The Children's Blizzard(85)

But she felt lonely anyway, mostly, despite the fact that she had been surrounded by people ever since the blizzard. Missing something. Missing someone. Not her mama, not anymore—oh, yes, she’d been so happy to see her that day! But almost immediately, she’d waited for the bad thing to happen, because it always did. And when she was told that her mother had left in the middle of the night without a goodbye—just like the other time—it didn’t hurt as much. The wound this time was already inside her, it wasn’t being carved into her with a dull knife like it had been the first time.

She would never see her mother again, but the difference was—she didn’t want to see her mother again.

    So it must be Fredrik she missed, then; Fredrik she thought of when she thought of “home.” But she could bring his memories with her wherever she went, that’s what Teacher had said to her once. So “home” would be that—anywhere she could think of Fredrik. But already his image was fading at an alarming rate; sometimes all she could remember of him were those dreadful moments when they were both crying, mad at each other, in the middle of the blizzard.

Or sometimes, all she could remember was his body, sleeping so still beside her when she opened her eyes the next morning in the ravine, and she was so cold, she was beyond feeling.



* * *



—

AS THE DAYS passed, Anette saw so many new things, experienced so many wondrous moments, she wondered if she would ever be able to remember them. She wished she was clever enough to write them down—in a diary, that’s what it was called. Mrs. Johnson had given her one the first night she was in Omaha, but she didn’t have the right words to explain all the images parading through her mind. She could see them clearly, but she couldn’t pin them down upon the page. Everything happened so quickly, one after another, an assault. But people meant well, they liked her, they were kind, Mr. Woodson kept reminding her whenever he saw her grow still, her eyes dull, retreating into herself.

Take that dinner in her honor, when she had been the only child present. There were so many things to eat and it was evident she was supposed to try them all and make happy noises, but all she’d felt was sick by the time it was all over. And all those shining, grown-up faces turned her way! She’d squirmed, she’d wriggled, she’d wanted nothing as much as she wanted to run away right then, just sprint out of the house and keep running. But Omaha, she soon found out, was not a place for that; there were too many people and wagons and things called carriages and drays and cable cars, all going their own ways, taking turns crisscrossing the street, and Anette couldn’t figure out the pattern, so she couldn’t just run. She’d be hit by something, that was clear as day.

    They took many outings, she and Mr. Woodson, and he did try, very patiently, to explain what he called traffic to her. There were corners where everything had to stop, where some people and carriages were allowed to proceed while others waited, but she just couldn’t get the hang of it; she always wanted to cross when it wasn’t her turn.

There were parties for her, where other children were all dressed up in party clothes, as was she; Mrs. Johnson had helped her understand, or at least try to, which clothes were supposed to be worn when. And every piece of clothing was only worn once at the Johnsons’ before it was whisked away to be laundered! By someone else, not Anette! Mrs. Johnson did sit her down and explain that the boarding school wouldn’t quite be the same; she would have a uniform and would wear it for a week before it was laundered, but again she wouldn’t have to do it herself, which seemed fantastic.

At those parties, Anette was simply too shy to play any of the games the other children knew, games they seemed to have been born knowing how to play. What she’d heard someone call “playtime” was not anything she had been acquainted with, except for recess at school. While she wasn’t ashamed of how hard she’d once worked—one of the most amazing things was that her body no longer got stiff and achy when she sat too long, her back no longer throbbed, she didn’t get headaches anymore—she was sometimes filled with a sadness that she had missed out on what seemed an important part of childhood. At least childhood for girls and boys who had grown up in Omaha.

    The other children’s screaming—city children were definitely more excitable than prairie children—did make her ears ache, though; she hadn’t been prepared for how loud the city was compared to the prairie. All the voices in the streets and the wheels of the carriages and wagons and cable cars, outdoor clocks with bells that chimed, and not all at the same time, harnesses on storefront doors that jingled when the doors opened and closed, jangly music coming out of buildings Mr. Woodson wouldn’t take her to, people shouting, selling things on every corner—

Even Mother Pedersen at her most furious couldn’t have made her voice heard over all that noise.

One day they went to what Mr. Woodson called a circus—P. T. Barnum’s circus, he said proudly, he’d seen it back in New York at something called the Hippodrome. It was all under a big tent, and there was a parade full of the oddest people she’d ever seen—giants and tiny people and what Mr. Woodson pointed out as clowns, people with funny faces who piled out of carriages and jumped around and hit one another with pig bladders and sacks of flour. And then there were the fantastic animals; he pointed them out to her, too. Elephants and tigers and lions, the most beautiful horses she’d ever seen ridden bareback by elegant ladies on their tiptoes. Anette couldn’t take her eyes off those graceful figures, she thought she might cry, she’d never seen such prettiness in her life. She was given peanuts and popcorn and something called spun sugar, and she ate it all and then got sick later, but Mr. Woodson didn’t mind. “That’s how you see your first circus,” he said, tickled. “I got sick the first time I went to one, too.”