Marilynne Robinson - Lila

So she meant to sit in the rocking chair by the window with Job open in her lap and see what she could make of it. She did wonder why dust fell so evenly, more like rain than like snow, since the wind pushed snow into drifts. Well, the air in a good house is so still. There was the clock ticking, steady as could be, and time passing, and no sign of anything else happening at all, but then in two days there would be the shadow of dust again, anywhere you happened to look for it. She wiped it away, the room was perfect for a little while, and then she fell to thinking. Rocking for the sound it made, and thinking.

The clock struck eleven. He always came home for lunch. If she met him at the door he put his arms around her. If there was rain on him he still might not even wait to take his coat off first before he kissed her forehead or her cheek, and she liked the coldness and the good smell. He never asked her how she had spent the morning, but she told him sometimes. Reading a little. Thinking about things. She felt good, and the baby was moving around more than ever, elbows and knees. The old man would look into her face for sadness or weariness, and she would turn her face away, since there was no telling what he might see in it, her thoughts being what they were. She’d been thinking that folks are their bodies. And bodies can’t be trusted at all. Her own body was so strong with working, for what that was worth. She’d known from her childhood there was no use being scared of pain. She was always telling the old man, women have babies, no reason I can’t do it. But they both knew things can go wrong. That’s how it is. Then there’d be poor old Boughton again, if he could even make it up the stairs this time, and there’d be Jesus, still keeping His thoughts to Himself. And she’d be thinking, Here’s my body, dying on me, when I almost promised him I wouldn’t let it happen. It might make her believe she was something besides her body, but what was the good of that when she’d be gone anyway and there’d be nothing in the world that could comfort him. She guessed she really was married to him, the way she hated the thought of him grieving for her. It might even make him give up praying. Then he’d hardly be himself anymore.

Well. There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and turned away from evil. All right. And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters. But she kept thinking, What happens when somebody isn’t herself anymore? I seem to be getting used to things I never even knew about just a few months ago. Not wondering what in the world I’m going to do next, for one thing. Maybe it’ll be something the old man liked about me that will be gone sometime, and I won’t even know what it was. She found herself thinking she might stay around anyway. She thought she’d always like the feel of him, she’d probably always like to creep into bed beside him. He didn’t seemed to mind it.

That boy, never meaning to kill his father, looking at his hands, almost wishing he could be rid of them. Rid of himself. She’d felt that way, too, plenty of times. That night or morning when she was trying to clean away all the blood, and Doll, who probably wasn’t in her right mind, saying, “He wasn’t your pa. I’m pretty sure. Maybe a cousin or something. An uncle, maybe.” And here was his blood all over Lila’s hands and her clothes, some in her hair. She had brushed a strand away from her eyes, and it fell back, wet and heavy. So much blood she knew he was dead, whoever he was. So, whoever he was, he took it with him. It died in his body. Doll said, “A grudge was all it come down to. They should’ve let me be. After all these years.”

Lila said, “What was his name?”

“Which one? There’s just so damn many of ’em.” And she gave Lila a look, puzzled and scared and tired of it all. Rolling her eyes, too old and spent to lift her head, still trying to settle on any sort of plan, what to do next.

The name of the man she was fighting with.

“You expect me to know? There must be a dozen of ’em. One meaner than the next.” She said, “I’m the only ma you ever had. You could’ve just died entirely, for all they was doing for you.”

Lila knew. She remembered. But what was their name?

“There was that one — I cut his hamstring. Years ago. I thought that might put an end to all the trouble he was causing me. But it give him a dreadful limp and his brothers got all riled up about it, so I just had more to worry me. His cousins. They thought they could catch me easy enough, a scar-faced woman with a child in hand.” She laughed. “I guess it weren’t so easy after all.”

The folks at that cabin?

“Don’t matter. They wasn’t your folks. You was just boarded out there.” She said, “Your pa got the idea he should take you back from me, after he’d left you behind like that. Then the whole bunch of ’em was looking for me, whenever any of ’em could spare a little time. Where was they when you was just scrawny and naked? Folks like a grudge. That’s all it comes to.”

Lila said she wouldn’t mind knowing a name, though.

“What? You going to go looking for ’em?”

No. No point in it.

“That’s the truth. I think they pretty well forgot about you anyway. Me laming that fellow was what mattered to ’em. Because he was so young, I suppose. Well, they shouldn’ta sent him after me. It was just the revenge they was after. This last one never asked me where you was. Not that I give him much chance.”

So he might have been her pa.

“He wasn’t your pa. He didn’t look like him, far as I could tell. It’d been a while. It was pretty dark.” So Lila had that blood all over her, and it was the first time she had heard a word about her father. And here was Doll, probably dying. For months Lila had had a decent room and a job clerking in a store, and she’d been thinking just that day how good it was of Doll to make sure she could read and figure. Now all that was done with. The more she tried to wash the blood away, the more of it there was. Blood had soaked into the rug and stained the floor. She wished everything was done with, every damn thing. That she could be rid of herself. Somebody was going to find her like this. But there was Doll to see to. She’d ripped her other dress into rags before she even thought how fouled the one she was wearing was. Oh, what to do next. How to live through the next damned hour. That has to be the worst feeling there is. She hated the way she could stand just anything. It was her body going on. Her body, her hands remembering how Doll used to comfort her.

She shouldn’t be thinking about any of this. Here I go, scaring the child. She said, “Your papa’s going to be coming home pretty soon. He just loves you so much.” When she hugged her belly the child might feel her holding it in her arms. It might feel safe. She said, “Now, you going to go kicking that book off my lap? What’s your papa going to say about that?” She had a child now, this morning, whatever happened. She had a husband. Maybe loneliness was something she’d get over, sooner or later, if things went well enough. That night on the stoop was the first time Doll ever took her up in her arms, and she still remembered how good it felt. Those shy little presents, made of nothing. The rag baby. That shawl she could have used to keep herself warm at night, but she put it over Lila when she came in and only took it away again just before she went out the door in the dark of the morning. Maybe she never would have been so fierce if she hadn’t been set on keeping the child she’d stolen. She could probably feel the life coming into the child, sleeping in her arms day and night. And the child could feel it, too. Now motherhood was forcing itself into Lila’s breasts. They ached with it.