“I’ll never be the baker Mama is.”
“Mama’s teaching me to sew.” Clotilde leaned over the fence and pointed. “What are those, Mrs. Johnson? They’re so pretty.”
“Sweet Williams.” She plucked a stem of bright pink and white flowers and handed them to Cloe. “Wait just a minute and I’ll bring you some seed packets. You can start a nice flower garden for your mama,
Mama had Bernie turn the soil around the front porch and prepare it for planting. “Not too much manure. It’ll burn the seedlings.” She and Clotilde planted lady asters, pink and white carnations, marigolds, hollyhocks, coneflower, and bachelor’s buttons all around the farmhouse on Hopper Road.
Rikka liked to follow Mama around the house, holding the flowers Mama snipped. Mama would fill a mason jar with water and let Rikka arrange the flowers. Mama said it had symmetry, whatever that was. “I think Rikka could be an artist,” Mama told everyone. She came home one day with a box of color crayons and let Rikka draw on old newspapers.
Bernie wanted to be a farmer like Papa. Clotilde wanted to be a dressmaker. At three, Rikka could already draw pictures that actually looked like cows and horses and houses and flowers.
Everyone assumed Hildemara would grow up to be someone’s quiet, hardworking wife. No one thought she had any ambition to do more than that, especially Mama.
Days passed in a blur of chores, school, study, and more chores, but every Sunday, Papa hitched up the horse and wagon and they all went into town to attend services at the Methodist church. Most of the parishioners had known each other all their lives. Some didn’t like Mama because she worked for the Herkners, who had taken business from the Smiths, bakers who had been in Murietta for years.
“I wouldn’t work in the Smiths’ bakery if they paid me twice what Hedda and Wilhelm do. I went in there once and never went back again. The place is filthy, flies buzzing everywhere. Who’d want pastries from that place?”
Many of the men didn’t like Papa either. Some called him a Hun behind his back. Those who had hired him the first year as a day laborer thought better of him, though. A quiet man, Papa didn’t try to press his way in among people who viewed him with suspicion. Mama, on the other hand, lingered after services, talking to as many members of the congregation as she could.
Papa wasn’t as easy with people as Mama. He didn’t like answering personal questions, or mingling with people who liked to ask them. After a few months of trying to break into the tight circles, Papa gave up. “I won’t stop you, but I’m not going back to church, Marta. I’ve got too much to do to stand around talking to people. And I can spend time with the Lord out in the orchard or vineyard.” Papa flicked the reins.
“Even God took one day off a week, Niclas. Why can’t you?”
“I’ll rest on Sundays. But not there. I don’t like the way people look at me.”
“Not everyone thinks of you as a Hun, and those that do would change their minds if you’d make an effort to talk to them. You know more about the Bible than the pastor.”
“You’re better at making friends, Marta.”
“We need to get to know people. They need to know us. If only you’d-”
“I’ll stay home with you, Papa,” Bernie volunteered a little too brightly.
“No, you won’t. You’ll go to church with your mother.”
During lunch that day, Clotilde frowned. “What’s a Hun, Papa?”
Mama put more pancakes on the table. “It’s an insulting name for a German.”
Bernie stabbed two pancakes before anyone else could get to them. “Who would want to insult Papa? He helps everybody who needs it.”
“Fools and hypocrites, that’s who.” Mama leaned over and forked one of Bernie’s pancakes onto Hildemara’s plate. “Try sharing once in a while, Bernhard. You’re not king of the roost. And put your napkin on your lap. I don’t want people thinking my son is a complete barbarian.”
Bernie did what Mama told him. “How long has the war been over, Papa?”
“It ended in 1918. You tell me.”
“Six years.” Hildemara answered with scarcely a thought. “I wonder whatever happened to Mrs. Ransom.”
Mama gave her an impatient look. “Why would you care what happened to that woman?”
Hearing the anger in Mama’s voice, Hildemara shrugged and said no more. But Mrs. Ransom stayed on her mind for the rest of the day. Hildie prayed her teacher’s grief had eased by now. Every time Mrs. Ransom came to mind, she prayed again.
21
1927
After three years of working the farm, Papa made enough money from the harvest to build a long, enclosed sleeping porch on the back of the house. He put in screened windows and a partition with a closet on each side. He built bunk beds for ten-year-old Hildemara and eight-year-old Clotilde, and a fold-down platform bed for Rikki-at five, still the family baby. On the other side of the partition, Bernie had a room to himself with a real bed and a catalog dresser. Mama ordered mattresses.
Hildemara loved the new bedroom until cold weather came. Even winter screens couldn’t keep the chill out. Papa hung canvas on the outside and hooked it down through December and January, which made the room dark and cold. Mama came out the back door each morning after the potbelly stove had been stoked. The girls piled out of bed, grabbed their clothes, and made a mad dash into the house, crowding around the potbelly stove to get warm. Hildemara slept on the top bunk and always ended up being last and therefore outside the ring of warmth. While Clotilde and Rikka pushed at one another, Hildemara wormed in as close as she could, shivering until the heat penetrated her thin arms and legs.
“I’m going over to the Musashis’ this afternoon,” Mama announced one morning.
“Give it up, Marta. They like to stay to themselves.”
“It won’t hurt to try again.”
The Musashi family owned sixty acres across the road, twenty in almonds, ten in grapes, and the rest in vegetables that changed by season, and not a weed anywhere. The barn, sheds, and outbuildings were sturdy and painted, as was the wooden post-and-beam house with sliding doors. Hildemara wondered where they slept seven children until Bernie said Andrew told him his father had built a dormitory for the boys and another for the girls, each with sliding doors into the living area and kitchen.
Bernie, Hildemara, and Clotilde saw the Musashi children every day at school. They had American names: Andrew Jackson, Patrick Henry, Ulysess Grant, George Washington, Betsy Ross, Dolly Madison, and Abigail Adams. Every one of them was a good student, and the boys impressed Bernie with their skill on the field. He had to work hard to be the best whenever the Musashi boys joined a game. The girls were quiet, studious, and polite, but they never had a lot to say, which made Hildemara uncomfortable. She preferred to be the one who listened rather than having to think of things to say. Hildemara preferred Elizabeth’s company. Elizabeth always had things to talk about-the latest movie she saw at the theater, visiting her cousins in Merced, riding in her father’s new automobile all the way to Fresno.
Papa had finally made the first inroad when Mr. Musashi’s truck broke down on the way back from Murietta. Papa slowed the wagon when he saw him tinkering with the engine and looking perplexed. He had a wagon loaded with lumber and a water tank for the shower house he planned to build, but didn’t see any reason not to stop and see if he could help. Papa got the truck running enough to choke its way back up Hopper and pull into the Musashis’ yard, where it died again. Papa called Bernie to tend the horse and put supplies away while he went across the street to the Musashis’ place to finish the repair job. It took the rest of the day, but Papa fixed it. Mr. Musashi
