IT HARDLY SEEMS worth building a fire and setting breakfast oats to boil when there is only me to eat them. The rest of the day stretches out before me and there ain’t a thing in it that seems pressing with Jeremiah gone. But I know this feeling, I have seen it before with Mama, and the only thing for it is to keep moving.
The sun is full up when those first chores are done and breakfast eaten. I am drying the last dish when footsteps come loud across the front porch and then there is knocking. Maybe it is Jeremiah coming back to say good-bye like he should have, but when I fling open the door of course it is Jeremiah’s Ma calling, a basket in her arms, the cold rosy across her cheeks.
‘I came to see how you were faring,’ she says.
‘Come in,’ I say, even though she ain’t the company I want. ‘I’ve just been laying out plans for my day.’
‘Oh? And what are those?’ She moves past me to the middle of the kitchen, taking measure of the house I keep.
I say the first thing that comes to my mind. ‘Thought I might start making soap.’
‘Good. At least you keep a tidy house.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I try.’
‘I brought along some mending, needs doing,’ she says, and sets down her basket. Inside are chambray shirts and trousers and woolen socks.
‘I can do that,’ I say, even though there is nothing I hate more.
She gives me a pointed look and then acts like I ain’t said one word. ‘The men discussed it and Mr. Wakefield thought you might be of help with the sugaring.’
‘I’d like that better than mending,’ I say, thinking of being outside, tapping the maple trees and collecting the syrup. ‘I can drill taps—you only need tell me where the tools are kept—’
Jeremiah’s Ma frowns. ‘That’s work for James and Jesse. The mending needs doing. And it’s the sugarhouse tending you’d be best suited for, since you don’t have anyone else to mind.’
She wants me indoors, is what, sewing or else working over the sugarhouse stove, boiling sap down, keeping all hours. She is reminding me of Alice and Sarah with their homes full of children to watch and husbands to feed. All I have is an empty house and it ain’t enough.
‘I can tap the trees easy. I’d like doing it.’
Her mouth goes tight. ‘You’d do better to remember you’ve come up in the world and do what you’re asked.’
THE MENDING AIN’T much. Split seams. A hem come undone. Socks rubbed threadbare at the heel. From the kitchen window the trees’ empty branches sway in the wind, and I try to prove myself with my smallest stitches. But I get tired of hearing my own breathing and the pull of thread through fabric.
Out on the porch, the weak sun feels nice, but that ain’t where I want to stay. I am down the steps and into the fallow cornfield, heading for the woodlot. I pass the tin-roofed sugarhouse, moving along the creek, walking where Jeremiah must’ve gone when he left, seeing things the way he saw them. Trees send out new tips to their branches, and ice crusts the banks of the creek. I tuck the hem of my skirt up in the waistband of my apron to keep it from dragging in the mud.
I am watching my boots mash their prints into the slushy mud, not paying any mind to where I am going, when a voice says, ‘Rosetta Edwards. You’re a ways from home yet, ain’t you?’
‘That ain’t my name no more,’ I say, my heart pounding to see Eli Snyder in the middle of the path.
I kick myself for walking this far when I’ve got other things to be doing. By avoiding one hurt, I have just brought myself a different kind of trouble.
‘That’s right. You’re a married woman now. What are you doing here then, Mrs. Wakefield?’
‘Going visiting,’ I say, and square my shoulders, meeting his look dead-on.
‘Your think your new family is going to get your Papa those water rights? That’s why you got married now, after hanging on Jeremiah all this time, ain’t it? And everybody knows Jeremiah only married you to get the bigger enlisting bounty.’
Eli steps closer, his hand stretching out, reaching for my skirt. I think how the boss mare in a herd don’t wait to kick, and I aim for his man parts. He catches my leg, twisting and shoving until I fall back into the slush. Then he bends over me as I scrabble backward, my feet slipping in the mud. He is panting now but he keeps coming. I can’t get my feet under me to stand and he lurches forward, pinning me and snatching my hem. My shriek is so loud I can’t hear my gathered skirt seam pulling free of the bodice, but I can feel the ripping fabric.
Jeremiah’s voice says, You’ve got to punch hard and not get punched. I ball up my right hand, thinking of weak spots. Eli’s hand clamps my leg. The other grabs my left wrist, pushing it into the ground, digging each one of his fingers and every rock into my wrist. His fingers scratch and claw at my thigh, but I aim for his nose like Jeremiah taught me, hearing him say, When you punch, you’ve got to move, and then I smash my fist into Eli’s face.
Before I even see the blood, I am shoving up off the ground, quick, ready to punch again. Eli rolls away from me in the slush.
‘Don’t you touch me!’ I scream.