Lila: A Novel

by Marilynne Robinson

  “Well,” he said, “maybe. But I do want to say one more thing. Thinking about hell doesn’t help me live the way I should. I believe this is true for most people. And thinking that other people might go to hell just feels evil to me, like a very grave sin. So I don’t want to encourage anyone else to think that way. Even if you don’t assume that you can know in individual cases, it’s still a problem to think about people in general as if they might go to hell. You can’t see the world the way you ought to if you let yourself do that. Any judgment of the kind is a great presumption. And presumption is a very grave sin. I believe this is sound theology, in its way.”

  She said, “I don’t know nothing about it.” Then she said, “I don’t understand theology. I don’t think I like it. Lots of folks live and die and never worry themselves about it.”

  “Ah, of course!” He laughed. “You don’t like theology! I should have thought of that. Too many years alone, I suppose. Talking to Boughton. Or to myself. Preaching. I am a fool.”

  “Well now, I didn’t say I won’t start to like it sometime.” She said this because she could hear sadness in his voice.

  He laughed. “That’s kind of you. I suppose it’s a little late to ask, but what do you like?”

  “I don’t know. Working.”

  He nodded. “Work is a fine thing.” And he put his hands to his face. “Listen to me! Every word I say is just pure preacher! I could cite text!”

  She said, “I expect you’d be used to it by now.”

  * * *

  That night, lying against the warmth of him, she said, “Maybe you don’t have to think about hell because probly nobody you know going to end up there.”

  After a moment, he said, “I suppose there’s an element of truth in that.”

  “Except me.”

  “Lila,” he said, “I have to preach tomorrow. If you put more thoughts like this in my head, how am I supposed to get any sleep?” He drew her closer to him, stroked her cheek. “I’m going to keep you safe. And you’re going to keep me honest.” Maybe he couldn’t think she would go to hell, because he loved her. She thought, He’d have as good reason, or better, to love any one of the whole world of people who might have turned up on his doorstep. The thought of them made her wish it was morning, Doane and Mellie and the others. That long time when she had no notion of what time was. Lying down to sleep in the dew and darkness, being roused again in the dew and darkness, a fire for supper, a fire for breakfast, if Doane could get it started soon enough, a pot of beans, or ashy potatoes in their husks, and that bitter, urgent smell that comes in the wind, as if the world were scared to sleep and then sorry that the morning had to come. Waking up with her hair in tangles. They always said no whimpering, the grown-ups, and she would try to stop and then stop and sit there with Doll’s arm around her, the two of them eating from the same dish.

  The next morning, before it was morning, she had gone to the river, and he had waked to an empty house. She put on her old dress, and she went to the river and washed herself in the water of death and loss and whatever else was not regeneration. But there was a child, she was almost sure of it, and what else could she expect, with that way she had of creeping into the old man’s bed when he never even asked her to. She had seen women bearing their children in a shed, at the side of a field, babies that the light of day shouldn’t have seen for a month or two but the women’s bodies just gave them up out of weariness. She and Mellie had found a woman like that once, alone in a cabin at a little distance from a huckleberry patch. They heard her crying, and Mellie said they’d better look in the door. Then Lila ran to find Doll, and when they came back Mellie was crying, too, because the woman had taken hold of her hands and wouldn’t let go of them. She said, “I was trying to help, now I guess I nearly got some busted fingers.” Doll talked to the woman so that she’d know there was someone there besides children, so she calmed a little and let Mellie go. Lila and Mellie drew some water from the well, and they gathered an armful of starwort and spread it on the grass to dry. Then they sat on the stoop and listened, because they couldn’t help it, and Doll talked to the woman, trying to comfort her. The woman knew the baby shouldn’t be coming yet. It was just a long, bloody struggle and at the end of it a little body to wash. Doll could be so gentle. They couldn’t help watching her. She swaddled it up in a flour sack. And then she walked the woman out to the porch and washed the blood and the sweat off her, and they couldn’t help watching that, either. The woman was so thin, except for the pouch of her belly. Her bare legs trembling. She kept saying, “My husband will be back soon. He went for help. He’ll be back.” But that’s the kind of lie people tell sometimes when they got only strangers to rely on. There’s shame in that, so people lie. They helped Doll clean up around the place as well as they could, and did the milking, and fed the chickens, and she and Mellie found some meal and cooked it, and told her the starwort would help if she burned a little of it, and they left her their huckleberries. That poor baby just lay there on a bench, waiting for its father to see it, the woman said. Walking along in the dark, looking for their camp, they didn’t say a word. Well, Doll did say, “That’s how it is.”

  So what she had to do was stay in that house and let the old man look after her, and when the time came, the church women who would be so glad to put a living child into his arms. They could bring all the cakes and casseroles they wanted for as long as they wanted, and he would be happy to have something he could talk to her about. Lila thought of herself as old, nearly safe from childbearing. She might not have given in so easily, otherwise, to the comfort of him, the feeling of him next to her, so much better than resting her head on that old sweater she stole from him. No point in worrying about that now. There would probably be a child, and that would probably be a good thing. But only if she stayed. At least now she knew he would let her stay, however crazy she might be, or ignorant, or lost. If there was going to be a child. So she went back to his house and put on her new dress and waited for him on the porch.

  * * *

  The thought of a child made him older. He never slept much or well, but now he hardly seemed to sleep at all. She wore her ring and tried to stay near the house, but if it helped at all it just worried her to think how sad he would be if she did a wrong thing and upset him. The more she might seem like a wife to him, the more he would fear the loss of her. One morning she found him in the kitchen before the sun was up, looking stooped and rumpled, stirring oatmeal. She touched his shoulder in a way he took as a question, and he said, “I don’t know about myself, Lila. Such a night. I’m almost afraid to pray. I find myself praying now that I’d be able to accept”—he shook his head—“things I can’t bear to think about. It’s against my religion to say it would be too hard. But I’m afraid it would be.” He shook the oatmeal off the spoon into two bowls and set them on the table. “I cooked it too long. It’s pretty sticky. But it’s good for you. Here’s some milk.” He gave her a spoon and a napkin, sat down across from her, clasped his hands, and prayed briefly over his oatmeal. “And much the worst of it is that all the real hardship falls to you. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk this way.”

  She said, “Women have babies. All the time. I figure I can.” To comfort him she could have said it might all turn out just fine, it usually did, but she was as much afraid as he was to think that way. She couldn’t tell him she had unbaptized herself for fear he thought it would harm the child. Why did she do it that morning? She could just as well have done it after the baby came. Then if something went wrong she wouldn’t have to wonder whether she was to blame for it. It was dread at the thought that made her ask him right then if once you been baptized you could ever just wash it off you, and he smiled and said no.

  “Even if you wanted to?”

  “Well, that’s probably about as close as you could ever come. But no. You don’t have to worry about that.” She was relieved, in a way.

  She’d heard people say that a sad woman will have a sad child. A bitter w
oman will have an angry child. She used to think that if she could decide what it was she felt, as far back as she remembered, she could know that much, at least, about the woman who bore her. Loneliness. She pitied the woman for her loneliness. She didn’t want this child of hers to feel afraid with no real reason. The good house, the kind old man. I got us out of the rain, didn’t I? We’re warm, ain’t we? In that letter he had said there’s no such thing as safety. Existence can be fierce, she did know that. A storm can blow up out of a quiet day, wind that takes your life out of your hands, your soul out of your body. The fire went up and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning. And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning. She had copied this fifteen times. It reminded her of the wildness of things. In that quiet house she was afraid she might forget.

  She thought, An unborn child lives the life of a woman it might never know, hearing her laugh or cry, feeling the scare that makes her catch her breath, tighten her belly. For months its whole life would be all dreams and no waking. The steps in the road, the thought of the knife, then the dread sinks away for a while, and how is a child to know why? She could only guess what all it was that Doll was afraid of, or ashamed of, but she lived her fear and her shame with her, taking off through the woods with an apple thumping in her lunch bucket and Doll wearing a big straw hat she must have hoped would shade her face enough to hide it a little. More than once Doll took her hand to hurry her along and wouldn’t let her catch her breath and never told her why. She always stayed back from the firelight even when the night was cold and even when there were no strangers there to see. Doane and the others saw, of course, but Lila was the only one she ever really trusted to look into her face. Well, child, Lila thought, I will see you weltering in your blood. And mine. Lonely, frightened, my own child. If the wildness doesn’t carry us both away. And if it does.

  She looked after the gardens. She walked up to the cemetery to see to Mrs. Ames and the child, and now the boy John Ames and his sisters. No need to go out looking for ironing to do, the Reverend told her. There was a woman who had taken in his laundry for years, so there was no need for Lila to do that kind of thing at all. She should take care of herself. That was the best thing she could do. Everything would be seen to.

  She had that room he called her study. The Bible was there, and her tablet, and a drawer of new pencils and erasers and pens and tablets. There were books with pictures of other countries in them, China, France, some of them from the library. Most evenings the Reverend walked with her after supper, her arm in his, pausing to speak to everyone he knew, however slightly, to say, This is my wife Lila. Every courtesy owed to him was owed to her also, now that she was his wife, and he wanted to be sure they, and she, understood this. When anyone spoke to her, she nodded and said nothing. Whoever it was always changed the subject to the weather, the corn crop. If they walked out past the edge of town he would put his arm around her waist, still shy of her and pleased to be alone with her, knowing she was relieved to be alone with him. She knew he was thinking and praying about how to make her feel at home. She had never been at home in all the years of her life. She wouldn’t know how to begin. But the shade of the cottonwoods and the shimmer of their leaves and the trill of the cicadas were comfort for her. The pasture smell. Elderberries grew in the ditches by the road, and they picked them and ate them as they walked. Sometimes it was dark when they turned back toward Gilead. Once, he noticed a bush glimmering with fireflies. He stepped into the ditch and touched it, and fireflies rose out of it in a cloud of light.

  When he was in the house she kept the door to her room open. She sat at the table and did her copying and paged through the books he had given her, since she knew he might look in from the hall. And over the head of the living creature there was the likeness of a firmament, like the terrible crystal to look upon, stretched forth over their heads above … And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings like the noise of great waters, like the voice of the Almighty, a noise of tumult like the noise of a host: when they stood, they let down their wings. She shut the door and locked it when the Reverend left the house, and then she sat in the corner on the floor and hugged her knees to her chest and closed her eyes and thought.

  There were other people on the road Doane knew, who would share the fire and add whatever they could to supper and talk with him about where work was needed and where there had been flood or hail or grasshoppers or foreclosure. They would scratch out maps on the ground—the bridge is out here so you’d best take this road south of it—and they’d tell stories about the farms they’d worked, stinginess or meanness or stupidity they’d seen or heard about, and who was fair or more than fair. This was after the dust began to blow to the south and west, and the people who would have been working those farms began to drift into the parts Doane knew, and Doane’s people were obliged to wander a little to find work. Doane said those folks would work for just about nothing. How was a man supposed to make a living? And finally he said, Hell, if they’re so set on Nebraska they can have it, and Kansas to boot. He was going back to Iowa and east from there. He was tired of eating sand anyway.

  Even before the worst of the dusters there was grit drifting around everywhere. They slept with damp cloths over their faces, and when they woke up they had to shake sand out of their hair and their blankets and clothes. People who lived in houses said they had begun stuffing wet rags into every crack they could find and sweeping their floors five times a day. But there was no living outside when the dust began drifting north. Doane had waited a little too long for things to get better, so when they started east there were other people on the road who had the same idea, and others ahead of them, already taking any kind of work there was. Doane said he had seen hard times, but this just did beat all. Arthur said they should have started east sooner, as if the thought had just come to him, and Doane said he didn’t want to hear it. What use was there in saying something like that. A couple of good rains and they’d have been right where they’d have wanted to be. And don’t say nothing if you got nothing useful to say.

  It wasn’t like Doane to speak to Arthur that way, or it hadn’t been up till then. But Doane had never before had much trouble keeping everybody fed, and it weighed on him. Things got worse, and pretty soon he was cross as a snake. Arthur and his boys took off, thinking they could do better on their own. It would have been hard for them to do worse, and at least they wouldn’t have Doane bossing them around when nobody ever said they were working for him anyway. But they were back with him in a few days. They got lonely and they were fighting all the time. Doane didn’t say a word to them about it, except that they were more than welcome to their share of nothing. That was when he began to sort of hate Marcelle. She’d gone out into a bottomy field where she knew there would be nettles, and somebody else had already gathered them all. Doane told her she was ugly when she cried and he didn’t want to look at her. That was when Doll went off on her own and was gone for four days.

  Doane and Arthur got work clearing some young trees and brush off a field that had been abandoned and was going to be turned to pasture. They all helped, limbing the trees and stacking and burning the brush, and they were paid in potatoes and dried beans, which is how things were then. So when Doll came back there was a fire and supper, people fed and tired, and her child gone. They said they didn’t know the name of the place where they left her, some shabby little town down the road a few miles. She probably didn’t even wait long enough to let herself cuss. She just ran and walked and ran and walked down the road the way they would have come, through one shabby little town, so closed up for the night that no one answered the doors she pounded on, and then on to the next town. And there the child was, sitting on the church steps. Doll might not have seen her except that the church door was open and there was a light from inside because that preacher was watching out for her. Lila was so sure he had wanted to make an orphan of her that
only years later did she think he might have been a kind man. An orphan is what she was, and she knew it then, and she thought that preacher must somehow know it, too, and be ready with the frightening word that would take her life away from her if only he chose to say it. And there was a voice above the firmament that was over their heads; when they stood, they let down their wings. She didn’t want to know what the verse meant, what the creatures were. She knew there were words so terrible you heard them with your whole body. Guilty. And there were voices to say them. She knew there were people you might almost trust who would hear them, too, and be amazed, and still not really hear them because they knew they were not the ones the words were spoken to.

  She had never heard anyone talk this way about existence, about the great storms that rise in it. But when she saw these words, she understood them. A time came when Doane couldn’t figure a way to keep them fed. His good name meant nothing because along these new roads he was just one more dirty, weary man with dirty, weary women and children straggling after him. He couldn’t very well keep his pride when he couldn’t even ask for work without seeming to ask for pity. Those years of saying, if he had to, Be fair to me and I’ll be fair to you, and being twice as careful to live up to his side of the deal as he was to make sure the other fellow lived up to his, all that was gone, and still they trailed after him, trusting him because they always had. They got work once pulling the tassels off corn, miserable work at best, out in the field with all the dust and heat and the grasshoppers getting on you and the itchiness of the silk and the edges of the corn leaves rasping against you. But by that time they almost weren’t up to it. They went so slow they didn’t finish the rows they were supposed to do, even though they worked until dark, till they could hardly lift their arms. And then they weren’t paid but half what had been agreed on, because they didn’t finish. Mellie cussed and cried where the man could hear and Doane slapped her. That was the first time he ever did any such thing. What does it matter if some ignorant man nobody would even notice loses the pride he has been so careful of all his life? If somebody said to him, No work here, mister—that’s just how it was, no harm intended. But it was also a great voice they heard everywhere, saying, Now, those half-grown children will be hungry and you’ll have the shame of it and there’s nothing you can do but wish at least you didn’t have to look at them. And he did seem to begin hating the sight of them. But they were bitterly loyal to him for the insult he suffered because his pride had been their pride for so many years.