Family Inheritance

Chapter 1 Northern Minnesota July 6, 1990 The old farmhouse creaked in the night air, and the wind howled through the badly caulked windows. Nausea, shortness of breath, and stomach pain were assaulting Anna Teresa Miller’s body as she lay in her bed in the darkened bedroom. She figured she was dying, but she didn’t care. Her life had never been very good, so how could death be worse? The doctor had warned her that diabetes could kill her, that it would attack her kidneys and her other vital organs, but what did it matter? As her mind fought to stay alert, thoughts rambled in and out, scrambled together, leaving her unsure of what was happening and what was just a memory. In one moment, she was three years old standing beside her mother in the ramshackle barn where cows were herded in each night and milked. Anna’s stomach rumbled and hunger pains gripped her thin body, but she knew she wouldn’t get supper until all the chores were done. Even at her young age, she had chores. Suddenly, she was fourteen and her mother had dropped her off at Walter’s family’s farm to work for them. Her father had died, and her mother could no longer care for her. As the memories floated in and out, she fought to remember where she was now and what year it was. For a brief moment, she knew it was 1990 and she was still in the farmhouse she had moved to as a teenager. Then she was sixteen, pregnant, and being forced to marry Walter, a reluctant groom at best. Her mind relived the pain of losing that baby and three more after that. She was certain then that she wasn’t supposed to be a mother and had convinced herself that she didn’t want to be. By that time, the farm could no longer support them, so Walter would pick up odd jobs, leaving most of the farm chores to her. Life with Walter had been hard—oppressive poverty, backbreaking work, and a***e. Then Helene, Alice, and Suzanne had been born, adding to her workload and escalating Walter’s laziness, drinking, and anger—at her, at life, at the kids, and at the fact that he’d never had a son. When she’d first become pregnant, Walter’s mother, who sometimes tried to be good to Anna, told her that having children meant she wouldn’t be lonely when she grew old. Now, as she lay dying alone in the creaking house that had been her prison and her home for over forty-five years, a cynical chuckle passed through her lips and a tear slid down her cheek. Her mind once again slipped into the past to a day when her daughters, with their dirty faces, tangled hair, and soiled clothing, sat on the rough wooden floor, cutting out pictures from old magazines and catalogs as slight drafts of wind shivered through the poorly insulated walls and ruffled the pages. Chatter occasionally erupted in an otherwise silent and serious atmosphere. “I’m going to marry a rich man and live in a big, beautiful house,” ten-year-old Helene had exclaimed as she carefully arranged the figures of a handsome man and a beautiful woman among pictures of luxurious homes. “I’m going to have lots of kids and be a really good mom,” Alice proclaimed with the determination of an eight-year-old. Seven-year-old Suzanne’s voice was serious as she declared, “I’m going to work in a big office and be the boss of people.” That day, Anna had felt anger, fatigue, and defeat at her girls’ wild imaginations and their ideas that life could be better. Anna knew it wouldn’t be. Overwhelmed by the constant work that the farm, the old house, her three girls, and Walter required of her, Anna’s life had no room for dreams or play. That particular day, and many before and after, Anna had felt as though the world rested on her shoulders. She had often been bitter that nobody seemed to know how hard she worked or what a burden the old house and those three girls were on her. It certainly wasn’t the life she had wanted, but her mother had reminded her often enough by saying, “You made your bed, you lie in it.” So Anna had done just that. Anna’s eyelids fluttered, and a shiver ran through her body as the same memory took hold again. A noise had erupted in the kitchen when the back door slammed open against the wall. Fear crossed the faces of her young daughters as a drunken voice bellowed, “Where are you, Anna? I’m hungry. Get in here and fix me something to eat!” The sound of a fist pounding against the kitchen table resonated into the living room as Anna scurried toward the raging man who now stood in the kitchen doorway, swaying unsteadily on his feet. The memories stopped running through her mind like old motion pictures, and everything was starting to go dark. It had done that several times during the night. Her conscious mind knew she should call an ambulance, but she wasn’t ready yet. Maybe she would just die in bed because it didn’t really matter to her where she died. She was tired of living. Anna’s kids didn’t know about her health problems because Helene had stopped talking to her years ago, and Suzanne had just slipped out of her life. Alice tried, but Anna didn’t know how to talk to her middle daughter. In fact, she never did know how to talk to any of them. She had tried to raise them better than her mother had raised her, but her kids hadn’t responded the way she had expected them to. Walter had been a mean, abusive man his entire life, and Anna knew she had never loved him. For much of his life, she hadn’t even liked him. Yet, when he died, she missed his presence. He was all she had ever known. As darkness covered her eyes, momentary panic overwhelmed her because the shadows were so thick. Is this what it will be like forever? “No, Anna, there is light waiting for you, but you’re not done yet,” a voice whispered in the darkness. Quickly opening her eyes, she scanned the room. At the end of her bed, she saw a shadow. “Who’s there?” Her weak voice tried to reach the specter. A cold breeze echoed throughout the dusty, dingy room. The figure became clearer as Anna grappled with her fading consciousness. It’s a man, an old man, gray and unshaven. It took a moment, but her weary mind grasped a vision of her husband looking like that just before his death. Scared at the thought of seeing him again, her voice quivered into the empty room, “Walter? Is that you, Walter?” The apparition inched closer. Anna’s hands shook as she grappled to pull the sheet up over her face. “No, please, Walter. Go away,” she pleaded. “Don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me anymore.” The specter seemed to stop moving, hovering there, and the voice became a whisper. “I can’t hurt you anymore, Anna.” Anna slowly pulled the sheet down and watched with wide, fearful eyes as darkness surrounded the vision; it began to fade. Pain-filled words echoed, “Don’t come yet. I don’t want you to suffer this pain. Set your life right, Anna.” “I don’t understand,” she whimpered. The voice grew louder. “I didn’t do right by you, Anna. We didn’t do right by them. You have to do right by them. You can’t come yet, Anna. You can’t come yet.” The words were so tortured that Anna quickly pulled the covers up over herself again, cowering lower in the bed, shivering with fear. The sounds were farther away now, echoes in the quiet room. “Set your life straight, Anna. Do right by them . . . do right by them.” The voice faded, and Anna could feel in the air that the ghost had disappeared. The room was eerily quiet except for her own labored breathing. “I don’t know what you mean. I don’t understand . . .” she cried. Memories of her life and her daughters once again floated through the darkness like a movie—visions of her children as babies, then toddlers, teenagers, and then young women. Tears slid down her cheeks as she called their names into the empty room. With her last bit of consciousness, she reached for the pad and pen on the bedside table that had three telephone numbers neatly printed on it, and scribbled a message. Picking up the bedside phone and summoning the last of her strength, she dialed 911. After mumbling her address into the receiver, Anna closed her eyes and the world went black.