An Offering: The Tale of Therese

by Pittman, Allison

  Not a single person took note of the unknown girl in their midst. No one asked who she was, or where she came from, or where she was going, or what was in the basket she carried. But Therese didn’t care. She knew the comfort of invisibility.

  The outer streets of Brunnendorf teemed with afternoon life. Children played games with red-faced determination to finish before being called home to chores. Women bustled with late purchases from the markets in the square. Men made their way to the pubs, shouting promises to be home for supper. And again, Therese wove through all of this, not catching a single inviting glance of a child, or the sympathetic interest of a woman, or the curious glance of a man.

  “Nothing here to miss,” she said aloud, attracting no reaction for an odd behavior. “And no one here to miss me.”

  The streets grew narrow the closer she came to the fountain square, and she resumed her habit of walking head down, aware of nothing but the space immediately around her feet, making swift decisions and maneuvers to avoid the skirts and boots that came into her view.

  The bells, though, pealing from the tower of the church where she’d been baptized, called her to stop.

  Vespers. She stayed rooted in place, standing her ground against the few who battered against her. Paß auf, they said. Watch out.

  Therese altered her route, turning not toward the side street where Mutti waited in their back room, but toward the sound of the bells, where God waited for her to offer prayers to him.

  “I can walk right in there,” she said to a harsh-looking woman who happened to walk up beside her. “I can because I’ve been baptized.”

  The woman strode on with no acknowledgement, and that was when Therese noticed she clutched a reluctant child by the hand—a boy, whose face still held the sweat and soil that marked an afternoon of play.

  Therese recalled the clutch of Sister Heida, and her hand longed for another. Opa’s large, work-calloused grip, or Oma’s gnarled clasp. She couldn’t bring to mind her mother’s but imagined it lifeless and limp. And then, a tug. An inexplicable tingle at the tips of her fingers, so strong that she glanced down expecting to see that someone, something had taken her. Instead, only her own flesh, the pulling sensation stemming from her own skin.

  The bells rang their appeal. Her bare toes itched to take the next step in their direction, but now the pressure to turn back toward home reached to the shoulder free from the burden of the basket.

  “Is that you, little Therese?”

  It was the first time her name had ever been spoken aloud in the fountain square. She looked up, just enough to see the dark robe and simple belt of a monk, then to the warm, smiling face of Brother Mark.

  “It is you.” Now his hand took hers—the one that been beckoned by Mutti—and he bent down to the level of her eyes. She could see his smooth pate behind the fringe. “You have grown since I saw you. Only a few weeks, but still. I’ve watched for you.”

  “I’ve been to my Oma and Opa’s.”

  “I see they have taken good care of you. You are coming to Vespers? Shall I walk with you?”

  “I–I don’t know. I haven’t been back yet to my mother. And I feel—”

  “Of course.” He stood, never taking his eyes from her face. “You should go to your mother. I’m sure she has missed you.”

  “Has she come to church since I’ve been gone?”

  A silly question born of a tiny hope, confirmed by his response.

  “No, child, she has not. Nor has anyone gone to see her, I’m ashamed to say. I asked Father Bastian if we shouldn’t, just to let her know that you’d been baptized, and to invite her into our fellowship, but I was . . .” He looked away, in the way everybody did when they talked about her mother.

  “We’re going to go live with my grandparents,” she said, in an attempt to rescue him from his discomfort. “They are good Christians and will take me to church. And catechism too.” She succeeded, and he broke out into a smile broad enough for her to see a missing tooth.

  “That is wonderful, indeed, little Therese. See how faithful God is to those who are faithful to him? I will say a special prayer of gratitude for his blessings, but I will have to get used to missing you again.”

  “Will you, really?” Though she had no doubt. Brother Mark was a man of God, unable to lie, and before she could question the propriety of such a gesture, she wrapped her arms around him, her cheek against the coarse weave of his robe, his hand at the back of her head. No one had ever missed her—not even her mother, as far as she knew. Today, perhaps, Oma and Opa were sitting at their evening meal, glancing wistfully at her empty chair, or maybe they were continuing their argument about Mutti, with Therese a mere coincidence of their grace.

  But this man had no reason to miss her. Or be kind to her. Moreover, he had no reason to even suggest kindness and compassion for her mother. Only God could compel such a stranger to show her such love, and for a fleeting moment, she wondered if she wouldn’t rather assign herself to his family rather than hers, where compassion seemed to happen without condition. Without paying first a penalty of separation and pain.

  “Go to your mother, child.” He’d bent down and whispered the words with a kiss to her hair. “And come to visit when you’ve been fully welcomed at home.”

  Therese nodded and pulled away. At some point she had dropped the hamper, and now it felt too heavy to carry. There was one solution.

  “Here,” she said, lifting the woven lid to reveal the contents barely disturbed by the jostling. Oma packed well. She lifted out the sealed jar of pickled vegetables and handed it up to Brother Mark. “Take these, please. From my Oma. I’ll have plenty when we go back to live.”

  Brother Mark held the jar like a treasure. “What a treat. And I look forward to telling my brothers the story behind the gift.”

  The last chime had long since faded by the time they parted, and Therese felt a new urgency to get home. The lightness of the basket afforded speed to her steps, and she joined—at least in spirit—the other children in the streets in an effort to be home before full dark.

  She turned the final corner and realized that she must have grown since leaving, because the single room seemed so much smaller than it had when she left. The walls jutted out like an afterthought, something inconsequential to the attached shop. Rarely had she been allowed to wander out after dark, so she had no idea the winking sadness of the faint light coming through the one small window.

  The light, at least, meant Mutti was home—not off with the friends who often took her away for an evening’s carousing. And she hoped the light meant her mother was alone, because when the men came to visit, she always insisted on the dark.

  The eagerness that had compelled her was quickly fading, calling Therese to summon all the courage it took for her to traverse a forest to take these final, familiar steps. Once at the door, she wondered briefly if she should knock, as if such a prolonged absence could render her a stranger to her own home.

  “Nonsense.” She sounded like Oma. “Just open a bit and peek in.”

  She did, gripping the big latch in both hands and inching the door wide enough for her to see a narrow view of the foot of the bed.

  “Wer ist da?” Mutti’s voice sounded plaintive and weak, tinged with something else. Fear. Often she had remarked that they should get a chain for the door, or at least a second lock so that strangers from the street would not be able to walk themselves right in.

  “Mutti?” Therese allowed her voice to enter first, spoken with a timidity to match her mother’s. Reassured to find no man in sight, she slipped in and closed the door behind her. “Mutti. I’m home.”

  What struck her first was the smell. Soiled linens, a pot that must have been days without emptying, spilled beer, iron-dried blood, evidence of retching—or worse—on the floor. What struck her next was the silence, because in the full minute it took for Therese to walk through the door, close it behind her, and take in the vision of what had once been their plain—but neat�
�� home now turned into nothing more than a heap of trash and stains, her mother hadn’t made a sound.

  “Mutti?” She set her basket on the table, fearful of what vermin might be lurking on the floor, and picked her way to the bedside.

  “Thank God you are here, girl. Blow out that light, will you? I can’t sleep.”

  “Is that all—” She meant to ask, Is that all you have to say? After I’ve been gone for such a long time? But before she could finish her sentence, Mutti exploded in such a fit of coughing, Therese took a step back at its fierceness.

  The light Mutti spoke of came from a glass-domed sconce, rather high up on the wall next to the bed. Something new she must have added after Therese left. The pale lavender tint of the glass softened the light from the white taper within. Odd, though, because the taper itself, while showing some signs of burning down, had no globs of dripping wax to show for the effort.

  “Later, Mutti,” she said once the spasm had subsided. “Right now, I want to see you. Did you miss me?”

  Drawn closer, Therese could see that her own transformation during her time away was nothing compared to the change that had happened to her mother. The vibrant, passionately mercurial woman had been reduced to this—a pale, immobile creature, seeming to fight only for the next breath. Every inch, every pound that had been added to Therese’s flesh must have been stolen from her mother, whose face had turned to bone, with a body made of nothing but the bunches and wrinkles of her sleeping gown.

  “I didn’t think you would come back.” Nothing in her mother’s voice expressed joy that Therese had returned. “I hoped—”

  “Of course I came back, Mutti. But first, there was a terrible storm, and the creek came up over the bridge. And so I had to stay.”

  “Stay?”

  “With Oma and Opa.” She stopped at the dangerous-sounding click in her mother’s next breath, continuing only when the exhalation was complete. “They kept me this whole time.”

  “Did they.” Not a question, but a return of the dark edge that came with every mention of Mutti’s family.

  “I didn’t know—if I knew you were sick, I would have come back so much sooner.”

  “I didn’t want you to come back. Didn’t want you to see—” And then a soft wheezing that carried with it everything she couldn’t say.

  “But, Mutti, listen.” Therese knelt beside the bed and brought her face close to her mother’s ear so she could whisper, thinking somehow that her mother could share her breath. “I haven’t told you the best part. Oma and Opa, they want us to come home.”

  “Home?”

  “Their home. Your home, the farm. Opa sent me to tell you that all is forgiven. And too much time has passed, and that he—they—miss you terribly.”

  Mutti turned her head, and Therese could see the droplets of sweat on her brow. “You are lying.”

  The heat from Mutti’s face leapt across the tiny gulf between them, flaring up in Therese’s cheeks.

  “Never! Why would I lie about something like that? They took me in, like they never had before, like you said they never would. Opa made me a bed, and Oma found one of your dresses from when you were a little girl, and she fit it to me. And we went to church, and I learned stories about Our Lord and Savior, and I played with the piglets—”

  “Our Lord and Savior.” She’d turned her head again, and stared straight at the ceiling.

  “Yes. I suppose I should have told you this first. I was baptized. The very day I left, at the Chapel of the Holy Fountain.”

  “Father Bastian?”

  “Yes.”

  “He wouldn’t touch you when you were an infant in my arms.”

  And so Therese told her the story of the entire day, getting hit with the stone and being found by Sister Heida and being fed by Brother Mark.

  “Father Bastian isn’t the whole Church, Mutti.” She left out his condescending remarks, his thinly veiled distaste. “Tomorrow morning, I’ll go to Brother Mark and tell him that you’re sick. He might know of something to help—”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “He’ll send for that priest—” Her words were caught up again, mixed in with the wet, spewing cough.

  “Do you have any water here?” She’d gone to the pitcher, only to find it dry. If only she could fill it with the cool, sweet water from Opa’s well. “I’ll run to the fountain and be right back.”

  Certainly there was more to do than simply fetch a pitcher of water, and if it didn’t seem disobedient to her mother, she would have run straight to Brother Mark. Without a fully realized plan, she picked up Oma’s basket and the pitcher and headed for the door.

  “The light?” Mutti called. “So I can sleep.”

  “When I get back,” Therese promised.

  She took the bread and pies from the basket and laid them on a splintered wooden platter. A proper meal. The basket now empty, she placed their one big bowl inside it, took the pitcher, and with one look back at her mother—who, despite her protests, had fallen asleep—stepped out into the cool night.

  It was a pleasant time of the evening, before drunkards turned to fighting and abandoned wives into shrews. A look straight up into the skies showed bright pinpoints of stars, and she knew God watched down through them. She could run about unnoticed, just another shadow, and she did—to the fountain. In the dark, the mouths of the wolves lost their detail, and she first held the pitcher in the stream, with both hands once it became too heavy. When it was full, she set it beside her and filled the bowl inside the basket. Once she placed the strap over her shoulder, she realized the weight of the water would make her list to one side. The water sloshed over the bowl’s brim, through the weaving, and onto her skirt. Little chance there would be anything left in it once she got home.

  Still, the errand could not be abandoned. She leaned her body to level the bowl, held the pitcher in the opposite hand to balance the weight, and took her first carefully measured step.

  “For Mutti. For Mutti.” She spoke the phrase over and over, and by the time she got home, she felt as if her arms and every bone within her had turned into water themselves.

  Her mother still slept, more soundly now, hands heavy at her sides. Therese put the pitcher on the table and dragged their chair to the bedside. She set the bowl upon it and, having found the last clean bit of rag in the house, dipped it in the water and laid it on Mutti’s fevered brow.

  “Danke.” She stirred a bit in her sleep, and Therese continued to dab along her face and neck. Mutti’s hair, the remnant of her beauty, was gathered in a hasty plait sitting limp over her shoulder; sweat-curled tendrils formed a dark crown.

  “Would you like a sip of water?”

  “Please.”

  Therese rushed to the table and poured fresh water into a battered cup. She lifted her mother’s head, terrified of the heat she emitted. Mutti took only a few swallows, obviously pained by each one. Therese laid her down again and moistened the rag, this time bringing it to her mother’s lips to wet them for one last bit of refreshment.

  “I should go get Brother Mark right now.” Therese fought back her tears, lest Mutti turn to her and see them. “He’ll know what to do. I don’t understand why—”

  “He’ll bring the priest,” Mutti said as if they were picking up the conversation from an hour before. “And the priest will want to hear my last confession, and I will not confess my sins to that man.”

  “Mutti, please. Let me—”

  “Do you feel my skin, girl? How it burns? It is because I am halfway to hell already. When I would not confess your birth as a sin, he threw me out. You were in my arms, sick with fever. Nowhere to go and I went to the church, and I begged him—Baptize my child, lest she die tonight. I went into the confessional and confessed my sins. I’d stolen bread to feed myself so I could nurse you. I’d spoken horrible thoughts about my parents because they turned me out of the house. I thought longingly about your father, missing him and wanting him not just for y
ou but for myself. But I would not name you as a sin.”

  “Sister Heida told me that when we confess our sins, we give them over to God, and he takes them away.”

  “Then maybe I should have given you away to him when you were born.” Her voice was flat, giving Therese no idea whether or not she spoke with true regret. “A little foundling bastard for the nuns.”

  “But you didn’t. Because you love me?”

  “Because I was a fool.”

  The weight of her mother’s words was as painful as her mother’s breath, and Therese blamed the illness for both.

  “I think his heart has softened. He didn’t throw me out.” Even as she spoke, though, she saw his haughty face and knew if Sister Heida had not been at her side, she would have suffered the same fate as she did that night in her mother’s arms. “Besides, he won’t need to hear your confession because you aren’t going to die.”

  “I am.” Mutti’s eyes, which had been trained on the ceiling all the time she spoke, darted quickly to the door, and then over to Therese. “I am. I fell ill not two days after you left, and I’ve known with each morning that I would not see you again.”

  “But I’m here now. So you were wrong about that.”

  “I’ve been wrong about so many things.”

  With excruciating effort, Mutti shifted her body to make room for Therese to lie next to her, just as they had when she was very little. Now she felt small again, and though she was frightened of the fever, her mother’s warmth brought comfort to her body, chilled from the walk to the fountain and the splashing water. She stretched up and singed her lips with a kiss to her mother’s cheek, then settled with her head upon her breast. Each labored breath sounded like the rushing of the creek. Therese held herself as still as Papa Bear when the coughing rolled beneath her.

  “Mutti?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “It’s not too late.”

  “Too late?”