Chapter Ten
1944–1947
IN OCTOBER OF 1944, just before Minka’s thirty-third birthday, she and Roy married quietly in an empty church in Providence. It was a wartime wedding, modest and simple. The bride wore an everyday dress she’d sewn herself. The couple skipped a honeymoon, and Roy went immediately back to his job working the night shift at the shipyards, a position he’d obtained that spring, after his discharge from the Army Air Forces. For a while Minka juggled overlapping schedules, cooking midnight dinners for her new husband, then rising a few hours later for her shift at the fabric store.
When she wrote to Miss Bragstad that Christmas, for the first time she signed her letter as a grown-up: “Minka” instead of “Minnie.”
I’m wondering how my little Betty is. I know I should be very proud of her now. She must be a young lady, nearly sixteen. I think of her so often, and hope so much she’ll always be a credit & joy to her parents. You will write me in your letter, a bit about her won’t you?
. . . I’m enclosing a bit towards your Xmas dinner at the home. I sincerely hope it will be a merry one for all. The home must be a blessing for many a girl today —I only wish I could find a little boy & girl under my Xmas tree. You haven’t a pr of twins, have you?
When Germany surrendered the following May, in 1945, America was nearly overcome with giddy relief as sons and brothers and husbands came home. Eager to take advantage of the new GI Bill, Roy decided to move to Minneapolis, where he could take drafting classes at the Dunwoody Institute. The renowned Mayo Clinic was nearby, too, in case he needed treatment for his recurring stomach problems.
For the rest of her life, Minka would consider Minneapolis, with its acres of glittering lakes and clusters of bushy green trees, the most beautiful city she had ever seen. The mighty Mississippi River flowed right through it, like something from a fairy-tale kingdom. The downtown district was crowded with grand cathedrals and skyscrapers, cultural institutes, and fancy hotels. Block after block, a glorious, giddy mess of honking cars filled the streets, and a person could go dizzy looking at all the signs and advertisements lining the sidewalks. Half a million people called this city home —and when they went out in public, everyone seemed to dress to the nines.
Minka had spent time here before, briefly, a few years after Betty Jane’s birth. A businessman from Aberdeen had a home here, and when jobs dried up in South Dakota during the Depression, she’d come here to be his housekeeper. She’d been lonely and heartbroken then, but her life was different now.
Now her name was on the deed to a tall, narrow house on a tree-lined street just two blocks from the beaches of Lake Calhoun, a popular spot for boaters and sunbathers. Jennie had given her the money for a down payment —recompense for all the years of milking cows and twisting sausages and working in the store. Although the house was already a half-century old and in need of fresh paint and a good cleaning, it was roomy enough to take in renters, and Minka envisioned it becoming a beautiful home under her loving care.
Most satisfying, the last name printed on that deed was Disbrow.
Two months after they arrived in the City of Lakes, the girl who’d once marveled at the novelty of an icebox watched as something called an atomic bomb put a horrifying coda on the Second World War.
In the booming economy they both found work, Roy on a production line and Minka at another yard goods store. Each morning, the couple had coffee and oatmeal together in their new kitchen, then set out into a city that seemed to sweep residents along the sidewalks with postwar energy. In the evenings, Minka cooked dinners that were easy on Roy’s sensitive stomach, often a simple pot of navy beans, his favorite. Then the couple changed into old clothes and worked on the bottom half of their house, readying it for renters.
They painted walls and fixed plumbing and hung cheerful green-and-white-striped awnings outside. Roy installed window boxes and built decorative shelves around the bulky radiators. Minka cleaned house and spent hours in the basement with a washboard and wringer, doing laundry by hand as she always had. She sewed dresses for herself and wool coats for them both.
The newlyweds’ days were filled with brisk work. Their nights were filled with something else —a dark legacy of the war.
Roy had spent some six hundred hours in bomber cockpits, and in the unguarded moments of sleep, those hours returned to lay claim. It all came flooding back: terse instructions and prayers in cramped rooms. Exhilarating dread during liftoff. The incessant, maddening blare of a straining engine. Explosions and flames and smoke popping beyond a rain-spattered windshield. The static that cut into the voices of friends on the intercom. Sandwiches and scotch in London afterward, for those who’d survived that run.
As the endless loop played, the darkened bedroom in Minneapolis would be pierced by Roy’s hoarse cries.
“Minka! Minka, they didn’t come back.”
His wife tried to soothe him, but he’d flail.
“Don’t you understand? They didn’t come back!”
“Yes, Roy,” Minka would say. “I understand.” But it took him a long time to settle after a nightmare.
Still, the couple was blessed in the ways that mattered. Bad dreams could be outgrown, Minka thought. They had a marriage, a home of their own, a new life.
And Minka was determined to have another baby, even though Roy expressed no interest in having children. Betty Jane’s absence was a hole that never filled.
What Minka could not guess was that the very month she moved to Minneapolis, if she’d left her new house and gone just two miles down 31st Street, past Powderhorn Park where the next Olympic speed-skating trials were to be held, and if she’d turned right on Longfellow Avenue, she would have seen a brown-haired teenager named Ruth Nordsletten helping pack her family’s belongings into a borrowed truck. The Nordslettens had lived in Minneapolis for two years, but Ruth’s father had just accepted a pastorate in Wisconsin. They were moving on.
Ruth was a pretty, sensible, outgoing girl who, for the first five weeks of her life, had been known by another name. Sixteen years earlier, a new mother with a broken heart had called her Betty Jane.
* * *
Minka waited until Roy had finished the last of his grasshopper pie and had lit a cigarette. She sat down in the chair next to his, hands clasped on the fabric of her dress —one of his favorites —watching his face as smoke drifted in front of it. The windows were open, filtering some of the day’s heat out into the evening air.
“I went to the doctor today,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “He gave me a test . . . and I’ve got some news.”
She fervently wanted this to be good news for him. A year after moving to Minneapolis, Roy had new creases at the corners of his eyes, and he didn’t smile much these days. Canadian officials had recorded his wartime weight as a slight 130 pounds, but he was even thinner now —his elegant suits seemed to hang on him. He’d begun stopping at bars to drink before coming home, a wasteful habit that baffled Minka.
He needed a distraction, something good and hopeful to pull him from his memories. Something other than the drinking, which put a nasty bite in his attitude. Surely this was the thing to do it.
Roy leaned back, resting his right arm on the table. “What’s your news, honey?” he said.
“Well . . .” It was difficult to remain casual. “How would you feel about being called ‘Daddy’?”
Roy looked at her. He seemed to be waiting for something else.
“I’m . . . I’m pregnant. We’re going to have a baby.”
Roy did not leap up and sweep her into his arms. He didn’t start humming, as he used to do when he was happy. He didn’t even smile.
Instead, he squinted at her.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. The doctor said so. And I can tell because . . . well, you know I’ve felt this before. A long time ago. With . . . with Betty Jane.”
Minka waited, nearly bursting with all she wanted to say. That she needed to hold her own baby in her arms again. That on the bus home from the doctor’s office, her eyes had filled with happy tears. That she was secretly hoping for another little girl, although she’d be just as happy with a boy, or twins, or whatever would come.
She didn’t say any of this. She waited for Roy to speak.
“Shoot, honey.”
Minka didn’t realize that she was holding her breath.
“You know I wasn’t planning for us to have kids.”
Minka felt a hot pressure behind her eyes. She resisted it.
“I know. But Roy, I think you’ll . . . I think you’ll love the baby. Once it comes. Once you see it, and hold it, it just . . . it changes everything. You can’t help it.”
Roy stared at her. Minka looked down at his plate, where a bit of piecrust lay on a smear of chocolate. Outside, she heard a car door slam, an engine cough.
“Well. Okay.”
Disappointment welled in Minka, searing and rough. She tamped it down. There was enough love in her heart, enough longing, for the both of them. And once the baby was here, everything would change. She knew that firsthand. He’d see.
* * *
On a dark Saturday evening in mid-December, as a light snowfall frosted the frozen grass in their small yard, Minka’s labor came on strong. Roy drove her into the heart of Minneapolis, past streets hung with Christmas lights and green garlands, to St. Barnabas, a pretty hospital that looked like a brick castle. Roy handed her over to the staff, then sat in the lobby smoking and looking at that morning’s newspaper.
Minka was grateful when Dr. Robbins pushed a needle into her spine and injected her with medicine to block sensation in her lower body. The contractions were strong enough to take her breath away.
A few minutes before 3:00 the following morning, Minka’s baby was born. The doctor and nurse busied themselves near the end of the table, slapping, rubbing, wrapping, murmuring to each other. The doctor raised his head, glanced at Minka.
And Minka felt she could fly.
She craned her neck for a closer look, but the nurse hurried the baby out of the room.
“She’s, ah, just going to take the baby to the nursery,” said the doctor from between Minka’s legs. “I’m just sewing you up. She was a very big baby.”
“Is she all right?” Fear sliced through Minka.
“Um, yes . . . well, she was a little blue. But she’s breathing. So . . . we’ll see what’s going on.”
As it turned out, the baby, whom they named Dianna Dace Disbrow, had a closed valve between her heart and lung, a condition that resolved after eight days in the hospital. Minka stayed with her, happily breast-feeding for the first time and staring into her daughter’s big, blue eyes. Here was all the sweetness and joy of cuddling a newborn, and none of the wrenching pain of saying good-bye. This one, she got to keep.
Roy brought Minka a single red rose. His brother Robert sent a telegram from Aberdeen, gently ribbing Roy, who’d been sure the baby was a boy: HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS AND DEEPEST SYMPATHY. TRY AGAIN.
Minka wrote to Miss Bragstad on Christmas Eve, using a single sheet of paper torn from a hospital notepad. Mother and baby were to be released from the hospital that day. Minka shared the good news. She wrote how happy she was, how darling the baby was. And, as always, she brought up her first daughter.
Hope you have a very merry holiday season. And that your getting good news from Betty Jane. She’ll be a young lady of 18 in May. Bless her heart. . . .
Before Dianna’s birth, Jennie had driven the nearly three hundred miles from Aberdeen to provide help for the expectant parents. When Minka carried the baby home, the place was warm and glowing with candles and filled with the smell of fresh-baked bread. The proud grandmother had prepared enough food to feed an army. A pot of buttermilk-barley soup simmered on the stove, waiting to be topped with butter and maple syrup. It was a perfect homecoming.
And Minka had been right about the baby. From the beginning, Roy was besotted.
* * *
The minute he walked through the doorway each evening, Roy laid his hat on the sideboard and held out his arms for the child he called “Dolly.” He’d settle her on his lap and sing little tunes made up on the spot, or waltz across the floor while Dianna watched his face. Within months, she’d begun to grunt along to his music.
Minka had never been so happy. Instead of writing letters begging for scraps of news about her baby, asking questions that rarely received answers, now Minka could fill a pretty baby book with all the information she wanted. She recorded every detail about her daughter: each new tooth, every new pound, new skills, favorite toys. Dianna didn’t like to be laid down, so Minka learned to dust and tidy with one hand while cradling her baby in the other.
Unwilling to give her daughter up to a sitter, Minka became one herself, quitting her job at the fabric store and taking in children during the day. Her new life took some getting used to. Caring for little ones involved an astonishing amount of work, with diapers to be changed and washed, meals to be fixed, tempers to be soothed.
It was hard to adjust to the constant clamor, but she managed, even holding to her old Dutch standards in housekeeping. She scrubbed everything, every day. After meals, dishes were washed and put away immediately. Clothes were hung up, never tossed on beds or chairs. Such was Minka’s aversion to clutter that she discarded almost anything she wasn’t using, including letters. She didn’t keep a single page of her correspondence with Miss Bragstad or a single wartime letter from Roy.
The only thing she held on to was a small collection of photos, neatly stacked in boxes. And tucked away in a drawer where no one could find it, Minka kept the picture of baby Betty Jane. From time to time when she had a few moments alone, and always on Betty’s birthday, she pulled it out and savored the memory of her very first love. Her prayers became like a mantra: Please let her be healthy. Please let her be happy. Please let her be loved.
In March the Disbrows drove back to Aberdeen to christen Dianna at Zion Lutheran, Minka’s childhood church. The baby wore a long, white gown that Minka had sewn. Grandparents, as well as aunts and uncles from both sides, doted on the gorgeous baby. Dianna had her mother’s high cheekbones and her father’s olive skin, dark hair, and bright eyes.
It was a festive occasion, offering barely a hint of the trouble to come.
After the christening Roy posed for a picture with his three handsome brothers, all of whom had also served in the recent war. In the photo, taken in their mother’s living room, two of the brothers are smiling, but the other two wear the recently coined “thousand-yard stare.” The suffering of veterans, once called “nostalgia” but now referred to as “shell shock,” had been observed for centuries yet was little understood.
One of the blank-faced Disbrow brothers would soon be dead by his own hand.
The other one, the brand-new father, would live longer but in no less pain. Roy’s post-traumatic stress disorder, as the condition would later be known, was a catalyst that was already propelling him toward alcoholism. And it would soon awaken something that rested deep within and would eclipse all else —a disease that would one day ruin his life and devastate his young family.
The Disbrows returned home to Minneapolis, leaving South Dakota behind again. Even with rent coming in from the downstairs neighbors and Minka’s child-care wages, there didn’t seem to be enough money. Minka took a second job at a drugstore, working evenings and weekends. Her constitution was as strong as ever. She never missed work, even when her nights were broken by her daughter’s hungry cries or her husband’s nightmares.
For the Christmas of 1947, Jennie and Jane came to visit. Although money was tight, conditions had improved far beyond the frugality of the farm years and the Depression, and the three women created a feast. They stuffed a turkey, mixed Jell-O salads, layered marshmallows over yams, assembled pecan and apple pies. Minka draped garlands and pinecones in the little-used dining room and set the table with china and a perfectly ironed tablecloth.
A steam radiator hissed, keeping the bitter cold out of the small rooms. Roy put up a tree, everyone decorated it, and Dianna stared in wonder. Jane, who doted on the baby, taught her to scrunch up her nose on command.
Late that night, Minka composed a letter to Miss Bragstad.
The superintendent of the Lutheran House of Mercy was in her final two years before retirement. In nearly three decades, Bertha Bragstad had encountered more young women than she could remember, heard every story and excuse, and witnessed innumerable tears. But no girl stood out like the Dutch milkmaid who’d conceived through rape and then fallen in love with her baby girl. For almost nineteen years, far longer and more often than Miss Bragstad could have predicted, Minka had kept up a correspondence. The girl had donated money, handmade clothing, gifts, and turkeys, even through a depression and a war.
She had been unable to forget her baby, even after all this time.
But this would be Minka’s final letter. Her second daughter had just learned to walk —her first was now a college-aged adult. She would have kept writing forever if her letters had prompted news about Betty Jane. But Miss Bragstad’s letters were always gently vague. She passed along very little information, other than to say that Betty Jane was “a fine girl” who was “happy in her home.”
Minka didn’t know that Betty Jane’s adoptive parents had renamed her Ruth. She didn’t know that the girl would be married within a year to her high school sweetheart.
As much as Minka longed for news, she didn’t really know anything.
. . . we are all fine here. My mother is with me, has been since Nov. My little girl is a year old, and needless to say we all love her dearly. She has brought so much joy into all our lives. She has big blue eyes & medium dark hair, looks a lot like Betty Jane did, although Betty was fairer. . . .
Would appreciate a line from you & if you have any news about Betty, I’d surely love to hear how she is. . . .
Please write me if you have word Miss Bragstad, will make my Xmas happier just to know she is fine and happy. . . .
Minka enclosed a Christmas stocking with the letter —a gift from her baby, Dianna, to whatever babies were now at the home. She would write no longer. From this time forward, Minka would hold on to just one photograph, a handful of memories, and a promise she’d made the day she said good-bye to her first child.
She would never forget Betty Jane.