Michelle Hoover - Bottomland

We can go . It was Nan who said it first, months before Esther and I left. I woke to the sound of cracking, a draft. When I opened my eyes, Nan was sitting on the edge of my bed. She made sure I heard what she did. The thud of the nails as they fell and the window pried open, the sudden wind. She held a hammer in her lap as if a prized possession. You can go if you want , she whispered. We all can . When I sat up, she looked at me as if she hadn’t expected me to have questions. It isn’t natural, living in a box .

The letter about Father should have ended it, but I kept my promise to wait for several years more. Chicago was notorious then. That’s what Esther would have known. But for the rest of us, it was only so much noise. We were dollar to mouth, the streets cold for walking in the winters, and the summers hot enough to drive us to the lakeshore. There were race riots near the stockyards and meatpacking plants, and Leopold and Loeb, the Übermenschen , were arrested like cowards for the murder of young Bobby Franks. Esther’s letters slowed to one every three or four months. They were always the same. A half-page at most, scribbled with ink, running with names and events I didn’t understand. Agnes says little Martha might have broken her finger. Or, Nan told Patricia straight out she shouldn’t say another word about the plates. Or, Old Tensley finally built his own shed, can you believe it ? No matter who Martha or Tensly were, or why Patricia worried about plates. Esther never did bother with explanations.

Greta was five years old when the last letter came. I opened it alone at my desk. The paper was flimsy, too small a piece to hold in a wind.

Dear Sister,

I’m sitting for once, hardly time to breathe. I picture you in that house, all cozy. Say hi to Charlotte for me. And Keyes, is she always in your business? Agnes and those brats of hers are about to drive me crazy, and I’m working from dawn to sleep and bored stiff.

Around here, Adam Haskett is the gossip. Remember him? He finally married a girl. They have a baby, and that baby is older than it should be by five months They only married last year. There was a big to-do over it. Of course Patricia goes running her mouth. People think a baby forgives everything, she says. But that’s Patricia, all angelic like. It only makes things worse, she says. Think of the child!

My pencil’s a stub. Got to run. Nan is calling.

You can’t be mad forever, can you? Write me! Remember what you promised?

E.

Greta stood in the doorway. “Mother?” With her quickness, the girl could slip between shadows. She gripped my knees until I lifted her into my lap.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

I wiped my face. “Reading letters.”

“From who?”

“An old friend.”

“Do I know her?”

“She should have known you, yes. But she lives very far away. I’m afraid she’s not much of a friend now.”

Greta turned the paper over in my hands, trying to make out letters, names. “Why do you read them?”

I folded the letter in half and slipped it back into its envelope. “I don’t know.”

“Auntie says it’s time for dinner. You’re late.”

“Does she?”

“She says you must be feeding the birds up here for all she knows.”

“Go on with you. I’ll be right there. Just have to splash some water on my face.”

The girl pouted, pulling my arm.

“Greta, go on.”

At last she went, rushing down the stairs so fast I imagined her falling easy as a feather. Greta was as fierce as Esther, fiercer even. But Greta was kind, while Esther seemed to be growing less. Remember what you promised , she had written. And I remembered. I had waited for her even after Father went. A baby. It only makes things worse , Patricia had said. Esther was sure to pass the message on.

I shook the dust from her letters in my closet. There were dozens of them, some opened, some not. I tore them from their envelopes, skimming her awkward hand. Wait for me. She’d said it one way or another in each of those letters. Then what she meant but didn’t say, nearly every time: I’ll never come . With a pair of scissors, I started cutting. A corner from the first, another in half and half again. Soon I was cutting those letters into strips. Sister, dear sister , she had written. But none of those sisters were me. They were Nan and Agnes. Even Patricia. I had plenty of sisters here for myself. In only minutes, those letters lay in pieces at my feet, except one.

I sat at my desk and sealed the envelope again. It was dated only the week before. Return to sender , I wrote across the front. No one here by that name.

The next day at the courthouse, I asked for a form. There’s more to you than they think , Mother had said. Twenty years and counting, I would have told her. When the form asked for the change of name, I wrote, “Norma Byrne.”

Without even looking, the woman behind the desk struck the form with her bloody stamp.

I can’t say I never imagined going back. After the country got on its feet again. After another war filled the factories with girls. Mrs. Keyes took to her bed and soon she was gone — I could have tried then. But no matter how often I wondered about home, Chicago was more. Before she went, Mrs. Keyes had left the house to us.

It would have taken a day on the train, a half for the drive. Every mile that passed, I knew I might still turn around. When I reached the house, I imagined myself too afraid to step out. Only the smell of dust and pigs when I rolled down the window, the whine of the weather vane on the barn.

A girl called to me from the porch. “They’re all at the wedding.”

I could picture her there, hiding behind one of the porch posts, almost as if I saw her myself. She wore her hair in a kerchief and pigtails, tall as a stalk. The buckets in her hands clattered at her thighs. The girl would never have known a stranger to visit the house.

“Whose wedding?”

“Why, Darlene’s of course. Aunt Agnes made her dress.”

I opened my door and stepped out, the heat of the sun in my eyes. “And your name?”

“Renie.” She stood in the yard, awkward as a boy. Soon she was telling me her thoughts on weddings and dressing up in all sorts. “I’m not going,” she said. “Any day, I’d rather do chores.”

Of course. Her eyes had a sureness I knew. With her height and her cheekbones, the girl had to be Nan’s.

“Weddings,” I answered. “You know what they say. Never make too much of something. ”

“Mother says that too.”

“Your mother, does she have many sisters?”

The girl stuck a knuckle in her ear. “She has two. But she used to have another one. As pretty as me, she said once.”

“Did she now?”

“Very pretty, Mother said. But the sister drowned.”

The yard rose up. I leaned against the hood of the car. I’d imagined the visit dozens of ways, but this one always repeated itself. “Are you sure?”

“Sure what?”

“That her sister. ”

The girl tilted her head.

“Never mind.” My hand burned on the hood and I shook it off. The wind struck, the barn door swinging. There wasn’t anything but the dark hayloft and a bell ringing from an animal’s collar, a curl of rope in the dust.

“What’s your mother’s name?” I said.

“Why, Nan of course. What’s yours?”

“Something of the like,” I said. “Some called her Nan. Some Margrit.”

“That’s a funny thing, to have two names.”

The girl lifted her buckets again and made her way to the barn. The buckets banged as she walked, though she couldn’t help but look back. I stood by the car under the sun. I had little energy left to explain myself. Before the girl disappeared again, I called out, “You tell your mother that her daughter loves her, you hear? Her youngest one. Tell her, her daughter loves her very much.”