The Personal History of Rachel DuPree_ A Novel - Ann Weisgarber [48]
I snapped my dishcloth at the flies crawling over the countertop.
All at once a pushed-away memory rose up in my mind. I stared out the kitchen window as the memory took shape. The squaw and her half-breed boy came back the day after Isaac had sent them away. I had nearly forgotten that. When Isaac saw her coming back on the road, heading our way, he told me to stay by the barn. Cursing to himself, he got something from his knapsack—I couldn’t see what—but I saw the tight-pressed look on his face. Without another word, he went to meet her, and that scared me. I gripped the shovel with both hands and watched. Something was said; I couldn’t hear what. But not long after, she turned around and walked off, pulling her handcart with the boy sitting in it. I was so relieved that tears came to my eyes. I never saw her again. Or the boy. But six weeks later when Isaac bought his first head of cattle, he brought home only eighteen. That surprised me. On our train trip from Chicago to Interior he had talked about buying twenty, his eyes lit up just from the telling of it. Anything less, he had told me as we sat side by side on our cushioned train seats, would make him look like a greenhorn.
“What happened to the other two?” I had asked Isaac when he brought the herd home.
“Cost more than I figured,” he said, not meeting my eyes. I thought he was ashamed. I believed he was worried that I might think less of him, that I’d think he wasn’t a real rancher. I looked at my gold wedding band. That was where the money had gone. I took it off. “Here,” I said, holding it out.
“No. Put it back on. No wife of mine goes bare handed.”
I snapped my kitchen towel again at a cluster of flies, my wedding band flashing.
Isaac had given money to that squaw. That was what was in his knapsack; that was how he got rid of her. At the time I didn’t let myself think about it. Now it made me sick.
Under the kitchen table, Alise chattered as she played with her rag doll. Nearby, Emma was on her side, her thumb in her mouth, half asleep but fighting to keep her eyes open so she could watch her sister. Earlier she had been fussy, her gums suddenly sore and bright pink from teething. To ease her hurt, I had given her a teaspoon of children’s soothing syrup.
What else could Isaac have done? Take the squaw in? Have her live in the barn? Or take just the boy and expect me to raise him? Don’t think about it, I told myself. It happened a long time ago, long before Isaac knew me. Think about something else.
I wiped the sweat from my forehead, then sifted flour for soda biscuits. In a few months, I’d be grateful for the oven’s heat. A nervous chill swept through me. In a month, there’d be nothing to cook.
Don’t think about winter, either. Put your mind on your soda biscuits. Resolving to do that, I measured out the baking soda, the sugar, and the salt with measuring spoons instead of guessing. I spooned the batter onto the baking sheet, paying special mind to make sure that each biscuit would turn out the same size. I spaced them just right. I did all this as if I were new to cooking, as if I had not been cooking since I was six, Liz’s age.
How many biscuits, I asked myself, do you suppose you’ve made? Hundreds? No, more than that. More like thousands. I’d probably made that many cookies too. Before the drought set in so hard, every Saturday I made two batches of cookies. I did that to please Isaac. He had a sweet tooth.
He got that from his mother. Mrs. DuPree loved her sweets. And didn’t it show, Trudy the housemaid was prone to pointing out. I could fill my kitchen clear to the ceiling with the cookies I used to bake at Mrs. DuPree’s boardinghouse. There, I baked cookies with sugary white icing and cookies with big fat raisins. I made molasses cookies, lemon cookies, and oatmeal cookies. Sometimes