The Children's Blizzard(70)

But sometimes, when he thought she wasn’t watching, Mr. Woodson would study her with a troubled frown. He would look at her, then at Mother Pedersen, and shake his head. As if he didn’t quite trust the situation in front of his own eyes. As if he somehow could see into the past, see how it was before the blizzard. Then he would grow silent, and thoughtful.

There came a day when Anette was allowed to sit in a chair for an entire afternoon, with real clothes on, not a nightgown. She’d expected to put on her old clothes, but instead there was a bright blue gingham dress with rows of buttons up the back that Mother Pedersen fastened for her. She had new underthings, too—pretty, snow-white underthings with little frills. And new black slippers with red ribbons across the instep—Anette could not stop looking at them; she sat in the chair and extended her legs, pointing her feet, admiring them. Her hair had been washed and brushed. It was like a holiday, if she’d ever known what a holiday was before, which she didn’t. But that was how Mr. Woodson described it, the day she got out of bed for the first time.

    She heard Mother Pedersen flying about the house in her usual way, and once it was time to start dinner Anette came out of the bedroom on unsteady legs, gingerly crossing the floor in her pretty new shoes; she held her one hand against the wall for balance. She had no idea how long she’d been in bed; she’d never thought to ask, but her legs felt like jelly that hadn’t jelled. Still, now that she was dressed and up, she knew she ought to be helping get dinner.

“Anette! What are you doing?” Mother Pedersen asked, aghast, as Anette tried to grasp a pail; she could at least bring in some snow to melt on the stove.

“Helping.”

“You sit right down! You’re too weak. Let me.” And Mother Pedersen snatched the pail from her hand with something like her old anger, and marched outside to get the snow, bringing it inside to melt by the stove.

“I—I don’t know….” Anette had no idea what to say, how to ask the question she was desperate to ask: Would she be able to stay here, now that she couldn’t work so much? If not, where would she go—who would take her in? She just wished someone would explain it to her. Mr. Woodson might be able to tell her, but he wasn’t here today, and Teacher wasn’t yet back from school.

“You don’t know what?” Mother Pedersen—obviously harried and tired—snapped. But then she caught herself, brought the back of her hand up to her red face as if to cool it, and presented a forced, but not malicious, smile to Anette. It struck her that Mother Pedersen, too, was uncertain about how to proceed with this new—softness?—between them.

    “I don’t know—”

But then there was a knock at the door. Mother Pedersen frowned, put down the skillet of cornbread she was about to slide into the hot oven, and dashed to answer it, muttering, “Now what?” All the visitors were beginning to wear on her, Anette could tell.

Anette heard a commotion at the door, then a voice, a voice from her memory, or a dream, perhaps. Then into the kitchen rushed someone radiating emotion and exuding a familiar smell—a combination of potatoes and horse and sweat. Before she knew what was happening, Anette felt arms around her neck and for a moment, the world turned black as she was enfolded into those arms that might have once rocked her, but probably not. Still, the sensation she felt with them around her reached back to before she’d been born. It was both familiar and startlingly strange.

But her heart knew; her heart forced the cry of “Mama!” out of her throat before her mind could put everything together. Anette was astonished to feel a rush of tears flood down her cheeks; longing—pent up this last year and a half, longing for something she’d never truly known—nearly burst her chest wide open. She sobbed with pure relief, a feeling as basic as breathing, as natural as seeing, to be in her mother’s arms.

Other emotions—anger, hurt—beckoned at her across this great gulf of belonging, but for now she shut her eyes to them. Wasn’t this what she’d wanted? Wasn’t this what she’d forbidden herself to cry for, because she knew it would never happen? And yet here she was!

“Mama!”

“My Anette! My poor girl! Oh, to have you in my arms again, my poor thing! What have they done to you?”

    At this, Mother Pedersen began to sputter angrily. But before she could say anything, Anette’s mama was pulling her down on her lap and rocking her, none too gently—Anette winced as her mother touched her stump too roughly—and Anette laid her head against her mother’s shoulder and allowed herself to feel like someone’s daughter again. Or maybe for the first time?

Because even as she fell into this womb-like embrace, she couldn’t help but think that never, not once that she could remember, had she been cuddled and exclaimed over. Loved.

So why was her mother being so nice to her now?





CHAPTER 32


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WHEN GAVIN WOODSON MADE THE now-familiar journey from the Newman Grove train station to the Pedersen homestead on a borrowed horse, lugging all the letters and gifts that were small enough to carry (Christ, this good deed of his, while it may have given him a conscience, a soul, and a heart, was about to break his back), the last thing he expected to find was Anette’s mother sitting on a chair in the kitchen like a queen on a throne—and Anette cuddled on her lap.