American Anthem

by BJ Hoff

  Lately, Vangie had grown so desperate that she sometimes caught herself intoning a monotonous prayer, over and over again like a chant, a plea that the Lord would help her see the babe with love rather than as a kind of…parasite, which was how she sometimes viewed him. Then her blood would chill as she realized what an unnatural thing this was, having to plead for the capacity to love her own child.

  And then there was Conn. The man had been more patient with her than any woman deserved. But if she sometimes felt ashamed of the way she was hurting him—deserting him, in truth—she also felt helpless to do anything about it. She hated the pain in his eyes when he looked at her, so most of the time she simply turned away from him, refusing to look.

  The awareness of what she was turning into made Vangie retreat even more deeply into herself. At times she felt as if she were buried, hidden away from everyone she knew. Indeed, the deadness of spirit with which she’d lived since losing Aidan seemed to be spreading over her like some dark creature of the sea, its tentacles choking off every part of her.

  There were even moments when Vangie caught herself listening for her heartbeat to stop.

  And moments when she thought she would welcome the silence.

  Nell Grace felt as if she were drowning in the torrent of feelings that rushed over her as she climbed the hill toward the Big House. Never had she felt such a mixture of desperation and anger and helplessness.

  Her grand plan wasn’t working, that much was obvious, and she was beginning to feel like a fool for ever believing it would. Her mother might be going through the routine of caring for Baby Will, but anyone could see that’s all it was to her—a routine. If she had any feelings for the poor wee babe at all, she seemed intent on not showing them, especially to him.

  What else could she do? She couldn’t force Mum to love the baby. No one could do that. Except perhaps the Lord.

  But in spite of all her asking—and she had asked, countless times—He didn’t seem to be listening.

  She was beginning to get really angry with her mother, who shouldn’t have made Aidan her whole life, after all. She had five other children, including herself, who needed a mother’s attention and affection. And Da—well, he was about as helpless as a man could be in the face of what was happening. Every time she tried to talk to him about Mum, he would mumble something about her not being completely over William’s birth yet or her not having all her strength back or how much better she would be once winter was gone and she could get outside and work in her garden. Nothing but excuses, and so far as Nell Grace could see, none of them credible.

  But Da had always been a bit soft where Mum was concerned.

  No, Dad was a lot soft where Mum was concerned, and in truth, would she want him to be any other way? Besides, she knew he felt as helpless as she did, and that must be terrible for a man when he loved his wife as much as Da obviously loved Mum.

  She looked up to see Paul Santi standing in the backyard of the Big House, watching her. He removed his eyeglasses, smiled, and waved at her, and Nell Grace’s heart lifted. They talked almost every day now, not for more than five or ten minutes, but she was learning to like him ever so much. He was the nicest young man. So polite and thoughtful and funny.

  Da, of course, would take none of these things into account once he learned that she was interested in an Italian gentleman. She could almost hear him calling Paul just that, in that way he had of drawing out the words that made it sound as if he were saying something bad: “that Eye-talian fella.”

  Well, Da would just have to learn that she wasn’t going to be ordered around anymore like a schoolgirl. She would soon be eighteen years old, the age of a woman, not a child. She had a job. She was an adult. She liked Paul Santi—and he liked her, she could tell. She thought he liked her a lot. And if she was old enough to work full-time for Mr. Emmanuel, help keep house and stand in for her mother with Baby Will—not to mention raising the other children at least a part of the time—then she was old enough to talk to the young man of her choice, whether he happened to be Irish or Eye-talian.

  So full of her imaginings about a coming conflict between her father and Paul Santi was she that, for a moment at least, she nearly forgot her sadness and discouragement about her mother and Baby Will. When she remembered, she said yet another prayer for the both of them, then quickened her steps to meet Paul at the gate.

  By midafternoon, after Conn had gone back to work and Emma had settled for her nap, Vangie felt the old, familiar lethargy begin to seep through her. The sky, earlier bright with sunshine, had darkened now, with clouds quickly moving in. The encroaching gloom seemed to reflect her mood.

  She had heard nothing from the baby for over an hour. Although she was grateful for the quiet, she supposed she ought to go and check on him.

  She found him lying quietly in the crib Conn had originally made for Emma. He wasn’t sleeping after all, but wide awake, lying quietly and staring at the foot of the crib. Vangie watched him for a moment, and for the first time she seemed to really see his thinness, the nearly translucent quality of his pale skin, the red-gold highlights in the puff of downy hair that covered his head. So delicate, so frail…

  Her other babies, the ones who had lived, had been sturdy little things with rosy cheeks and plump limbs and round tummies. Aidan, especially, had been unusually large and robust. “All boy,” she remembered Conn saying, pride evident in his tone and in his eyes.

  The memory of her firstborn hit her like a hammer blow. Her eyes filled, and she was about to turn and leave the room when her attention was caught by the baby’s faint gurgle and the way his attention seemed to be locked on his own feet.

  She followed his gaze. There, inching its way toward one tiny foot, was the largest, most terrifying spider she’d ever seen. It was black and covered with fur and obscenely ugly.

  Vangie cried out, and the baby snapped his head to look at her. He wailed, kicking his feet and flailing his fists. Vangie grabbed him, whisked him up under one arm, and frantically called for Renny Magee.

  She had always been terrified of spiders. Even the small ones. She could imagine unknown horrors at the very sight of one. Indeed, she would shriek for Conn or Renny at the sight of a dark blot on the wall that turned out to be nothing more than a smudge. But this—this thing was the worst she had ever encountered.

  And it had been in her baby’s crib—it had threatened her child.

  Renny was not to be found. Then Vangie remembered the girl had gone up to the Big House to visit her ailing friend. And Conn was down at the stables well out of earshot. Vangie paced the floor, holding the babe securely against her as she frantically tried to think what to do. Finally, drawing a determined breath, she hurried to fetch the broom from the kitchen pantry.

  When she came back, the ugly thing was still squatting in the crib as if looking for new prey. Plopping wee William in his basket by the window, she swept the horrible creature through the rails of the crib onto the floor, where she proceeded to beat it with the flat of the broom as hard as she could until it finally gave up its struggle and shriveled into a lifeless blot on the floor.

  Still shaking, she stared down at her grisly work with a peculiar sense of triumph, then set the broom aside and retrieved the babe from his basket.

  She looked down at the baby boy cuddled against her shoulder. He was watching her with wide eyes but no sign of fear. Indeed, his expression was curious, as if this might be some sort of game devised for his entertainment.

  Vangie carried him into the bedroom. Not until she collapsed on the rocking chair by the window did she begin to weep—softly at first, then harder. All the guilt and the anguish of the past weeks came rushing in on her like an avalanche, dislodging the wall she had set around her heart.

  She saw it all now, saw what she had done, what she had allowed to happen—and it was a bitter awareness entirely. She had been so unfair to Nell Grace—to all of them. She had forsaken her own responsibilities as a mother and hardened he
r heart not only to the wee boy in her arms, but to her other children…and her husband, her faithful, long-suffering Conn. She had absented herself from the ones who loved her best. Because of her grief for the one lost, she had grieved the ones who needed her most.

  Had it not been for the baby in her arms, Vangie thought she might have broken in half with the weight of her selfishness, her sin. She leaned her head back against the chair and squeezed her eyes shut and wept.

  “O God, O Lord God, forgive me!”

  Only then did the babe begin his own surge of wailing. Realizing that she’d startled him, Vangie quickly gathered him closer and began to soothe him, pressing her cheek against his as she patted his back and rubbed his silken head.

  “Shush now, sweet William,” she crooned softly. “You’re safe now. Mother’s here. Don’t cry. Mother’s here.”

  After a moment, he stopped. With her own tears still tracking down her face, Vangie turned him onto her lap, on his back, so she could study him. His soft white nightdress was too big for his teensy body, but he was growing some, she noticed. He had long fingers and long toes for such a wee thing, and she saw now that his ears stuck out just as the twins’ had when they were born.

  “Never you mind about those ears,” she told him. “You’ll grow into them soon enough.”

  She continued to look him over, each tiny part of him a discovery. “Why, he’s perfect,” she murmured, running a finger over the tops of his toes. So tiny, but perfect indeed. He quirked his fair, red-gold eyebrows as he examined Vangie’s face, and what appeared to be a smile in the making appeared, tugging at the corners of his mouth.

  Vangie’s tears fell over him, and he lifted a wee fist to touch the dampness on his cheeks. She lifted him then and buried her face in the softness of his flannel-covered body and then, just as she had with her other babes, she inhaled the warm sweetness of him, breathing deeply of the promise and the glory a new babe had always held for her.

  A few minutes later, little Emma came shuffling into the room, rubbing her eyes. She had obviously slept right through all the excitement but now intended to claim her place with her mother and baby brother. Thumb in mouth, she crossed over to the rocking chair and climbed up beside them.

  That was how Nell Grace and Renny Magee found them when they came home later that afternoon—Vangie, Baby Will, and wee Emma all cuddled together asleep in the rocking chair by the bedroom window.

  Nell Grace stood watching her mother with her baby brother, her little sister huddled close to them. After a long moment, she brushed a tear away, then turned to look at Renny.

  Renny met her gaze, and Nell Grace smiled at her. “Mum will be all right now, Renny,” she said.

  “Aye,” Renny said, her voice hushed, her own eyes damp. “So it would seem.” She turned to again look at Vangie and the baby. “I wonder what happened.”

  Nell Grace, too, returned her attention to the scene by the window. “God,” she said to Renny Magee. “I’m thinking God happened.”

  Late that night, with the moonlight streaming through their bedroom window, Conn MacGovern lay drinking in the sight of his wife and the infant in her arms, both sleeping soundly.

  There could be no more beautiful sight in the world, he thought, swallowing hard against the swelling in his throat. Vangie, her riot of dark red hair fanned out over the white bedsheet, the wee boy tucked against his mother’s heart.

  Contentment. Peace. Beauty.

  All the lovely words he could think of, the words that spoke of God’s blessing and a man’s joy, went drifting through his mind. He was growing drowsy, yet was reluctant to sleep. He could be a happy man just lying here the rest of the night, watching the woman he had loved for more than twenty years and the tiny, newest evidence of that love.

  Here, tonight, in this room that looked out on the place the Lord had brought them to, was everything a man could ever want, ever need. Oh, they’d been through their valleys, that was true. They had known hunger and homelessness and sickness and the loss of loved ones—oh, Aidan, my son! They had met with disdain and contempt and outright hatred in some places of this country they now called home. He supposed they’d experienced just about every hurt, every heartache, every loss, that human beings could know.

  But in the midst of it all, they had also known grace. God’s grace. That’s what had brought them this far. And as he watched his sleeping wife and child, and as the years of their lives played through his memories and his thoughts like a continuous river of dreams, Conn MacGovern knew that in the years to come they would know that grace again. And again.

  And again.

  31

  BEYOND THESE WALLS

  When my spirit, clothed immortal,

  Wings its flight to realms of day,

  This my song through endless ages:

  Jesus led me all the way.

  FANNY CROSBY

  Maylee died on Easter Sunday evening.

  Miss Susanna had sent for Renny Magee late in the afternoon, so Renny was there when Maylee drifted quietly off to sleep and didn’t wake up.

  Up until then, she read to her from Maylee’s favorite book, the Holy Bible, pausing once to remind her friend that the only reason she was able to read anything was because Maylee had taught her. She didn’t know if Maylee heard her or not, but she felt the need to thank her one more time.

  She also played her tin whistle, because Maylee always urged her to do so during their visits. She played Maylee’s favorite hymn, one written just recently by Miss Fanny Crosby, a friend of the maestro and a frequent visitor to Bantry Hill. Renny knew she would never play or listen to that hymn again without hearing Maylee’s pure, high voice singing the words as she almost always did when Renny played it:

  All the way my Savior leads me;

  Oh, the fullness of His love!

  Perfect rest to me is promised

  In my Father’s house above:

  When my spirit, clothed immortal,

  Wings its flight to realms of day,

  This my song through endless ages:

  Jesus led me all the way.

  Before she left, Renny looked back one last time at the room where she had spent so many hours with her friend. Cookie, Maylee’s kitten, was peeping out at her from underneath the bed—Miss Susanna had promised she would take good care of her. The jar of marbles Renny had given Maylee still sat on the windowsill, but their sparkle was gone without the sun to cast its light on them. The Easter present she’d given Maylee, a paperweight she’d made of multicolored, carefully polished tiles—now rested on the bedside table. Maylee’s eyes had been heavy when Renny helped her open the package, but she had smiled at the sight of all the colors.

  Renny managed not to weep until after she left the Big House. Even when Miss Susanna led her from the room after Maylee died, and even when both she and the maestro gave Renny a hug and told her what a good friend she had been to Maylee, she remained dry-eyed.

  She was able to hold back her tears because she knew Maylee would have scolded her for weeping. She would have reminded Renny that she had been eager for this day for some time now and welcomed it when it came.

  Outside the house, as she started home, Renny wondered if Maylee was flying now. The younger girl had always been keen on the idea of flying and talked about it often, especially when she talked about heaven.

  Renny had never thought much about heaven one way or the other until she became friends with Maylee. Even though she had given her heart to Jesus several months before, heaven just didn’t occupy much space in her thoughts. In truth, it was a subject that seemed to be reserved for old people.

  But Maylee wasn’t old, not really, even though her disease had made her look and feel old. Even though she was only eleven—almost twelve, as Maylee liked to say—she didn’t mind talking about heaven at all. In fact, she liked to talk about it. She was always wondering if she really would “wing her flight” to get there.

  “Even though I’ll have a new and p
erfect body, I hope I’m not confined to just walking around all the time,” she’d said to Renny during one of their conversations about heaven. “I hope I’ll be able to just fly around with the angels and go everywhere and see all the wonderful things they see. I get so tired of never being able to go anywhere or see anything but walls.”

  The memory made Renny choke on a sob, and she stopped where she was, plopping down on the side of the hill toward home. No longer able to contain her grief, she finally let the tears flow. She wept until she thought her heart had been wrung dry and there could be no more sorrow in her.

  Nell Grace found her there and eased down beside her. After a moment she put her arm around Renny’s shoulders. And as the twilight crept in on the hillside and the stars began to fire the evening sky, the two girls sat and quietly wept together.

  32

  HOMECOMING

  A house is built of logs and stone,

  Of tiles and posts and piers;

  A home is built of loving deeds

  That stand a thousand years.

  VICTOR HUGO

  Two weeks after Easter, Renny Magee was finishing up the ironing—a task she actively detested and rarely undertook voluntarily. Today, however, she had offered to do at least a part of it in order to help out Nell Grace, who was working all day at the Big House.

  As she ironed, she was watching over Baby Will and Emma so Vangie could finish hanging the freshly laundered curtains in the twins’ bedroom. The monotony of heating the iron and pressing the clothes gave her too much time to think, and since she’d mostly been thinking about Maylee, her mood had become increasingly somber.

  Although the day was golden bright and warmer than any weather they’d had so far this spring, to Renny everything seemed faded and dull with the ache of Maylee’s absence. Sometimes on days like this she still caught herself anticipating her afternoon visit with her friend. Then she would remember that there would be no visit with Maylee ever again, and the raw place deep inside her would burn with pain.