Amelia
Amelia had always felt a certain injustice at the roles her body forced her to fill. As she struggled for a foothold in the city, bent over in steamy rooms cleaning laundry or dishes, she envied the men outside the walls, their backs bare to the sun as they poured their strength and effort into jobs that turned their bodies hard and strong. When she visited her married friends, it baffled her that they seemed so happy, toiling in stuffy kitchens while their husbands got to leave and work for money and then come home and eat meals with nary a 'thank you' or an offer to help with the clean up.
She'd never sought to shrug off the system-- had never approached the foreman at a construction site and asked for a job. She'd never had the time or money to spend wearing trousers for the sake of a point. She just quietly yearned for things to be a bit different. She wanted a job out of doors where she could exercise her whole body. She wanted the prospect of a marriage where she was free to leave in the day and work for her own money, as she had always done. Perhaps where she and her husband could both come home, after a day of hard work, and cook together. Clean together. Care, together, for the children.
In spite of all that, she quickly decided that her favorite room in all of the Tucker family home was, in fact, the kitchen. She preferred it to her own bedroom, to the parlor, and even to Mr. Tucker's study, with its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and grandiose mahogany desk.
She liked the kitchen, not for its function, but for its simplicity and for the moments she experienced within its walls. Every other room felt ghostly and vacant. The ceilings were all just a shade too high for the people standing beneath them. The floors were all a few feet too broad for the furniture sprawled across them. The walls didn't hold enough pictures, the decorations were aloof and ostentatious, and the air itself seemed thin and cold, no matter how close she sat to the fire.
Of course she would never say such a thing out loud. Just because she came from humble beginnings didn't mean she lacked class. She kept her feelings to herself, but she quietly preferred the kitchen, with its battered black stove, chipped wooden furniture, and cluttered cabinets. It was in the kitchen that she busied herself throughout the early days of her stay at the Tuckers' ranch, shoulder to shoulder with Melissa as they laughed and talked and worked.
"It must have been amazing growing up here," Amelia noted, looking up from the potatoes on her cutting board to stare out the kitchen window. It overlooked the garden behind the house-- a colorful chaos of flowers and vegetables. Beyond the garden were a few rows of trees Melissa fondly referred to as "The Orchard."
"It was alright," Melissa said with a shrug, not looking up from the knife in her hands as she deftly sliced and carved a freshly-slaughtered chicken. "It was better when I was little."
"Why's that?"
"Oh, you know," she shrugged again, pausing in her work to follow Amelia's gaze out the window. She stared wistfully at the greenery before turning back to her task. "When I was little I spent all my time out there. Josh and I were thick as thieves back then. He was only two years older than me and the second I found my feet I tagged along after him on adventures. My earliest memories are of digging holes and climbing trees. We were a couple of little monsters. Drove our poor parents crazy." She paused and laughed at some rekindled memory. "One time we went out after a rainstorm and wandered back into the house, stark-naked, covered in mud. I remember fascination with the clarity of my footprints on the white rug in the parlor."
She laughed again, and Amelia found it hard to rectify her friend's joyful memory with the strict, stifled cleanliness of the house she stood in. Her parents must have been furious...
"Pa was the one who found us," Melissa went on, still laughing. "He bellowed and carried on, but he was laughing too. Hauled us up, one in each arm, and carried us out to the yard. Started dumping buckets of water over our heads and going on and on about how ma was gonna whup our bottoms pink if we didn't cover up the evidence." Lifting a hand, Melissa wiped a tear of mirth from her eye with the back of her hand.
"Of course, we didn't. There we were, out in the yard, shivering and still half-muddy, when we heard the shriek from inside. Ma came rushing out, scolding all three of us, wagging her finger and screaming. Pa had a bucket of water in his hand and he listened to her for a minute before tossing it on her. Just... just drenched her, and for a second we all stood there shocked. Then Josh picked up a handful of mud and hurled it at pa. I retaliated with a fistful to the back of Josh's head. Ma picked me up and dumped me in the wash basin by the well..." she trailed off, her voice no longer filled with humor but with the heavy sadness of lost happiness.
"I've digressed, haven't I?" she asked, shooting Amelia an apologetic glance.
"Perhaps, but it was a nice side trip," she said honestly. "It sounds like a nice way to come up."
"It was," Melissa agreed, nodding. "It stayed that way for a while, too. Long enough that I remember it pretty well. Things changed, though. Brent was born when I was five, and ma died about a year after."
"I'm so sorry," Amelia said. "I know how hard it is to lose a parent."
Melissa answered her words with a kind smile and eyes that glittered with unshed tears. "It is," she said, nodding. "I know we're supposed to say 'I was young' as if that somehow lessens the loss. As if... as if the fewer years you spent with them, the weaker your bond. It doesn't much feel like that, though, does it?"
"No," Amelia said thoughtfully, shaking her head. "It feels like you didn't just lose a loved one. You lost a... a..."
"A god," Melissa finished sadly, tossing sliced chicken into the bowl in front of her. "It feels like losing a deity, and deities aren't supposed to be mortal."
"I suppose not." Amelia focused on cubing her potatoes for a few long moments, thinking back to her parents' death. "I suppose also, though, that we're lucky. In a broken way."
"How's that?" Melissa asked curiously.
"Well," she shrugged, trying to figure out how to put her thoughts into words. "My parents-- your mother-- they died while they were still gods to us. So in a sense, they always will be. We never had to see them turn human."
As soon as the words left her mouth, Amelia realized how easily they could be taken for a slight. In a sense, they were an accidental but earnest insult. She'd been in the Tucker household for less then a week, and already she knew how deeply she disliked the family's patriarch. He was cold and blunt, and she couldn't begin to imagine him laughing off two muddy, mischievous children and starting a water fight with his wife.
Fortunately, Melissa either missed the veiled accusation or understood it well enough to let the insult float by unaddressed.
"You're right," she said, nodding resolutely. Then she turned to Amelia, smiling. "You are awfully good at finding the positives in a terrible situation, Miss Amelia."
"One of the many benefits of a life hard lived," Amelia shot back, smiling. "Anyway, tell me more about growing up here. Did Brent traipse around after you like you traipsed around after Josh?" She wanted to hear more about the father of her child. Maybe understanding who he'd been in his youth would help her understand who he was, today. Maybe that understanding would help her convince him to give up his wild, wandering ways and settle down to be a father and a husband.
As if she could hear the idiocy of Amelia's thoughts, Melissa's face darkened. She lowered her attention back to her task.
"No," she said, shaking her head. "After ma died, things changed a bit around the house. Pa got pretty strict. We spent more time doing Bible studies and such than playing. He let Brent go outside, so long as Josh was with him, but I was supposed to stay close to the house. I think after... after what happened with my mother, I guess you could say he became a little protective of me. I learned to ride, but I've never ridden alone. I have to have pa or Josh with me." She rolled her eyes and shook her head. "I sit a horse better than pa, better than most of the ranch hands. I'm damn near as good as Josh, you can ask him so yourself."
Amelia didn't think she'd be asking Melissa's older brother much of anything. She'd hardly seen him since the first night at the ranch. He joined the family for breakfast and supper, but hadn't attended a noon meal since her first day and never returned in the evenings to join in their quiet, lamplit companionship. On the rare instances that he was present, he kept quiet, answering his father's terse, ranch-related questions with clipped but respectful answers that gave her an impression more of employee than of family. He didn't even look like the rest of them. Brent, his father, and Melissa all had the same brown hair and sea-green eyes. Josh looked like someone had painted Brent under harsh, dark lighting-- all hard features, dark hair, and soulless black eyes.
He didn't seem unkind, but he hardly invited conversation. He kept his head lowered and his mouth shut, shrinking deliberately into the background of the family tableau. She certainly couldn't imagine herself waltzing up to him, tapping him on the shoulder, and asking if Melissa was as good a horse rider as he was. She almost laughed at the thought, wondering what circumstances would drive her to approach someone so cold. She'd have to lose her mind to be so bold.
Unaware of Amelia's mental digression, Melissa was chattering on about the injustices of her soft, ladylike existence. "...only logical end result is that I'm thrown and trampled. Nevermind I can outride them all, I'd certainly fall off or something, right? And, you know, there's only so much to do in the immediate vicinity of this house. I've read every book in pa's study, I've tried every gardening technique I've read. I do needlework and paint and play the piano. I climb the trees out back. I keep this place clean. I cook. I do laundry. But there's only so much time one can spend doing a given thing before you need a little adventurous reprieve. Don't you agree?"
Amelia had never had the luxury of flitting from one preoccupation to another, but she did understand. St Louis was a big city, but she'd been trapped within its confines, restricted by safety, money, and social class. Her options were limited, just as Melissa's were. Their circumstances were different, but the end result was the same: boredom.
"I agree," she said, nodding. "Still, it's beautiful here. It..." she hesitated, praying that the raw, cautious hope in her heart didn't find its way to her voice. "It seems like a good place to raise a child."
"Oh, it will be," Melissa said, her smile turning bright. "And your baby won't have to deal with my pa. He or she can run wild and free and track all the mud imaginable into your home if that's how you want it to be."
Amelia laughed at the thought, allowing herself a second to imagine Brent as an invested father, cleaning mud off her screaming son. God, how she hoped it was a son. God, how she hoped Brent was around to be a father.
"Oh, that reminds me!" Melissa exclaimed, dumping the last of her chicken into the bowl and carrying her knife and cutting board to the washbasin. "We need to talk to the men at supper tonight about going for a ride and picking out a spot for your house."
"My house?" Amelia asked, dumbfounded.
"Of course! Don't get me wrong, you can live here for as long as you want. But I figure you'll be wanting your own place. I wouldn't want to live here if I didn't have to," she said laughingly, gesturing at the door to the dining room. "I'd be terrified to have a baby in here. Everything's so fragile and fancy."
Amelia shuddered at the thought of her child throwing family china or ripping out the pages of a leatherbound book. Then she smiled at the thought of a smaller home, all her own to decorate. She'd want light curtains and white linens. Pictures and paintings on every wall, knick-knacks on every shelf. The sitting room would be messy and covered with toys...
"I'd like that," she said wistfully, smiling at her cubed potatoes.
"We'll go tomorrow after church, if the weather holds," Melissa said excitedly, washing her hands in the soapy water, but Amelia was hardly listening. She was thinking of a crib beneath an open window, and curtains fluttering with a warm breeze. If all went as it should, her baby would be born in the early summer. She imagined bright sunlight slanting on new wood floors, and linens, straight off of line, smelling of heat and fresh air.
Dangerous hope curled in her belly as her mind ran rampant with the idea of a home. Her home. A place that was hers to clean, to decorate, and to lay her head each night, secure in another day. Not an orphanage or a boarding house or a guest room.
A home.