I have something for you. She unfolds the pillowcase
she’s been embroidering all these weeks—thousands
of tiny stitches, daisies and roses and butterflies,
and in one corner, a bluebird stitched in such detail
it looks like it will fly right off the cloth into the sky.
It’s something I’d expect her to give Emma
as a wedding gift—why is she giving it to me?
I know the answer without asking: she’s been stitching
all her dreams for Frank, trying to hold them steady—
no doubt I’m part of them. She holds it out to me;
I put my hands under hers and let the pillowcase
drape both our arms. Then I’m crying,
we both are, our tears watering the garden
she has made. Thank you, I say,
and she says, Those are lucky children,
waiting for you in Washington.
The Scent of Soap
Ollie
Slings. Bandages. Red cross and white cap.
Smell of antiseptic. Squeaking wheel on the medic’s cart.
Cold sweat—I wake up. No, I’m not over there—then where am I?
I must be home. Yes, here in my childhood room. (I hope I didn’t scream.)
Alone, dark night. But yes, home. I’ve been dreaming, remembering the war …
yet not only the war. Something new … like clean sheets, fresh off the clothesline,
sweet. Maybe the scent of soap? Lilac soap. And Emma’s whisper. Oh! I remember.
Meet me at midnight in Grace’s playhouse, Ollie. I was so sure I wouldn’t fall asleep! I
get up (everyone else seems to be sleeping) and meet Emma as we planned. I take
a stone I’ve polished, and offer it. It’s beautiful, she says. Then she mentions
my missing arm. She says, Let me see it. The stump of it? No! I say. I’ve
told her it is hideous. She touches it through my shirt. I’m adamant.
Tell me why not, Ollie. It’s one part of—who I love. So I show her.
Wings of a butterfly could not be as gentle as Emma’s touch.
I Step onto the Train
January 1918
Now, in the Distance
Muriel
I could still change my mind.
Until I’m actually on the train—I hear it now
in the distance—I could turn to Mama
(wearing her new hat) and Papa, each holding
one of Grace’s hands. I could turn to Emma—
and to Ollie, carrying my suitcase with such
a natural rhythm anyone would think he’s had
only one arm since he was born. I could turn
to Mrs. Norman, standing at Mr. Norman’s side, his hand
resting on her shoulder. I could turn to all of them
and say, I’m not going after all. I’m staying here.
There would be no shame in that. My place
here could still be opened in all the ways
it has begun to close. I know this
as the train approaches, as the whistle drowns
all necessity and possibility of saying any of it.
The train comes to a stop where we are standing,
and Ollie swings my suitcase up onto the train
as the conductor yells his All aboard!
I step onto the train and turn to wave goodbye,
then pick up my suitcase and go to find my place.
Muriel arrived in Washington, D.C., in time to be a part of the final push for woman suffrage. A combination of courage, determination, and careful strategy helped the suffragists win the support of President Woodrow Wilson on January 9, 1918; the next day, the House of Representatives passed the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The women, and the men who supported them, continued to work until, on August 26, 1920, the Amendment was signed into law, granting women the right to vote.
Like Muriel, and the other characters in Crossing Stones, Frank Norman is fictional, but his war experience reflects that of the more than eight million people who were killed in battle in World War I. By the time the war ended on November 11, 1918, over sixty-five million people throughout the world had fought in it, and total casualties (including deaths, wounded, and prisoners of war or missing in action) added up to over thirty-seven million.
In addition to the war itself, a deadly influenza epidemic spread through the battlefields, killing millions, and when the soldiers returned home, many of them carried it back to their families and communities. The flu spread worldwide, killing between twenty and forty million people in 1918 and 1919.
I considered continuing my story until Muriel casts her first ballot. But when I look closely at this image—a ballot in a woman’s hand—I see that the hand is not Muriel’s, or not only hers. It is my grandmother’s hand, voting in her first election when my mother was three years old; my mother’s hand, my aunts’ hands, my sisters’ and nieces’, my own—and now, your sister’s, your daughter’s, your own.
So I leave them here: Ollie and Emma in the circle of their new love, and Muriel moving with confidence toward all that she will accomplish in her life as a happily unmarried woman.
Notes on the Form
Acknowledgments
Notes on the Form
I’ve created a formal structure to give the sense of stepping from stone to stone across a flowing creek. I think of this kind of writing as painting with words, a process involving hands, eyes, ears, thought, and emotion, all simultaneously working together.
The relatively free style of Muriel’s poems represents the creek flowing over the stones as it pushes against its banks. Ollie’s and Emma’s poems represent the stones. I “painted” them to look round and smooth, each with a slightly different shape, like real stones. They are “cupped-hand sonnets,” fourteen-line poems in which the first line rhymes with the last line, the second line rhymes with the second-to-last, and so on, so that the seventh and eighth lines rhyme with each other at the poem’s center. In Ollie’s poems the rhymes are the beginning words of each line, and in Emma’s poems they are the end words.
To give the sense of stepping from one stone to the next, I have used the middle rhyme of one sonnet as the outside rhyme of the next. You will see that the seventh and eighth lines of each of Emma’s poems rhyme with the first and last lines of Ollie’s next poem, and the seventh and eighth lines of Ollie’s poems rhyme with the first and last lines of Emma’s next poem. If you have trouble finding these rhymes, remember to look on the left side of Ollie’s poems, and on the right side of Emma’s.
Acknowledgments
I thank Frances Foster for her constant faith, encouragement, and editorial skill, and everyone at Farrar, Straus and Giroux for all they do, with special thanks to Lisa Graff.
Don Mager worked out the cupped-hand sonnet form and shared it with me. Jonas Albertsen, my father’s Danish cousin, suggested Ruby’s Danish name and helped me with her language. I thank them.
Thanks to the Indiana chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, especially the Fort Wayne group, and many trusted friends and faithful readers.
The time in which Crossing Stones takes place is a fascinating period of history. Librarians, novelists, psychologists, historians, film-makers, letter writers, and family archivists all give us access to the past, and I am grateful. A visit to the Hull House Museum in Chicago was especially helpful.
I thank those who understand the history and importance of the progressive movement and work to continue its forward momentum. Among the many people whose work inspires me are John and Beth Murphy Beams, Ann Colbert, Claire Ewart and Tom Herr, the Liuzzi family, Omowale-Ketu and Clydia Oladuwa, Ron and Suzanne Scollon, Sox Sperry and Lisa Tsetse, and Ralph Salisbury and Ingrid Wendt.
I thank my family—the ancestors who lived with love and courage through the times I am imagining, especial
ly my parents (my mother was born a week before this story begins and lived to admire Richard Tuschman’s beautiful jacket artwork); my brothers and sisters, their husbands, wives, children, and grandchildren; and my husband’s family. Special love and thanks to my son, Lloyd, and his wife, Penny; their children, Cameron and Jordan; and my son, Glen.
As always, I am immensely grateful to my husband, Chad Thompson, beside me and within this book in countless ways.
Also by Helen Frost
Keesha’s House
Spinning Through the Universe
The Braid
Diamond Willow
About the Author
Helen Frost is the author of several books for young people, including Hidden, Diamond Willow, Crossing Stones, The Braid, and Keesha’s House, selected an Honor Book for the Michael L. Printz Award. Helen Frost was born in 1949 in South Dakota, the fifth of ten children. She recalls the summer her family moved from South Dakota to Oregon, traveling in a big trailer and camping in places like the Badlands and Yellowstone. Her father told the family stories before they went to sleep, and Helen would dream about their travels, her family, and their old house. “That’s how I became a writer,” she says. “I didn’t know it at the time, but all those things were accumulating somewhere inside me.” As a child, she loved to travel, think, swim, sing, learn, canoe, write, argue, sew, play the piano, play softball, play with dolls, daydream, read, go fishing, and climb trees. Now, when she sits down to write, her own experiences become the details of her stories. Helen has lived in South Dakota, Oregon, Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, Scotland, Colorado, Alaska, California, and Indiana. She currently lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with her family. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
My Mind Meanders Like the Creek / April 1917
My Crooked Mind / Muriel
Our Lives and Our Fortunes / Muriel
Apple Trees / Emma
Should We? / Ollie
Moral Compass / Muriel
Fragrance of Lilacs, Sweet Scent of Skunk / May 1917
Deep Quiet / Emma
Socks / Muriel
Lightning / Ollie
Ten Days Home / Muriel
Why Not? / Muriel
A Greater Good / Muriel
Someone / Muriel
Would It Hurt? / Emma
Right in Front of Everyone / Ollie
Circles for the Crossing Stones / June 1917
Would You Be Willing? / Muriel
The Gentleman Should Always / Muriel
Frank’s Absence / Emma
Rocking / Muriel
Geranium / Ollie
Your Son and Brother / Muriel
Conversation Through a Thick Curtain / July 1917
Love to Everyone / Muriel
2:25 / Muriel
Seeing Things / Emma
Careful / Muriel
Adventure / Muriel
Frank Writes to Me / Muriel
Blisters / Ollie
Courage / Muriel
Fifteen Words / Muriel
Politics / Emma
A Long, Low Moooooooo / Ollie
Like a Rain-Soaked Wool Jacket / August 1917
“Kaiser Wilson” / Muriel
Bluebird / Emma
In the Night, Through Towns / Ollie
A Few Eggs, Five Peaches, All the Peas / September 1917
Restless / Muriel
The Tide That’s Drowning Millions / Emma
Unbreakable / Muriel
Names / Ollie
Against the Dark Space / Muriel
I Didn’t Mean / Muriel
A Basket / Muriel
My Shepherd, I Shall Want / Muriel
Nest Blown from Its Tree / Emma
Two Languages / Muriel
Staring at Me / Ollie
Invisible Thicket / Muriel
Gray / Emma
A Rock So Heavy / Muriel
Blinding Light / Ollie
A Bullet and a Bandage / Muriel
Applesauce / Muriel
White Shirt Crumpled in the Mud / October 1917
Her Careful Signature / Muriel
I Know Instantly / Muriel
Blackberry Jam / Emma
Mud / Muriel
Changes / Ollie
This Changes Everything / Muriel
Take This Bread / Emma
Phantom Pain / Ollie
What Kind of Luck? / Muriel
A Few Sentences Each Day / Muriel
Daisies on a Pillowcase / Emma
The Phone Rings / Two Short, One Long / Muriel
Muriel Can Help / Muriel
Crazy Ideas / Muriel
Ollie’s Patchwork Story / Muriel
A Sharp Yes-and-No Shoots Through Me / November 1917
Toward—I Don’t Know What / Muriel
Here with Grace / Ollie
Look Deeper / Muriel
Could I? / Muriel
Picket Line / Muriel
Sash Abandoned in the Snow / Muriel
Grace Brings a Message / Emma
We’re Winning / Muriel
An Angel from Heaven / Muriel
Put Grace on My Back / Ollie
Nothing to Do with Nourishment / Muriel
How Close Can I Go? / Emma
One Thousand Women / Muriel
Strangers Together / Muriel
Probably … If / Ollie
Tell Me About Your Trip / Muriel
I See That, Too / Emma
Lake of Shining Waters / Muriel
Tipperary / Ollie
Then What Happened? / Muriel
Let’s Climb Cobb Hill / Emma
In the Doorway / Muriel
I Had My Rifle, Loaded / Ollie
A Small, Cold Stone / Muriel
With Our Three Arms / Emma
Nothing in the World / Muriel
Worth Knowing / Ollie
A Quick Nod / Muriel
I Can See Myself / Emma
Bluebird Stitched in Such Detail / December 1917
We Have Reason to Believe / Muriel
My Friend Miss Muriel / Muriel
It Also Happened to Us / Ollie
Blackberry-Apple Cobbler / Muriel
One Hand, Drying / Emma
Bluebird Stitched in Such Detail / Muriel
The Scent of Soap / Ollie
I Step onto the Train / January 1918
Now, in the Distance / Muriel
Epilogue
Notes on the Form
Acknowledgments
Also by Helen Frost
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by Helen Frost
All rights reserved
First edition, 2009
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