Caroline: Little House, Revisited(112)
“Oh, Pa!” Laura said. Her voice cracked. Tears spilled down her face and dripped from her chin.
Caroline did not know what to say. Some of the Indians were looking at them now. What would they think—what might they do—if they heard Laura and understood what she had said? “For shame, Laura,” she chided, and regretted it immediately. Laura had lost all hold of herself. She could hardly breathe enough to sob. Caroline crouched down beside her daughter and asked, softly, “Why on earth do you want an Indian baby, of all things?”
Laura panted and hiccoughed before she managed to answer. “Its eyes are so black,” she whimpered, looking past Caroline through a blur of tears. As if she were no more than coveting a dress for its buttons. It made no sense. Laura knew it, too, and grimaced with the effort of trying again. Caroline wiped Laura’s cheeks with her apron, hoping the touch itself might help her grasp what Laura was trying to convey. It did not. Whatever Laura felt, she did not have the words for it. It was too large, and she was so small she could neither contain it nor release it. All she could do was look up at Caroline with eyes that begged to be understood. Beseeching. Caroline knew the word well enough, but she had never seen it like this. Laura’s misery was so raw, Caroline could feel the throbbing of it herself.
“Why, Laura,” she said, and suddenly she was the one pleading. “You don’t want another baby. We have a baby, our own baby.” The rest of the words caught in her throat. She gestured toward the doorway, where the crown of Carrie’s dark little head was visible above the board.
Laura tried for an instant to agree. Then her face crumpled. “I want the other one, too!”
Her outburst struck Caroline’s face like a wind. She sat back on her heels, too bewildered to try anything else. “Well, I declare!” she said.
“Look at the Indians, Laura,” said Charles. “Look west, and then look east, and see what you see.”
Laura obeyed, and Caroline with her. The line of Indians seemed to rise up out of the grass to the east, then sink back into the west, as though they were as much a feature of the prairie as the creek and the bluffs. When Laura turned back, the black-eyed baby was out of sight. Caroline braced herself for a fresh surge of desperation and protest. Instead Laura accepted the blow as if she were grown. The expression slid from her face until her features were slack. Her shoulders jerked with jagged, silent sobs. However incomprehensible its cause, Laura’s grief was real. The sight of it left Caroline staggered, as though something had been taken from her, too.
Caroline took Laura’s hand and held it until the last of the Indians had passed. She wanted Carrie more, to turn her back to the Osage procession and take the baby up in her arms so that Carrie might feel how vital she was, no matter how many black-eyed Indian babies might pass through the dooryard. But it was Laura who needed her, not Carrie, though Caroline could think of nothing to do but stand by the child until Laura had absorbed the brunt of her loss.
“Are you ready to go inside?” Caroline asked when the Indians were gone. Laura shook her head. “All right. We’ll sit on the doorstep awhile.”
Caroline sat down with her back propped against the doorway and pulled aside the board that separated them from Carrie. The baby scooted out and found her place in Caroline’s lap. Caroline’s body eased some as Carrie settled back against her. Carrie knew perfectly well where she belonged. Caroline stroked Carrie’s plump knee with her palm—round and round, as though she were polishing it.
It was time for dinner, and Caroline could not compel herself to move. “I don’t feel like doing anything,” she said to Charles, “I feel so—” She did not know how to say what she meant, any more than Laura had. There was no single word for it. The weight of the Indians’ departure, balanced against the lightness of her relief, had left her blank inside. Everything she could feel was outside of herself—the smoothness of Carrie’s knee under her palm, the curve of the baby’s spine against her chest. “So let down,” she finished. That was not it, but it was as near as she could manage.
“Don’t do anything but rest,” Charles said. Caroline did not have it in her to smile, but her cheeks rounded at his tone. He had not spoken to her that way since she was pregnant.
“You must eat something, Charles.”
“No,” he said, looking at Laura. “I don’t feel hungry.” He went to the stable then and hitched the mustangs to the plow. She and Laura and Mary were not hungry, either. Together they sat, watching the path the Indians had worn across the yard. Blade by blade, the grass would grow up through the footprints and horse tracks. There would be no trace of their leaving.
Thirty-One
Caroline set down the pails and lifted the back ruffle of her bonnet so that the breeze could find the nape of her neck. Three rows remained to be watered: the carrots, the sweet potatoes, and the tomatoes. One thing never changed, and that was the everlasting heaviness of water. Pail after pail she pulled from the well and toted to her kitchen garden. Each dainty plant must have its dipperful if it was not to suffer during the long afternoon.
The soil here was sandier than she was accustomed to. It was warmer to the touch and easier to work, but did not hold water in the same way. Water splayed outward over the surface of the ground before sinking in, leaving only a thin layer moistened. Caroline had shown Laura how to carefully press a little dimple into the earth around each stem, so that the soil might cup the water long enough to soak the thin white roots. Twice a day Caroline bent double all along the length of each row, emptying each dipper of water where it could do the most good. Laura begged to help, but Caroline diverted her to digging a shallow trench around the perimeter, to ensure no rainwater fell out of reach of the seedlings. Careful as Caroline was with the dipper and pails, her hem was always damp and gritty by the time she finished. Laura would no doubt douse herself to the kneecaps.