by Joy Oden
Wilhelmina Guterson scraped the frost off the kitchen window to check for any signs of life outside. The distant nub of sun clearing the horizon offered watery light but no warmth. She checked the nearby branches of the Aspen Rip had planted in the early weeks of their marriage. So she could watch the birds as she worked, he’d said, dreaming of the treehouse he’d build when the kids got old enough. Seventeen years later, despite its leaf buds curled tight, shuttered against the weather, the tree flourished; their family, however, comprised only the pair of them. Min felt the bulk of cloths between her legs and pulled her sweater closer, watching her breath as she exhaled.
But spring arrived every year, and even this far north, life found a way to blossom. Perhaps even in her. She started a fire and set water to boil for porridge.
Rip came into a toasty kitchen. Tendrils of steam wafted from the coffee and brown sugar melted on the oatmeal. Still Min shivered. Her husband called her scrawny, often pinching the scant flesh that failed to warm her bones. Even her blonde, fly-away hair let heat escape. As she bent at the sink, Rip smacked her bottom with a calloused hand.
“Morning, Wife.” Then he turned to see Clover come in. “And good morning to you, too.” He also slapped her rear end, but his tone was softer, and his touch lingered. Min banged the lid on the pot and looked at the hired girl from under a scowl, wondering how many brushstrokes Clover gave that red hair of hers each night.
The hired man entered from the yard bringing with him a blast of arctic, shattering the delicate shell of warmth from the fire. “Them cows is milked. Got the ice chopped on the trough.” Burt sat down to his breakfast. He hoarded his words. But his bat-like ears and hooded eyes didn’t miss a thing at the Guterson place. Min knew he tried to enlist a couple years back, when Canada had declared war on Germany. But his weak lungs stopped him, so he stayed on at the farm, hired man the only thing he’d amount to. Now he focused on his steaming bowl, his free arm wrapped protectively around it.
The four ate, the quiet broken only by the spitting fire in the stove, the clinking of spoons against bowls, and the slurps of coffee.
With a burp and a thump of his empty cup, Rip stood, adjusted his suspenders over his wide, hard middle, and barked: “Ready then, Burt?”
The hired man stood, but before leaving, took his bowl and cup to the sink, saying softly, “Thanks for the porridge, Wilhelmina.”
She didn’t think to answer, just hoped one of them would stop at the outhouse to warm up the seat.
New snow formed leaning drifts, their individual flakes sparkling against the blue sky. The clothes on the line hung rigid, frozen solid, but Min knew the sere air would pull out the ice by afternoon and she’d get Clover to bring them in then. Min glared at the girl as she scrubbed the pot, her wide hips and full breasts bouncing.
“After that, you can mop the floor.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The Guterson’s had kindly taken on Clover, an orphan with few options, to help especially when the children started arriving. Meek, flat-chested and clumsy back then, Clover took more work than she gave. But Min, older by seven years, instructed her charge with patience, even motherliness. Then Clover fleshed out, her red hair softened to auburn, and she’d grown out of the need for a mother. Lately, her big hazel eyes looked directly into Min’s. Min wondered if they looked into Rip’s the same way.
The women worked all morning, mending, cleaning, and baking, each knowing her tasks and how to stay out of the way of the other.
Sometime after lunch, and the men’s slamming of the back door, Min walked into the sitting room to see Clover cradling Min’s favorite doll, Esperance, and cooing to it, of all things. Like she was a baby rather than an expensive, delicate display figure.
“Hey, Girl! Did I give you permission to mess with my dolls?” Rip had given Esperance to Min after the first miscarriage. Something to help ease the pain, he’d said as he held his wife, struggling to contain his own tears. Now the case held seven dolls, each successive one presented with less tenderness. When he’d handed over the brunette last fall, Rip had pronounced it the last one; he couldn’t take anymore. After that, if he shared her bed, it was only to sleep. Still Min hoped.
She yanked the doll out of Clover’s hands and clutched Esperance. The doll stood half as tall as Min herself. Her soft blonde curls, only dusted, never brushed, glistened and her painted lips smiled benignly. Min fingered her porcelain face, brushed the sable eyelashes that protected the eyes, frozen halfway between blinks. The doll wore the heavy velvet of a set of curtains Min had transformed, one of her newer outfits. Most afternoons, Min sewed, making clothes for her dolls, telling herself they could be used for a baby. Just as soon as it came. She placed her in the center front of the cabinet that Burt had built for her collection and locked the glass doors.
Winter took up most of springtime, its teeth locking the farm in an icy grip well into May. Often Min woke shivering in bed without Rip and his cook-stove warmth beside her. She’d get another blanket and wrap herself around his pillow to breathe in his scent.
When the weather finally turned, it came with day after day of rain, a gift for the just-planted crops, but not for Min’s floors. Though at a word from Clover, Rip started taking his boots off at the door, insisting Burt do too, so they wouldn’t tramp mud on the linoleum. Min stopped taking the hired girl with her on her weekly trips to town, not even missing the lighthearted chatter Clover’d been bothering all and sundry with lately.
By August, the sun reconsidered and became a hammer. Still, Min wore a sweater as she thinned the beans. Sitting back and shading her eyes against the glare, she noticed Rip and Clover under the shade of the barn, his hand on her belly.
Min crushed the beans she was holding and choked, “Girl, get over here and help with this weeding.”
But Rip scowled at her, “I don’t want her in this sun getting wore out.” Clover smiled at Min and walked past the garden and into the house. Who was the hired girl now?
As the heavy work of autumn increased, Clover worked less. Rip paid scant attention to Min now, but she dug her fingernails into her wrists rather than let him see her cry. She refused to look at Clover or do any of her chores. The house slid into dusty clutter. Except for the tall cabinet in the sitting room. Min spent more time sewing and dressing up her dolls. Outside the kitchen window, sunken, discolored cankers appeared on the Aspen.
Shrieks tore apart a cold night in November. Min bolted upright, sure fire had engulfed the barn and one of the horses. But the cries came from upstairs, Clover’s room. Alone in her bed, Min gripped the sheets, pulled them to her mouth to stifle her own scream. Clover’s time. Would she survive? People died in childbirth all the time.
Min’s scream dimmed to a moan reminding her of the noises her mother’s ancient aunt used to make as she mixed her herbal concoctions, chanted her shady incantations. An apt one came to mind: The wheel of time becomes a door/ Stories of now decline to lore/ A ready berth, a distant shore/ Breathe your last and be no more. She repeated it a few times before the noise from above drove her outside and into the root cellar. She took Esperance with her and crouched behind the potato pile. Even though the polar draft scraped her lungs, she drew it in, hoping the sharp pain could numb her heart.
A moment or several hours later, Rip flung open the door, strode to the wood pile, and yelled for Burt to high tail his ass over.
“That goddam house’s so drafty, you can pretty-near see your breath.” He bellowed as he loaded logs into Burt’s arms, and started to load his own. Then he saw Min.
“You’re in here playing with dolls? Clover’s in trouble. The midwife needs help.” He slammed the door behind him.
But Min stayed frozen beside the potatoes until Burt came back. “C’mon, Wilhelmina. It’s too cold. You need to get breakfast going. Coffee. Chores is always good to let your mind lose a problem.” He cupped her elbow, tugged her to standing. Min had stopped shivering some time back and she stumbled on numb feet. She forgot Esperance.
Later, Burt brought the doll in, carrying it by the arm.
After long bitter darkness, the kitchen’s steamy glare of mayhem smacked Min back to reality. Soiled sheets, torn up and bloody, lay scattered over her the counters. Mucky footprints traced men’s tracks through the kitchen and into her bedroom, where Clover now labored. Because she’d done it so often, Min stoked the blazing fire and got the coffee going. Her shivering returned.
Finally, after many more hours, the baby came, mewling rather than crying. Rip brought the child, still covered with birth, and put him in Min’s arms. “A boy,” he yelled before rushing back to Clover. “Why is there still so much goddam blood? Let’s get another blanket…”
At first, the child felt like one of Min’s dolls, and she tended to him like she would Esperance. But then she felt his aliveness and the window of her mother’s instinct, long since frozen shut, thawed. She nestled the baby in her left arm to test the water. Using the softest flannel she could find, she smoothed the blood and mess of Clover off his tiny body, velvet cheeks and fine hair.
“Aren’t you beautiful?” she cooed. “Such a perfect thing in this rough old house…” Min found one of the softer doll dresses she’d made and eased his arms into the sleeves. “There now, that’s nice and warm, isn’t it?” Min picked the baby up and nestled his head into the crook of her neck, knowing instinctively how it would fit. She held him close with a sure, tender hand, no longer shivering, as she absorbed his warmth and breathed in his new-born smell. Intoning a rhyming song from her own childhood that she thought she’d forgotten, she swayed from foot to foot, somehow knowing a mother’s dance.
“Rest little baby don’t you cry/ and Min will sing you a lullaby /There’s grain in the silo, and rye in the shed, /open the oven, take out the bread…” And as gently as a dust mote coming to rest under the bed, Min kissed the tiny eyelids, lined with sable-like lashes. “You could be my son,” she whispered. “I think we’ll call you James.”
The baby was fussing and rooting toward Min’s useless chest when Rip came through to see the midwife out. His stricken eyes found his wife’s, as if he were lost at sea and she was safe harbor. She moved toward him to offer comfort. But he took his son from her arms.
“She didn’t make it,” he barked to dam his tears. “Your mama’s dead.” He buried his head into the baby and choked sobs that Min had never heard, despite all their losses over the years. She stood by, her arms empty and her heart aching.
“I thought maybe we could call him James —”
“Carl’s his name,” he wailed through ragged breaths, his body shaking. “Closer to Clover.”
“Clover…” Min took a step backward and bumped into the counter. And remembered her incantation. The blood in her veins dried up. It was her fault. She’d hexed Clover to death.
Min turned away from Rip and his son. Her breath now shallow cuts, she picked up a bloody sheet and scrubbed at it. She didn’t turn as Burt carried the body of Clover through the kitchen and out to the root cellar. “I’ll make a casket,” he said. They’d have to store it until the ground thawed enough for burial.
The Aspen struggled in its battle against the blight as the rearranged family lurched into deep winter. Snowy trips to town became more perilous, then stopped altogether. Rip said nothing, banging doors and chairs, and softening only when he looked at his son. Min tended to the baby, feeding him diluted cow’s milk, changing his soiled cloths, but nothing more. The weight of his body bore the heaviness of guilt. She preferred to cook and clean, or just cuddle Esperance.
It was Burt who found any joy in Carl, hurrying through his chores so that he could pick him up, bounce and coo to him.
On the shortest day of the year, Rip chopped down the Aspen with wild hacks. After the men cut the branches into logs, they came in for dinner. They felt the emptiness first: no cooking smells, no baby noises. Rip bolted from room to room, calling for Min and Carl, his yells more and more panicked. But it was Burt who thought to look for her in the root cellar.
She was using the claw of a hammer to loosen the lid of Clover’s casket. On the coal pile, wrapped against the cold, little Carl watched. She mumbled as she worked: “…get your mother out… had enough rest now… she’ll be —”
“Wilhelmina, whatcha doing there?” Burt put a hand on Min’s shoulder and reached for the hammer. “It’s freezing. You’ll catch your death.”
Min’s grip loosened, but she looked past the hired man. “Carl needs his mother. It should be me in this… It was me who…” Her words petered out.
“Well, now, Clover’s dead.” Burt picked up the baby, drawing him to his chest. “You can be Carl’s mother now. He needs you.”
“But I’m not… not good for him… he needs Clover…”
“Nonsense, why you see to him just fine. Just takes getting used to. Now, let’s get the both of you back into the warm.” He corralled Min with his free arm toward the door. But she fell behind as he opened it.
The light of the stars shone through halos of ice-crystals whose beauty belied the ruthless air. Burt didn’t notice the star light as he carried Carl into the house. He didn’t notice as Min stopped following him. So he didn’t see when she turned toward the fields with their white blanket twinkling in the starshine, offering a final promise of warmth.
I’m an English professor at Houston City College, and my short fiction has appeared in Free Fall, Ariel Chart International Literary Journal, and soon, Literally Stories. I’m a Canadian sweltering in Houston, and while I can ski and unicycle, my best sport is writing.
Photo by Sami Aksu: https://www.pexels.com/photo/frozen-water-drops-on-a-glass-window-11606143/
