She was moving her stool to the last cow for this evening. She rose with the stool in her hand. Then she felt such a sudden heavy pain that her body bent forward. Without her knowing how it had happened she was on the stable floor.
The pain was intense, cutting like a knife through her body. She was sitting on the floor, with the stool in one hand and the pail in the other, and was unable to rise. She remained there, staring in disbelief before her, as if she had done something unreasonable and foolish. The cow she had just finished milking turned its head and looked at her in surprise, as if asking: What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you finished with me? Why do you sit on the floor?
The sharp pain in her abdomen eased but left a fretting itching sensation. It was her old ailment. Then she suddenly felt moist between her legs. Something warm streamed down the inside of her thighs, toward her knees. The fluid kept coming: From inside her body, something pleasantly lukewarm flowed over her cold skin.
Kristina knew what it was. She recognized the tepid, sticky substance that flowed down her legs. She had had this same experience once before on a spring day when she was beating wash down at the lake. She need not lift her skirt to look. She was sure: red runnels down the inside of her thighs and legs. The red flow had come over her again at the moment she rose from the milking stool.
It was Kristina’s own blood that warmed her cold, stiff limbs. But what did it mean? She didn’t know. She only knew that she must get away from here, she must leave the stool and the milk pail.
She tried to raise herself but her legs shook under her, and only at the third attempt did she manage. She was standing straight now and moved one foot with the utmost effort. She took a few steps toward the door. There she sank down to the floor for the second time.
She remembered that Karl Oskar was currying the horses and she called to him. She called several times before he heard.
He rushed up to her: “What’s the matter? Have you hurt yourself? You look pale!”
“I think I’m bleeding. .”
He shot hurried questions at her but she only asked him to help her inside.
The wife put her arms around the husband’s neck and he carried her inside the house. Before she lay down on her bed she removed her skirts. The children grew frightened at the sight of her bloody legs. Karl Oskar found some towel rags and dried her. The blood stuck to her skin so that she felt horribly gory, as she did when cleaning up a carcass after slaughter. She tied broad strips of rags around her as a bandage, but the blood kept on trickling. The flow stopped only after it had drenched a second bandage.
Each word from Karl Oskar was blurted out in apprehension. He wanted to send for Manda Svensson, the neighbor’s wife, who knew something about ailments. Perhaps she could staunch blood? But Kristina said that she was not with child, and so she needed no helping woman. This was not a childbed, not a miscarriage. Therefore it could not be very dangerous; the bleeding would soon be over.
But her assurance did not calm Karl Oskar; rather it increased his anxiety. If the bleeding had been caused by a miscarriage he could have understood it. Then it would have been something natural. But such was not the case and he had to ask: What could this mean?
Kristina had never mentioned to him the pain in her lower abdomen she had felt for so long.
— 2—
Next morning Kristina’s bleeding had entirely stopped. She had been lying on her back as still as she could the whole night. But she was very weak and stayed in bed.
“You’re limp because you’ve lost blood,” said Karl Oskar.
He sent Johan to summon Manda Svensson and it didn’t take long before their neighbor woman was sitting at Kristina’s bedside. She was eager to help, for it was in her nature to take charge and decide for others. In her own home she ruled her submissive husband. Manda was the farmer’s daughter who had married the hired hand. The couple could never become equal, as she had refused to give up the upper hand she had had over her husband from the beginning. Ever since they had come to America she had remained the boss who decided and her husband remained her hired hand.
When Manda heard that it was not a miscarriage that had forced Kristina to take to her bed, she said, “I believe you must be bleeding from pure weakness. That’s a common female trouble. It could also be bleeding sickness.”
Kristina must drink a concoction of healing herbs, insisted the neighbor’s wife. She would have liked to prepare such a concoction but the herbs she needed grew only in Sweden, and she dared not pick and cook from those which grew here in America. She might get hold of poisonous plants. Once she had picked some unfamiliar berries and had vomited them up again; ever after she had been scared of American plants.
She advised Kristina to lie quite still with heated caldron lids on her stomach, night and day. If she had evil fluids in her body they would thus dry up and disappear.
Kristina listened to her neighbor with half an ear. She was not worried about herself. If the Creator wished to take her away from this world, what did it concern her what sickness hastened her departure?
Her weakness forced her to stay in bed. Meanwhile, Karl Oskar was filled with concern for his wife. He prepared nourishing food for the sick one, skimmed the cream off the milk and gave it to her, killed hens that weren’t laying and boiled chicken soup for her, and prepared egg dishes of various kinds. He thought good food would put her on her feet again. But her strength came back very slowly.
The inside chores she had planned this winter remained undone. She had intended to put up the loom and do some weaving; the wool needed carding and spinning after the sheepshearing of last summer; she had wanted to make clothes for the children on her new sewing machine. Before, it would have bothered her that nothing could be done, but now she no longer was disturbed by neglect of worldly concerns. Why should woolen yarn and looms and clothes disturb the peace in her soul? Why should she be concerned for her daily needs which she soon would discard?
But there were chores in the house that must be attended to, and Karl Oskar and Marta assumed them in her place. They helped each other as best they could. From her bed she gave her husband and daughter instructions: how the milking must be done, how much skimmed milk to save for the calves, how to preserve the cream for butter. And they came to her and asked about the cooking: how long they must fire the oven before baking, when to put in the cornbread, how much time was required for the yellow peas, how to handle the pans on the Prairie Queen to keep the food from sticking to the bottom.
From a man never trained for women’s chores there was nothing to expect, and less from a girl not yet fifteen. Kristina praised her successors when they succeeded and scolded them when they failed. However carefully she told them what to do they still made mistakes. There were accidents and failures. Some chores were well performed, others were done in a slovenly way or entirely wrong. And she could see it so clearly; as yet there was no one to take her place — in this house she was still irreplaceable.
She felt no concern for herself. She had peace. Karl Oskar tried to cure her with cream, chicken soup, and egg dishes, Manda Svensson with heated kettle lids. But she had only one she trusted, one who could give her back her health. Her close and loved ones needed her and she felt that God for their sake would let her remain in this world a little longer.
— 3—
Toward the end of January Kristina had regained so much of her strength that she could get up for short intervals and resume some of the easier chores. The merciless cold had eased a little and she didn’t feel chilled so quickly.
Ulrika Jackson came one day to their house with a belated Christmas present for little Ulrika: She had knitted a woolen blouse for her goddaughter. She had planned to come during the holidays but had not dared because of the bitter cold.