Marilynne Robinson - Gilead

“But when I had walked a few blocks I realized she was following along behind me. She came up beside me and she said, ‘I just wanted to tell you not to feel so bad.’

“And I said, ‘Now I will have to walk you back to your door.’

“And she laughed and said, ‘Of course you will.’

“So I did. And then the other woman came home, Lorraine, the one who shared her rooms. There was a dinner at their church, but Delia had made some excuse about not feeling well and having to stay home. I should have been long gone by then, but there we were, eating our pumpkin pie. What could have been more compromising?”

He laughed. “It was all so respectable. But word got to Tennessee somehow and her sister came to visit, with the clear intention of scaring me off. I’d come in the evenings with a book of poetry and we’d read to each other, while her sister sat there glaring at me. It was ridiculous. It was wonderful. But when the school year ended, her brothers came and took her back to Tennessee. She left a note for me with Lorraine, saying goodbye.

I knew her father couldn’t be hard to find, since he was a minister, so I went there, to Memphis, and I found his church, a very large African Methodist Episcopal church, and the next morning being Sunday, I went to hear him preach. Knowing Delia would be there, of course. And I hoped to speak to him. I thought it might recommend me to him, if I could manage to seem forthright and manly, you know. I got my shoes shined and my hair trimmed.

“The church was full and I sat near the back, but I was the only white man there, and people noticed me. Delia’s sister was in the choir, so of course she saw me. And I could tell her father suspected who I was, by the way he watched me. He preached about those who come among you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly they are ravening wolves. He also spoke about whited tombs, which inwardly are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Looking at me the whole time, of course. “But I still made myself speak to him at the door. I said, T only want to assure you that my friendship with your daughter has been entirely honorable.’ And he said, ‘If you were an honorable man, you would leave her alone.’

“I said, ‘Yes, I will do that. I came here to assure you of that.’ Which was a lie, of course. I did intend to stop seeing her, but it was an intention I had formed in his church that very morning. I thought that Delia’s standing with her family might be helped if I impressed him as a plausibly decent man, and my only chance of doing that was by going away. And I could see what a very good life she had. I’m not sure what my intentions had been in going there. Certainly I never thought I would leave without saying even one word to her. But I did. I left for St. Louis that same evening. I’m not sure he was impressed by my gallantry, but I do know it impressed Delia. Then the fall came, and I happened to be walking down her street, as I happened to do every week or so, and there she was. I tipped my hat and she burst into tears. And from that moment we have considered ourselves man and wife.

“Word got back to Tennessee and she was more or less disowned, and then she got pregnant and the school dismissed her. I was selling shoes at the time — there’s very little money in it, but you don’t get arrested for it, either. So her mother came a few weeks before the baby was due and found us in a state of something like destitution, living in a residential hotel in an unpleasant part of town. It was humiliating. But of course we couldn’t find respectable accommodations, and the hotel clerk where we got a room charged me a good deal extra for turning a blind eye, or words to that effect. He had a phrase for the law we were breaking—‘pernicious cohabitation? ‘lascivious cohabitation’? Lewd. For some reason I always forget that word. You can’t imagine how many ways they make things difficult.

“Then her father came and her brothers, and the five of us had an earnest talk about Delia’s well-being, which began with her father saying, ‘You should be very glad that I am a Christian man.’ He is an imposing figure. And he persuaded me that I should tell Delia to go home where she could be cared for. I did that, and she went away with them. Ah, the desolation!

The relief! I was so scared by the thought of that baby. I knew in my miserable heart that something would go wrong and I would be to blame for it. I tried to hide my relief from her, but she could see it, and she was hurt by it, I knew she was. I told her I would come to Memphis as soon as I had saved up the money. It took me weeks, because I had some debts and the fellows found me. I expected they would, and that was another reason I was glad to let her go, but of course I couldn’t explain that to her. Finally, I wrote to my father and told him I needed money — he hadn’t heard from me in a year at least — and he sent me three times as much as I asked for. And there was a note telling me that you were getting married.

“During those weeks there was a revival, a tent meeting, down by the river. I used to walk over there every night because there were crowds and noise and there wasn’t much alcohol. One night a man standing just beside me, as close to me as you are, went down as if he’d been shot. When he came up again, he threw his arms around me and said, ‘My burdens are gone from me! I have become as a little child!’ I thought, If I’d been standing two feet to the left, that might have been me. I’m joking, of course, more or less. But it’s a fact that if I could have traded places with him, my whole life would be different, in the sense that I might have been able to look Delia’s father in the eye, maybe even my father. That I would no longer be regarded as quite such a threat to the soul of my child. That man was standing there with sawdust in his beard, saying, ‘I was the worst of sinners!’ and he looked as if that might well be true. And there he was weeping with repentance and relief while I stood watching with my hands in my pockets, feeling nothing but anxiety and shame. And a certain amusement, if you will forgive me. But the next day my father’s letter came and I got a decent coat and a bus ticket and I was all right then.

“When I got to Memphis the baby had just been born the day before, and the house was full of aunts and women from the church, coming and going. They let me come in and sit in a corner. I don’t think anyone knew what to do with me till her father came home, so they just went on with their business. If the day had been warmer, I think I’d have been sitting on the stoop. One woman said to me, ‘They’re both just fine. They’re sleeping.’ And she brought me a newspaper, which was kind of her. It eased my embarrassment to have something to look at.

“When her father finally did come home, the room emptied and the house became completely still. I stood up, but be didn’t offer to shake hands. The first words he said to me were ‘I understand you are not a veteran.’ Ah. I told him some lie about my heart, and then I regretted it instantly, because I felt I had made myself sound feeble, but I needn’t have worried about that, because I could tell he didn’t believe a word. As I recall, Deuteronomy says cowardice forbids one from going to the army. ‘What man is there that is fearful and faint-hearted? Let him go and return unto his house, lest his brother’s heart melt as his heart.’ So I had scriptural warrant, though I chose not to mention it.

“He said, ‘I understand you are descended from John Ames, of Kansas.’ Of course anyone else would have put that right, but I thought there might be some advantage in letting him believe it — he was referring to your grandfather, of course. It was the first slightly positive thing he had ever said to me. He said he knew people whose families came north from Missouri before the war, and apparently they told some remarkable stories about him, about raids and ambushes. I told him I had heard stories about the old man while I was growing up, which is true. They were mainly stories about him running off with the laundry, but I didn’t tell him that. I remember my father said once when he was a boy the old man came to our church and sat in the back, and when the collection plate came to him he just emptied it into his hat.”