in the streets. The prairie was dirty, of course—goodness, it was all dirt! Even the walls where she’d once lived were composed entirely of dirt. But that kind of dirt came up from the earth, which she could never think of as anything other than good. The dirt in the city came from the sky and from people. City dirt was dirtier than country dirt, it just was.

  She also learned that you could get tired from good things almost as much as you can get tired from bad things. While her body felt stronger, more rested, than she could ever remember it feeling, the truth was that sometimes she grew weary just the same. She could get exhausted just from too much laughing, she found out. Too many outings, too many new experiences. Too many emotions—they could wear a person out. She thought she’d never be tired again, once it had been explained to her that she wouldn’t have to work like she used to. She had been wrong about that.

  Eventually, she got used to the Johnsons, as she’d gotten used to the Pedersens, and while there was a world of difference between them, the one constant was that she still felt as if she didn’t belong. And now that she was growing up—she was twelve, they’d had a birthday party for her with presents and ice cream and an organ grinder with a monkey—she was starting to realize that she might never feel as if she belonged anywhere. That maybe she had never had the chance to, or that she didn’t have it in her, and she was destined always to be a stranger in someone else’s house. And this realization troubled her.

  Especially when she had to say goodbye to Mr. Woodson, who was going back to New York City. He seemed excited about it, although sad, too.

  The day before he was to get on one of those terrifying trains and head east, he took her for a walk. It was a long walk, the longest she’d had since coming to Omaha, but she liked that; her legs stretched out, they ached in a good way, and when she asked, as they came to the outskirts of town, whether she could run, he laughed and said, “Go ahead!”

  And she did! She stretched out her legs and ran, her wooden hand didn’t impede her at all, she ran and imagined that Fredrik was chasing her, and for a moment, she could feel him on her heels, ready to overtake her. And in the next moment, he had; he’d run on ahead of her, and once he turned back to wave at her, then he rounded a corner and disappeared. She stopped, then; tears filled her eyes as her heart followed him for a moment. Then her heart let him go. He w
as really gone now, gone forever—she wiped her tears, wrenched by his loss again, and the impending loss of Mr. Woodson, who’d been so kind, who made her laugh, who—maybe even loved her.

  She hugged herself as she cried. Because no one was left to do so.

  Mr. Woodson was beside her in a jiffy, though. He didn’t hug her—he never had; he seemed awkward around her in that way. But he did pat her shoulder and she heard him sniff, too, as he managed to say, thickly, “There, there.”

  Then he took her hand, and they stood for a long moment together, as if waiting for someone. But finally, the two of them started walking again.

  After a few minutes Mr. Woodson stopped, and he pointed at a little store.

  “That’s where I first saw her,” he told Anette, staring at the shabby little store with a couple of weathered wagons and sturdy farm horses hitched in front of it. “That young girl. My maiden of the prairie. I thought I was an old fool, to be so taken with her. But she opened my eyes and led me out there. She led me to you.” He squeezed her hand but kept on staring, still looking for someone who was not there. Anette understood, so she squeezed his hand back. He had a ghost, just like she did.

  “At least I got to save you,” he continued thoughtfully. “At least I got to do some good, after all.” He sighed. It was a deep sigh, the kind of sigh that settled something.

  Then they turned around and, hand in hand, walked back to town.

  FIVE YEARS LATER

  CHAPTER 38

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