The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [28]
“You can do it!” Mama called out. I looked up. She was already across. “Swallow your fears. Keep coming.”
I crept and finally looked up to my mother’s hand reaching out to me.
“We did it, Clara.” She hugged me. “Come, we’ll fix that tea I promised.”
“No one should be in that kind of danger,” I said. “No one.” I wanted to cry in relief. “This is all because you didn’t think this through.” I shivered both from outrage and fear.
“Clara. We’re here. You have to let go of what got us here and take one step at a time. It’s the Estby way.”
“Maybe I’m not an Estby then,” I said.
She softened. “You’re truly frightened.”
I started to cry. “I thought I’d die,” I said. “And you too. Why did you bring me? What did I do to make you want me along?”
“Oh, Clara, I would never knowingly do anything to hurt you. Never.” She pulled me to her. “I … I hoped you’d like the time with me on this journey. You’re a wise young woman. You add respectability to the wager. I enjoy your companionship. This could be such an education for you. I. You can’t let things frighten you. We must be bold. We must be.”
“But I was scared.”
“Come, let’s have that tea,” she said then. “And a little conversation.”
I drank the tea, inhaled the mint of it. My mother stared at me in a thoughtful mood.
“What makes you think you’re not an Estby?”
“You tell me often enough that Estbys aren’t fearful; they keep going.”
“Oh, we’re fearful all right. But it doesn’t put us in shackles. It shouldn’t you either.”
I sipped my tea. My hands still shook.
“I’m different, I guess,” I said. “I mean, I can see that I’m different. I have a different shape, hair color, eyes. I don’t see things like Ida or Papa do. Or you. I think things are either right or wrong, and the rest of you think, well, things are either good or bad.”
She stayed quiet, replenished my tea. “Clara. There’s something you should know. If something were to happen to me on this trip—not that I think it will, but, well, the lava craters and this dangerous trestle. It’s possible.”
Her words sent fear through me. “Don’t, Mama. Don’t you dare die and leave me alone in the middle of nowhere.”
“Not my plan. However”—she cleared her throat—“perhaps it’s time you knew.”
THIRTEEN
The Spoils of Achievement
A moment of tingling, a premonition of something bad.
“When I was fifteen,” she began, “I … became with child.”
“Oh. But you were sixteen when you married, you always said.”
“I … wasn’t truthful about that.” She didn’t look at me. “It was by the son of a wealthy family I worked for. It … I thought … He wasn’t much older than I. I wasn’t sure how things even happened, but I knew I loved him. Or thought I did.” She cleared her throat. “When my mother learned of it … they were … shamed. She had my stepfather speak to Ole, a friend of his from the old country. Ole was willing to cover the shame I brought to my parents.” The wind whistled behind us, and I felt cold despite the warming tea. “We married and I gave birth to you.”
I stared at her.
“You were born in Michigan. We moved right after to Yellow Medicine, Minnesota. What I wrote in the Bible about your birthday was written to conceal my shame. Your grandparents moved with us, and we told everyone that you were big for your age. So there’d be no question about your legitimacy.”
“So I’m—”
“You’re actually nineteen, Clara. You’ll be twenty in November.”
I was shocked into silence. Then, “But if Papa isn’t my …” Is that why he hugs Ida, teases Bertha by tugging on her braids, holds Lillian laughing on his lap, but rarely if ever touches me?
“He’s your father in every way, Clara, save one.”
“But if you didn’t really love him …”
“It was best for the family. All of us.”
“And the man, the one who is my real—?”
“There’s no need to know more. He was in my life and then gone. I moved ahead. That’s what Estbys do.”
“Which I’m not,” I said. My voice cracked. I’m truly not. “What am I?”
“You’re an Estby. That’s that.”
“And baby Ole?”
“He came after you, not before. And yes, he died.”
“What was his name, my father?”
She shook