Dorothy Garlock (2 page)

S
pring
had come to the river town of Dubuque, and with it the long awaited letter. The happiness that brightened Ana’s face when she received it faded quickly as she read:

April 10, 1885

Dearest Mama,

I am so sick. I fear I will die giving birth to the child of my beloved. My feet and legs are so swollen I can hardly stand on them. I think of you often and weep for the worry I have caused you. My heart aches to see you one last time. I want you to take my baby and give it the love you gave to me. O Mama, my heart is sore. This is a dreary place. The Jamison’s do nothing but work. Please come. Owen has promised that you will be met in Lansing. Make haste, dearest Mama.

Your loving daughter, Harriet

The sounds and the fragrant smells of an Iowa spring were in the air. The spicewood was in bud, the cottonwood in tassel and the shrill piping of the season’s first frogs could be heard. Unending swarms of ducks, brant and cranes glided down to settle on the river while others soared aloft to continue their long journey northward. Hardy violets and yellow dandelions edged the path on which Ana trod to reach her small house backed against the river bluff. She neither saw nor heard these wonders of spring.

In the privacy of her home, she read the letter again and again and wept. After the weeping passed, Ana damned the man responsible for enticing so young a girl to do what she clearly knew to be wrong and then abandoning her, leaving her no choice but to follow him so that her child would not be born a bastard. Ana remembered the loneliness after Harriet left: the days long and empty, the nights a nightmare in which she wandered a vast open plain searching for a small girl who called for her mama.

The winter had been agonizingly long for Ana. She had spent a cold, lonely Christmas day sitting beside the cookstove in the rocking chair remembering other Christmas days when the house, filled with the smell of roasted goose, fruitcake and pumpkin pie, rang with laughter as a young child opened gifts left by Santa Claus.

During the weeks that followed the holidays, she had kept busy. In January she had been snowbound for a week, unable to climb the icy hill to go to work in one of the big houses on the bluff overlooking the city. Every spare minute of her time had been spent knitting or sewing. She kept one of the merchants down on Locust Street supplied with caps, scarfs, mittens and stockings. She put away the money he paid her. It was enough to pay her fare to Lansing and back with some left over to buy more yarn.

Holding the tear-stained letter, Ana recalled the unhappy late summer months that had climaxed in a terrible scene. Ana could still see the stubborn, defiant look on Harriet’s face—Harriet who had always been so obedient and reasonable—screaming at her.

“For heaven’s sake! I’m old enough to go out if I want to. A lot of girls are married at my age.”

“Where are you going? You’ve been out three nights this week.”

“To the ice cream parlor to meet Maud.”

“Don’t lie to me, Harriet. Maud’s mother wouldn’t allow her to go out with—”

“—with a servant? Is that what you were going to say?” Tears flooded Harriet’s eyes as she crossed the room to the door and flung it open. Her plump cheeks were flushed with hurt and anger, and brown eyes that usually sparkled with laughter now sparkled with indignation. “Not everyone thinks of me as a servant.”

“It’s honest work, honey. Nothing to be ashamed of. I didn’t want you working in the button factory.”

“You don’t think being a servant is a bad job because that’s all you’ve ever been.” Harriet must have known how hurt Ana was, yet she rushed on, “I’m just as good as Maud and a lot prettier.”

“Of course, you are. That’s not the point. I don’t want you with that fast, reckless crowd Maud’s brother runs with. I’ve seen the way they race their horses up and down the hills. One of these days there’ll be an accident and someone may be killed or maimed for life.”

“Oh, Mama—”

“That crowd has a bad reputation, Harriet.”

“They’re nice to me!”

“Someday you’ll meet a nice man and be glad you’ve kept yourself above reproach.”

“Like you did?” Harriet shot back. “You kept yourself above reproach and look what happened to you. Don’t you ever wish you’d married someone else? Papa was old and grouchy and stingy—”

“That’s enough! Don’t say another word. Your father took me and my grandmother in when we had no place to go. He married me after Granny died so I could stay here and take care of you. It would have broken my heart to leave you. You were only four years old—”

“—and you were my age—fifteen. Did you sleep with him, Mama?”

Ana, taken back by the question, could only stare at her stepdaughter. Harriet had changed so drastically in the past few months that she hardly knew her anymore.

“You know I didn’t sleep with your papa. He never asked it of me,” Ana finally said in a low, trembling voice.

“I remember how it was. He treated you like his servant. He paid you to take care of me. He married you so people wouldn’t talk about you living here in the house after your granny died.” Bitterness edged Harriet’s tone and distorted her young face. “I’m not going to marry an old man and live in a place like this. I’m going to marry a young man who will love me and want to sleep with me and do all those
nasty
things I’ve heard a man does to a woman in bed.”

“Harriet!” If her stepdaughter had suddenly sprouted horns, Ana couldn’t have been more shocked. For a moment she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. “Hush that kind of talk! My word! If Judge Henderson heard you talk like that he’d think you were . . . fast!”

“Judge Henderson! He’s heard a lot worse things than that.”

“But not from a fifteen-year-old girl.”

“Can’t you understand that I just want to have some fun?” Harriet set her lips to keep them from trembling.

“And I want you to enjoy being young and having the young men pay attention to you. But I think you’re going about it the wrong way. The boy who delivers coal has been trying to talk to you. He’s a handsome lad. Give him a chance.”

“Oscar Swensen! That stick! All he does is stutter and stammer and twist his cap in his hands.” Harriet raised her eyes to the ceiling while buttoning her coat. She threaded her fingers into her gloves and looked defiantly into Ana’s eyes. “You work your fingers to the bone during the day and wear your eyes out at night sewing or knitting. I’m not going to work all my life. I’m going to find someone who will love and pamper me like Judge Henderson does his wife.”

“Your papa left us this house but little else. We have a place to live, but we have to earn money for everything else. I’d like you to remember that my sewing and knitting paid for the material in that dress and coat you’re wearing.” Ana turned her head, hiding a face suddenly contorted with the pain of remembering her own lost youth and the time and love she had given this girl.

“I know that, Mama, and I’m grateful.” Harriet hung her head, then raised it to glare defiantly. “You should try and find a man, Ana. This time get a young one with some life left in him.”

“Is that what you’ve done?”

“That’s exactly what I’ve done and I’m having the most wonderful time of my life. Please don’t spoil it for me.”

“If you’ve met someone you like, I’m happy for you. Invite the boy to come to Sunday dinner, honey. I’ll cook a good meal—”

“Boy? He’s a
man
with a smile like an angel. He laughs, he sings, he dances. It makes me happy just to look at him. I can’t ask him to come
here
!”

“Oh, Harriet!” It hurt unbearably to know Harriet was ashamed of her home.

“Fiddle, Mama! I know what I’m doing.”

“I hope you do,” Ana said quietly.

With mixed exasperation and desperation, Ana followed Harriet out onto the porch and watched her go through the front gate and down the street. For the first time her stepdaughter had called her by her given name, and to Ana it signified a new stage in their relationship. She loved Harriet as if she were her own daughter, although there were scarcely eleven years between their ages. She had tried to teach Harriet the same values that her grandmother had instilled in her. Where had she gone wrong? What could she have done differently?

A buggy pulled by a slick sorrel came careening around the corner. It sped past the house, but slowed when it reached Harriet and kept pace with her. Then it stopped and a man jumped down. He lifted his bowler hat and bowed from the waist with a flourish. Ana could see that Harriet was laughing at him as he lifted her into the buggy. Seconds later they were down the hill and out of sight.

Remembering, Ana lifted her palms to her cheeks. She should have done something. But what?

Harriet had finished school two months before and had gone to work in Judge Henderson’s home on the bluff. Maud Johnson’s father owned a boat and the boiler works, and her mother had social ambitions that didn’t include her daughter associating with a girl who worked as a maid in a home where on occasion the Johnsons were guests. Harriet and Maud had not been friends outside the classroom, and Ana doubted that it was Maud whom Harriet was meeting; perhaps it was her brother or one of his friends.

October arrived and with it another change in Harriet. She became increasingly quiet and moody. Her evening visits to town stopped abruptly. Since she worked only part of the day, she was often in bed by the time Ana got home from work. Ana was sure the young man who had laughed and sang, the one who had made Harriet so happy, had left town. She waited patiently for time to heal the young girl’s heart.

One evening in the middle of October Ana came home to an empty house. A letter lay on the kitchen table.

Dear Mama,

Forgive me for taking the money in your sewing basket. I will write when I am settled. I do love you and don’t want to cause you worry, but I must go.

Harriet

Part of Ana’s life had gone with Harriet. Now she had no one. Almost frantic with worry, Ana visited the boiler works to speak to young Franklin. He said he hadn’t seen Harriet and that he did not know whom she had been meeting. With a cocky grin he assured Ana that Harriet was a big girl who could take care of herself. Ana had wanted to slap the smirk from his face. She called on Judge Henderson. Neither he nor his housekeeper could think of a reason why Harriet would leave so suddenly.

Work kept Ana sane. She worked harder than she ever had in her life, worked and worried and waited. Thanksgiving came and with it heavy snow, but no word from Harriet.

Just before Christmas a short letter arrived. Harriet said she had married Owen Jamison and was living on a farm west of Lansing, a small port on the Mississippi River in the northern part of the state. She said that she was happy and well and expecting a baby. She had signed it simply, Harriet. It had seemed to Ana that Harriet had cut her out of her life.

Not another word had come until now. Now Harriet needed her and she would go. Harriet had always been alarmed by the slightest illness. Ana could well imagine how frightening having a baby would be to the young girl.

Ana stood on the porch and looked toward the river where the black smoke from a river steamer shot upward and trailed behind it as it made its way upriver. In the years since the end of the Civil War, Dubuque had become lusty and ambitious with the large influx of immigrants to the fertile prairies of northeastern Iowa. Lumbering had replaced mining as the important industry. Huge log rafts were floated down from the north and converted into lumber and ties for the railroads that were opening new paths into the West.

Dubuque was home. Ana had never been more than twenty-five miles from it. Her father had worked in the lead mines. He had died in a fire trying to rescue her mother after he had carried Ana and led his mother-in-law to safety. After that there had been just she and her grandmother until they came to work for Ezra Fairfax and she’d had Harriet to love.

Ezra had been good to her in his own way. He had paid for her to attend school while her grandmother took care of his house. He was also a frugal man, and one who cherished his standing in the community. It would never do for a young woman to live in his home, without benefit of marriage, to care for his daughter. The customers who came to his tailor shop were church-going people. During the days following her grandmother’s death, when Ana was overcome with grief and feeling lonely, Ezra offered to marry her. He gave her a home and security in exchange for taking care of the house and four-year-old Harriet.

Ana went back inside, lit the lamp, and picked up her knitting. Before she could leave she had to finish the order for two dozen pairs of mittens. They were almost ready for delivery as were the black caps and the heavy stockings the rivermen would buy.

While she knitted, Ana’s thoughts went ahead to all the things she would have to do before she could leave. First she would go to the steamship office and purchase a ticket. Then she would write to Harriet and tell her the time of her arrival. The trunk in the attic was old, but in good shape and big enough to hold her best clothes as well as work dresses to wear while she helped Harriet. Her neighbor, Mr. Leonard promised to watch the house. Her garden had been planted and she hated to leave it. Fiddle! What did that matter when she was going to Harriet?