The Children's Blizzard(81)

Now she heard her name being called by Raina—“Gerda! Gerda?”—so she hobbled even faster to her corner, where there was a milk stool, a lantern, a blanket, some of her schoolteacher books. She reread them—she’d memorized them. Anything to try to take her mind off…things.

Or course, she couldn’t teach again, not anywhere around here in northeastern Nebraska or Dakota. But she also couldn’t imagine remaining in her parents’ house much longer. She couldn’t forever blot out the sun that still shone on her parents and her sister. She had received several letters that Mama and Papa would not allow her to read, they’d burned them up without a word after they had read them first, but she knew what was in them. How could you? My son is gone forever, my daughter. How could you do that to them? How could you let them go to their deaths?

    Tiny’s parents never wrote, however. Her parents never spoke his name. She couldn’t allow herself to, either, for fear she would let slip the damning truth behind her actions that day and kill her parents on the spot.

Sometimes she let her imagination loose, picturing herself older, odder every year that she remained here. Children would make up songs about her, cruel songs. They would sneak around at night to see if they could catch a glimpse of her—afraid but excited, too, to see her face. They would shriek and run off in the night when she came to the window to see who was throwing pebbles at it. In their telling, she would grow uglier and crazier each year, until she was a witch, an ogress.

But also in her imagination, she sometimes saw herself curled up on her bed, shrinking with the passing seasons. Doing her best to take up less air, less space. Withering away until she was like one of those creepy apple-head dolls that Mrs. Kristiansen made, dolls with wizened, wrinkled faces as if all substance had been sucked from them.

“Gerda!” Raina had crept into the barn while she’d been arranging herself—not an easy thing to do—on the low milk stool, preparing to wait out the party. “Gerda, you are trying my patience—oh, there you are!”

There was scolding in Raina’s voice. And other things—adult things, maturity and weariness and resoluteness, too. No nonsense. This was not the slightly singsong voice of the little sister she’d last seen months ago. Gerda steeled herself to look up into her sister’s face.

    There was no accusation in it. No hate. A steeliness—new—in her eyes, but it didn’t obscure the love she’d always seen there. Her sister would never look up to her again, but she would still love her. And Gerda assumed that burden, too—just when had her family’s love and care started feeling like the worst punishment she could imagine?

“Gerda, why are you hiding away? And oh—how thin you are!” Raina clucked like a mother hen; she shook her head. She was dusty from the trip, her braided bun slightly undone, she hadn’t even paused to splash water on her face. But she looked well; she looked pretty—prettier than she had when she left, her cheeks less full, her cheekbones more pronounced. She looked somewhat guarded, too; it was evident that she had not come through these months unscathed emotionally. Gerda remembered her odd letters when she first left home, and she wondered.

Raina looked tested, that was it—and she’d obviously passed that test, spectacularly. The two of them had never been equals; Gerda had always been the leader, Raina the docile follower. But now their positions were reversed, their relationship redefined, and Gerda frankly didn’t think she had the strength to adjust to its new parameters.

“I’m not hiding, I’m—” But then Gerda sighed. “Yes, I’m hiding.”

“Not from me, I hope?”

“No, but from the others. You know Mama invited some neighbors to welcome you home.”

“To show me off, you mean.”

Gerda had to laugh. “Yes, that’s what I mean.”

    “Ach, I thought I was through with all that, once I came home.” And Raina slid down next to her sister, not caring that she was sitting in murky straw. She even took a piece of straw and began to suck on it, just like she used to when she was small. “I am tired of it, these people looking at me like I’m some saint. When all I did was what anyone would have done—” Then she stopped, and looked away.

“Why did you send them home, Gerda?” Raina finally asked the question that no one else had dared. In all this time, all the accusation and anger, no one had asked her why she’d let the children out early; they all just assumed she’d gotten confused in the storm and made the wrong decision, and that was bad enough.

But Gerda had been carrying the answer around in her stomach like a heavy stone; it weighed her down, it filled her up so that she couldn’t eat, couldn’t do anything but be aware of it, always. Here was a chance to give it to someone else, at least for a brief moment—and she took it, almost crying with the relief of unburdening herself.

“Oh, Raina—it was because of Tiny! I wanted to be alone with him, and I knew that the Andersons were going to be gone for the day, it was so nice, so much warmer than it had been—remember?” And Gerda shut her eyes and felt, again, the surprising gift of the soft air that morning, bearing with it promises. Promises of the future. “I told Tiny, that morning, that I was going to let school out early and he should come for me and the girls, and then the storm came. So suddenly! But the children were already wearing their cloaks and had all their slates and pails—I’d already rung the bell. I told them to run. As if they could have, those little things. Then I jumped in the sleigh with Minna and Ingrid and Tiny and we went off. Laughing—laughing, Raina! It seemed exciting, in that moment, to outrun the storm. But I did turn back, once. And I saw that the children had already disappeared in the snow and wind, and I worried, then. I wondered if I should make Tiny turn around so we could call them back. But I didn’t. I told Tiny to keep going, I didn’t want to spoil my plans. And that is why I am a criminal. A murderess.”