Take and Give

by Amanda G. Stevens

  Perhaps this weight was not meant to be lifted.

  She turned away from the door and went back to the garden. She sank to her knees beside the pool, not in reverence but unable to bear up under the weight.

  “Did You give us these things for our enjoyment? Are You a God of … gifts?” Lee gripped her knees. “Jesus Christ, if there is any chance to— I don’t know if … if I can continue like this.”

  The water continued to rush and tumble. The flowers blazed in the sun. Lee’s fingers dug into the grass along the path, deep into the soil, holding on.

  Look up.

  She hadn’t sensed the watchful presence on the other side of the glass. He was on his feet today with the aid of a cane, perhaps from the donor of the wheelchairs. He held it with both hands, centered in front of him, leaning heavily. Their eyes met through the window, and Marcus didn’t turn away.

  She shook her head. She couldn’t speak to him. But he moved toward the door, one step at a time, and used his entire body to push it open. Lee rose and hurried to hold it for him.

  His breathing labored, but he was steady on his feet. “Thanks.”

  She couldn’t even nod.

  Marcus trekked from the door to one of the benches, braced and lowered himself, wincing as he bent his injured knee just enough to sit. His gaze took in the waterfall and the pool, the grass and stone, the flowers.

  “It’s a good place,” he said quietly.

  Lee managed a single nod.

  “I’ll leave you alone if you want. But when you left, you didn’t look okay.”

  “I …” Her heart hammered. The weight shifted from her shoulders onto her chest, starting an ache. “I wasn’t able to tell you last night, but I—I regret my words in the park. My ridicule.”

  He rubbed his neck, sighed, but didn’t break eye contact. “It’s not like I don’t know what you think.”

  “No, Marcus. You’re right, I was angry. Emotional. I may even have wanted to wound you, though I don’t understand why I—why you’re the person I choose to attack. I don’t—I don’t—”

  “Lee.”

  Her name in the shelter of his voice, the voice she’d once known she would never hear again. Lee raised her hands to hide her face.

  “Oh.” Marcus pushed to his feet to stand beside her. “Hey. Lee. It’s okay.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “I mean—I forgive you.”

  Not those words. She shook her head. Please don’t.

  The waterfall filled the silence while she tried to regain her calm. Level breathing, blinking until her eyes ceased to burn. She had to live with what she’d done. Marcus couldn’t erase it. She had to live with everything she’d ever done.

  “What is it?”

  She shook her head. Didn’t he understand? Why wouldn’t he go?

  “It’s time to talk,” he said.

  He wouldn’t go because he was Marcus. She lowered her hands but kept her eyes closed, tried not to let her voice shake. “I’m simply facing … my future existence.”

  “What?”

  “Before God.”

  He cleared his throat. “Tell me. What you mean.”

  “I—I have been made aware that He does not bend to my standards. Yet I have not bent to His. There is a—a large discrepancy between His requirements and my actions.”

  His warm arm encompassed her shoulders. Her feet were moving, her body guided to a bench, and her shoulder pushed down until she sat. The words she’d spoken filled the garden, squeezed into every space, created a pressure she could hardly stand.

  “I don’t meet God’s standard, either,” Marcus said.

  “No, Marcus. I’ve hated Him. I know—I believe I know—Who He is now, and still I want to hate Him. It was easier. Numbing.”

  Why was she saying these things? Marcus couldn’t help her. He would only be wounded when he realized she was so far beyond assistance.

  “You’re not numb now.”

  “I can’t get it back.”

  “Good.”

  She shut her eyes against the sting. “I know. I deserve to feel it.”

  The quiet lasted so long, she thought he would struggle to his feet and leave her. Instead, he whispered. “Feel what?”

  Lee shook her head, though he was ignoring that communication so far.

  “Lee. What do you feel?”

  She couldn’t avoid it while he forced the issue. But she couldn’t endure it, either. “It’s like drowning.”

  And not drowning in a movie or a novel, going to sleep amid floating bubbles. This felt like a true, endless drowning, the evidence of which she’d seen on victims, brought to the emergency room past saving. Water filling her, weighing her down, squeezing out her air and preventing her from drawing in more. Struggle. Pain. The knowledge of impending death.

  “Lee.”

  “It’s terrifying,” she whispered. “He is terrifying.”

  “Did you talk to Him?”

  “Yes.”

  His breath caught.

  “I have acknowledged my … violations.”

  “You know the rest. We’ve talked about it.”

  Over and over, for years. Yes, she knew. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t deserve to.”

  Marcus shifted on the bench to face her, ablaze, the way she’d seen him only a few times in his life, only since he’d come back. “Lee. If you deserved the gift, where’s the glory in giving it? If you know now Who God is, you know He wants glory. Deserves glory.”

  The gift. Like harmony, like poetry, like blossoms and the sound of water. But greater than these. Necessary. Costly.

  “I don’t know how to want Him,” she said. “I don’t know how to feel anything toward Him that isn’t … vile.”

  “Okay.” Marcus gripped the inside of his knee. “Ask Him for help.”

  “Help to want His gifts? No one has to ask for this. I’m not …”

  Words crumbled to dust inside her. She huddled on the bench and caved forward, arms wrapped around her body. His hand settled below her neck, where he’d left a handprint of bathwater on a too recent night, ravaged by fever.

  “Lee,” he said. “Ask.”

  She covered her face, though she couldn’t hide. She trembled. She flailed inside against the current of her hate and her selfishness and her pride and her daughter’s blood. On her own, she would indeed drown. Deserved to. Wanted to.

  “God,” she said. “Jesus Christ.”

  She waited for the weight to crush her, but her chest rose and fell with breath. Another gift.

  “I am requesting … if You will give me … I am requesting absolution. Based on Your sacrifice of blood in payment for the—the blood I have shed and the—the numerous wrongs I have—”

  I can’t. Please, if You will. She doubled over, all the way to her knees, and a shudder gripped her. Marcus’s hand stayed in place, firm and warm, not leaving her.

  “Please forgive me.” Every word came with a fight for breath. “Please help me.”

  Shaking. Spent. But air filled her lungs. She was pulled out, away from the flood of herself. She felt no love, no joy, no warmth like Violet’s, but a quiet relief. And inside her, there was a glimpse. Radiance. His blood washing her baby’s from her hands, washing all her grimy soul until she emerged naked and spotless. Thank You. Inadequate, which was the point. The way of His glory. I almost understand.

  Lee pressed a hand to her chest. She no longer ached. In time, will I love? Will You help me to love? Slowly, she sat up. At some point, the hand had lifted from her back. She turned.

  Marcus was weeping. Head in his hands. Lips pressed tight to keep his silence.

  She set a hand on his arm, and a quiet sob broke from him. He rocked forward. His tears fell on her hand.
>
  “Marcus.”

  “Lee.” He covered her hand with his. “Lee. Oh, God, Your gifts.”

  Epilogue

  Return the Bible. Say as little as possible. Keep the secret.

  Violet repeated her checklist as she searched for Marcus. Juana finally pointed her outside. Sure enough, Marcus sat with his back to an oak tree, next to the parking lot, one knee bent. The tree’s late-afternoon shadow sprawled across the sun-washed grass.

  Around his mostly straightened knee, Marcus had wrapped one of those rice-filled heating pads, its flannel material patterned with red and blue birds. He’d shaved since Violet last saw him, and his face without the beard looked thinner but more like himself. He seemed to be watching nonexistent traffic pass and leaves fall and … well, there wasn’t a whole lot else to watch. He looked intent on it, though.

  Maybe she shouldn’t walk up to him without a warning. “Hey.”

  He jolted, then turned his head. As their eyes met, his smiled, worn crinkles showing around the edges. “Hi.”

  He’d be a good brother. If only she hadn’t ruined it. The part of her the Bible called her “old man” wished Austin had never told her. If she didn’t know, she could have been Marcus’s little sister without any dishonesty.

  “I won’t bug you,” she said. “I just came to bring you this.”

  She held out the Bible. Marcus took it in both hands and looked down at the cover. His thumb caressed the worn leather at the spine’s edge.

  He gave a long coming-home kind of sigh. “Thanks.”

  “I, um, I highlighted. With pink. And I wrote in it. I think I started around Luke—and Acts and Romans. I wrote a lot in Romans.”

  Marcus opened the book, found Romans, and began to turn the pages. Heat rushed into her cheeks. The pink highlighter and green pen—good grief, ink was everywhere. She hadn’t realized at the time how much color she was spilling, all over. She just kept reading things she didn’t want to forget.

  “I’ll get you a new one, if you want. There’s a bookstore in the church that sells them, and I’m going to get a job as soon as I can, and—”

  “It’s okay.” Marcus looked up at her. This time the smile that started in his eyes reached his mouth.

  She hadn’t seen his mouth smile since he’d come back to them. She sank down next to him, and the grass tickled her ankles. “I thought it would be over. When we got here.”

  “Over?”

  “If Walt’s right, there’s danger here, too.”

  “Not for you.”

  “Only because I’m not worth anything.” Was it the old man who felt the relief of that?

  Marcus glared at her. “Don’t.”

  “Well, I don’t mean—”

  “I know Lee would call you her friend. And I know you’ve been showing her love. Showing her Jesus.” His voice caught on the Name.

  Violet crossed her ankles in front of her. “I try to.”

  “Well. It isn’t worthless.”

  It would be wonderful if he was right, but four months had taught her the difficulty of witnessing to Lee. Maybe they were too different, their personalities. Maybe the gap between them existed because Violet had never in eighteen years hated herself and, for some reason, Lee lived with self-hatred every day. These days, praying was all Violet could do.

  The side door of the church opened, and Juana marched out, an apron over her T-shirt and jeans, a plate in her hands. Marcus gave a small sigh.

  “I see you found him.” Juana squatted down in front of him. “Surprise.”

  “Juana, I had lunch.”

  “Three hours ago.”

  “I’m barely hungry.”

  “Barely counts. Come on. Protein and carbs.” She held out the plate of potato salad, baked beans, and a grilled burger with cheese and relish oozing from under the bun.

  Marcus took it and set it over the Bible in his lap. “Thanks.”

  She grinned and disappeared back into the church.

  “I think Lee put her up to this food-every-three-hours thing.” He picked up the burger and took a bite. He chewed as if he were thinking hard about it.

  Dear Jesus, I didn’t need another reminder that he’s hurt and weak.

  She wouldn’t be able to keep the secret forever. Look how that had gone with Khloe. Sometime, the truth would slip out of her, or maybe out of Austin—he’d already done that once.

  Being disowned might hurt less if she did it now. And Marcus deserved honesty.

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  She glanced down. Her thumb was rubbing phantom charms on a phantom bracelet. Would she ever break the habit? Her wrist no longer felt naked, but every once in a while she caught herself rubbing her wrist as if the bracelet still hung there.

  “Violet.”

  She tried to bury the tears, but they surged into her eyes. “Marcus, the con-cops didn’t figure it out. That you were leading the resistance.”

  For a moment, he looked like a statue. Then he set the plate aside, in the grass.

  She pushed the words out before he could ask questions, interrupt, kill her nerve. She tried not to tremble. “Austin told me. Clay gave you up to them. I know in heaven I’ll be your sister in Christ, but I know this means I can’t be, here on earth. I didn’t want you to know, but I had to tell you.”

  Marcus’s hands curled on the cover of the Bible. “Clay thought they had his daughter. He thought he was making a trade.”

  The shuddering inside her went still. “You … know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did Austin tell you?”

  He shook his head. His hands tightened to fists.

  “You …” She shouldn’t keep pushing, but he’d treated her like a sister anyway. She had to know. “When did you find out?”

  Marcus drew in a breath, too sharp, like the sound Lee made before her panic attacks. The whole time. He’s always known. Locked in the dark, he’d known who put him there.

  Her tears overflowed. “How can you not hate me?”

  “You didn’t want it to happen.”

  “Do you hate Clay, then?”

  Marcus looked away. “I don’t think so.”

  He probably thought she couldn’t understand. Well, she couldn’t, not what had happened to him. But some days, she thought she might hate her mother. It was so hard to tell. She didn’t hate her every day, for sure. And when she’d only half woke from the worst of her dreams, thinking Lee was gone, in hell, she’d hated the robber with the gun. Even when reality cleared, she’d had to pray to stop hating him.

  “Does this mean …” She swiped at her tears. “I can still be your sister?”

  “Violet.” He said it on a sigh, as if she’d been completely ridiculous to think otherwise.

  “Oh.”

  Marcus let her cry a little more, and then she sat against the tree with him, and their outstretched legs made a right angle from the trunk. He finished eating the burger, then put the plate down without touching the potato salad or the beans.

  “Marcus.”

  “Hm.” He was beginning to sound sleepy.

  “I was part of what happened. It’s … inside me. Even though God forgave me, and you forgave me.”

  Cars passed on a main road out of sight, and a bird sang in the tree limbs above them. Maybe Marcus had fallen asleep. After a while, he pulled the heating pad from his knee and began to massage it. He didn’t speak for another minute, until he leaned against the tree with a strained sigh.

  “Last winter, I watched a man get arrested. An old man, preaching in a store parking lot. The agent told me to go back in the store. And I did.”

  “You couldn’t have stopped it, though,” Violet said. It wasn’t the same.

  “Probably not. But I let the agent think there was only one Christian standing there. I li
stened to the customers cheering while the agent put handcuffs on the guy. I didn’t say anything. And that’s just one thing inside me, and … compared to a lot of things, it’s … well, small.”

  “I have more too,” Violet whispered.

  “Well. There are things inside everybody. Even after God forgives us. I don’t know if they’re supposed to be gone or not. I know for God, they are. But for me, there’s still … a stain of them.”

  “Do you know what Lee’s inner things are?”

  The quiet stretched out like their shadows, until he said, “Some of them.”

  Those were what Violet had to pray for. And Austin’s, too. That he’d left his sisters at home—that was one thing he felt the stain of inside. She needed to learn more. The more she knew, the better she could pray. And … well, he was Austin. Everything about him was worth knowing.

  “Lee’s going to talk to you soon, I think. After she … well, she would call it processing.”

  A bird of hope soared in Violet’s chest. Maybe Lee was processing the Bible and would talk to Violet about it. Marcus’s tone didn’t leave room to ask, so Violet said, “I’ll wait.”

  “Thanks.”

  She leaned her head against the bark and let herself remember a night she’d huddled against a tree at least the size of this one, having run from a half-lit country store. A night she’d hidden and waited for the ruining of lives. She’d never be so stupid again. So young.

  Minutes passed. Marcus’s chin dipped toward his chest. Violet should go, let him sleep here in the sun if he wanted to. She drew her knees up to stand.

  His hand jerked, struck the paper plate. Potato salad and beans spilled over the grass. A breath shuddered into him.

  “Hey,” Violet said. He didn’t look at her.

  He probably wanted her to leave him, but she couldn’t yet. She wrapped her arms around her knees and watched from the corner of her eye while he pulled in another breath. Should she say more or stay quiet?