Marilynne Robinson - Lila

Clean and acceptable. It would be something to know what that felt like, even for an hour or two.

Well, she might start going to church again. Then she would feel better about taking her beans and her potatoes, and besides, she had let the weeds get out of hand. It’s best to weed after a good rain. The next day was a Monday, and she could always find somebody who wanted help with the wash. And she’d be done by evening, so she could stop by the preacher’s and do a little gardening, and have a nice supper afterward. If he walked out along her road, he’d see she was all right.

She read over the page she had been copying from. There were the same words over and over— He saw that it was good, And the evening and the morning. So she turned to the page she had dog-eared, and found the beginning of that book, the Book of Ezekiel. Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. She wrote it ten times. Her bedroll had been hanging from a nail, so it wasn’t really damp, and she had that sweater for a pillow. People start work early on wash day. She’d be awake in the dark as she always was. She’d practice her writing at dawn and be in Gilead while it was still barely morning.

* * *

She had bathed and waked the second time as she warmed herself in her blanket, thinking about things, and when there was light enough she took her tablet into her lap and opened her Bible beside her on the floor. She wrote, And I looked, and, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, a great cloud, with a fire infolding itself, and a brightness round about it, and out of the midst thereof as it were glowing metal, out of the midst of the fire. Well, that could have been a prairie fire in a drought year. She had never seen one, but she had heard stories. And out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had the likeness of a man. And every one had four faces, and every one of them had four wings. Well, she didn’t know what to make of that. A dream somebody had, and he wrote it down, and it ended up in this book. She copied it ten times, still trying to make her letters smaller and neater. Lila Dahl, Lila Dahl, Lila Dahl. She had four letters in each of her names, and he had four letters in each of his. She had a silent h in her last name, and he had one in his first. There were graves in Gilead with his name written out on them, and there was no one anywhere alive or dead with her name, since the first one belonged to the sister she never saw of a woman she barely remembered and the second one was just a mistake. Her name had the likeness of a name. She had the likeness of a woman, with hands but no face at all, since she never let herself see it. She had the likeness of a life, because she was all alone in it. She lived in the likeness of a house, with walls and a roof and a door that kept nothing in and nothing out. And when Doll took her up and swept her away, she had felt a likeness of wings. She thought, Strange as all this is, there might be something to it.

Doll was gone those four days, she told Lila finally, to see how the folks at the old place were getting on. The times were so hard by then that she was having trouble keeping the child fed and keeping clothes on her back, and she had the thought that things might be better where her people were, farther east. She’d expected some of the worst of them might have died off. She said, “Somebody shoulda shot that Hank long since.” Who was Hank? “Never you mind.” Doll had to be careful, so she asked around the neighborhood — that took a while, since folks don’t like to talk to outsiders — and she walked past the old place a few times to see for herself. She said, “It seemed about the same. Nothing you could go back to.” Lila said, “If things’d been better, would you a gone back there, too?” And Doll said, “I couldn’t. They know I taken you in the first place, so if I come back with you there’d be hell to pay.” Doll told her this because Lila wasn’t the same to her after what happened while she was gone. She said, “I done it because I wasn’t finding no way to look after you.” If Doane had ever bothered to explain, he’d have said the same thing. They were just figuring out where to leave her. For her own good. Where to tell her, stay, and wait, and somebody will come along. So after that she couldn’t love Doll like she did all those years. For a while she couldn’t. She’d never thought she might be sitting on that stoop again, at night probably, watching Doll sneak off into the woods. One way or another, it comes out the same. Can’t trust nobody.

They found Doane and the others again. It was evening, after supper, and there was a fat, soft, embery fire in the middle of the clearing. Doll picked up the skillet and tossed it into the fire. Flame roared up and embers flew. “How could you do that!” she said. “Leave my child sitting on the steps of some church! I might never a found her! I told you I was coming back!” She was yelling at Doane mainly, but there was no one there she didn’t glare at. Only Mellie glared back.

Doane said, “You was gone a while. We sorta gave up on you.”

“Now, why would you do that! I keep my word! Has there ever been a time I didn’t, in all the years?”

Doane said, “Well, Doll, you can hold your grudge or you can come along. If you’re going to be around, I don’t want to hear another word about this. None of it.”

Marcelle said, “We kept your stuff.”

“I just bet you did!” Doll said, and Doane gave her a look.

He said, “We thought about dropping it in the fire. But Marcelle wouldn’t stand for it. It mighta been the best thing.” He walked over and picked up Lila’s bedroll. That shawl was wrapped around it. He pulled it loose, and he smiled, and he went over and sort of dangled it over the fire, and the flames climbed right up it toward his hand. So that was gone. They stayed with Doane’s people, Doll having no better idea what to do. They never said another word about what had happened. It was just like before, and everything was different. You best keep to yourself, except you never can.

* * *

Mrs. Graham wanted help with her wash. She was a cheerful woman. Friendly. She enjoyed talking. She never seemed to notice that Lila didn’t enjoy talking, or listening, and that was all right. They’d worked together times enough that Lila knew how she wanted things done, and that seemed to make the day go faster. Mrs. Graham made them a nice lunch of tuna-fish sandwiches with chocolate cake for dessert. She had a nice house. There were white curtains in the kitchen with strawberries along the hem. Little green stitches to look like seeds. The washing machine was on the back porch. It was a good machine, electric, you didn’t even have to crank the wringer. Lila didn’t let herself look into the parlor, at the piano and the sofa and the rest, which reminded her a little of St. Louis except that none of it was so big and fine, and the drapes were open.

At the end of the day she had a five-dollar bill and a waterproof coat with a hood. Lila said, “The Reverend told you to give me this,” and Mrs. Graham said, “Well, he worries about you, dear. He’s a good-hearted man. And it was just hanging in the closet, no use to anybody.” She smiled shyly, kindly. Lila didn’t ask whose closet it had been hanging in, how many women in the church or in Gilead had been asked if they could spare a coat before this one turned up, or how there could be no one else but her who could use it. Maybe no one was as broke as she was, but there were some people who must come pretty close. He should be worrying about them, too. Well, all right, she thought, so all I got to do now is save up for that bus ticket, save up a little traveling money. I can’t wait to get out of this town. She folded the coat and put it into her carpetbag, the five-dollar bill in a pocket, and then she walked up to the cemetery. The roses on the grave were blooming, and the weeds were, too. She said, “Well, I’m sorry, Mrs. Ames. I been staying away too long. I never meant to let this happen.” She loved them. The likeness of a woman, and in her arms the likeness of a child.