Pray for Us Sinners

by Marilyn L. R. Hall

  Then, out of nowhere came peace. It settled upon her quite unexpectedly with the realization that all she had to do to get him back was go with Della. With that knowledge, joy came flooding back into her empty heart. “Oh, sweet Jesus!” she sang and felt like dancing down the steps to tell Jack her decision—never even considering her nakedness under the robe. How long had it been since she felt joyful? How long had she lived in terror and despair? How long had fear been her companion? How long since she and Jack had laughed and teased and pleasured one another? Surely God had blessed her by giving her Jack’s love. By giving Jack to her. He was surely God’s special gift to her and here she was ready to throw it all away. Toss it away as if it wasn’t the most important thing in her life. To do that was most likely a sin. To belittle God’s gifts. A very major sin probably. Maybe even what Leo called a mortal sin. A sin unto death! A sin unto death!

  Then the voice came just as if somebody was right there in the room talking to her and though she knew it was only her imagination, she listened to it.

  “You’re reaching for straws, Rose Nash. You know that baby under your heart is truly God’s gift, and your love for that baby is your husband’s only chance for redemption. You must not kill his child!”

  In spite of her certainty that the voice was imaginary, it sounded so real that she couldn’t help glancing about to see if perhaps somebody, Viola maybe, had slipped in unbeknownst to her.

  “Is anyone there? Is somebody here?” She really didn’t expect an answer and got none, but in the silence that followed, a realization came. Two realizations, actually. The first was that her panic and her madness had disappeared and a peace … “the peace that passes all understanding?” had taken their place. And the second realization? That there was no way on God’s green earth she could go with Della to that doctor.

  The loneliness that followed Jack Nash going away was too deep to bear and too dark to talk about. If God hadn’t given her the wisdom to spend her life minute by minute, not looking ahead or remembering behind, she never would have lived through it. Never lived past that first black week, but God was there for her and she prayed he was there for Jack too. For she knew that no matter how cold he had seemed when he walked away from her, he really did love her more than his own life, and his hurt had to be at least as bad as hers. Likely even worse because he didn’t have a little baby growing under his heart, sharing hope for a better day.

  That awful morning while she stood there waiting for the prostitute from across the alley to knock on her door, clutching Jack’s folded-over money in her hand, tears pouring down her cheeks, down her chin, and onto her bathrobe, she couldn’t help thinking about her beloved Jack who was probably pacing nervously below her—probably not far from where she stood. She could see him anxiously checking his pocketwatch, maybe smiling to himself as the minutes lengthened, growing more hopeful that Della wouldn’t show her face in the store at all.

  Rose wished she didn’t have to bring such awful hurt on him, but there wasn’t anything she could do to change any of it. She couldn’t kill his baby!

  When Della knocked on the door, though, she hesitated before going to it, and when she finally stood looking into the woman’s dark, sooty eyes, she hesitated again. This was the moment! What she did now would seal her fate forever. “Oh, sweet Jesus!” It was hard to set that particular destiny in motion. The last thing on earth she wanted to do, the most distasteful to her, the most repugnant.

  Della only shrugged when Rose told her she wouldn’t be going with her to the doctor. “Ain’t no skin off my nose,” she smirked, “but your old man is gonna shit bullets!”‘

  Rose felt resentment that Jack had revealed so much of his feelings to that whore. “It’s not any of your business,” she told her, and the words were spoken in a tone of superiority. The woman who stood before her snorted as she turned and retreated toward the stairs, letting her words echo behind her—“Well, snooty lady, it may not be any of my business but I sure as hell heard more about it than I ever wanted to hear!” Halfway down the hallway to the back stairs that would take her down to the grocery store, Della turned a scornful face back to her.

  “And any damn fool who’d give up a stud like Jack Nash for a snot-nosed squallin’ brat shouldn’t be runnin’ around loose. She oughta be locked away on a loony farm instead of bringin’ more dummies into the world!”

  Rose felt like she ought to say something to that, but no reply came to her mind. And then it was too late as the door into Leo’s Grocery was slammed against her.

  A vision then filled her mind of Jack’s beautiful blue eyes looking up to see Della stomp toward him with her doomsday message eagerly spilling past those petulant red-painted lips. Rose would never know for sure what that message meant to Jack. Did he cry or did he curse? Whatever his first reaction was, his second was Biblical. He shook the dust of their marriage off his feet, turned away and left that place, and at least as far as Rose knew never again set foot there.

  It’s possible that nobody ever loved a man the way Rose loved Jack Nash and it’s probable that nobody ever hurt as bad as she hurt once he was gone and she knew it was her fault that he went.

  She remembered the beginning, when she was a very little girl making those mud cakes for her baby dolls and the landlord’s beautiful son accidentally stepped backward and smashed them to set her wailing in protest until she looked up into those eyes that were as pure and blue as if a piece of the spring sky had fallen into them. She was no longer a yowling little 5-year-old playing house but from that instant on and for all the rest of her life she was a woman in love. The mud cakes and the baby dolls lay forever after forgotten in the dust while she plotted and dreamed about the day (and never doubted its coming) when Jack Nash would look into her eyes again and know with the same certainty she had, that they were two halves of one whole and that neither would ever be anything without the other. And it had all come true—but Rose had never imagined the ending—that came out of a clear blue sky like one of those sudden summer hailstorms back in Mississippi; storms that never failed to tear up Mama’s vegetable garden and demolish her flowerbeds.

  When the first week without Jack was over, Rose knew she couldn’t live through a second week. It wasn’t that she merely missed him, it was that she wasn’t all there without him. He really was the other half of her! She decided then to just go ahead and die, and she stopped eating, she tried to stop drinking too, but kept taking sips of water without thinking.

  Then Leo and Viola and Mary Jean made some kind of pact to keep her alive, and they wouldn’t let her alone long enough to die. Mary Jean threatened to put her into a hospital and force-feed her … that idea was so disgusting she had to give up and eat. Besides, Leo pointed out that if she were to die, the baby would die also and since keeping the baby alive was what caused Jack to leave in the first place, it really didn’t make sense to kill the baby now and not get Jack back anyway.

  In the state she was in, all that made perfect sense, so she set aside all thoughts of dying—for the time being at least.

  But living didn’t get any easier. Somehow Claire Louise and Walter got wind of her troubles and they came and demanded she move out of the apartment and into their house. She entertained that notion for a time. It might be easier not to miss him if she wasn’t always seeing where he’d walked or sat or lain, but then a new thought came to her. What if he came back? What if without her, he was only half there himself, and what if he realized he had to be with her in order to just be alive? If he came home and she was gone and living with Claire Louise, he’d never forgive her. So she turned that offer down and found hope suddenly replacing despair. More than hope … an inner knowing that he would come back to her someday. And all she had to do was just stay where she was and wait for him.

  Soon after that, she realized the money Jack left her was eventually going to run out and since she had to support herself now and pay a doctor to deliver her baby and maybe even pay for a hospital, she k
new she had to get a job. She’d helped Leo and Viola at the store a lot during the three years she and Jack lived in the apartment, so now she asked Leo for a steady job. He seemed uncertain that he could pay her enough but he didn’t hesitate to put her to work. Her morning sickness passed soon enough and she began to feel as good or better than she’d ever felt in her life. True, she had to be careful not to dwell on thoughts of Jack. It only took a word or a moment’s reflection to bring back all the pain and sorrow and loneliness. But she managed pretty well for the most part, and having work to do was a great blessing. It would have been, even if she hadn’t got paid at all.

  With Jack gone, Sister Claire and Walter came over more often, and they brought pretty things for her and for the baby and even for the apartment. Lots of Leo’s customers fussed and worried over her and brought her baby things. Leo and Viola were special blessings, though. They were the ones who held her in their arms and prayed with her and comforted her with their love. And with their love for Jack, because they cared deeply for him too and understood her loss.

  They took her to church and they took her to their doctor so she’d get the proper care and so Jack’s baby would be healthy and safe. Less than a month after she started her job, Leo raised her wages … more than double what she started with. She felt guilty about that because she didn’t seem to be worth that much, but she couldn’t talk them out of the big increase. So she just tried to work harder.

  And so the months passed. She tried to find out something about Jack … where he’d gone … but nobody could tell her anything. She had never known the name of the company he worked for or even his boss’s name. All she could recall was the name of a town, a suburb of Chicago, which Leo recognized and Walter did too. So several Sundays when the store was closed, she asked Walter to drive her there and just look around in case she might run into him. It was unlikely she knew, but she didn’t think it was impossible. Rose’s natural optimism was fighting its way back, and she expected more and more to see his beloved and familiar face grinning at her across a shelf of canned tomatoes or peas, or when she looked up from the cash register, or even when she opened the door to her bedroom.

  At last it was September and her time was drawing near. Her pretty little shape had swollen into something that looked like an overripe pear and when she saw her naked body in the vanity mirror she was almost glad Jack wasn’t around to see it. She could understand his revulsion about pregnancy now, because she felt a fair amount of revulsion herself. Especially as the final days drew to a close and her nausea came back with a vengeance and then diarrhea set in and a while after that some nasty hemorrhoids caused her miserable sleepless nights. Then her skin dried out and she itched everywhere. Every morning brought a new complaint and it was getting so bad that she started hoping she’d die in her sleep. Claire Louise came and stayed with her the last few days, and Rose didn’t know if she was better off with or without her. Claire Louise did have a sort of calm strength about her these last few months, and since Rose was rapidly losing everything, she supposed her sister could be a help to her.

  The day the baby finally chose to be born was one of the most perfect days Rose had ever seen. The morning sky was as clear and blue as Jack Nash’s eyes and a warm autumn breeze billowed the new curtains Claire had hung just the day before. Rose knew a day like this back home would have been full of the songs of mockingbirds in the laurel oak trees and butterflies of every imaginable color would be floating from mounds of chrysanthemums at the side of the porch to the asters at the front and to the crape myrtle bush outside the girls’ bedroom window. There would be a special golden haze over the fields and crows and mourning doves would be sounding their calls in the distance. And the hooves of Jack Nash’s horse, Wild Honey, would be pounding a soft thud along the field road, bringing him nearer and nearer to where she waited for him in the stand of willow trees that lined the creek a quarter-mile behind the barn, their special trysting place during those few months before Pa whipped him and he disappeared that other time.

  All those sweet rememberings hushed when the harsh reality of the pain of labor set in though. And they came on with a crash—there would be no gentle learning pains for Rose Sharon. She knew this was some special vengeance conjured up for Jack by some witch-woman. He surely was making her pay for letting his baby live.

  There was to be no hospital for Rose either. The bed where she lay to conceive this child became the bed where it was birthed, and it hardly seemed a fair exchange.

  While Walter and Mary Jean paced and prayed in the kitchen, Viola and Claire Louise rubbed Rose’s back and stroked her forehead until the doctor finally came and conducted Jack’s baby girl down that long and winding road and out into a harsh and unmerciful world.

  If Cynthia Jackleen Nash was not the most beautiful baby ever to be born of woman, there certainly wasn’t anyone in the house that pre-dawn to suggest otherwise. They all oohed and aahed and praised her as they checked the petite 5½-pound, 18-inch-long infant. She had a perfectly round little head full of large eyes and just a bit of a nose above a tiny rosebud mouth. What little hair she had was dark, and when Rose took her one and only look at it in those wee hours after midnight, she thought the child was the image of its father and that almost made up for all the pain it took to get it born. But it was plain she was a girl and that broke her heart. After that realization, Rose didn’t even care to look any closer. The ordeal was much worse than she had imagined and the only thing she wanted to look at ever again was Jack Nash’s pretty face. In the final 2½ hours while Claire Louise, her strength all gone and bearing a headache that almost blinded her, knelt beside the bed praying desperately and without ceasing, Rose had screamed Jack’s name over and over, cursing him in one breath and begging forgiveness that she had not done what he wanted in the next.

  At the height of her pain she had decided to give this infant to Claire Louise and search Jack out to tell him she would never ever go through this again. Rose had seen her Mama give birth to at least three of her baby brothers and never had she given the least indication it was such a thoroughly nasty experience.

  After they had cleaned her and the bed, they tried to lay that awful little creature next to her breast but Rose rebelled as violently as she was able in her condition and Viola, fearing for the safety of the child, held her next to her own heart instead.

  And so while Rose slept away the memory, the people who loved her most rejoiced together in the kitchen and somewhere miles away, Jack Nash, blissfully unaware of all of it, turned in his bed and slid a hard-muscled arm across the bosom of his new woman.

  But Cynthia Jackleen quickly won her mother’s heart. When Rose awoke early the following afternoon, she noticed first of all the brightness of the day through her bedroom windows. The sunshine lit up the room with that pale golden glow peculiar to September and lifted her spirits instantly—and then she noticed the way the sheet stretched flat across the bed. That huge lump that had plagued her for so many months was gone! She felt so joyful at the sight that she sat up and threw her legs over the edge of the bed. She had started to stand when, without warning, pain shot through her lower belly and she became violently ill. Sinking back upon the pillow she closed her eyes and screwed up her face in agony.

  “Jack! Damn you, Jack! Where are you when I need you?” Hot tears stung her eyes and then she heard it. A mewling whimper from the basket next to her bed. As she listened and as the realization poured over her that Jack’s baby was in that basket, her mouth readjusted itself into a smile, and her tears became tears of thankfulness to God.

  She tucked her legs up to her stomach and rolled sideways off the bed. This time the dizziness didn’t come nor did the pain, so she sat on the floor with her back against the bed until she felt it safe to move closer to the basket. Then she scooted to it and looked inside.

  The baby was so tiny and so neatly wrapped that she had a time finding her face—until she reached in and pushed back the blanket.

 
All she could do was stare. “Sweet Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!” she sang over and over again and was so rapt in the wonder of it that she didn’t see Claire Louise come into the room until she was kneeling beside her. Sister Claire laid her arm around Rose’s shoulder and squeezed her. “You certainly did it right, Rose Sharon. She’s perfect and just beautiful. I wish God would have seen fit to give me one just like her.”

  Rose forgot every bad feeling she’d ever had for her sister and nuzzled her head onto Claire’s thin shoulder. She was smiling so big her face could hardly contain it and she grabbed Claire’s hand and squeezed. “It is worth it! It is worth all that terrible pain, ain’t it, Claire? Oh! Oh! If only Jack was here. If only he could see her. He couldn’t leave me if he could just see her. If only he had waited.” She reached into the basket. Then Claire stopped her. “You get back into bed, Rose Sharon. I’ll lift her out and bring her to you. You’re not strong enough yet to carry her.”

  As Rose moved back to the comfort of her bed, Claire Louise gingerly lifted the little bundle from the basket and placed it into Rose’s eager arms. Then she sat on the bed next to her baby sister and the two of them giggled and baby-talked while Rose unwrapped the blanket and examined the perfect little hands and feet, counting the fingers and toes.

  After many moments, Rose bundled Cynthia up again and with fresh tears streaming down her cheeks leaned against her big sister. “Claire Louise, a baby really is a gift from God.” She brushed away her tears. “Jack will see that someday.” She nodded her head and squeezed her daughter tighter. “Your Daddy will come back to us one day, Cynthia Jackleen. Yes, he will! God will see to it!”