Rebecca Coleman - Heaven Should Fall

“You’re going to be a good mother,” Leela said. “I can tell you’re a strong person. You’ve got the mama lion inside you. You haven’t seen her yet, but she’s there.”

Her praise warmed me. If she had been my own mother I would have rested my cheek against her arm as she worked beside me; but I knew she was Cade’s, not mine. “Hopefully nothing will happen to bring her out anytime soon,” I replied.

She laughed. “Oh, Jill,” she said, and her voice was rueful. “Peace never lasts long enough. That’s what’s true.”

Sometimes during the day Candy will have that TV on, showing those court programs where people air out their dirty business in front of a judge. I don’t like to hear that stuff. Some things other folks just aren’t meant to know. Why I would ever care who’s the father of that baby or whether someone’s husband had a lady friend on the side, I can’t even imagine. You tell me what you want me to think about your circumstances, and I’ll take you at your word. It’s none of my business to go guessing at what you’ve got under the carpet.

My mother and father, they taught me not to stick my nose in the affairs of others, and thanks to that I never felt as though it was a lie to let folks go on believing their presumptions about me or my family. Even my own children never knew I had a husband before Eddy. It seems like a different person’s life now, that for four long years I had a different name and lived in a different state, sleeping in a bed every night with a man who was not Eddy. Of course it was so long ago now it doesn’t matter one bit. Children assume so many things that it isn’t hard to make an old life go away. At one point in each child’s life, when they realize what’s possible, they’ll look you in the eye and ask, “Did you ever have a boyfriend besides Daddy?” And you shake your head no, and just like that it’s gone. None of them ever asks again.

I’d been so lonely, living in Maine. The house Harold promised me had turned out to be a trailer, with secondhand curtains that didn’t hang right. These days I wouldn’t care too much, but a new bride is picky about those things and she has a right to be. She’s making up a home. As it was, all the women my own age, there at our church, had babies already. When they met up it was for coffee and to let the babies play, so they never thought to include me. And then finally I was expecting, and for a while they included me some. I was embarrassed about my house, so I didn’t invite people over too much. That was a mistake, I suppose. It made me look inhospitable, but I didn’t realize that in time. I should have just bought some real curtains.

But then, before I got any chance to get to know anyone real well or fix the place up any better, the baby—my daughter Eve—was gone. After that I went back home to my mother and father, because I couldn’t take living among those women and their babies, nor with a man who thought we could replace Eve like buying a new dog. I couldn’t just come back to that trailer, pack up the baby things and get to work decorating as if a new rug and some wallpaper would ever cheer the place up. It was like that life had gone sour in the refrigerator, and there was no choice but to throw it out.

For years I hardly thought about all that. I’d cast it off, and it went away like it was supposed to. But then, once Candy got so concerned with her religion, started passing comments about true marriage and God’s plan for families, I felt the sour taste of my departure in my mouth again. I knew that if she really knew me—my own daughter—she would think I was a sinful person. I wanted to say to her, life isn’t so simple as all that. If ever there was someone who understands how hard it is some days to be a family, it’s the Lord. I kept quiet in spite of Candy’s ramblings, and I knew that in this life I’d poured all I had into the measure, and let the Lord fill up the rest of it with grace. That’s the main thing with her—she’ll spout off with her God-talk about rules and regulations and forget everything about the mercy. The whole blood-flow system she’s got all mapped out, with no heart at the center.

But even though I didn’t need for my children to know about my first husband, or about their lost sister, having lived inside that loneliness for so long made me anxious for my children to have better than that. Candy I wasn’t so concerned about, because she had that hardness in her that, for all its worrisome qualities, made me sure no man would break her. And as Cade came into his own, I stopped fretting over that for him, too. He had a big heart, but if he had a falling-out with a friend or got a snub from a girl, he knew how to close himself off against further hurts from that person. He wasn’t like me, where I’d keep bleeding out the feelings like a wound that just won’t clot. Neither Cade nor Candy was the type who would ever just pack their things and abandon a life, the way I had. But when I left Harold, I hadn’t done it because it was the easy thing. It was just the only way I knew to stop the pain.

Elias, though. I confess that when he was little, his father and I worried that he was a soft boy. He was a sulker, the kind to go off kicking the dust to sit under a tree all alone, licking his wounds. Mostly people didn’t try to fight with him, because he was big and if he did get a notion to fight back, he’d have that person flat on the ground in one strike. But he couldn’t shrug things off, and he never did those peacock-y things boys do to get girls’ attention. For a while we worried whether he liked girls at all. His father made some noise about that, and as much as I shushed him I admit I fretted over it myself.

And then, not too long before he graduated high school, he started bringing home Piper Larsen from down the road. She came from a funny family—her mother and father were archaeologists or something of that nature, and they’d go away for months at a time to dig up old pottery and bones. The house she lived in belonged to her aunt and uncle, who farmed that land, and I suppose her folks found it convenient as their home base in between trips to wherever they ran off to. Well, it’s hard for me to trust people like that, but I was just so pleased to see Eli interested in a girl at all. He always had some excuse for bringing her around—that she wanted to see our new baby chicks, say, or to try the rhubarb pie I’d made because she’d never had rhubarb, or wanted to stay for supper because it was leftover night at her place. It was cute to see him trying to court her that way, and she was a pretty thing, too, like a foal: all bones, big eyes. She had pale, pale hair. My mother had always told me to make a wish when I saw a white horse, and every time I saw Piper walk in that door with Eli, I felt like making a wish on her. I couldn’t have picked a better choice for him, either. She was smart, grounded, good-hearted. Even though her people were from away, her family didn’t seem so bad, just a little odd. I couldn’t help but picture where it all might lead. And I confess, too, that since I’d set aside my imaginings about that sweet daughter who would sit beside me quilting, I started inventing new ones for how I would teach Piper to make a piecrust, or listen to her tell me some things about the strange places she’d visited. I hoped she would like me.

One night we had her over for supper and she helped me fix up the biscuits and a salad. Oh, she had the nicest manners, that girl, and a good, open way about her for learning new things. I showed her how you peel strips down the cucumber, then slice it lengthwise and scoop out the seeds with a spoon before you slice it in smaller pieces, and then you get pretty little half-moon slices with no seeds to bother with. She acted like I’d taught her something really special. She had a manner of touching your shoulder or arm in this affectionate way, like family almost. I was so fond of that girl, I couldn’t hardly contain it.