The Children's Blizzard(34)

Mama suddenly rose and continued shaking out the mattress tick; she bent down and kissed Gerda on the head and gently told her to go back to the dishes, and the moment was over. Mama was Mama again, singing hymns as she went about her tasks, that odd, feverish gleam in her eyes gone. She welcomed Papa home from the fields that night as usual, with a table full of hearty food and a scolding for him to leave his work boots outside, as if he’d ever dared to wear them inside!

    That night, as she and Raina lay next to each other, Raina already softly snoring, Gerda heard the familiar, low murmuring between her parents, felt the reflexive relaxing of her own limbs, her eyelids growing heavy. But for the first time, she understood that conversation didn’t always bring about resolution. That people—all people—carried around inside them notions and thoughts and sadness that could not be alleviated simply by talking about them.

But that people—women, perhaps, especially—had to try. Or else…Gerda didn’t really know. Maybe, when you carried those sad thoughts around forever, you could die from them?

Gerda’s lips felt chapped and raw; she wanted to lick them but didn’t dare for fear her tongue would freeze to them. She realized she’d been talking to herself. Just like Mama had on that strange day—and others like it. But as Raina got older it was upon her that Mama would shower these urgent, pent-up torrents of words, thoughts, feelings, memories. Gerda, by then, was spending too much time out in the fields or barn with Papa, doing her very best to keep up with him, although she couldn’t. They both knew it, and in little glances and sighs from her father, Gerda did see what her mother meant; she did understand how much her father missed not having a son.

There she was again! Talking to herself, her thoughts strange and far away, while her body kept moving. Although she realized she was shuffling now, as was Ingrid, and she hadn’t felt Minna stir at all for a while. Suddenly her heart seized, then it tried to race but it couldn’t, her blood was too cold. But still panic flooded her, propelled her legs, her feet that could just as well have been cement blocks for all that Gerda could feel them, forward, forward. Now she was stumbling, shuffling instead of dragging. Her head still bent against the onslaught of this terrible, clogging snow; it filled her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her lungs, and she wondered if she could suffocate in it. She wondered if Minna already had.

    “Come, come,” she yelled, crazily, to poor Ingrid, who looked up at her once, and through the whirling snow Gerda saw horror—a face rubbed raw, eyes crusted over with ice. Ingrid’s lips were blue and trembling. She emitted a faint, pitiful cry.

“Come!” Gerda had only one hand with which to drag the little girl, as her other arm was wrapped around one of Minna’s limp legs. “Come, Ingrid, come!”

And with her head bent back down again, Gerda plunged forward into the nightmare. It was growing darker by the minute. It must be nearly dusk. They’d never see a light in a window, not shrouded in this curtain of misery.

She staggered on this way, one girl on her back, the other barely upright, crying constantly now, until suddenly Gerda smelled something. Something faintly sweet. She stopped, walked ahead, then turned blindly to her left; she dropped Ingrid’s hand so that she could feel her way through the wind and snow, she inched ahead, arm outstretched, and it was a miracle that jolted through her body when she touched something—something hard, cold, little smooth ridges, an occasional sharp edge.

A haystack.

“Ingrid!” She whirled around, dropped Minna against the stack—the girl didn’t move, she was as inert as a doll. Gerda ran back a few steps; she heard crying, grabbed something alive, and it was—another miracle!—Ingrid. Then she dragged the child back to the haystack, and with a fury—a hunger—Gerda began to paw at the hay. It was freezing, sharp, it bit at her hands, fighting back. But after how long, she did not know—she only knew that she was both drenched in perspiration and numb with cold—she had carved out an opening, a tiny cave barely large enough to shove Minna and Ingrid inside and maybe she could squeeze herself in there, too. It was something, anyway, and she crawled in after them as far as she could. She fell on her back, gazing up at darkness but it was quiet now, so quiet her ears popped; the wind was muffled, she heard her own breathing, and another ragged little breath beside her. But from the silent, frozen mound of clothes and flesh at her head, there came no sound.

    “Minna,” she croaked hoarsely, but a blanketing exhaustion overwhelmed her. She was sinking now, sinking in this tiny space, straw tickling her nose. It was still cold—colder down at her feet than at her head, although she could barely sense that, as she could not feel her feet—but they were out of the worst of it. They would stay here until it passed over. Minna was surely asleep, that was all; Ingrid had stopped crying, and must have fallen asleep, as well.

It was so quiet. She was only aware of her own breathing, shallow breaths coming further apart than she’d ever felt. It was like drowning, but she had never known anyone who had drowned, had only read about it in books. Her lungs filled up with something other than air, and she felt her eyes close, her body grow limp.

She tried to stay awake; she began to count backward from one hundred. Ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven, ninety-six, ninety-five.

    “Ingrid,” she murmured, lips so numb she could barely move them. “Ingrid, now it’s your turn, go on, keep counting….Raina, why don’t you ask her….”