In the seventh month of Rosa’s pregnancy, Joshua’s strength failed him as he succumbed to the fever that had been striking throughout their part of the country for weeks. Though he tried to soldier on, Rosa finally put her foot down and made him take to bed as the doctor had ordered. Things got worse when John was felled by the fever as well. Rosa tended to her men day and night while praying that she wouldn’t fall prey to the fever lest her baby be endangered.
John’s youthful system beat back the fever in a few days and he was back on his feet. Joshua, much to his chagrin, was bedridden for more than a week, occasionally getting so delirious that Rosa feared that he would die.
But Joshua did not die. As his strength began to return he tried to get back to work but Rosa furiously forbade him from getting out of bed before he was well. Joshua heeded his wife’s command and petulantly returned to bed.
It was only when Joshua was back up on his feet and John was well past the fever that Rosa herself finally surrendered to fatigue. Joshua carried her to bed and sent for the midwife to make sure his wife and unborn child were okay.
Rosa proved to be as impatient a patient as her husband did as she endured a week of bed rest on Joshua’s orders. Joshua hired Emma, a young woman who had been brought west by her husband and then subsequently abandoned by him when he decided to seek his fortune unencumbered, to help out with the house and the baby.
Emma was all of 20, fair and blonde with haunted, sad eyes. She was pleasant enough but she was weighed down by so much disappointment and betrayal that she rarely smiled. Since her husband had run off to the mountains of California looking for gold, Emma had survived by doing odd jobs. She had a vague notion of accumulating enough money to return to the east even though she didn’t know what she would do once she got there.
Rosa was wary…uncomfortable with the notion of another woman (especially a white woman) in her house…but Joshua was adamant and in time she relaxed a bit about it. Especially when Rosa decided that Emma was not covetous of her family or her home.
Once she was back on her feet, Rosa reluctantly agreed with Joshua’s notion of keeping Emma on to help with their burgeoning household. Rosa was concerned a bit that Emma might resent taking orders from a Mexican woman but Emma never displayed any such misgivings.
In truth as she grew closer to her due date, Rosa came to appreciate the fact that the girl was there to help her with the seemingly never-ending chore of keeping the house and grounds kept up. And even John, wary about the newcomer at first, took to Emma in due course.
Joshua for his part was glad to be able to take some of the burden off his wife’s back. The girl Emma seemed to be one of the saddest creatures he had ever met…of course being abandoned by your husband might do that, he reckoned…but she was a hard worker and that pleased him. She was also, he couldn’t help but notice in idle moments, easy on the eye as well, the kind of girl he’d imagined himself marrying before he fell in love with his precious Rosa.
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