Pray for Us Sinners

by Marilyn L. R. Hall

  The warehouse wasn’t that great a job, but it brought in some money and it kept Jack busy. Gradually, as they came to know the neighborhood better, a lot of little odd jobs became available, and their life settled into a pleasant routine again. And very soon Rose started helping out in the Wesselmans’ Grocery.

  Leo Wessleman was in his middle 50s and not much taller than Rose, with a powerful oversized torso and short muscular legs. He was exuberant and gregarious and seemed to have the strength of a bull; he was always proving his vigor by hoisting heavy cases of canned goods onto his shoulders and heaving weighty grocery boxes into the delivery truck—“showing off,” Viola called it, with a smile and behind her hand. She, on the other hand was quietly efficient and retiring, fragile as a wren and about as colorful. But she was the sweetest lady Rose had ever met; Viola had immediately set herself the task of playing mother to the girl and once she did that, Rose never had another real worry about anything. Before long, Leo had taken the part of father to both her and Jack and from then on they were “the kids,” and whatever they needed was theirs. Neither Rose nor Jack had ever had such unconditional love given to them before, and they were so charmed by the Wesselmans they couldn’t do enough for them in return. All in all, theirs was a most satisfying relationship.

  Before long, with Jack working every day, Rose was spending almost all her spare time in the store. She developed a special kinship with Leo because he was so outgoing and kind and she had never been able to relate to her own father that way. Leo encouraged her to open her heart to him, so she did. He understood her even better than Jack did, because his was the same spirit of attachment to the earth and all natural things. They shared their most secret selves. He understood her need for solitude sometimes, the joy she experienced when she walked barefoot in the grass or freshly turned soil, which was not easy to come by where they were. The alley behind the store had a patch or two of dirt with a few sprigs of grass shooting out of it, but it was mostly graveled over. And except for an occasional fleeting whiff of the wet earth just as a shower begins, Rose never got to enjoy that most pleasant fragrance. There just wasn’t enough real dirt anywhere near them.

  But together they watched the seasons change that first year. It was already autumn before Rose knew it, and there were a few scrawny trees squeezed between the alley and the backs of the buildings. Rose had to admit she’d never seen such pretty colors as those leaves turned. But there weren’t any geese flying across the night sky, or if they were, you’d never have seen them with all the bright lights. And you’d never have heard them with all the city’s noise. And the migrating birds that flew low across the fields back home, twisting and turning all of a piece like a giant bolt of dress goods, were flying elsewhere as well.

  That first winter was nothing like anything she’d ever experienced before. It was ungodly cold … a piercing cold that penetrated her heaviest coat to chill her to the bone and freeze the marrow in it. And for a while she didn’t believe she could stand it. For a while all she wanted to do was fly south herself. But Jack laughed at that notion and shamed her out of it. Then, one strangely hushed and windless evening brought the first snow and Rose found it mesmerizing and so beautiful that she spent the first hour racing from window to window just watching it fall; fat floppy flakes that looked like scraps of lace drifted haphazardly in the still air like drunken butterflies. She felt caught in a dream and she couldn’t turn away until it had covered the street and the sidewalks and frosted the tops of street lamps and automobiles and drifted over garbage cans and crates to hide all the ugliness in the alley. Jack had rushed her down the back stairs and opened the door to the alley so they could reach out and catch some flakes in their bare hands and on their cheeks and hair. Everything was changed as if by magic into mysterious shapes of spun sugar that glittered and sparkled in the lights of the city.

  The snow fell all night and most of the next day, and that dirty gray city was absolutely transformed into a fairyland, all rose and blue and deep purple depending on the time of day and the slant of the sun, when there was one. Rose and Jack played in it, she rubbed her cheeks with it, she tasted it. Jack showed her how to make snowballs and they made them in the alley and threw them at each other. And at the deliverymen and Leo and Viola and Mary Jean, and they got stung right back. They even made a snowman and Rose opined how much fun her brothers would get out of playing in the snow with her.

  Yes indeed! That first snow was a glorious revelation to Rose and an adventure of epic proportions for the young lovers from Mississippi. But the beauty passed soon enough when the soot and salt and crush of feet and vehicles turned God’s lovely gift into a nasty brown slush that got pushed here and there and melted and froze and melted and froze as it snowed again and again and more and more piled on top of it. Snowplows pushed it up out of the street onto the sidewalk, and shopkeepers shoveled it back off the sidewalks and into the street, and winter went on and on and on until the notion of ever having found it beautiful became a ludicrous joke.

  Leo had shared all these new experiences with Rose and Jack, and he enjoyed the seasons more than he ever had before, because they shared them. The other thing he and Viola shared with Rose was a simple unquestioning faith in God. Jack left God and religion to the womenfolk. He didn’t doubt there was one, but he didn’t see any connection between that God and himself. He had managed to repel Rose’s attempts to church him from the very first month of their marriage and in such a forceful manner that she hadn’t approached him about it again. Not that she was a church-goer herself, it was mostly Bible reading and now and again a revival or a visit to a particular preaching.

  Now, though, with the Wesselmans’ support she was going to church fairly often and the weird thing was … the thing that would have caused her Papa to skin her alive … she was going to a place called St. Mary’s—one of that Roman Pope’s churches. A Catholic Church. Even Jack’s eyebrows kind of raised up at hearing that. Not that he knew anything about it. Or cared either, but there’d been so many years of hearing people tell about the wickedness and Godlessness of that “Papist Religion” that he just naturally shrank from it. He did ask her a few questions and he did remind her of the way her people felt about it, but she reminded him that she didn’t have any people anymore. That they’d all cast her out, so she felt like she was free to make up her own mind about that church and anything else that took her fancy and he just shrugged and agreed that every word she said was exactly true.

  So Rose went to church with Leo and Viola. She helped out at their store, and Jack worked at the warehouse and shoveled snow and did odds-and-ends repair and maintenance jobs here and there. Rose cooked his meals and washed his clothes and mended and ironed his shirts and kept his house in order. And all the time they were able to be together was spent loving each other. Holding onto, kissing, and caressing each other. And when they couldn’t be physically in contact, they loved one another with their eyes.

  The only way Rose could have been happier would have been to live in the country again. To dance with feet bare upon the tender earth, to feel again the thick mowed grass in the Nash front yard tickle her unshod toes. For Rose was a child of nature and she had a fierce need to absorb whatever strength, whatever mysterious life force it was that came only from direct contact with the earth, with the soil—something that concrete, asphalt and tar-covered gravel prevented her from absorbing.

  Thus time passed. Money didn’t come any easier. Jack went through some periods of depression when his natural optimism, good humor, and trust in the goodness of life and his pride in the power of his manhood rose and fell with the amount of money he earned in any given week. Most of the bad times would end with Rose sweetly counting off the marvels he had accomplished so far, and between the recitations her sweet mouth would kiss away the weariness, the sadness and the depression while her body nestled close to his and everything in her made love to him. Jack never knew about the despair that would rise in her heart when he descend
ed into one of those dark pits. She hid from him the desperation that threatened to overwhelm her whenever he … her rock … started to disintegrate. Still, neither of them ever gave up on their dream of better times and it was that dream, and Rose’s faith in Jack, that kept them and saw them through the hard and lean years.

  All through the rest of December and into the New Year of 1934, Rose couldn’t stop regretting her rashness on that morning when she brought up her sister Claire Louise and the Christmas presents. That was one of those spoiled-little-girl tantrums she succumbed to with disheartening regularity, and it was downright mean on her part to rake up again all those bad feelings for Jack.

  During her reminiscing today, Rose recalled a cold and rainy November afternoon the first year in Mary Jean’s apartment, when the memory of Claire Louise’s vicious rejection of them was still fresh and bloody in her and Jack’s minds. Jack was still at work and Rose was preparing supper when there came a soft but determined rapping at her door. When she opened it she was pleasantly surprised to find Walter Bradley standing there, but the pleasure-part evaporated instantly when she noticed her sister trying to hide behind him.

  November 1931

  After sighting Claire Louise, her first inclination was to deny the woman entrance. So some minutes had passed before those proper Southern manners she had picked up during her sojourn with Abigail Nash kicked in and she stepped aside and motioned them both into her home. Walter embraced her warmly and immediately began an explanation of Claire’s visit—Claire stayed just inside the door, plainly ill at ease and nervous to the point of shaking while keeping her eyes on the windows across the room and away from Rose altogether.

  “I know you probably would rather we didn’t come around, Rose, but I can’t have you living right here in the same city with us and not be concerned about your welfare. You are the only family we have close by so unless you really despise the sight of us, I hope you’ll see fit to spend some time with us.”

  He saw that Rose was smiling but her face looked drawn, and the smile wasn’t reaching her eyes. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “There is no excuse for the way you and Jack were treated that day on our front porch. No excuse and no explanation that anybody who isn’t living with bitterness and prejudice in their hearts could accept or understand.” He reached out and took Rose’s hand and held it to his chest. “So we will certainly understand if you can’t or choose not to forgive us right now. But perhaps you might forgive us when more time has passed? Perhaps later you will be able to find forgiveness in your hearts—Jack, too?” He looked back at Claire who was still staring toward the windows. “At any rate, Rose Sharon, that is our purpose in visiting you today. We come to apologize with shame and humility and to ask your forgiveness.”

  Then he squeezed her hand before letting go of it and called Claire’s name. His gentle voice had taken on a firm edge.

  When she turned her eyes to meet his, he nodded. “It’s your turn, Claire.”

  Claire Louise looked as though she wanted to bolt out the door and down to the street. For one instant Rose thought she might even prefer taking a quicker way—out the window rather than humiliate herself with apologies. But eventually, she started talking and although she still couldn’t meet Rose’s eyes and was instead staring at the top of her apron she did speak the words Walter asked her to. Near the end of her monologue, her breath caught and her voice cracked and unbelievably to Rose, tears started to run in little rivulets down her pale, bony cheeks.

  After a while, her voice came back and it was shrill with desperation. “I’m so ashamed, Rose Sharon!” she shrieked and looking down started to fiddle with the clasp on her purse, finally opening it and rummaging around until she came up with a handkerchief. “And everything Walter said is true. There is no excuse for the things I said or for the way I acted.” She looked up at Rose and met her eyes for the first time. “If you can never forgive me it will be exactly what I deserve. And I won’t blame you. Walter says I am nothing but a “whitened sepulcher” and a “hypocrite” because I call myself a Christian and I pretend to ‘pray with the tongues of angels but I have not love’ and all of that is true, except I really couldn’t see it until last evening when the Lord spoke those very same words to me when I knelt to pray.”

  Rose was flabbergasted! She almost dreaded Claire Louise’s skinny cold arms around her and she feared that was her intent, so at first, she was more aware of her own thoughts than of her sister’s confession. While Claire held herself in check Rose’s brain went over and over the tearful sentences until they sank in and then her mouth opened and made a pretty little circle of surprise. But instead of grasping onto Claire, she threw herself against Walter and hugged him. Pretty soon her own tears were making a wet spot on his coat and with some embarrassment she backed away and shook her head at both of them in turn. She couldn’t recall ever having anybody apologize to her before and the experience was staggering. She remained speechless for some time, but Walter was smiling by then, and he looked at Claire and nodded his approval. Then Claire took another deep breath and dabbed at her nose with the handkerchief.

  “I came here to say I’m sorry and ashamed and to beg if I must, that you forgive me and that you will not hate me anymore.”

  Rose just stood there with her mouth open.

  Claire Louise’s face screwed up again and the tears, which had abated some, gushed down like rain water from a drain pipe. “If you can’t forgive me, Rose Sharon, I’ll just have to accept that as God’s punishment.” She stopped talking long enough to blow her nose. “And I will just stay away and pray that someday things will be different. Walter has been at me ever since … ever since the first day you were here, to try to make it up to you. And to Ja … your husband, too” She was having some difficulty saying his name. “And I knew as soon as Walter drove you away that day that I had sinned grievously. But it is so hard for me to admit my sins. Even when I know them in my heart. It’s so hard for me to admit when I am wrong.”

  Rose still didn’t know what to say. Maybe Claire really was sorry or maybe Walter Bradley had made her so miserable she had to “say” she was. Whichever was true, Jack wasn’t likely to be so quick to forgive. Should she? It wasn’t Rose’s nature to hold grudges or to stay angry. But out of loyalty to Jack, who had been badly hurt and humiliated by Claire Louise’s meanness, maybe she ought to let her stew in her own juice a while longer.

  “Oh sweet Jesus,” she thought, “please give me wisdom!” and then she looked squarely into Claire Louise’s pale wet eyes. “I ain’t sure what to say Sister Claire. My Jack was well-nigh crushed by your mean mouth, when all we came to ask you for was some neighborly hospitality. I feel like he’s the one you hurt the worst and he’s the one you ought to be beggin’ forgiveness from. For my part, you’re my sister and I cain’t hate you. I know that sooner or later I’ll forget what you did and I’ll forgive you. But I don’t think I can do it today. Not today, yet.”

  Claire Louise nodded. “I can understand that, Rose. What I did was terrible … awful! I don’t know if even God will ever forgive me.” And then she was weeping again. She looked at her husband for encouragement but he was frowning at her and now he shrugged. So she looked at Rose again. “I am not the same woman I was all those months ago when I sinned against God and you, Rose.” Her shrill voice softened then. “God has turned it to my good,” she continued. “He has shown me what a miserable hypocritical life I was leading and how far I have to go just to be the least of his disciples. I feel that now I am truly on that straight and narrow path of which the Bible speaks. I feel like I’ve spent 30 years fooling myself, thinking I knew God when I had not the vaguest idea who he was or what he wanted of me.”

  While Claire was confessing, Rose looked past her to see Jack Nash enter and close the door behind him. His dazzling blue eyes took in the scene before him and Rose could see he was torn between greeting Walter and booting Claire to the end of that “straight and narrow p
ath” she was walking on.

  Claire Louise’s voice trailed off to nothing when she realized neither Rose nor Walter were listening and were looking at something in back of her. So she turned in that direction and recoiled instinctively at the sight of the man she had abused. Jack’s wide, electric-blue eyes passed over her, unnerving her even more, but he chose not to acknowledge her presence. Instead he reached out his hand to Walter and in one long stride was in front of him shaking his hand and grinning a warm welcome.

  “If you ain’t a sight for sore eyes, Walter, I don’t know who is!” Then he turned his head to look at Rose while he was still pumping Walter’s hand. “You got some coffee made?” And then he looked at Walter again. “Rosy made some apple cobbler a day or two ago that tastes like the angels baked it. Sit down over there at the table and she’ll get you a plate.” He let go of Walter’s hand and motioned to Rose to get the coffee on while at the same time moving across the room to stand behind her, squeeze her against him and kiss her cheek, letting his hands slide across her breast as he left her.

  Rose had automatically obeyed, and the room and its occupants waited in silent anticipation while all eyes watched her fill the pot with water, set the percolator basket inside, and measure the ground coffee into it—she was so flustered she couldn’t remember how many spoons to add, but she went ahead and pressed the lid on top, set it on the burner, and struck a match to light it. When the blue flame appeared, Jack rubbed his hands together and with a movement of his head motioned Walter to take a seat at the kitchen table. He saw Walter look anxiously at Claire, who seemed so ill at ease he almost felt sorry for her. But he had made up his mind she wasn’t even there and he behaved accordingly. Walter observed that Jack seemed not to have noticed her at all. She was invisible to his eyes.