After a dreamless night, I found Mom making pancakes early the next morning. Fridays were for pancakes, and Mom dutifully made sure Mary got her Friday pancakes before she was off to the beach. My mother offered me the platter heaped with blueberry pancakes as big as a dinner plate.
I shook my head. “Later,” I said impatiently.
I slid into a seat at the table, watching as my mother turned back to the kitchen counter with the tiniest sigh. She slipped two cakes onto a plate, every vertebra in her back visible as she bent over to pop the plate into the oven.
You were right to choose this one. Mildred’s words echoed in my head.
I fumed silently, thinking, What other choice did Magda have? Magda chose me, because Mom is … how she is … What other choice was there? I asked the spirits silently, bewildered.
Mary crashed into the room at full speed, interrupting my thoughts as Mom replaced the platter of pancakes on the table. The kitchen had a certain gravity like that: add food and hot coffee, and it acquired a summoning power all its own. My father shuffled in suppressing a yawn, the newspaper tucked under one arm. My mother hated when he retrieved the newspaper in his robe, and she frowned her displeasure.
As Dad and Mary served themselves and Mom sat down at the table with a cup of coffee, I addressed my mother. “Mom, the other night John said Lucy has been acting strange. Can we go out there today?”
Magda swooped into the kitchen in an equally well-worn housecoat. It was the color of dried-up mint toothpaste, and I wondered if it had ever been green.
“What’s this, then?” Magda asked, as Mary scooched her chair over to make room.
“Apparently there’s something wrong with John Weseloh’s dog,” my father said from behind his paper with a practiced indifference.
My mother’s eyes shifted from me to Magda. “I—” Mom started.
“I thought we could go together?” I offered gently, when Mom closed her mouth again. I secretly hoped for the time alone with my mother. I needed to ask her things about Magda and Mildred, even if she might not answer me.
“What’s this, Helene?” Magda repeated, staring down my mother.
Mary stopped chewing, a wad of pancake lodged in her cheek. Her eyes were wide as she watched the proceedings.
Mom lifted her downturned face to meet Magda’s. An entire conversation took place in the steady gaze between them. I knew better than to interfere. My mother broke first, dropping her gaze to the floor again.
“That’s what I thought,” Magda said smugly. “That silly animal stuff is all fine and good for you, darling, but I need Lisbett today.”
Mary chewed quietly across the table from me, studying her plate intently. She snuck a peek at me, and I gave the slightest hint of a shrug. We had seen how this played out before.
“For heaven’s sake, Magda. Elisabeth wants to go,” my father said suddenly, dropping the paper again.
In my eighteen years, I had only witnessed my father disagreeing with Magda over the landscaping, the chickens, and other things of my father’s domain. This was new.
“You stay out of this, Jacob Ridder,” Magda snapped in a low voice, biting every syllable. She pointed a thin, elegant finger across the table at him.
Dad shrank immediately. “No, I—well. No,” he stammered, raising his hands to show he didn’t mean anything by it.
Dad looked from Mom to me to Magda and sighed. He stuffed nearly half a pancake in his mouth, picked up the paper, and scurried up the back stairs, his robe flapping behind him. I found myself trapped between my grandmother and everyone else, a position that was as familiar to me as breathing.
“Sorry, Mom,” I said with a sigh.
As much as I resented how much time Mom spent with Mary and their secret understanding, I felt bad for my mother as she withered under Magda’s thumb. I pleaded to Mom with my eyes. Forgive me. Love me.
“Do you mind going to Weselohs’ alone for Lucy?” I asked. I was forced yet again to side with my grandmother.
My mother nodded once, her blue eyes watery, and that was that.
“I like the silly animal stuff,” Mary mumbled through a mouthful of pancakes.
When I came in from the lake, Magda was dressed and waiting at the kitchen table for me. Everyone else had peeled off to their days: Mary to the beach, Mom to the Weseloh farm, Dad to the mill.
“Don’t make me wait all day, Lisbett. I’ve got things to do too,” Magda said without looking up from the newspaper.
It’s barely nine AM, I thought, rolling my eyes. I turned my back to Magda and grabbed my warm plate of pancakes from the oven. I ate them dry, rolled up like how the Norwegians in town ate lefse, hovering over the sink to catch the falling crumbs.
“You were up early anyway,” Magda said to my back.
Everyone was up early, I thought. It’s pancake day.
“Don’t talk back,” she said.
While Mary usually gave me the courtesy of not reading me, I could never count on that privacy from Magda. Too bad I couldn’t reciprocate. It would have cleared so many things up for me. I had barely slept since Magda had caught me sneaking in, bursting with a million questions. I could no longer contain myself, and I was sure Magda knew it too.
“What did Cousin Mildred mean yesterday, that you chose me?” I asked, feeling suddenly brave.
Magda sighed. “Get dressed. We need to talk,” she said.
Surprised at the candor, I rushed to rinse my plate in the sink and slunk off up the stairs to change and wrangle my hair into a braid for the day.
“Don’t let your mother and sister distract you with their animal things,” Magda said when I rejoined her in her bedroom.
I said nothing. I sat with my knees splayed on the floor at Magda’s feet, ready for a lecture.
She sat in a tapestry chair, its legs carved with the whorls of the wheel of life like so many other things in Magda’s room. She had ditched her housecoat for her preferred summer style of long black chiffon dress, the skirts draped around her thin legs making her look like the Queen of Sheba, or that dreaded W-word: witch. Bare feet to match my own—better for feeling the earth’s vibrations—peeked out from under the folds of fabric. Her silver hair was swept up into an elaborate knot, a sign that she’d had plenty of time to get ready.
I waited.
“Elisabeth,” Magda said. “You are meant for greater things than soothing spooked horses and cursing coyotes.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes, nodding solemnly. I had heard this speech a hundred times since I had started levitating. You are special. You are meant for greater things. Und so weiter, und so fort.
“You know I love your mother very much. But she could never do what we need you to do. Now, Cousin Mildred was right the other day.” I sat up straighter at this part. “Your mother didn’t choose this path. She … couldn’t. So yes, I was forced to choose it for you.”
I swallowed hard and raised an eyebrow at Magda, an approximation of the look she gave me all too often. “What do you mean, she didn’t choose this path? What choice did Mom have?”
I didn’t voice the real question that had picked at me: What other choice could I have had?
Since I could remember, Magda had told me I was made for greater things, that I was born to carry responsibility for our family, that I would take my place with her after I turned eighteen. That it was only me, no one else, who would succeed her. That I was born to inherit our family’s greatest treasures.
“Why not Mom?” I asked when I was old enough to understand.
“You were born with an even greater gift,” Magda had said.
I stopped asking questions when I realized the extent of my mother’s limitations, how Magda only gave Mom animal cases. I had never seen my mother work with people. Even as a child, I knew I was special, different, that there were things I could do that my mother couldn’t. But what if I was wrong? What if she just didn’t want to?
Magda leaned in, almost whispering. “Helene wasn’t always like this.” She paused. “I can’t begin to tell you how it hurts me to say anything against my only daughter. The truth is, Helene is as talented as you or me, but she chose long ago that she wouldn’t accept the responsibilities of this family. She saw the long days, the heartbreaks, the constant threat of the town turning against our kind, and she chose to hone her practice on things with lesser stakes. Chickens. Horses.”
My world threatened to come apart at the seams. “Mom just didn’t want to do it,” I said slowly.
Magda winced. “You could say that,” she said with an exaggerated shrug.
So I’m not special. She didn’t want it. And you’re stuck with me, special or not, I thought. I could’ve sworn I saw Magda’s eyes flash dark for a fraction of a second, so briefly I thought I had imagined it.
“Why didn’t you try to …” I asked.
She cut me off with a shake of the head.
“You know as well as I do that I couldn’t change your mother. Look at her. She made her choice, and this is what we have left of her,” she said, her face falling. Her delicate manner surprised me.
“Best to leave her be,” Magda continued. “And I will teach you, darling girl, like I always have. Don’t I always teach you?” she asked in a singsong voice that made me feel like an oblivious child again.
I nodded. “Yes.”
And look where it got me.
“Then that’s how we’ll be, you and me. I will teach you, and all of this will be yours, forever, darling.”
Later, Magda drove to St. Agnes to see the “good” tailor—Mrs. Gerhardt, the wife of the Lutheran minister, was the only option in Friedrich and one of those women who staunchly refused to do business with us. As I cleaned the kitchen absently, I realized Magda hadn’t actually answered my question. Why didn’t Mom want this? And why should I?
I was taking inventory when Mom returned home and began to pull things from the fridge for supper. She browned hamburger in a pan on the stovetop and added onion and celery.
“Tater Tot hot dish?” I asked when she pulled a bag of Ore-Ida from the freezer.
She shot me a smile over her shoulder.
As the meat sizzled, I asked her casually, “What happened with Lucy?”
Mom turned and watched me, holding her spatula aloft, finding the words.
“She’ll be fine,” Mom said after a while.
A wave of relief washed over me—at least John would be happy about Lucy.
But relief was quickly replaced by so many questions. Why had my mother been given a choice when I was not afforded that freedom? I had grown up thinking I had no choice in the matter, even that I was special, chosen. I loved serving our town and neighbors. It made me feel helpful, proud. I had never stopped to think if I wanted it for myself—Magda had always told me what to want.
It was mind-boggling to think that might’ve been different if only my mother had been different. My curiosity was piqued: Who had my mother been before? I remembered that shadow flashing across Magda’s face, and I had the feeling she hadn’t told me the full story. What did my mother know that she couldn’t say?
As Mom watched me, I felt she must know a lot more than she let on.
I sighed and tucked a jar back into the armoire. My mother crossed the room suddenly and took me into her arms, spatula still gripped in one hand. I couldn’t remember the last time my mother had hugged me.
It was too much. I pulled away and retreated up the back stairs.