Good Heavens

by Margaret A. Graham

  As I handed it to her, Linda snatched it. “It’s from her mother,” she said. I reached for the letter and gave it back to Portia. She stuffed it in her shirt without reading it and went back to the garden. That Linda! I could wring her neck!

  As I was coming back in the house, I heard the phone ringing and ran as fast as I could to answer it. I was surprised to hear Clara on the other end. “Esmeralda, we just wanted to hear from you. How’re you doing?”

  “Oh, just fine,” I said. “Clara, I want you to thank the W.W.s for all those sheets and towels you sent up here. The girls were tickled pink with some curtains they found in one of the boxes.”

  “Well, the towels were old. I hope they’re all right.”

  “Clara, those cotton towels are a whole lot better than the new ones made out of who knows what kind of material.”

  “I guess you have single beds up there, and we didn’t have any sheets that weren’t double.”

  “They work just fine. The girls just tuck them under. Now, listen, Clara, I want you to bring the W.W.s up here for a visit. We can make room for as many as can come. Once the W.W.s meet these girls and see the work that needs to be done in their hearts, they’ll go home burdened to pray for them. It’s real pretty up here, and you’ll all enjoy the scenery. But now, Clara, Thelma will have to do the driving because these mountain roads are the mischief to drive.”

  “Oh, Esmeralda, we’d love to come!”

  When we hung up, I leaned back in the chair, feeling good about Clara and the rest of them. They really were good women, and they did stuff nobody else would take the time to do. They may not have had all the smarts in the world, but maybe that was just as well.

  In a minute the phone was ringing again. It was another caller about the piano. He asked the price, and when I said, “Five hundred,” he hung up on me. That was discouraging. I went back in the kitchen and told the girls, “I guess we’re asking too much for that piano.”

  Lenora shook her head. “No, you aren’t asking too much.”

  I was surprised to hear her say that, mainly because she hardly says anything. She added, “Any Steinway is worth a lot more.”

  “But it’s in such bad shape.”

  “I know,” she said, her lifeless eyes the color of slate.

  “You play, don’t you?” I asked.

  “I play,” she answered.

  Ursula had told me Lenora played in nightclubs until her drinking got the better of her, but I didn’t think I should pry to find out anything more. “I wonder what’s keeping Ursula?”

  “Won’t she be home for lunch?” Evelyn asked.

  “I hope so.”

  But she wasn’t. The girls came in from the garden, and we sat down to the sandwiches and tea. Hearing the women talking with each other was encouraging, and I tried to keep a conversation going at our table with Dora, Linda, Portia, and the two from the kitchen. Linda did most of the talking. “When the cat’s away, the mice will play,” she was saying. “Miss E., when we finish in the garden, can we go down to the falls?”

  “The falls?”

  “Yeah. The falls are down in back of here, only there’s not so much falls as rocks—big boulders the size of city buses. Musta been an earthquake or something that tore ’em loose and sent ’em down the mountain. Creek water runs in and around and under them. I climbed to the top one time. Climbing to the top takes some smarts because you have to pick your way up, but I got no problem with that. You can see way downriver from up there. Can we go?”

  “We better wait for Miss Ursula and ask her.”

  “Oh, she won’t let us go,” Linda grumbled. “But maybe if you go with us she will.”

  “Well, I’ll go with you, but she’s the director; she’s the one you’ll have to ask for permission.”

  Linda groaned. “She’ll say no.”

  Ursula didn’t come and didn’t come. I was concerned that she might have run out of gas or something. But at about 3:00 she turned in the driveway, and I went down to meet her at the back door. “Did you get the loan?”

  “Well, maybe. All their computers are down. I kept waiting, but they finally told me it was no use waiting any longer, to come back Monday.” She sounded tired. “Anyway, the president of the board has to sign the forms, so they promised to mail them to Mr. Elmwood.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “the ten days are not up until Wednesday. This is only Friday.”

  “I know,” she said. She looked beat.

  “Have you had lunch?”

  “No,” she said, so I told her to go on over to her apartment and I’d bring her a sandwich.

  While I was making the sandwich, Linda came in from the garden. “Did you ask her? Did you ask her if we can go to the falls?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “I will, I’ll ask her. Better yet, you ask her. Here, take this tray over to her apartment.”

  “Her apartment is off-limits to us.”

  “I see. Then I’ll take it.” Linda walked with me to open the doors. “Good heavens, you girls have earned a treat. Look at all those rocks you’ve piled up there. We can use those rocks to build a wall or make a patio or something.”

  “You don’t know when to quit, do you, Miss E.? You’re a Type A if ever I saw one.”

  “What’s a Type A?”

  “It’s a workaholic—somebody who don’t never quit. You’re a prime target for heart attack or stroke.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Miss E., if you had been in as many rehabs as I have, you could write the book on psychology.”

  I laughed and we parted at the door leading up to Ursula’s apartment. Linda went back to the field.

  The apartment was sparsely furnished, and the computer sat on the only table, with piles of papers and books. They were probably all necessary to writing proposals for grants, but they made for a big mess. Ursula thanked me, but I guess she was too worried to smile. Pale as a ghost with dark circles under her eyes. I wished she’d quit spending so much time on those appeals and get more rest.

  She sighed. “Sit down, Esmeralda.”

  I took a pile of books off a chair and drew the chair up to the table.

  Ursula was on the verge of tears. “Esmeralda,” she began, “I must not fail in this job . . . I simply cannot fail.” Handling that sandwich the way a sick person does who hasn’t the strength or the will to eat, Ursula sighed and put it down. Her eyes were brimming; I handed her a tissue. “I’ve been here nearly two years and have nothing to show for it except a pile of bills. I want so much to serve the Lord . . .”

  I did the best I could to comfort her—told her she was serving the Lord.

  “Am I? Am I serving the Lord?” She lifted her eyes from the plate and looked at me. “I don’t seem to be getting anywhere.”

  “Oh, come now—you’re working so hard you’re bound to succeed. You’ll succeed, Ursula. I guarantee it!”

  “I have to, Esmeralda . . .” She fingered the glass of milk.

  I rattled on, hardly knowing what I was saying. “Well, now, Ursula, there’s more than one kind of success . . .”

  I don’t think she heard me. “You see, my parents . . . well, my parents disapprove of what I’m doing. They want me to pursue an academic career such as they have. The only way I could persuade them to let me take this job was to present it as a practicum in my major, psychology.”

  Now, in my book, a woman her age should be able to make her own decisions. “Ursula, if I may ask, how old are you?”

  “Twenty-nine next month. . . . You’re thinking that I’m old enough to choose what I want to do without asking anybody’s consent. Well, I am old enough to do that, but my parents aren’t Christians, and I don’t want to do anything that might keep them from coming to Christ.”

  “I see,” I said, but I really didn’t see that being tied to their apron strings would have anything to do with winning them to Christ.

  “My parents are both scholars. Mother teaches humanities, and my fat
her is a professor of antiquities.”

  “He teaches about antiques?” I couldn’t believe it. “People go to college to learn about antiques?”

  “No, not antiques. Father lectures in the university and all over the world about ancient civilizations.”

  “I see,” I said. Ancient civilizations. That sounded as dry as moldy bread.

  “Father wanted me to follow in his footsteps, and I would have, but I would’ve had to learn Semitic languages. I don’t have his gift for languages. In fact, I failed Latin, French, and Spanish. I had to pursue graduate work in a field that had no language requirement. That’s why I chose psychology.”

  I was seeing another side to Ursula and beginning to understand a little better why she was the way she was. Chances were, since she only knew English, she was determined to know every word of English in the dictionary.

  “My parents are very disappointed in me. I have a brother who was a Rhodes Scholar. Now he’s in the state department. When I accepted Christ and began to talk about Jesus, my parents were so alarmed they sent me to one of those places to be deprogrammed.”

  “Oh my!”

  “I went through the program but came out still knowing that what I believe is true. My parents were devastated—humiliated would be a better word. They threatened to cut off my allowance, but education is such a priority with them, they permitted me to return to grad school and finish my last semester.”

  I really felt sorry for her. As for her parents, I could wring their necks! There was a photograph on the cabinet, and I picked it up. “Is this your daddy?”

  “Yes, that’s Father.”

  The picture showed him gray-headed with a dark beard, smoking a pipe and wearing a turtleneck. “He looks like a professor,” I said and set the picture back on the cabinet.

  “Now can you see why I cannot fail at Priscilla Home? They would never forgive me for wasting two years here when I could be well on my way in a doctoral program.”

  “Is that what you want to do—study for a doctor’s degree?”

  She hesitated. “No, Esmeralda. No, it isn’t. I just want to make a go of it here at Priscilla Home.”

  I could’ve told her a lot of stuff that would help her succeed, but I figured this wasn’t the time. Ever since I came to Priscilla Home it looked like everything except the counseling sessions were just thrown together. When the women were not having a one-on-one with Ursula, for the most part they wasted time—stayed outside smoking. “Ursula,” I ventured to say, “what would you think about writing us a schedule so that every day is planned and duties are assigned?”

  “I do have a schedule for counseling sessions. The last resident manager took care of scheduling other activities. She was incompetent, and I suggested that she make a career change, which she did.”

  “You mean scheduling is my job?”

  “I thought you knew that.”

  “No.”

  “I should write job descriptions,” she said wearily.

  “Well, then, I’ll try, but I’ll need your help. What would you think of having the first hour of the morning set aside for prayer and praise?”

  “Prayer and praise? Do you think they’re ready for that?”

  “I do.”

  “Very well.” She was too worn out to give it much thought.

  “After prayer and praise, then there’s work in the house and yard—I could sign them up for that. After lunch we could have a Bible study.”

  “Will you teach it?”

  “Me? I’m not a Bible teacher.”

  “Well, you’re the only one available. I’m tied up all day long counseling.”

  “Ursula, I’ve never taught anything!”

  “Well, think about it.”

  Think about it? There is no way under the sun I could set myself up as the Priscilla Home Bible teacher!

  Suddenly I remembered the falls. “The girls—I mean, the ladies—want to go to the falls. I’ll take them if it’s okay with you.”

  “All right, you can take them. Tell them to be careful.”

  “Good. I’ll tell them. Now, Ursula, eat your sandwich and drink your milk—and why don’t you take a rest while we’re gone?”

  “I might as well.”

  I picked up the tray to take it back to the kitchen, but when I looked back at that poor, sad girl, my heart went out to her. I put down the tray, went around the table, and gave her a hug.

  7

  The trail to the falls led us through rhododendron thickets with trees towering overhead. Shaded as we were and with a stiff breeze whipping about, I was chilly, but the girls led at such a pace I figured we’d warm up. I was bringing up the rear with that girl Brenda from Alabama. She’s a hairdresser and offered to do my hair any time I liked.

  Brenda told me her real husband, as she called him, had been a nice man until some bimbo at work wooed him away from her. “Tommy and I were getting along good, went to church, had a nice house almost paid for. The kids were grown. Then he met that bimbo at work, and she wouldn’t leave him alone. Miss E., young girls go after older men because they have got more money than the lowlifes their own age.”

  Here was this middle-aged woman telling me that after that man left her, she’d fallen apart and started drinking. If they had went to church all their married life like she said, how come they let this happen? Well, I can tell you. Going to church can be an end in itself—just a habit—a place to see friends. And if it’s not, it’s like I’ve always said—going to church is not enough when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of facing the things life throws at you. A body needs to be close to the Lord—needs to be one-on-one with Jesus every day to be up to meeting whatever comes down the pike. Reading some little devotional and letting that pass for a quiet time just won’t hack it. I tell you, I have learned the hard way. I slack up on studying my Bible and cut short my prayer time, and things go to pot. It happened right there at Priscilla Home.

  Brenda smoked a lot, so she got out of breath. We stopped to rest, only she lit another cigarette. From what she told me, since her husband had left her, she’d gone from one man to another. “Miss E., I guess I keep thinking I’ll find another Tommy, but I’ve given up. There are just not any more Tommys out there.” She sucked on that coffin nail and blew the smoke away from me. “I see Tommy every once in a while in the mall or some place with that woman’s children. She had three and now they have one together.”

  Seeing she still loved that man, I could tell she was sliding into a big-time pity party if I didn’t put on the brakes.

  Brenda ground out the cigarette. “My mother says I’ve disgraced the family and I’m not welcome in her house.” Her chin was trembling. “She never even invites me for holidays or anything. The children won’t have anything to do with me. I don’t ever hear from them, not even on my birthday or Mother’s Day.”

  I started applying the brakes by saying we’d better catch up with the others. We got up and hit the trail again.

  It was not an easy walk but the kind you would expect on a mountain footpath, rocks and fallen logs, marshy places. When we reached the stream, the footpath turned into a very rugged trail following alongside the stream up to the falls. I did pretty well climbing over rocks and roots until it came to a nearly impassable place. Instead of climbing farther, I decided to stay right there on a flat rock that jutted out into the water. “Brenda, you go on ahead with the girls.”

  Holding on to a branch, I stepped out on that slab of a rock and was welcomed by sunshine again. I got settled with my back to the sun warming my bones and thought I would pray for Brenda and the other women if I could. So far as I could tell, Priscilla Home wasn’t helping her or any of the others very much. There were still a few girls I didn’t know well—a stout woman named Wilma, a truck driver from eastern North Carolina, tough as nails. Emily, who came from Missouri and claimed to be a professional ice skater. Well, I didn’t know about her. There was another girl from Virginia, Nancy. She was a nurse.

/>   It was hard to find the time to really get to know these women, but Portia was the only one I found too weird for words. Ursula told me she’d hitchhiked all the way from Florida—walked the last miles on the Old Turnpike with a foot of snow on the ground and a gale blowing hard. Landed at the door at 3:00 in the morning with only the clothes on her back and cigarettes. Ursula couldn’t turn her away, and after Portia’s application was filled out and her mother sent her medical deposit, Ursula had no excuse not to let her stay on.

  From where I was sitting, I could see the avalanche of boulders above and wondered what catastrophe had caused all those rocks to tumble down the mountain like that. Lester might know, I thought, and remembering him, I wished I could get away to check on him.

  High up on the boulders I could see one wide waterfall, and on the creek’s way down there were smaller ones. A few yards above where I sat, there was one with that clear, cold water spilling over rocks, swirling and splashing white all around the slab I was sitting on.

  God’s glory was everywhere—the sun and the breeze playing on the trees and the stream, birds flitting here and there chirping. I felt like singing praises to the Lord, so I turned to see how far away the girls were; it wouldn’t do for them to hear my foghorn of a voice. I could hardly hear them shouting to each other, so I figured they were far enough away that my singing wouldn’t cause permanent damage to their eardrums. With all that beauty around me, I sang “How Great Thou Art” like I was on stage with only God listening.

  Below my rock, there was a wide pool with the trees reflecting in the water, shimmering nervous-like. The water was so clear I could see trout facing upstream, waiting for an unsuspecting bug to come their way. It was the kind of pool children skip rocks on. Beatrice and I used to do that when we were little kids. Poor Ursula, I thought, as a kid she probably never skipped rocks or did anything much except keep her nose in a book—probably read the dictionary all the way through.

  I sat there thinking about the things Ursula had told me; I was beginning to understand why Dr. Elsie had said I could help her. I didn’t have book learning, but I did have experience.