The Little Bride (32 page)

T
HE colony kitchen smelled of wet wood. One girl washed the cutting blocks, another the spoons, a third the buckets. They might have been sisters, or not; all the colonists shared the same sturdy gait, and a way of keeping their eyes raised even as they bent over their work. They moved like birds, clustering, splitting off, clustering again, and talked almost constantly, though they seemed to agree more often than not, which struck Minna as odd, and somewhat irksome—agreeable conversation—and made her feel more strange and miserable than she already was. The girls smiled at her as they passed, but for all their cheerful bustle they did not talk to her or ask her to help, and she began to feel as though they suspected her. They’d noticed the missing buttons at her back, or a desolation in her face. Maybe Samuel’s teeth marks were visible in her dress, or she sat on her stool in a certain way. The colonists did not know that she was Samuel’s stepmother, but neither were they certain that she was anything as right as his wife; he’d introduced them by name but offered nothing more. It seemed possible that the people would simply think them brother and sister. But now she shrank from the girls’ smiles; she felt as though they’d seen her and Samuel in the back of the wagon, seen everything, and what followed: his climbing out; his sleeping on the ground; his taking up the reins this morning without so much as looking her in the eye; Minna stuffing her hand in her mouth, all she could do not to cry. It was impossible that the girls had seen any of this, of course—yet every time they gave her a kind look, Minna’s distress mounted. That was pity, she was sure of it, and that, there, that was disgust. They were her aunts, in disguise.
Look, how she proved us right. Look how far she went just to prove us right.

An older woman set a dozen onions and a knife in front of Minna. “For supper,” she said, though dinner had just been served, and Minna looked up, to thank her, for the woman must have seen her about to cry. But she was already crying, and could barely see. She cut quickly, to set off the onion fumes, then slowly, so she wouldn’t slice herself. Worse than her shame was her disappointment, which threw her deeper into shame. What had she thought? But she had not thought—that was her downfall. She had thrown herself at him. And he wouldn’t even kiss her. All the way down the hill she’d tried to decide if his not kissing her had been out of shock, or the opposite—if he hadn’t been shocked at all. If he’d been waiting all this time to reject her. She remembered the doctor who’d told her to smear yogurt on herself and how for a month after that she did not touch herself once, not because she feared the terrible itching again but because the man had seemed so unsurprised that a girl like Minna would itch.

She should never have left Ilya, that last day in Odessa. She should have said, ask me to marry you, and been his wife; then her worst sin would have been stealing a bottle of milk. Ask me to marry you. Galina always said, Make sure they think it’s their idea. But Minna had pressed up against Samuel, given herself easily, failed utterly. There were names for what she’d done with him. Even her mother would let a man go first, unless he told her to go first, in which case it would still be his idea.

Minna sucked on her right little finger. The taste of onion made her tongue wet. Her tears ebbed. The kitchen was silent, she realized. They’d left her alone. The room was large and clean and bright, with an up-to-date stove like the one Ruth claimed Leo had gotten her and a full sink as well as a washbasin, and from her stool she could see three of the families’ houses, along with two dugouts they used for storage. She and Samuel had been given “the tour” by the colony’s leader, a man called Abe who wore suspenders and carried a looking glass as a sort of conductor’s wand, waving and pointing it as he rattled off colony statistics. Eleven families, twenty-two cows, twenty-two calves, four yoke of oxen, six mules, four horses, more chickens than they could count, a well for every quarter, one barn, a “Farmers’ Hall” for study and debate and prayer, a schoolhouse, a kitchen attached to the hall, one grand piano, four privies. Oh, and a few hogs. The hogs he’d mentioned with a little question mark in his voice, as if some part of him recalled that they might pose a problem but couldn’t remember exactly what it was. Minna understood now why Max wanted nothing to do with the colony. They were Jews, but they seemed to have forgotten their fear. They spoke as often in English as in Yiddish. They had rules—it turned out, for instance, that they only raised the hogs, and did not eat them—but the rules were self-written and subject to change, quite literally, for on the wall of the Farmers’ Hall there was pinned a long scroll, where next to the item about the hogs, and not eating them, someone had inked in:
most of the time
.

The window closest to Minna was open; through it came the sound of crickets. She’d never believed her father when he said that crickets weren’t singing, that they made all their noise with their wings and legs and stomachs, one part rubbing against the others, but now she thought she could hear this in the insects’ rhythm, a tripping between frenzy and stillness, and a vibrato within vibrato that no throat could produce.
Stridulation
, she would learn later, in a tall, beautifully illustrated book called
Nature
. But now Abe walked into view, followed by Samuel. They stopped by one of the dugouts. Abe pointed, and waved his looking glass vigorously. From the moment they arrived he’d been trying to convince Samuel to stay. The colony was the future! he said. It proved that Jews could do more than buy and sell—they could work, and make, and provide! Who could hate them now? But they needed men, he said; the fall harvest had gone well enough that the Baron de Vintovich was sending two of their boys off to agriculture school, which would be good in the long run, but in the short, see, well, two boys gone left them short. In the short run, see? Excuse the pun. Women, too, he’d added, looking at Minna, and he seemed sincere, not just placating. A panic rose in her throat as she imagined telling him all the reasons she was not the kind of woman they wanted. She could not bear children, it seemed. She was not faithful. She was not cheerful like the colony girls, nor robust like the colony women. She could not promise, if given twice her share of food by mistake, that she would give any of it back.

Samuel stood with his arms folded, nodding as the man went on. There was his shirt pulled tight across his shoulders; there was the line where his collar met his neck. She’d laid her head against that neck, like a fool.

Stop looking at him, she told herself. Look at the onions. Look at your knees under your skirt. Close your eyes and look at nothing. Hear the crickets. Imagine that you’re in your own kitchen; imagine the dream, come true: your own kitchen with a sink, and curtains on the windows.

But she could no more talk herself into the fantasy than she could stop looking at Samuel. It was like testing out a new injury, making it hurt just to confirm that it was still there. She watched his hands. She watched the subtle movements of his neck that told her he was speaking. His stillness, compared to Abe’s; he didn’t once shift his weight. His trousers, which she had mended. His hands moving to his hips.

Then the woman was back, wiping her boots on the step. Minna moved her pinky from her mouth to her ear, and shook out the tears that had pooled there. She picked up the knife again. There were two more onions to cut, the smallest and most bruised, which she’d left for last.

She cut into one. But before she could start to cry again, the woman was by her side, pointing a short, dirt-caked finger at the wet, white rings, saying, “Now. Isn’t that the most remarkable thing. No matter how many hundreds of times you see it. Look at that. An onion’s milk.”

T
HEY were boarded at Abe’s house, on two cots set up next to the children’s bed. Night at the colony was loud compared to where they’d been: there were the crickets; the cries of an infant; footsteps on the path; in the Farmers’ Hall, someone played the piano. Minna sat up to see if the children were asleep, then lay back down. She shifted slightly, closer to Samuel, then bent her elbow out and slid it toward him.

“What.” His arm withdrew.

“What did you tell him?”

“Who?”

“Abe.”

“Shh.”

“They’re asleep.”

Samuel didn’t answer.

“We can go outside, if you don’t believe me.” She entertained an image of herself and Samuel walking arm in arm toward the Farmers’ Hall, swaying slightly to the music. She would shiver. He would remove his arm from hers, lay it across her shoulders. She was desperate, she thought, deranged—yet she couldn’t stop the scene’s unfolding.

Samuel turned away, onto his side. “I told him I’m going back. Tomorrow. He’s given me supplies. I plan to pay him back.”

“And what about me?” Minna asked.

“I didn’t answer for you.”

“So what will I do?”

“How should I know?”

In his voice was temperance, boredom.

“Do you despise me?” she asked.

“I don’t despise anyone.”

“That’s an awful thing to say.”

“There are worse things to do.”

Minna said nothing.

“In another circumstance,” he went on. “If we were different people, I mean, you would go back. I would be the one to run away.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Does it matter?”

One of the children coughed. Minna waited. “I don’t know,” she said.

“Of course you don’t.”

“See?You despise me.”

“No, Minna,” said Samuel. “If I despised you, I would kiss you.”

Minna rolled toward him. Her face met his back.

“You can come, if you want,” he said. “I won’t stop you.”

“Samuel.”

“I won’t tell your husband. I never told him who tore the pages in the
siddur.
I never tell him anything. He’s been forsaken enough.”

Minna thought of her stove. The cellar she’d dug herself. Her comb, under the mattress. She’d forgotten about it until now.

“So we’ll go back, is what you’re saying, and everything will be as it was?”

“It’s up to you.”

“But you could do that,” she said.

“I can do anything I choose to do.”

“But you must have thought . . .” Minna was thinking of his face when he’d come to her, at the creek. His simple, undefended want.

“Is that what you want to know? What I
thought
?”

“No. I suppose not.”

The child coughed again, snuffled, tossed, settled. The crickets rubbed themselves. The piano player started up a new song. She reached for Samuel’s shoulder.

“I thought you’d been sent to ruin us,” he said.

 

 

T
HERE had been a monkey, in Odessa, that sat on various corners and blew kisses to passersby who threw coins. These kisses involved the monkey touching its fingers to bared teeth, then waving and grinning until the passerby waved back, at which point the monkey would fold its lips over its teeth and scowl and pretend as though it had never seen the person, at which point the person had a choice: he could walk away, or he could pretend as though he wasn’t offended by laughing very loudly and throwing another coin, only to go through it all over again. Most made the second choice. And Minna would wonder, Why did people do that? What was wrong in them that they should be so rough with their own hearts?

But all night, she could not let go of Samuel’s shoulder.

 

 

T
HE wagon was packed, the horse and mule hitched. The colonists thronged about, shouting to each other as much as to Samuel, who sat on the bench, reins ready in his hands. Stay awhile! The Baron de Vintovich is due to visit! It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance! Samuel looked back at them with a quiet impatience on his face, as a nobleman might endure the attention of peasants, and Minna, standing next to the wagon, looking up, felt certain that he would never marry. The thought made her glad, in the lowest of ways. But even as she indulged her gladness, she saw that his expression had changed, or else her vision of it had changed, and now Samuel’s stiffness on the bench was that of the lame and his face was searching the colonists with a furious, urgent fear.

“You thought your mother might be here,” she said loudly, for the thought had come to her loudly, and given her a shock. She had not often thought of Samuel as the son of a mother.

He looked down at her. “So what?”

So what. She didn’t know. She’d meant to accuse him, she supposed, but of what? So he’d been a child. So he’d known his mother. So his beautiful mother had been the one he preferred, even after she’d run away. Minna had not been so forgiving. She waited for him to shrug, or look away. But he kept his eyes on hers. She could see him trying not to blink.

“So I’m sorry,” she said.

His gaze held. “I never asked you for anything.”

“I know.”