Chapter 1
Parts of my story are hard for me to tell, deeds and episodes I’d rather people didn’t know, parts that trouble me still. It’s easier to confess our defeats and weaknesses to strangers.
The pretty young woman who sits on the porch steps with her toddler, her notebook and pen, is no stranger, though we never spent much time together until recently. She’s my granddaughter, Paula, Hettie’s girl, and she wants to write down my story. I am tempted to give her anything she wants, because I am so full of love, blessed by the presence of her and her little son. Blessed by having Hettie nearby, too. How fortunate I am, seeing them almost every day, watching that baby grow.
I feel strong, but do I have the courage to reveal everything?
It’s a fine fall day with the corn rustling in the breeze and hawks circling in a cloudless sky. I look out on the cornfield between my cottage and the big old farmhouse on the other side, Paula’s house now. I have a lot of stories about that house, about the crook who built it and how he died.
Since moving into the farmhouse with her husband, Vaughan, Paula has come to know the secrets of the house and the secrets of his family, too. I am sure everyone has secrets. Sometimes they come out.
“We had hard times,” I say, “but we were lucky, weren’t we?”
I refer this to Wanda, who sits in the porch rocker beside me and interrupts my story when she thinks I’ve got something wrong or when she thinks she can tell it better. Wanda has always been like that. She likes having the upper hand, but I’m used to her. She’s my stepdaughter and I love her equally with my own children. Maybe more, because we’ve been close for so many years. We’re both old ladies now, but we correct each other with the same old vigor as before.
“I was there,” Wanda says. “Sometimes your gran and me was lucky, but mostly we was smart.”
Wanda wasn’t present for everything, but I don’t correct her notion that she knows it all. I don’t mind confessing my own mistakes, but the part I don’t want to tell concerns Barlow, Paula’s grandfather. He was such a good and generous man; I don’t want anyone to think less of him. We forgave each other, but it took 15 years of living apart.
Paula wants to know more about those 15 years of separation, the years we missed. She already knows the story of Wanda and me, how Wanda sought me out when I lived in the mountain cabin, stalked me, people today might say, when she was just 13. To this day I believe Wanda and I saved each other. I was almost 20, but she was wiser in many ways. She probably thinks she didn’t need saving, homeless though she was. Maybe she forgets how she latched onto me and made me care for her. She calls me Ma. I’ve always loved that.
Wanda doesn’t mind telling stories about her mischief, but I notice she never admits her real mother’s line of work. She proudly acknowledges that my first husband, Jamie Long, was her father. I suspect she lets her kids think Jamie and her ma were married, and that her ma died before Jamie married me. She’s deliberately vague about dates. This practice, I think, is often a good idea.
The only good things I remember about Jamie Long are his singing and his storytelling. And yes, how he danced. There are things Wanda doesn’t know, like how he said the “whore’s kid” was not his, and that she could do the same kind of work as her mother. Wanda was 14 at the time, and her father wanted me to abandon her to that life! I will never tell her, though maybe it would come as no surprise. In many ways, Wanda is the wisest woman I know.
She got her looks and her beautiful voice from him. Jamie was a looker and a charmer, but he had grand ideas about himself. Wanda can be charming if she chooses, but mostly she’s sassy and bull-headed. She gets that from her granny on her ma’s side: Lucie Bosell. What stories we could tell about her!
I’m sure there are stories about herself that Wanda hides from everyone. It’s called whitewashing the past, and I suspect it’s done all the time. The family knows Jamie killed a man in a fight. Wanda doesn’t mind her kids and grandkids knowing that part.
Paula is waiting with her notebook. She wants to hear about her Grandfather Barlow and me, how we met, and why we waited so many years to marry. I don’t want to lie, so I must speak carefully. Even when people don’t exactly lie, there are ways to avoid the truth.
“You were sweethearts in Winkler, way back then,” Wanda says.
This is true, but I am surprised to hear Wanda knows, because that short courtship happened when she was not living in town. It’s the part I’d rather not confess, so my tone is just a little sharp when I say, “I don’t know why you say that.”
She shrugs and gives a knowing grin. “Will saw you lots of times. He said you walked together every night.”
“I was an office worker for the company. After work we sometimes walked back to the boardinghouse together.”
Wanda turns her grin to Paula. “Your grandpa was the boss of the sawmill company.”
To me she says, “Will saw you kiss at the train station. He said it was night, about suppertime.”
“There might have been a kiss,” I say, embarrassed, even now.
Paula interrupts. “Is this the same Will you married?”
“Will Herff, yes,” Wanda says. “He was a kid then, but he kept an eye on Ma because she’d been good to him and his brother. Will was my second husband.”
Paula sighs. “I’m going to need a family tree to figure this out.”
Wanda gets that lopsided grin on her face again. Our families have always been hard to figure out, especially her side.
Paula comes back to my story. “So you and Grandpa Barlow were sweethearts, but you left him.”
“We weren’t sweethearts, exactly, but maybe if I’d stayed we would have been something more. Your grandfather was kind and helpful when I worked in his sister’s boardinghouse. I left Winkler–and him–because of a telegram. You see, my young cousins had finally located me. Unknown to me, their father had died suddenly, and they’d been put in an orphanage in Fargo, North Dakota. They needed me, so I went to them. And I stayed there for almost 15 years.”
“That’s the part I want to hear,” Paula says. “Why you stayed so long and why you came back.”
Taking a deep breath, I begin with the day I left Winkler.
End of the first chapter. I hope you’ll continue the story on Amazon (ebook and paperback) or your favorite online bookseller!