The Children's Blizzard(4)

    Anette nodded. She went to bed that night in the stifling attic. She cried—silently—and couldn’t sleep. When the sun rose, she was summoned by a big cowbell from downstairs and put to work. Washing, fetching water, throwing slop out into the ravine behind the house, tending to the children, sewing—Mother Pedersen looked over her shoulder as she tried to darn a sock, and said something under her breath that Anette couldn’t quite make out—cooking, clearing away.

That night, exhausted, Anette slept.

When school started up for the summer session, before the crops had to be harvested, she was told that she could attend when she wasn’t needed at home. Mother Pedersen gave her a slate and a shiny new lunch bucket but warned her, “They cost a dime. A whole dime, do you understand? If you lose them, you can’t go to school anymore. And come right home after. No dawdling.” Anette ran the mile north carrying the slate and bucket along with a flicker of hope, cradling them carefully, terrified that all three would be snatched from her, or fall to the earth and shatter.

But school hadn’t turned out to be much better than her new home; she couldn’t understand English, her overworked muscles cramped up from sitting at the bench for so long, and sometimes she fell asleep without warning. The other children—twelve assorted Norwegians, Swedes, and Germans—were polite, but they all knew that she was only a hired girl with no family. So they kept their distance.

Except for Fredrik Halvorsan. Who, one day, instead of running around with his brother and the other boys, suddenly peeled off, pulled on Anette’s apron string, and said in Norwegian, “Tag, you’re it!” And Anette ran toward him, she tagged him easily, and he was so astonished—because he prided himself on being the fastest boy in school—that he blurted out, “You’re my friend now,” and he kept that promise. He sat next to her at lunch, they chased each other at recess, sometimes he even raced her home, even though he then had to turn around and run another mile and a half back north to his farm. He was the only good thing in her life, but Anette couldn’t tell him that for fear of inviting too many questions for which she had no answers.

    Teacher was also nice to her, when she was allowed to be. Ever since she started boarding at the Pedersens’ this last school term, she had tried to help Anette with English. But Mother Pedersen wouldn’t allow it. “This is not school,” she told the younger woman, as she gave her one of her needling looks so at odds with the china-doll delicacy of her face. “Boundaries must be respected. Anette is mine here.”

Mother Pedersen was always claiming ownership of things, people—even ideas.

Father Pedersen was different. He had tried to be kind to Anette, and to Teacher. But he was outside most of the time with the horses he loved. Anette had learned not to smile too much at him or laugh at his jokes or his stories. Mother Pedersen had a way of looking at her when she did that caused Anette to lose sleep at night, puzzling over it.

But Teacher had not learned these things. She was a schoolteacher; she carried all the knowledge of the world in her head. Yet she couldn’t seem to understand the unspoken rules of Mother Pedersen’s house. Anette longed to warn her. But Anette didn’t have the words, even in her native tongue, to give voice to her concerns about what was happening in that two-story house. The air was so close, so stifling with things that she couldn’t understand, but that still resonated in her heart, her head, her very bones. There was a vibration, all the time, a high, tense note, like a string on a violin being teased forever, and all you could hope for was that it would finally break. And yet, you also feared that day, had nightmares about it, entered that house with dread that today would be the day when that note was silenced forever.

    Especially after last week, when there was no school and the air was so bitterly cold that Father Pedersen couldn’t always escape to the barn where Teacher sometimes followed him, and they were all stuck together for long days and longer nights—Anette shuddered, thinking about it.

So it was such a relief, this morning, when the cold spell broke; everyone except Mother Pedersen had fled that house. Teacher had grabbed Anette’s hand and run with her—neither wore their heavy coats, only thick shawls, and Anette had even dared to put on her regular petticoats, letting her flannel ones air out on the line where she’d hung the children’s wash before breakfast. Teacher and Anette flew across the log bridge over the ravine at the back of the property, and their boots skimmed the packed, hard, snow-covered prairie, that little one-room school a beacon, drawing them away from the darkness of that house.

And now, at recess, Anette and Fredrik were running like they always did, like birds themselves, chasing and laughing, until Anette finally tagged him. When she did, she felt a stinging shock, heard a sizzle, and they both leapt apart, gasping.

Then they looked up at the sky. As Anette began to tremble, Fredrik ran to get Teacher.





CHAPTER 2


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Come to Nebraska, the Garden of Eden! Acres for the taking, acres of a bountiful land that will surely yield a harvest fit for the gods. Have you ever seen the sun set behind rolling green hills, heard the prairie lark sing its glorious song, smelled the perfume of flowers so abundant, they make a veritable carpet of velvet petals? Have you longed for the magic of a prairie winter, gentle yet abundant snow to nourish the earth, neither too cold nor too warm, only perfection in every way? Have you longed to cultivate a land so yielding, the plow is scarcely needed to give up its rich earth? Then leave your Czars, your Kings, the shackles of the filthy city, and come to a land of fresh, healthy air, a land where every man can be his own king. Our agents of the Union Pacific Railroad will even meet you off the boat in New York Harbor and make arrangements for you to take the first train west to God’s own country, Nebraska. The Homestead Act provides for any male or female head of a household one hundred and sixty of these heavenly acres for only a small filing fee. In five years, those acres will be yours to pass on to your children and their children’s children.