Slowly, she turned and made her way back to the porch swing. Despite her profound sadness, she tried to smile at Jimmy Lee as she settled beside him. “Well, Jimmy Lee, we are a pair, aren’t we? This front porch looks like a rest home for accident victims, or maybe war heroes. What do you think?”
“I think, Miss, Geneva, that yew are about the purtiest thang I ever slapped my eyes on.”
She would not cry, but she allowed herself the indulgence of opening her palm and looking down at the shooting star in her hand and wishing with all her strength that the man would turn around and come back to her. The sun streamed in warm and soft. Jimmy Lee let his adoring eyes rest full on her face, while Laminations lifted his mournful face toward Jimmy Lee, wagged his stump, and wriggled closer to his master.
She was approaching the last rise before the grassy bald broke out of the trees, and she gave Fairhope his head as she scanned the horizon to watch how the sun turned the long grass soft and golden. A breeze picked up the moment she found herself in the open, and with a start, she realized she was there. Jacob’s Mountain, where Love lived. Where, at one time, she had entertained the fantasy that she would meet The One who would be her all, her past, her future, her dreams and her reality. She thought maybe she should hear music, like the soundtrack of a movie, but all she heard was the empty wind as it rifled through the grass and swirled around her with desolate whisperings.
The sky was still glorious, and far below, she could see the reds and golds of the trees undulating across the hills. It was so lovely, and so empty. There was nothing here but herself and her sorrow and her longing. Slowly, she dismounted, and dropping the reins so Fairhope could graze, she limped to a boulder and sat, turning her face to the sun as it slipped down into the field of grass. The grass looked like wheat, with fuzzy little tops that glowed in the afternoon light. It made her think of a sea of twinkling lights stretching up a long meadow and melting into the blue sky. Before long, the warmth and the wind made her sleepy. Pulling her knees up under her chin, she laid her cheek on her hand and closed her eyes, feeling the sun and watching the red spirals dance behind her eyelids.
When she opened them again, she saw him coming toward her with a halting gait, but smiling as if he knew she needed comforting. She remained perfectly still until he came all the way to her, far closer than he had ever been before, close enough that she could have touched him if she had reached out her hand. She lifted her head. “Hello, Holy Miracle.”
He smiled with his eyes and with his cheeks, rosy and round above the snowy beard. “Hello, girlie. I see yer ahopin’ fer Love to come and abide in ye?”
He knew all, this wise old man who had roamed the mountains for a lifetime and more, healing all that he touched. Geneva let her mute gaze tell him what he wanted to know.
He straightened and drank in the view all around him. “Hit’s been awhile since I been here. I like the view from this side the best.” He stopped and looked farther into the horizon. “But I reckon this’ll be the last autumn I kin stand here and listen to the angels still invisible. Lord tells me this winter I’ll see ‘em with my real eyes, and lookin’ back, what I see now will be like I wuz alookin’ through muddy waters.”
“You mean, you expect to die?” The thought startled and saddened her. How could this piece of her history, one of the few sureties of her life, die?
“There ain’t no dyin’, girlie, only a little sleep, and then the rushin’ upward to the light of the Lamb, where the chaff shall be burned away, and the gold will be refined to be fit.”
She could not believe it. He had been a part of her for as long as she could remember. He had given her the joy of healed wings flying to freedom. Now, he looked no different than the day he had first revealed himself to her, when she was nine years old and lay watching the trout flit among the bright shadows of the maidenhair ferns.
“How old are you, Holy Miracle?” she asked with the unconscious curiosity of a child.
His eyes grew round with pleasure. “Old,” he answered, and he seemed to have to struggle to contain his delight. That was all he needed to say. He was as old as the rock upon which she sat. He was as eternal as spring. He had been born with the very rising of this mountain. And now he had spun out his life and waited to meet his Creator.
He moved a little closer, and his eyes softened. “I see ye still got that thistle in yer soul. Don’t ye reckon it’s time ta be agittin’ rid of it?”
She felt weary. “What do you mean? A thistle?”
“Why, the pain, in yer soul, the one that’s amakin’ ye long fer what ye ain’t got.”
“You mean Howard?”
“No, girlie. It ain’t a man, though a man will come fer ye. The Lord’s already got him picked out fer ye, and he’s jist awatin’ til yer ready, with a clean soul, to take him.
“Ah, I know yer needin’ Love, even though ye’ve had Love dancin’ all around ye since the day ye was borned. And yer mighty blessed. Ain’t many that yearns so fer the glory of God. Hit’s His Love yer alookin’ fer.”
“But how do I find that? Isn’t His Love always here, isn’t it supposed to live in us?”
“Oh, yes, but when ye git a thistle in yer soul, and ye leave it there, ye cain’t feel nothin’ but the pain of that, and it’s such a pretty hurt, ye don’t want to let it go, either.”
Geneva made no effort to hide her misery. “But how do I get rid of it?” She wished he would stop speaking so cryptically.
He reached toward her with the easiest and gentlest of motions, and laid his hand, warm, light, and dry as an autumn leaf upon her forehead, then he lifted his eyes. “Oh, Lord God, this child is aneedin’ yer Love, and she’s been asearchin’ and apainin’ fer a long time. Open up yer big heart, Lord, and send yer Love apourin’ into her. Let yer Spirit take over her whole self, cause ye made her in yer image, and she’s apinin’ fer yer glory. Oh, Lord God Almighty, in the name of Jesus, let her be Holy Ground.”
Geneva felt a little dazed, as if she had walked into a room where nothing seemed in the right place, and gravity held little sway. Then she felt her being, physical as well as spiritual, being filled and probed. At first, she was shamed because it seemed to her there was so little to plumb, and what was there was superficial and ugly. But before the shame came to light, the bottom of the shallows of her soul crumbled away like stale bread, and she felt the deeper avenues of herself opening, as if there were unexplored caverns to be searched and filled. Again, far into the depths of her soul, the bottom seemed to fall away, and there was more and more, until she felt bigger and deeper than she would have ever hoped or thought possible. All of her was huge, but the being—and it was a being, vast and terrible, and of absolute authority—continued to fill her, until she felt there was nothing left of herself, except small remnants shoved tightly in the corners. So filled was she that she was afraid to inhale, lest she should burst.
Her sense of shame remained, and she knew herself as a sinner who had wreaked harm and havoc, but soon this sense was overlaid with a welling joy so that she wanted to abandon self and let the joy suffuse more than just her heart and soul and body. There was more to her than she ever could begin to know. She extended backward and forward into time and space and possibilities. And as she expanded with the presence of this Being of awful power, she fully desired that the vestiges of her past hopes and fears and sins, which clung like noxious little cockleburs, would release and drop away. And still, the filling and expanding continued, and she did not know if she was in pain or ecstasy as she felt herself growing ever larger, surfeited with this awful, agonizing joy, this horrible pleasure.
Holy Miracle lifted his hand away, and smiling with the light behind his eyes, he looked at her with infinite patience and gentleness. “Yes, girlie, the Lord God Almighty loves you sure, and thistles don’t grow in no Holy ground. I’ll be aleavin’ ye now, but ye got yer life to live. Ye tell yer sister old Holy Miracle Jones has found his last and best healin’.”
An
d with that, he turned, and made his way back up the long hill through the undulating grass, ripe with sun and time. He seemed to take on the qualities of the softest of winds, barely rippling the grasses as he passed. Still stunned, but aware that the power in his hands was leaving her, this earth, for good, Geneva let the tears roll down her face. She fell off the rock and onto her knees in the grass, and lifting her arms high, she called out, “Oh, my Almighty God! Take it all away! Deliver me of all my pride!”
After that, there was no more time or circumstances or hope or pain. There was just the overwhelming sense that the illusion of Self had been stripped away, so that she was free to be pure light and joy and laughter. The rosy light poured into her from the edge of the sky and across the golden grass, and the wind whispered the sweetest of secrets, the answers to the most closely shrouded mysteries. She felt the laughter rise to her lips, and she stood, letting herself be wrapped up in this joy as she watched Holy Miracle Jones crest the hill into that rollicking gold light, and Geneva’s love streamed after him.
Fifteen
Geneva perched on the toilet seat and leaned forward to examine the little strip of blue plastic pinched between her thumb and forefinger. Positive! Once again, she counted. Twelve weeks. She had barely dared to allow the thought to take root, even when she had missed her second period, even when she had been carried to the bathroom on waves of nausea every morning. She had simply not believed that she could have been reprieved from the awful certainty that she had drunk the vile liquid from Howard’s cup.
She squeezed her eyes against the image of his pained face, the lightless eyes staring at her with despair as she took it from him. How reluctantly he had surrendered it! It had been a test, and she had failed, proving herself shallow and selfish. And he had given her up in that moment, knowing that she would not stand firm, that she was capable of billowing and changing course with the slightest wind.
She had given up on herself, too, when he had told her that he could not love her, could not hold her to him and give her the life he thought she wanted. But that was before her wants changed, before God had told her He would never give up on her. He had shattered all the panes of her brittle self and had replaced them with pure, warm light.
And now, this! At first, she felt nothing, just a numb uncomprehending, then a small tendril of fear spooled upward along the path of her spine, curling and twining around her heart. It was quickly joined by a green vine of joy, which unfurled and grew and flowered, coupling with the first weed of fear until she did not know which was which. She only knew that something bloomed and grew, huge and terrifyingly beautiful. The feeling was too big to name; these things bursting into feathery spirals were too fine and delicate to articulate, to hold long enough to slip into a slot of meaning. But she did know that the pain she had been carrying with her all these weeks had lightened.
Thank you, Lord, she whispered, as the joy crowded out the fear, But what do I do now? She didn’t care. Howard’s child was sleeping in her womb. God had granted her something that she didn’t even know she had wanted. Against all hope and possibility, she was being offered another chance to love someone. Not Howard. He had made it clear that was not possible. But his child. Someone to give her whole self to, to delight in, a gift worthy of the Magi. She gave a little gasping chuckle and leaned her head against the wall, letting the wonder of it wash over her.
There was a knock at the door of the bathroom.
“Aunt Geba, I gotta pee!” came the small voice. “Let me in! I gotta pee now!”
She jumped up and pushed the blue strip of plastic underneath the tissues in the wastebasket, then opened the door to Phoebe’s earnest face. “Gotta pee, Aunt Geba.” The child clutched at her crotch and danced a little jig.
“Sure, honey, let me help you,” Geneva said, lifting the child onto the toilet. “You’re such a big girl, holding it like that. I’m proud of you!” Phoebe teetered on the seat, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and beaming at Geneva. “I know. I can always hold it now!” She reached for the toilet paper and tucked a wad of it between her legs, then hopped off the toilet. “I am a big girl! I can pull my own pants back up,” she said, struggling to do so.
The phone rang, and there was a simultaneous knock at the front door. Geneva heard Rachel talking to someone as she picked up her niece and stuck her small hands under running water, then handed her a towel. “Good job, sweetie! You got them nice and clean!” She carried Phoebe into the living room to see who had arrived, but it was empty. Outside, Rachel was setting the twins into their baby stroller. Hannah stood beside her sisters and poked soft toys at them.
“Hey,” said Geneva, opening the door.
“Hey,” answered Rachel, glancing up and smiling. “Who do you have there?”
“A little girl I found in the bathroom pee-peeing all by herself.”
“No!” shouted Phoebe, “A big girl!”
“Yes, you are!” agreed Geneva, kissing her. “A big girl, indeed. I won’t be able to carry you around much longer.” And she set the child down with a hug. Phoebe scampered over to her sisters. “Who was at the door?”
“Sally Beth. She just popped in to borrow Fairhope. Said she wanted to get in one last ride before the weather got bad. Can you believe it’s supposed to snow today? It’s so warm now.”
Geneva could hold her news no longer. “You got a minute?”
Rachel looked at her askance. “I’ve got days. What’s up?”
Geneva had not intended to sound so serious. She laughed. “Not much. Just something earth-shattering.” She lowered her voice. “I’m pregnant.”
Rachel’s eyes flew wide open and she slapped her hand to her chest and gasped. Then she grabbed Geneva and hugged her tightly. “When did you find out?”
“Just now. EPT.”
“Oh my!” breathed Rachel, looking at Geneva with something between delight and shock. Then she hugged her again. “Oh Lord have mercy!”
“I think this is a sign of His mercy. You don’t know what I did. I tried to get rid of this baby already, before I even know I was pregnant. But I guess I have been spared the consequences of what I did.” And Geneva sat down beside her sister and told her about the dark, deadly tea she had swallowed on that bitter morning. “But I still have that baby! Oh Rachel! It’s such a gift!”
They both sat silent for a long while, contemplating what this might mean. Finally Rachel spoke, “Honey, that’s great, but what will you do? And how come you haven’t figured this out already? You haven’t been with Howard for months.”
Geneva could not stop the giggle. “I know! I can’t believe it!” She rushed on breathlessly. “I was so out of it after the attack, I didn’t notice that I had missed a period, and then, ‘cause I just assumed I couldn’t be pregnant, when I missed the second one, I figured it was because so much had been going on, and then, I started thinking I had some sort of stomach bug that wouldn’t go away. It wasn’t until last week that I started getting suspicious, but I was scared I would jinx it if I thought about it too much…” She giggled again, and then tears sprang to her eyes. “Oh Rachel! This is just so amazing! What on earth am I going to do?”
Rachel caught her giggles. “I don’t know, girl! But you’d better do something soon! Three months gone already, so you don’t have a lot of time. Oh! By the way! That was Lenora on the phone. She wants to come see the babies again, and, of course Jimmy Lee is coming, as usual. Seems like she just can’t get enough of them, and I guess Jimmy Lee isn’t going to give up, at least not until he finds out about this!” She tapped Geneva’s belly. “I’m going to call her back and tell her to bring Howard with her this time instead of Jimmy Lee!” she laughed. “And bring a ring!” She clapped her hands with delight. “Oh, hot dog! We have to start planning a wedding! Geneva, you’re going to have everything you wanted!”
Geneva recoiled. “No! Don’t you dare!” She sobered and dropped her eyes. “Rachel, I won’t marry him. I can’t.”
; “What? Of course you will marry him! Once he finds out, he’ll sweep you up and take you straight to the church. I know he’s just looking for an excuse to get you back, and this will be the perfect opportunity.”
There was a time when Geneva would have joined Rachel in this fantasy, thinking furiously, planning, figuring out a way to make things turn out in the way she wanted, but today, she did not try to think or plan or maneuver. She simply allowed herself to be, to revel in the gratitude and peace she felt when she thought about this baby. She tried not to think of Howard; it hurt too much to switch the light of her memory onto the little cabin on the mountain and the bed of mint and the streaming stars. God had promised to direct her life, and there was no need for her to try to do it herself. She might not have Howard, but she would have his child forever. She smiled, even as the ache settled into her bones. Would she ever stop this ceaseless yearning for him? She hoped so, but she knew it would be a very, very long time.
“No. I won’t.” She had not thought about how Howard would react to the news about this miracle, but as the words came out of her mouth, they brought with them resolve. “Of course he would marry me, but I can’t do this to him—trap him, or at least make him feel trapped. He has made it clear he doesn’t love me, doesn’t even want to love me, and I can’t put him in that position. We’d be a classic hillbilly shotgun wedding couple, and he would spend the rest of his life resenting me and the baby. I can’t do that to him, to us. To this baby. What we had was perfect, and I won’t ruin it.”
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