Like Gold Refined

by Janette Oke

  But Mindy’s captivation with her new horse did not interfere with her household chores. Virginia did not need to prod or scold with directives to do the chores first. She was thank? ful for this additional signal of Mindy’s growing maturity and right choices.

  “You know,” said Mindy one night as they worked together doing up the supper dishes, “Buttercup is one of the best things to happen to me. I think—” she paused a moment—“about sixth best.”

  “Really?” said Virginia, wondering how Buttercup had man? aged to come in that low in her priorities.

  “I was thinking about it last night after I went to bed,” Mindy explained. “It’s kinda hard to sort it all out but … I think I got my list figured out now.”

  “You have a list?”

  Mindy nodded. “ The very best thing is asking God to forgive me and letting Jesus into my life.”

  Virginia wiped her hands on her apron so she could give her daughter a hug and a whispered “I’m so glad, dear.”

  “ The next best is being born—because if I wasn’t even born … ” She shrugged as if that should be self-explanatory. Virginia smiled. “The next is coming to live with you and Papa. ’Cause if I didn’t come here—” She broke off, then finished lamely, “I was sad before.”

  “You remember?” Virginia was surprised. Mindy had never spoken of her life before she came to live with them as a tiny little girl of three.

  Mindy shook her head. “Not much … I just know I was sad. I’m not sad anymore.”

  This time Virginia disregarded her dishwater wet hands and reached out again to draw Mindy close. She kissed the top of her head. “Oh, Mindy,” she said, her voice choked.

  But Mindy was anxious to continue her list. “Then … ” she said, and Virginia released her. “Then … I’m happy for Martha and Olivia and Jamie. And Murphy.” She giggled. “All that counts as four.”

  Virginia nodded.

  “Then—number five—I’m happy that Slate came here.”

  “Slate? I’m happy Slate came, too.”

  “And then Buttercup.” She seemed so pleased to have made it through her carefully ordered list and looked to Virginia for her approval.

  “ That’s a good list,” smiled Virginia, and Mindy nodded.

  The small figure reached for another dinner plate and began the drying process, but her mind seemed distracted as the towel went round and round, drying the same spot over and over. Virginia thought she must still be contemplating her list and was totally unprepared when the little girl looked up and asked, “Did my other mama love me?”

  Virginia felt the air leave her lungs. What in the world could she say to that? She could not—would not—lie to the child. They had never lied to Mindy. She had grown up knowing that she had another set of parents. They were never referred to as the “real” mother and father but always the “other” mother and father. It had been explained that her father had been killed in a car accident, that her mother was living in another city, very sad over the loss, even though her father was married to another woman at the time of his death. Jonathan maintained that the child had a right to know her parentage, and Virginia agreed. The facts, after once presented, were never discussed unless Mindy brought them up; then her few questions were answered in a matter-of-fact, nonevasive manner. But this? This had never come up before.

  Mindy must have read the doubts and confusion in Virginia’s eyes. She shrugged those little shoulders again and attacked the plate more vigorously with the dish towel. “I know my other papa didn’t,” she said, and her voice was a bit too firm. Too forced.

  “Why do you say that?” Virginia stood looking down at her child, wild thoughts racing through her head. She wished that Jonathan were with her.

  Mindy looked up with solemn, honest eyes. “He never held me or touched me … or anything. Not like my real papa.” There, she had said the word. But it was to Jonathan she assigned the title “real.”

  “I don’t think my mama loved me, either. Did she?”

  Virginia’s mind scrambled for satisfactory words. Honest words. What could she say? Would it destroy Mindy’s newly awakened faith?

  “Let’s sit down … and talk,” she began, her words faltering, her hand on Mindy’s shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” said Mindy. “We can finish the dishes.”

  So she is determined not to make too big an issue over whether she was loved—or not. Virginia felt like crying. She would have been much more comfortable sitting down, Mindy drawn close into her arms as she sought for words that might explain Jenny’s situation to a little girl. Oh, I wish Mama were here, she found herself thinking. Or Grandma. They’d know what to say. How to say it.

  Mindy placed the thoroughly dried plate on the stack and reached for another one. Say something, Virginia prompted her? self. Don’t let her shut the door on this. It has to be dealt with now—while she’s open and honest.

  “Honey … ” she began and swallowed. “ There are lots of different kinds of love. Different ways to … to express it. Some people … some people find it difficult to show love to others because … well, because something has … happened in their life to make them … to hurt them in some way.

  “Your mama was deeply hurt … when she was a little girl. Her … her mama left. Left her with her papa, your grandpa Woods. Grandpa Woods didn’t know about Jesus then. He was angry … and bitter … and he didn’t … wasn’t able to show much love to your mama. So your mama didn’t grow up learning … knowing much about how to love others.”

  Mindy’s hand had ceased its circle of wiping the plate. She listened carefully, her eyes intent on Virginia’s face. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” asked Virginia softly. Mindy nodded. Then she spoke.

  “You have to learn about love … from family.”

  “Yes,” Virginia hurried to agree. “You learn about love. Or at least, you learn how to express love. How to be … loving. You need to learn that. And practice.”

  Mindy nodded again.

  “That doesn’t mean that you will always … always like what another person does … or says. But if you love them … then you are able to forgive them and … ”

  “Like Martha,” Mindy said with a grin. “Sometimes she’s a real pest.”

  Virginia smiled in spite of herself. But the smile quickly faded with Mindy’s next comment. The girl’s thoughts were back to Jenny again. “She didn’t love me … or she wouldn’t have given me away … to you and Papa.”

  “She gave you away … ” Virginia quickly backtracked to restate the unwelcome phrase. “She let you come to live with us because … because she was afraid. She thought that … ” But it was hopeless. How could she explain to a child that her mother had abandoned her because her father had? “She didn’t know what else she could do,” Virginia finished lamely.

  “And she didn’t know how to love,” Mindy said in almost a whisper. Virginia did not argue the statement.

  “Was that why my other papa didn’t love me? Didn’t he know how to love, either?”

  Virginia took a deep breath. “I know nothing about him.

  I only know that your mama loved him very much.” The statement was meant to assure the young child, but it had the opposite effect.

  “She loved him … but not me?”

  Oh, dear, now I’ve got myself in a corner, mourned Virginia silently. How do I get out of this?

  “Your mama … your mama met your papa at a time when she really needed someone … to love her. She’d had a very bad accident and needed special care. Your papa was the one who … who helped her get better. They learned to love each other … and got married. They … they had a good time … living together … having fun.”

  How could she explain their life to a child? Their way of living and acting that she herself did not begin to understand? “They … they liked to have fun. Go to parties … and things,” she stumbled on.

  “But they didn’t go to church.”

  Virginia w
as surprised at the child’s perception. She was somehow separating the way her birth parents lived from a life of faith.

  “No. No, they didn’t go to church.”

  “Didn’t they know about God?”

  “Your mama used to go to church … sometimes … with me, when we were growing up.”

  “But she didn’t tell God she was sorry? Didn’t ask Him to forgive her sins?”

  “No. No, she didn’t do that.”

  “We need to pray for her,” said Mindy seriously, concern darkening her eyes.

  “Yes,” replied Virginia, her eyes filling with tears as she drew Mindy up against her aproned front. “We need to pray. We need to continue to pray for your mama. I’ve been praying for … for years.”

  “But we need to pray more than just, ‘God bless Mama Jenny,’ “ went on the girl who had been taught to remember her other mama in her evening prayers along with the rest of the family members on the list.

  “Yes … we need to pray more than that.”

  “Do you pray more than that?”

  “I do.”

  Mindy looked relieved. Virginia’s hand stroked the child’s hair, brushing it back from her forehead. She held her close, the plate pressing awkwardly against her hip bone. For a long moment Mindy snuggled close, then she pushed back.

  “Mama,” she said, her eyes solemn but determined. “It doesn’t matter that Mama Jenny doesn’t love me. I love her anyway.”

  Virginia nearly choked as she stifled her sob. She pressed the child more tightly to her. “I love her, too, honey,” she man? aged to say in spite of her tears. “I always have.”

  Mindy seemed to put the conversation behind her, but her evening prayers from then on were filled with pleading to her God to remember her other mama and to help her to know that she had to say she was sorry for all of the wrong things she had done. Virginia’s heart ached for the child. Was it fair for such a heavy burden to fill such a young heart?

  “Perhaps God will answer her prayer … more quickly than He has mine,” she said to Jonathan one evening as they retired.

  Jonathan looked surprised at her statement. “God has not been ignoring your prayers,” he said quietly.

  Virginia was quick to amend her comment. “I didn’t mean that. It’s just … just that I’ve been praying for Jenny for such a long, long time … and there has been so little happening.”

  “How do you know what’s been happening? On the inside? You haven’t even heard from her … in years. Maybe God is doing terrific things in her life. Even now.”

  Virginia nodded. “Oh, I pray so.”

  But Virginia did not feel reassured. If it’s not already too late, she found herself thinking. I don’t even know if Jenny is still alive.

  “I think I’ve found a woman to stay with the folks.” Belinda sounded excited as she welcomed Virginia and the children into her kitchen. Virginia responded with a quick smile, a flood of thankfulness washing over her.

  “You did? How?” She knew her mother, in one last, des? perate effort to allow her parents the privilege of remaining in their own home, had been searching out someone who was willing to be a live-in.

  “I put a notice in several papers. I finally got a response. It looks quite promising. Papa and I are taking the train into the city tomorrow to interview her.”

  “That’s wonderful,” exclaimed Virginia. “I’m so glad they won’t have to move off the farm.”

  “Now, don’t get your hopes too high—it isn’t finalized yet,” cautioned Belinda.

  Virginia nodded, but she could not let go of the hope. “It’s an answer to prayer,” she said with confidence. “Even the children have been praying.”

  “Children are wonderful little prayer warriors,” agreed Belinda. “I sometimes think they can understand the mind of God better than we cynical, practical adults.”

  Virginia looked out the window to the backyard where Martha and Olivia were busy with pails and shovels in the sandbox that Drew had built for his grandchildren. Perhaps it was true. Children had such simple, complete faith.

  “Well, I do hope that is true,” she said sincerely. “Mindy has been pouring her heart out to God every night. She is so concerned for her mama. The mama she doesn’t even really know.”

  “She might know more than you realize,” Belinda said softly. “Sometimes children remember more than we think.”

  “Perhaps she does. It’s all so strange. Memory. Perhaps our past affects us far more than we think it does.”

  Belinda turned to look at her daughter. “You’re worried about Mindy?”

  Virginia stirred. “No … not worried. Not really. At least not at this point. She seems … seems to have things well sorted through. For being a child of nine, her perception astounds me at times. But I … I guess I worry that there may come a time when things … sort of pile up. She’s had a rough start in life, Mama.”

  “She’s been more blessed than some. At least she was put on the right track early on. She has a family who loves her. She knows that.”

  “I think she does. But she also knows that she wasn’t loved in infancy. That’s got to affect a child. Knowing you were unwanted. No matter how brief the time. She asked me about it the other evening.”

  Belinda looked surprised. “Were you able to quiet her fears? Give her assurance?”

  “I’m not sure.” Virginia placed James in the high chair and brushed her hand over his disheveled hair. “What could I say? I fumbled around for words. I couldn’t just blurt out that her folks had decided she was a … an impediment to their life and activities.”

  “Of course not.”

  “But it is true—nonetheless.”

  “Because her parents were two selfish people who never allowed themselves to grow up has nothing whatever to do with who Mindy is. Her worth as an individual. She is a very special little girl with a … a sensitivity and awareness beyond her years. The world is a better place because of her being in it.”

  “I know that … but does Mindy?” Virginia was on her way to the cookie jar to get a cookie for James. She turned to her mother. “I had never given it any thought … before Mindy. Does one ever fully get over rejection? I don’t know. Is the knowledge—the hurt—a tear that always remains? Is later love enough to erase all that? To undo it? I don’t know, Mama.”

  “Mindy seems fine to me,” her mother replied, no doubt trying to ease her daughter’s mind.

  “I pray that she is. I pray that she will remain so. But it … it still troubles me some. I mean … does one really ever know what is going on in the heart and soul of a child?”

  “There are indicators. Signs.”

  “But by the time the signs show up—on the outside—is it too late for the inside? I don’t know.”

  “God can do miracles, Virginia. Even in the healing of a child’s heart.”

  Virginia sighed. “Yes … I know He can,” she said with deep feeling. “I’m counting on that … because, quite frankly, I admit that I’m not up to the task. I have no idea how to help her. Really help her. I can’t see what’s going on inside that little heart.”

  The entire household was astir. Their very own telephone was being installed. Henceforth no longer would trips to town be required to make a telephone call. Virginia could hardly believe it. What a blessing it would be to be able to dial the phone and speak to her mother anytime she chose. How nice to ring up Rodney and Grace or Danny and Alvira. To call Francine or have long chats with Clara. And her grandparents. Her grandparents, too, had just installed a telephone. That in itself had greatly reduced Belinda’s concern. At least if they needed help they would be able to call a family member.

  Even the small children skipped around in excitement, seeming to understand that this gadget on the wall would change the life of the family. Virginia had to keep shooing them out of the way so the workmen would not be tripping over them.

  The negotiations with the woman from the city to stay with the Davises were still
ongoing. Belinda was quite com? fortable with their interview and the prospect of her coming, but the woman herself had not as yet given them a definite yes or no.

  “I think she’s holding out until we’ll be desperate enough to promise her the moon,” Drew had remarked dryly. “And, quite frankly, I am getting very close to that point. Your mother is beside herself with worry. I don’t think she’s had a decent night’s sleep in months.” Virginia had not realized it was that serious a matter for her mother and was sorry she had not been more empathetic. Her only thought had been to keep things as they had always been.

  But the phone would help. It would ease the burden. At least they would feel like they had some kind of connection with the folks on the farm.

  Virginia could hardly wait until the man in charge stepped back and said with satisfaction, “It’s ready to go, ma’am.”

  “Now?” It was almost too good to be true.

  As soon as the crew stepped out her door, Virginia checked the phone list they had left, lifted down the earpiece, and with a trembling hand cranked out two shorts and a long. Would it really work? Would she really be in touch?

  The receiver lifted on the other end and she heard her mother’s voice. It sounded strange. Muted. But it was definitely her mother.

  “Mama. It’s me. Virginia. We have our phone.”

  “Virginia.” Her mother sounded as excited as she felt. But now that they were speaking over the miles, Virginia did not know what else to say. They had been together for tea and a chat just the day before. There was no new news.

  But the children were jumping up and down and tugging on her skirts, and Virginia decided that it was time to introduce them to the modern technology of this new world. “Here,” she said to Martha. “Say hello to Grandmother Belinda.”

  Martha, a grin on her face, eagerly reached for the earpiece and pressed it to her ear as she had seen her mother do. But the moment Belinda’s voice came crackling through the strange new instrument, her eyes grew big and she threw the receiver back at Virginia. Virginia lunged to catch it. She was unsure of the damage it would cause if the piece fell to the floor. She need not have worried. The attaching cord was far too short to let the piece actually drop.