Strawberries & Cream

by MASON CASHMAN 

I remember Mémère once telling me about her cow; about how she stepped so gingerly through the snow that her hooves barely made a print; about how she seemed to remember that the long narrow strip of grazing pasture was all they had and so paced herself; about how she never wandered farther than the fork in the stream before it tumbled down the rippling falls by the mill just before town.

I remember Mémère once telling me about their farm, though by then her memories were almost all scattered in hazy mist.

She leaned forward in her rocking chair, blonde maple hewn by her first husband creaking, and placed her hand over mine. I leaned in, of course, cradling her small weathered left hand in my right, spring melt veins forking under pale freckled paper skin, her built legacy etched in wagon rut wrinkles and pine switch tendons stretched over burnished fieldstone knuckles.

But memories of her years nearly alone were all still there, of Henri’s letters home, of her parents in the meadow, of the little kicks in her belly getting stronger each day. She was barely seventeen.

She lived them again and again. And I listened.

A whisper, her eyes closed—“Piton, Henri, my sweet boy, have I told you of Estelle?”

Foothills of the Green Mountains rolled around us, feeling my bare feet settled in the cool damp of the morning grass. Blush clouds lilted over their soil-bound sisters, the rows upon rows of strawberries peeking out from under their green scalloped bonnets. Mémère told me she would call to Estelle on these summer mornings when they were both still youthful, not yet mothers, meeting her in her stable with breakfast before the day’s work truly began. Rogue berries would be plucked along the trodden path from the cedar shingled farmhouse to the barn’s rough door. The hinge would creak open to spill light over its residents. An armful of sweet long grass would be laid as a treat for Estelle as Mémère settled into the stool to milk her.

Estelle would fill her milking pails swiftly, standing proud with brindle hair softly wrapping her round growing middle, warmed by the light leaning through the open barn door. Mémère would wobble with the heavy pails, but her hands were used to this work. Her life on the farm, her whole life, took strong hands, strong heart, and strong faith. Sometimes calloused hands. Always opened heart. Never hopeless faith.

Leading Estelle into the pasture, Mémère would survey the slender stretch abutting the stream, their few small acres, as she removed the lead. Cud-chewing mouth would tip skyward to watch the flitting birds along the treeline as Mémère laid her hand behind Estelle’s ears, rubbing soft circles of affection. Gate closed, Estelle could roam free, but instead she would follow Mémère’s patterns, grazing just a few paces away. A kinship. Estelle had, after all, introduced Mémère to her husband.

My mother had told the tale to me and my sister countless nights as I stared out the window at the stars emerging over the rustling maples. It was our family’s fairy tale of the north country. Our lineage.

Henri was the boy with strong but gentle hands and inquisitive dark eyes. They were an honest family, six boys with Henri the youngest, their father having passed before Henri could know him. They owned the aging dairy farm just as far from town as Mémère’s berry patches but in the opposite direction, arced up the pine hill and swathed into the valley. Henri was then barely seventeen, and Mémère just shy of two years younger. He approached her after church in town one early spring Sunday, head low, squinting though light bouncing off white clapboard and snowdrift corners refusing to melt. He had heard her family’s one dairy cow was expecting soon. With Mémère’s mother newly widowed and her only older brother away in the war, Henri offered his services for the calf’s delivery.

The calf was born as the meltwater streams were rushing, though her mother passed during her birth. She was named Estelle for the cross of white tufted amidst the brindle on her forehead, and for the shine in her mother’s eyes before they closed. Henri brought milk and cream to Mémère and her mother until Estelle was old enough to breed and begin producing herself. Mémère brought him fresh strawberries in return.

They married as soon as he finished school; she did not. Henri enlisted for the war in the cooling of that summer, following all of his brothers except the oldest, who they said to be simple but still a good man.

Mémère had just grown accustomed to Henri’s absence, missing him daily, managing the farm with her aging mother well enough, when she learned she was with child. She prayed Henri could be home for when the time arrived. Soon, in the mornings pricked with crystalline dew, Mémère learned their child would not know a grandmother’s stories of sweet summer berries. Henri’s brother opened the earth, and Mémère’s parents rested together in the meadow before the frost held firm.

Mémère stood tall through the winter, Estelle by her side, both mothers-to-be of children feared never able to know their matrilineage. She managed her farm, protected her child, and prayed. Henri wrote often. Mémère read them over and over, and wrote back as the sun rose earlier and the stream’s denizens sang to the stars.

“Mémère, what did he say in his letters?” I remember I asked, soft summer air then lingering on my tongue.

It felt odd to call Henri by name, our name; I was given his. I never knew my mother’s father, as he was gone before I could see the man who Mémère often believes I am. I will always let her believe.

Estelle would nose Mémère’s hand as the paper fluttered in warm breeze carrying goldenrod and dandelion, a cool wet swipe on the back of her wrist. Rested onto the oak stump near the pasture’s gate, bark peeled and edges worn smooth, hand on her growing belly, Mémère would read, and Estelle would listen.

My beloved bride, Henri’s letters all began. Alice, my angel,

He would detail his days in camp before moving to the front.

He would apologize, always, for writing less often than he wished he could.

He would tell how he would not be able to write again for a while, as they would soon be landing in France.

Her hand was an autumn last-green trembling in my palm, her eyes again closed. Mémère recited lines from memory, all in soft reverence.

It hurts to know that I am hurting you, Alice. Alice, my early apple blossom with your amber eyes and your sweet dimples and your laugh to brighten any room. I cannot begin to say how much I miss you. I am endlessly sorry I have to keep detail from you about my location, or my safety, or even of just my thoughts on what I have to do. When I am home, I will make it right for us. I will do right for you and our child, who I cannot wait to hold tight and tell stories before bed.

Wavering fingers of her left hand traced the pads of my right palm, wandering with her husband’s words, as her right hand opened and closed through the air, grasping for his letter to materialize. Ink on paper over trickling forked streams under soft paper skin.

And Henri would ask about Estelle, saying that his brother, the oldest, still on the dairy farm on the pine hill and in the valley, could help with the calf’s delivery when it was time.

My mother had never told me the rest of the tale until I was older, and even still said it sparsely. Mémère had then told me, when I asked, but not until I was the age she was when she felt it all, her years so nearly alone.

Estelle’s calf arrived while the cattails were newly high and the stream was starting to slow. A cricket’s choir and day-warmed hay wrapped the mother and child as Henri’s brother helped unfold her new legs, wipe clean her new eyes. A white crescent curled through brindle around the calf’s neck, wet matted in that first evening. Mémère knew better than to name a calf so soon. Henri’s brother looked to Mémère, and in his one nod, his way of speaking, she understood that her own time was soon as well. Thumbs were rubbed behind Estelle’s ears in care, in love, in gratitude and knowing that strength was to be mustered, and Mémère made her way into and across and out from town to the aging dairy farm up the pine hill and in the valley, to her husband’s mother. A letter was sent to Henri. Henri’s brother stayed with Estelle and the new calf, fresh to the world with strawberry seed freckles in her coat.

Mémère returned to the trodden path between the cedar-shingled farmhouse and the barn’s rough door in short time, her blush-cheeked daughter now swaddled snug to her chest; Henri’s brother had gone back up the pine hill. Estelle laid cradling her calf as the nights began to stretch, and did not lift her head as Mémère creaked open the barn door. The crickets did not sing, the stream humming soft over burnished pebbles.

The calf did not stir.

Henri’s brother again opened the earth, and Estelle’s calf soon rested in the meadow.

Mémère held her daughter close, rocking in the blonde maple chair in time with the wind’s hushed whistle, as she unfolded a new letter. Finally, word from the front, as Henri had landed in France. Mémère found the letter gave no call to her, Henri’s beloved bride; no ask of Estelle. She found it gave call to Mrs. Henri Gagne, now sole proprietress of her rows upon rows of strawberries and her long narrow strip of grazing pasture and her family’s one dairy cow. He was to have been given news of their daughter, sent home for early leave in time for her christening. Mémère held her daughter closer, and she prayed, knowing Henri would still, now, be home soon.

At the break of morning, cradling her daughter, Mémère creaked open the barn’s rough door as rusted leaves skittered. Soft glow fell onto Estelle as she lifted her head. Her eyes shone like her mother’s, watching Mémère settle onto the stool, and Estelle brought her head forward, gently nosing the infant sleeping softly. Mémère’s fingertip traced the cross of white tufted on Estelle’s forehead, a pink drip smudging into the snowdrift as they shared a small breakfast of the season’s last strawberries, pulled from the icebox, still sweet.

I remember Mémère trailing off in her story of Estelle, her gaze drifting back into hazy mist, her memories untethered, the stream babbling onward from the farm and through the fields and past the fork and by the mill where she found work, backbreaking, to support her daughter, my mother.

Mémère looked over to me and relaxed back into her chair. I remained leaned in towards her. Mémère, my beloved Alice, sat so small in her rocking chair hewn by her first husband as a wedding gift, a place to rock their children to sleep and tell them stories together. Her hand rested onto the rocking chair’s arm, dotted with pale pink strawberry stains, drops of sweet lineage.

“Estelle. She was like our first daughter, Henri.”

I squeezed Mémère’s hand, gently.

I remember she gave a soft smile, one I know as now being my own, too.

“Oh, Henri, I’ve missed you,” she said. “Oh, I’ve missed you both.”