The Children's Blizzard(22)

    And he behaved like a lucky man, he truly did—at times. Yes, he brought her presents from town, planted a flower garden for her in the best soil around the house, relegating the vegetables to a more troublesome plot of land and doing the hard work of coaxing them to grow. He sang her songs in the evening and made his gratitude known to her in bed, when she permitted it.

But she could never forget the other times. The times when he put everything else on this dreadful scrap of land ahead of her. Like the time when she was giving birth to her youngest, the baby. Anna lay panting and grunting in the bed, the other two children standing in the doorway, dumbstruck, staring at her while she strained to bring forth this new life. And Gunner, where was he? In the barn, with his prize mare who was foaling at the same time. But the mare was having trouble, a breech birth, and her husband stuck his hands into the mare to pull out a foal, while she, Anna, lay alone. Split open with pain, clammy with terror, during childbirth. Alone, she gave birth to a son for him, she pulled the child out from between her legs with her own shaking hands, she held him there while she screamed. Their youngest son was born in a webbed, scarlet fury of blood and pain, and in that moment she couldn’t help but feel this was his destiny.

    That, she could not forget. Let alone forgive.

Then he brought them, those strangers, into her house. He presented each of them to her as he presented his pretty presents. With a flourish, a pleased flush on his handsome face. But with no real idea of how the practicalities of it all would work: who would feed them, clothe them, have to live with them day in and day out while he escaped to his everlasting stable.

“Anna, my love, you needed help, so I have arranged it,” he told her the day that Anette’s mother arrived with her in tow. “I heard of a woman who wanted to sell her girl—there’s trouble at home, I gathered, and the mother thinks it’s best to get rid of her. Someone in town told me, and I wrote to her, and she’ll be here today. To help you, my love!” He must have seen the darkness overtake her face; that darkness she couldn’t always control, even though she knew it distorted her pretty features, made her less than her usual self.

“A stranger? In my house?”

“You said you were lonely!”

“Lonely for my family, my sisters, my friends. Lonely for you. Not lonely for a girl her own mother doesn’t even want! What do we know about the family? Is she slatternly, the mother? Is the girl a bastard child?”

“I don’t know—I don’t think—”

“You didn’t even ask, did you?” Anna could have slapped his silly, stupid face right then; the man looked so surprised by her questions, so stunned at her refusal of his gift. Anna never refused gifts.

“It’s too late, they’ll be here today. I promised the mother. She was desperate—and so, my Anna, may I say, are you. You have too much to do with the children and this place, you know that’s true.”

    “And why is that? Who dragged me out here to the ends of the earth?”

Gunner didn’t respond, he never did when she reminded him of his folly. He only pressed his lips together, passed his hand over his eyes, so that when they were visible again a little light had gone out of them. They weren’t such a polished, gleaming brown. Then he rose to go to the stable and tend to his horses, the only things he truly loved.

“Don’t think that I will be good to this—creature,” she called after him. “Don’t think that I’ll treat her as my own!”

And she hadn’t; she never would. The girl was stupid, there was no other word for it; she had a habit of staring into space, her eyes dull. Her skin was pockmarked, her hair a mustardy brown and thin, stringy. Anna feared that her own children, a girl and two boys, would catch whatever had made Anette this way, but she had no choice but to rely on the girl for help. The child was a hard worker, there was no denying that, but she worked in as dull a way as she lived, her movements ploddingly methodical, her face expressionless. Anna would never be able to stop adding up the cost of an extra mouth to feed, an extra body to clothe, and then there was school to think of. But she had learned to live with the girl, absorb her status in the household—servant only. Not family.

But then, the Schoolteacher arrived. And that was Gunner’s doing, too.

“Darling Anna, good news! I’ve been appointed to the school board—a sign of my importance in the community. Just you wait and see, I’ll run for office one day, my dearest!” And he’d puffed his chest out, patted his mustache, and looked ridiculous. The vanity of man!

“And we’ve just decided on the new teacher for this term,” he continued smugly. “This will be her first school, but her older sister has excellent references and she’s from a good home. The Olsens over in the next county, they farm, immigrants, Norwegians like us. The father is a deacon in the church, an impeccable character. When we visited to tell the girl she was chosen, I was very impressed by the family.”

    “That’s nice.” She had been knitting a new muffler for him. Putting her pretty hands to labor for him. Completely unaware of the treachery he was about to deploy.

“And I volunteered our home, for her to board in. I felt it was the thing to do, being new to the school board. It’s a good way to show my value to them. She’ll start with the winter term, we can put her up in the attic with Anette. I thought I might insulate it, paint it up a bit—”