doorway, not knowing what to do. Mama reached out to her. “Did you talk to Mrs. Miller?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“What did she say, Hildemara?”
“Congratulations.”
Mama laughed wildly. “What did I tell you about that woman, Niclas?” Mama moaned. “We’ll get no help from her or that lazy daughter-” She cried out in pain.
Hildemara started to cry. “Don’t die, Mama.” Shaking, she sobbed. “Please don’t die!”
“I’m not going to die!” She clutched Papa’s shirt, her fingers white. “Oh, Jesus. Oh, God of mercy…” After a moment, she let out a harsh breath and fell back, panting. “Go on outside, Hildemara. We don’t need you.”
Papa looked around. “Where’s Clotilde?”
Mama gasped, a look of horror filling her face. “Oh, mercy. I don’t know!”
“I’m here, Mama.” Clotilde stepped around Hildemara and held out a fistful of Mrs. Miller’s perfect yellow roses.
Baby Rikka turned out to be Mama’s easiest child, or so Papa said. He tugged Hildemara’s pigtail gently. “You were so scrawny, Mama thought you’d die before the end of your first month. But you hung on like a little monkey.”
“She’s still scrawny.” Bernie gave her a pitying look. “Tony says she’s skinny as a rail.”
Rikka was so plump and sweet, even Hildemara became enamored. Clotilde liked Rikka well enough the first day or two, but when the baby consumed Mama’s attention, Clotilde asked if the stork could come back and take her away again. Papa laughed long and hard over that.
“She’s beautiful, Niclas.” Mama smiled down at Rikka as she nursed. “She has your blonde hair and blue eyes. She’s going to be even prettier than Clotilde.”
Hildemara took Mama’s hand mirror and ran to the barn. Sitting in an empty stall, she studied her face. Did she look like a monkey? She had Mama’s hazel eyes and brown hair. She had Papa’s straight nose and fair skin. Somehow, even sharing those traits, she wasn’t pretty at all. She burned instead of turning brown like Bernie. Her neck looked like a stalk growing up out of the flowered gingham dress.
Hildemara wished she had been born with Elizabeth Kenney’s long red curls and green eyes. Maybe then Mama would be proud of her. Maybe then Mama would speak to her in that loving voice she used with Rikka; look at her with that soft, doting smile. Instead, Mama often looked at her with a frown. She would let out her breath with impatience. She would wave her hand at Hildemara and say, “Go play somewhere else, Hildemara.” She would say, “Don’t be hanging on to my apron strings all the time!” Mama never said, “Look how sweet Hildemara Rose is… look how pretty and sweet…”
Maybe Mama didn’t like looking at her straight, mousy brown hair and hazel eyes, though Mama had the same. Sometimes, Hildemara wished Mama would hide her disappointment and make excuses for her the way she did the others. Maybe Mama regretted having wasted the name Rose on her. She wasn’t poised, pretty, or popular the way she imagined Mama’s friend Rosie Gilgan had been. She didn’t have Papa’s fine singing voice or Mama’s intellect. She made a “joyful noise to the Lord,” Papa said, and she had to study hard and long to get things into her head.
Whenever Hildie stayed inside the tent-house and offered to help, Mama became impatient. “If I need help, I’ll ask for it. Now go on out there! Find something to do! There’s a whole world outside the door. Stop hiding in here.”
She wasn’t hiding. “I want to help, Mama.”
“It’s no help having you underfoot all day! Go! Fly, Hildemara. For heaven’s sake, fly!”
Hildemara didn’t know what she meant. She wasn’t a bird. What had she done wrong? Maybe Mama never loved her. If Mama loved plump, pink-white babies, then having a scrawny, sickly one would have been a great disappointment. Hildemara tried to gain weight, but no matter how much she ate, she still had skinny legs and bony knees and collarbones that protruded. Clotilde, on the other hand, grew plump and pink and added inches. “Clotilde’s going to be taller than Hildemara in another year,” Papa said one evening, and Hildie felt even worse.
Sometimes Hildie felt her mother looking at her. When she looked back, Mama would get that troubled expression again. Hildemara wanted to ask what she’d done wrong, what she could do to make Mama smile and laugh the way she did every day with baby Rikka. Sometimes when Mama did smile at her, it didn’t seem to come from pride or pleasure, but sadness, as if Hildemara just couldn’t help disappointing her.
Like today.
“Why are you so quiet, Hildemara?”
She looked at Mama nursing the baby. Had her mother ever held her that tenderly? “I was just thinking about school. When does it start?”
“Not until mid-September. So you can stop worrying. You’ve got a little more time to play and enjoy your summer.”
Hildemara started praying for Mrs. Ransom. She taught kindergarten and first grade, so Hildie had only one more year to suffer before she moved up.
At the end of the harvest, Papa collected his share of the crop money. It wasn’t as much as he had hoped, but some other farmers fared worse. Some others fared better, too, Mama said. She’d been to town. She’d talked to people. Papa told her Mrs. Miller said there were extenuating circumstances. Grim-faced, Mama sent the children to bed early. Bernie and Clotilde, having played all day, went to sleep right away, but Hildemara lay awake, troubled and listening.
Papa sighed. “We’ll do better next year.”
“Not here, we won’t. Mrs. Miller told me this morning she expects me to cook and clean for her. Just to make things even, she said. She thinks I should be thankful for the place she’s given us.” Mama gave a hard laugh. “She can do her own cooking and cleaning. Or hire someone else to do it.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“When you do, tell her to find someone else to sharecrop her place. They should know they won’t get a share of anything.”
“We’ve got no place else to go.”
“We’ll start asking around. Look what you’ve done with this place, Niclas. And think how much you learned!”
“I didn’t earn any money.”
“Because Mrs. Miller isn’t any different than Robert Madson. You’re a hard worker, Niclas. I’ve watched how you manage a work crew. The men respect you. You listen to people. You take advice, from men, at least. And with all your engineer training, you’ve been able to fix Mrs. Miller’s farm equipment and get that well pump going. We’ll find a place of our own.”
“And how do I pay for it?”
“
Papa didn’t speak.
“Don’t look at me like that. I told you why I wasn’t willing to give it to you sooner. Madson took advantage of you. So has Mrs. Miller.” She gave a soft laugh. “Well, I’ve decided if anyone is going to take advantage of my husband, it’s going to be me.”
Hildemara lay in the dark, watching and listening, holding her breath until Papa spoke quietly.
“I could lose everything you saved.”
“Not if you listen to me. I’ve talked to a lot of people around town. I’ve spent time at the library. I’ve read the back newspapers. I had to be sure this is where we belong. God may talk to you, Niclas, but He hasn’t said anything to me. If I had my choice, you’d be an engineer again. We’d be living in Sacramento or San Francisco. I’d own a hotel with a restaurant! But you hated working for the railroad. If you went back to it, you’d eventually hate me,
