Chapter 3
A Glimpse Ahead

Pa’s marriage to Mrs. Parrish was just about the happiest day of my life.

By the time we all got to bed that night, I was exhausted, and I think everyone else was too. Being too happy for too long at one stretch can wear a body out just as much as hard work.

But as I lay in my bed on that warm August evening, even though I was so tired I didn’t think I could have kept on my feet another minute, sleep didn’t come for a long time. Once my feet and hands quit being so active, my brain figured it had to get some exercise. The instant my head rested against the pillow, my mind raced off and I had no choice but to follow.

This day wasn’t just the first day of Pa’s and Mrs. Parrish’s life together as husband and wife, I thought. It was also my first day, I guess you’d say, as a grown-up.

I wasn’t grown up yet, of course. And it’s ridiculous to say that all of a sudden, on a certain day, you just up and become an adult. I was only seventeen, and plenty of seventeen-year-olds did have to fend for themselves and were a lot closer to full grown and independent than I was. But I knew on the day of the wedding that a lot of things were going to be changing for me real soon.

I’d been so busy the last two years since Ma died, acting like a mother to the other kids, helping Pa with the chores and the cooking and cleaning. Suddenly I realized time was passing quickly and I was getting older in a hurry. Ma had been right about the prospects of my marrying. And even if I did have any prospects—which I didn’t—I don’t think I’d have relished the idea anyhow. If I ever did get married one day, it’d have to be the Lord who saw to that part of my life, because there was a heap of living I wanted to do, things I wanted to see, places I dreamed of going.

It began to dawn on me that maybe now I could do some of those things, go to some of those places. Now that Pa was married, Mrs. Parrish would be taking care of everything that I’d been doing—all those housekeeping and wife and mothering things I’d sorta done because there was nobody else to do them.

Pretty soon I’d have to figure out something to do besides just being underfoot around the house. I was pretty close to being past schooling age, and I suppose I could study to be a teacher someplace else, like Miss Stansberry. Pa and Mrs. Parrish would have kept me at home till I was fifty—that’s just how wonderful they both were. But somehow I wasn’t sure that’d be exactly right—or if it was what I wanted.

Something inside me started stirring that night. Ma and Uncle Nick and Pa—they all used to talk about the “Belle blood,” as if when your name was Belle, you had no choice but to get ornery and stubborn and independent every so often. I didn’t think I ever got too much that way, but once in a while when I’d get riled or headstrong over something, Pa’d mutter about the Belle blood.

Maybe it was my Belle blood stirring. I started thinking about going off alone to some strange new place just to see what it was like, thinking about meeting new people, about being a grown-up who had to take care of herself because she didn’t have to tend to her Pa and brothers and sisters anymore. I found myself wondering what Los Angeles was like, and thinking about the Oregon territory folks were talking about. I wanted to know more about the mountains and the miners and Indians and trappers who lived in them and what kind of people they were.

Even a month earlier I would have been afraid at the prospect of going someplace by myself, of being away from Pa and the others, of having a job of my own somewhere besides Miracle Springs. But it didn’t frighten me now. It was kind of exciting, adventurous.

Maybe that was what the Belle blood did to folks. Maybe that’s why Uncle Nick was always in trouble and then came out here—that adventurous spirit in his blood.

So when I say it was my first day as a grown-up, I don’t mean that anything really changed all at once. But my thoughts and my outlook toward things began to change—no longer a little girl way of viewing. I began to think, This is my life, and I’m getting older. Pretty soon I’m going to be out doing things and going places because I decide to, not because my ma and pa decide for me.

Maybe that’s what growing up is more than anything else—being on your own, relying on yourself to decide what’s going to become of you instead of looking to somebody else like you’ve always done. And as I lay there that night, that was the question that kept coming to me: What AM I going to do with myself now?

It wasn’t as if I needed to decide anything before I got up the next morning. With Uncle Nick and Aunt Katie still there in the cabin with us, and with Pa and Mrs. Parrish off to Sacramento and San Francisco for a week, for a while it’d be just like the last six months. School would be starting up again in a few weeks, and I had already agreed to help Miss Stansberry again this year.

But Uncle Nick was already building a new cabin for him and Katie up past the mine in a little clearing in the woods, about five or six hundred yards from ours. Zack was now fifteen and had been growing like a weed. He was still quiet, but his voice had deepened and he was apt to be as tall as Pa in another six months. He’d be thinking man-thoughts before long.

Mrs. Parrish and I’d already laughed several times over what I should call her. She told me, “I would be honored, Corrie, to have you call me Mother, but only when you feel comfortable doing so. And you must never call me what you called your real mother.”

“I called her Ma,” I said.

“Then you call me whatever you like.” She smiled and put her arm around me. “I will always call you just Corrie. But I want you to know that I do think of you as a very special daughter—a spiritual daughter, a daughter whom the Lord gave me first as a friend . . . a daughter of grace.”

“Thank you,” I replied. “But I’m afraid you will keep being Mrs. Parrish for a while yet.”

She laughed, that laugh that always seemed to have music at the back of it. “Oh, I do love you, Corrie Belle! I will be as happy as can be to keep being Mrs. Parrish to you forever!”

I gave her a tight squeeze. I loved her too—differently, but I think by now probably just as much as I loved Ma and Pa. I couldn’t believe how good it was of God to bring together the two people I loved most in the world.

Just then some of Ma’s last words came back to me. It had been two years, but I could almost hear her voice saying them like it had been yesterday.

You turned out to be a right decent-looking girl, she said. You’re gonna get along just fine, Corrie. I know you’ll make me and your pa proud.

I cried thinking about her. It was still the happiest day of my life, but sometimes happiness and sadness get all mixed up in a girl’s heart, and then tears come out and you don’t quite know why.

Then Ma’s words about women getting on in the world came to my mind, her telling me—as she did more than once—to be strong and have courage and to try things.

“Don’t be afraid to go out and do things, Corrie. And never worry what folks’ll say or think. How else is a woman gonna get on in the world if she don’t try?” That wasn’t the kind of thing you heard most women talking about. But I guess Ma had plenty of the Belle blood in her too!

When I finally began to get drowsy, the last thought I can remember was praying that God would make me strong and would give me the courage to go out and do whatever it was he might want me to.

But I don’t think my prayers were completely finished when I fell asleep.