The Children's Blizzard(82)

    “Oh, Gerda.” Raina looked as shocked as a person could, and Gerda was glad. She’d longed to tell someone, but the only people around were Papa and Mama, and she just couldn’t hurt them any more. But now that she had told Raina, she was strangely relieved and free.

“So you see, Raina, I am not like you, I’m not like anyone. I am evil. I am lost. I haven’t told Papa and Mama this—about Tiny. I haven’t told anyone. Just you. You’re the only one who knows the truth about me.” Gerda shifted on her stool; her lower leg ached in this position, but she welcomed the pain.

“It’s good that you told me, you needed to tell someone. You’re not bad, Gerda, you just let—you just let a boy turn your head for a minute.” Raina seemed thoughtful; she tucked her legs up and hugged them against her chest. “That could happen to anyone.”

“Not you. You wouldn’t have endangered those children for a man.”

Raina took a very long time to answer this. She opened her mouth to speak, shut it, then finally lay her head in her hands before looking at her again. “No, you are not evil. I—I almost ran off with a man. The husband of the family I boarded with. I tell you, Gerda, it was awful in that house, he paid me too much attention and I was a fool, I let him. The first man to give me flowers, I put all my heart in his hands. And one night, right before the storm—when it had been so cold, remember? And we couldn’t leave the house for days, I thought I might go mad. He came to me and he told me we would leave, just the two of us. And even though he was a man who would leave his wife and family alone on the prairie—God help me, Gerda, I would have gone with him. I might have, I think. All that time in that house—those terrible weeks—I always asked myself, ‘What would Gerda do?’ Because you were the strong one, you always told me what to do, my sister.” Raina reached for Gerda’s hand.

    “Why—what stopped you?”

“His wife. She came at him with a knife.”

“Good Lord! I had no idea—your letters were odd, but I had no idea you landed in such an evil place.” The two Olsen girls sat hand in hand for a long while. Gerda remembered their uncomplicated childhood, being loved, being wanted. How had these two, raised in such a manner, ended up here—both of them wracked with guilt over a man?

But just like a fairy tale, one sister remained good, while the other was branded forever.

“You didn’t go,” Gerda reminded her sister.

“I might have.”

“You didn’t. For whatever reason, you didn’t.”

“And then when the storm hit, I thought he would come for me and the children at the schoolhouse. I waited, hoping he would. But of course, he didn’t.” Raina raised her head and stared at the barn wall, tracking the movement of a small brown mouse that had poked its head out from a hollow in one of the slats. “Only when the wind blew the window out did I finally act on my own. I might have waited there all night, letting the children freeze to death.”

“You didn’t. You did the right thing in the end. Don’t forget that, Raina. Don’t ever forget that. I did not.” Gerda embraced her guilt once more, returned to its rightful place in the pit of her stomach. Raina would walk around with little bits of it—the jagged, painful edges of knowledge—but this stone was hers alone.

    “What do you plan to do now?” Raina asked after a long moment. “Teach again?”

“Not here, no. I can’t. No one would hire me.”

“You could—I could help you—let me help you!” Raina looked up, her eyes sparkling. “I could take you to Lincoln with me, help with your education. You could go to college, too!”

“No!” Gerda didn’t mean to shout, but she couldn’t bear this—her little sister so eager to help, to give her absolution. “No, Raina, no—you don’t understand. I cannot stay in Nebraska.”

“What do you mean?”

“I am outside now—an outcast. This community, they will not have me, nor should they. There’s a pact out here, I’ve come to believe. Unwritten, but still. You don’t think of yourself first. And you don’t want too much. The people here—good people, don’t get me wrong—they abide by these rules, they never ask for more than what Providence has given them. Other than sailing across an ocean to take a piece of the earth as their own, they have never asked for more. They have never thought of themselves first. But I did, you see. I broke the pact. I can’t stay here.”

“So where will you go, Gerda? Not too far away?”

“I have a plan, I think. I’ve written to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Do you remember that school we visited long ago, where the little Indian children were? With Papa?”

“Yes, and Papa got so angry?”

“There are other schools like it. Out west—I mean to go west. Tiny always wanted to—” Gerda felt tears threaten. It did not help that Raina immediately scooted over and put her arms around her; Gerda stiffened, tried to push her sister away, but Raina refused to let go and finally, Gerda dissolved into tears for her beau, missing him so much, more than she had thought she would. She missed the children, of course, but Tiny—the thought of him dying out there alone; they’d found his body up against a fence post, far from his pony’s, he’d never even gotten close—caused her to muffle a scream of agony, feeling everything he must have felt. Terror, confusion, pain. Love and worry for her, too. She hoped.