Chapter Twenty-Six
since morning, blanketing the fields and fences. The house felt muffled and close. The older children had been kept downstairs
with strict instructions to stay quiet, but I could hear their restless thumps and stifled giggles through the bedroom door.
Wind whipped against the windows while I labored in bed. I’d hoped Eng would be there, but he and Chang were on their way
back from Adelaide’s.
The baby came fast—a sudden, slippery entrance. She looked like a bird tumbled from its nest, mouth open, squalling.
Phoebe wrapped her tightly in a cotton cloth and placed her in my arms. “A girl,” she said. “What will you call her?”
I looked down. She was a wee thing, smaller than the others, her face red and pinched, her damp hair black as ink.
“Rosalyn,” I said. Eng and I had discussed it. “Beautiful rose.”
Phoebe shook her head. “Well, this rose is a loud one. She’s going to make herself known.”
And she did. Rosalyn wasn’t difficult, exactly, but she was insistent.
For the first few weeks, if she wasn’t sleeping or nursing, she was fussing.
The other children had softened in my arms like warm dough; Rosalyn fought sleep.
I paced the bedroom with her, bouncing gently, murmuring nonsense until her head finally lolled against my shoulder.
More often than not, when I tried to lay her down, she let out a low, ragged cry.
When Rosalyn was asleep, the whole house seemed to lean into the silence like a blessing. When she stirred—that reedy wail
cutting through the calm—everything lurched back into motion.
Six-year-old Stephen was full of questions. “Why does she sound like that?” he demanded. “When will she stop?”
I wished I knew. “She’s new to this world,” I told him, as if that explained anything. “She’s still figuring things out.”
And then, one morning at breakfast, when Rosalyn was a few months old, Katie made a face at her as she lay in her basket on
the floor—and Rosalyn smiled. Her eyes crinkled, her pink gums showed, and the corners of her mouth turned up.
“She’s smiling!” Katie crowed. “Mama, did you see?”
“I saw!” After weeks of fussing and tears, it felt like a hard-won victory.
“Make her do it again,” James said, elbowing Katie aside. Rosalyn regarded him soberly.
“She only smiles for me,” Katie said.
But the smiles began to spread. She offered one to Stephen when he sang his made-up songs, to James when he showed her the
wooden horse he’d carved with Eng’s help. To Patrick, who patted her head with his sticky toddler hands. To Julia Ann when
she changed her diaper. To Eng when he returned after three days away. Even to Chang, who remarked, “This one clearly inherited
her uncle’s charm.”
By now, Rosalyn was firmly rooted in our family.
The children gathered around her basket, whispering in exaggerated tones, offering treasures: a blue jay feather, a smooth stone from the creek bed, a butterfly wing.
She’d begun to laugh—a startled, hiccupping sound—and to coo and gurgle as if deep in conversation with herself.
She rolled from back to front, then front to back, delighted with her new mobility.
It wasn’t that she was an extraordinary baby. She met the usual milestones, had the same needs as any infant. But somehow,
in that short time, she became the eye of our family hurricane, the still point around which we revolved. She steadied us.
On the nights Eng and Chang were at Addie’s, the children and I fell into our own rhythm. Supper was simpler—cornbread and
pea soup instead of roast ham and potatoes, apple slices in place of pie. Once a week, Grace or Phoebe filled the copper washtub
with kettles of warm water, and the children took turns bathing, youngest to oldest, their bodies glowing in the firelight.
Then came clean nightclothes, hair combed smooth, teeth scrubbed with salt and soda. Prayers murmured in drowsy voices—requests
for God’s attention to broken dolls and stubbed toes. The day’s restless energy settling into calm.
Later, with Rosalyn warm against my shoulder, I made my rounds. Moving through rooms that smelled of lye soap and woodsmoke,
I paused to straighten a blanket, to brush back a damp lock of hair, listening for the even breathing that meant all was well.
There was a particular sweetness to these moments—the house in balance, Rosalyn’s dark eyes wide and alert, reflecting the
lamplight. The grandfather clock ticking in the parlor. The timbers settling. The banked hearth giving off the occasional
pop and crackle. In that hush, even the smallest sounds felt sacred.
The night before Rosalyn died, I woke to her crying. When I reached her cradle, her face was damp and splotchy, her fists
tight. I gathered her in my arms and carried her to the rocker, pressing her small body against mine. She was wailing in a
choked, urgent way that made my throat tighten, her tiny ribs fluttering against my palm.
I began to hum a tune from my own childhood, a lullaby Dinah used to sing to Adelaide and me when we were small—one I’d passed down to each of my children in turn.
Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry,
Go to sleep, little baby.
When you wake, you shall have
All the pretty little horses.
The words came easily, steeped in memory. When Rosalyn’s breathing slowed, I pressed my nose to the tender spot on her head
and inhaled her warm, yeasty scent. Her eyes drifted shut. Her fingers unfurled.
If I had known it would be the last time I rocked her to sleep, would I have done anything differently? Would I have memorized
the weight of her in my arms, the texture of her hair against my cheek, the scent of her skin, the rhythm of her breath? Or
would I have done exactly what I did—patted her back, laid her in her cradle, tucked the small blanket around her sleeping
form, and gone back to bed?
It was an ordinary morning, a cold, gray day that began like any other. Frost silvered the pines, and a skin of ice rimmed
the edges of the creek. Chimney smoke threaded through bare branches. Eng and Chang had risen early to catalog inventory in
the barn before their planned return to Adelaide’s that afternoon.
By the time the older children woke, thudding down the hall with their demands for breakfast and clean stockings and missing
toys, I’d already been up for an hour. I changed Rosalyn, dressed her in one of the gowns her siblings had worn before her,
and carried her down the stairs to Phoebe in the kitchen house to nurse.
“Did she sleep through the night?” Phoebe asked as I handed Rosalyn over.
“Almost.”
“Her teeth are starting to come in,” she said, tying Rosalyn to her chest in a sling. “After I feed her, I’ll give her a piece
of licorice root to gnaw on.”
A few minutes later, Grace and I were in the dining room, serving breakfast to the older children, when we heard a shriek—followed
by a long, low wail.
Phoebe. From the kitchen house.
“You stay,” I told Grace, sick with fear. I ran out onto the porch, toward the screaming, toward the kitchen, though I wanted
to run in the opposite direction—back inside, back in time, to somewhere, anywhere, else.
Phoebe was standing motionless on the stone floor, tears streaking her face. Rosalyn lay limp in her arms.
I heard my own scream in my ears as I reached for her.
Phoebe, poor Phoebe—cradling Rosalyn while she turned slabs of ham in the cast-iron skillet, stirred bubbling hominy, kept
watch over the biscuits. The baby squalling and hungry, the sling slipping loose as Phoebe bent toward the fire. Rosalyn tipping,
sliding from her grasp, slick as a fish, onto the red-hot coals.
A moment suspended. A high, piercing cry. Phoebe’s frantic shout as she lunged forward and snatched the baby from the hearth.
The wailing reduced to whimpers. And then a terrible stillness.
The ruin of Rosalyn’s small body, her skin in tatters. Her chest sunken and still. The smell of scorched flesh and milk.
Her quick death a mercy.
I could not bring myself to look at Phoebe, sobbing uncontrollably.
I wanted to rage, to scream, Why weren’t you more careful?
But I knew. I knew. She’d been up for hours, standing at the hearth, feeding the field hands at dawn, preparing our breakfast, her mind already turning toward the dishes and the midday meal.
Moments ago, she’d been keeping everything together. Now the whole farm was in an uproar.
The anguished mother: me. The children pressing into the kitchen house, wailing, inconsolable. Phoebe standing frozen, unable
to comprehend what had just happened.
It was the brothers’ final day of three in Traphill. The rule, Chang reminded us, was inviolate. Remember? No emergency, no
hardship, no illness justified breaking the arrangement. They must return to Addie’s. Chang was expecting a seed shipment
in the morning and needed to be there to inspect it.
Eng was silent. He looked down, fingers rustling the peanuts in his coat pocket.
“Please,” I begged, my voice choked with tears. “We have to bury Rosalyn. You can’t leave. You can’t.”
“The timing is . . . terrible. I’ll be back on Friday, Sallie.”
“We can’t wait that long.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t understand,” I sobbed. “Eng—I don’t understand.” He’d missed his children’s birthdays, and Christmas, and Easter,
sometimes multiple years in a row, depending on the calendar. But I couldn’t believe he would willingly miss his daughter’s
funeral.
Chang looked away, his jaw set, hands in his pockets.
Eng held my shoulders. “You have to be strong, Sallie. For us.”
“Rosalyn is gone. She’s gone, Eng.”
“She’s gone, yes. There’s nothing we can do to bring her back.”
“I need you.” My voice broke on the words.
Chang sighed heavily.
Rage rose from my gut and burned in my throat. “You are a beast. I cannot stop myself from wishing . . .” I turned away before saying something I knew I’d regret.
“A beast.” He gave a dry laugh. “There it is. What she thinks of us, Eng.”
“Not Eng. Just you, Chang,” I said.
“Unfortunately for you, Sallie, we come as a pair.”
“Go, then.” I spat the words. “Deny your brother the chance to bury his child. I hope you never have to know what that’s like.”
“I hope so too. And maybe all of us have learned a lesson about expecting too much from our kitchen help.”
His barb hit its mark. But I hated him for saying it.
I turned to Eng. “How can you let him speak to me this way?”
“It is a sad lesson, Sallie” was all he said.
In that moment, I hated him too. Hated that despite my pleading, my sobbing, my grief laid bare, he would choose his brother
over me.
Even so, I did not truly believe he would go. Not until I saw the back of their buggy disappear down the drive an hour later.
Avoiding the children. Avoiding me.
The wind the next morning was knife-edged. Beyond the barren field, thin trees leaned against a colorless sky. Pastor Sparks
arrived alone on horseback, and we held a small funeral service. Just the five miserable children and Grace and me, huddled
in our coats and shawls. I was glad for the cold, for the wind that strafed my skin; it was welcome punishment.
Phoebe was nowhere to be seen.
A tiny grave had been chipped into the frozen earth just beyond the orchard. A narrow gash in the dirt. Easy to miss if you
weren’t looking.
The pastor read a few lines from Wordsworth:
I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.
Rosalyn, sweet Rosalyn. I wanted to dig into the dirt with my fingernails and bury myself beside her.