From the Improvement Era, August 1954 —

The Kaleidoscope

By Iris Schow

Having planted his small reserve of corn, Paul Blake leaned on his hoe, contemplating the pink froth of bloom that was his Willard peach orchard. The twenty years since he came from Salt Lake City in 1853 had seen much progress, he reflected. He turned at a sound from the direction of the new stone house. Rhoda, his youngest child, was trying to hurry across the garden without spilling a drop from the thick mug she carried.

Neither running nor spilling, she walked rapidly. Even so, Paul thought, she possessed at eight years something of the inherent dignity of her mother. Her white forehead intensified the smooth line of her black hair. Lydia must have been just such a child, erect-shouldered, quick of movement. Of course, at closer range Rhoda’s brown eyes, which were like his own, interfered with the illusion somewhat.

“Mama said she thought you’d like some cool buttermilk,” said Rhoda crisply. “Here’s the corn. I’ll untie the knot while you drink.”

She passed him the mug and began untying the small muslin bag in her calm, businesslike way. “Mama also said,” she continued, rising eagerness shining in her dark eyes, “Mama also said that if you didn’t mind planting the rest of the corn alone, I could tend Emmy’s baby awhile.”

“Sister Sawyer’s baby,” Paul corrected.

“Sister Sawyer’s baby. But everyone calls her Emmy except me!”

“I try to have Annie and the boys say Sister Sawyer, Rhoda. You’ve helped a lot today. I don’t mind planting the rest alone.”

Paul began transferring corn to his right pocket. Then noticing Rhoda’s look of happiness almost too great to bear, he added, “I’m afraid you care more for Sister Sawyer’s baby than for your own sister Henrietta’s little Robert.”

“Oh, I like little Robert, only I hardly ever get to Ogden to see him. But tending Baby Marie is about like having a baby of our own.” Rhoda’s forehead wrinkled thoughtfully. “You’d think it couldn’t be, when her hair is brown and she is a baby, but when she cuddles up against me, she makes me think of a dear little lamb!”

Recalling the baby’s tight, damp curls, Paul understood. “But remember, Rhoda,” he said slowly, “that you shouldn’t get to loving someone else’s baby like your own little sister. Something might happen so you couldn’t see her. People sometimes move away or. … ”

“You mean I shouldn’t tend her today?” The effort to keep her lips from quivering flattened and stifled her voice.

“No,” said Paul. “Just be a big girl and think about what I’ve said.”

Suddenly she grasped his arm and looked up earnestly almost pleadingly. “Father, I’d never want to tend Marie if only we had a dear little baby!”

She began to cry in a thin, childish treble of partially controlled weeping. Kneeling, Paul cradled her head against his shoulder. “Father’s big girl mustn’t cry,” he crooned. “You must be happy in the place God gave you in life. Someone must be the youngest in the family, just as someone must be the oldest. Now go play with the baby.”

Paul watched Rhoda pass the well and disappear around the new stone house. “Someone,” he had said, “must be the youngest in the family, just as someone must be the oldest.” The words evoked the memory of Hiram, his eldest, whose earthly body had rested in Nauvoo since 1846 and of a second little grave beside the Green River. Then William, their firstborn of this new land, had thrived beneath their care.

William, Henrietta, Heber, Annie, and Joseph: each had brought the special problems of a special individuality, but Rhoda’s unfolding aroused the most frequent apprehensions in his mind.

Well, this wasn’t planting corn! So, with a minimum of motion he proceeded up the row. Whacking a pocket, dropping the hard kernels, pushing the soil back with one firm pat of the hoe, taking one step forward — this was merely a slower method of stepping off land. And while doing so he could dream of exciting things he had done. Indeed, it was a dull occupation for one who had piloted a steamboat on the Mississippi, yet from the first there had been a healthy fascination in doing it. How many years he had planted small garden patches, now alone and again with one talkative child or sometimes two, learning to pop the corn into the ground!

The planting finished, Paul stopped at the well for a drink. He noticed the artificial bird’s nests Rhoda had molded painstakingly from mud and grass in her little wooden bowl and set under each corner of the well-roof to invite occupation. More were drying on the well-curb.

Paul had a worried smile for this reminder of how Rhoda set her heart on the impossible. When he had said that he doubted the cleanliness of enticing birds to nest under the well-roof, Lydia remarked that it was all right, as no birds would accept nests made by people anyway. Rhoda had been polite, but insistent, finally commenting, “Maybe some kind of bird Mama doesn’t know about will lay eggs in my nests.”

Oh, well, he reflected, going on to the house, her interest in nest-making was flagging a little.

Washing up in the kitchen, Paul heard Lydia and fifteen-year-old Annie talking with a neighbor in the parlor. “Yes,” Lydia admitted, “Heber is young to be on a mission. But once boys get married without going, as William did, it’s harder to get off. That’s how it went with Henrietta’s husband, although his family always wanted him to go.”

“Your youngest boy’s a big help, I notice,” said Sister Andrews, as Paul entered the parlor.

He had scarcely exchanged greetings and expressed agreement with the conversation in progress, when Rhoda rushed into the room, a flashing-eyed, panting example of a child both seen and heard.

“Father! Father!” she cried. “Emmy said she would sell little Marie for a gold dollar! Hurry, hurry, Father! You’ll let me get her, won’t you?”

Searching for a wise answer, Paul drew the excited child to his knee. “Sister Sawyer was joking, Rhoda,” he said soothingly. “Mothers don’t sell their babies.”

“She said to bring one gold dollar, and she’d give me the baby today!” persisted Rhoda.

“Land sakes, child!” exclaimed Sister Andrews. “Emma is only fooling! Everybody knows there’s no such thing as a gold dollar!”

“That’s what Emmy thinks,” said Paul. “Yes, there are gold dollars, and Lydia has one among her keepsakes. But Sister Sawyer would never give you her baby for it.”

“Oh, yes, she would, Father! You don’t know how serious she was! She said money was scarcer than hen’s teeth, and gold was better than silver. So if Mama will give me her gold dollar, I can go get little Marie.”

“Well, before I’d be such a silly — ” said Annie, her gray eyes cool with lately gained majority.

“Emmy means it!” insisted Rhoda, near tears. “Nobody knows that she means it but me!”

“I believe it’s best to let Rhoda see for herself, Lydia,” said Paul.

“Taking part in light-minded nonsense about separating a mother and her baby doesn’t seem right to me,” Lydia stated. Knowing she was remembering the loss of her own two little ones increased Paul’s annoyance at Emmy. Trifling with Rhoda’s desire for a baby was unkind!

“They both need this lesson,” Paul said. “Emmy used something she thought Rhoda didn’t know to trifle with the child’s affections. Now, if you’ll let me have the gold dollar, Lydia, I’ll make use of something Emmy doesn’t know to trifle a bit with hers!”

“Well, if you think it will help—” Lydia conceded.

“Annie shall go with you, Rhoda,” continued Paul, “to show Emmy we mean it. Tell her your mother and I will be most happy to have the baby and offer her the gold dollar.”

A quiet ecstasy possessed Rhoda.” Her smile cut at Paul’s heart when she turned in the doorway to say, “Oh, thank you, Father.” Then they left him dreading their return.

Before long they were back. Rhoda’s dark eyes burned in the pallor of her tense little face. “Here’s your dollar, Mama,” she said stiffly. “Emmy wasn’t telling the truth about selling the baby.” Tears shone on her long lashes, but she was not actually crying.

“When Sister Sawyer finally understood that you and Mama really wanted the baby, and when she saw it was a gold dollar, she bawled like a baby,” stated Annie. “She said anybody should know she was just fooling because Rhoda sets such store by Marie. And she just blubbered!”

“She was real serious when she first said she’d sell her,” contended Rhoda. “And little Marie tried to pat-a-cake. She can’t quite do it, but she just tries!” The memory brought her tears, and she buried her face on Lydia’s shoulder.

“There, there, Honey,” said Lydia. “You’re no worse off than you were before. You can still play with the baby.”

“I don’t want to now!” Lydia’s worried glance met Paul’s.

“The child will make herself sick,” she said.

“She might be better off outside helping me,” Paul suggested. “We’ll need some fresh water for supper, Rhoda. Let’s go after it.”

Lydia wiped Rhoda’s eyes, and Paul led the child away.

“I was sure Emmy meant it,” said Rhoda.

“People can look like they do,” Paul replied. “You mustn’t be so upset. She was just having a little joke.”

“It wasn’t a, thing to joke about.” Rhoda’s lips quivered.

“We must learn that there isn’t anything that some people won’t joke about. We mustn’t get upset over their fooling.”

“Emmy got very upset when you and Mama really wanted Marie.”

“She thought we were too old and had too many children to want another baby,” Paul said, smiling faintly.

“You do, don’t you, Father?” Rhoda insisted.

Paul sobered. “If one of my children needed to bring a baby home to live, you would see how much I’d love it,” he said. “Let’s get the water. Sister Andrews has gone, and I hear Mama and Annie clattering the kettles. We’ll soon have supper.”

“I don’t think I want any,” said Rhoda, but she followed him.

After supper Paul sat outside reading, while Lydia’s knitting needles clicked steadily. Rhoda was sitting alone in the lengthening shadow of the well. Sometimes she snapped one of her mud birds’ nests in two absently.

The soft crunch of a buggy’s wheels turning in at the gate took their attention, and the next instant Henrietta appeared, driving competently, although little Robert sat on her lap. Paul tied the horses, while Lydia reached for the baby, whose twinkling blue eyes smiled as he came to her willingly.

“He’s a featherweight, Etta, but such a sweet disposition!” exclaimed Lydia.

“I’m sure he’s healthy, Mother,” said Henrietta anxiously, tucking back a tendril of her brown hair. “John’s coming,” she added, laughter lighting her clear gray eyes. “He’s having one of his interesting struggles with your gate, Father.”

“He always could get it open,” Paul laughed, “but a city man can’t be expected to know how to shut a gate.”

“Something wonderful has happened!” exclaimed Henrietta. “John has a call on a mission to Scandinavia, and Father Hansen will run the butcher shop alone and pay John’s expenses if Robert and I may stay here. I’ll help pick peaches,” she finished earnestly.

“Never mind the work, Henrietta,” said Paul. “We’ll enjoy having you. And the baby,” he added, noticing Rhoda’s slow approach, “may be what we need most right now.”

“You little thought I’d bring Etta back to you so soon, did you, sir?” inquired John, joining them.

“I warn you I’d be riled up if you did it for anything but a mission,” replied Paul.

“Come inside,” urged Lydia, “it’s chilly for the baby.”