Marilynne Robinson - Lila

She thought, An unborn child lives the life of a woman it might never know, hearing her laugh or cry, feeling the scare that makes her catch her breath, tighten her belly. For months its whole life would be all dreams and no waking. The steps in the road, the thought of the knife, then the dread sinks away for a while, and how is a child to know why? She could only guess what all it was that Doll was afraid of, or ashamed of, but she lived her fear and her shame with her, taking off through the woods with an apple thumping in her lunch bucket and Doll wearing a big straw hat she must have hoped would shade her face enough to hide it a little. More than once Doll took her hand to hurry her along and wouldn’t let her catch her breath and never told her why. She always stayed back from the firelight even when the night was cold and even when there were no strangers there to see. Doane and the others saw, of course, but Lila was the only one she ever really trusted to look into her face. Well, child, Lila thought, I will see you weltering in your blood. And mine. Lonely, frightened, my own child. If the wildness doesn’t carry us both away. And if it does.

She looked after the gardens. She walked up to the cemetery to see to Mrs. Ames and the child, and now the boy John Ames and his sisters. No need to go out looking for ironing to do, the Reverend told her. There was a woman who had taken in his laundry for years, so there was no need for Lila to do that kind of thing at all. She should take care of herself. That was the best thing she could do. Everything would be seen to.

She had that room he called her study. The Bible was there, and her tablet, and a drawer of new pencils and erasers and pens and tablets. There were books with pictures of other countries in them, China, France, some of them from the library. Most evenings the Reverend walked with her after supper, her arm in his, pausing to speak to everyone he knew, however slightly, to say, This is my wife Lila. Every courtesy owed to him was owed to her also, now that she was his wife, and he wanted to be sure they, and she, understood this. When anyone spoke to her, she nodded and said nothing. Whoever it was always changed the subject to the weather, the corn crop. If they walked out past the edge of town he would put his arm around her waist, still shy of her and pleased to be alone with her, knowing she was relieved to be alone with him. She knew he was thinking and praying about how to make her feel at home. She had never been at home in all the years of her life. She wouldn’t know how to begin. But the shade of the cottonwoods and the shimmer of their leaves and the trill of the cicadas were comfort for her. The pasture smell. Elderberries grew in the ditches by the road, and they picked them and ate them as they walked. Sometimes it was dark when they turned back toward Gilead. Once, he noticed a bush glimmering with fireflies. He stepped into the ditch and touched it, and fireflies rose out of it in a cloud of light.

When he was in the house she kept the door to her room open. She sat at the table and did her copying and paged through the books he had given her, since she knew he might look in from the hall. And over the head of the living creature there was the likeness of a firmament, like the terrible crystal to look upon, stretched forth over their heads above … And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings like the noise of great waters, like the voice of the Almighty, a noise of tumult like the noise of a host: when they stood, they let down their wings. She shut the door and locked it when the Reverend left the house, and then she sat in the corner on the floor and hugged her knees to her chest and closed her eyes and thought.

There were other people on the road Doane knew, who would share the fire and add whatever they could to supper and talk with him about where work was needed and where there had been flood or hail or grasshoppers or foreclosure. They would scratch out maps on the ground — the bridge is out here so you’d best take this road south of it — and they’d tell stories about the farms they’d worked, stinginess or meanness or stupidity they’d seen or heard about, and who was fair or more than fair. This was after the dust began to blow to the south and west, and the people who would have been working those farms began to drift into the parts Doane knew, and Doane’s people were obliged to wander a little to find work. Doane said those folks would work for just about nothing. How was a man supposed to make a living? And finally he said, Hell, if they’re so set on Nebraska they can have it, and Kansas to boot. He was going back to Iowa and east from there. He was tired of eating sand anyway.

Even before the worst of the dusters there was grit drifting around everywhere. They slept with damp cloths over their faces, and when they woke up they had to shake sand out of their hair and their blankets and clothes. People who lived in houses said they had begun stuffing wet rags into every crack they could find and sweeping their floors five times a day. But there was no living outside when the dust began drifting north. Doane had waited a little too long for things to get better, so when they started east there were other people on the road who had the same idea, and others ahead of them, already taking any kind of work there was. Doane said he had seen hard times, but this just did beat all. Arthur said they should have started east sooner, as if the thought had just come to him, and Doane said he didn’t want to hear it. What use was there in saying something like that. A couple of good rains and they’d have been right where they’d have wanted to be. And don’t say nothing if you got nothing useful to say.

It wasn’t like Doane to speak to Arthur that way, or it hadn’t been up till then. But Doane had never before had much trouble keeping everybody fed, and it weighed on him. Things got worse, and pretty soon he was cross as a snake. Arthur and his boys took off, thinking they could do better on their own. It would have been hard for them to do worse, and at least they wouldn’t have Doane bossing them around when nobody ever said they were working for him anyway. But they were back with him in a few days. They got lonely and they were fighting all the time. Doane didn’t say a word to them about it, except that they were more than welcome to their share of nothing. That was when he began to sort of hate Marcelle. She’d gone out into a bottomy field where she knew there would be nettles, and somebody else had already gathered them all. Doane told her she was ugly when she cried and he didn’t want to look at her. That was when Doll went off on her own and was gone for four days.

Doane and Arthur got work clearing some young trees and brush off a field that had been abandoned and was going to be turned to pasture. They all helped, limbing the trees and stacking and burning the brush, and they were paid in potatoes and dried beans, which is how things were then. So when Doll came back there was a fire and supper, people fed and tired, and her child gone. They said they didn’t know the name of the place where they left her, some shabby little town down the road a few miles. She probably didn’t even wait long enough to let herself cuss. She just ran and walked and ran and walked down the road the way they would have come, through one shabby little town, so closed up for the night that no one answered the doors she pounded on, and then on to the next town. And there the child was, sitting on the church steps. Doll might not have seen her except that the church door was open and there was a light from inside because that preacher was watching out for her. Lila was so sure he had wanted to make an orphan of her that only years later did she think he might have been a kind man. An orphan is what she was, and she knew it then, and she thought that preacher must somehow know it, too, and be ready with the frightening word that would take her life away from her if only he chose to say it. And there was a voice above the firmament that was over their heads; when they stood, they let down their wings. She didn’t want to know what the verse meant, what the creatures were. She knew there were words so terrible you heard them with your whole body. Guilty. And there were voices to say them. She knew there were people you might almost trust who would hear them, too, and be amazed, and still not really hear them because they knew they were not the ones the words were spoken to.