What would happen to Raina?
Papa and Mama would sell the farm eventually; they would have enough to move to Newman Grove, they already talked of that. Without a son to keep the farm in the family, they couldn’t remain on the land they’d labored so painfully to own. The circular nature of their lives—moving back to a settled community like the one they’d left behind in Norway—maybe it was like life itself.
Raina thought sometimes of going to a bigger city like Chicago after she had her degree. Mr. Woodson, although he hadn’t written to her in a while, still influenced her—she thought maybe she would write for a newspaper, too. Sometimes she wished to disappear, like her sister had, and maybe by going to a big city, she could accomplish that more easily.
But no, she didn’t wish to disappear quite as thoroughly as had Gerda. Unlike her sister, Raina knew she would always be welcomed wherever she wished to go. And she would be there for her parents in their old age. Maybe in the city Raina would finally meet someone who would unlock her heart and throw away the key for good.
Maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she would live for her work or go back to teaching so she could live through her pupils, become one of those respected spinsters who was awarded a nice brooch upon her retirement, during a ceremony where her former pupils sang songs in her honor. After all, she was a heroine. Once.
Quietly, Raina picked up her shopping basket and tiptoed over to the cash register as Tor and Anette continued to chat happily, freely—these two silent children of the prairie, together chirping like lovebirds. Raina smiled, despite the aching loneliness she knew awaited her the moment she stepped out of the store. Anette and Tor—it was right. It was fitting.
They would name their first son Fredrik.
CHAPTER 39
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Dear Raina,
I know it has been a long time since you’ve heard from me. How are Mama and Papa? Are they angry with me for leaving? I never wanted to hurt them but since I already had, it seemed to me that it was best that the break be swift and permanent. I could never again be the daughter they had known. Every time they looked at me, they would feel pain. And I’ve caused enough people pain.
Let me tell you a little of what I’ve been doing, dearest sister. First of all, I went to Colorado. Tiny showed me a picture of the Rocky Mountains once—he said a fellow could touch God there. So I thought I would go for him. I thought maybe I could touch him somehow.
The mountains, Raina! Oh, the mountains! You’ve never seen anything like them! They are so vast, so magnificent, that at first you cannot breathe. They appear like a smudge on the horizon—the train chugs west through Nebraska, then goes a little south, and the land is flat, like we know. But all along you have been climbing, and that smudge becomes an unbroken, jagged line, like a pencil drawing, and then you are suddenly up in some foothills with these majestic mountains in front of you, a long line north to south, repeating itself, endlessly, to the west. I got off the train in Colorado Springs and took a cog train—it’s like a locomotive but it runs differently, it’s smaller, so it can wind its way up through the mountains. The air here smells of pine and cold—it’s hard to describe. It’s not cold like the winter cold we’re used to, more like peppermint, I suppose, like the candy we sometimes got in our stockings at Christmas—it’s just so pure! I went up all the way to the top of Pike’s Peak, one of the tallest mountains in Colorado, and the air is thin that high up—above the tree line! Too high for anything to grow, the mountains are bare there, with patches of snow and alpine flowers, but no trees. But when the moon rises, it seems like you can walk right into it, it’s so close.
I didn’t really touch God here, though. I thought, for a minute, that I could. But I did feel close to Tiny then. I said goodbye to him at the top of that mountain.
Then I went to Montana, to the Indian school that had hired me.
This is when I learned that I am not the worst person in the world. There is such evil there, Raina. The school is mismanaged, the funds are misused. The children mistreated—they are spanked regularly by the principal and there is nothing I can do about it. I know that some of the girls have been assaulted and ruined forever by some of the male teachers and administrators—it’s as if that’s one of the reasons they are there. Not only to be schooled, but to be used, ruined, by some of these men who know they don’t have to answer to anyone but other men just like them. I’m supposed to look away, like the other female teachers. They don’t bother us—why should they, when they have helpless young girls who are too terrified to fight back?