I Shall Be Near to You(11)

‘Here, Rosetta. You put your hand here and your other one here,’ and he slid one red chapped callused hand under her head and one under the middle of her bundle. I thought then that I was getting out of picking her up, but he took his hands away and said, ‘Now you try.’

I held her, thinking of the time I broke Mama’s special china teacup and feeling scared what would happen if I dropped this, the only sister I’ve ever had, if it would be like that baby bird all skin and dark lids and what happened when it fell out of its nest. I couldn’t get to Mama’s bed fast or slow enough and when Mama reached her hands out over her special wedding ring quilt for the baby, I had to sit because I made it without dropping my baby sister.

‘No,’ I say to Betsy now. But I can’t find my tongue to tell her the rest. I don’t tell her how babies are too delicate, how I am scared of having one after watching Mama labor over our dead brothers or how I can’t see myself raising a child with Jeremiah’s Ma hovering over me and Jeremiah gone and never seeing it, not even once. I don’t want a baby to remind me of Jeremiah, I just want him. I don’t tell her how I’ve come to ask Papa something, so maybe after Jeremiah leaves I won’t have to stay at Wakefield farm, lonely in that house by myself.

Betsy says, ‘Oh. I thought maybe …’

‘No,’ I say. ‘That can wait for Jeremiah to come back.’

I take up those jars Mama pulled down for me.

‘When are you going to come visit again?’ she asks.

‘Soon, maybe. But I’ll see you at church,’ I say, and am out the door before she can ask me any more questions.

I button my coat against the cold wind. Inside the barn the smell of cow is thick on the air because they ain’t been out to pasture since the last storm. Papa is dumping a bucket of water from the barn well into the tie-up trough, water sloshing down his pant leg and bits of hay sticking to his hair and clothes.

After he gives me a hug, he says, ‘You look happy. Jeremiah being a good husband?’

I nod and wonder if Papa will think I am happy or that Jeremiah is a good husband once he hears what I am asking.

Papa says, ‘The farm misses you.’

‘I miss it too,’ I say, and start to tell Papa that I aim to keep on helping him.

But before I can say a word, Papa says, ‘I talked Isaac Lewis into being my farmhand now you’ve gone and grown up.’

Papa has to think about the farm and can’t see any other way, but it smarts to hear he has filled my shoes already. I hug those canning jars to my chest and say, ‘We aim to have our own farm someday, me and Jeremiah.’

Papa gives me his sad smile and says, ‘I know you do. You’ve always been a farmer at heart. But I bet about now you’ve got a husband getting hungry at home.’

I hear how I am dismissed, so I just say, ‘Good-bye, Papa,’ and show myself out. I walk down the lane and along the road where the snow ain’t so deep and look over my shoulder to the hill where all my baby brothers are buried.

I can still see Papa there, the last time he took his shovel, me watching from the kitchen window, him stabbing the earth over and over, his back turned to the house. Betsy, she was in with Mama, both of them quiet like snow falling. There was that world out there and another world in Mama’s room and then there was me staring out the window.

I didn’t know my mind was made up to help him until my hand was on the door handle and the bitter wind was pulling at my hair. The chickens cackled as if there weren’t nothing different about today than any other day. Except for Papa on the hill again.

In the barn the cows were waiting, lowing because they had full udders. When I went through the tie-up and opened the lean-to door, the horses nickered their sweet talk to me, hoping on getting some breakfast.

‘You just have to wait some more,’ I said to them. ‘Like we all have to wait sometimes for nothing. Or for nothing good.’

Papa took the best shovel so I clattered around the lean-to looking for the other one. I found it, my hand on the splintery handle, and took it up that hill, tripping over the frozen mud.

At first there was only the metal punch of the shovel and Papa grunting. But the closer I got, the more it sounded like talking and then I had to stop because of the words he was saying and I heard how he didn’t want no audience, not for anything in the world. Not with the things he was saying.

‘God. Damn. You.’ After every word, the shovel pounded the ground. ‘Why can’t you keep to yourself! And what kind of God would? What kind of God, damn it! Taking all my sons! All my sons! Leaving me nothing but daughters!’

I should’ve stayed looking out that window. My heart was near to breaking, but that made me freeze right through. I listened too long and then I left Papa on that hill and took my shovel back to the lean-to. In the barn the horses and the cows were all waiting the same as before.

I threw down enough hay to keep them still and got to work milking. My head against warm cow flank, short hair drying my wet face. The metal pail rang with hot milk and the long scruffy barn cat came running, winding himself around my legs, hoping for the first squirts but we all hope for things we don’t get.

When I finished the first cow I dragged my stool to the next. The cat came too; he just wouldn’t give up but I wouldn’t give in neither, not even when he bit my leg through Papa’s old work pants. I kicked that cat but he kept coming back for more, and I wondered how he could be so stupid to keep trying the same thing.