April showers will come, so they say
But they don't, and it's May
You're about to forget the whole thing...
All at once, one day, it's Spring
Alice tucked Helen into bed in her old bedroom in her parents' house, and then, everyone sat around the kitchen table while she and Gideon told Helen's story, which was more exotic than they could've imagined. Helen wasn't simply from back east, which would've been impressive by itself. She was actually from Ireland. "Ireland, clear across the sea!" Gideon exclaimed. Adam's jaw dropped to think that this little girl had already crossed an entire ocean, while he had never even traveled as far as Eugene.
Helen was born in a place called County Kilkenny, where her mother died giving birth to her. Times were hard in Ireland – the whole country was feeling the effects of a famine – and when Helen was six, she and her father boarded a ship bound for America. Her father found work in New York, in a neighborhood full of other Irish immigrants. But New York was a very crowded city, packed with more people in one block than in this whole Oregon town. Helen and her father lived in a building called a tenement, where diseases spread easily. After about two years in America, her father died of scarlet fever. Helen was taken in by some kind neighbors, a couple who'd been friends of her father. But the neighbors were barely getting by themselves, and after a year, they had to give Helen to an orphanage in Brooklyn, a different part of the city. After a year at the orphanage, she was put on the orphan train, along with two dozen other children. The other children were all hardier and stronger than Helen and were picked out by families in farming towns across the Midwest. By the time the train reached the depot in Eugene, Oregon, the end of the line, Helen was the only child left – just her and one of the stern old nuns who ran the orphanage.
Silence fell over the table when Gideon and Alice reached the end of Helen's long, sad story. Her life didn't seem so exotic or impressive anymore. Millie and Mrs. Elcott both had tears in their eyes. Adam almost felt like crying himself, when he imagined Hannah being tossed from place to place, with no real home or family, like Helen had.
"An' the orphanage sent her out west to do farm work!" Mrs. Elcott fussed, wiping her eyes. "That poor mite is barely big enough to cast a shadow."
"Well, I'll put some weight on her," Alice said, her eyes shining. "I'm goin' to stuff her like a Christmas goose. I'll make her buttermilk biscuits and sweet potato pudding and smoked sausages and apple pie and griddlecakes with molasses and…"
"Well, don't feed it to her all at once, Alice," Millie said, laughing a little and patting Alice's arm.
Alice laughed too, though her eyes with glistening with tears. There were so many years of pent-up motherhood inside her, long denied and now bursting to be free. She and Gideon went to look in on Helen before they went to bed. "I'm goin' to do everythin' for her, Gideon," she whispered, stroking their new daughter's cheek in the moonlight. "Read her bedtime stories and tuck her in and braid her hair and sew her clothes and everythin'."
"Course you are," Gideon said, wrapping one arm around her shoulders. "She'll have the finest ma this side of the Mississippi."
God has a plan for you, Alice, her father had told her after her last miscarriage, and Alice saw now that it was true. All these years that she and Gideon had been trying for a baby, somewhere far away, this little girl had been suffering sorrows of her own. All these years, God had his hands on them, planning to bring them together at the railroad depot in Eugene. It felt to Alice just like her first winter on the Pontipee farm, which dragged on for so long that she'd given up hope of spring ever coming. She'd given up hope of ever being a mother too, but now, all at once, it was spring.
Adam, Millie, and the Elcotts got their first good look at Helen the next morning, over breakfast. Adam would've never guessed that she was ten, the same age as Hannah. Hannah was a hardy farm girl, always rosy-cheeked and bright-eyed from so much time outdoors. But Helen was a little slip of a thing, with pale, sunken cheeks and eyes that stayed downcast, shy around so many new people.
She was so shy, in fact, that Gideon pulled Adam to one side and asked him and Millie to ride ahead of them to the farm, to tell the rest of the family about Helen. "Tell 'em to act real natural when we get there, like she been there all along," Gideon said, and Adam nodded, proud of his youngest brother, who was already proving to be a good father. "With all this gettin' used to, she ain't ready to have a big fuss made over her."
Adam glanced back at Helen and shook his head. "Just seems mighty strange to me," he said softly, "you and Alice leavin' the farm last week by yourselves, and comin' back now with a gal Hannah's age."
Gideon smirked. "Oh, yeah, Adam?" he challenged. "Do it seem as strange as you ridin' off to Bixby's store to trade still a bachelor, and comin' back the same day married to Millie?"
Adam laughed at that. "Well, I guess that's 'bout right. Guess this family always had a strange way of doin' things. Helen should fight right in."
The Elcotts' old baby things – a gown and silver rattle that had been in their family for generations – had long been tucked away in a chest, where Alice couldn't see them and have her heart broken again over losing so many babies. Those things wouldn't do for Helen, of course, but the Elcotts did have some things to give her. After breakfast, while Adam and Millie rode back to the farm, Mrs. Elcott presented Helen with a doll, a children's Bible, and some dresses, still in good condition, that had belonged to Alice when she was a little girl. Reverend Elcott added her name to the family tree in his Bible, along with County Kilkenny, Ireland, and her date of birth.
Helen kept very quiet through all this, but Alice tried not to let that trouble her. Surely she would open up when they brought her home to the farm in all its May glory. Alice winced to imagine what Helen's first impression would've been if they'd adopted her during the bleak, dreary wintertime, but they had the weather on their side now. If she and Gideon couldn't win this child over, the springtime would.
"There ain't nothin' on earth like a farm in spring," Alice promised her, after they said goodbye to her parents and began the trip up to the farm. "Just wait till you see it." Helen sat on the wagon seat between them, and Alice and Gideon told her about the sunshine and fresh air, the meadows full of flowers, the fuzzy baby chicks in the warm hay of the hen-house, and the young calves in the barn with their big, soft eyes. As the town disappeared behind them and the wagon climbed into the hills, Helen's little face lost its sad, shy look, and her eyes began to shine.
So much of her life had been confined to the noisy, grimy push of the city. But now, it seemed that a whole new world was waiting for her at the top of these hills. She had never in her life picked an apple straight off a tree or milked a cow or made a daisy-chain; back in New York, all the apples came in crates, all the milk was in bottles, and the few flowers that grew in the city parks looked too paltry for making into chains. Perhaps Helen would be happy in this new home. She would have cousins and farm animals to play with. She would have parents to take care of her. She told herself that they weren't replacing her parents in heaven, because they had been her mam and da, while these new people were her ma and pa.
"I know you'll be real glad of livin' with us," Alice said, still trying to raise her spirits, "just as soon as we get you all settled in."
Helen took a deep breath. "I'm glad of it already," she said softly, though she kept her eyes down, still too shy to look up. Her voice still carried a lilting Irish accent, and the sound of it made Alice's heart melt. This must be how it felt to a mother hearing her baby's first cry.
"I feel so glad I could yell," Helen added, finally raising her head.
At those words, a slow smile spread over Gideon's face. By now, of course, he knew the story about Millie's first trip to the farm and how Adam never told her that he had six brothers. He knew about Millie saying those same words as she and Adam rode through his same mountain pass – Echo Pass, which had played such a role in their family story.
"Go ahead," Gideon said quietly to Helen, grinning now.
Helen was usually too shy to even raise her voice, but now, the beauty of the sky over the mountain pass struck her and moved her to boldness. Just as another new member of the Pontipee family had done ten years ago, Helen tilted her head towards the sun and cried, "Hooray!"
The look of wonder on her face as her own voice bounced back to her, echoing off the pass a bell ringing, made Gideon and Alice laugh. Feeling like a real family now, the three of them rode home together, to the farm and the welcome that was waiting for them.
I tried to bring the story full-circle with this chapter, and even though there's an air of finality to it, this might not be the last chapter, either. :)