Nevada Barr - Bittersweet

“Dear God,” she prayed, “I know you mustn’t tempt the Lord thy God and this isn’t that, it’s just business. If you could show me it wasn’t true that Nate killed Wolf-in a way-I’d put Imogene behind me, marry again. Marry Nate Weldrick.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and willed the words to heaven. When she opened them she was alone and small under the ring of mountains, the little grave at her feet. “If not, Lord, I’m going to cast my lot with love.” The defiance returned and she added, “Half a year. I’ll listen half a year.”

For minutes she stood still, expecting to be struck to the ground, but there was nothing.

HAVING SWEPT UP THE SHARDS OF BROKEN PITCHER, PATCHED THE bullet hole with baking soda, flour and water, and pasted a picture postcard over it, Sarah waited for Imogene to come home from school.

“I want to get a job,” she said as the schoolteacher let herself in. “I have to have something to do. It’s time I pulled my own weight, as Mac says.”

Imogene closed the door and took off her coat. “We can live on what I earn, you know that. We are even saving a little. You needn’t do this for me.”

“I want to feel I’m helping.”

Imogene warmed her hands at the potbellied stove. Enjoying the warmth of the fire and the homey smell of supper from the kitchen, she realized she’d grown to like returning at the end of each day to a home kindled with another woman’s work.

“You help me, Sarah.”

“I suppose,” Sarah said falteringly. “Yes…I suppose I do.”

Guilt shook Imogene from her complacency. Even with the toys cleared away, Wolf’s presence was everywhere, from the scuffed chairs to the smudged nose prints on the window. She turned from the stove. “I’ve gotten spoiled, having you to come home to. What kind of work are you thinking of?”

“Needlework is all I can do,” Sarah replied. “So that’s what I’m thinking of.”

“I’ll ask at school for you. Some of the girls come from well-to-do families.”

In the next week, Sarah gathered up her courage and posted notices advertising needlework for hire in the stores, but got no response.

Her resolve had not weakened, but she was running out of places to post notices when Kate Sills came up with an idea. The youngest girls at Bishop Whitaker’s were too young for the school and needed to be tutored. “What they need,” Kate had said wryly, “is a wet-nurse. The bishop had no business taking them.” There was no money in the budget to fund such a position, but if Sarah would work for a dollar a week and lunches, Kate said she would pay it out of her own pocket.

Imogene brought the news home like a gift.

“I couldn’t!” Sarah exclaimed. “What if I can’t do it? Oh, Imogene, what would Kate think of me? Needlework I can do here, with nobody watching me. Teaching? I don’t think so. You’re the teacher, Imogene, I couldn’t teach.”

“The oldest isn’t even six,” Imogene reassured her. “All you need do is care for them, play with them, take the time with them that the other teachers can’t spare. It wouldn’t be teaching, really.”

Sarah squared her shoulders. “I’ll do it,” she declared, as if she were promising to rebuild the Colossus at Rhodes.

Seven girls at Bishop Whitaker’s were under the age of six, girls that the bishop, in his softheartedness, had taken because their older sisters were enrolled and the mothers had pleaded. Sarah was to take them from eight-thirty in the morning until noon, the hours when the other teachers were the busiest. One of the recitation rooms was set aside for her use. “When the weather is better, you can take the girls out of doors if you like,” Kate had offered. Secretly, Sarah felt she’d be let go before winter was out, but she put on a brave face.

The first morning, Imogene walked her to the recitation room and introduced her to the children assembled there. The little girls greeted Imogene with boisterous affection. Seven sober faces bobbed and seven stiff curtsies were dropped for Sarah. “See you at lunch,” Imogene whispered as she left. “They are going to love you.”

As the door swung shut behind Imogene, the eldest, Maybelle, a pigtailed child of five and a half, stepped forward. “Why do I have to be with the little kids?” she demanded. Two of the very little girls started to snuffle because their feelings were hurt.

Sarah’s heart sank.

Nobody would talk except to say something spiteful. Finally, Sarah separated the two older girls and gave them each a stack of picture books. The youngest she let play together, happy to have them occupied and moderately quiet.

By ten o’clock the smaller children were bored with one another and had started to squabble. Before the morning was out, Sarah had all seven isolated, each scowling over her own pile of pictures.

Imogene rescued her in time for lunch. The moment she opened the recitation room door, seven voices piped, “Miss Grelznik!” and there was a mad rush of children to hide in her skirts. Sarah was not far behind.

“It was awful!” Sarah wailed over the soup. “They hated me. I’ll never be a teacher until they invent rooms with more corners. I ran out of places to send them, they were so bad.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Imogene reminded her. “Do you want to stop? No one will think less of you for it.”

“No.” Sarah took a spoonful of soup. “I want you to help me make up a lesson plan.”

“Sarah, they are just babies-”

“I don’t care. Maybe they don’t need a lesson plan, but I do.”

“We’ll do it first thing after supper,” Imogene promised.

That night it was Imogene who cleared up the dinner things while Sarah pored over sheets of foolscap. Near midnight, Imogene came to stand behind Sarah’s chair, resting her hands lightly on the younger woman’s shoulders. Sarah leaned her head against the schoolteacher and closed her eyes. “I’m almost finished,” she sighed.

Imogene kissed the golden crown of hair. “Take care of yourself, Sarah. Your love is more than a net under me. It is the tower from which I shout down the world.”

Next morning, armed with a basket of paints, paper, glue, and bits of cloth, Sarah again took possession of the recitation room. When Imogene peeked in before the noon break, all the children were happily absorbed in making Christmas ornaments. She mouthed a silent “Congratulations” to Sarah and closed the door noiselessly.

“They are warming to me,” Sarah reported as she and Imogene ate in the school lunchroom. “The eight of us had a good time this morning. I taught them something, too. While we worked, I told them the story of Christmas and how it is celebrated in Holland and Italy. You told those stories to me, years ago. Remember?” There was a scuffle and commotion in the hall. Several of the teachers, including Imogene, left the table. Half a minute later, Imogene poked her head back into the lunchroom.

“Maybelle has skinned her knee on the ice. She says no one is to touch it but Mrs. Ebbitt.”

Sarah stayed at Bishop Whitaker’s School through the winter, and by spring she was teaching fine needlework to the older girls and assisting in the classroom during the afternoons. Sarah never spoke of Wolf, though she would sometimes talk to him when she knew she was alone, and she never forgot her pact with God.

HEADS BOWED OVER THEIR BOOKS, BRAIDS AND CURLS TUMBLING over their cheeks, the bishop’s girls scratched answers on their final examination papers. Occasionally they glanced up at the test questions Imogene had written on the board. Sunlight streamed through the windows, warm on Imogene’s face and hands. Careful not to disturb her scholars, she slid the sash up and leaned out. Eva Quaiffe, the music teacher, had laughed, telling Imogene that spring was short-lived in the eastern Sierra. “It came on Tuesday last year,” she’d remarked. But now the bitterbrush was in bloom on the mountainside, and the sweet scent of the yellow flowers drifted down, mingling with the sharpness of sage. Imogene breathed deeply and closed her eyes.