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After supper the stranger left and the kids gathered into the main room. Their father was sitting in a worn out rocking chair, loading his pipe and glancing down at them every now and then as they either sat, or laid on the floor. Beth stared at him for a moment from a distance. The man she had loved so dearly all her life, her father, had sold her out, for food on the table.
"Reverend Farley will marry you next Sunday, Beth, so you best be putting your heads together for some kind of dress to marry in." Her father informed her as they all crowded around the fire to listen to one of their father's tall tales he like to tell.
Just like that, she was getting married. And he didn't seem to care a whit.
"Beth's getting' married?" Joan the seven-year-old asked, looking at her sister with big eyes.
"Yes she is."
"To who?" Jacob the oldest asked, his face scrunching up in a huge frown. Jacob was one year younger than Beth and very protective of her.
Maybe Jacob could change her father's mind!
"Mr. Cahill, the man that had supper with us." Her father explained. "I told you all, she's engaged now."
"She don't even know him." Jacob shook his head. "How can she marry a perfect stranger?"
"Don't matter. She's getting married. The subject is closed. It's arranged." Her father told them. "He's asked for her hand. And I accepted."
Jacob shot Beth a strange look. Was he pitying her?
All the kids looked from one to the other. This was big news, and few knew what to think of it.
"She's leaving us?" Janet her younger sister cried out. Janet was ten and always curious and sometimes overly dramatic.
Carolyn glanced at Beth, and looked really startled. She was just going through puberty and everything upset her lately.
"All of you will eventually leave as you get married. Maybe not the boys, but you girls will." Her father told them. "It's the way life is. Girls marry and move off with their husbands. Nothing strange about that. Just part of life."
But tears formed in Janet's eyes as she turned to her younger sister Joan, "But I'll miss her, does she have to go?"
Most of the kids laid on the floor, side by side. The house was big, old, and falling apart. There were leaks in the roof, gaps in the floor and all number of problems, but it was home and they all made the best of it.
Her brothers, Jacob, Matthew, Daniel, Mark, Luke and James all stared at her with their mouths open.
Beth grabbed Martina's hand and they went back to the bedroom, a room full of bunk beds, and one regular bed in the middle of the room. Four other sisters slept in this room aside from her and Martina. Sometimes Martina and Beth would complain that they never had any privacy, but today Beth looked at the room and knew how much she would miss it.
"Wedding dress? I don't have no wedding dress." Beth cried when she shut the door. "I got two dresses to my name."
But her mother was on the other side of the door and came through. She was holding Ruth the three-year-old on her hip. Her mother saw her expression and she reached to touch her cheek. "You can use mine…I can take it in for you. We'll measure you tomorrow after you bath in the creek."
"Bath in the creek? Tomorrow isn't Saturday and I'm not going to town."
"No, but you are trying on my wedding dress and you will be spotless young lady. I plan to pass that dress down to every one of you, and we must take care of it."
Beth looked wide-eyed. "I really got to go through with this? I mean…I don't know him Mama. He's handsome, but…I don't know nothing about him. He's a stranger. When you used to talk to me and Martina, you talked about the men we would fall in love with. Well…I'm not in love! Not yet at least."
Her mother glanced about the clean room, and nodded. Even her heart was heavy that her first born was leaving, Beth could tell. But she squared her shoulders and faced Beth with the truth of it.
"Beth you are twenty years old. Another year or so and people would be callin' you an old maid." She looked Beth in the eyes and saw the surprise n her face.
"Old maid! Mama!"
"I know, you're still a ch
ild in some ways, but it's time you were growing up, dear. It's time you were marrying any way. This man seems very nice and clean and quite good looking. What's wrong with that?" Her mother asked. "It's not like you are marrying some old man or ugly man."
"What's wrong with it?" Beth moved away to show her displeasure. "What's wrong with it Mama, is that I have no choice, that's what is wrong." Beth argued. "I don't know the man, I don't have any feelings for him. And yet you expect me to marry him. What happened to love, Mama? I thought marriage was about love. You've taught us that since we were little. Love is the most important thing, you said. Am I wrong. Don't you love Pa?"
