In the grainy dark before dawn, Caroline woke to the pull of her stomach drawing itself taut. Before opening her eyes she resigned herself to it; better to let her muscles express her dread of this day than give voice to it.
Already the room had changed. Neither Charles’s clothes nor his nightshirt hung on the nail beside her own, though the usual sounds of him putting on his boots and taking up the water pail came from the back door. She lay still a moment more after the door shut, letting herself collect the feel of the roof and walls around her one last time before kneeling alongside the trundle bed to pray.
As she fastened her corset, Caroline marked the faint rise of her waist, like the dome of a layer cake peeking over the pan. The quickening would follow before long. She was more impatient for it this time than she had been even with Mary. After spending weeks packing boxes and crates, it was disquieting not to have felt her own body’s cargo. Caroline flattened her palms below her ribs and drew a breath. Not a flicker, yet the steady press of the steels along her core eased the quiver of her nerves. With each successive breath she stretched her lungs deeper still, until she was nearly within reach of her accustomed cadence.
Caroline took her dress down from its nail and the bedroom turned gaunt—stripped and scoured down to the last bare inch. Vinegar still stung the air, sharpened by the cold. It crowded out the familiar traces of Charles’s shaving lather and rosemary-scented bear grease. Caroline washed her face, then with her damp palms smoothed the length of her braid before pinning it carefully up. Last of all she dipped the comb into the basin of cold water and slicked down the loose strands between her forehead and the nape of her neck.
A fresh pail of half-melted snow already waited beside the cookstove for her. Caroline stoked up the fire and set the draught as deftly as Charles tuning his fiddle. She filled the coffeepot and skillet with snow, draped the girls’ underthings over the back of the rocker to warm, then went to fetch the last of the salt pork.
At the threshold of the newly emptied pantry she hesitated. A score of years had passed since she’d faced such a barren set of shelves, yet the sight was enough to waken the old tremors of unease. The few things she had not been able to make room for—the last half-dozen jars of preserves, the eggs in their big barrel of salted limewater—beckoned to be packed as persistently as the bedstead and rocking chair. Tightly as they’d loaded the wagon, Caroline could not help wondering if hunger would find a place to lodge among the crates and bundles.
Caroline shook herself free of such thoughts. This morning at least, they would have their fill of eggs and empty an entire jar of tart cherry jelly onto their cornbread.
As she stirred milk into the cornmeal, her mind ran counterclockwise. Their first meal in this cabin, Caroline remembered, she had nearly cried. She’d forgotten the sugar—somehow forgotten it entirely when they’d loaded the wagon with their share of the provisions at Father and Mother Ingalls’s house that morning. She was just pressing the cornbread into the pan when she’d realized.
Charles had looked at her, with her hands caked in cornmeal and her face on the verge of falling, and said, “I don’t see how sugar could make that cornbread any sweeter than the prints of your hands already have.” That night in bed, he’d kissed her palms instead of her cheeks.
Once the salt pork was parboiling and the cornbread was in the oven, she dried her hands and went in to wake Mary and Laura. Caroline smiled as she crouched beside the trundle bed, at the harmony of their breaths beneath the patchwork quilt. She nudged them from their dreams, then sat back on her heels to watch for the moment she delighted in, when their faces seemed almost to shimmer as their minds began to stir. And then the way the girls looked first at each other, as though the sight of the other was what made the world real to them.
When both had taken their turns with the chamber pail and washbasin, Caroline led Mary and Laura to the stove. They yawned and rubbed their eyes as she buttoned the bands of their flannel underwear over their stockings and layered them with woolens. She combed their hair until it lay straight and soft as corduroy, then sent them back into the bedroom to put their rolled-up nightdresses into the carpetbag and pull the linens from their bed while she finished breakfast.
Charles stepped in. “Anything to take out yet?”
Caroline split an egg against the lip of the skillet and opened it onto a saucer. Still fresh, though its white was tinged pink from the preserving barrel. “The second carpetbag is packed,” she said. “As soon as the girls have stripped the trundle bed the straw ticks will be ready. The chamber pail and basin may both go once they’ve been emptied and rinsed. And my trunk.” She dropped the eggshell into the teakettle to take up the lime, wondering aloud how long it would be before they would have eggs again.
“Indian Territory’s swarming with prairie hens,” Charles promised.
Caroline’s fork jittered in the skillet. “I wish you wouldn’t call it that,” she said as gently as she could manage.
“What?”
“Kansas. Indian Territory.” She pricked at the curling strips of pork as she spoke. “I don’t like to think of the Indians any more than I have to. I saw enough of them in Brookfield.”
“The Potawatomis never did your family any harm.”
“Just the same, I’ve had my fill. I’ll be thankful when they’ve moved on.”
Around the edges of the skillet, a dribble of egg white was beginning to form a skin like the rim of a pancake. Caroline’s stomach shuddered as the smell suddenly unfurled, thick and brown, saturating her nostrils.
“Are you all right?” Charles asked.
She swallowed hard, remembering that she had not taken her usual glass of warm water to insulate her stomach against the skillet’s odors. “It will pass if you’ll fill a mug from the teakettle for me, please.” Caroline dragged the skillet to the side of the stove and scraped the crusted membrane of egg loose before sinking onto the bench.
Charles held the steaming mug by the rim as Caroline hooked her fingers through its handle. She leaned into the vapor and drew its blank scent through her nose and mouth. Immediately the steam began to melt her queasiness like a breath against a frosted windowpane.