Pray for Us Sinners

by Marilyn L. R. Hall

  Rose nodded—it was plain that whatever it was, it was really bothering him to talk of it. He searched her eyes and then plunged on.

  “A month after he left you, Jack sent me a letter with money in it. Money for you. He asked if I would put you to work and let him pay your wages so he could support you and the baby and you would never know. I didn’t want to deceive you, but he made it clear it had to be that way.”

  Rose started to protest and he shushed her. “There was never a return address and the postmark was Chicago. There wasn’t any way to find out where he was, Rose. If there had been, I’d have let you know one way or another and after the first letter, there was never anything in the envelope but the money. And it was always cash. Always the same amount. I continued to pay you what I agreed to and just added his money to it. And so this whole five years, Jack Nash has been taking care of you Rose. He never stopped loving you. I couldn’t tell you before because he didn’t want you to know. But now you need to know, I think. Viola thinks so too. Were we wrong?”

  Rose wasn’t sure. Did that change anything? It made her feel less rejected but did it change anything? She smiled at Leo though, to reassure him. “I’m glad to know that, Leo. I kinda wish I knew it before. It might have made his goin’ easier.” She nodded her head, “Anyway, I’m glad to know it now. It means he cared and I’d about given up hopin’ for that. Thank you, Leo.”

  Then she urged him back out the door without seeming too. It was so hard to keep this act up. She was not by nature a devious person and found it difficult to pretend to be something she wasn’t. If he wasn’t gone soon, she feared she’d give herself away. But he seemed to be convinced that everything was fine and so he patted her arm while he took her hand and put a folded piece of paper into her palm. Then he turned away and walked to the back stairway.

  Rose closed the door behind him and went back to the kitchen table to conclude her letters. Before she sat down though she looked at the paper in her hand. Sure enough, it was the letter from Jack that Leo just told her about. She smiled. Who else, but the Wesselmans would hang onto that letter all these years, trusting that someday they could give it to her. She read it and crushed it to her lips and kissed it and then cried awhile. She would put it in with Cynthia’s letter, she thought. One day that would mean something special to her, too.

  Then she felt her firm resolve begin to break down. Tears were very near the surface and she wasn’t at all sure she was doing the right thing anymore. So all those years Jack had been sending money. Taking care of her. Why couldn’t he have come to see her? Didn’t he ever wonder about his child? He didn’t even know whether he had a son or a daughter. Wasn’t he ever curious as to how she looked? “Oh Jack! Jack! You made such a mess of everything!” And then sadly, “You sent me money because you were such a prideful man, weren’t you, Jack Nash? You had to support us out of pride. It wasn’t love or regret or anything else but your pride.”

  But it was a long time before she was at peace enough to write the third letter. This one was so special. It had to speak her heart and it had to speak it to Cynthia when she was old enough to read it and understand. Not to the Cynthia in the bedroom singing to her baby dolls but to a young girl Rose did not yet and never would know. “O Sweet Jesus! Help me,” she prayed.

  “My dearest Daughter,

  By the time you read this letter you’ll have formed an opinion of me from the things you remember while we were together and the things your Uncle Walter and Aunt Claire Louise and your Granny and Grampa, Viola and Leo, have told you. I hope it’s a realistic opinion and neither sees me as better or worse than I am. I wish I could have spent all these years with you but I am not able to do that. I don’t imagine you’ll ever really understand why, but it’s the only thing I know to do considering the state of my life now. The reason I’m writing this letter is to tell you in a personal way how much I love you. How happy I was when I knew you were on the way and what a blessing it’s been living with you and watching you grow up. You were the most beautiful baby ever born and are now the prettiest four-year-old girl God ever made. I know that by the time you read this you will be even more beautiful and so sweet and good that nobody can tell you from God’s own angels. I hope you’ll always listen to Leo and Viola when it comes to going to church and learning about God and being good and all that. They are your godparents. I chose them because they are such good people and they are as close to you and me as if they were my real Mama and Papa. You can ask Claire Louise about our blood relation. I’ve got hard feelings about them and shouldn’t pass that on to you. You’ve got more aunts and uncles in Dobbin, Mississippi, and Claire Louise will tell about them too. The only thing in my life till you came was your Daddy, Jack Nash. I loved him since I was a child of five and I never even looked at another man my whole life before or since he left me. He was the most handsome, the most exciting, the most manly man that ever drew a breath. There wasn’t a woman or girl who ever laid eyes on him didn’t want him for her own, and yet he loved me and wanted me and married me and left all those other ladies to mourn after him. I don’t know how I won him, except that God blessed me with him. I need you to know what a fine man he was. He was a hard worker, and he did the meanest kind of jobs when we first come to Chicago just so I could have a house to live in and food to eat and when he finally got a job that paid good he bought me all kinds of lovely things and took me to fancy places. Peculiar as it sounds, your papa thought I was something special and he liked to show me off. Even after he left us, he sent money to Leo every month to see we were well taken care of, though he kept that a secret from me till he died. When Jack Nash finally came back to us, Cynthia Jackleen, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and some crazy person shot him down in the street. That crazy person was being paid to kill the man who was standing near your Daddy. That’s the worst thing that ever happened in my life and with him gone I am no longer a living person. I am dead inside, Cynthia and that’s why I’m not able to stay here anymore with you. I just can’t live anymore without your Daddy. Please be good for Uncle Walter and Aunt Claire Louise. They love you so much and they are so good to us. But remember you are a Catholic and the only one in our family, ever, so while you may go to church with Sister Claire please go to your own church with Leo and Viola, too. I ask you to keep God always Number 1 in your life. I didn’t do that, Cynthia. I put Jack Nash first and that may be why I’m in such trouble now. I tried to make him be God I guess, and no man can live up to that. Please don’t forget me and please don’t think bad of me. I’m leaving you the only Kodak picture I’ve ever had of Jack Nash and me. It’s our wedding picture in the oval frame that I been showing you every night of your life. Please don’t ever lose it. It’s all you have to remember us by. I guess that’s all there is to tell. I haven’t given you much worthwhile in your life except to love you. That’s about all I had to give anyone. Don’t forget Scotty and Mary Jean. They always loved you too. And Cynthia, if anybody ever asks you about your Mama, you can tell them … though your Mama never did much of anything worthwhile in her whole life, she sure did love your Daddy. She sure did love Jack Nash! I hope you will love him too, and I hope you will forgive us both.

  Your loving mama, Rose Sharon Nash.

  And then, last of all, Rose wrote on the back of the letter she had written to Cynthia, the words of a song that had come to her the night before in a dream—maybe to remind her, when she finally was old enough to open and read it, that on this terrible night, Rose had gone joyfully with her husband Jack, the love of her life, to be together in a better place for eternity.

  Rose touched the letter to her lips, breathing her spirit into it, and then folding it, inserted it into the third and last envelope. She remembered to put the letter from Jack that Leo had just given her, inside with it, before sealing it, then she wrote Cynthia’s name on the outside and added the words, “When she is old enough to read and understand”. Then she sat very still for a while with her hands folded on the
table before her, her mind slowly unwinding from the tension and stress of the letter-writing. Across from where she sat was a row of wooden hooks on which hung outdoor clothing, coats, hats, sweaters, scarves and beneath all of that sat a neat row of galoshes. They hung and sat there all year long … winter and summer … and now she noticed, for the very first time, Jack’s wool cap with the ear flaps down. It was red plaid and he never wore it again after he got his good-paying job. It must have hung there undisturbed these whole five years. How had she ever missed it? She guessed it just got covered up with something over the years. Now it made her sad again and she was so weary of feeling sad.

  She stared at it for a while thinking about the last time she remembered him wearing it. The day he told her to get dressed up in her beautiful blue silk honeymoon dress so they could go out that night and celebrate his first real job in more than two years. The job that in the end had killed him. That morning though, he had gone to load and unload trucks all day in the bitter cold with that big, orange-haired man … Jess somebody. She guessed she’d never known his family name in all the time he’d worked with Jack. And for a minute she sat there wondering what had ever become of him. For that matter, whatever had become of Rosy and whatever became of Jack? The times had been hard but the joy of sharing them made them good times … days and nights full of love and hope. Nobody could have told her on that day that she and Jack wouldn’t be together forever, loving and laughing and teasing and giving pleasure to one another. Nobody! She’d have laughed in the face of anyone who tried to tell her that, on the last day she saw Jack Nash wearing that red plaid cap with the ear flaps down.

  Without being aware she was doing it, she had started singing softly in her sweet, thin soprano voice, giving vent to the sorrow and loneliness she was feeling. It was a love song in a minor key with a sweetly beautiful melody that brought tears to her eyes and a smile to her lips. The song, in its entirety, had come to her just last night in a dream, when she’d finally fallen asleep after lying awake for hours dreading the morning and Jack’s funeral and now the words to it were written on the back of her letter to Cynthia. As she sang, she started to sway right where she sat at the table and then, because the spirit moved her, she rose from the chair to circle the room, her body moving like an autumn leaf swirling through the air and drifting to earth on the cadence of her song. Never in her life had she felt so light, so weightless, so at one with the rhythm and the melody. For a time Rose Nash sang and whirled round the dusky old parlor and kitchen of her apartment forgetting entirely all the bad feelings that had only moments before assailed her. Cynthia Jackleen heard the consoling music of her mother’s voice and came into the kitchen to stand with her back against the door jamb and stare; her eyes full of admiration and wonder, at her pretty young mother dancing so beautifully, so gracefully with such a happy and serene smile on her face. The song went on and on and the room, lit now only by the reflection of the city’s lights on the mist outside the windows began to brighten with a cozy saffron-colored glow. It was so peaceful and so pretty that Cynthia slid down the door jamb to sit on the floor where she was soon lulled into a wonderfully contented nap.

  “In the night I hear you call me

  Your song comes across the meadow,

  Daring me to follow, to follow, to leave this world

  The world I know behind me and wander,

  And wander among the stars with you…

  Then I see you in the moonshine, the starshine

  The silver mist that drifts across the high hills and valleys

  And with the dawn it settles on the river

  And beckons, and beckons me,

  Rise and follow you ….

  What must I do?

  My heart says follow you

  Don’t count the cost ….

  My heart says follow you,

  My heart is lost.

  So tonight I won’t resist you

  Your song is too strong for me to turn aside

  I love you so madly

  My heart is yours I must abide

  Beside you, within you,

  My heart and soul are yours

  My eternity is yours

  My life, my love—

  I am yours!”

  How long Rose danced and sang her song would never be known by anyone. Afterwards, she went to her bedroom, lifted the suitcase off the bed and carried it to the kitchen table where she placed it and arranged the three letters in a neat row alongside, only this time she placed them so the names written on them were topside. She prayed God’s blessing upon each of them to ease whatever pain they might bring to the readers. Then she went to the table in the living room, picked up a little music box that Jack had bought her with money from his first big paycheck. She placed it beside the letters and tore a piece of writing paper in half.

  “This is for you, Viola. I want you to keep it to remember me and Jack by.” And she slipped it under the corner of the lid.

  Then she walked here and there through all the rooms of the apartment, searching out a special memory for each of her friends and family.

  She took an ornate silver-backed hand mirror, which was also a gift from Jack, and laid it on the table with a note to Mary Jean.

  The radio Jack bought her so she could hear and sing along with all the music she loved, was a special gift for Scotty, who loved music as much as she did, and she wrote that in a note giving it to him.

  And that was about all she owned that had any monitory value. Then she noticed beside her bed on the table, the shimmering ruby beads of the rosary Mrs. Pulaski had given her when she learned Rose was a new convert on the very morning Jack came back to his old neighborhood. She picked it up and lovingly held it to her lips to kiss the cross. Then she carried it to the kitchen table and tore another piece of paper in two and wrote Leo’s name on it, and added “Please use this every day to pray for Rose and Jack Nash who you took such good care of all these years and who really need your prayers now.”

  One last look around the room showed her everything was finished. There was nothing left to do … except for Cynthia.

  Rose went to her then, where she sprawled sound asleep against the doorjamb. She knelt beside her and cradled the child in her arms, rocking her and crooning softly an old lullaby from her own childhood, until the little girl began to stir against her breast and opened her big brown eyes, which looked more contented at that moment than Rose had ever seen them. They smiled at one another and Rose snuggled her closer still singing and still completely at peace.

  Finally she ended the song and brushed Cynthia’s soft curls back from her forehead. “Sugar,” she said as calmly as she was able considering the nervous racing of her heart, “Grampa Leo made me promise to send you downstairs before it got too late so he and Gramma Vi could give you some candy and visit with you awhile before bedtime. You can tell him your Mama is gonna go to sleep now and you aren’t ready to do that yet.” She smiled at Cynthia’s eagerness to be gone before she even finished her message. “Wait a minute, now. I’m not finished talkin’ yet.”

  Cynthia nodded enthusiastically and danced around her. Rose got to her feet and walked the child to the door. “Ask him to bring you back up in about an hour.” And then her expression changed and the strain of the smile she was smiling started to hurt the muscles in her cheeks and her smile became more like a grimace. Instantly her daughter reached up and clung to her waist. She no longer wanted to leave her mother. She had never felt as close to her as she did at that moment and she had no desire to lose that sense of attachment. The passion of her embrace tore at Rose’s heart and she wondered if she could complete her plan. If she left Cynthia forever, would the little girl ever stop grieving? Would she ever forgive her?

  Rose bent down to kiss her, held her in her arms and kissed her and the two of them clung to each other until Rose realized she was transferring her own fear to her child. She sighed deeply and with some effort was smiling again. She took the child’s hand and led h
er to the sink, above which were several shelves, and she took down a little red enameled cup that stood there next to a stack of dinner plates. She bent down with it to Cynthia’s eye level. “Here’s 10 cents. You take this and tell Grampa Leo I said you can buy whatever treat you’d like from all the treats in the store. That way you can have your choice this time.”

  Then she took what was left of her note paper and wrote instructions to Leo. “Dear Leo, please let Cynthia buy a treat for herself and let her visit with you and Viola for a while. I want to sleep and she still wants to play. You can bring her back up in about an hour if that’s okay. I would really be grateful. Love, Rose Nash.”

  And then, albeit reluctantly, with the dime clutched close to her chest and the note wrinkled in her fist, Cynthia kissed her mama goodbye and let herself be herded out of the room and down the stairs.

  Rose stood at the top with her jaws aching from the effort of smiling and watched until she had reached the bottom and opened the door that led into the grocery store. After giving Rose one final look and catching the kiss Rose blew to her, Cynthia disappeared from view, and a moment later, Viola stuck her head out and looked up to wave at her. “You rest easy, Rose Sharon. Your baby’s in good hands.” And Rose nodded. “I know,” she said, too softly to be heard and turned away quickly to hide the tears that had already started sliding down her cheeks.

  But unflinchingly, Rose walked back to the apartment and went inside, closing the door behind her. Then she glanced one last time at the table laden with gifts and messages before turning away and going into the bedroom.

  At the bed she lifted a pillow and stared down at the pearl-handled revolver that lay hidden there. It belonged to Mary Jean Turner. She’d kept it in a drawer beside her bed. One day a year ago she’d shown it to Rose after there had been a robbery across the street and she needed to reassure herself of her ability to protect herself and her property.