Grandma nodded, seeming pleased. Then her expression became serious again, and she looked at me very directly. “Second, I know what a struggle you and Ben are having with your money, and I want to do what I can to help you raise my babies. I am leaving the main farm to you and Ben. There is no debt attached to it, so you’ll always have a place to live, and you will receive a rental check every month for the farmland.”
“But, Grandma, that isn’t fair to everyone else.”
And we’re supposed to be going back to Chicago in six weeks.
But in my heart, I knew I had turned that corner a long time ago. I didn’t want to go back, but I had no idea how Ben would feel about it.
She raised her hand, again impatient with my interruption. “Let me finish, Katie. I have thought this through.” Her tone brooked no argument. “Your father, Aunt Jeane, and your sister will each receive one hundred acres of the land your grandfather and I purchased on Grayson Road after the war, and also a division of your grandfather’s railroad stock. It won’t be as much as your part, but I spoke about this to them on the phone already, and we’ve settled things.” Reaching across the table, she took my hands in hers, her pale blue eyes bright and determined. “This land has been in the family for a hundred-and-twenty years. It is to remain in the family. Your grandfather is buried on it. I will be buried on it. If it is gone, the family will be scattered to the wind. You and Ben must keep it alive so the family will have a place to come home to.”
“I’ll talk to Ben,” I promised, feeling the importance of what she was asking. “Are you sure this is all right with Karen? I don’t want her to think I’m getting more because I’m the only one who . . . has children.”
Grandma shook her head, silently admonishing me. “Kate, you must let go of the idea that the two of you are running against each other in a race. Your children are not your accomplishment to hold up to her, nor is her work and her money hers to lord over you. Both are gifts God has given, by His grace, not by your works. God has put you where you are, and He will show you where you should go from here. Be humble. Be gracious and grateful. Bring the family closer together. I wish I had not waited until the end of my life to begin this task. Now I have no choice but to leave it for you to finish.” She smiled, giving my fingers a squeeze. “When you feel burdened, listen to the laughter of your children. Take delight in them. They will make your load seem light.”
“I will. But you stop talking like this. You’re going to be around for a good long time.”
Patting my hands, she sat back in her chair. “Oh . . . long enough to watch my roses bloom. I’m certain about that,” she said quietly. “Could you help me back to my chair? I want to rest before that McCamey boy comes out with my legal papers.”
Carefully, I helped her from the kitchen, and we moved along the dogtrot with painful slowness. One tiny step, then another, no larger than a baby’s and no more steady.
As we passed the stairway, she turned her head to look at the images of old picture frames yellowed into the wall. “You need to paint that wall, Katie,” she said. “You can hang pictures of my babies there.”
“It can wait,” I whispered, a lump rising in my throat. Those yellowed squares of paint were our history. In my mind, I could see which portrait went in each space—like puzzle pieces that fit together to create my grandmother’s life. I wondered if my children would someday take my life off the stairway wall and replace it with their own.
A great gasp of air rushed from her as I lowered her into the recliner in the living room. She groaned deep in her throat, closing her eyes but keeping her grip on my hand.
“Do you need a drink of water?” I asked, wondering if she still had something to say to me, or if she just didn’t realize she was holding me there.
“No.” Her voice was faint, little more than a breath exhaled. “You’ll remember your promise about the farm?”
“I’ll talk to Ben this afternoon.” Sitting on the arm of her chair, I rested my cheek atop her head and listened as her breathing became long and deep. Slowly, her fingers loosened, and her hand fell away from mine.
Standing up, I took an afghan from the couch and covered her, then watched her for a moment, the way I sometimes did with Joshua, just to make sure everything was all right. She looked peaceful, more so than usual, her lashes fluttering slightly and the pleated line of her lips curving into a smile. I pictured her dreaming the dream about yellow bonnets, her mind making her once again into that barefoot, tawny-haired girl with the sky-colored eyes.
Joshua called me from his crib, and I went to get him, closing the living room door so he wouldn’t bother Grandma. It was impossible for him to comprehend the fact that she couldn’t play with him anymore. When they were in the same room, he tried with great determination to convince her to build block towers, play puppets, or roll his ball to him. She seldom felt well enough, and I knew that only made her situation harder to bear. It was difficult to know whether to let them be together or to try to keep them apart. His baby antics made her happy. The fact that she couldn’t participate made her sad. It was hard to say which outweighed the other.
I woke her when the lawyer came. Oliver Mason arrived just after the lawyer. Bundling Joshua, I told Grandma good-bye and left her to her legal papers. I didn’t want to be there to hear about the dividing of her estate. It made me feel like a vulture waiting to gain from her life. I wondered if that was what the lawyer would think of me.
Grandma seemed to be feeling well as she held Joshua in her lap and kissed him good-bye. “You keep those ears covered,” she said, opening the Velcro fastener on his hood and examining it with fascination. “I declare,” she said to the lawyer. “They have simplified everything these days. I suppose soon no one will know how to tie a bow or fasten a button.”
The lawyer laughed at her. “You know, Mrs. Vongortler, you’re probably right. I’m not sure that’s such a good thing.”
“I’m not either,” she agreed, handing Joshua to me. “You take your time and have supper in town with Ben this evening,” she suggested. “Oliver can stay with me. We’ll slice some of that ham and have sandwiches for supper.”
Half asleep in the corner, Oliver nodded like a trained hound. “I don’t have any place to be. I’d be happy to stay until this evening.”
“Don’t wear yourself out,” I told Grandma. “You can call me at Ben’s office if you decide you need me.”
She waved me off as if I were a fly buzzing in her face. “Go on, now. I’ll be fine. Enjoy some time with your family.” So I gathered Joshua and left her there with Oliver and the lawyer. I knew why she wanted to give Ben and me time together. She wanted me to tell him about our inheriting the farm, and she wanted to know that he would accept the responsibility of keeping it for the family.
On the way to town, I thought about how to tell him and wondered what he would say. Over the months, he had settled in to life in Hindsville and had made friends in town. He had even joked about someday retiring there and playing dominoes Tuesday nights with the old men at church. But we hadn’t talked seriously about staying.
When I got to the church office, I closed the door and told him everything Grandma had said.
It took him a moment to digest the news. He stopped making funny faces at Josh and started looking serious. “Well . . . but . . . wow,” he muttered, shifting Josh on his lap. “Is she sure she wants to do that? I mean, isn’t this going to cause some hard feelings with the rest of the family?”
I wondered if that was his polite way of saying he didn’t want the responsibility of the farm. “She says she’s already talked to them about it. She’s leaving them some of the land she and Grandpa bought in later years and some railroad stock. She’s afraid if she wills the main farm to them, they might decide to sell it. She asked me to promise we would keep it for the family.” I took a deep breath and plunged headfirst into the private dream I had been building. “Ben, it could be a perfect solution for us. I don’t see how I’m going to work with two babies, and I don’t want to right now. I want to take the time to be with the children. They’ll only be babies for a little while, and I don’t want to miss it. I don’t want to wake up someday with regrets.”
He fell silent for a moment, looking at the computer screen, as if the answer might be somewhere in his electronic blueprint. “What did you tell Grandma?”
I swallowed hard, hoping he wouldn’t be angry. “I told her I would talk to you, but you know Grandma. She had her lawyer out there this afternoon so she could change her legal papers. She doesn’t want to take no for an answer, but we have to do what is right for us. If we take the farm, it means staying in Hindsville for good.”
He gave me that devil-may-care grin and turned to put a disk into his computer as Joshua stretched out his hand to touch the flickering screen. “Well, Kate, you know I’m not the practical kind. I’ve been thinking about staying for a while now. It just seems to make sense.” A logo came up on the computer screen, and he pointed to it. “You know these plans I did for Williams and Bernhardt? Well, those are on ComCAD software, and ComCAD is a little company based out of Springfield, of all places. I was talking to a guy there the other day, and it just happens they need a tech support person for their structural design module. Steady work, salary negotiable, stock options, insurance—the whole works. I can do a lot of the work remote. No need to commute every day.”
“You’re kidding!” I gasped, staring at the ComCAD logo on the screen, and feeling as if God had just answered all our prayers. “Ben Bowman, why didn’t you say something! You’ve been wanting to get into the software end of things. Why didn’t you tell me when I came in?”
A wicked twinkle danced in the corner of his eye. “Well, you had all this
important
stuff you wanted to talk to me about . . .” He did a perfect imitation of Grandma’s wistful, martyred tone. “I just didn’t figure you’d have time to listen to my little bit of news.”
Wadding up an extra sheet of paper, I threw it and hit him in the head.
“Ow,” he complained, glancing over his shoulder at me.
“You deserve it.” I laughed. “You should know better than to tease a pregnant woman.”
Standing up, he grabbed me in his arms and kissed me, squeezing Josh between us. “You’re pregnant?” He pretended to be amazed. “We couldn’t tell.”
“Benjamin,” I scolded, sounding like Grandma, “you’d better watch what you say. You’re skating on thin ice here.” It was the first time the two of us had talked about the baby since I told him the news, but suddenly everything seemed all right.
Ben seemed to feel it too. The stress lines were gone from around his eyes. “How about if I take you to dinner to celebrate? Grandma called and said she’ll be dining with Dell and old Oliver. She suggested we go over to that German place on the way to Springfield. I can show you my new office while we’re over there. And she told me to tell you not to worry about her, and to leave Joshua at Wanda Cox’s, because she’d already called Wanda and made sure it was all right.”
Shaking my head, I chuckled under my breath. “I think she’s decided we need a little time off.”
Ben reached to turn off his computer, but I could tell from his profile that he was smiling. “She’s probably right. These past few months have been something else.”
“Yes, they definitely have,” I agreed, hearing the bell ring on the church tower. Opening the door, I stood in the March sunlight, feeling the promise of spring in the warm afternoon air.
Ben stood beside me, looking out at Town Square Park, bustling with kids headed home from school. “I wouldn’t trade it, though. Would you?”
I didn’t have to think about the answer. This had been the hardest year of my life, when all the colors ran outside the lines I had drawn, but also the year when I finally discovered myself. “No,” I said. “This year has been worth it.”
We had started the year adrift, lost on a river of conflicting desires and uncertain plans. Now we were anchored to this place, our family, the farm, our children, each other. The prayers of our hearts had been answered, even if we had not known what to pray for.
We talked about the future that night with a wonderful sense of joy and anticipation. We talked about the children growing up, about Joshua starting school, about the new baby and what he or she would be like. We talked about names—Jared for a boy, and Rose for a girl, after Grandma. We imagined ourselves retired on the farm, waiting for the grandchildren to visit. We talked about ourselves, and how lucky we were to have each other, and how long it had taken us to find out what was really important in life.
When we returned to the farm, the house was quiet. Grandma was asleep in the downstairs bedroom she had once shared with my grandfather. Stepping into her room, I watched her in the dim light of the reading lamp on the night table. Her face was as pale as milk, her breathing raspy and labored. Coming closer, I touched her forehead and listened. She felt warm, but not feverish, so I didn’t wake her, but decided to sit up for a while instead. Ben came by the door, and I whispered for him to go on to bed, then turned back to Grandma.
Something familiar caught my eye beneath the lamplight. I stretched out my hand and touched the pressed wildflowers on the cover, just to make sure I wasn’t imagining the book’s presence. Grandma hadn’t forgotten it, after all. A sense of joy filled me, and I picked it up, sitting on the chair beside the bed and opening to the first page.
The Snow Dancers,
it said, and I thought of the silent Christmas snow that Grandma Rose had willed into existence. Warmed by the memory, I read the handwriting, now faint and drifting downward across the page.
Winters were long and deep when I was young, a slumber during which I held close to my family, huddled against cold, and darkness, and hunger. With my young brothers and sisters, I slept on a mound of quilts by the old black stove in that ancient white house where the wind howled through like a marauding ghost. At night we sat by the dim hearth and thanked the Lord for the meager blessings of our table.
Ofttimes we had only fried cakes for our supper. Buck flour sold at twenty-five cents each bag, and in those lean days it was the only means by which my father could feed so many mouths. Many nights he stood over the heavy black stove, his shoulders stooped from a long day of selling firewood. He mixed the flour with milk, or water when there was no milk. We watched, hungry for better things, but grateful for what we had. We knew the pain of empty stomachs and were thankful for each night we went to bed with food in our bellies.
My mother seldom took care of the household work. The hardships of birthing so many had left her bitter and frail in her thoughts. She was not born to a life so filled with want. Winter, with its dark, silent storms, made her sullen and quiet. She sat alone in the oak rocking chair saved from a rich man’s rubbish, and sang quietly, nursing the youngest of us in her arms, weeping from the burdens life had brought her.
I often heard her rise with the babe late at night when we were all in our beds. The sounds of the baby nursing, and of the rocker creaking, and of my father sleeping nearby, were sounds of comfort for me.
I remember a night when she called to us so suddenly that we jumped from our beds. We went to her hesitantly, nervous and afraid, for we were often uncertain of her. We found her not in the rocking chair, but standing in the blue spill of moonlight from the eight-paned windows. She did not scold us, but gathered us round her knees and stroked our tangled heads with gentle fingers.
“Look, children,” she whispered so that my father would not hear. “The snow dancers have come out tonight.”
Looking out, we saw them with our own eyes, tiny fairies of ice, no larger than grains of sand, dancing and twirling like diamonds in the moonlight. My mother told us how she often watched the snow dancers from the big house she had lived in as a child—before she came from the old country. Before she became a wife and a mother of so many. She told us how the snow dancers only came at special times, when the moonlight was like spun silver and the snow touched with magic.
Tugging at her hands, we begged to go among the snow fairies. She smiled like an angel, then bade us dress in our warmest clothes, but quietly so our father would not hear, for he did not believe in such foolishness.
When we were dressed, she wrapped our heads in white flour-sack towels to keep the dampness from our hair, and we dashed from the prison of the old white house—away from the scent of coal oil and buck-flour cakes. Stretching our fingers, we ran through the glittering air, catching the snow fairies, passing through them and sending them swirling on the smoke of our breaths. Laughing, we unwrapped our linens and let them billow from our hands as we ran, twirling and dipping, floating on the moonlit breeze, as light and free as the snow fairies themselves.
I looked back at my mother as the dampness fell on my hair, but there was no hint of scolding in her face. She stood by the frosted window glass, the baby asleep in her arms. As I watched, she closed her eyes, and she danced in and out of the window light, swirling and dipping, unaware of the burden in her arms, free and light as the snow dancers.