Beneath the Apple Leaves(9)

In the kitchen, the zinc washbasin waited, the steam from the water rising and glistening the ceiling. Andrew stripped to his waist and knelt. Carolien bent over the strong back and scrubbed the shoulders and the neck with the hard soap and brush. She had done the same ritual to his father for as long as Andrew could remember and now she repeated the service for her son.

He cringed knowing his mother’s back tweaked with the scrubbing and her hands stung from the soap. He turned his head and tried uselessly again, “You don’t need—” but she gently placed her hand on his crown and turned him forward again until she had finished. Then she stood and handed him the soap and stretched the square sheet that acted as the only wall for privacy.

Andrew shed the rest of his clothes, stepped naked into the tub, his knees bending against his chest as his six-foot frame contorted to fit. The clear water gleamed black within moments, highlighting the pale skin that hid beneath the soot.

In the hot water, his muscles relaxed, gave rise to the pain between his shoulder blades and lower vertebrae from constant stooping under the shallow tunnels. He ran his hands along the ripples of the water; the skin along the palms hardened. His fingers were still slender—the fingers of a surgeon, his father had always said. Now the nails were rough, the cuticles black, the object of Andrew’s surgery the endless walls of bituminous coal.

Andrew rubbed the soap into his neck and his face, plunged his face into the dark water and cleaned his hair. The muscles in his arms and stomach were defined now but left him feeling weak and unhealthy. They were the hard muscles of work that stressed the body instead of strengthening it. He rubbed his arms. He ran a hand through his dark hair. His blue eyes stared back in reflection. The smell of his mother’s cooking brought his stomach rumbling, though the fight to sleep was stronger than that to eat.

He climbed from the tub and dried off, his skin instantly tight from the harsh soap, and changed for dinner, unclipped the sheet and emptied the black wash water, bucket by bucket, out the front door.

A plate of roasted rabbit and glazed carrots centered the table. He looked up in surprise at the delicacy and saw his mother had been crying, her face pale with long pink streaks against her cheeks. The woman drifted in a grief-gutted dream and yet this was the first time he had seen her cry.

She sniffled and shook her head, stared at the browned, dead rabbit, its flesh shiny and taut as the skin over her knuckles. Between them, the night swelled in the house, the cold winter air permeating between termite-ravished boards. Carolien’s eyes lifted to his, held him in a memory. “I’ve made arrangements for us, Andrew.”

He waited. Under the table, he gripped his knee just to know it was still there.

“I’ve written my sister, Eveline. In Pittsburgh.” She looked as if she had said enough, as if he understood what she had left out. Her blue irises set in red-rimmed eyes scanned the room as if she were seeing it for the last time. “We can’t stay here.” Her voice deadened. “I can’t live like this anymore.”

The wind wheezed through the slats. The smell of the food disappeared. His mother folded her hands on the table. “Eveline’s husband, Wilhelm Kiser, has a good job with the railroad. He’s agreed to give you an apprenticeship.”

The room spun and stood still all at once. “College.” The word simply dribbled out. “I—I have my application in.”

Her face twisted in near disgust. “College?” Disbelief brought a short laugh to her throat. “Are you a fool, Andrew?

“Are you?” his mother asked again, sincerely perplexed. “You’re not going to college.” Her tone unrecognizable, foreign and harsh. “You never were.”

“We were saving.” Andrew’s ears burned. “We have—”

“We,” she shouted, “have nothing!” Carolien grabbed the open empty metal box and shook it upside down violently. “You were never going to college, Andrew! Your father was cruel to put those thoughts in your head.”

His mother’s lost, weary eyes looked as ancient as her twisted fingers. “You can spend the rest of your life picking coal underground or you can take this apprenticeship on the railroad. You have no other options.”

The college application, the old, worn veterinary books, fanned on his bed caught fire in his mind, burned behind his eyes, the smoke stinging and hot. “I don’t know anything about the railroad.” It was all he could think of to say, his own voice dead.

“It doesn’t matter. You’re smart and will learn. A job on the railroad pays well.” Her vision grazed the empty chair sitting at the table. “It’s safe.” His mother stretched out her neck as if she were trying to swallow something that did not taste right. “My sister and I aren’t close, Andrew. We haven’t spoken in over a decade. But she’s a good woman and has promised to take care of you in my absence.”

“Your absence?”

She broke, sobbed in a short burst. Her head rested upon the heel of her palm and she smacked her forehead ruefully. Her lips stretched over her teeth as she tried to speak. “I can’t . . . I can’t stay here.” Her palm rubbed hard against one bloodshot eye and then the next. “I’m going back to Holland. Your father had enough saved to pay for one ticket.”

The fire rose up Andrew’s neck again. “He saved that for my schooling.”