Lila

by Marilynne Robinson

  Always the same thoughts. The Reverend was still in his study, but she believed there might be comfort for her in lying down in his bed, and there was. She took his pillow and gave him the other one, and that felt better. When he came in he must have thought she was asleep, because he whispered, Bless your heart. He lay down with his arm across her waist, and she touched his hand to her lips. If he took it for a kiss, that was his business. He settled closer against her, and that felt very nice.

  * * *

  It was October when the child began stirring. Lila had pinched off some sprigs of ivy and put them in water glasses to sprout roots, and when they did she had taken them up to the cemetery for the boy John Ames and his sisters. She was clearing away leaves from them when she felt the child move. She said, “Well, child! I been waiting on you.” The sun was brightly mild. There was the crisp sound of maple leaves just ripe enough to fall, and leathery oak leaves that would cling until a wind took them, and the smell from the fields of all the life that had burned through all those crops until it spent itself down like a fire. It was almost the smell of smoke. She said, “This town’s called Gilead, child. That’s a Bible name. We going to stay here till you’re born. I figure we’re safe here. We’ll see what happens.” She said, “I’m going to be a little bit more careful about what I say, that’s one thing.” The old man would have liked to be told that she felt the child moving, but she wouldn’t tell him yet. It lived in her and knew her, and if her thoughts were dread or regret or anger or anything that stirred her heart, it knew her thoughts.

  She had forgotten how it felt not to be by herself, as she was still, till that very moment, no matter what the old man said or did. Kind as he was. She put her hand on her belly and she said, “You got a pa who is a preacher. His brother and sisters are here, and his mother and father, and his wife and her baby. The whole family lying here together. We come up now and then to see to them because who else do we have? Just Doll, and I don’t know where to look for her. I might figure it out sometime. I’m going to get me some crocus bulbs. There’s folks who bring in the best corn crop you could imagine, but they’re just useless when it comes to a flower garden. You can see that, looking around up here. Irises would be nice, too.” Three women came up the path. Lila said, “I spose they’ll think I’m talking to myself.” She nodded to them, and then she walked down the hill and through the quiet evening streets to the preacher’s house. Gilead was the kind of town where dogs slept in the road for the sun and the warmth that lingered after the sun was gone, and the few cars that there were had to stop and honk until the dogs decided to get up and let them pass by. They’d go limping off to the side, lamed by the comfort they’d had to give up, and then they’d settle down again right where they were before. It really wasn’t much of a town. You could hear the cornfields rustling almost anywhere in it, they were so close and it was so quiet. She said, “You’ll like it here well enough, child. For a while.”

  The old man came out on the front porch and smiled at her with his head to one side, the way he did when there was something he wasn’t going to ask her, so she said, “We been up to the graveyard, looking after things a little.” She said we and he didn’t ask about it, so she said, “Me and the child. Seems like there’s two of us, now it’s moving around a little.”

  “Two of you,” he said. “That makes three of us, I believe. The three of us should probably have our supper.” And he held the door for her.

  * * *

  Doll would have loved that kitchen. It was all painted white, and the curtains were white. Sunlight came in in the morning. Lila polished it every day, the way Doll did that kitchen in Tammany. It was strange, but if Lila pretended she was just there to do the cleaning it made things easier. She knew how to do it, and she could stop thinking about what else might be expected of her. Like cooking. She took cuttings from some red geraniums she saw at the cemetery. “The frost going to kill them anyway. No reason they should go to waste. You never want to waste things,” she told the child. She put them in glasses on the windowsill to root, and they looked so beautiful that she brought her Bible and her tablet downstairs so she could work at the kitchen table.

  The old man was always making them toasted cheese sandwiches and canned soup, and then worrying over whether she was eating what she ought to. Ladies from the church brought in supper from time to time, so he probably mentioned his worries. Somebody had left a cookbook on the counter, most likely Mrs. Graham, since she was the one who was a close enough friend to Lila to help out in ways that might offend her if someone else tried them. Well, she knew she wasn’t really Lila’s friend, but somebody did have to help her sometimes, and Mrs. Graham took it on herself, which was kind. Just as well not to chew your fingernails, dear. This is what they call an emery board, it’s really just a piece of sandpaper. It’ll keep your nails from snagging on things.

  Well, who thought of that? And little tiny scissors. One of the girls in St. Louis had trimmed her nails and painted them, what there was of them, while another put her hair up in rags to curl it. They plucked her eyebrows almost down to nothing, and then drew them back in with a pencil. They got the idea to pierce her ears with a darning needle right then, when they were thinking about it. Laughing the whole time. They put powder on her face to try to hide the freckles, and purple lipstick, and pink rouge. She just sat there and let them do whatever they liked because she was so young and such a fool. And because they were playing the Victrola. They enjoyed the Victrola. Best forget all that.

  It was strange to wonder what she had really forgotten. Never you mind. Doll must have said that to her hundreds of times, and all it did was make her wonder and remember and keep it to herself. Where did you go that time you left me? How long did it take you to get there? Never you mind. Lila would have asked who was there at that house, still there after so many years. Her mother? Was she born there? Were there other children born after her? But she knew what Doll would say. Lila knew how desperate she must have been even to think of taking her back there. Maybe she’d begun to doubt that she was right to carry her off in the first place, since she was having such trouble finding any way to live. So it was best to forget all that, too. Not to wonder. Why should she wonder? When she felt the baby stir she remembered sleeping on Doll’s lap, restless in her arms with the warmth and damp, and dreaming.

  The old man had said, “Why Ezekiel? That’s a pretty sad book, I think. I mean, there’s a lot of sadness in it. It’s a difficult place to begin.”

  She said, “It’s interesting. It talks about why things happen.” Well, the old man said, and cleared his throat. That was a special situation. God had a particular relationship with Israel, certain expectations. Moreover I will make thee a desolation and a reproach among the nations that are round about thee, in the sight of all that pass by. So it shall be a reproach and a taunt, an instruction and an astonishment, unto the nations that are round about thee, when I shall execute judgments on thee in anger and in wrath, and in wrathful rebukes. She copied the verses ten times. Her writing was getting smaller and neater. Lila Ames. The old man worried over her reading in the Bible just at that place. So she told him she had looked at Jeremiah and Lamentations and thought she probably liked Ezekiel better. He nodded. “Also very difficult.” Then he told her that it is always important to understand that God loved Israel, the people in these books. He punished them when they were unfaithful because their faithfulness was important to the whole history of the world. Everything depended on it, he said.

  All right. She was mainly just interested in reading that the people were a desolation and a reproach. She knew what those words meant without asking. In the sight of all that pass by. She hated those people, the ones that look at you as if they want to say, Why don’t you get your raggedy self out of my sight. Ain’t one thing going right for you. Existence don’t want you. Doll couldn’t hide her poor face anymore, the way she did when they were all together and Doane did their talking for them. People would try t
o figure out that mark. A wound, maybe a scar? It was an astonishment to them. They would stare at it before they realized what they were doing, and Doll would just stand there waiting till they were done, till they looked past her and spoke past her. And then she would try to sell them what little she had in the way of strength. Or they could just swap something for it, if that was easier. In those days it seemed to Lila that they were nothing at all, the two of them, but here they were, right here in the Bible. Don’t matter if it’s sad. At least Ezekiel knows what certain things feel like. That voice above the firmament. He knows the sound of it. There is no speech nor language. But it was asking a hard question all the same, something to do with the trouble it was for them to hold up their heads, and where the strength came from that made them do it no matter what.

  The old man said to her one evening that he would like to know a little bit about the woman who looked after her. He’d been telling her stories about his family. His grandfather used to talk to Jesus in the parlor, and they all had to be very quiet until they heard him at the front door saying, “Lord, I do truly thank You for Your time!” He was trying to get her to talk to him a little more, probably wanting company. He said, “My grandfather was a pretty wild old fellow. He shot a man. One that I know of. Then he was in the war, so there might have been others. He enlisted as a chaplain, but he had a gun, and he took it along with him.” People do want company, in the evening.

  So she said, “The woman who took care of me, she called herself Doll. You know, like something a child would play with. I never knew no other name for her. A teacher gave me Dahl for a last name, but that was just a mistake. Doll used a knife on somebody, cut him. I believe she regretted it on account of the trouble it caused her. She was sort of looking over her shoulder all the time I knew her. It wasn’t so much the law that caught her. She ended up having to do it again, cut somebody. Nothing else to say. She was good to me.” That was more than she meant to tell him. “She give me that knife I had out at the shack.” Why did she say that? “I wouldn’t mind having it back.” That was just the truth. It was a pretty good knife.

  “Well, yes,” he said. “Everything you had out at the cabin is in a couple of boxes in the attic. I’m sorry I forgot to tell you that. I’ll bring them down for you.”

  “Just the knife is the only thing I been missing.” She said, “Since I’ve got that Bible.” She didn’t mind if he remembered who she was for a minute, but she didn’t want to scare him too much, either. He did look a little concerned.

  “Yes,” he said, “Ezekiel. Are you planning to copy that whole book?”

  “Only the parts I like.”

  He nodded. “Sometime I’d like to know which parts you like.” He said, “I don’t want to intrude, of course. It would be interesting to me. From the point of view of interpretation. I’d like to know your thoughts.”

  She said, “I’m still thinking. Maybe I’ll tell you when I’m done.”

  He laughed. “I’ll look forward to it. But you might never get done, you know. Thinking is endless.”

  “It’s true I been taking my time about it.”

  “There’s no hurry. Boughton and I have been worrying the same old thoughts our whole lives, more or less. There’s been a lot of pleasure in it, too.”

  “Well, I been trying to work something out. Trying to make up my mind about something. So I’m going to want to finish with it.”

  After a minute he said, “I’m trying not to ask what it is. You have every right to keep your thoughts to yourself. It’s clear enough that that’s what you want to do. So I’m not going to ask.” He laughed. “This is a real test of my character.”

  She shrugged. “It’s just old Doll. That’s what it comes down to.”

  “I see.”

  She said, “You know that part where it says, ‘I saw you weltering in your blood’? Who is that talking?”

  “It’s the Lord. It’s God. And the baby is Israel. Well, Jerusalem. It’s figurative, of course. Ezekiel is full of poetry. Even more than the rest of the Bible. Poetry and parables and visions.”

  She knew he’d been wanting to help her with Ezekiel, so much that it made him downright restless. He’d been reading it over, just waiting for this chance to tell her it was poetry. Hardly a man is now alive who remembers that famous day and year. That was practically the only poem she’d ever heard of, so she didn’t really know what to make of the help he wanted to give her. The rude bridge that spanned the flood. “Well, it’s true what he says there. It’s something I know about.”

  “Yes. You’re absolutely right. I didn’t mean that it wasn’t true in a deeper sense. Or that it wasn’t describing something real. I didn’t mean that.” He shook his head and laughed. “Oh, Lila, please tell me more.”

  She looked at him. “You ask me to talk. Now you’re laughing at me.”

  “I’m not! I promise!” He took her hand in both his hands. “I know you have things to tell me, maybe hundreds of things, that I would never have known. Things I would never have understood. Maybe you don’t realize how important it is to me—not to be—well, a fool, I suppose. I’ve struggled with that my whole life. I know it’s what I am and what I will be, but when I see some way to understand—”

  “Is that why you married me?”

  He laughed. “That might have been part of it. Would that bother you?”

  “Well, I just don’t know what I’d have to tell you.”

  “Neither do I. Everything you tell me surprises me. It’s always interesting.”

  “Like that I been missing that knife?”

  “I’ll find it for you. First thing tomorrow.”

  “That was Doll’s knife.”

  He nodded, and he laughed. “Sentimental value.”

  She said, “I spose so.”

  “Well,” he said, “before I give it back to you, promise me one thing. Promise me you know I would never laugh at you.”

  She said, “You laughing at me now.”

  “Only in a certain sense.”

  “‘A certain sense,’ now what’s that sposed to mean? The way you talk!”

  “I only meant—” He looked at her. “Lila Dahl, you’re deviling me!”

  She laughed. “Yes, I am.”

  “Just sitting there watching me struggle!”

  “I do enjoy it.”

  “Hmm. That’s good! Because you’ll see a lot of it.”

  They laughed.

  “But I did mean to ask you something,” she said. “There’s a baby cast out in a field, just thrown away. And it’s God that picks her up. But why would God let somebody throw her out like that in the first place?”

  “Oh. That’s difficult. You see, the story is a sort of parable. You know how in the Bible the Lord is spoken of as a shepherd, or the owner of a vineyard, or a father. Here He is just some kindly man who happens to pass by and find this child. In the parable He isn’t God in the sense of having all the power of God.”

  “But if God really has all that power, why does He let children get treated so bad? Because they are sometimes. That’s true.”

  “I know. I’ve seen it. I’ve wondered about it myself a thousand times. People are always asking me that question. Versions of it. I usually find something to say to them. But I want to do better by you, so you’ll have to give me a little more time. A few days. I don’t really know why I think that will help, but it might.” He touched her hand. “‘Because I love you more than I can say, If I could tell you, I would let you know.’ That’s poetry, but it’s also true. It is.”

  “That’s a nice poem.”

  “‘The winds must come from somewhere when they blow, There must be reasons why the leaves decay.’ It’s kind of sad, really.”

  “I was never one to mind that.”

  “Me either, I suppose.” He said, “In my tradition we don’t pray for the dead. But I pray for that woman all the time. Doll. And now I have a name for her. Not that it matters. Except to me.”

  �
�There was a girl named Mellie. She’s probly still alive. And Doane. I don’t know about him.”

  “I’ll remember them, too.”

  “But it’s Doll I mainly worry about.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” she said, “you keep on praying. It might ease my mind a little.”

  And he said, “Thank you, Lila. I’ll do that.”

  He sat beside her until the room was dark. She was wondering what he might want to say, and what she might say if she began talking. She was sitting there with her hands folded in the lap of her dress, the Sears dress with flowers on it. There was a little mirror on the wall across from them, bright blue with the evening sky, and there were lace curtains behind them, and the chill of the window, and beyond that trees and fields and the wind. To have a man sitting beside her still felt strange, one she liked and pretty well trusted, but a man just the same, in those plain dark man clothes he never gave a thought to and smelling a little of shaving lotion. There was warmth around him that she could feel though she didn’t touch him. His ring on her hand and his child in her belly. You never do know.

  She said, “Now, why would they want to salt a baby?”

  “Hmm? I looked that up in the Commentary. It said they did it to make the baby’s flesh firm. Too much salt would make it too firm. That’s Calvin. The way he talks about it, they must still have been doing it in the sixteenth century. Four hundred years ago.”

  “I didn’t even know he was dead. Calvin. The way you and Boughton talk about him.”

  He laughed. “Well, maybe the old preachers need to reflect on that. But Calvin can be very useful. About salting babies and so on.”