An Offering: The Tale of Therese

by Pittman, Allison

“For you to give me to God. Tomorrow morning, when you’re a little stronger, we can go together. I don’t need to live with Oma and Opa. You can leave me at the gate, even, if you don’t want to go to the door. And maybe—”

  “Hush, child.”

  “—you can give your confession, and—”

  “My darling girl,” Mutti said, raising a hand listlessly to touch Therese’s cheek, “you are the only taste I’ll ever have of God’s mercy.”

  When Therese woke up, the room was filled with the gray light that precedes the dawn, and her mother lay beside her, still and cool as stone. Therese’s head no longer rested on Mutti’s breast, but there was no need to listen for a beating heart or labored breath. The last bit of hard-fought life must have escaped while Therese dreamed beside her—sweet dreams of weight and warmth.

  “Mutti?”

  She expected no reply, only spoke the name one more time, reassuring herself that the woman beside her on the bed was indeed the same who’d burned so fitfully the night before. Her florid complexion had turned to something like the petals of a white lily, with tiny, thin traces of pink and blue. Her lips were soft and pale and parted, as if caught in a surprise, and her dark lashes rested with a promise of never rising again. Rarely had she ever seen Mutti sleep so beautifully. Every other time, she’d be flung to her side, mouth open and wet, one arm slung across to fight the sun. But now her arms were folded, her hands clasped as if in prayer. The disarray of her hair made smooth, plaited and pinned. The foul odor of illness and filth was gone, too, as were the stains upon the sheets.

  Slowly, Therese crawled from the bed, never once taking her eyes from the beauty of her restored mother.

  “I should go.” She whispered as though Mutti merely slept. “I should go fetch Brother Mark.” The echoes of her mother’s protest rang in the silence. “Or Opa? But I don’t want to leave you—”

  A movement caught the corner of her eye. Like a ripple in a stream moving right through the air. The room remained dim, but turned more gold than gray, and her toes tingled as if they’d been tickled by the floor itself. The softest wsht sounded behind her, the resonance of a broom swept along the wall and across the door.

  But no sound of the latch.

  She turned, and though the sight that greeted her should have made her shout out, her cries stopped at the top of her throat. Not in a frightful, choking way, but as if a net wrapped around them and urged the bundle to turn instead to words—questions that would chase away the fear.

  “Who are you?”

  He was a man, unlike any she had seen before. Taller than the door and just as broad. He wore a plain white tunic over dark leggings and boots lashed to the knee. His face was remarkable only in the fact that she’d never seen one quite like it before, seemingly free of any distinguishing characteristic. No beard, no scars—a nose and chin and lips just as they should be. The eyes, though. These he trained upon her, a shade of amber rimmed with lashes the color of bronze. His hair, long and loose, fell to his shoulders in waves that appeared impervious to the wind.

  I am here. He spoke, but his lips remained as motionless as her mother’s.

  “Why are you here?”

  Instead of answering, he stepped forward, crossing the room in half a stride, took the chair from the side of the bed, placed it squarely in front of the door, and sat himself upon it.

  Even sitting, he filled the space.

  “I need to leave,” Therese said, as if the smallness of her voice might budge him. “I have to go find help for my mother.”

  Your mother is not here.

  “Not help, exactly. But I need—”

  I am here.

  She knew instinctively not to argue more. Instead, she looked back to her mother. “Did you help to make her look beautiful?”

  He gave no response but raised his hand to beckon her close.

  Before obeying, she pulled the miraculously clean white sheet up over her mother’s form, creating a shroud that wafted down to hide the precision of her features. Then, fearless, she crossed the room and stood inches away—close enough to feel the heat emanating from him. Not like Mutti’s fever, but enough to know she would burn with a touch to his skin.

  Do not be frightened.

  “I’m not. Not for myself, but for Mutti. Is she really dead? Is her soul with God?”

  Yes, served as the simple answer to the first question. To the second, he gave none. She knew, from an instinct deep within, that he had no answer to give. For the first time since returning home, Therese felt a hint of mourning.

  Just then, a knock sounded on the other side of the door. Loud, like the meat of a man’s fist pounding, and soon a man’s voice followed.

  “Marta!”

  She’d heard such noises before. Not usually this close to dawn, but for the carousers of Brunnendorf, the hours of night lost their measure.

  “Marta!” he shouted again, and followed her mother’s name with unsavory words befitting his intentions. Always before, when a man came calling in this fashion, Mutti would whisk Therese away in the corner, cover her with a blanket, and open the door just wide enough to hiss a warning to the man on the other side to go away with his noise or come in with his silence.

  They rarely went away.

  “Marta!” The pounding was strong enough now to make the pewter pitcher jump on the table, and to Therese’s horror, the latch rattled.

  Therese reached out and grabbed the sleeve of the man guarding the door. “Can’t you tell him to go away?” After all, he was monstrous in size, and would need only to open it.

  He will not come in.

  Still, the voice raged on, soon joined by others. Raucous laughter and crude jokes about how long it had been since Marta strolled their streets. Shouted suspicions about her disease, slurred bits of hope that the little girl had come home. Therese remembered how they looked at her when Mutti turned her eyes away, how they took every opportunity to touch—her face, her leg.

  She uttered one more plea, then turned to run to the familiar corner, hoping the horde would be shamed into silence if they broke through and saw the state of her mother. A ring of fire gripped her wrist. She cried out in pain, but when her wail ceased, so did the sounds from the other side. No dying conversation, just the deep silence of the waning night, as if—to a man—they’d been snuffed out like a flame.

  “You’ve hurt me.” Though the pain disappeared in the instant he released her, a bright-red ring of flesh remained. “Who are you?” she repeated, without hope of getting an answer.

  I am here.

  “What are you?” Though deep inside, she knew.

  I am here.

  “What is your name?”

  Mauer.

  Mauer. Wall. And so he was, sturdier than any formed of plaster.

  He—Mauer, for he seemed less imposing with a name—opened his arms invitingly, and without question she crawled into his lap. His sleeves fell below his wrists, his collar rose midneck, so as she laid her head upon his shoulder, no part of his flesh touched any part of hers. Her desire to flee and seek Brother Mark’s protection subsided. In a short time, she realized that the chest of this man did not rise and fall in breath, nor did any heart beat within him.

  Like Mutti, she thought, though he thrummed with life.

  No, he said. Not like your mother. I will be here when you awake.

  She had no intention of sleeping. How could she, sitting on a wall with her mother at peace only steps away? But she did. As deeply and soundly as she would in her little bed at Opa’s farm. She was curled up to perfection and lulled by the sounds just below Mauer’s skin—the sound of wind and rain, like the storm raging loud enough to block any wakeful sound. She slept past dawn, and into the morning, waking only when the rhythm of Mauer’s making clashed with a new pounding on the door. This voice equally familiar, but no less frightening.

  “Vermieter!”

  Therese rubbed her eyes, then craned her neck to whisper close to Mauer’s ear.
“It’s the landlord. Here for the rent, I suppose.” It was a recurring battle, one that threatened a life on the street more than once a year. “What shall we do?”

  I am here.

  And then another voice. “Therese? Marta?”

  Therese leapt to the floor. “Opa!” She looked up into Mauer’s golden eyes. “Please! Let him—”

  In an instant the chair was nestled in its place at the table and the door flung open. Opa nearly rolled through in his haste, and Therese ran into his arms. Hot tears flowed into the soft folds of his neck.

  “Oh, my girl, my girl. They’re saying outside that your mother is sick. That nobody’s seen . . .”

  He held her close, and with each cinching of his embrace, the memory of Mauer sitting guard at the door dissolved, like a dream not quite remembered. She couldn’t tell Opa about him now; her mind couldn’t begin to form the words to speak, and it didn’t matter because there wasn’t a trace of him in the room.

  “I didn’t know you were coming so soon.”

  “So soon? It’s been three days.”

  Three days? How could so much time have passed, and no recollection of a single minute since climbing into Mauer’s lap?

  “I should have been sooner. Days.” She felt him crying too. “Years. I should have kept her at home. Should have—but it is too late.”

  At this, for the first time, he turned his watery eyes toward the motionless form of his daughter.

  Therese leaned in, closed her eyes, and breathed deep. In his shirt and his skin she could smell the farm—the moist earth of the morning, sweet fresh milk straight from the goat, Oma’s bread after a day’s rising.

  “Opa?” She waited for him to breathe once, twice, until he returned to his reliable, steady self. She could feel his grief like a knot between her shoulders, the way she’d felt on cold, dark mornings when she had to carry the pitcher of water from the fountain back when she was too little for such a chore. But then she remembered—she wasn’t little anymore. Opa’s farm had made her strong. God himself had grown her up, giving her a name recorded in the Church’s book and prayers to say in the deepest woods. She lifted her wrist and saw the remnant of Mauer’s fire, a faint slash of pink wrapped around her veins.

  They buried Mutti on Opa’s farm, as the churchyard would not have her. Therese had listened to Opa’s pleas, that he was a good Catholic and would say prayers for her soul and tend to the grave and pay for the stone and pay a little more come the next harvest.

  But she’d heard Father Paul’s replies too. Adamant, they were, because her mother died with the darkness of mortal sin, unconfessed, like any other sinner ignorant of God’s mercy.

  Opa did not know, perhaps, that Therese heard everything. Father Paul had been invited to their home. He sat at their table, drinking their tea and eating one slice after another of Oma’s good gingerbread. Would it have done any good to tell him that Mutti died longing for mercy? Or that an angel from heaven came to protect her child? The hardness in Father Paul’s face dissuaded her, and she sat by the hearth, resting against Gräber, listening to the men debate her mother’s place of rest.

  “This is for the best,” Opa said when he patted down the last bit of fresh earth. “She is home, like we wanted. Right, Agathe?”

  “I suppose,” Oma said, hands clasped against her clean apron. “It’s what we all come to someday.”

  “I think it’s best too,” Therese said. They three were the only mourners at the site, though neighbors had been generous with their gifts. The setting sun meant a good supper awaited. “Mutti always said she wanted a home with a little fence and a goat in the yard. Can you build a little fence here, Opa?”

  “Ja.” Tears filled his eyes again, but they did not fall.

  Mutti would be—as always—at a distance, and the sharp shadows of evening grew soft and muted as they walked back to the cottage. One shadow, however, stood out, sharp and black, moving with a decisive stride toward them.

  Oma squinted. “Wer ist das?”

  Therese, however, knew exactly who it was and burst away from her grandparents, running straight into the softness of Sister Heida’s body, wrapped as it was in the worn, dark wool.

  “Father Bastian told me,” she said, pulling Therese deeper into the embrace. “You poor child. I’m so sorry about your mother.”

  Therese stepped away and looked up, Sister Heida’s face as full of light and comfort as the moon. “How did you find me?”

  “I prayed and asked God to send me to the people who would lead me to you. It is a small world, my little Therese. And gossip makes it smaller.”

  “Come.” Therese tugged Sister Heida’s hand. “Meet Oma and Opa. They know all about you. I live here now, with them.”

  The sister was invited to stay for supper, as there was more than enough food to feed them twice over, and knelt next to Therese’s small bed to pray before crawling in next to her to sleep. Her voice was the light before the dawn, singing a hymn of gratitude for the new day.

  “How long can you stay with us?” They worked side by side in Oma’s garden, Sister Heida expertly pulling weeds while leaving the brave vegetable shoots standing.

  “Not much longer. I told Sister Odile I would be back in two weeks’ time. It took me nearly a week to find you.”

  “Can’t you stay? If you haven’t any other family, you could live with us. In the room Opa was building for Mutti. You could have that.”

  Sister Heida laughed. “I have a family. A mother and a father and two brothers. I don’t lack a home, but my life is in Brehna. With the other sisters. And I have children there. Not my own, of course, but God’s. They are waiting for me to teach them.”

  “But you could teach me, couldn’t you? I want to learn too.”

  Sister Heida paused in her labor. “I know you do, child. And you’re such a smart girl. Would you ever want—?” She stopped and stared at Therese’s face. Such a rare moment to see her expression without a smile, but with an intensity that narrowed her dark-lashed eyes, turning Therese herself into a question that begged an answer.

  “No,” Opa said as they gathered for dinner. “Impossible. She’s only just returned to us.”

  “And we’ve nothing to give the Church to take her,” Oma said, sounding disappointed in her reason.

  “My convent often takes in those who have nothing to give,” Sister Heida said. “The poor are no less worthy to serve God. Perhaps they are more blessed because of their poverty, having nothing to give but their very lives.”

  Therese listened to every word, hunger growing within her despite her belly full of food.

  “She is all we have,” Opa said.

  “You are all she has,” Sister Heida said. “And she is still so very, very young.”

  Silence fell as thick as butter, and a change came over Opa’s face. For the first time, he looked old. Not in any way defeated or weak, but the lines in his face had grown deeper even since Mutti died. He lifted his hand, gnarled with age and work, and touched it to Therese’s cheek. “You don’t know how we’ve grown to love her.”

  Therese darted a glance to Oma, thinking that if she saw even a hint of what Opa promised in his touch, she would dig her heels in as deep as Mutti and never, ever leave.

  “She should go,” Oma said. Her eyes never left her trencher, but tears fell down her withered cheeks. “It’s what’s best.”

  A fever came to life within Therese’s spirit, and she reached up to clasp Opa’s hand, hoping he would feel it too. This wasn’t like the sickness that took her mother away, but a spark—no, a torch—that would carry her not only to Brehna, but into God’s very presence, where she could pray every day for him to forgive her mother’s sin.

  “Do you remember, Therese?” Sister Heida had been speaking. “The day I found you, and we went into the church, and I gave you two coins for the offering. Do you remember what I told you?”

  “You told me I could keep the money if I wished,” Therese said, the moment com
ing back as clear as if the wooden alms box were sitting on the table with the schnitzel. “But that the Lord would bless me for the gift and give me even more than I give to him.”

  “And isn’t it so?”

  “It is.” She looked around the table, wishing she had the power of speech to say all that was in her heart. So many miracles from such a tiny offering. Hunger a distant memory as she craned to see across the platters of food and find the face of the woman who had taken her off the street and fed her in the house of Our Lord and Savior. She saw a grandmother who wept for her and a grandfather who made a new home for her in his very heart. She looked through the window and knew, just over the rise, her own mother had finally come home—here—to rest, far away from the world that had made her so weary and sick.

  And now she was offered a chance to leave it too. But not the way Mutti did. Not in death, but with life. A life given to God, now and forever her only Father.

  Still, she must be given.

  “Please, Opa?”

  The longing in her voice seemed to take him by surprise. He sat back in his chair, and all of the grief that had kept him stooped and stiff turned into something else. Peace, the same that visited the day he resolved to bring her mother home.

  “Is this what you want?”

  “Yes, Opa.”

  He looked to Sister Heida. “There is a place for her? She will be treated well?”

  “Yes.” She spoke it as a promise.

  Brehna

  NOVEMBER 1505

  The water was cold in the basin, but no ice had formed. That was the worst, when the first girl up had to poke her elbow in to break it, then bump her hands around the floating, freezing shards. This would be her second winter at Brehna. Therese recalled the days when she had to go to the wolf fountain in the square and remembered to be thankful that the wash water was here, every morning, just steps away from her bed.

  “Hurry up,” Girt said behind her.

  “Since when are you so eager to wash?”

  “Since we’ll only have porridge for breakfast and I want to be the first in line.”