Butterfly's Child by Angela Davis-Gardner Read Free Book Online Page A

the Plum River parish. Her husband and elder son and Frank’s grandparents all lay beneath the cedars in the graveyard, and furthermore, her husband had left a sum in his will that had allowed the church to add its fine new steeple and belfry.
    Kate had come to dread the sight of Mrs. Pinkerton in the kitchen each morning. No matter how early Kate managed to rise, Frank’s mother was always there before her, cracking eggs in a bowl, rolling out biscuits, frying ham, all of her movements brisk and excluding. She wore loose flour sack dresses over her sagging body, heavy black shoes cut outto allow her bunions some ease, and thick glasses that magnified her washed-out blue eyes and the creases around them. Mrs. Pinkerton assigned Kate tasks, and no matter how simple—setting the table, making coffee—Kate felt the old woman watching her with a critical eye.
    She treats me as if I were a hired servant, Kate complained to Frank. She means no harm, Frank said, she’s been running the house for years. When Kate said that was the problem exactly, and wasn’t it time for her to move back to Cicero so she could help Frank’s sister Anne, now in confinement with her second child, Frank said she only wanted to help until Kate settled in.
    Kate felt already steeped in the lessons of drudgery: the long Monday wash days, Tuesday nights with the flatirons beside the hot stove, the endless preparation of meals, scrubbing floors, cleaning lamp chimneys and woodstoves, pumping the separator each morning, tending the vegetable patch.
    Kate wrote to her mother, pouring out the details of her grueling routine and, putting aside her pride, begging for money for a servant girl. I cautioned you, her mother wrote back, you’re not suited for such a life. Kate should always remember that she was welcome to come home for a long visit. Her mother did not mention the servant.
    Frank said they needed to buy a new harrow before the next season, but he would see if he could adjust the budget to hire a young girl; his mother, however, overruled him. Kate needed to learn how to manage the household in all its particulars before she could give directions to a maid.
    â€œI’ve learned it all,” Kate said, glaring at Frank over the table. “The concepts are quite elementary.”
    â€œI don’t suppose you’ve done any canning.” Mrs. Pinkerton gave her a sharp glance.
    Then you would suppose incorrectly, Kate wanted to retort, but instead said in her sweetest voice, “Why, yes, I’ve done quite a bit of canning.” She’d watched her mother’s maid Lavonia put up strawberries; anything she didn’t know was available in books.
    â€œI’m glad to hear it,” Mrs. Pinkerton said. “We need one hundred jars of canned goods per person each year. There’s a heap of beets down cellar—poor Elmer’s last crop. It would be a shame if they went to waste.” They would can them tomorrow, she said.
    â€œWhy do you always take her side?” Kate asked Frank as they were getting into bed.
    â€œI don’t. But money is short just now. We’ll have a servant next year. Corn and wheat ought to be sky-high after this drought—we might have enough profit for two servants. Though what we need most,” he said, putting his arms around her, “is children.”
    â€œI hope they’ll be born full-grown,” she said, “and knowing how to can and plow.”
    He laughed and pulled her nightgown above her hips.
    â€œIs it just children you want from me?”
    â€œOf course not.” He looked at her, shocked. “I adore you, darling,” he said, gazing at her with that warm, grave expression that had won her.
    She kissed him. “Then take my side.”
    â€œI will,” he said, pushing into her as she tightened her arms around him. “I do. I take your side.”
    The next morning, after the men were off to the fields,