Marilynne Robinson - Lila

She remembered how she felt that morning that she went walking by the jail, just to see if she could find out how Doll was doing, and there she was, bundled up in an Indian blanket, rocking in the chair the sheriff had set outside his office door for her, looking at the trees. The wind was taking the last few leaves. There was a little crowd of people watching her, since she was a curiosity, and a couple of men who were angry as could be to see her sitting there peaceful and at ease for all they could tell, though Doll never did give a stranger a sign that anything troubled her. The sheriff was standing on the step, talking with those men, already irritated with them.

One of them shouted, “You ought to be hanging her!”

“Doubt I can do that. She don’t weigh nothing.”

“Then shoot her.”

The sheriff laughed. “I guess I wasn’t brought up that way. To go shooting old women.”

“Well, I’d be more than happy to do it for you.”

The sheriff said, “Now, shooting a big fellow like you, I wouldn’t have a problem with that at all. And you’re about exactly the right size for hanging. Fine with me either way. You might want to keep that in mind.”

“This town is a disgrace to the whole damn country, that’s what it is! You’re a disgrace to that damn badge! I never heard of such a thing in my whole life! Setting a killer outside where she can rock and watch the world go by, like somebody’s dang grandma. If that don’t beat all. And this ain’t the only crime she ever done.” He glanced at Lila. “She stole our baby girl, just took off with her. It was out of pure spite that she done it. We been looking for the two of them all these years.”

The sheriff shrugged. “I wouldn’t know about that. She’s in enough trouble without adding to it. Just now she’s gaining strength for her trial. Judge’s orders. Gotta try her, you know. You’re getting ahead of yourself with all this talk about hanging.”

“The judge tell you not to lock her up?”

“The judge don’t give a damn.”

“Well,” he said, “this ain’t over. Not by a long shot.”

“Never said it was.”

From time to time one of the men would glance over at Lila, though Doll never looked at her, not even when Lila went up to her and put that molasses cookie on her lap. She just said, “I don’t know you,” and let the cookie lie there by her hand. So how those men would have known to watch her Lila had no idea. It might be she took after that family of hers she’d never heard of until a week ago. They looked at her as if they were asking which side she was on, and what was she supposed to do? They didn’t even bother to tell her their names or say hello. When they decided she wasn’t going to help them get their vengeance on Doll, maybe tell the sheriff that she’d been stolen by her as a child, they started looking at her with a kind of scorn, even laughing a little between themselves, like they couldn’t believe this was what all the fighting had been about. It’s just amazing how anybody at all can hurt your feelings if they want to. And she was wearing that dress she’d bought without even looking at it. It was tight across the shoulders. It had red pockets like hearts, with ruffles around them, and it was checked like a tablecloth. She kept her coat on, but still. Why you should have to stand there feeling ridiculous with a bloodstain still on your shoe, just at the time when other people are out to insult you, and not one part of it is your fault or your choice, that’s the kind of thing she didn’t understand. Because you do it to yourself. Why should she have cared for one minute what those people thought of her? Or cared that they never so much as spoke to her. She remembered a hot blush of something like anger, but more like damned old shame.

Then they came back, them and two others carrying a pine box, and set it down on the street right in front of where Doll was sitting. They took off the lid so the sheriff and all of them could see what was inside, that old man, bundled up in a sheet, just as pale as the moon. And one of them looked right at Lila when he said, “You see what she done to him. She bled him like a hog.” Doll just kept on rocking, looking at the trees. Lila did glance into the box, since everybody else did and she didn’t want to stand out. To keep her from drawing attention — that must have been why Doll acted like she’d never even seen her before, wouldn’t meet her eyes. Somebody might notice. A grudge can pass from one person to the next just because it hasn’t burned itself out yet. So you don’t want to stand too close to it. None of it needs to make any sense. And Lila did have that knife, and now she meant to keep it. The dead man’s lips were white as could be. So was the arch of his nose. It was a picture that stayed in her mind forever, no matter what, with the thought that he was her father, though that was more than she knew. With another thought, too, that maybe the grudge had meant more to Doll than the fact that he was Lila’s father, and she didn’t meet her eyes because she was ashamed to. Ah, well.

But there he was, in that box lying in the road, with those men sort of swaggering where they stood, shifting their weight, threatening by the way they kept their arms folded. The sheriff said, “He’s dead, all right. You got a point there. Now I believe he has a train to catch.” Doll’s head didn’t even reach the top of the chair, but there she was, proud in her captivity like some old Indian chief, and it was clear that the sheriff sort of took to her. He said, “When we set a date for the trial, you will be notified by mail.” So the men knew they might as well close up the box. They carried it away to ship it home, wherever that was, to let the old man rest among his kin, whoever they were. Doll glanced after them once, and then she closed her eyes.

When that woman at the house in St. Louis asked Lila what she would call herself, since none of them used their own names, she said, “Doll, I guess,” and the woman snorted, which is how she laughed. She said, “We already got a Doll. Had two of them till a couple months ago. The one ran off with some salesman. She’ll be back pretty soon. Think she’d have better sense. So you ain’t Doll. We don’t have no Rose just now. Put a little henna in your hair — Rose’ll do. Ruby. We’ll think of something.” Her knuckles were big, and her rings hung loose on the bones of her fingers. She was always turning them up the way they were supposed to be, and they wouldn’t stay because of the weight of the stones. Bright red, bright green, big as gumdrops. Lila and Mellie used to keep bits of broken glass they found in the road sometimes, and they called them jewels. Why was she thinking about any of this? She was so scared that day, in that parlor with the drapes closed at noon and that damn credenza with the vase of dusty feathers sitting on it. Looking like a coffin. There was a stirring under her heart, so she said to the child, “I won’t breathe a word to you about that place, but I guess you might know anyway. Because that fear has never left my body, has just hidden in it, waiting. You might feel it, down in your poor little bones. God bless ’em.”

She heard the Reverend at the door, and she went down to meet him. He was smiling up at her as if he still hadn’t gotten over the surprise of finding her, his wife, lowering herself down the stairs, with her hand on her belly so he would know she was being careful for the child’s sake. And then his arms around her and his cheek against her hair. “So,” he said, “how are you two?”

“Fine, I guess. We pretty much wasted the morning, daydreaming. I keep trying to read the Bible, but my mind goes wandering off. You wouldn’t want to know where. The things I find myself thinking about, with the Bible right there in my lap.”