Till Morning Is Nigh

by Leisha Kelly

  “You shouldn’t!” she protested. “Pa does that. Every year. That’s what he gets us, since we were little.”

  Young Sam only sighed. “There’s just no tellin’ about this year.”

  “It wouldn’t seem right, not comin’ from Pa.”

  “Better than the little ones not havin’ it at all.”

  Young Sam talked to us about what might come next for their family, and Samuel told him about our decision to help them, even if it meant taking them all in permanently.

  “I ain’t far off from eighteen,” he told us. “We can make it if we hafta.”

  I knew all of us felt drained by the time we went to bed. I rolled out a pair of quilts to make an extra bed for Sam on the sitting room floor. Lizbeth was teary, but I knew it was sadness more than sickness troubling her now. And like some mysterious little touch of grace, she was the one who found the baby Jesus under her covers that night.

  Look Down from the Sky

  The children who were well enough had school on Monday and Tuesday, and then they were out for the rest of the week. By then everyone was feeling better. Sunday’s snow was enough to cover everything generously, so on Wednesday afternoon, young Sam took his brothers sledding on the sleds Samuel had made last Christmas. I had thought that the little girls would want to go too, but they didn’t, so I had them help me make bread for the Posts and then start some cookies—a triple batch of snickerdoodles to begin with.

  Despite the rich smells in the house when the sledders came back, there seemed to be a somber mood among them. I discovered later that they’d been far enough into the timber to come close to the site of their mother’s grave. They hadn’t gone there, but the snow, the cold, the barren trees—just like the day we’d buried her. It had been close enough to call it all back to mind. Wila Hammond and Emma Graham, gone together—it was a year ago last night. I knew at least some of the children realized that, and I wished I knew some comforting words to tell them.

  I gave everybody the first cookies out of the oven and made cocoa to go with them. But the mood didn’t improve much despite how quickly the treats disappeared. Samuel and young Sam had already left to do the milking and other chores at the Hammond farm for that evening, and I was left with the rest of them all just sitting around.

  “Let’s make the special Christmas cookies next,” I suggested. “The roll-out ones with all the nice shapes you like.”

  “Trees,” said Berty.

  “And candy canes,” Rorey added without much enthusiasm.

  “And stars and angels,” Lizbeth continued more cheerily. “I think that’s a great idea.”

  She worked valiantly at getting everyone involved. Mixing or rolling, stirring the red coloring into a bowl of sugar, or grinding nuts and chopping dates and candied cherries to decorate the tops.

  We made quite a production team, though I knew there were really very few hearts in it today. Lizbeth carefully cut out triangles, laying one sideways atop another to make a star. Then she showed the little girls how to make angels with a triangle, a small circle, and a large circle cut in half for wings. They used tiny bits of cherry for the mouths and date pieces for eyes. Katie added hair of finely ground walnut bits.

  I looked to see if Rorey’s angels were smiling today, but it wasn’t easy to tell. “Do they have cookies in heaven?” she suddenly asked me.

  “I don’t know, honey,” I told her, almost afraid to answer.

  “This one’s for Mama,” she said soberly. “Do you think we could put it out with a note on Christmas Eve? Maybe Santa could take it to her. Don’t he know the angels?”

  I nearly choked up, and Lizbeth did, poor girl. But before either of us could speak, Kirk answered far too harshly, “Santa don’t know no angels! He ain’t even real! You can’t give no cookie to Mama.”

  “I can too!” Rorey answered back, her eyes suddenly brimming. “On Christmas I can! Cause Mama said once anythin’ can happen on Christmas! It don’t matter what you say! It don’t even matter if Santa is real!”

  I don’t know where in the world Kirk got such a mean streak, but the next thing he said seemed designed to tear at her. “I’m gonna eat that cookie. Soon as it’s baked.”

  “No, you are not!” Rorey screamed. “It’s Mama’s!” In a fit of tears she flew off the chair where she’d been standing and rushed at him. I knew Rorey was one fiery little girl, but I’d had no idea she’d have no hesitation taking on a brother Kirk’s size. She beat at him good, and he shoved her. Lizbeth, Joe, and I all hurried to grab them both before things could get any further out of hand. Joe was the one that got hold of Kirk first, and what surprised me more than anything else was that Kirk took an actual swing at him. I wished to goodness Samuel were here.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Joe demanded. “It don’t hurt nothin’ for a little kid to dream! Let her be!”

  “It’s just dumb. It’s nothin’, an’ you know it! Do you think it’s gonna help anything?” Kirk yelled at him. “Do you? Mama’s dead! And Pa’s been ’bout the same as ever since! There ain’t no use pretendin’ otherwise!”

  As if she understood far better than we realized, Emmie burst into tears. She wasn’t the only one. Katie and Sarah were soon crying too, along with Berty. Harry mashed the cookie he’d been working on into a squishy lump, and Willy set down the nut grinder and took off outside.

  Robert followed Willy, grabbing both of their coats. I was so grateful he did. I had my hands full here. Rorey was still kicking and swinging, trying to get at Kirk. “You’re not gonna eat that cookie! You’re not!”

  “Oh, hush,” he told her. “You’re just dumb.”

  “No, she’s not,” Franky said. He looked so pale and drained all of a sudden. His silvery eyes were dark and pained. “She was just bein’ nice.”

  “You’re dumber’n she is.”

  “That’s enough!” Joe insisted, pulling Kirk toward the sitting room door. “What the devil’s the matter with you?”

  “I’m sick of it!” Kirk answered. “I’m sick a’ pretendin’ everythin’s all right. It ain’t! Why can’t somebody just come out and say so?”

  Joe dragged his brother into the other room, and I let them go, knowing there was nothing I could say right then that Kirk would want to hear. Lizbeth looked absolutely beaten. She drew in a deep breath and rested her hand on a chair back as if to steady herself.

  “It is too Mama’s cookie!” Rorey kept right on arguing even though there was no longer anyone to argue with. She tried to pull away from me, but I was afraid to let her go. Lizbeth stirred herself to try and comfort Emmie and Bert. Franky, dutiful as a little soldier, put his arm around Harry as the smaller boy took another wad of dough and squished it soundlessly in his hand. Still Rorey struggled to pull away. I knelt and drew her into my arms.

  “Rorey, sweetie,” I said gently. “It’s your mama’s cookie and nobody’s going to argue. Kirk’s just upset, that’s all. Sad and scared—”

  “Scared?” she asked. Her eyes were angry, but her face was wet with tears.

  “Yes. Big kids and grown-ups get scared sometimes when bad things happen. It’s pretty normal, and it’s okay. We just need to be patient with Kirk and try to understand. He misses your mama too. He just doesn’t know how to deal with everything right now.”

  “Does he miss Pa?”

  Her question made me cold inside. “Yes. I’m pretty sure he does.”

  She struggled with the next words and almost couldn’t say them. “Is . . . is Pa dead too?”

  Harry acted like he didn’t even hear us. Franky stayed beside him, but he was watching me, his eyes seeming all the more haunted. Sarah and Katie were watching me too, motionless, like they weren’t sure what to do. Berty spilled the bowl of red sugar, and Lizbeth took both of the younger ones into the bedroom and shut the door.

  “I don’t think he is,” I answered Rorey plainly. “I hope not.”

  “Why did he go away?”

  “I’m not sure anyo
ne can explain. Not well enough. Just that he’s so sad inside that he doesn’t know what to do.”

  “He should come an’ eat supper with us,” she said with an easy logic I couldn’t deny. “He should help me make another cookie for Mama. And one for Emma Graham too. Will you help me?”

  It was a rare moment for Rorey, and I knew it was an important one. “Of course I’ll help. You tell me what you want me to do.”

  “We need angels,” she said solemnly. “Lots more angels.”

  Sarah and Katie helped me cut out more triangles and big and little circles. Franky stayed at Harry’s side, letting him shape and then demolish the same couple of cookies over and over. We filled a cookie sheet with bare angel shapes and then started on another tray. I wasn’t sure anybody would be able to eat these cookies, but right then I didn’t care. Rorey needed angels. Maybe the rest of us did too. So angels we made. And once I figured out what it was that Kirk needed, I’d surely work on that too.

  The bedroom door opened, and Berty came padding softly out in his sock feet. He helped me clean up the red sugar, and then he wanted to help decorate the tray of angels and I let him have his way. So did Rorey. She didn’t care if they had sugar on them or how much or what color. She didn’t care if they had eyes or mouths, so long as they were angels and no one touched the special one she’d designed for her mama.

  Soon we were putting them in the oven and then pulling them out again to cool. Beside the stacks of snickerdoodles rose piles of Christmas angels.

  Rorey surveyed our work and was satisfied. “I think Mama’s gonna look down from the sky and be happy. She still loves us.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Of course she does.”

  “Jesus look down from da sky too,” Berty added solemnly, and I gave him a nod and a little squeeze.

  We must have made Samuel and young Sam wonder when they came back bringing the Hammonds’ milk again. Of course they wanted to get their hands in the cookies. Who wouldn’t after working hard out in the cold? But I directed them to the snickerdoodles. For now, I thought we’d better leave the angels alone. Until Rorey was ready. Maybe until she’d put up her mama’s and wanted to taste one herself.

  The moment came a little sooner than I expected. Joe and Kirk came back in the room, Kirk with his head down and Joe prompting him on. Rorey stopped and stared at them, not about to back down.

  “Sorry, kid,” Kirk told her. “If you wanna do stuff in honor of Mama—even make a cookie—it’s okay with me.”

  She stared for a moment. And then she reached for the cooling rack and grabbed an angel with a walnut nose and a generous supply of sugar covering the wings. She handed it to Kirk.

  “Mama wants you to have one too.”

  After that, it was all right to eat them, with only a special handful set aside.

  Samuel said Robert and Willy had been chopping wood in the yard. They came in quietly after awhile and didn’t say a word about the outburst. Joe and Kirk went out together to see that the rest of the chores were finished.

  Berty said Lizbeth and Emmie had both been crying when they went into the bedroom. When I went and checked on them, they were both asleep. But even in rest, Lizbeth looked weary and distressed. It was hard for me not to be angry about how wrenching all of this must be for her. Not at God, but at George, even though he hadn’t asked for the loss of his wife any more than the rest of us had.

  I felt so drained of energy that evening, I was glad I’d had another pot of soup simmering on the stove that didn’t need further attention. After dinner, we all gathered to listen to a radio show again. Emmie and Lizbeth were even up to join us, and I was glad for the togetherness and the peace. But everyone was so quiet, like we were all afraid to say much of anything. Appropriately, the show we listened to signed off with a new rendition of “Away in a Manger.” And strangely enough, that night it was Rorey who found the paper baby Jesus on the pillow beside her dolly.

  Stay by My Cradle

  All week, Mary and Joseph kept progressing a little closer to the kitchen table “Bethlehem.” Most of the time, a group of the younger children would move them together, just a foot or two, with great ceremony.

  “They’re getting closer,” Sarah would announce, and indeed they were. I thought their position on the hallway floor a little too precarious at times and would set them up out of harm’s way when I knew there’d be plenty of traffic shuffling through. But whenever I did that, they always returned to the same spot before much time had passed. I assumed it was Sarah who put them back, but I never saw for sure.

  Likewise, when I moved angels, shepherds, and livestock off the table to make room for a meal, no one said anything. But I never had to put them back after cleanup. They just appeared, every time, when I was busy doing something else. Once I caught Harry and Bert moving them, but I know they weren’t responsible every time. And nobody admitted to moving baby Jesus at night. He didn’t show up in somebody’s bed all the time. Sometimes he was on Sarah’s dresser, the spot she’d designated for him. Sometimes he was just missing, only to show up the next day in the strangest of places. Samuel’s boot. Joe’s coat pocket. Even atop the tray of cookie angels.

  Our wise men hadn’t moved because nobody was sure when they saw the star and began their journey. Finally Robert decided that they’d better get started. So he helped the littler kids erect a simple paper stable with rolled paper legs, so they could paste the tube holding the star to the back of it. I was proud of all the work they’d done, but they still weren’t satisfied. Franky, Sarah, and Katie fashioned the manger itself, while Rorey sat beside them, carefully tearing to shreds the sheet of the paper she’d colored yellow days ago. The stage was set.

  The last few days before Christmas whisked by us without any more word about what had happened to George. It was hard not to give up, but Lizbeth still prayed every night that he’d come home to them. I knew Samuel was right that even if he did, we would need to stay close, keep a watch on things, and be here for the children.

  Lizbeth and young Sam argued after the little ones were asleep, about whether Sam should go to town and buy the Christmas candy. Lizbeth seemed to feel it was too soon to accept that their father wouldn’t take care of that for himself, and even if he didn’t, it just wouldn’t be right for the familiar striped candy sticks to come from someone else. So Sam finally decided that he would get a completely different kind of candy, something new to all of them, just “so the little kids’ll have sweets” without duplicating his father’s tradition.

  He rode a horse into town alone for that, and on the same day we took the Posts three different kinds of bread, a pie, and a plate of cookies. They surprised us the following afternoon with a huge turkey, two crookneck squash, and four jars of home-canned corn. Here was our Christmas dinner! I tried to tell Barrett we’d only meant to bring them a gift to thank them for the use of their truck and for being such good neighbors. They didn’t have to reciprocate. But he said they were just giving a gift too, to thank us for Samuel’s help with the furnace and for being such good neighbors back to them. I sent Louise one of the button necklaces the children had made, plus a bag of mint leaves harvested last summer from the abundant supply behind the house.

  Sarah and Katie had made Christmas cards for their grandmothers. I truly didn’t expect to hear back from either one of them, but we did. Samuel was amazed that his mother sent a card. She’d only written to us once before, ever. And Katie was excited and scared all at the same time to receive a card from her mother’s mother. She waited anxiously as I opened it to read to her, but there was no word in it about where her mother was now.

  The day before Christmas Eve, Samuel took the children out to get a tree. Wisely, he went to the timber below the west pasture, avoiding the east timber between us and the Hammonds’ house with the little grave site it contained. The absences were hard enough to bear without visiting graves in this season.

  I popped popcorn again, and the kids sat and threaded masses of it
into a garland to circle around the tree. We put up Emma Graham’s lovely glass ornaments and the yarn people and button ornaments we’d made last year. The big paper star from last year’s tree had gotten pretty crumpled, so Rorey made a new one. Still, the tree looked a little bare, and last year’s paper chain was now gracing the mantel, so Lizbeth got the kids making more paper chain, colored bright. And I wrapped a big red towel around the tree base.

  That night very late, Samuel was working in the barn, finishing Berty’s gift as I stitched on a cloth teddy bear for Emmie, cut from a worn-out old sweater. I’d already helped Samuel put the finishing touches on Harry’s clothespin soldiers, and they were stretched out on the table in front of me with their painted faces and wooden-spool stands drying.

  But we still hadn’t figured out what to make for Franky, and we were running out of time. I thought I could just give him the hankies I’d made at his suggestion for his father, but I knew that would serve as nothing but a sad reminder. I was stewing a little about what else we could do when Samuel came in with his eyes twinkling merrily and one hand behind his back.

  “Guess what I found.”

  “What?”

  “It was in the corner of the hayloft, underneath that stack of old boards I’d been meaning to move.” He pulled his hand forward. A hammer. A rusty, old, child-sized hammer. “It must have belonged to Emma Graham’s son.”

  I took it in my hands, looking at him with question.

  “I can clean it up. It’s perfect for Franky.”

  “What on earth made you look in the hayloft?”

  “Remember what he told us? About giving him some wood? I thought maybe we’d have to do that. I’d gone up to bring down some of those boards and pull the nails out, thinking to give him enough lumber and nails to make a little chair or box or something.”

  “Oh, Samuel, do that. Along with the hammer. He’ll love it.”

  I made fudge late that night so I could surprise the children with it Christmas morning—an extra big batch so I could give extra to Sam and the other big boys.