The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [137]
“Good riddance to that,” Clara heard Ida say. She stopped short. “I can’t believe Mama wrote that horrible story down after Papa begged her not to.” Clara watched as Ida tossed the last of a pile of yellow foolscap into the flames.
“What … what are you burning?”
“Mother’s story,” Ida said, turning. “She wrote about that terrible, terrible time. Who would want to know what you two did back then? It’s not right. It was private and painful, and Papa said never to speak of it, ever. Bill doesn’t want it talked about. Lillian doesn’t. I certainly don’t. And you, Clara? Do you want it talked about?”
Clara stood speechless. Then, “It was her story.”
“Just an old woman’s reminiscing,” Ida said. “And she had no right to any joy from that time, no right at all.”
Ida turned back to the fire and Lillian gave Clara a hopeless look. With a stick, Ida poked the pages free to be thoroughly licked by flames.
She’d come too late!
At least her mother had had the joy of writing the story for herself. She had perhaps found comfort in remembering how her life changed by setting forth on that long-ago walk. Maybe she wrote down how she was acknowledged with an occasional smile and head nod by suffragette women when she met them later on the streets of Spokane. Honored by strangers though not by her family. Maybe she had written about Clara; she was sure her mother would have. And she’d have written of her grief, her losses, and the things that mattered most to her—family.
The scrapbook! Clara looked around. It was the only other evidence of what they’d done together. Her sisters might have burned it first. She looked at the trunk. Empty! Maybe her mother had hidden it separately from the manuscript. She sped by Margaret toward her mother’s room, when Bill’s wife reached out and touched her sleeve. Clara stopped. Margaret put her finger to her lips for silence. She moved her eyes toward a box resting on the porch.
With Ida and Lillian engaged in watching the flames devour their mother’s story, Margaret spoke quietly to Clara as they moved to the steps. “I thought Thelma or maybe Norma Fay might want some of Mother Helga’s lesser things one day. The Lamplighter book your mother read to Thelma, a few other trinkets.” She moved aside one of Helga’s quilts, the one with squares from the reform dress. Beneath it Clara saw two little red shoes Helga had brought with her from Norway, and Clara could see the edge of the scrapbook. Margaret looked into Clara’s eyes, patted Clara’s shoulder. “I’ll keep them safe,” she said. “You never know what stories will interest children when they’re older.” Then she pulled an envelope from the book with Clara’s name on it, and handed it to Clara. “Your mother must have meant for you to have this,” Margaret said.
Clara held the envelope, opened it. Inside was a piece of Hardanger lace, not yellowed though it was old. Clara recognized it as the piece of the heart her mother had carried on their walk. No note, but Clara knew: Helga had made certain Clara would always hold a piece of her mother’s heart.
AUTHOR’S NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This story could not have been written without Margaret Estby’s careful saving of the scrapbook bearing bits of history of a grand walk across the continent in 1896. Margaret kept the secret until her husband, Bill, died, knowing that he too harbored resentment from that time of quarantine and loss.
The memories also would have been lost without Thelma Estby Portch’s choice to dance with her grandmother through the stories. She didn’t know what story her grandmother Helga wanted her to take care of, but years later, Margaret gave Thelma the scrapbook, and at last, Thelma knew the story that had meant so much to her grandmother. Darillyn Bahr Flones, great-niece of Clara, first wrote the story for a school paper in 1979. In 1984, Doug Bahr, Helga’s great-great-grandson, chose to write an essay on Washington history for a