Marilynne Robinson - Lila

That was the day she walked out with a pew Bible. They would have been so happy to give her one that she couldn’t bear the thought. They’d take it wrong. She wasn’t getting religion, she just wanted to know what he was talking about. For her own reasons. And someday, when she had decided to leave, she’d probably bring it back. It made her feel better to be interested in something. That much less time for the thoughts that worried her.

But she wanted him to know she wasn’t such a fool as he might have thought she was. Since he did seem to think about her. So she began tending that grave. There was writing on it. We wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief. Must be from the Bible. Let’s see if he thinks it was God who scraped the moss off the headstone and put the ivy there. Who cut back the yew shrubs so some light could get through. Who would make the roses bloom. And she had noticed that the garden behind his house was running to weeds, so she began tending that, too. Once, he found her working there — looking after her potato plants, though he didn’t seem to notice. Picking the beetles off and dropping them in a tin can. He said, “You have done so much. It looks wonderful. I would like to give you something for it.” He had his wallet in one hand, his hat in the other.

She said, “I owe you a kindness.”

“No,” he said. “No. You certainly don’t owe me anything.”

“I best decide that,” she said.

“Yes. Well, if there is ever — anything at all. That you need— If you ever want to talk again, I might do better this time.” He shrugged. “I can’t promise, but I’ll try.”

She said, “I ain’t making any promises,” and he laughed. Then she said, “I’m thinking about it. Thank you.” He was a beautiful old man. His brow was heavy, but his eyes were kind. Why should he care what she thought, whether she stayed or left, what became of her? She knew what she looked like, with her big hands and her rangy arms, and her face that had been burned a hundred times, more, and her scorched hair and her eyes the sun had faded. In St. Louis they had made a sort of game of it, trying to pretty her up. Everything looked wrong. Just pretend you’re pretty. Mainly she’d cleaned up around the place, helped the others with their clothes and their hair. When she tried to pretend, they’d laugh. He did have a way of looking at her, when he looked at her at all. She had to admit it. But if she let herself start thinking like that, he would begin to matter to her, and the times she had let that happen, those two or three times, nothing had come of it but trouble. She had a habit now of putting questions to him in her mind. What do you ever tell people in a sermon except that things that happen mean something? Some man dies somewhere a long time ago and that means something. People eat a bit of bread and that means something. Then why won’t you say how you know that? Do you just talk that way because you’re a preacher? This kind of thinking made a change in her loneliness, made it more tolerable for her. And she knew how dangerous that could be. She had told herself more than once not to call it loneliness, since it wasn’t any different from one year to the next, it was just how her body felt, like hungry or tired, except it was always there, always the same. Now and again she had distracted herself from it for a while. And it always came back and felt worse.

But she began to think about getting herself baptized. She thought there might be something about that water on her forehead that would cool her mind. She had to get through her life one way or another. No reason not to take any comfort the world seemed to offer her. If none of it made sense to her now, that might change if she let it. If none of it meant anything, after all, no harm done. Then he told her that they would be having a class, and she would be very welcome to join them. She was still making up her mind, just walking past the church because she thought she might be early or she had come the wrong evening, because she had walked past twice before and had not seen anyone going in. She never really knew the time, and she could lose track of the days. But then there was the preacher coming along the street toward her, so she just stood there where she was and waited. Nothing else to do. He had taken off his hat when he saw her, so he probably meant to speak to her. She had not thought what she might say to him, had not expected to speak to him at all, only to sit in the row farthest from him and listen and keep her questions to herself.

He said, “Good evening. I’m happy to see you here.”

And she said, “I figure I better get myself baptized. No one seen to it for me when I was a child.” Realizing as she heard herself say the words that after all her thinking she felt almost in the habit of speaking her mind to him. Didn’t she know better than to let herself think like that? Hadn’t she told herself a hundred times? This is what was bound to come of it. He didn’t even look quite the way he looked to her in her thoughts, and still she had spoken to him as if she knew him. That’s what came of living the way she did.

“Well,” he said. “Yes. We’ll take care of that. Certainly.”

Everything she said seemed to surprise him a little. No wonder, when it surprised her, too. She thought, How do I know what I’ll be saying with all them church people watching me? She said, “I can’t come tonight. I got to work.” And she turned and walked away, instantly embarrassed to realize how strange she must look, hurrying off for no real reason into the dark of the evening. The lonely dark, where she could only expect to go crazier, in that shack where she still lived because it was hard for her to be with people. It would be truer to say hid than lived, since about the only comfort she had in it was being by herself. If she didn’t go back now, before the full ache of shame set in, she knew she would never set foot in that church again. The best thing about church was that when she sat in the last pew there was no one looking at her. She could come a little late and leave a little early, when she wanted to. She could listen to the sermon and the singing. People might wonder why she was there, but they never asked. And it was just interesting to hear the old man talk about being born and dying and the rest of it, things most folks are pretty quiet about. Not much else was keeping her in that town. So she decided she would go back to the church and walk in the door the way she meant to do in the first place. But when she did walk in, he stood up, so she left, and those ladies followed her out into the street. They must have been talking about her. So what? They could have let her go if they’d wanted to. If she felt like a fool, so what? He stood up like he did before, and he smiled and said, “I’m glad you could be here, after all.” She said, “Thank you.” And after that it was easier. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. At least she was beginning to learn a little.

If she thought about the preacher so she wouldn’t think about other things, she could just as well be remembering the old times, when she had Doll. No point wondering about that cabin Doll took her from, or who it was that had kept her alive when she was newborn and helpless. She had picked up the Bible and read at the place it fell open, and she found this: In the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to cleanse thee … No eye pitied thee. And she fell to thinking that somebody had to have pitied her, or any child that lives. I passed by thee, and saw thee weltering in thy blood. Lila had seen children born. They were just as naked and strange as some bug you would dig up out of the ground. You would want to wash the child and wrap it up in something to hide it, out of pity. Hard as she tried, all she could remember were skirts brushing against her, hands not so rough as other hands. That might have been the one who made her live. What did it matter. In the evenings when it was too dim to read she wrapped herself in her blanket, huddled up in a corner so that her face and her feet were covered, and thought or dreamed, slept or lay awake. If Doll was her mother she wouldn’t have had to steal her, so Lila knew that much. What could matter any less than where she came from? Well, she thought, where I’m going might matter less. Or maybe why I’m here by myself in the dark wondering about it. She didn’t mind the dark or the crickets or even the scurry of mice, really, and it pleased her to think that the stars were there, just outside an open window. In the dark of the morning, in her nightdress, with her bar of soap, she walked down to bathe in the river. No one could see her. She could hardly see herself. She liked the smell of the soap. She felt the stones and the silt at her feet, but there was a good sting of cold in the water sliding over her skin. It made her take gasping breaths that left the taste of air in her throat. Doll used to say, “Now you’re just as clean as a body can be.”