Between Earth and Sky(12)

Alma looked down the rows of gaping faces and felt her cheeks burn.

“Now, young lady.” Her mother’s voice was steady, but knife-sharp. “Let these Indians see what happens to bad little girls.”

With every step Alma took toward her bed, she regretted saving Margaret’s doll. She hated Stover and wished her family had never come. She drew her skirt up over her backside and braced her hands on the mattress.

The back of the brush struck her bottom, stinging her skin through her thin cotton drawers and driving her forward. She balled the quilt in her fists and clenched her teeth. Her mother paddled her again. And again.

Ten strikes later, Alma’s legs wobbled and tears streamed down her face. Her mother cast the brush onto the bed and stalked away. Alma stood and straightened her skirt, keeping her head down to hide her red, puffy face. She never wanted to see her mother or another Indian ever again.

*

Stares and whispers kept Alma’s embarrassment aflame all day. Why couldn’t the Indians just ignore her like they usually did?

When evening finally came, Alma lingered in the parlor as the others marched to bed. She waited until all was quiet, then hobbled upstairs. Her backside still throbbed from the morning’s punishment.

A sliver of light shone beneath the dormitory door. Alma could hear Miss Wells pacing the room, counting heads. She sighed and slumped against the wall. Fresh tears sprang to her eyes—hot tears, full of hate and frustration. She couldn’t bear it, not a single day more. She felt lonelier here surrounded by the Indian children than she had in Philadelphia all alone.

The footfalls stopped and the somber drone of evening Scripture began. “The word of the Lord came to Jonah . . .”

Ugh. Alma knew that one already. The Indians had probably never seen a whale, wouldn’t know what the story meant. True, she hadn’t either. But she’d seen the skeleton of one laid out in a museum. Surely that counted.

“Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and . . .”

Run away, that’s what she’d do. Run away and find a new mother and real friends.

When the footfalls stopped and the somber drone of evening prayers began, Alma turned the knob and opened the door just a crack. She slipped in and crept to her bedside. With Miss Wells’s gaze upon them, not one of the sixteen girls dared look up. She sank onto her knees beside her bed. While her lips mouthed the last verse of prayer, her mind swirled with plans of flight.

After the teacher damped the lamps, Alma slid into bed, still dressed in her day clothes and boots. She would slip out as soon as the other girls were asleep. Maybe she’d join a troupe of actors, wear face paint and pretty costumes. Maybe she’d steal onto a steamboat and sail down the Mississippi. Anywhere would be better than here.

In time, rustling fabric and whining bedsprings settled. Slow, even breaths sounded through the room. Alma was just about to rise when the floorboard creaked beside her.

She cracked open one eye and spied one of the older girls, named Catherine, creeping toward the window. The girl’s quilt hung over her shoulders like a shawl. She coaxed the window open without a sound and slipped out onto the roof.

Next, Alice tiptoed past, then Rose and Margaret. Had they stolen her idea? Were they running away too?

Alma remained motionless, her eyes combing over the other beds. Sleeping forms rose and fell with silent breaths. No one else had awoken.

She looked back to the window. Alice and Rose had already vanished onto the roof. Margaret gathered up her nightshirt with one hand and grabbed the window frame with the other. A breeze fluttered her hair, carrying with it the scent of the lawn and trees, the rocks and dirt, the moonlight and stars. A slight leap and out she climbed, into the open.





CHAPTER 7


Minnesota, 1906



Endless miles of baled hay and swaying cornstalks at last gave way to the stone, brick, and steel of St. Paul. Inside the dining car, Alma’s teacup chattered atop its saucer in time with the rocking train. The toast on her plate lay half-eaten and her soft-boiled egg untouched. She stared out the window at the small houses and tenement buildings lining the track. Every so often, the gray water of the Mississippi bullied its way into view between gaps in the transitioning landscape. At this distance, the river’s surface appeared smooth, like a vein of painted glass in a decorative window. But Alma knew better. She had looked upon those same waters countless times as a girl. She knew their unforgiving and unyielding currents.

“La Crosse is what—a hundred miles downriver?” Stewart asked.

Alma tore her gaze from the window and looked at her husband. His soft eyes calmed her—not the blue of her parents’ nor the inky-brown of the Indians’, but hazel. Even in the harsh incandescent light of her aunt’s parlor that first evening they’d met, his eyes had struck her. She could stare into them forever without reminder of things past. Here especially, so close to her childhood home, she needed that refuge. “A hundred and fifty.”

“Did you come here often?”

She shook her head. “Only once. Mother preferred Chicago.”

“Isn’t that twice as far?”

“Yes, but twice as fashionable.”

Stewart chuckled. “She’s still living in La Crosse, isn’t she? We could stop by on our return home.”

“No,” she said, on top of his words.