Her Mother’s Hope

26

1930

Summers meant even more work for Hildemara. She helped Mama cook, kept the house swept clean of the dust and sand always blowing in, washed clothes. In the afternoon, while Clotilde looked at movie star magazines and dreamed up new clothing designs and Rikka sat on the porch swing daydreaming and drawing, Hildemara weeded the vegetable and flower gardens. Hildemara didn’t understand why Mama expected so much from her and so little from her sisters.

Clotilde repaired shirts and pants and sleeping bags. Cloe loved to sew and she was good at it. Mama bought material for shirts for Papa and Bernie and dresses for Hildemara, Clotilde, and Rikka, two new ones each year. When Cloe finished, Mama gave her money to buy fabric remnants to piece together and make whatever she wanted. Cloe could sketch garments, make patterns from butcher paper, and sew a dress that didn’t look like one everyone else was wearing that year.

Rikki wandered around in a dreamy state, always seeking a place to sit and draw whatever attracted her undivided attention. If she didn’t come in for dinner, Mama sent Hildemara out looking for her. Mama never asked Rikka to do chores. “She has other things to do.” Like draw birds or butterflies or the Musashi girls working in the rows of tomatoes.

Sometimes Hildemara resented it. Especially on a hot day when she could feel the dust blow against her damp skin and feel the trickle of sweat between her growing breasts. Hildemara worked on her hands and knees, pulling weeds from the flower garden around the front of the house. Rikka lay on the porch swing, hands behind her head, gazing off at the clouds. Hildemara sat back on her heels, wiping perspiration from her forehead. “Would you like to help me, Rikki?”

“Have you ever looked at the clouds, Hildie?” She pointed. “Children playing. A bird in flight. A kite.”

“I don’t have time to look at clouds.”

Mama came out and asked Rikki if she’d like a glass of lemonade. Hildemara sat back on her heels again. “Can’t Rikki take a turn weeding once in a while, Mama?”

“She knows who she is and what she wants out of life. Besides, she has such fair skin, she’d burn to a crisp pulling weeds in the garden. You do the weeding. You haven’t got anything better to do. Have you?”

“No, Mama.”

“Then I guess you’d better get used to doing what you’re told.” She went back into the house.

Rikka came to the porch railing and sat against a post. She had a sketchbook in her hand and started drawing. “You could say no, Hildemara.”

“It has to get done, Rikki.”

“What do you want to be when you grow up, Hildie?”

Hildemara yanked another weed and threw it into the bucket. “A nurse.”

“What?”

“Never mind. What’s the use of dreaming?”

She picked up the weed bucket and moved to a row of carrots. “There will never be enough money for me to go to training.”

“You could ask.”

And have Mama say no? “The money Papa and Mama make off the farm and Summer Bedlam has to go to mortgage payments and taxes and farm equipment and vet bills for the horse.”

“They’re doing well, aren’t they? Papa just extended the shelter he built off the barn.”

“That’s so winter rains won’t rust his tractor.”

Rikki wandered along the row of vegetables. “Mama buys sewing supplies for Clotilde.”

Hildemara bent over and pulled another weed.

Rikki put her arms out like a bird, dipping one way and then the other. “Mama buys me art supplies.”

Hildemara threw weeds into the bucket. “I know.”

Rikki turned. “Because we ask.”

Hildemara sighed. “Tuition to a nursing school and textbooks cost more than sewing and art supplies, Rikki.”

“If you don’t ask, you’ll never get anything.”

“Maybe God has another plan.”

“Oh, I already know what it is.”

“What?”

“Go on being a martyr.”

Stung, Hildemara sat back on her heels, her mouth opening and closing as Rikki skipped up the back steps and went into the house.

* * *

Mama continued pressing her about the future, though Hildemara didn’t see that she had one. “You’re about to enter high school. You need to start making plans.”

“Plans for what?”

“College. A career.”

“Bernie’s going to college. I heard you talking to Papa about how much that will cost.”

“He might get a scholarship.”

Might didn’t mean would. “I hope he does.” She wondered how one went about getting a scholarship and whether she might qualify.

“Well?” Mama looked annoyed. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“What do you want me to say, Mama?”

“What you have on your mind.”

Hildemara chewed the inside of her lip, but lost her nerve. “Nothing.”

Shaking her head, Mama took her purse and headed out the back door. “I have shopping to do in town. Do you need anything, Clotilde?” Red thread. “Rikka?” A box of pencils. She gave Hildemara an annoyed look. “I don’t have to ask you. You never want a thing, do you?”

Nothing as inexpensive as red thread and a box of pencils, she wanted to say, but then Mama might ask the question of what she did want, and she’d have to hear why she couldn’t have it.

Hildemara went to the library the next day and checked out a biography of Florence Nightingale. She read on the long walk home, taking her time, knowing she’d have chores to fill the rest of her afternoon and evening. She came in through the back screen door and shoved the book under her mattress before going in to help Mama with dinner. She set the table and made the salad, then later, cleared the table and heated water to wash the dishes. Cloe got out her folder of glossy pictures from movie magazines and studied dress designs, while Rikki sketched Papa reading in his chair. Mama set her box of writing materials on the table.

Letters, letter, letters. Mama was always writing to someone. Sometimes Hildemara wondered if her mother loved all those people in other parts of the world more than she loved her own family.

Papa went to bed early. Mama followed him. “Don’t stay up late, girls.”

When Cloe and Rikka finished their game, Hildemara took the book out from under her mattress. “I’ll come to bed in a few minutes.”

* * *

Mama stood at the work counter rolling out a piecrust when Hildemara came in the front door. The biography she had hidden lay on the kitchen table. Heat rushed into Hildemara’s cheeks when Mama glanced over her shoulder. “I saw your mattress sticking up and felt a book. I expected to find Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility. That’s what I thought you’d be reading.”

“It’s a biography, Mama. Florence Nightingale was a nurse.”