The House on Malcolm Street

by Leisha Kelly

  The suggestion jarred me, and I was tempted to tell her to keep the letter a secret. Of course Marigold would pray. But she might also think that I should go to my father’s side, and I did not want that, not for me or for my daughter. Eliza would not really understand. She’d seldom been with her grandfather, and then only when sheltered by her father’s special watch care as well as my own. She had no idea how ugly he could be.

  Still I could not refuse the prayers. If it came up, I would simply have to tell Marigold that my father did not want my presence and I did not want his. Strange as that might seem, it had been the truth for most of my lifetime, and I could not really picture it changing now.

  I expected Eliza to ask Marigold to pray for her grandfather immediately, but she didn’t. While we put away groceries and ate a quick lunch, the subject of the letter never came up. But I knew I could not just ignore it. I would have to at least reply to Anna, and like it or not, writing to my father directly would probably be the right thing to do.

  I borrowed paper and sat down. First I wrote to Anna, telling her that things were going well for us and that I appreciated her letter and would contact my father myself. Then I began the far more difficult letter. Simple as it should have been, nothing seemed to suit me, and I ended up restarting the letter three times. Finally I decided that if I couldn’t find any words I could feel secure sending my father right now, then maybe I didn’t really need to say much of anything at all. So I wrote only that we had moved and supplied the new address. Marigold had no telephone number, so I told him that too. That was enough. I could not even express my endearment at the end but instead signed it only, “Your daughter, Leah.”

  He hadn’t come when John died, nor Johnny James. He had barely tolerated my presence at my own mother’s funeral. I did not know why he would be seeking me now, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. But at least I’d done what might be considered a daughter’s duty, and let him know where to find us.

  It was pouring down rain by the time the letters were written, and I was very glad to have finished our errands in the morning. Mailing the letters could wait till tomorrow. There were more pears and apples to cut and can, and that was the perfect job for a rainy afternoon.

  “Grandpa doesn’t feel good,” Eliza finally told Marigold as we were filling jars once again.

  I hadn’t disclosed the content of my letter and she hadn’t asked, but now she looked at me with considerable concern. “Oh, I hope it’s nothing serious.”

  “I don’t expect so,” I said solemnly.

  “But we’re gonna pray for him anyway,” Eliza quickly added. “Will you pray too?”

  “Of course I will.”

  It pricked my heart for a moment to realize that Eliza had given the impression that both of us were praying individuals. Hypocritical or not, I just couldn’t manage to tell Marigold otherwise. And I know she would probably have appreciated me volunteering a bit more information, but I didn’t want to talk about my father. John had told me about his family, how they could be distant, too caught up in their own lives to take much time in each other’s. But that wasn’t the same as giving each other any real reason for avoidance.

  “Mr. Abraham’s father moved in today,” she told me. “I saw them this morning while you were gone.”

  I’d wanted to ask questions before. Now I finally felt bold enough. “Why were you concerned about not seeing much of Mr. Abraham while his father is here?”

  She lifted jars carefully into the rack of the boiling-water canner. “To tell you the truth, child, the man feels that we think too highly of each other. Mr. Abraham’s father and son are both rabbis, and they are both terribly concerned about him becoming too close to a woman who is not Jewish.”

  “That seems a little unfair.”

  She shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. If I had a son, I would want him to marry a Christian, so my grandchildren would be taught about what the Son of God has done for us. Even if they had no children, I would still think it right for them to be able to share and support each other in their faith. So I suppose I understand their position readily enough.”

  “But you and Mr. Abraham haven’t spoken of marriage. Have you?”

  “No. At least not directly. But I’m quite sure it’s crossed his mind, the same as it has mine.”

  It was unsettling for my earlier thoughts about them to be confirmed, but I tried not to let on that I found anything unusual about it. “It shouldn’t be any of his family’s business to keep you apart,” I told her, hoping to sound supportive.

  “But it’s right to show the proper respect. To the elderly Rabbi Abraham, of course. Saul will not directly dishonor his wishes, and I support him in that.” She gave me a sly grin. “But that being said, let’s make them a pie in time for dinner.”

  It was startling to find in Marigold the sort of attitude I might expect in a strong-willed twenty-year-old. Behind her gray hair and wrinkles, she seemed to have a steel determination.

  “Is Mr. Abraham your beau, then?” I asked her.

  “A dear friend. And it is perfectly sufficient to leave it at that.”

  But I couldn’t quite stop with the questions now that I’d started. “Can you share and be encouraging in your faith, even though it’s different?”

  She nodded. “We’ve spoken of it often. He has shared the basis of his beliefs just as I have mine. And we agree that there’s really only one difference. I say his religion is incomplete without the Messiah who waits for them to receive him. And he says my religion is based solely on the teaching of an uneducated carpenter’s son.”

  I sat down, and Eliza climbed into my lap. “How in the world can you reconcile that?”

  “Oh, we’re much nearer than you might think.”

  “I don’t understand how you could be.”

  She smiled. “One afternoon over tea he asked me why, apart from the traditions of my family, I could accept Jesus’s claims to be the Messiah. And I asked him why, apart from the traditions of his family, he could not. That turned out to be a very fruitful discussion.”

  My curiosity would not stop. “Did Mr. Abraham come to believe in Jesus?”

  “Not outwardly. Not openly. But passages like Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 are doing their work in his heart to this day, and I completely believe that.”

  I should have known better than to delve so completely into a religious discussion. At this juncture, I wasn’t quite sure of my own beliefs anymore, so I was certainly in no position to speak of others’. But oddly, I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “I’m afraid I don’t remember those passages,” I told her, hoping I really had heard them somewhere so I could consider my own words more than just a bold lie.

  “Oh, my. Psalm 22 is a prophetic picture of Christ on the cross. Really remarkable. And Isaiah 53 is an amazing statement of the real reason why the Messiah would come, far too often overlooked. It’s very clear about his substitutionary sacrifice.”

  “You seem to know the Scriptures very well, Aunt Marigold.”

  “That’s what Mr. Abraham thought. He was rather impressed, actually. So I told him how important it was to my preaching grandfather that girls learned the Word as well as the boys, because it’s so often the women that teach the children what they need to know.”

  “I don’t know,” Eliza suddenly spoke up. “Not about any of all that, I don’t think.”

  “Oh, goodness, you’re young,” Marigold immediately told her. “And even if you weren’t, that is easily remedied.”

  I’d really started something. Marigold was all fired up and determined. As soon as we had the canner going, we worked quick as we could to get pies in the oven, and then, when they were finally baking, she got back to my non-thought-out questions.

  “Fetch the Bible. Over in the corner.”

  I didn’t want to read. I didn’t want to ponder the words or risk the flame of bitterness they so often sparked in me. But I couldn’t tell her no. Eliza seemed eager to learn. Who was I to stand
in the way?

  So at Marigold’s direction, I read both Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 and then listened while she explained to my daughter how both were fulfilled in Jesus. I didn’t remember ever hearing a better teacher. If Mr. Abraham’s heart had been pricked, it was no wonder.

  But I didn’t question the Son of God’s deity or his station as Savior of men. That was not my problem. The thing I questioned was the goodness of God the Father. How could a being of complete and ultimate good allow such dreadful sorrows to take place in this world?

  Checking the pies in the oven was a convenient excuse for distancing myself from the discussion. And it was easy enough to keep myself busy after that. Every jar in the last canner batch had properly sealed, but we had more fruit yet to cut, so I began again. Somewhere Marigold had recorded just how many pint and quart jars I’d taken to the basement filled with fruit, but I’d lost track, happy in the abundance. We’d even gladly shared fruit with other neighbors, and the minister of Aunt Marigold’s church, in addition to the Kurchers, yet still had plenty more.

  I wondered briefly how I’d manage church on Sunday. I hadn’t been to a regular service since before my son’s funeral, and I wasn’t sure I could sit through it without anger or tears. Perhaps I could convince her that I didn’t feel well enough to go. But how long could I continue to be dishonest? By now Marigold surely thought me to be quite strong in the faith. Primarily because of the words of my daughter, which I never refuted. What would she think of me if I dared tell her of my struggle?

  Josiah came home surly and peevish. He wouldn’t even talk to Marigold when she asked him what was wrong. I couldn’t help thinking that surely it must be me that was troubling him. Here I was, eating Marigold’s food, sitting across from him at the table, and not yet paying a single dime into the household, when he, as far as I could tell, was the one who supplied every bit of the groceries the yard did not produce, and probably considerably more besides. In the time I’d been here I’d seen nothing at all to indicate that Marigold had even a smattering of income other than what came from her one paying boarder.

  “Maybe you need some thinking time before you sit down to supper,” Marigold told him. “That’ll give me time to get the rest of these canning jars out of the way. The rain is done. Could you take Mr. Abraham one of the pies, and while you’re about, walk over to the post office and put Leah’s letters in the box for her?”

  I could imagine that such a request might not sit well with him, so I offered to mail the letters myself. I preferred it that way. But the words from me only served to raise Mr. Walsh’s ire all the more.

  “I’ll take them. I won’t make you set after it when Aunt Mari wishes otherwise.”

  He was so abrupt, and his tone so harsh, that I let him leave without another word. Eliza was quiet, wide-eyed.

  “Don’t worry,” Marigold told her. “He’s surely had a bad day with his work. Or some other difficult matters churning about in his mind. It happens now and again. Don’t let it bother you.”

  We had the table cheerily ready before Josiah returned. Still I was uneasy and quite sure, despite Marigold’s words, that his ill temper was somehow because of me.

  “Should Eliza and I eat before he gets back?” I asked timidly. “Or, take our meal to our room so he can eat with you alone? I’ll bring the dishes – ”

  “Nonsense,” she interrupted me. “He doesn’t bite, and you’ve as much right to be at my table as he has.”

  “But – ”

  “If everyone ate alone every time anyone was out of sorts, families would scarcely know each other,” she maintained. “The world would have no use for tables any bigger than a nightstand.”

  Eliza smiled, just a little. “That would be funny. We could line them all up, or put them in a really big circle on the days when nobody was out of sorts.”

  “Far better to be civil and hospitable, whether we feel like it or not.”

  Her words, though seeming to be about her nephew, put doubt within my heart about her own feelings toward us. Of course she would be genial and welcoming, because she believed that was the right thing to do. It didn’t mean she really wanted us here after all.

  Dinner that night was a trial for me, though the potato soup was the best I’d ever eaten and the corn muffins were so much like my mother’s that they’d have been a treat in any other circumstance.

  We didn’t belong, regardless of how much we might like to. Marigold had her heart set on winning the heart and soul of her neighbor. Though we’d helped her with her harvest, she wouldn’t continue to need our help, and then we’d just be in the way. And Mr. Walsh had scarcely any patience left for us at all. I had to consider. Where could we go from here?

  That night the difficult dreams returned. But instead of calling out for my mother as I’d done so many times before, I found myself crying for my father as the belching, bellowing metal monster bore down in my direction. Father turned away. I could barely see him through the smoke and the haze. He seemed frantic, distressed, desperately searching for something alongside the endless tracks. But he was not searching for me.

  The locomotive rushed on, rushed over me, and I could not breathe. Finally, in the midst of the screams and the blood, my mother was there, clutching me to her breast and crying.

  Oh, why? Why did I have such dreams? This one was not quite the same, but they all were so similar, filled with the terror of that devil train. I clutched the blanket to my breast after being shaken awake like so many times before in the middle of the night.

  At least I hadn’t waked screaming again, or fallen from the bed with a thud loud enough to be heard by Mr. Walsh no more than a room away. When I was a wee child, my screams had wakened both my parents, night after night. Mother would kiss me and hold me in her arms until the tears faded. Father would holler from his bedroom that I wasn’t hurt and shouldn’t be “coddled” at the expense of everyone else’s sleep.

  Mother had prayed for the dreams to go away. I remembered that now and wondered why she’d never gotten upset that the prayers were not answered. The dreams still shook me. Not as often. Sometimes they were weeks apart. Months, when I’d been with John. But they always returned, like a plague that had attached itself to my spirit and would not let go.

  We used to live beside a train track, that much I knew. But the wail of the monster at night had been far too much for me to bear. Father moved us to the farm he still occupied, five miles from the nearest rail crossing. But the dreams did not cease, and he lost patience with them, sometimes disappearing outside and slamming the door behind him when I cried out at night.

  Eliza rolled beside me, her dark curls flopped haphazardly across her face and pillow. Thank God I hadn’t wakened her. Thank God she wasn’t plagued by dreams like mine.

  I took a deep breath, realizing that those almost-prayers had risen from me without a moment’s thought, automatically, as though spirit-breathed. Many times in the last few months, I’d squelched my own inklings in that direction, or ridiculed myself because of them. But I realized now that I really couldn’t change who I was, and some part of me, despite everything, still believed in God’s sovereign hand.

  God was real. To Marigold and Mr. Abraham. Definitely to my dear faithful daughter and in some measure to my own heart. I couldn’t truly deny him. But I had yet to reconcile my feelings. Though it would be fruitless to pretend someone did not exist, that didn’t mean you could pretend you weren’t angry with them. I still felt betrayed, forsaken, and I didn’t know how that could ever change.

  I hadn’t ventured to my knees in such a long while, and I came close to stumbling from the bed and making some attempt that night. It might have been a new beginning for me. But before I could completely coax myself, my eyes filled with tears and my head stopped my heart.

  I couldn’t pray. I didn’t know how anymore. With my misgivings and hard feelings, any attempt I made would be pitiful and futile anyhow. What was the use?

  I felt drained, utterly s
pent the way it used to be when I finally caught my breath after a long cry. Why did I dream such things? Why did I have such turmoil in my heart? Why could I not just sleep and forget all the questions, all the pain?

  Eliza rolled against me, her cheeks oddly damp as though she’d been silently crying. For a moment I thought she might have awakened, but my dear daughter slept on, touched by the sadness of some nameless dream.

  “Why, God?” I suddenly found myself pleading. “Please, please give her peace.”

  11

  Josiah

  Dawn light woke me to the new day, but it didn’t take long for thoughts of yesterday’s funeral to cloud my mind. I wouldn’t have gone except that my boss had said some of us should, and he’d chosen me to go with him. It should have been easy just to sit in the back of a room full of strangers and wait out the time until it was done. But my mind had refused to stay so separate.

  Even now I thought of the nearly grown children of the couple that had died in Tuesday’s train wreck. What would they be doing this morning? How long would it be before anything began to feel real or ordinary again?

  It didn’t help me to be thinking such things. But maybe if I took the time to pray for that family again, there could be at least that much good in it.

  Seeing the grieving mourners had taken my mind back to rushing and straining to pull that woman from the mud, only to find her already gone. It was too much like the horrible day when I’d lifted Rosemary from the ditch after our awful accident.

  Mr. Abraham’s rooster jarred me with its belated crowing, and I shoved away Aunt Mari’s bedspread and pulled myself up. As much as I’d like to lie in bed all day, I’d have to present myself downstairs before long or Mari would send Leah Breckenridge my way, thinking I might be late for work. I hadn’t told them I wouldn’t be working today. I usually knew several days in advance when I would be free on a Saturday, but this time Mr. Behrens had simply said to stay home, take some time. Of course it was because of the way the funeral had affected me. I wished he had decided to attend alone.