I Am Regina (2 page)

It is warm inside the barn and our cows make fine company, for they are motherly and kind.

An owl hoots somewhere in the distance. From the wooded hills? The mountains? Barbara laughs and races across the barnyard to our cabin. I run after her, stumble up the cabin steps and slam the door on the haunting sound.

Mother has supper waiting on the table. It is the venison stew we have been eating these past three days. I dip my biscuit in the gravy thickened with cabbage. It tastes good and warms me. I sneak a second biscuit from the bread basket. John grins at me from across the table and I grin back at him. John is sixteen, with dark, curly hair and brown eyes. Barbara says Marie LeRoy, who lives on the farm next to ours, is in love with him.

Barbara and I help Mother clear the table while Father and Christian smoke their pipes. My brother Christian is almost twenty. A man now. He would like to have a farm of his own. But Father needs Christian's strong, sturdy hands to help him till the soil and reap the harvest. Christian talks seriously with Father now about the smokehouse roof that needs repair. John sits with them, whittling on the wolf's head he is creating from a piece of oak.

I scrape the scraps off my pewter plate into Jack's clay bowl. The black and white dog paws my skirt, eager for his supper.

“Regina.” Mother hands me another plate to clean.

“Must you go to the mill tomorrow?” I ask.

“The corn must be milled before the winter comes.”

“I know.”

Mother touches my downturned face. “With the corn meal, I can make johnnycakes for you.” She smiles when I look up at her. My mother has a crooked smile that lights up the right side of her face but not the left—as if the left side held a secret she musn't tell.

“Will you buy maple sugar from the miller's wife?” I ask, guessing at that secret.

“We'll see.”

I like maple sugar as much as johnnycakes. I hope “we'll see” means “yes.” I scrape the plates while Mother wipes crumbs off the table into her cupped hand. She is small and quick and always moving. Unlike Father, who has a stillness inside him; who often rests his arms on the barnyard fence and watches in silence as the sun goes down. It is at times like these that my father's stillness worries me. He seems so far away.

Mother is like a sparrow, fluttering here and there, cleaning up the remnants of our meal. I wish I looked like her instead of like Father, tall and big boned. Most of all, I wish I had her hair. My mother's hair is soft and light brown, while mine is coarse and black. Barbara says my hair is like an Indian's. I hate her when she says it. Indians are heathens.

I feed Jack his supper. He wags his tail in appreciation, then gobbles down his meal. “Good boy,” I say, running my hand along his silky hair. Jack makes me feel safe. He would warn us if an Indian approached.

Father shakes the embers from his pipe. He stands and takes out the Bible we keep in a wooden box that hangs on the cabin wall above the blanket chest. Father brought the Bible with him from Germany. He taught me to read from it.

We gather together before the fire. I rest my head on Mother's lap as Father reads aloud to us. It is the story of the Exodus. when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. It reminds me of the story Father tells of our own exodus here from Germany. I was only two, but the story is alive in my memory, he has told it so. often.

We sailed from Germany on a ship named
Patience.
Father says patience was needed to endure that long trip across the Atlantic. There were so many of us aboard, we had to be packed as tight as cucumbers in a pickle barrel. Our drinking water was black with worms. Cold biscuits were our daily fare. Either they were hard and stale or filled with red worms and spider's nests. We ate warm meals only three times a week. There was much sickness and disease. Many people died.

Mother says she wrapped me in the patchwork quilt I still keep upon the bed I share with Barbara. We call it the quilt of many colors, for Mother made it for us from scraps of cloth she'd sewed together into star designs of yellow, red, white and blue. The quilt warmed me when the cold wind blew off the ocean. Mother says she rocked me in her arms when I was frightened. She told me stories from the Bible and sang to me when fierce storms tossed the ship. Sometimes I wish I were two years old instead of ten. Then Mother could hold and rock me the way she used to.

Father closes the Bible and I have not been listening. Is it a sin to think of your own life when it is brought to light by God's Word? Tomorrow, I must read the passages to myself so that God will know I meant Him no disrespect.

Father bows his head and I bow mine. He thanks God for bringing us safely to this promised land of Pennsylvania. He asks God to watch over us.

Father walks slowly across the cabin and places the Bible inside its box. Mother says that when Father was young, she thought he was the strongest man in all of Germany. He could fell trees and split logs faster than any man she knew. But time and endless chores have aged him. He looks old and he is often sick. Yet now, as he turns back to us, he looks young. Perhaps it is the warm glow of firelight that softens the lines in his face. Perhaps it is the strength he always seems to gather from reading God's Word. Each night I pray God will keep my father strong. I would feel lost without him.

Mother leads us in the hymn singing. Her voice is strong and true.

I love this hymn. It tells me that no matter how alone I may feel, God is always near. My mother's arm encircles my shoulders as she sings. And it is then I know that here, within the warmth of my mother's arm, within her singing of this hymn, no harm will come. In bed, with Barbara snug against my back and a rising wind whispering through the leaves on the nearby apple trees, I fall asleep with this thought to comfort me.

 

 

 

I
am like a bear. When the weather turns, I'd like to hole up in this warm cave I make from my patchwork quilt and remain in bed until the balm of spring awakens me.

It is not spring awakening me now.

“Time to get up!” My sister's cheeks are flushed with morning air. Her dark eyes shine. She is already dressed and ready for the day.

Frost laces the little window in the loft I share with her. The rising sun shines through, casting panes of pale light on the rough wood floor. It is too early to get out of bed. I hear Gert and Bessie mooing from the barn. They want to be milked. I wish the cows could milk themselves.

“Mother wants breakfast early. She and John must be leaving soon.” Barbara leaves me to my slow waking.

I turn on my side and draw the quilt close around my shoulders, wanting to shut out the chilling air, the thought of Mother's leaving. I wish I could sleep all day and awaken at sunset when she returns.

I trace my finger along the knothole in the floorboard by my bed. The knothole is shaped like a queen, with a long, full dress and fancy crown. Mother says Regina means “queen.” If I were really a queen, I would send my servants to the mill.

“Regina. Hurry up! We have to milk the cows!” Barbara calls from the room below.

“I'm coming.”

My homespun dress and woolen shawl hang from pegs on the cabin wall only four short steps away. But it is chilly in the loft and the four steps feel like twenty.

I climb down the ladder into the cabin's main room where Father, John and Christian are already eating breakfast at the table. I wish that I could join them. Mother often says that I am too full of wishes. That my burden is to still myself and be thankful for my lot.

Barbara joins me at the cabin door. She is carrying the milk pails. I rub my hands together as we walk across the barnyard. I must milk Bessie. She won't let down her milk to cold hands.

Fritz and Brownie moo from their stall as we milk their mothers. “You'll get your share soon enough,” I tell the calves who solemnly stare at us through the slats that keep them from their. mothers. Bessie swings her head around, gazing at me with sad brown eyes. I rest my head against her flank, savoring the warmth.

Our breakfast is bread which we heat in toasting irons over the fire. The bread is warm and chewy, but the crusts are hard. I feed them to Jack who lies at my feet, resting his chin on my shoes. Although he is partial to John, Jack always keeps me company when I am eating. He knows I will reward him.

John pokes his head through the cabin door. “The oxen are harnessed. We're ready.” He winks at me.

Mother dons her cape. “Regina. Barbara. Mind the fire while I am gone.”

I run to Mother and hug her. She smells of wood smoke and yeast. “I wish you didn't have to go.”

“Why, Regina.” She lifts my chin so that she can look me in the eyes. “Would you have us eat corn the way the cows do?”

“No ... but the Indians ...”

“What would the Indians want with one old woman?”

“You're not old! You're my mother!” I hug her hard.

Mother laughs, then wraps her arms around me. “And nothing keeps a mother from her family. I'll be back by sunset.” She kisses me on the part which divides my hair. “See to the chores, and tomorrow I'll make those johnnycakes for you.”

I hope she remembers to get the maple sugar, too.

Father helps Mother into the wagon. He hands John a whip to mind the oxen. “Don't spend time in idle talk, John. See to the corn.”

“Yes, Father.”

John whistles to Jack. The black and white dog leaps into the wagon, sits himself down between John's feet, and cocks one black ear at me, as if he were saying, “Aren't you coming too?”

I wish I were.

Christian checks the oxen's harness. He adjusts a buckle with such care, as if this alone could assure the safety of their journey.

Father turns to Mother. “God be with you.”

“And with you.” Mother pulls her cape close around her.

“Giddap, Ben. Giddap, Red.” John flicks the whip. Mother grabs the seat as the wagon lurches forward.

Christian and Barbara join Father and me. We watch the wagon slowly roll away. “The corn must be milled.” Father says it to no one and yet to everyone. He closes his eyes.

My father does not give voice to fear, but I sense his concern. I slip my small hand into his large one. Father squeezes my hand and bows his head. I believe he is praying what I now pray, “Dear God, be their guide. Bring them safely home to us.”

 

Mother has given chores to each day of the week. Monday is for baking, Tuesday is for washing and so on to Sunday which is given to the Lord. Today is Tuesday. My hands turn red from scrubbing clothes in hot, lye-soaped water.

Barbara helps me hang the wet clothes on a rope that runs between our cabin and the oak tree which grows a few yards from our door. When Father cleared the land, he let this tree remain. “The oak has weathered many storms. It has earned the right to stay here,” Father told us. The oak is old. Maybe hundreds of years old. I love the sense of permanence it gives me.

“If we finish the chores by lunchtime, we can gather walnuts in the afternoon,” Barbara says, hanging Christian's long trousers on the line.

“Can we visit Marie?” I ask, thinking of the walnut trees that grow along the path leading to her cabin.

Barbara grins. “That's what I've planned. But don't tell Father, unless he asks. He might disapprove. You know how he feels about ‘Marie LeRoy and her fancy ways.”'

“I won't tell,” I say, thinking of the necklace I made for Marie out of apple seeds. I can almost hear her delight when I give it to her. The dark seeds will look pretty against her pale and delicate skin.

It is lonely on the farm. Even the LeRoys, our closest neighbors, live a good ten-minute walk away. Both Barbara and I are hungry for companionship. We don't dally with our chores. We attack them.

At noon, Father and Christian return from gathering wood for our winter fires. They bring the cold, clean smell of pine into our cabin. Christian is a head taller than Father and his hair is light brown while my father's hair is gray. Yet they seem like brothers the way they share their chores. They both look tired and hungry as they sit down at the table. While Barbara and I fill their plates, they talk together in low voices about the bark they must gather this afternoon to make shingles for the smokehouse roof.

Father smiles up at me as I serve him his lunch of bread, cheese and apple cider. “I saw our clothes drying on the line. You and Barbara have been working hard. Your mother will be pleased.”

I blush at his words. Father does not praise us often.

As Barbara and I fill our plates, I hear a soft rustle coming from outside our door. No one seems to mind it but me. It must be the chickens scratching through the fallen oak leaves. Or the wind, restless now with winter coming.

The rustling stops.

Yesterday, Barbara said that I was like a rabbit, jumping at every sound. And so I tell myself that perhaps the chickens have had their fill of bugs and mites. Perhaps the wind has died. But the sudden quiet is unnerving.

We join Father for the blessing. The table feels empty without Mother and John. I have been so caught up in chores, I haven't given much thought to them. They must be at the mill by now. I wish Jack had not gone with them. I miss his reassuring warmth against my legs, the weight of his chin resting on my shoes.

Jack would warn us if anyone approached.