The Personal History of Rachel DuPree_ A Novel - Ann Weisgarber [55]
“How’d they come to be?” I said.
“Erosion.”
I wasn’t all that sure what the word meant, but it made me think about how the land in Louisiana ran in dark streams after a storm. I said, “It rains that hard?”
“Sometimes. But mostly it’s the wind.”
Rocking back and forth, I patted Emma’s back. I lifted my chin, letting the breeze dry the sweat on my face.
“Tell us a story, Mama,” Alise said, now lying flat on her back.
I didn’t feel like telling a story. I just wanted to sit; I just wanted to be quiet with my girls close to me. The soothing syrup made me feel slow, and I didn’t have it in me to think up a story. “No,” I said. Then I thought about Mrs. Wells-Barnett. She would expect me to do better.
I said, “Liz, get the Longfellow book.”
She acted as if she hadn’t heard me. “Liz,” I said, and this time she got up and went into the house to get the book.
The Longfellow book of poems had been Mrs. DuPree’s gift when Mary was born. It was the first piece of mail we’d gotten from her even though Isaac wrote her a letter the third Sunday of every month. When the book came, surprising us both, Isaac said it was a peace offering. I didn’t see it that way. The book was empty—no letter or signature on the title page. That was how all Mrs. DuPree’s books came. They were just empty recognitions of the birth of each of our children.
It was me what wrote the child’s name in each book. It was me, using my best Palmer penmanship, what wrote, From your loving grandmother, Elizabeth DuPree. If Isaac ever noticed that it wasn’t his mother’s hand, he never said the first word. Neither did I.
Liz brought the book to me and got back on the blanket. I opened it to “Hiawatha.” It was a restful poem, not like “Paul Revere’s Ride,” that dashed with excitement all over the countryside. “Hiawatha” was a poem about a lake and forests of pine trees, a place different—better—than the Badlands. Then, too, it made me think about when I was a schoolgirl. I had recited the first part of “Hiawatha” at my eighth-grade commencement.
I began to read to the girls, one arm around Emma.
By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Indians. I had picked a poem about Indians. I stopped. The girls looked at me, waiting. I read on.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.
The sound of the words lulled me. The soothing syrup did too. Emma burning her hand, I told myself as I read the familiar words, was an accident. Accidents happened to children.
An accident was how our Isaac Two died. He had just turned five; it was February 27, 1911. On that particular day, spring came for the afternoon, melting the icicles that hung from the dugout’s roof and turning the skin of snow on the ground to a slippery slush. Isaac had ridden off to the south pasture to check on the cows expected to calve come April. I was slow and headachy, but I wanted to hang the laundry outside. Mary, Isaac Two, and John played soldiers and Indians on a small outcrop of low rocks. They hid and ducked as they pointed their forefingers, pretending to shoot each other and making soft popping noises with their lips.
I had been watching; I always did. But it didn’t matter. Isaac Two slipped and fell. A sharp point on a rock pierced his right temple, and he was dead before I could spit the clothespins from my mouth.
Three days later, Liz was born.
On their blanket, Liz and Alise looked more asleep than awake. Emma’s eyes were closed. The wind had picked up, making the grasses ripple.
At the door on summer evenings,
Sat the little Hiawatha;
Heard the whispering of the pine-trees,
Heard the lapping of the waters,
Sounds of music, words of wonder.