“Am I better?” I said. I remembered the shining doorway I’d seen the night before.
“Your fever has gone down,” Hank said.
“Then I’m better,” I said.
“Fevers always go down in the morning,” Hank said. “And then they go up again in the evening.”
“How is the baby?” I said.
“The baby is so weak I can’t feed it nothing but a sugartit and milk in an eyedropper,” Hank said.
“Then I ought to nurse it,” I said.
“You can’t,” Hank said. I felt the emptiness in my breasts.
“I want to see the baby,” I said.
“The baby is too delicate to move,” Hank said. “I’m keeping her in a shoebox by the fire.”
“I want to see her,” I said.
“You just need to rest,” Hank said.
When Hank was gone I looked for the lighted doorway in the bedroom wall, but seen only the wall where coats and overalls hung on pegs. Yet when I closed my eyes and looked through the squint of eyelashes I seen the bright threshold. It was there all the time if you just looked at it right, like stars in the sky at noon if you can see them.
I closed my eyes and listened to the things outside the house. There was a dove calling somewhere in the woods across the creek. It was like the note when you blow across the mouth of a bottle. It was like a note coming out of a cave in the mountain.
Hank was getting clothes together in the kitchen to take out to the washpot. He had made a fire under the washpot and carried water from the spring to fill the cauldron and the tubs. As far as I knowed Hank had never washed clothes before. “The water is coming to a boil,” Hank called. “I hate to leave that baby for a minute.”
“You can’t take the baby outside,” I said.
“I’m afraid if I turn my back it’ll quit breathing,” Hank said.
“It’s in the hands of the Lord,” I said. But I didn’t know if I was talking in my head or really talking to Hank. I couldn’t tell the difference no more.
I could hear him talking like I was in the room with him. I heard Hank carry the clothes out to the washpot, and I heard him singing to hisself as he stirred the clothes in the boiling water with the troubling stick. Hank had never washed clothes before, but now he had no choice. He was singing “By Jordan’s Stormy Banks.” He sung several verses and choruses while he troubled the hot water and then lifted the clothes out with the stick, streaming and steaming, and slopped them down on the washboard.
Hank left the baby in the shoebox on the chair by the fireplace while he done the washing and split more wood at the woodpile. I heard the chop of the axe and then the hack of the echo coming back from the ridge across the creek. Chop-hack it went. Chop-hack, chop-hack. His axe was making music and the dove was making music. Everything was making its own music. The dust in the air was music and the clouds in the sky was music. And the baby’s little cry was music that hurt.
WHEN NEXT I woke up I was shivering. It was cold like ice water was pouring through the hollows of my bones and there was ice in the sockets of my joints. My teeth chattered and my elbows jerked. Hank bent over me and said, “You’ve got the chills.” He wrapped the quilts tighter around me. But the quilts felt thin as muslin that let a cold wind through. There was nothing between me and the ice at the North Pole.
“Drink this,” Hank said. He held a cup of hot tea to my lips. There was fumes coming from the tea. It was part whiskey. My jaws shook so I couldn’t hardly put my lips to the glass. I swallowed a trickle of tea and it went down my throat like a lizard of fire. It crawled in my belly and curled up in a nest of glowing coals. I took another sip and the nest of coals got bigger.
“Drink all of it,” Hank said. I took another sip and swallowed. The hot herb tea made me shiver even worser. Shivering shows you’re still alive, somebody had said. I shuddered and jerked from one end of the bed to the other. My breasts was empty, but I wanted to hold the baby. But I couldn’t even keep my arms still. I tried to lay still and my back jerked and rippled. My bones felt like they was rattling against each other.
As the warm juice in my belly started spreading, carrying its lights through veins and bones to my toes and fingertips, I stopped jerking a little. I laid back on the pillows and seen the door in the wall of the bedroom. It was warm evening light coming through the door, on the grass and among the pine trees. Somebody was calling to me on the path, just beyond where I could see.
Now I could think two things at the same time. I could hear Hank in the living room talking as he awkwardly lifted the diaper and gown from the baby and sponged the little body off with a piece of flannel cloth. The baby was so little a regular diaper almost covered it up. The skin was too delicate to rub. Hank just touched it with the wet flannel the way he might wash a sore place or a wound. He touched the baby like he was almost afraid to touch her.
“Be a miracle if this baby lives,” Hank said.
“It’s a miracle any baby lives,” I said. But I didn’t know if I was just talking in my head. I couldn’t nurse the baby. I had failed her.
It was night outside the window where Hank was. Night pressed against the house and made it feel little.
But through the door in the wall of the bedroom come the light of a summer evening. Birds was singing in the golden trees and the grass was warm from the sun. You could tell where the path in the grass was because it was sunk a little. The trail wound off into the pines and up the hill. “Julie,” somebody called among the trees, beyond where I could see.
Who could be calling me out into the late evening sun, into the woods where the sun didn’t reach? I wondered if I should get out of bed. I had laid still so long I was weak and my legs felt like they was froze. If I had such a fever as Hank had said, should I get out from under the covers and walk outside?
“Are you coming, Julie?” the voice called. And at the same time I heard Hank talking from the living room. “I’ve heard of giving a baby ginseng tea to stimulate its heart,” he said.
“Ginseng tea is too strong for a baby,” I called. “I wouldn’t give it nothing stronger than pennyroyal tea.”
“You could give it a smaller dose, or a weaker dose,” Hank said. He sprinkled talcum on the little girl and slid a diaper under her. Hank worked careful, barely touching the delicate skin. The baby was so soft a touch could bruise it. The skin was softer than a rose petal and would break just as easy.
After he got the diaper under the baby Hank laid the ends across the belly and pinned them. He held one diaper pin in his mouth while he snapped the other into place. Hank’s hands was too big for that kind of work, but he was doing his best. I seen there was things about Hank I couldn’t have guessed. He was talking to the baby. “She’s a pretty girl, now ain’t she a pretty girl?” Hank was saying. “Prettiest girl in the world. Ain’t got a name, pretty little thing.”
But while I heard Hank talking, almost singing to the baby, I could hear the voice calling from the pine trees also. “Julie,” it said, “I want to show you something.”
Whose voice was it? It sounded so familiar. “Julie,” it called, “I want you to come out where I can see you.”
Suddenly I knowed it was Papa’s voice. I hadn’t noticed that before, for it wasn’t Papa’s voice when he was old, but when he was young. It was his voice as a young man, when he first met Mama. He was calling to me in the voice of his youth. He was calling to me across the summer grass from the pine woods.
“I’m not supposed to walk,” I called back.
“You can walk,” Papa said, almost like a kid calling me out to play. I lifted the covers aside and got out of bed. My legs was stronger than I had thought they was. I had to walk slow, but I was steady. I took short steps to the door and walked out into the grass.
It was a world for a picnic out there. I had never seen a place so perfect. The grass was warm and trimmed smooth. The world was a park, a garden. It was like the world must have been in the beginning. There was bushes that smell
ed like perfume and flame azaleas in bloom. There was little bluets along the edges of the grass. It was grass you wanted to set down on. It was grass you wanted to lay back on and watch the clouds pass over.
Papa called to me again, but he was further out in the woods than I had thought. “Are you coming, Julie?” he said. It was like he had gone for a walk on the path up the mountainside and was waiting for me. We was going for a stroll on the trail that wound off through the pine trees to the edge of the sky.
But in the living room Hank was still talking to the baby. He laid a white flannel blanket over her up to her chin. “This little girl will live till the end of the century,” Hank said. “She will live to see the end of time. For preachers say the world will come to an end at the end of the millennium. This little girl will start out in a shoebox by the fireplace and live to see Jesus bust out of the eastern sky in all his glory.”
“How can time come to an end?” I said in my head.
“It will come to an end when the Word is fulfilled,” Hank said.
“Time can’t end, for what would follow would be time too,” I said.
“Don’t you believe the Bible?” Hank said. “Don’t you know it says plain in Revelation that time will stop?”
“But what comes after that will be more time,” I said.
The baby cried a little cry. It was a cry small as a bird might make. It was small as the memory of a cry. She was crying and I couldn’t feed her.
• • •
“YOU ARE WALKING on sacred ground,” the voice in the pines called to me.
“I’m walking barefoot,” I said.
“Only a few more steps,” the voice called. But it was now further up the trail. The voice was in the shadows under the pine trees. The pines had purple and green shadows. The grassy path wound deeper into the trees.
Now it was like there was music coming out of everything I looked at. The glowing grass under my feet had its own music, and the shadows blowed out deep organ music. I knowed the music was in my head, but it was seeing the wonderful world of grass and pine grove that made me think the music. There was music coming from under the ground so deep it hurt my bones and stirred through my guts. Everything had a different voice, but the voices all harmonized like a congregation at church.
“Julie,” the voice called as I stepped into the alcove among the pine trees. It was a little dancing yard, a little cove. I looked for Papa’s figure, but there was nobody there. The woods was lit with the evening sun, but I didn’t see nobody. It was the kind of place where you expected to see a burning bush. I walked over the soft grass as easy as gliding.
“Papa,” I called to the path going up the hill. There was nobody in sight among the pines, and nobody answered. But I thought I heard somebody speak, or maybe it was a dove calling. I stepped up the path knowing there was somebody waiting, for I had heard the voice call my name. The music was in my head, but the voice come from the pine trees. “Papa,” I called again. But when I come around a turn in the path there was nobody there. “Please, Jesus,” I whispered, “let me talk to Papa.”
“Julie,” the voice said again, and it sounded close by but above me. I hurried up the grassy trail and seen the top of the hill was bare. It was covered with grass and a bright, white cloud hung so close it appeared to lean against the top of the hill. It looked like I could step from the path right onto the shining cloud.
“Papa,” I called. But I didn’t see anybody on top of the hill. There was just me and the sky and the white cloud.
“Julie,” the voice said behind me. I turned, and where there hadn’t been anybody before stood a young man that looked a little bit like Papa. He had a reddish blond beard and hair. He was wearing a white shirt and he had slender shoulders and the whitest skin you ever seen.
“Don’t you know me?” he said.
“I think I know you,” I said.
I was standing on the top of the world and there was nobody there but him and me and the shining cloud almost at my elbow.
“I have come to show you my love,” he said.
“Why have you come to me?” I said. I felt how shameful I was. I hadn’t even been able to nurse my baby.
“Because you have shown the truest love,” Papa said.
“How?” I said. My knees was shaking.
“Because you have loved others more than yourself,” he said.
“I done what I had to,” I said.
“You are one of the blessed,” he said.
“What kind of dream am I dreaming?” I said.
But Papa didn’t answer. He turned and walked further up the grassy hill. I was afraid he might just melt away into the light. He looked so slim and starved. I was afraid he would vanish before I could find out why he had come to me.
There was things I wanted to ask Papa, things I would never get a chance to ask again. “Will I live?” I said.
“I have come to tell you, you will live,” Papa said. “You will live and you will continue to work and to love.”
“That sounds simple,” I said. “Simple and hard.” They was two words that fit my life, the life I had lived. Ever since I could remember the work had been hard, work I often hated. I looked for Papa, but he wasn’t on top of the hill. I looked behind me, but there was nothing but pine trees and grass there. The cloud had floated away and hung far out over the valley.
“I wanted to ask if the baby will live,” I called. But there was only the whisper of air around me.
I stood on the hill until the light begun to fade. Far to the edge of the world I thought I seen a star come out like a crystal. It was time for me to start back down the hill.
I HEARD THE baby crying in the living room.
“I’ll put some extra wood on the fire,” Hank said.
“It’s near bedtime,” I said.
“Never mind what time it is,” Hank said. “I’m going to make some more tea for the baby.”
“What kind of tea?” I said.
“I’m going to put a little camomile in it,” Hank said, “to help the baby sleep. To hush it up from crying.”
I felt how warm and damp the sheet was around me. The quilt pressed down its warmth close to my sweaty skin. I reached a hand from under the covers and touched my forehead. My skin was wet with sweat, and cool. But I could smell the sickness on my hand, the smell of old flesh that has been cooked by fever and needs scrubbing. I was dripping with sweat.
Thirteen
Hank did go after Ma Richards after my fever went down and Ma Richards helped me take care of the baby while I was getting my strength back.
Ma Richards complained, but she helped me with little Delia like she was her own baby. I’ll have to give Ma that. But it didn’t do no good. The child had been born too early. She was too little to be able to live on cow’s milk and sugar water and the gruel Ma Richards made. It broke my heart to see how tiny Delia was and how she wouldn’t gain any weight. Her fingers and toes was tinier than match heads. Her little arms was the size of my fingers. Taking care of Delia wasn’t like taking care of another sick baby, where you hold it and rock it, and give it tonic and warm milk. Delia was so tiny you didn’t dare hold her upright. She was so weak you didn’t want to move her no more than you had to. And she was so delicate you was afraid you’d break her skin or arm just by taking her up.
“The Lord will let this baby live,” I said, “if it’s his will.”
“The Lord has his own plans for people,” Ma Richards said, in her way that always irritated me.
“But we can still ask for what we want,” I said.
“We can ask,” Ma said. “But that don’t mean the Lord has to answer.”
I had been feeling better about Ma Richards as I got stronger. But maybe because I had decided to like Ma more, my guard was down. Before, I had been extra careful whenever she was around and held myself back because I disliked her so much. Now anger rose right out of my guts and filled my mouth.
“I guess you know all the Lord’s se
crets,” I said. I sounded like Mama when she was mad. It just come out and I didn’t try to stop it.
Ma Richards was folding diapers on the kitchen table. She stopped and looked at me. She wasn’t used to people talking back to her. She certainly wasn’t used to me talking back to her.
“I try to tell the truth,” Ma said.
“Why should the Lord show you the truth more than anybody else?” I said. I could feel a shadow in the air around me, like the daylight was haunted. I had never gone so far quarreling with anybody, except maybe Lou. But I didn’t want to stop myself until I’d gone farther still. It felt good to talk angry.
“I’ve learned a few things in my years,” Ma said. “And one of the things I’ve learned is how foolish the young can be when they won’t take advice.”
“The only advice you want to give is to run things,” I said. I had gone that far; I might as well go on farther.
Ma Richards went back to folding diapers. She finished one and started folding another. There was a grin on her face, like she had been waiting a long time for a fuss and nobody had obliged her. “Throwing off on me won’t make the baby no better,” Ma said.
“You don’t care what happens, as long as you can be the queen bee,” I said. My voice was shriller than I wanted it to be.
“I care enough to come down here and work day and night to take care of you,” Ma said.
I wanted to drive her out of the kitchen. I wanted to fold the diapers myself. I grabbed a diaper off the pile and started to fold it. Hank was out at the barn and I didn’t want him to hear me quarreling with Ma Richards.
“You don’t think nobody knows how to do anything but you,” I said. Now that my tongue was loose it just seemed to go of its own accord.
“What is wrong with you, Julie?” Ma said. “You must be out of your head.”
“I believe in respecting old people,” I said. “But I never run into anybody like you before.”
“Hank don’t seem to mind the kind of person I am,” Ma Richards said.
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