She asked one question: “Is it safe to write a check on our account today?” That got me excited, because it sounded like money in the bank!
Ursula was on the phone about ten minutes, saying four or five thank-yous before she put down the receiver. She kept holding on to the phone, looking across the table at me, and her chin was trembling, her eyes brimming.
“What is it? Ursula, what’s the matter?”
She took off her glasses and wiped her eyes.
“Esmeralda, that was Attorney Phillip McIntosh.” She was so emotional she could hardly talk. “He was calling to tell us . . . to tell us we’ve been left a legacy. A legacy of forty thousand dollars! Forty thousand dollars!”
“What!” I couldn’t have heard that right.
Now she was really historical, crying and laughing at the same time.
“Forty thousand dollars? Are you sure? Who? What?” I was on pins and needles, but Ursula was too historical to talk. I grabbed some tissues and handed them to her.
“You remember a Mrs. Hirsch . . .” she blubbered and blew her nose. “She . . . Mrs. Hirsch . . .”
“I remember her,” I said. “You told me her daughter came through the program here and was saved.”
“That’s the one,” she sobbed.
“That daughter was killed, wasn’t she? Killed in an automobile wreck.”
“Correct.”
“And her mother has been sending us checks . . .”
“Until months ago.” She was wiping her glasses and sniffling; I handed her more tissues. She put the glasses back on, adjusted them, and blew her nose again. “Mrs. Hirsch has died, and in her will she left her entire estate to Priscilla Home—forty thousand dollars!”
I honestly couldn’t believe my ears!
“It’s true, Esmeralda. It’s true! The attorney said as soon as he got off the phone with me he would deposit the money electronically to our account. He said we can write checks on it today.”
“He did? Oh, praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!”
“There’s just one thing—if the bank’s computers are still down . . .”
“Ursula, I think we can trust the Lord to make those computers get cranked up, don’t you?”
We both laughed. Ursula sniffled. “I’ll call the bank right now to see if that electronic transfer will go through.” She put the phone to her ear and frowned. “There’s no dial tone.”
“I left the phone off the hook. I’ll run over there and put it back on.”
I was so happy I could have flown across the yard. Thank you, Lord, thank you! Thank you, Jesus!
As I hurried through the day room, all the girls were waiting for me to start Praise and Prayer. Linda yelled after me, “You’re late, Miss E. What happened to you?”
“Just wait,” I said, hurrying up the stairs.
When I got in the office, I put the phone back on the hook and practically fell down in the chair. I was actually weak in the knees. Forty thousand dollars! Never in my entire life had I felt so absolutely flabbergasted! To think the Lord would do this for us when my faith had been on such a roller coaster going up and down, getting nowhere. In spite of that, here the Lord gave us all this money. I just started bawling!
It was the money, all right, but it wasn’t just the money. It was the Lord’s way of telling us he wasn’t through with Priscilla Home. That was the icing on the cake.
I had to get back downstairs, so I tried to pull myself together. I went in my bathroom to wash my face. I didn’t know how much I should tell the girls because I didn’t know how Ursula felt about including them in this.
Drying my face I could see that my eyes were awful red.
I would have to tell them something.
I went back downstairs and was surprised to see Ursula sitting there with the girls. Her eyes were red, too. “I want to tell the ladies,” she told me, and I was glad to hear that because it relieved me of maybe saying something I shouldn’t. “I called the bank,” she told me, “and the computers are up and running. The transfer will go through.”
Well, Ursula didn’t spare them any of the details. It was a kind of confession about her not trusting the Lord to provide. The girls were dumbfounded, as much by seeing Ursula emotional as by hearing the good news of the forty thousand dollars.
Linda broke the spell. “Does this mean we get a town visit this week?”
Ursula wiped her eyes, put her glasses back on, and answered, “Yes, we’ll see that you get to town sometime this week.” Then she excused herself and went up to the office.
A murmur was going around the room, the women discussing what they had just heard. To get Praise and Prayer underway, I asked them if they remembered anything from our last session. Instantly, two roommates, Nancy and Emily, answered at the same time, “His mercy endures forever.”
Talk about surprise—I was bamboozled! That came from the long psalm Wilma had read—every stanza ended with “His mercy endureth forever.” And I had thought her reading that was a big mistake. Just goes to show you how the Lord works. It was easy to understand why God’s mercy would mean a lot to these women. “Well, we have certainly experienced his mercy today, haven’t we, girls? I gotta tell you, I had just about give up on the Lord sending us enough money to pay our bills. Here he’s given us more than enough.”
Of course, the devil wasn’t going to let that pass. Linda piped up with, “Oh, you’re saying Jesus will give you anything you want, just so long as you’re a Christian?”
Wilma took her on. “No, Linda, it don’t mean that and you know it don’t mean that.”
This could lead to a war of words if not fists; I had to head it off if I could. “Girls, all I’m saying is, you can stand on God’s promises with both feet.” And I added what Splurgeon said about that: “The Lord has never forgot a single promise to a single believer.”
Portia was looking at me with eyes that held more pain and misery than ever I’d seen in one so young. She whispered something to Linda, and Linda with a grin on her face asked me, “Portia wants to know, what if you don’t believe—is there a promise in the book for a sinner?”
It bothered me that Portia couldn’t ask her own question.
Linda egged me on. “What about that, Miss E.? I say the only promise God has got for sinners like us is hellfire and brimstone.”
Words seemed to pop right in my head. “Portia, the Lord sends rain on the just and the unjust, those who believe in him and those who don’t. That shows you he loves everybody, even people who don’t believe in him.”
I couldn’t tell if that meant anything to her or not. Linda wasn’t satisfied. “She wants to know if there’s any promises for her.” And poking Portia in the ribs, she laughed. “Portia, you’re stupid. I told you the only promise God has got for you is hellfire.”
“No, Linda, you’re wrong,” I said, trying to keep my voice down. “Jesus made a promise especially for unbelievers as well as believers. Let me find it here,” I said and started looking for the verses. They were in Matthew on the left-hand page, in the right column, at the end of a chapter, so I found them pretty quick and gave out the reference.
Waiting until they all found the place, without thinking, I asked Portia to read the verses. I should have thought twice before asking her. Linda answered for her. “Miss E., you know better’n to ask Satan’s child to read the Bible!”
I felt like telling Linda off, but she would love that and use it to make matters worse. “Emily, will you read them?”
“I don’t have my glasses.”
Well, it looked like I was striking out, so I read them. “‘Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’”
Linda didn’t give the words time to soak in. She blurted out, “It don’t read like that in this Bible.”
“Well, that’s because you hav
e a newer translation than mine. Miss Ursula gives you Bibles in modern English because that’s easier to understand.”
Linda hooted, “Portia, you listen to me. This Bible we got is full of mistakes—”
“Now, Linda, that’s not true.”
She wasn’t listening. “Oh, by the way,” she said, “yesterday that preacher ducked that boy three times, right?”
“Right. He was baptizing him in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”
“That means you Christians believe in three gods, right?”
“No,” I said. Remembering how it was taught to me, I told her, “There is only one God but there are three persons in the Godhead.”
“Explain that.”
“Well, I can’t rightly explain it, but that’s what the Bible teaches.”
Linda was really getting a kick out of this. “So you believe everything in the Bible is true?”
“I do. The Bible is the Word of God.”
“Ha! It’s been translated so many times it’s as full of mistakes as Swiss cheese has got holes. And you still think it’s the Word of God? How do you know that?”
My neck was getting warm. “Well, Linda, I can’t give you all the reasons why we know it’s the Word of God, but it works for me.”
She looked around the room grinning. “Well, it sure don’t work for me!”
“Have you give it a try?”
“Sure. Lots of times. I been saved four times.”
“Well, I think it’ll help if you’ll just read the Bible for yourself. What say you all read the Gospel of John—maybe a chapter or two a day—and underline the word believe every time you come across it. Okay?”
I didn’t know how the girls reacted to that because the bell rang and they all dashed outside to smoke.
I can’t tell you how upset I was at not being able to answer Linda any better than I did. As I gathered up keepsakes that had fell out of my Bible and put them back in there, I fretted, What we need is a preacher, somebody who can teach the Bible and give these women answers to their questions.
I left my Bible on the couch and went up to the office. Ursula was writing checks to our creditors. “I called the bank again, and the forty thousand came through a few minutes ago. Would you like to take these checks into town?”
“Yes, but first we need to buy some groceries. There’s nothing here for lunch.”
“Well, I’ll give you a check for the groceries. You can run into town this morning and buy them, and this afternoon one of us can go in and pay the bills.”
“Okay. I’ll give the girls, uh, the ladies, their work assignments, then I’ll make a grocery list.”
When I came through the day room, Portia was curled up in a corner of the couch looking through my Bible. The other women were waiting for me outside and polluting that good mountain air with tobacco smoke. That is one nasty habit. Why any woman would want to go around smelling like the American Tobacco Company is beyond me. But I wasn’t going to let a thing like that spoil my day—not this day—not with forty thousand dollars in our bank account.
I was in the middle of making work assignments when I glimpsed Evelyn ducking behind the dumpster, and I was curious to know why. “She’s throwing up,” Linda told me.
“Is she sick?”
“No, Miss E., she’s not sick,” Nancy said.
“She throws up all the time,” big-mouth Linda informed us.
That puzzled me, but I didn’t want to follow up on it in front of all the girls. Nancy, being a nurse, didn’t think Evelyn was sick, so I would leave it at that.
“Now, Lenora,” I said, “Miss Ursula will be busy in the office this morning and I have to go into town. I’m leaving you in charge of checking the rooms upstairs to see that everybody has made their bed and hung up their clothes. After you’re done with that, see if you and Evelyn can straighten up the craft room. It’s a big mess.”
The rest of them knew what was to be done in the garden; if I was to get back from town in time to fix lunch, I didn’t have a minute to spare. I made a quick list, got the check, and hit the road.
To tell the truth, it was a relief to get away for a little while. It gave me enough peace and quiet to get my head and my heart to agree again. That’s a big problem with me. My heart wants to go one way and my head another. Beatrice always told me I had more heart than head, but I took that with a grain of salt because most of the time Beatrice put me up on a pedestal right up there with the pope. If she had been in Praise and Prayer and heard all them questions Linda asked that I couldn’t answer, she’d know she was right; that my heart was okay but it was my head that was out of line.
It’s surprising what forty thousand dollars in the bank will do for your faith. Nothing doubting, I told the Lord, what we need is a preacher—somebody who can answer questions about the Trinity and all the like of that. Good heavens, if the Lord would send us forty thousand dollars, surely he would not mind giving us somebody who could teach the Bible.
I wished Beatrice would call so I could tell her about the legacy. That thing of her depending on public phones to call me was a nuisance. Don’t Carl know it is un-American not to be holding a cell phone to your ear in all public places?
I laughed and barreled down the Old Turnpike, belting out “Standing on the Promises.” Coming around a curve, I slammed on brakes to keep from running over a partridge and her brood. That mama didn’t mind the brakes squealing—just moseyed across the road like always, her chicks following along behind, but when I commenced singing again, that scared the daylights out of her and she shot through the woods like a rocket! I had to laugh.
In the store I hurried as fast as I could with the shopping. At best, we would have a late lunch. Naturally, when you’re in a hurry, they have only one cashier working and there’s a line a mile long. I can’t stand to wait any time, much less when I’m running late. Ordinarily I’d tell the manager he needed to get another girl on checkout, but I guess I was too happy to make a fuss. While I was standing in that line, I ran through my list to make sure I had bought everything. We would have hot dogs for lunch since that was something we could fix quick. For supper we’d bake the ham and have cabbage and potatoes. We might even stir up a couple of the cake mixes.
When I finally got through the checkout, I went to get the car. All that working in the garden had my bones in an uproar, so, with forty thousand dollars in the bank, I gave myself a treat by driving up and having the bag boy load the groceries. It was worth the fifty-cent tip.
Driving home I was still excited, but being alone in the car was a good time to be praying. I thought about Angela, Brenda, Melba, Portia, Evelyn—there were so many needs. But I couldn’t keep my mind on praying. A body needs to wind down to pray right. I have got to find the time to pray more, Lord. There was so much going on at Priscilla Home, I couldn’t keep up with it. My mind was racing from one thing to another.
Albert Ringstaff—now that was something I wanted to get to the bottom of. Him turning out to be someone who knew Lenora was a big surprise. Him asking “Was it Milan or Moscow?” where he last saw her was a big mystery. Good heavens, there’s no telling what we have got here.
The Chevy had made it up the Old Turnpike, and I tooted the horn as I was turning in the driveway. The girls dropped their tools and flocked toward the back door to meet me.
12
By the end of the week we had accomplished a lot—Dora had borrowed the plow again and laid off the rows getting the garden ready to plant. You should’ve seen the scarecrow those girls made! It wasn’t a “he” it was a “she” with a burlap body and lots of stuffing in all the right places and dressed in the tackiest evening gown and shawl I ever saw. They named her “Goldilocks” because Brenda and Melba, our two hairdressers, had dyed a mop head yellow and made it into stovepipe curls for Goldilocks’s hair. Earrings Emily had made from jar rings dangled from both sides of the head, and somebody had found throwed-away pie pans to hang on her to scare the birds away.
Friday I drove the van into Rockville and let the girls off at a strip mall. Dora didn’t want to go to town, so Ursula scheduled a counseling session with her. Lenora went with us, but it was beginning to rain and she didn’t get out of the van. The only thing I needed was mouthwash, and I bought a large economy size. After my trip to the drugstore, I sat in the van with her, waiting for the others to finish shopping.
I talked but Lenora didn’t. Finally, I got the courage to ask her in a roundabout way about Ringstaff. “I guess Mr. Ringstaff had business in New York.”
She nodded her head.
“I thought he was retired.”
“He is,” she said, but that was all. Her pale skin and that lank-looking hair made her look older than her fifty-odd years. Fingering a button at her throat, she seemed lost in her own little world.
I didn’t know where to go from there, so we just sat, not talking. The rain was coming down pretty hard. I kept an eye out for the girls as they went from one store to another. I hated spying on them, but they weren’t allowed to go in a drugstore where they could get over-the-counter dope. Of course, they could get some of that stuff in the grocery store as well as beer and wine, but we couldn’t deny them the right to a grocery store. Once we got back home Ursula would check their purchases to make sure nothing outlawed at Priscilla Home was brought in the house.
Even though it was raining, I asked, “Lenora, would you like an ice cream? There’s a store on the corner.”
She shook her head.
“Wasn’t it nice of Mr. Ringstaff to give us those fish? He’s quite a fisherman. I wonder what kind of work he was in.”
“He worked for a piano company in New York.”
I had it on the tip of my tongue to say, “So that’s where you met him, New York?” but I didn’t. Instead, I said, “I guess his company called him back to New York.”
“From time to time, they do.”
I figured Ringstaff was a piano salesman. “Maybe he can help us sell our piano.”
Good Heavens Page 13