Once again his anger drained from him and his shoulders sagged, his head bent, and Gerda’s misery was complete. She had done this to him. She had tarnished his name in the community, forever.
“A man has only his name, Gerda,” Papa’d once told her when they were in the barn, mucking out the ox stalls. He’d smiled proudly at her when she staggered beneath a shovel full of manure without flinching; that smile she’d learned to hoard, smug that it was hers alone and not Raina’s; that smile that told her, I know you’re not a son, but you are as fine a daughter as a man could have.
“A man has only his name, that’s why he wants sons. But if he can’t have sons, he still has his name until he dies and so he must make sure he does nothing to ruin it—he must make sure those in his care behave in a certain way. You understand, don’t you, daughter?”
She must have been nearing thirteen or fourteen when this conversation occurred, she realized. Nearing womanhood, and all the delicate navigation that entailed, and she’d blushed, understanding what he couldn’t bring himself to say. But she’d also nodded—of course she understood! It was so easy, she’d thought then. She was unable to imagine a scenario when she wouldn’t behave in a way to bring him honor. The world was simple then—right and wrong. You don’t steal, you don’t lie, you don’t hurt anyone, you do your chores, you don’t talk back to your parents. You don’t covet your sister’s fancy handkerchief that an aunt back home sent for Christmas; you don’t feel like your lot in life is worse than anyone else’s. You don’t want more than your fair share—
Ah. But that was what tripped her up in the end. Wasn’t it? She’d wanted more. Asked for more. More time with Tiny. More of him than he wanted to give. That wanting had led her to making the worst possible decision; it had led her to put herself first, her students last.
It had led her to murder.
Would she actually face trial for the deaths of her students? Her heart began to palpitate, her throat constrict. She asked her mother for another glass of water but she couldn’t begin to ask her that question. Papa would know—
But Papa wouldn’t look at her.
She would have to wait to know the full impact of her actions, then—but she couldn’t imagine that anything could be worse than this guilt she would have to bear in secret. Papa and Mama could never know how thoroughly bad she was. It was hard enough on them as it was. She would have to carry the boulder of her evil—for that’s what it was, selfishness that had led to unimaginable ruin, the deaths of innocents, of innocence itself—on her back, alone, for the rest of her life. No one would see it but her, she would never be able to let someone else hold it, not even for the briefest of moments.
As she lay for three more long days in the darkened room—the curtains drawn tight against anguished eyes—tended by her mother while her father prowled the Andersons’ house like a caged tiger, she tried to sleep, to rest her body, but she couldn’t. In the middle of the night she would sit bolt upright, prodded with electric shocks of fear and guilt, imagining herself in a jail cell, the gallows awaiting her the next morning. She couldn’t stop this nightmare, this torment.
She began to hate her mother for loving her, for staying by her side even through the nightmares. This good woman—she had lost a son in the old country. And now, she had lost a daughter. A woman, a mother—she looks forward to the day a daughter marries. Hadn’t Mama been stockpiling a hope chest for years, for both Gerda and Raina? Whenever she had a spare second, she had knitted shawls and blankets, pressed flowers and put them under glass, made sachets of dried prairie grass, saved precious ribbons from stray packages or gifts. All for her daughters, to set them up in their own homes when their time came. And then, of course, there would come the longed-for grandchildren, the next generation, the hope for the future.
But Gerda had deprived her of this. At least there still was Raina.
Finally, the Andersons asked Mama and Papa to take Gerda home. She overheard them one evening, as the four of them miserably shared a meal. “We can’t keep her here any longer, we have our own place in the community to think of,” Pa Anderson said, not bothering to lower his voice. “She was a good girl, though, at least what we saw. But after this…”