Drowning Ruth (5 page)

“Shh,” Amanda said toward the ceiling of the room that was ready for Carl. “Quiet.”

But she said it so softly, nearly whispering, that Ruth, awake now upstairs, didn't pause in the spirited conversation she was having with herself. Amanda went up to fetch her, wrapped her in a blanket, and carried her down to the warm kitchen. Ruth knew she was plenty old enough to walk, and she kicked her feet a little as they went down the stairs to prove it.

“Shall we have oatmeal?” Amanda measured it out as she asked.

“No!” Ruth said.

“Shall we have gingerbread?” Amanda stirred the oatmeal with a large wooden spoon.

“No!”

“Shall we have parsnips?”

“No!”

“What shall we have, then?”

“Frogs!” Ruth said, and she laughed as if she had said the funniest thing in the world.

“When my daddy comes home,” Ruth said, pushing her spoon into her cereal, “will we go to the house with the green rug?”

“What house?”

“The house with the green rug. Where Mama is.”

The sudden rush of feeling at the mention of Mathilda nearly choked Amanda, and she gasped, fighting to stay above it. Think of something else, she told herself frantically. Think how clever Ruth is, describing a cemetery plot as a house with a green rug. “Of course you can go there,” she said at last. Her voice was calm and steady. “Your daddy will take you. But you understand, sweetheart, that your mama's in heaven, don't you?”

“Yes,” Ruth said, and she conveyed a large spoonful of oatmeal into her mouth.

“And if you're very good, someday you'll go to heaven too.”

Amanda ate her breakfast standing up, so that she could attend to other chores—shaking out the kitchen rug, washing the glass pane in the front door—as she thought of them. She was rinsing her bowl when Rudy stamped his boots on the porch and came in. He stood in front of the stove, rocking from foot to foot, his fingers tucked in his armpits. “It's a cold one,” he said.

“Do you think we should bring more blankets?”

“Wouldn't hurt. Might as well pile on everything we've got.”

“We'll leave at two then.”

“We'll be early.”

“Well, we can't be late.”

Rudy saluted. “Two it is.”

She frowned. It was easy for him to make fun, but somebody had to take responsibility. Somebody had to see that things went as they ought.

Ruth stirred her oatmeal, picked up a clump in her spoon, raised it high and spilled it back into the bowl.

“Ruth, don't play with your food.” Amanda took the bowl off the table and wiped the child's mouth with the dishrag. Ruth squirmed, pulling her face away from the sour smell.

“Hold still.”

Usually Amanda would have urged the girl to eat more, but not today. Today there wasn't time. She went to the back door and called the dogs, who came trotting over the drift that had piled high behind the snow fence. “Come in and get warm,” she said to them, setting the bowl on the floor.

Was she going to get started on the dinner or was she going to let the day get away from her? The lining of her coat was cold as she pushed her arms into the sleeves. She put on her mittens, picked up her basket and stepped outside. The air burned her cheeks and instantly froze the inside of her nose, while the sun lay so bright on the snow, she had to squint her eyes nearly shut against the glare. The sky was as blue as heaven as she marched, lifting her feet high and then plunging them knee deep into the snow, making her way to the root cellar.

She banged at the ice around the cellar door with a shovel until she'd chipped away enough to pry the door open. By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs she was blind in the gloom of the cellar, after the bright sun outside. She had to stand still for a moment, one hand pressed against the dank wall, waiting for her eyes to adjust. At last she could make out the vegetables in their barrels and bins.

She would offer to buy his half of the farm, she thought, piling potatoes, apples, carrots, onions and more potatoes in her basket. Not right away, but in time, when he'd healed and was growing restless. He would certainly be restless. He was no farmer, after all, and he was hardly a father. Hadn't he gone off when Ruth was only toddling the minute he'd heard the guns? He would be happy to have some cash, happy to be free to start his life again. And then everything would go back to the way it should be. She and Ruth would go on living on the farm. She would raise Ruth—a girl needed a mother, after all. Isn't that what Mathilda would have wanted? The thought of her sister made Amanda's
heart beat hard, and her breath come in shallow gasps. There wasn't enough air in the cold, dark cellar. Abandoning the vegetables that rolled out of her basket and onto the floor, she stumbled up the packed earth stairs and out into the brilliant blue sky.

Some weeks later, when Mama was a little better, not talking normally, but no longer making those hideous sounds, I told my father how I had seen Mathilda and Carl together at the island.

I thought he would send her away “to think things over,” the way he had sent me to Cousin Trudy when Joe was courting me, but he only sighed as he smoothed my mother's wavy hair with her silver-handled brush.

“A son-in-law would be nice,” he said at last. “And now that Mathilda's out of school, she can help with your mother. You could go to nursing school, like you wanted.”

What was he thinking? I couldn't go to nursing school now! Not now when Mama needed me more than ever.

One day, Miss Sizer and Mrs. Zinda stopped me on the street. “Isn't it wonderful, all your parents are doing for the young people?” they exclaimed, shaking their heads and clucking their tongues with delight. They said it as if I were one of them and not like my sister, not a young person at all. People like a wedding, it seems. They don't care who is marrying or what it will do to other people's lives.

I was Mathilda's maid of honor. I wished them all the happiness in the world. And then I applied to nursing school. As I had always wanted.

Amanda peeled potatoes, dropping the finished ones into a pot of cold water so they wouldn't go gray.

“Hungry,” Ruth said, coming to stand at her knee.

“You should have eaten more of your breakfast, then, shouldn't you? I don't have time to be feeding you all day.”

But when she'd done the peeling she spread a slice of bread with butter and pressed brown sugar thickly over that.

“You sit right here and eat it, now,” she said, holding the sandwich over Ruth's head until the child scrambled onto a chair. “I don't want sugar and crumbs all over my nice clean floor.”

“You didn't have to make such a big dinner today,” Rudy said as they sat down to pork chops and scalloped potatoes. “Carl's bound to be hungry. I could've waited.”

“We have our big meal at noon here,” Amanda said. “He knows that.”

“Well, for one night, I mean.”

“I'm sure Carl wouldn't want us changing everything we do, just to suit him, Rudy.” Amanda put a piece of meat into her mouth and chewed it fiercely. “Do you have the wagon ready?”

“Just about,” Rudy said, and he dug into his potatoes without further comment.

When they'd finished, Rudy took the extra blankets out to the barn, and Amanda put bricks in the stove to heat. Then she called Ruth in from the yard, where the girl was tumbling in the snow, and half led her, half dragged her up the stairs to dress.

How had the child gotten burrs in her hair in the middle of winter, Amanda marveled, as she gently picked apart Ruth's mats. Every few seconds, she couldn't resist bending close to rub her face against the girl's impossibly soft cheek, fiery red with the cold.

And then she peeled off everything Ruth was wearing and started
fresh. Clean underwear first, a cotton shirt with long sleeves, long wool stockings, three little petticoats, her best dress, and then a pinafore over that. Last night, just in time, she'd finished knitting a fancy sweater for Ruth to wear specially that afternoon. It had a cream-colored background and was studded with rosebuds of five different colors, each one a French knot. The whole thing had taken her months. She held it up now for Ruth to see.

“Isn't it just gorgeous, Ruthie?”

Ruth fingered a colored nub. “I like the blue ones,” she said.

“See? They're flowers. Roses.”

“Roses,” Ruth repeated.

“Hold out your arm.”

It was difficult to get the sweater on now that Ruth was so fattened with fabrics, but finally Amanda had wormed her in and she buttoned it up to the girl's chin. Ruth looked a little stiff, like a doll. “Oh, you angel!” Amanda exclaimed, giving her a squeeze.

“Itchy.” Ruth pulled at the neck.

“No, honey, you'll stretch it.”

“No, itchy! It's itchy.” Ruth squirmed and stamped her foot. She began undoing the buttons.

“Ruth, it is not itchy.” Amanda pulled the girl's fingers away from the buttons and redid the two Ruth had managed to unfasten. “Wait until you get outside. It'll be nice and warm then. You'll like it.”

Ruth threw her head back and screamed to the ceiling. “No! Itchy!” She yanked at the collar, at the arms.

Amanda grabbed hold of her wrist, and Ruth let her knees go limp. She hung from Amanda's hands, shaking her head wildly and kicking her heels against the floor.

“Ruth Sapphira Neumann! Stand up! You mind me now!”

The girl was light and compact, easy to maneuver despite her struggling. With one swift movement, Amanda drew her against her knee. She swung hard, but her hand bounced off the thick material
covering Ruth's bottom. Ruth barely felt it, but the shock of being punished made her scream harder.

“Be quiet!” Amanda shouted, louder than Ruth. “Be quiet!” And then, quite suddenly, she burst into tears herself. “Quiet.” She was weeping the words now. “Please be quiet.” Ruth looked at her with surprise. And then she, too, began to cry.

Amanda sank to the floor beside Ruth and lifted her into her lap. She bent over her, so that Ruth fit like a snug bundle against her body, and tucked her cheek over the girl's head. “Oh, my baby,” she crooned, rocking. “My poor baby girl.”

After a while she sniffed and sat up. The sweater had twisted. She straightened it and refastened the buttons that had come undone.

“Come on, let's wash our faces.” Ruth stood near the basin while Amanda wiped a cold washcloth first over Ruth's face and then over her own.

“And now I'll have to do your hair again.” Amanda lifted Ruth so that she stood on the chair in front of the vanity. There they were in the mirror, eyes swollen, hair tangled, not at all the sweet picture Amanda had envisioned earlier. For the second time in twenty minutes, she worked a brush through Ruth's snarls.

“Do you want a bow?” It was taking a chance, asking, because Ruth had to wear one. Really, the whole outfit would be ruined if she didn't wear a bow. The blue one, of course, it would have to be the blue one. But Amanda felt sure Ruth would want it. She held it on top of Ruth's head for the girl to see. Perfect. “Now doesn't that look pretty?”

“No.”

Grimly, Amanda slid the pins under the ribbon anyway, securing it to Ruth's fine, dark hair.

“Run in your room now and play while I get ready,” she said, lifting her down from the chair. To her great relief, Ruth did.

His leg would heal, and then he would go, Amanda reminded
herself, as she pulled the brush through her hair. He might promise to send money. Ruth would probably get a card now and again. And then, after a year or so, the cards would stop coming. He would have a new life somewhere, and she and Ruth would have theirs, right here where they belonged.

From the train, Carl could see them waiting on the freezing platform, Amanda holding a little girl, his little girl it had to be, on her hip. When he stood in the doorway of the car, Amanda pointed and bent her head to the girl's ear. The girl raised a mittened hand and waved vaguely. Her eyes were on a dog with a red collar far down the platform. She might have been waving at anyone.

He could walk only slowly, using two canes. It took a long time to make his way to them, step after faltering, unsteady step, along the platform that threatened to slide out from under him, against an icy wind that did its best to beat him back. Amanda set Ruth down, but the girl didn't run to meet him. The two of them stood like stones, waiting for him to come to them.