WHAT KEEPS A WOMAN alive, beyond food and a warm blanket? A regular customer helps, and to my surprise I found one, as consistent as Thursday nights, as generous as would keep me in my little room and in Cherry’s good graces. For two months of Thursdays so far, he’d put his money in Cherry’s pocket and taken me upstairs.
Through those nights, and others with less congenial company, I wrote a great adventure of my queen and her ardent handmaiden escaping prairie fire with only each other for help. When this story did not occupy my mind I imagined my gentleman cowboy, the rogue of Kansas City, and all the adventures that could be had by a woman so bold and so brave. As the stories solidified in my imagination, I committed them to paper.
The holiday season seemed to arrive suddenly. The newest girl, Greta, left behind by a gold-fever crazed family who’d paid her way out a year earlier to be farm help, was especially lectured by the preacher when he took notice of a new face among the fallen. Why tell the poor girl she’d chosen iniquity when her other choice was Loomis, who would use her like a whore anyway, work her like a mule, and pay her only food, and not enough of that?
The preacher said nothing about the family who’d left her behind to this so-called choice. Greta had had no money, at the time spoke nothing but German, and none of the other farmers wanted help, nor their wives either — not when Greta was such a pretty thing. There were enough Germans around who welcomed their native language in bed to keep her and Lisbet quite busy.
Unfortunately, she was a quick study and had picked up enough English to understand the preacher’s sermons. Every week her cheeks stained with the color of shame.
Christmas Eve, in the afternoon before the rest of the town would have their service, we heard the tale of the nativity and were duly urged to repent our sins. I glanced over at Greta when the conception of the Christ babe was described. Every year since I had arrived the Christmas story took on its own Long Grass telling, but there would be no star in the East or gifts from wise men. There was no room at Cherry’s inn for babes.
I caught Greta’s eye and wasn’t sure what expression was on my face. She colored and looked away.
Greta knocked on my door after we’d all returned and readied ourselves for a festive supper. I knew what she was going to tell me — I had eyes. So did Cherry. She was such a tiny thing for a German girl that the by-product of our work was already showing. She’d only been here a few short months. I wondered if she’d gotten with child from one of the men in the family she’d worked for. Perhaps that had factored into why they’d left her behind.
“If you wait any longer the doctor won’t do it,” I told her. “Cherry will put you out long before you have the babe, and you’ll both be lost.” As if to emphasize my words the harsh wind rattled the shutters over my window.
“But I don’t want doctor — woman healer?” Greta’s English had improved rapidly, but she still struggled.
I shook my head. “There’s no midwife anymore. She left about the time I got here. Doctors and preachers don’t like them.”
“Doctors don’t know — hairbs, herbs?”
“The only herb you find in this town is sassafras. I’m not even sure that is an herb. You have to have the doctor. Tell Cherry.” She earned enough for Cherry not to grouse too much about the fee.
I shooed her out of my room, wondering why she had chosen to confide in me instead of Lisbet. With Milla gone I was the oldest girl, I suppose, and that might have something to do with it. Every once in a while, a girl would ask me to read or write a letter for her, so most of them assumed I had some kind of special book learning.
I sat down at my little table and looked at the stack of pages that made up A Lady for the Cowboy. I lost myself in it to the extent that I could. Outlaws and miscreants tasted the lead of the cowboy’s pistol while the lady secured respect with a flick of a sinuous bullwhip. At the end of every adventure they returned to their forest cabin with a cool, clear creek nearby, and a garden of apples and oranges with chickens clucking between the rows.
Connor had slept poorly the night of our glorious afternoon, fighting the bedclothes and shrugging out of my arms. In the morning she had been quiet after spending half the night reading. When I woke, she’d kissed me and taken me back to bed. I’d not cared that I’d missed breakfast.
I had expected her to return that night, even though I told myself it was foolish hope. I had wanted her to return. When she did not appear I thought she had needed to escape the indoors. I didn’t know what drove her to want the open sky always overhead, but I wished I understood. I wished I knew more about her. But she didn’t return the next night, or the next week, or month. It was possible I would never see her again, or not for a very long time. Ulysses took twenty years to return to Penelope.
I told myself I was no Penelope. Didn’t I already know all that I needed? She had treated me like a person, had been kind to me, romantic even, and she had blinked back tears when I had told her she could keep the pages I’d read to her during our idyllic afternoon in the tall, golden grass. The tears had been mine watching her layer each sheet between pages of her collection of Shakespearean tragedies, treating my words like equal treasure.
Winter had replaced autumn, as it did, and my heart had chilled as well, or so I told myself.
By the time I went downstairs to partake of our Christmas Eve feast, the night had turned bitter with wind-driven rain. The fare was ordinary, but more plentiful than usual. Greta’s appetite was clearly off and from her red-rimmed eyes it was clear Cherry had given Greta an ultimatum.
Lisbet studiously ignored Greta, though it might have just as easily been any of us. That I had never ripened continued to be a blessing to me. End of cattle drive demands resulted in at least one girl in a family way at Christmas. Townspeople and Cherry all behaved as if the conception had been immaculate, even though we were told often enough that even God did not want us.