in America was touched with magic, Flora didn’t seem to find Mr. Holt’s behavior unusual. But instinctively Seema knew it was best to keep what she knew of Mr. Holt to herself.
The snow was falling harder now, and it seemed as if the train were traveling through a cloud. Seema pressed her thumb and middle finger to her brow. Her mind was webbed with so many secrets. She remembered a morning shortly after her father haddied. It was cold and snowy, like now, and the windowpanes were opaque with frost. She, Margot, Flora, and their mother were huddled around the kitchen table. As her mother studied the three of them, Seema noticed the lines around her mouth, newly inscribed by her widowhood. She could still hear the hurt in her mother’s voice as she stared out the window up at the sky: “What kind of God leaves a woman alone with three children?” she said to no one in particular. “My days as a woman are over now. But you girls, you have it all ahead of you.” Then she went around the table and pinned a future on each of them. Flora, “my merry one,” would always have men dancing around her, “like a maypole.” It might take her “shy, peculiar child,” Margot, a longer time to find a husband, but when she did, he would be as “loyal and true blue as she was.” Then she turned to Seema. “My unknowable one,” she said harshly. “She doesn’t even bother to chew her secrets; she just swallows them whole.” It was the first time she remembered thinking how much her mother disliked her.
Now, as she replayed that morning in her mind, three things leapt out at her: Her mother was thirty-four when she declared an end to her days as a woman. She wondered if her mother had ever seen an actual maypole. And she knew that had she ever confided to her mother about Mr. Holt, she would have somehow figured a way to put the blame on her. What kind of God, indeed?
She thought about Flora, the merry one, with her clear brown eyes and the easy way she had of talking to people. No unchewed secrets in her history. What must that be like? She was such an innocent, and now she was getting married. “Shy and peculiar,” Margot had outfoxed them all by being the first to marry ateighteen, just two months earlier. That left Seema as the spinster in the family. Everyone assumed that she would marry soon. But she was in no hurry. She liked going to dance halls, meeting handsome new men. The way things were now, she understood what men wanted from her and, frankly, she wanted little more from them. A husband would expect her to wash his clothes, prepare his food, care for the children—all the things she was doing for the White family, but at least they paid her. She never talked about her life to her family, and she wondered what, if anything, they knew about her.
Her mother’s letters were brief and infrequent; she rarely asked about Seema. From time to time, Aunt Hannah and Uncle Paul would make some comment about the bloom coming off the rose or fruit being too ripe, but then they’d turn it into some kind of a joke and they’d all end up laughing as if they were in it all together. And Margot? She couldn’t even imagine what Margot would think of the life she was living here.
She wondered what Margot was doing now. She imagined her puttering over the window box that overlooked the yard behind their house in Kaiserslautern. She could see the curve of her back as she bent over the bright red flowers, smelling their sweet leaves and cupping a blossom in her hand as if it were a soft-boiled egg. Margot kept the window box filled with geraniums, even during the coldest months. She doted on these flowers as she did on her collection of tiny porcelain owls and the assortment of hatpins she kept on the table by her bed. “It could be worse,” she’d say when anyone teased her about her quirky hobbies. “I heard about a man in Hamburg who kept two snakes in his room for five years before the police found him
The snow was falling harder now, and it seemed as if the train were traveling through a cloud. Seema pressed her thumb and middle finger to her brow. Her mind was webbed with so many secrets. She remembered a morning shortly after her father haddied. It was cold and snowy, like now, and the windowpanes were opaque with frost. She, Margot, Flora, and their mother were huddled around the kitchen table. As her mother studied the three of them, Seema noticed the lines around her mouth, newly inscribed by her widowhood. She could still hear the hurt in her mother’s voice as she stared out the window up at the sky: “What kind of God leaves a woman alone with three children?” she said to no one in particular. “My days as a woman are over now. But you girls, you have it all ahead of you.” Then she went around the table and pinned a future on each of them. Flora, “my merry one,” would always have men dancing around her, “like a maypole.” It might take her “shy, peculiar child,” Margot, a longer time to find a husband, but when she did, he would be as “loyal and true blue as she was.” Then she turned to Seema. “My unknowable one,” she said harshly. “She doesn’t even bother to chew her secrets; she just swallows them whole.” It was the first time she remembered thinking how much her mother disliked her.
Now, as she replayed that morning in her mind, three things leapt out at her: Her mother was thirty-four when she declared an end to her days as a woman. She wondered if her mother had ever seen an actual maypole. And she knew that had she ever confided to her mother about Mr. Holt, she would have somehow figured a way to put the blame on her. What kind of God, indeed?
She thought about Flora, the merry one, with her clear brown eyes and the easy way she had of talking to people. No unchewed secrets in her history. What must that be like? She was such an innocent, and now she was getting married. “Shy and peculiar,” Margot had outfoxed them all by being the first to marry ateighteen, just two months earlier. That left Seema as the spinster in the family. Everyone assumed that she would marry soon. But she was in no hurry. She liked going to dance halls, meeting handsome new men. The way things were now, she understood what men wanted from her and, frankly, she wanted little more from them. A husband would expect her to wash his clothes, prepare his food, care for the children—all the things she was doing for the White family, but at least they paid her. She never talked about her life to her family, and she wondered what, if anything, they knew about her.
Her mother’s letters were brief and infrequent; she rarely asked about Seema. From time to time, Aunt Hannah and Uncle Paul would make some comment about the bloom coming off the rose or fruit being too ripe, but then they’d turn it into some kind of a joke and they’d all end up laughing as if they were in it all together. And Margot? She couldn’t even imagine what Margot would think of the life she was living here.
She wondered what Margot was doing now. She imagined her puttering over the window box that overlooked the yard behind their house in Kaiserslautern. She could see the curve of her back as she bent over the bright red flowers, smelling their sweet leaves and cupping a blossom in her hand as if it were a soft-boiled egg. Margot kept the window box filled with geraniums, even during the coldest months. She doted on these flowers as she did on her collection of tiny porcelain owls and the assortment of hatpins she kept on the table by her bed. “It could be worse,” she’d say when anyone teased her about her quirky hobbies. “I heard about a man in Hamburg who kept two snakes in his room for five years before the police found him
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