Sing for Me Read online

  I grit my teeth and push hard against Sophy’s chair. It’s proving harder to conquer the park’s snow- and ice-crusted path than it was the sidewalk and street. The chair jounces and tips this way and that.

  Sophy cries out as we pass close to a team of Holsteins at work, pulling a man on a snowplow. The horses are working nearly as hard as I am. I toss my head like I’ve got a mane to ripple in the wind, stomp my feet like they’re hooves, let out a high whinny, and wrest a laugh from Sophy. Then I hear someone calling my name.

  “Rose! Wait!”

  My cousin Julia and her fiancé, Paul Schmidt, are scrambling on their skates up the side of the lagoon. She calls my name again, and waves. They make a handsome pair, those two, skittering on the jagged toes of their blades toward us. Julia, the youngest of three girls, carries herself with the lively confidence of the favored child—even when she’s stumbling and clinging to Paul’s arm, as she is now. Her auburn curls tumble from a cap the color of cranberries—a color that brings out the flush in her heart-shaped face. She is joyful. She is with the man she loves, the man she will marry in August on another picture-perfect day, I’m sure. And now: icing on the cake! Here come her favorite cousins!

  “I was just thinking about you. I evoked you!” Julia calls.

  She only wants to share her joy with us. She only wants us to be joyful, too. That’s Julia. Plain and simple, easy-peasy. She met Paul at the Fannie Mae Candy Factory, where they both work. Paul waltzed over to her at the end of her first shift and invited her out to dinner. Nine months later, they were engaged. “You’ll meet your match, too,” Julia keeps telling me. “You just need to get out more!”

  She sounds a lot like Rob, only her idea of getting out is quite different. When Julia gets out she follows all the rules. She’d delighted by the fact that I’m about to see Nils.

  They’re upon us, Julia dropping down on her knees and catching up Sophy’s mittened hands, Paul giving me a brisk, efficient hug, and then the two of them switching places in a clumsy little dance. Julia clings to me, relieved to have support on her skates. Over her shoulder, I watch as Paul tries to shake Sophy’s hand and then, confused at how to negotiate Sophy’s stiff limbs, steps back. Ankles wobbling, Paul glances longingly over his shoulder at the lagoon while Julia chatters on about the beautiful day, her frozen toes—“Frostbite! I’m sure of it!”—then on and on about their wedding plans.

  Finally she runs out of steam. Breathlessly she asks if I’ll come shopping with her. “I need help deciding about my dress,” she says.

  “Sure,” I say.

  “How about this Thursday, or the next? The stores are open later on Thursday night. Sophy, you could come, too.” Julia glances down at Sophy. “Would you like that?” Julia gasps. “Oh, honey! What’s wrong?”

  I look down to see my sister silently crying. Already her wet cheeks are chafed by the wind.

  “We want you to come shopping with us, Sophy,” Julia says.

  Sophy wrenches her head toward me. “Tea?”

  The National Tea, she means. With my gloves, I pat her face dry. She needs some privacy in which to compose herself. I turn the wheelchair away from Julia and Paul.

  “We’re on an errand.” I’m as good as Mother at forcing resolute cheerfulness into my voice. “We’d better get going.”

  Paul takes the hint. He slips Julia’s arm through his and starts drawing her back to the lagoon.

  “See you soon, then, Rose? You and Sophy, too?” Julia asks, tottering along.

  I nod. “We’ll be at church tomorrow.”

  Julia shakes her head. “I’m going with Paul’s family. We’re taking a drive around his parents’ neighborhood afterward. His mother says that the apartments in their part of the city are more affordable than almost anywhere else. And it’s a nice, clean neighborhood, too! We’re thinking of making our first home there.”

  “Sounds nice.” I can see Julia’s future as clearly as I see her moving toward the lagoon with Paul now. Nice and clean. Easy-peasy. That’s Julia’s future.

  “ ’Til some night soon, then—this Thursday, maybe, or the next definitely,” Julia calls. “Parting is such sweet sorrow!” With a wave, she turns away, then quickly back. “Wait! Can’t do this Thursday! We’re having dinner with some of Paul’s friends. So a week from this Thursday, okay?”

  I holler okay.

  “Promise, Rose?”

  I holler my promise, and then, as Julia and Paul glide away on the ice, I bend over Sophy. She’s crying even harder.

  “Sweetheart! What’s the matter?”

  Sophy shakes her head.

  “Try and tell me. Just try.” I pat her cheeks dry again. “Sophy, you’re going to be raw with windburn. Please stop!”

  She closes her eyes. Tears slide from beneath her lashes.

  “Are you hurting?”

  She hisses through her teeth, her easiest way to say no.

  I have to get her out of the cold. A seizure in the cold would be . . . well, I won’t let that happen. I step behind the wheelchair and start pushing. Hard, harder I push. We go fast—nearly too fast on icy patches—toward the park’s exit. The sound of traffic rushing by on the boulevard grows louder. We are nearly there when, surely to Sophy’s surprise and almost to mine, I turn the wheelchair into the shelter of a gazebo. Brown tendrils of dead ivy twine thickly through the gazebo’s latticed walls, sheltering us from the wind. Compared with the wide-open park, this little dank place is toasty.

  I crouch at my sister’s feet. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”

  “You.” She ducks her head, hiding her expression as best she’s able. “Tell.”

  “Tell what?”

  For a moment, nothing comes out of Sophy’s mouth but the throaty sounds she makes when she’s struggling to frame her thoughts with language. She memorizes all the baseball stats each spring with Dad. She can chime in on key words when Andreas reads from the Bible. She remembers whole passages from novels by James Fenimore Cooper and Rudyard Kipling (someone in the family reads to her nearly every night). Her speech just can’t keep up with her mind.

  Finally she gets control of her tongue and says what she wants to say.

  “No husband, children.” More sounds, and then, “For me.”

  I suck in a breath. While Mother and I were settling Sophy down for her nap, swaddling her in old towels, nestling a hot water bottle between her hips, we took turns explaining what was happening to her. We told her about her time. I told Sophy nothing was wrong. This just happens to us girls. Mother took it a little further, mentioning God’s words to Eve in Genesis, the harsh consequences of forbidden fruit, plucked and briefly savored. The curse, the pangs of childbirth, far outweighed by the joys of children. When we were finished explaining, Mother and I left Sophy to rest while we went into the front room and talked with Dad. We didn’t think to ask if she had any questions.

  Wind rattles the vines. Wind seeps between the leaves.

  I never imagined this far into Sophy’s future. Her womanhood. Her grief.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  She nods. Though her expression is still pained, she is calmer now, quiet and thoughtful again, not crying. We should press on. We should see the kinds of things she likes to see at the National Tea. We should find some distraction.

  I grip the wheelchair’s handles and push Sophy out of our shelter. Surely the temperature has dropped in these last minutes. The air cuts to my lungs as I huff and puff, steering Sophy in her chair through the park’s gate.

  There across the street is the National Tea. It will be warm inside. I will find a treat for Sophy, something she loves. She loves tapioca pudding. I will treat her to a little carton of that.

  I bend down to tell her this. To reassure her, without explicitly saying so, that there are other joys in life besides songs you can’t sing.

  Besides husbands and children you can’t have, I mean.

  I trundle Sophy into the National Tea and park her chair at th
e front counter. I pull Mother’s list—Just a Few Staples, Mother has written across the top—and the nub of a pencil from my coat pocket. I add to the list: 1/8 lb of prepared tapioca without raisins. This would barely be a taste of pudding for me; it will be just enough for Sophy.

  One of the apron-wearing boys behind the counter takes the list and runs off to collect the items. There are so few things we can afford now, so I know each and every item by heart. Oatmeal, milk, butter (only a little, but we’ll make it stretch, though this is not the Danish way), eggs, flour, coffee, potatoes, split peas, a ham bone.

  “Warming up?” I lean close to my sister. She doesn’t smile or kiss the air, but she does seem to be taking careful note of the stocked shelves, the displays of daily specials, the newfangled appliances. A gas oven! Who ever heard? We’ll talk about things like this when we get home. It will give us something to say.

  “Hello, Rose.”

  I turn to see Nils, smiling shyly down at me. He’s dressed like he’s already an assistant manager: neatly pressed black pants and green apron, a white shirt, a black bow tie, black suspenders. The only part of him that’s out of place is the shock of his honey-colored hair falling boyishly across his blue eyes.

  “Hi.” This was where we stood when he presented me with the roses. The other employees and the customers applauded us both. I feel nearly as confused now as I did at that moment. Nils does that to me—this change in him that yields this change between us.

  “I spotted you from the office.” Nils shoves that shock of hair into place and nods toward the back of the store, where a long window spans the top half of the wall. The store manager is at work there, riffling through a sheaf of papers. Nils lifts a hand to him, and the store manager lifts a hand back.

  “I’m glad you were able to come out,” I say. “It looks busy back there.”

  Nils nods. “Mr. Block has asked me to help with the bookkeeping. I have a head for figures, Mr. Block says. He’s the manager, you know.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  Nils blushes, then ducks down and gives Sophy a gentle pat on the arm. “Hiya, kiddo.” By the time Sophy has said her own hiya back, his hair has fallen into his eyes again. Now up he comes, the long, tall length of him, shoving back that shock. When he takes his hand away a sheen of pomade glistens on his palm. Beneath that sheen I glimpse the shadow of newsprint. Nils fancies himself a future member of a Chamber of Commerce, perhaps even the mayor of a small town out West one day, so he pores over the Trib whenever he has a spare moment, studying up on business and politics.

  Silence stretches. Nils is looking at me that way again. I might be the sun, moon, and stars combined. A girl could get used to the expression on his face. But now Nils glances at Mr. Block and winces. Mr. Block is eyeing him, tapping the face of his wristwatch.

  “Break’s over.” Nils takes a deep breath. “Listen, Rose, I got a coupon for a two-for-one dinner at Old Prague. I’ve yet to eat there, but I’ve heard it’s good. They have three meat specials. You can have your choice of pork, duck, beef, chicken, steak, or sausage . . . any three, with side dishes, soup, salad, and dessert. And coffee. I would love to have you as my guest at Old Prague this Saturday. Not this Saturday. Not tonight. I have to work late. Next Saturday, I mean.” He pauses for a breath. “What do you say, Rose?”

  “Why,” I say, “thank you. That sounds lovely.” And it does.

  “We’re set, then.” Nils holds out his hand with all the professional formality of an assistant-manager-to-be. We shake as if we’ve just made a deal. Only Nils squeezes my hand so tightly that I can feel the blood pulsing at my fingertips. I can almost feel his pulse, too.

  He lets go of my hand and gives Sophy a quick peck on the cheek before he turns away. I watch him walk toward the back of the store and Mr. Block. Loping down the aisle like that, he looks like the high school basketball player he once was. He was the star of the team his senior year. I was proud of him then. I’m proud of him now. Any girl in her right mind would be proud of him.

  FIVE

  We sit in our usual spot at the back of the Danish Baptist Church. Here, Sophy has room to stretch out, which is necessary, because when she sits in her wheelchair for too long—these services can sometimes be close to three hours—her arms, legs, and back cramp up. If Sophy has a spasm or a seizure, she’s less likely to interrupt the worship. Most important, as Sophy sees it, people can visit with us as they enter or exit the sanctuary. People can linger, leaning over the back of the pew. This is the highlight of Sophy’s week, and Mother’s. And mine.

  Forget Tuesday night. Forget Calliope’s and the music and the man who knows my name. And this isn’t the time to be thinking about Nils, either, though he is just across the sanctuary, glancing my way.

  I look down at Sophy. Her head is a warm weight in my lap. She is draped in her white, Sunday-best afghan, crocheted by Mother when Mother could afford to buy silk thread. Poking out of the bottom edge of the afghan are Sophy’s feet, which rest comfortably in Andreas’s lap. At six feet six inches, Andreas looks quite the giant looming beside her—a gentle giant cushioning his little sister’s feet. A fair giant with a fleshy nose. Last summer, when Andreas worked on Aunt Astrid’s farm, he got so sunburned that his nose swelled up and turned strawberry red. It stayed that way. Dad sometimes calls him W. C. Fields, which drives Andreas crazy, I can tell. (W. C. Fields bills himself as a drunk, and Andreas would remain a teetotaler under torture.) But Andreas is too mindful of the Ten Commandments to talk back to Dad, or even calmly tell Dad how he feels. With his full-ride scholarship to Moody Bible Institute, Andreas is nothing if not Commandment-abiding. He is steeped in the Commandments of the Old Testament and the Beatitudes of the New. He can memorize whole books of the Bible, and he even knows his favorite passages in Hebrew and Greek. Andreas can recite the doctrinal stance of any Protestant denomination, and he evangelizes with the best of them. In fact, he recruited many of the newest members of our church. He’ll certainly be a wonderful pastor. He might even be a missionary. Just look at him, taking notes on Pastor Riis’s sermon in the margins of his church bulletin. It’s hard to see where the bulletin’s type ends and Andreas’s careful writing begins.

  I glance down at my own bulletin, which rests open on Sophy’s middle. Shows how closely I’ve been listening—I have to read the sermon’s title to remember Pastor’s topic for today: The Call to Service.

  “ ‘As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said . . . ’ ” Pastor Riis pauses for emphasis. He plants his hands on either side of the pulpit and bows his head. Pastor is nearly eighty. His wide, deeply lined face is covered with liver spots. His voice, however, has the strength of a robust man in the prime of his life. “ ‘Separate me, Barnabas, and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.’ ”

  To my right, Mother stretches her legs into the aisle. Balancing her Bible on her lap, she underlines the passage Pastor just read. She is wearing fur-lined winter boots. The seams are splitting at the toes. We could never afford to replace those boots now. Or the fur coat, draped so elegantly over her shoulders. She makes a little note in Danish in the margin beside Acts, chapter thirteen. I can’t read what she’s written; her script is too small, and it’s gotten horribly messy, what with the arthritis affecting her hands. As for the verse in Acts, I recognize none of the Danish words.

  If I took that singing job, would I be able to buy new boots for Mother? Maybe not fur-lined ones, but sturdy, with treads to keep her steady on the ice? Say I was able to squirrel away a dollar a week. (Cleaning, I’m lucky if I can pocket anything.) How many weeks would I have to sing before Mother could have warm, dry feet again? How many weeks would I get to sing?

  I press my lips together tightly, lest the wrong kind of singing slip out. It’s one thing to dream of singing for provision. It’s another thing altogether to dream of singing for pleasure. Besides, sometimes I am able to sing for pleasure. For God’s pleasure, and for the pleasure of th
is congregation, and for my pleasure, too. I’ll be singing the offertory next week, for instance. I’m on the schedule. They’re counting on me. I must choose a hymn.

  Pastor Riis is elaborating more fully on the Scripture passage now. The Holy Spirit is the Great Executive of the Church, Pastor explains, laying plans and taking measures to carry them out. To do so, the Holy Spirit must select men, set them apart, and send them forth.

  And women, too, I suppose.

  “It is of the utmost importance that we have a call,” Pastor Riis says. “We were born to serve God in a way that He has ordained for us.”

  I’ve accepted my calling: my sister. As for my singing . . . I wasn’t born for it, and Sophy almost died because of it.

  My singing almost killed her.

  I try not to think about that winter night in Luck, Wisconsin—fourteen years ago just like yesterday—but I can’t stop myself. I never can.

  Rob was there that night, too, and Mother and Dad, and, of course, Sophy. But Rob is the only one among us who directly refers to the event.

  You know, if you’d just let ’er rip, your voice could very well bring people to their knees. You’ve just got to believe, Laerke. You’ve just got to get past the past.