Citizens Creek by Lalita Tademy
Elizabeth joined them in the kitchen after getting both boys down to sleep and the oldest girl settled at play. Jake had already devoured one plateful of beans and was working on his second.
“Jake, you remember Elizabeth,” Rose said. Something so simple, yet she stumbled over the words.
Jake barely looked up from his plate, but his tone was civil, if not warm. “I hear you’re a great help to my Rose,” he said.
“Your Rose has always been a great help to me,” Elizabeth said. She gave a demur nod.
Jake pushed back from the table, giving her full measure. “Rose says you’ll stay with us on the ranch, keep her company while I’m gone.”
Elizabeth laughed softly. “Whatsoever I can do,” she said. “Rose tended to me when I was young. Now’s time to return the favor.”
“Well then,” said Jake. “Whatsoever I can do too.”
“There is something,” said Elizabeth.
“Yes?”
Rose couldn’t imagine Elizabeth making demands so early, especially with such unease in the air. Her boldness was unthinkable.
“I wish you would bring more newspapers here,” Elizabeth said. “I’m so keen for the advertisements.”
Now it was Jake’s turn to laugh, but he avoided Rose’s eye as he did so, their business not resolved.
“Easy enough,” he said.
Ten, Rose thought, watching this exchange, like one of the math problems from the Indian school after the war ended. Rose was ten years older than Jake, and Jake and Elizabeth were almost the same age. The image unsettled her, two people so young and beautiful both.
“Pleased to have you on our ranch,” Jake said. He sounded sincere, and they chatted awhile, the talk small and without strain.
The kitchen had turned sanctuary, and Rose was thankful they got on so well so quickly, Jake and Elizabeth. But the babies stirred, Kindred and Jacob on the same schedule, and within minutes, filled the ranch house with full-on hunger cries. The mood reverted, tight and fragile.
“I want to see my sons,” Jake said.
Rose pulled her apron over her head to get at her top, leaving the kitchen and unbuttoning as she went to them. She didn’t wait for Jake, though she heard the scrape of dish on wood behind her as he pushed his plate away, and the tumble of a chair he didn’t bother to right.
He followed close behind Rose, all the way to their bedroom at the rear of the house. She didn’t try to discourage him. For months, she’d imagined the introduction of father and sons.
She finished undoing the top of her dress, letting it fall. She was expert in feeding both at once now. Each week, as the boys grew in shape and size, she figured new ways to accommodate them. She used a pillow of late as their weight increased, easier on her arms, and positioned the bawling babies, one at each breast. They held hands, the two boys, staring defiantly at Jake the entire while. Daring him. Daring him not to love both, as she did.
He sat in the stiff-backed chair in the bedroom watching until the babies filled and drowsed, and he watched as Rose rubbed their backs to relieve gas from their bellies, one after the other, and put them back into their baskets. Rose buttoned her dress.
“This one here is Jacob,” Rose said. “Took me eight hours.” She brought the basket and laid it by Jake’s right foot. “And this one here is Kindred. Older by two weeks.” She placed his basket at Jake’s left foot. “Two sons.”
Jake looked from one to the other, Jacob and Kindred, the wonder so plainly written in the sunburned etches of his face, she knew she’d done the right thing.
Chapter 56
SUNDAY, AND MA’AM and Gramma Amy were coming for an overnight visit, leaving their own ranch to the hired hands until their Monday return. No matter this was Rose’s farm, larger than her grandfather’s, that she’d been married now seven years, that she and her husband ran over fifteen hundred head of cattle, that she was mother to five healthy children, girls and boys both. It was as if she had become again that young girl, the scrawny chicken too plain for any man to want.
This year, the third in a row, showed every sign of another prosperous one—a bumper crop of cotton and corn, another hand hired and added to the bunkhouse, both her herd and Jake’s free of disease, market prices in Kansas anticipated to be high, the children well except for normal ailments. Even after taking out Creek Council’s share, they were still well ahead and able to save a little. They’d worked hard to get to this point on the ranch, and settled into a routine. Elizabeth brought them much-needed help, especially with Jake so often gone, but not so often he didn’t plant a new child in Rose each year or two. Yes, Elizabeth had brought them both her hard work and good luck.
Jake and Elizabeth got on from the start, and there was lightness around the table after supper whenever he was home before leaving again on the road to Kansas or Texas or within Indian Territory. Elizabeth was chatty where Rose was not, and could coax a smile from Jake at will. He relaxed when she was around, and they even eased into the habit of inviting some of their closer-in neighbors to share supper with them on an occasional Sunday. The ranch still demanded, but there was a vitality to offset the constant choring, a cheerfulness somehow connected to Elizabeth. The children without exception adored her, Laura, Lady, Kindred, Jacob, and now Ned, all eager to gain her attention, eager to please her, and where Rose set the bar high in her expectations of her children, Elizabeth gave that journey a taste of fun. Of play.
Rose and Jake never dwelled on Kindred’s addition to the household, as if talk could cause an unraveling neither was willing to test. For a while, in the beginning, they tiptoed round each other. For the most part, Rose’s hurt burrowed deep and scabbed over, but when she couldn’t shake off a mood, she’d spend long, solo hours canning or at the spinning wheel, relying on Elizabeth to serve as conduit between her and Jake, safe haven. And as months passed, and then years, they were all swept back into the necessary ebbs and flows of growing the ranch, and Rose let go some of her distrust of her husband, sometimes forgetting for days at a time to be uneasy of his weeks away on the trail and what he might be doing there. The winds that threatened to destroy them three years before with Angeli’s visit had quieted, and what settled across her heart now was as close to peace as she was likely to ever get.
“Don’t let the sofki burn,” Rose said to Elizabeth, suddenly reminded of a time so very long ago when she took the blame for her little sister’s carelessness when preparing sofki for the white agriculture agents on Grampa Cow Tom’s ranch. Now the dark kitchen was her own, clean and orderly, though they’d been cooking for days in preparation. She stirred the big pot on the stove to test for the mixture’s consistency, and tasted from the ladle. Perfect. As good as Ma’am’s.
“I’m not a child,” Elizabeth snapped. She wiped her hands on her apron and studied Rose. “Why so skittish? It’s only Ma’am and Gramma Amy, and not like it’s the first time.”
“It comes so easy for you.”
“What comes easy?” Elizabeth asked.
“Everything.”
Elizabeth grimaced, but Rose pretended not to notice. She didn’t have time or patience to backtrack and explain herself, even if she could, or to calm feathers. There was too much still to do before her mother arrived. She wasn’t sure who softened over the years, her or Ma’am, but things were improved between them now. Somehow her life with Jake allowed each of them to change into more accepting people. Still, everything need be perfect today.
“Rose,” Elizabeth said. Her voice was soft but firm. “The visit will go well.”
Rose stopped where she stood and closed her eyes, tight. When she opened them again, the flutters had calmed.
“Of course it will,” she said. She brushed a few stray bread crumbs from the table. “I don’t know how I’d manage without you here.”
“No need to find out anytime soon.”
“Somed
“Someday,” Elizabeth said. “But not today. Everything I need is right here with you.”
“I forgot the cha-cha!”
Rose called Laura away from her scrub brush on the wooden floors of the front room, and sent her for a big jar of cha-cha from the storehouse. Rose could count on her daughter to assist with the babies and the boys when they woke from naps. Jake was in the south meadow with the hands, branding season almost at the finish, but he had promised to be back well before supper.
They were almost ready.
Ma’am and Gramma Amy arrived in a cloud of dust. They rode in on the same split-oak wagon her grandmother drove when she left her grandfather’s ranch to go to Okmulgee as a cook, twelve years ago, each dent and nick in the wood bringing its own memories. At least the wheels looked safe, and newly crafted.
Age brought Ma’am’s looks closer to Gramma Amy’s, a fuller face, a fuller figure, gray-white hair, though her mother still carried the sour expression Rose remembered from childhood, and Gramma Amy the same calm.
She helped each down from the wagon, and showed them round the place and the new purchases added since their last visit, careful not to brag on the hand water pump in the kitchen or the new spinning wheel in the barn. She left them to freshen up in the room in the house she’d cleared for them for the night, and rushed to finish the rest of her chores.
By the time they sat to supper, Rose worried less that something might go wrong. Everyone ate with a hearty appetite, and asked for more. She busied herself, back and forth from the kitchen, insisting on filling each plate herself, her nerves smoothing as the chatter around the table grew comfortable.
Jake was in his element, and entertained as if he were king and the women his subjects. She marveled again at how at ease Jake was with everyone, how he drew them in with the energy of his talk and his enthusiasm.
“Cow ’most took a plug out of my arm today,” said Jake. “Almost didn’t see that back leg coming at me until too late to get out the way.”
“Sounds like Hadjo,” Gramma Amy said.
Rose laughed, the image of her grandfather’s cow coming to her. “The trickster.”
“Who’s Hadjo?” Elizabeth asked.
“I haven’t set my mind on that old cow for a long time,” said Gramma Amy. A dreamy, faraway look crept to her face, and made her look years younger. “Your Grampa sure was fond of that animal. Treated him more like pet than cow. He practiced his courting words on Hadjo before coming for me.”
Abruptly, Rose’s mood soured. Everyone smiling, laughing, only skimming off the good parts of her grandfather, while she was left isolated in her knowledge, shackled by the promises of silence she’d made to him as he lay dying. Not for the first time, she resented her grandfather, the unfair burden he’d piled on her. What he’d asked of her was too much, and wrong. She wanted her grandmother to stop talking about him.
“There’s gooseberry cobbler,” she said, standing. “Elizabeth, help me dish up.”
“Wait,” Elizabeth said. “I want to hear Gramma Amy.”
“What kind of cow?” asked Jake. He leaned forward in his chair.
“Spotted, black and white, not scrub either, but bred right.” Amy smiled at the memory. “Broad haunches, and ornery when she wanted to be. She had her moods, but with Cow Tom she was at her best. He kept her till she dropped of her own at pasture. Wasn’t long after that Old Turtle passed over.”
“Old Turtle?” Now Ma’am was interested. “Wasn’t he blind, taught Papa how to bring a sickly cow back into health?”
“Elizabeth, dessert?” reminded Rose.
“Honestly, Rose,” Elizabeth said. “You’d think these were your stories. They belong to all of us. Just because Grampa carted you along wherever he went doesn’t mean you’re the only one deserving to hear them. You wouldn’t share then, you won’t share now.” She looked around the table. “Who wants to hear Gramma?”
Laura raised her hand, shyly, and Lady followed her big sister’s lead. Kindred and Jacob waved their arms in the air. Baby Ned, in his basket in the corner, was still too small to understand.
There was a hard glint in her sister’s gaze that Rose didn’t like, an anger there that matched her own. She looked away.
“I been trying to pry stories about her grandfather out of Rose for years,” said Jake, “but she clams up.”
“Always been that way,” said Ma’am.
Rose motioned Laura, and her daughter reluctantly followed her into the kitchen to serve up the plates. Everything felt ruined. This was the ultimate betrayal, them ganging up on her. She could hear her grandmother’s voice from the other room, reaching back through the years, remembering, telling, and each word was as if someone chipped away at the very bedrock on which she stood. She’d kept the stories locked down so long, she felt stripped bare.
Rose sent Laura with plates of cobbler, but stayed in the kitchen, washing, tidying, storing. She couldn’t make herself go back to the others. Jake’s voice drifted in to her, loud and in high spirits, weaving tales of his last cattle drive, and laughter followed. Still, she couldn’t rejoin them.
Her grandmother came alone into the kitchen, but said nothing at first, looking around at the neatly stocked shelves, the scrubbed floor, the clean aprons hanging from hooks on the wall ready to use. She ran her hand over the top of the brand-new cookstove.
“You’ve come far,” Gramma Amy said. “A solid home. Children. There’s pride to that.”
Rose remembered how broken her grandmother was at her grandfather’s funeral fifteen years before, how in that moment she’d felt she was the parent and her grandmother the child. Over time, Gramma Amy found a way to recover herself, and Rose was secure in her grandmother as guide again. And yet, Rose couldn’t find words.
A burst of laughter came from the other room, and then the children’s giggles. Once more, Jake’s voice, and Ma’am and Elizabeth egging him on.
“You draw your power from Cow Tom, like water from a well,” Gramma Amy said quietly, “as do I. Our family needs that power too. Let it go. You won’t break.”
How much easier for Rose if she could talk to her grandmother, tell her about the torching of the Seminole villages. Her grandfather as murderer. If she could explain why she remained silent.
“But Grampa chose me,” Rose said, her voice small. Grampa Cow Tom had gifted her his shame, the darkness in his soul forevermore twined in with his goodness, such that she didn’t know how to sort them out for herself, let alone for anyone else. Could Gramma Amy love Grampa Cow Tom the same if she told? Rose hated this burden. What started as a promise to her grandfather was now a way of being she couldn’t control.
“Let go the needs of a child,” Gramma Amy said. “You are equal to anyone. But if you think you’re not, you’re not.”
Gramma Amy didn’t understand. Couldn’t understand. This was nothing to do with worthiness, but Rose accepted her grandmother’s words, burying ever deeper her grandfather’s shame beneath her own.
Chapter 57
AFTER A LONG night in the barn at the spinning wheel, Rose looked forward to a hot meal and a bit of shut-eye before tackling the day. Elizabeth would already be up and had surely taken charge of the early morning kitchen by now, and started breakfast for the ranch hands. She’d need help with the children, especially Kindred and Jacob, unmanageable four-year-olds who made mischief everywhere. How different to have such male energy in the house, after so many generations of girl babies. She was blessed.
This wasn’t the first full night spent at the loom by lantern light, an activity that soothed her like no other, strangely peaceful despite the clack and bang of the shuttle wheel, with its added benefit of practicality, producing an end product of material she could use to sew clothes for the children or a new shirt for Jake or a dress for Eli
She had made her own family, as her Grampa Cow Tom predicted; a successful husband, children, sturdy and strong, and her sister, radiant and plump, content with her new life with them. They’d made the ranch a going concern, with money padlocked and buried beneath the floorboards for when bad years came. Rose congratulated herself on fighting through that dark time with Jake.
Weary, Rose slipped into the house, picking at the stray wisps of fluff settled on her dress from the carded wool she’d spun. She heard them before she saw them, Jake and Elizabeth, and although they whispered in frantic, low tones to each other, the words traveled across the distance as if meant for her ears alone.
“With child.”
There sometimes comes a moment of comprehension when everything clears at once, and although the reality was there waiting to be seen, the recognition remains murky, just below the surface. After, it seems impossible the truth had not revealed itself before. For Rose, one moment her sister was her greatest ally, and the next, her mortal enemy, with the utterance of those two damning words, and the immediate certainty that Jake was the father. She’d played the fool for the past two years, again, with her husband, with her children, with her life.
Rose came out of the shadow into the glow of the kitchen so they could see her. They stood close to one another, her sister and her husband, not touching, but with an intimacy that threatened to knock her to her knees.