The Children's Blizzard(63)

“Papa, Papa—” She reached her hand out toward her father, who walked away and stared out a window. Sharply did her mother speak to him in Norwegian. “Stop behaving like this, she is still our daughter.”

“What, Mama?” Gerda struggled to sit up, her foot—the foot that was no longer part of her—still throbbing, but how could that be?

Mama must have read her thoughts, for, as she helped her up into a seated position, shoving a pillow behind her back, she explained. “You will still feel the foot, the doctor says. It’s normal, but eventually it will go away, that feeling.”

“Oh.”

Gerda shut her eyes, too exhausted to ask more. Her mind was turning over this information like a child turns over a handful of pebbles, searching for the one that feels best in her hand; the smoothest, coolest one. She couldn’t find anything that felt right, however. She was maimed for life. Never before had she imagined this for herself—she’d imagined pretty dresses, bright hair ribbons, a house of her own, with Tiny—

    “Tiny!” Her eyes flew open and for now, her foot was forgotten. “Where is he? Tiny—did he—was he—?”

“They found his body a couple of days ago,” Papa said coldly, still gazing out the window, his big, work-scarred hands grasped behind his back.

“No, no!” Gerda felt the impact of his words in her solar plexus, knocking the breath out of her—not Tiny! Yes, she’d told herself he was probably lost when he didn’t come back for her and the girls, but that was then, during the pinnacle of the storm when her resolve was focused only on survival. Now she could feel the pain exquisitely, viscerally—she struggled to control herself because she didn’t want to share her grief with her parents. It was hers, hers alone, they would never understand it. They would never understand them, Gerda and Tiny, because Mama and Papa had never been young and in love, had never had hopes and dreams—

But these were her hopes and dreams, not Tiny’s. If only they’d been able to have that one day together, the day she’d planned; the two of them playing house so she could show him what he would miss if he ran away, she could convince him with her domesticity—with her lips, if necessary—what a wife could give him that a life of adventure couldn’t…if only…

Her face was wet with hot tears, her head pounded, and her foot was beginning to tingle again; her stomach was so empty she felt faint but also sick, but she swallowed the bile, the grief. There was something else, some other worry buzzing about her aching head, and then she remembered, and she looked at Papa. She began to shake with dread—she understood why he was acting so strangely toward her. But she had to ask, she had to know.

    “The other children?” she whispered pleadingly. “The others—what about them?”

“Finally you ask what you should have asked the moment you awoke?” Papa’s voice bounced off the glass windowpanes and thundered about the room, tormenting her ears, her heart. “Finally you want to know about your students and not your beau?”

She nodded.

“They are gone, Gerda. All of them, lost in the storm. Three boys found together frozen, their arms about each other—the Gerber boys. A brother and sister—the Borstads—found only a few feet from the schoolhouse. And two little boys, Hardus Hummel and Johnny Rolstad, found together, too, not far from the Rolstad farm.”

The names were too much; she felt herself receding from the room, from her father’s accusing voice, and she began to chant as she had during the storm—“Minna, Ingrid, Hardus, Johnny, Johannes, Karl, Walter, Sebastian, Lydia…Minna, Ingrid, Hardus, Johnny, Johannes, Karl, Walter, Sebastian, Lydia.”

“Stop it!” Papa was beside her in one great inhuman stride; as she continued to mumble the names, their little faces spinning through her mind, she was trapped on a carousel of the dead—

A sting, a gasp. Papa had slapped her across the face.

“Steffen!” Mama rose, her voice terrible; she pushed her husband away from her daughter. Gerda was stunned, although she didn’t feel pain from the slap itself; her torture was that, for the first time in her life, her father had struck her.

And she deserved it, more than he would ever know—more than he ever could know.

    “Why, Gerda—why?” Papa’s voice was hoarse; he sank down into a chair and let his shoulders slump so that he seemed like an old man, but he raised his head and finally looked her in the eye. “What were you thinking when you let them all go, when you left with Tiny and the two little girls?”

Now she couldn’t meet his gaze. She also couldn’t answer his question—never could he know what she was thinking that day. So she only shook her head.

“We must get you back to our farm soon,” Papa said, rising once more, roaming the little room—where were the Andersons? She didn’t even hear Ma Anderson bustling about in the kitchen. “You’re not safe here.”

“What do you mean?” Gerda’s head ached as if someone had put it in a vise; she rubbed her temples but brushed her mother’s hands away when that good woman tried to do it for her. She didn’t deserve to be touched or soothed—not by decent people, people like her parents. People who would die from grief and disappointment if they could see inside her blackened, sinful heart.