The Personal History of Rachel DuPree Read online

  On the fifth morning, Isaac told me about his father, a man I didn’t know much about other than he’d been a doctor.

  “Father never turned a sick person away,” Isaac said. “He practiced at Provident Hospital, helped start the nursing school there. Had this house built for Mother when they got married. It wasn’t so close to the slaughterhouses then or the railroad tracks. But everything changed when Father died. I was fifteen. Cancer of the lungs. He was sick a long time, and Mother spent all their savings trying to find a cure. Borrowed against the house. He knew it wasn’t any use, but you know Mother.”

  That made me feel bad for Isaac; a boy of fifteen needed his father. But there was something else that made me feel even worse: the groove that ran between us. Isaac’s father was educated and had done important things; mine had been a slaughterhouse man. Isaac had finished high school; I had to quit after the eighth grade. He was fair; I was dark. Outside of this kitchen, Isaac would never look twice at a woman like me.

  The thing he talked most about, though, was land. “Don’t get me wrong,” Isaac told me and Trudy on the seventh morning of his leave. “I’m not taking anything away from Booker T. Washington.” He sat on the kitchen stool, a cup of coffee in his hand. The kitchen smelled rich. The coffee was fresh, and there was raisin bread rising in the oven.

  “Good thing,” Trudy said. She put linens to soak in a pan on the counter. “Your mama thinks the world of that man.”

  “And so she should. But being a tradesman isn’t good enough, not for everybody. Booker T. Washington needs to understand that. A man’s got to have land. I’ve staked my hundred and sixty and nobody’s ever taking it from me.” Isaac paused. “Nobody.”

  “Don’t think anybody’d dare,” I said. I was washing two mixing bowls. “But it’s the weather; it all comes down to the weather. I was raised on a farm and that’s what I most remember. Worrying about the weather.”

  “Your father’s a farmer?”

  “Was. Back in Louisiana before coming here. Sugarcane.”

  Trudy said, “How come you never told me that?”

  “How many acres?” Isaac said.

  “Can’t say. I never heard. Dad tenant farmed.”

  “How’d a tenant farmer from Louisiana end up here?”

  “It was something Dad always talked about, coming north, how it’d be so much better. Everybody did. We lived on a plantation down there.” I picked up the coffeepot. Isaac held out his cup to show that he’d enjoy a little more. I poured it for him. I said, “The plantation was Mr. Stockton’s, and when he passed, his daughter didn’t want the place. It was falling apart, so she sold it. Mama called the new people white trash with money and said no good ever comes from mixing with that kind. We took a train bound for the North. Chicago was the last stop, and Dad said it was as far from Louisiana as we needed to go.” I put the coffeepot back on the stove and turned down the heat. “Dad figured it’d be better in a big city like Chicago.”

  “Is it?”

  “In some ways.”

  Trudy said, “You couldn’t give me a hundred dollars for the South.” She kneaded the wet linens, working on a stain.

  Isaac blew on his coffee, then had a taste of it. Thinking about Isaac’s question, I opened the oven door and stuck a toothpick in the center of the first loaf. The toothpick came out moist; the bread needed a few more minutes.

  My school in Chicago, I recalled, was better than the one in Louisiana—there were more books. Jobs were easier to come by in Chicago, but rent was high. Still, a person could make a decent living. But the stink, it was bad. No matter which way the wind blew there was no getting away from the smell that came from the stockyards. Day and night, slaughterhouse fires burned carcasses. Black clouds of soot blocked the sun and there were no stars at night. For all that, though, I was glad to be here. Chicago was where I’d met Isaac.

  I turned to him, smiling.

  Our eyes met, and just like that, everything went still. The trains, Trudy sloshing the linens in the basin, the creaks in the house, it all stopped. Isaac’s eyes took me in. I stood before him, letting him admire me, me looking back at him, me taking pleasure in it all.

  “Your bread,” Trudy said. “Mind your bread,” and that quick, it was over. Isaac took a long drink of his coffee, and me—my heart racing—I didn’t do anything. “Your bread,” Trudy said.

  “Yes,” I said. I opened the oven, drawing in deep breaths of the hot air, feeling woozy. Isaac had seen me in a new way. I fumbled with the hot pads, my hands shaking as I took out the three loaves. I ran a knife along the insides of the pans, then flipped them upside down onto the cooling rack. I felt Isaac watching me; I wanted to go to him. I wanted him to put his arms around me; I wanted his lips on mine.

  I tapped the bottoms of the bread pans with the knife. The metal made a sharp sound. The bread loosened and dropped. Something had passed between Isaac and me. I kept on tapping, needing the noise to fill the kitchen.

  Trudy wrung out a section of her wash. “Yes, sir, Sergeant DuPree,” she said. “The boarders sure do admire you.”

  He put his cup on the counter. “That so?”

  “You’re all they talk about,” Trudy said. “You and that homestead of yours, it’s turned their heads. And you,” she snapped at me. “Stop that tapping.”

  Startled, I dropped the knife. It fell on the floor, clattering. I stared at it, heat rising in my cheeks. Still sitting, Isaac slid the knife toward him with the toe of his boot and picked it up.

  “Give it here,” Trudy said. He handed it to her, the handle pointed out. “Now go on,” she said. “We’ve got work to do.”

  “I can see that,” Isaac said, smiling some. Then he glanced at me and in that instant, I believed I saw a shine of admiration.

  He wasn’t gone but a second when Trudy turned on me. “What’s wrong with you? Making eyes at that man. You’re nothing but the help and he knows it. You’ll get yourself in trouble this way, throwing yourself at him. He’ll forget you before he’s even through with you, and didn’t I tell you about Lydia Prather? There’s talk of a June wedding.” Trudy pointed a finger at me. “Watch yourself, that’s all I’ve got to say.”

  I closed my eyes against it.

  On the tenth morning of Isaac’s leave, he came to breakfast wearing his uniform. I’d been the one what had rubbed out the spots and set the creases right even though laundry was Trudy’s job. I had insisted, telling Trudy that I had spare time while she had so much to do. In truth, I wasn’t thinking about Trudy. I wanted to run my hands over Isaac’s clothes and breathe in his smell. Trudy knew that; I could tell by the way she clicked her tongue when she handed me his uniform. But what harm could it do? I saw her thinking that too. Isaac was leaving on the 9:45 A.M. for Nebraska.

  It was hot for early May. The kitchen window was up, and between trains the birds sang. The robins were all back, and usually the sight of those summer birds made me smile. But that day, the day of Isaac’s leaving, tears blurred my eyes as I cooked breakfast. I was so sad and my heart so heavy that it was a wonder I was upright.

  I wasn’t the only one grieving. Mrs. DuPree was in her bed, claiming a sick headache.

  After breakfast, Isaac went with the men to the back alley and shook their hands good-bye. I watched from the kitchen window as I washed dishes. Jingling horse bells broke through my sadness. It was the coal man bringing his wagon from the other end of the alley. “Trudy,” I called out, my voice dull in my ears. “Mr. Jackson.”

  In the alley, the boarders slapped Isaac on the back, and I imagined them telling him that they’d all meet up soon in South Dakota. He held his hand high in a wave as he watched them walk down the gravel road, their lunch pails swinging a little with their steps. When the men were gone, Isaac called out something to Mr. Jackson, the coal man, who said something back. Then Isaac came through the yard, stopped for a few moments as if unsure of his way, and came on toward the kitchen stoop.

  My heart thumping, I dried
my hands on my apron. The last two mornings he’d kept away. Trudy told me I should be glad; Isaac DuPree was doing me a favor, so I’d best stop looking so puny. For all of Mrs. DuPree’s faults, Trudy said, she had raised her son to know right from wrong, even if I had puffed myself up like a brazen woman. He knew to stay away from the help. His last morning home, though, he was heading to the back steps. He was coming to see me.

  In the open kitchen door, Isaac stopped and looked again at the alley. “Poor bastards,” I heard him say to himself.

  He didn’t know the half of it. Eleven days ago Isaac DuPree had walked into the boardinghouse, and without giving it a thought, he’d made every one of us want something big. The boarders wanted land of their own, Isaac’s mother wanted to keep him here with her, and me—I dreamed of making a home with him in South Dakota.

  Mr. Jackson had his wagon in the backyard now. Trudy hurried through the kitchen to meet him, but not before throwing me a knowing glance when she saw Isaac at the kitchen back door. He stepped aside for her to pass, and that put him an arm’s length away from me.

  My breathing turned ragged. I held out the sack lunch of biscuits and boiled eggs that I’d packed.

  “What’s this?” Isaac said.

  “A little something to tide you over.”

  “Obliged.”

  His eyes flickered over me as he took the sack lunch. I drew in my breath. He liked what he saw. Because I believed this—wanted to believe that his eyes shined for me—I said, “I’m proud to know you.”

  Isaac raised an eyebrow.

  “A man with land. That’s a proud thing.”

  “So it is.”

  “There’s talk.”

  Isaac cocked his head.

  “Talk that you’re getting married.”

  “Gossip,” he said.

  “To Lydia Prather.”

  “Lydia Prather wouldn’t last a day in the Badlands.”

  I bit my lip to keep from smiling. In the side yard, Trudy said something about Mr. Jackson making a mess the last time he was there. “That’s the nature of coal,” he said back. Then they both fell to squabbling, each saying the other needed to learn how to mind his own business. It came to me that a year from now, five years, ten, I’d be still in Mrs. DuPree’s kitchen, still looking out the same window, still listening to the same bickering. Mr. Jackson started up with his shovel. It made a raw scraping sound as it scooped up coal. I pulled myself up. Coal clunked down the chute that ran along the side of the kitchen.

  “Likely not,” I said to Isaac about Lydia Prather. “But you’ll want a woman out there. In South Dakota.”

  Isaac stared at me.

  I looked him right in the eye. “One to cook for you, do up your laundry.” I smiled. “One to help in the fields.”

  “No,” he said. “Not me. I’m doing this alone. I don’t need Lydia Prather. I don’t need anybody.”

  “I—”

  “You’re as bad as my mother.”

  I’d made him angry; his muscles pulled at his mouth. Before I could make it right, he was gone, leaving nothing but his footsteps on the wood floors as he went through the dining room and then the parlor. The front door opened and closed. My ears rang and my heart flopped around in a strange way high in my chest. I hoped it meant to kill me quick.

  I stumbled into a corner, knocking over the kitchen stool. Holding my apron to my face, I tried to cry. I wanted to cry from the shame and the disgrace and the misery of having thrown myself at a man what didn’t want me. I tried, I gave a little wail, but I couldn’t cry. The hurt was too big.

  Somebody coughed. I spun around. Isaac. Heat flooded my cheeks. He’d come back to humiliate me even more. “Please,” I said, putting my apron up to my face again. “Go away.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “Go away.”

  “Now this is why women are such a mystery.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “God made women just to keep us a little off balance.”

  I looked at him over my apron.

  He was leaning against the pie safe, a little smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, but there was a hardness in his eyes. He said, “You might have something. The right kind of woman could come in handy. Another pair of hands. You do know your way around a kitchen, and like you said before, you grew up on a farm.” Isaac paused. “You were talking about yourself, weren’t you?”

  My heart skipped.

  He said, “A single woman can stake a claim.”

  My mind stumbled over the words.

  “That’d give me three hundred and twenty acres.”

  I put a hand on the counter.

  “I’ll have you write out a statement saying you intend to homestead. That way I’ll get the claim now. Land’s going fast. The agent’ll expect a little extra; you’re supposed to be there in person. But there’s ways around that.”

  His face blurred.

  “It’ll be hard work. You’ll have to pull your share. It’ll wear you thin. There’ll be days you’ll curse me, you’ll curse yourself for leaving Chicago.”

  “No,” I said.

  “You say that now, but it’s not Chicago. There’s no electric lights out there, or running water, not where I’m going.”

  Everything was suddenly very clear.

  “Three hundred and twenty acres,” he was saying. “I can raise a fair number of cattle on that, wheat too. It’ll get me off to a quicker start.”

  I said, “I expect to be married.”

  Surprise flashed across his face. “You can’t be. A woman has to be single to stake a claim.”

  “Then stake it now,” I said. “Like you said. In my name. Then come back and marry me. If you want that land.”

  His lips disappeared into a thin line. He hadn’t expected this, not from me, the kitchen help. I hadn’t expected it either; I didn’t know where the words came from. But now that I had said them, I made myself stand square to Isaac.

  He said, “What’s in it for you?”

  A chance to be in your arms. A chance to have something that counted. I said, “My own home.”

  “That so?”

  “Yes.”

  He turned away and looked out the back door, and I guessed that he wasn’t seeing Mr. Jackson driving his coal wagon out of the yard. He wasn’t seeing the alley and he wasn’t seeing the back sides of the next row of houses. Isaac was seeing, I believed, three hundred and twenty acres of land filled up with cattle and wheat.

  “I wasn’t looking to get married,” he said, still looking out the door.

  “Three hundred and twenty acres,” I said.

  “Hell.” Then he squared his shoulders. “All right,” he said, turning to face me. “But there’s one condition. We’ll give it six months. That’s enough time to get me started, get me through planting season. Then we’ll end it. You’ll come back home. There’ll be talk, but gossip never bothered me. We both get what we want. You’ll have been married, and I’ll have the land.”

  I wanted Isaac to say that I meant something to him, that he’d be proud to take me as his wife. Instead, I felt cheap. This wasn’t how I wanted it to be. I had sold myself for a hundred and sixty acres of land. But it didn’t have to stay that way. I’d work hard. I’d prove myself. Isaac wouldn’t be able to do without me. He might come to like being married. I said, “A year. I want a year.”

  His eyebrows rose.

  I said, “A year. Four seasons.”

  “You drive a hard bargain.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Most women don’t last that long homesteading, but all right. A year. I’ll come for you mid-June. Have your things ready.”

  “I want a preacher.”

  “I figured that.”

  He opened his gold pocket watch. “I’ve got just enough time to tell Mother.” He snapped the watch closed and put it back in his pants pocket. “But first your statement for the claim.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “My claim
.” A chill ran through me. “And your mother.”

  I waited in the kitchen while Isaac was upstairs telling his mother about our plans. Waiting turned my nerves bad. I went out back to get some air. Mr. Jackson, the coal man, had driven his wagon into the alley and was calling to his horses to keep moving. Trudy stood on the back stoop watching him, her hands on her hips.

  “Trudy,” I said. “He’s marrying me.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Isaac DuPree. He’s coming for me mid-June.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What’d you do to get him?”

  “Nothing. He just came out and asked me. Mid-June, that’s when.”

  “Lordy. You must have done something.”

  “Can’t you be glad for me?” I turned away and went back into the kitchen. She followed me. “Rachel,” she said. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  I started to say that she did mean it, but then I put my hand up. Isaac was coming down the stairs; he was coming to tell me what his mother said. His footsteps echoed through the parlor. I held my breath. The front door opened, then closed. The house was quiet.

  Trudy looked at me. “There goes your groom.”

  “Tramp,” Mrs. DuPree said to me. “Get out.” She stood in the kitchen in her nightdress and bed jacket, her face heavy with rage. Isaac hadn’t been gone over ten minutes.

  Stunned, I shook out my wet hands and left the frying pan I’d been scrubbing in the washbasin. “Tramp,” Mrs. DuPree said louder, as if I hadn’t heard her the first time. I fumbled with the knot in my apron strings, my hands still wet. “That’s how you got him,” she said. Trudy came in from the dining room holding her broom.