Authors: Shirley Streshinsky
"That's the way I feel, too," I told my sister, "I must admit I'm glad we agree. Sara says that Sally is a delight, that she is filled with enthusiasm and aching for adventure in the Wild West."
Willa smiled, absently, as she scanned the beach for some sign of a carriage. It was five years, almost, since Owen's death. She was, now, a little older than he had been that terrible summer. I considered my sister: At forty-three, it seemed to me that she was little changed. Her waist, perhaps, was a bit thicker, her hips wider, there were a few delicate webs at the corners of her eyes, lines that stood out white against the unfashionable tan of her face. Willa had stopped wearing hats altogether. My mind made a long skip to another hat, another time of waiting.
"What are you thinking about?" Willa asked, "that is so amusing?"
Caught, I confessed: "I was remembering the day Owen first came to Porter Farm . . . I was waiting on the porch with Mama, and she was furious that you weren't there—and then you came running across the field, hell bent, waving your straw hat at us . . ."
Willa's face softened. The memory of Owen pleased her, as I knew it would. She sank into the porch chair with a mock moan. "Oh, my, yes, I do remember," she said, exhaling softly.
"You were so out of breath from the run that you couldn't even speak," I went on, "and you were making these dreadful, gasping noises—very unladylike . . ."
"It's a good thing Owen wasn't looking for a lady," she answered. We smiled at each other. It had become part of our lives, little memories shared when we were alone. They nourished us like new-baked biscuits spread with honeybutter.
Willa was silent for a time. Finally she said, "It's strange, isn't it, how little his sons resemble him?"
I did not answer, I could think of no good answer. Willa and I had long since forsworn the superfluous lie.
The twins moved into our view, crossing the greensward, Porter in the lead and Kit trailing behind. The twins were four years old now, but Porter was as tall as a child twice his age while Kit was fine-boned, petite.
"Except for Porter, of course," Willa put in with a sly grin. "Everyone says Porter is the very image of his papa."
I laughed. "He certainly is that, and of course sweet little Kit takes after her auntie." Hearing her name, Kit looked up, smiled and waved at us. "Going fishing," she called, not breaking step. Porter was too intent on his thoughts to look our way.
"I know, sweet," I called back, explaining to Willa, "I thought they would have a chance to greet the boys before going off fishing with Soong. At the time it seemed rather a good idea to keep them out from underfoot, at least for a time after the boys' arrival."
"I've a mind to go someplace myself," Willa answered, "I have a dozen things I should be doing. I know their train came in yesterday, so there is no excuse for their being late—I thought Wen would want to make a point of being on time, especially since this is his first trip to the ranch since the trouble."
The trouble.
A gray, leaden silence settled over us. Even now, almost five years after it had happened, it took a certain amount of fortitude to speak of that time—the events that burst upon us in the summer of 1903, culminating in Owen's death, and the troubled months that followed.
Remembering, I shivered.
Trinidad and Ignacio had stayed, they had not left. Their loyalty to their
patrón
was greater than the hatred they felt for his son, who had defiled their daughter. Aleja. Thinking of her, I sighed.
"Why are you making all those strange noises?" Willa asked, snapping at me because Wen and Thad were so late.
"I was thinking of Aleja," I answered, honestly.
"I finally convinced Trinidad and Ignacio to visit her at the school," Willa said, "I hope they do go."
"I think they will," I answered, "though I do believe I've never seen Trinidad so upset about anything . . . On the one hand, she considers Aleja to be 'ruined,' and on the other she cannot help but be impressed at her daughter's success."
"Yes, well," Willa started, and from the tone I knew she was worried about Aleja. "I hope I haven't put the girl in an untenable position. She will be one of the few Californios in the state with a higher education. No matter how bright she is—I'm wondering if she will be allowed to use her education."
"I don't understand," I said. "How can education ever do harm? Look at Soong . . ."
Willa flashed me a knowing look. "Exactly," she answered, turning back to a contemplation of the circling hawks.
We did not tell Willa about the attack on Aleja until after the funeral, until Wen was safely back at St. Paul's. She was sick with grief and longing, and I thought I could not bear to tell her—but there was no avoiding it. She had to know, she needed to know. It was left to me to break the news, and there was no gentle way to do it.
I will never forget her face, the shame and loathing and anger that played on it when I told her (and she insisted on the details, on everything; she would not let any of it go unsaid). Later, it would seem to me as if a boil had been lanced within her, and all the hurt and anger that had been kept inside came gushing out. She had marched out of the house, I had struggled to keep up. She marched straight to Trinidad's house, which she had entered, perhaps, two or three times only, and she walked in and confronted Trinidad. "Send one of the children for Ignacio," she had demanded.
Ignacio walked into the front parlor, with its scrubbed floorboards, and Willa told them that she knew. She said, "I am shocked and ashamed for my son. I say to you now, if he were here I would take the whip to him. It is a terrible thing he has done, and he will not be excused. Never."
I watched them, our two old friends, and saw the tears that were close in Ignacio's solemn eyes.
"Señora," he said, turning his hat slowly in his hands, "I stay, even with the shame of my daughter. But I will never be in the sight of your son, the one who has done this. I cannot look upon him again, never in this life."
"I understand that," Willa had said, and then she added, "my son Owen will not be welcome at the ranch. When I see him, it will be somewhere else. But you say your daughter is shamed, and I cannot agree with that. The girl has done nothing wrong. It is not her fault. She must not suffer from the cowardly deeds of my son and his crude friend."
"What else is there but to suffer?" Ignacio answered. "She cannot now make a marriage. She is ruined."
Willa's face had set at hearing the words. "No," she had said, "no, that cannot be." Perhaps she had an idea, even then, to send Aleja away to school, but she said nothing. She knew it would take some planning, that she would have to work hard to find a school that would accept the dark-skinned girl.
She had done it. I don't quite know how, though I suppose it had something to do with establishing a fund . . . but now Ignacio and Trinidad would see their daughter graduate from the university. She would graduate with honors, the first of her race and sex to do so.
I felt a moan rising within me, and stifled it. It would not do for Willa to know I was thinking of that time, those terrible months after Owen's death. I tried to force my mind from the sharpest memory, but I couldn't.
I had been sick in the night. I had pulled myself from my bed and retched into the chamberpot. My skin was damp to the touch. I felt sour and wretched and I was filled with fear. I lay there, weak and ill, and confronted the question. I could no longer delay, I would have to tell her, there was no way I could avoid adding to her burdens.
Then Willa was there, holding a night lamp that flickered unevenly, casting long shadows on her troubled face.
"Lena, what is it?" she said, setting the lamp on my night stand so that it cast its glow onto me. "My dear, you're so pale." Her voice quivered with concern. She brushed the damp hair back from my brow with a tenderness that caused tears to slide down my face. I fought to form the words. I did not want to say them, but I had to. There was no other way.
"Willa," I whispered, "I must tell you something. I don't want to, you have too much to carry . . ."
She squeezed my hand to give me courage, and waited.
"You must know . . ." I coughed, and stumbled in my speech. I was sick with fear, my hands were cold. She began to chafe them.
I was not sure that I had said the words at all. Perhaps I had only thought them, I did not know. I saw Willa look at me quizzically. She blinked her eyes, twice, rapidly.
"A baby?" she repeated.
She knew. I had said the words.
She raised her other hand to the side of my face and held it there. She looked at me for a long time, as if trying to understand something. She blinked again, caressed my face, and finally she said, "There is so much I do not know, Lena. Dear little Lena . . . Your poor back, is it possible? Is there a way for you to have your baby, and both of you be healthy?"
"Yes," I said, "there must be a way. I know there must be a way."
"You want it that much?" she asked, and I could only nod my head and cry.
She was quiet for a long while, and then she said, "If there is a way, we'll find it, sweet one. You'll have your baby and I'll have mine. It's a new start, a new life. If there is a way, I promise you, I will find it."
And she did find a way. The boys were sent East to school—Thad following shortly after Wen's departure, the unhappiest boy I had ever seen. And then Willa, in mourning, and her younger sister went into seclusion.
For seven long months we lived in darkened rooms, dressed incongruously in the bright Hawaiian overdresses Willa had brought from the islands, their loose folds hiding our growing bodies. We spoke in soft voices, and we waited. Only a few people were welcome on the ranch during that time—good Dr. Hadley, Sara, Arcadia and Joseph. It was, of course, a tragic story. Owen Reade's poor widow, who would give birth to twins before the end of official mourning, a boy named Porter and a girl, called Katharine.
Near the end, I was confined to my bed. Sara was there, of course, with a retinue of trained nurses. Sara had gone to Boston to convince the young specialist, a doctor named Eastin, that he should return with her to southern California. Dr. Eastin had performed a number of successful operations called "caesarean." It was the only hope, Dr. Hadley had said. Sara had been thorough. By the time she and Dr. Eastin arrived at the ranch, she knew exactly what he would need in terms of equipment and nursing assistance, and she set about getting it.
Willa and I, then, were prisoners of our swollen bodies, dependent on our close coterie of friends to protect and provide for us. Joseph and Arcadia handled all of the business. Willa and Sara and Trinidad and Soong fussed over me, monitored my condition, my progress, as if they were generals and my body was the battleground.
Willa and Sara deferred to Soong, who was, always, treated with respect. Whenever he appeared, they withdrew. Whenever he asked that I be given a certain herb, or a tea, they gave it. They understood my need to be with him, and they made it possible. He slipped quietly into the house, sat by my bed, and with his long, graceful fingers soothed the inside of my forearm. I knew him now, knew him well enough to understand the turmoil that was there beneath the calm. He was troubled, though he never said it. He thought the risk I had taken was too great. And he was, I know, deeply distressed that I had made the decision without him.
"You would not have allowed it," I tried to explain. "It is the only time in our life together that I will ever make such a decision. Please understand, I had to. No matter what happens, it was my decision, and I had to make it."
As it had been when she gave birth to Rose, Willa's labor was short and the birth easy. The baby, though small, was pink and healthy. Two days later, my own baby was delivered by a surgical procedure in an operating arena elaborately devised in one of the parlors. The last faces I saw before drifting off into unconsciousness were those of the doctors, and the red-faced nurses in white caps.
When I regained consciousness, the first face I saw was Soong's, his beautiful dark eyes looking into me . . . Ah, that face, that beautiful face, filled with . . . how shall I explain? Rapture, I think. And gratitude mixed with love, and something wild and happy. "A boy child," he said, letting the Chinese accents be heard, "you have given us a boy child."
A gift, he knew that; a gift of our love, all that I could give so that he would know how vast, how enduring, my love was.
"Is he . . ." I began, and he answered, "He is perfectly formed, and big—too big for such a small mother. But beautiful, like his mother."
That moment, those words, the light in the face of my love, his lips caressing my hand—I knew it had been worth the risk, worth the pain. I knew then, and I have known always, that it was the finest moment. It was totality, completeness. I had never been so alive, I had never known such happiness.
We named him Porter, for my mother's family. He was beautiful, with dark, solemn eyes, gracefully shaped. His "twin" was as pink and delicate as he was dark and hearty. "How will anyone believe they are twins?" I asked Willa. "They don't look in the least alike."
"They are what is called 'fraternal' twins," Willa answered with remarkable calm. "Fraternal twins don't have to look alike. That is perfectly common knowledge."
I didn't believe it was, but I knew that Willa would make it seem so. She had a wonderful little speech she liked to give when outsiders raised the question of the twins' appearance. She explained, quite scientifically, the process that results in "identical" twins and the process that results in "fraternal." It was the sort of thing she was good at. No one ever questioned her authority.
The babies were born in January. It was summer before a new order settled into our household. The babies were together in a new nursery with Josefa, a relative of Trinidad's who spoke little English, but whose expertise with children was obvious. My recovery was slow. By the time I was up and about, Willa was working ten and twelve hours a day, having involved herself in all aspects of the ranch and the businesses. Joseph had seen us through the stormy business seas that followed Owen's death, when Willa had been stunned with grief and the troubles with Wen and, not least, our two pregnancies. Now she seemed to have recovered, and was determined to carry on in Owen's place.