Michelle Hoover

Excerpt from Bottomland

That night we lay awake alone in our beds, our heads on our pillows, listening for any footstep in the yard. Sleep, it seemed a hollow chore. I thought the darkness of the hall the night before, how pale Myrle had looked in her nightgown. She had held something in her hand, I remembered, but what? Myrle had never been one for secrets.  She had never before hidden anything from us. But Ester was different. The way she had stood at the top of the stairs, as if wanting to warn me of something. I never could trust a thing she said. Then the thudding sound that had woken me again—A door closed?  A nail pulled?  A chair wedged beneath a knob?  What if I had stepped out of my room a minute sooner?  What if I had never gone to sleep at all?

Mother would have done better. She would have woken in the dark the moment she sensed the door at the top of the stairs was stuck. Why, the house might be empty with every one of us in the fields, and several rooms off Mother could sense a window open just an inch. But the night before, I had gone back to bed as if sleep was what needed me most, and now my sisters were missing. The morning she died, Mother had taken my hand and craned her neck from her pillow. “What a girl you are, Nan,” she said. “So tall.” And then her mind settled and her consonants grew long, as if speaking two languages at once. With Father, German sounded like a march, but Mother’s throaty vowels were bread and milk and eggs. “You might not have your own, my girl,” she whispered. “But those sisters of yours, they’ll be everything to you. And you’ll be everything to them.”

In the morning, the girls’ room was empty. We packed our wagon, headed out just before sunrise.

The town had not seen us together for years, not with what Governor Harding had done. Why, if German wasn’t to be spoken in public, if even God could not understand a prayer in the German tongue—as our governor had declared in his speech during the war—then Germans and their brood might not be welcome in public, not all at once at least. And when only one of our brothers could serve, we had caused plenty of suspicion. Though we were born in this land and a part of it, still Father and his accent made traitors of us. We had done something awful, certainly. We were a rot to our country and town, and the townspeople eyed our every step. Though more than two years had passed, the sense of wrongdoing stayed heavy with us, even if we knew otherwise.

“Well now,” Lee whispered as we pulled the wagon to a stop. He stabbed a finger in his ear, as if thinking. Agnes tied the horses and sat back in the wagon, looking out. Ours was a small town with a main street three blocks long and a handful of dirt roads. The market squatted under an awning that bagged with the rain, and the town hall stood one-eyed with its great clock. Like a thumb, the doctor’s house stood at the end of a row, a shop of trinkets at the other, a cramped, rust- colored door at the side for the county sheriff’s office. There was a grocer as well, open to trading, though only on Wednesdays—and only, some said, when the man needed enough for a bottle. Still, this being a Saturday and harvest time, a dozen or more children ran underfoot, their fathers hauling baskets, and young women and girls walked the street in their hats. But none of those girls were my sisters.  Not even close.

Ray lifted his boots and landed in the street in a spit of mud. “Ready?” “I’m staying,” Father said.

I looked at him. “You’re staying?”

He crossed his arms over his stomach. “If they see the wagon, they will surely come, and you’ll be off and I’ll have found them.” He seemed calmed by this idea, and when he took off his hat, his forehead was smooth, only a tight red line from the brim.

Ray took hold of my arm. “Leave him be.  It’ll be easier...” But I shook my arm from him.  “Fine.”

I headed to the market alone. From the outside, the place seemed full of light. A half dozen customers crowded the aisles, more than I had ever seen at once, though the shelves themselves were spotty with stock. After the Great War, there was more of everything—sacks of hay, packets of paper, cans of beans and sauce—but few here could pay the price, and the market had its debts like the rest of us. I stood at the door and wiped my feet. With one turn of my head, I could see Ester and Myrle were no where about. Instead, a group of women moved in a wave from the counter. I couldn’t back out the door in time.

“Nan,” the first called out. It was one of the Clark sisters, flanked by the twins on either side. All of them were dark and plump, dressed in an old purple crepe that had faded at their throats. Their mother swept toward me with her long fingers and the girls followed, taking their nervous steps.

“Aren’t they back?” Mrs. Clark asked. I bit my lip.

“But they must be somewhere. I can’t even imagine.”

Her daughters reached for my elbow, my wrists. “It’ll be all right.”