Marilynne Robinson - Lila

She said, “I don’t know nothing about it.” Then she said, “I don’t understand theology. I don’t think I like it. Lots of folks live and die and never worry themselves about it.”

“Ah, of course!” He laughed. “You don’t like theology! I should have thought of that. Too many years alone, I suppose. Talking to Boughton. Or to myself. Preaching. I am a fool.”

“Well now, I didn’t say I won’t start to like it sometime.” She said this because she could hear sadness in his voice.

He laughed. “That’s kind of you. I suppose it’s a little late to ask, but what do you like?”

“I don’t know. Working.”

He nodded. “Work is a fine thing.” And he put his hands to his face. “Listen to me! Every word I say is just pure preacher! I could cite text!”

She said, “I expect you’d be used to it by now.”

* * *

That night, lying against the warmth of him, she said, “Maybe you don’t have to think about hell because probly nobody you know going to end up there.”

After a moment, he said, “I suppose there’s an element of truth in that.”

“Except me.”

“Lila,” he said, “I have to preach tomorrow. If you put more thoughts like this in my head, how am I supposed to get any sleep?” He drew her closer to him, stroked her cheek. “I’m going to keep you safe. And you’re going to keep me honest.” Maybe he couldn’t think she would go to hell, because he loved her. She thought, He’d have as good reason, or better, to love any one of the whole world of people who might have turned up on his doorstep. The thought of them made her wish it was morning, Doane and Mellie and the others. That long time when she had no notion of what time was. Lying down to sleep in the dew and darkness, being roused again in the dew and darkness, a fire for supper, a fire for breakfast, if Doane could get it started soon enough, a pot of beans, or ashy potatoes in their husks, and that bitter, urgent smell that comes in the wind, as if the world were scared to sleep and then sorry that the morning had to come. Waking up with her hair in tangles. They always said no whimpering, the grown-ups, and she would try to stop and then stop and sit there with Doll’s arm around her, the two of them eating from the same dish.

The next morning, before it was morning, she had gone to the river, and he had waked to an empty house. She put on her old dress, and she went to the river and washed herself in the water of death and loss and whatever else was not regeneration. But there was a child, she was almost sure of it, and what else could she expect, with that way she had of creeping into the old man’s bed when he never even asked her to. She had seen women bearing their children in a shed, at the side of a field, babies that the light of day shouldn’t have seen for a month or two but the women’s bodies just gave them up out of weariness. She and Mellie had found a woman like that once, alone in a cabin at a little distance from a huckleberry patch. They heard her crying, and Mellie said they’d better look in the door. Then Lila ran to find Doll, and when they came back Mellie was crying, too, because the woman had taken hold of her hands and wouldn’t let go of them. She said, “I was trying to help, now I guess I nearly got some busted fingers.” Doll talked to the woman so that she’d know there was someone there besides children, so she calmed a little and let Mellie go. Lila and Mellie drew some water from the well, and they gathered an armful of starwort and spread it on the grass to dry. Then they sat on the stoop and listened, because they couldn’t help it, and Doll talked to the woman, trying to comfort her. The woman knew the baby shouldn’t be coming yet. It was just a long, bloody struggle and at the end of it a little body to wash. Doll could be so gentle. They couldn’t help watching her. She swaddled it up in a flour sack. And then she walked the woman out to the porch and washed the blood and the sweat off her, and they couldn’t help watching that, either. The woman was so thin, except for the pouch of her belly. Her bare legs trembling. She kept saying, “My husband will be back soon. He went for help. He’ll be back.” But that’s the kind of lie people tell sometimes when they got only strangers to rely on. There’s shame in that, so people lie. They helped Doll clean up around the place as well as they could, and did the milking, and fed the chickens, and she and Mellie found some meal and cooked it, and told her the starwort would help if she burned a little of it, and they left her their huckleberries. That poor baby just lay there on a bench, waiting for its father to see it, the woman said. Walking along in the dark, looking for their camp, they didn’t say a word. Well, Doll did say, “That’s how it is.”

So what she had to do was stay in that house and let the old man look after her, and when the time came, the church women who would be so glad to put a living child into his arms. They could bring all the cakes and casseroles they wanted for as long as they wanted, and he would be happy to have something he could talk to her about. Lila thought of herself as old, nearly safe from childbearing. She might not have given in so easily, otherwise, to the comfort of him, the feeling of him next to her, so much better than resting her head on that old sweater she stole from him. No point in worrying about that now. There would probably be a child, and that would probably be a good thing. But only if she stayed. At least now she knew he would let her stay, however crazy she might be, or ignorant, or lost. If there was going to be a child. So she went back to his house and put on her new dress and waited for him on the porch.

* * *

The thought of a child made him older. He never slept much or well, but now he hardly seemed to sleep at all. She wore her ring and tried to stay near the house, but if it helped at all it just worried her to think how sad he would be if she did a wrong thing and upset him. The more she might seem like a wife to him, the more he would fear the loss of her. One morning she found him in the kitchen before the sun was up, looking stooped and rumpled, stirring oatmeal. She touched his shoulder in a way he took as a question, and he said, “I don’t know about myself, Lila. Such a night. I’m almost afraid to pray. I find myself praying now that I’d be able to accept”—he shook his head—“things I can’t bear to think about. It’s against my religion to say it would be too hard. But I’m afraid it would be.” He shook the oatmeal off the spoon into two bowls and set them on the table. “I cooked it too long. It’s pretty sticky. But it’s good for you. Here’s some milk.” He gave her a spoon and a napkin, sat down across from her, clasped his hands, and prayed briefly over his oatmeal. “And much the worst of it is that all the real hardship falls to you. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk this way.”

She said, “Women have babies. All the time. I figure I can.” To comfort him she could have said it might all turn out just fine, it usually did, but she was as much afraid as he was to think that way. She couldn’t tell him she had unbaptized herself for fear he thought it would harm the child. Why did she do it that morning? She could just as well have done it after the baby came. Then if something went wrong she wouldn’t have to wonder whether she was to blame for it. It was dread at the thought that made her ask him right then if once you been baptized you could ever just wash it off you, and he smiled and said no.

“Even if you wanted to?”

“Well, that’s probably about as close as you could ever come. But no. You don’t have to worry about that.” She was relieved, in a way.

She’d heard people say that a sad woman will have a sad child. A bitter woman will have an angry child. She used to think that if she could decide what it was she felt, as far back as she remembered, she could know that much, at least, about the woman who bore her. Loneliness. She pitied the woman for her loneliness. She didn’t want this child of hers to feel afraid with no real reason. The good house, the kind old man. I got us out of the rain, didn’t I? We’re warm, ain’t we? In that letter he had said there’s no such thing as safety. Existence can be fierce, she did know that. A storm can blow up out of a quiet day, wind that takes your life out of your hands, your soul out of your body. The fire went up and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning. And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning. She had copied this fifteen times. It reminded her of the wildness of things. In that quiet house she was afraid she might forget.