My Men by Victoria Kielland

Author:Victoria Kielland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Astra Publishing House

FISH TRAP LAKE, LOWER LAKE, CLEAR LAKE, LILY LAKE, STONE LAKE, AND PINE LAKE

LA PORTE, 1901

NOTHING WAS POINTING in the right direction, she had been given this whole life but what was she going to do with it? Bella acted blindly. She put an ad in the Chicago Tribune, maybe she could trade the house for a farm and get away, she couldn’t stay here anymore. There was no mercy in any of this. At its purest and most naked, even when kneeling against the pew—nothing. Bella had to get away, from this congregation, from the rumors, from everything breathing down her neck, and in the end everything worked out, she was offered a deal for an old pig farm a little ways outside the city, in La Porte.

Bella loaded everything onto the wagon; she had sewn the insurance money into the lining of the little coats and hidden their valuables so that highway robbers wouldn’t find them. Then they left—Myrtle, Lucy, Jennie, and Bella. There was nothing keeping them in Austin, it’s a free country. They took the cart road past the church and the graveyard, past all the white crosses stuck into the ground, so dearly loved, so dearly missed. The church shone in her burning eyes, a mother always knows a longing from the depths but Bella wasn’t a mother, or a wife, or even a sister or a daughter. She was just a grieving widow on American soil.

Bella raised her daughters to have faith in God, faith in the good in people, at least that’s what she said when someone asked, when the new priest poked his head in. You must get down on your knees, she might say, so God can forgive you. Her faith was so strong, so clear. Fortunately, the neighbors and the congregation were just glad to have a respectable person come to town at last, a Christian woman. Mother of small children. Widow with three girls. Bella took a deep breath, felt the never-ending faint prickling on her face—love with its grotesque red formations had gone too far and now she lay in a new bed in a big house like a crater of flowing hair. She said her prayers, closed her eyes. Bright sunlight streamed through the thin curtains, revealing the hint of a vaguely wondering smile in the corners of her mouth, everything swung so fast from one wall to the other, flickering one second and clearing up the next. Everything was there already, Bella had acquired two hundred acres of land with henhouses and stables, the cock’s twisted shrieks and the horses’ sweaty bodies. It was impossible to stand still. Nine lakes surrounded the farm, lakes that sparkled in the sun, still and clear like wet midpoints between the forest and the prairie. The pigs rolled in the mud, Bella felt her heart in her chest, everything pushed ahead, it was entirely natural, everything was ready and waiting for a new start.

Bella tried to tidy up. She hung

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