Night Bird Calling

by Cathy Gohlke

WHEN APRIL’S JONQUILS AND WILD VIOLETS gave way to May’s budding lilacs, we prepared for Granny Chree’s memorial service. The night before the service I cut bouquets of lilac buds from Aunt Hyacinth’s garden and brought them into the house to force their bloom into a heady perfume.

  Nearly half the town planned to meet beyond the church and walk up the mountain together. It would be a solemn farewell and a joyous celebration of Granny Chree’s life.

  I woke while it was still dark and heard the first whip-poor-will of spring call, Mama’s signal for comfort in the night, Aunt Hyacinth’s signal for joy, and mine for hope and new beginnings. It was fitting. It was a year since we’d laid Mama to rest.

  I slipped to the front porch and watched as dawn drew its rose-and-golden fingers through the sky. It would be a beautiful day, a glorious day, just the day Granny Chree had ordered.

  Before the rest of the family rose, I dressed and stole away to the Shady Grove church cemetery and Aunt Hyacinth’s grave. It had been too long since I’d stopped by. The inscription had finally been chiseled into the stone hewn in Asheville and shipped by rail. It had been set at the head of Aunt Hyacinth’s grave the month before, thanks to an early spring thaw. All things considered, it seemed fitting that Aunt Hyacinth had a separate plot and stone from the Belvidere family space. I laid the first bouquet of lilac blossoms across its top.

  “I knew you’d want to be part of this day, Aunt Hyacinth. Granny would have had it no other way.” I pulled the few stray leaves away from the base of her stone. “We’ve all come so far, haven’t we?” I whispered. “Further than I could have ever imagined.”

  I gave her the latest news about Ruby Lynne and the baby boy she’d birthed, her plans for college and becoming a teacher, and the home she’d found with an aunt in Tennessee. “I think Rhoan’s still running moonshine, but he tells Jesse from time to time when he’s had a letter from Ruby Lynne. I think it makes him proud that she stays in touch.

  “Dr. Vishnevsky received a letter from Marshall. You’d think he and Olney were the proudest of fathers. He said Marshall’s doing well in school, that he intends to become a doctor one day, as soon as his service in the military is done, though we all hope this war will be over before it’s his time to go. Granny’s gift more than paid for his first year of schooling, and Marshall is earning the money for the second himself.”

  I told her all the news about the Tates and how Clay McHone was going to rebuild our barn next month—with the help of a number of men from town. “The McHones moved in to make up Dr. Vishnevsky’s new family right after the baby came. You should see the doctor. He’s so happy, Aunt Hyacinth, like a grandfather with baby Cecilly—they named her after Celia.

  “You’d be so proud of that girl. She’s taught me so much about being brave and stepping out to help others, all the while becoming and remaining true to myself.

  “Chester’s helping me plant a victory garden. He combs No Creek every week from one end to the other, as far as his new red wagon can go collecting scrap metal and rubber and paper—everything imaginable for the war effort.

  “Fillmore has a good job at the shipyard in Norfolk. Gladys and the children will be moving there this summer, once school’s out. I don’t know what I’ll do without them, especially Gladys.

  “And Gerald—well, you know about him. You always seemed to know that he wouldn’t rule my life forever. You imagined that God has a hope and a future for me that I couldn’t conceive. Thank you for believing in that future, for believing in me when I couldn’t. I think, though I can’t see the road ahead clearly just yet, that you were right.”

  A rustle in the maple near the church caught my eye. A red-winged blackbird burst from its nest, spreading its beautiful wings in flight. My breath caught, and a song of gratitude filled my heart. I turned back to Aunt Hyacinth’s stone. I wanted to tell her everything.

  “Celia gave me the divorce papers she’d been hiding beneath her mattress, hoping to spare me. In the end, Gerald is claiming desertion and suing me for divorce. It’s not the sensation of insanity or adultery that he’d hoped to claim to gain the church’s sympathy, but he’ll be legally free to remarry . . . perhaps without the church’s blessing, unless he can convince them I’ve done things he can’t prove or that my running away from him is abandonment. Maybe he’ll convince them, but I no longer care. I’m not ashamed, just so thankful to be away from him, to not live another day afraid.

  “I wake up each morning now and the day is fresh and clean, full of hope, not laden with worries or guilt, and I sing, ‘Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see.’ A year ago I couldn’t have imagined that.

  “Our library’s doing well—busy. There was a drive to collect books for the armed forces, especially more recent fiction. So I’ve donated a box and inserted a card in each book assuring the reader that the librarians of Garden’s Gate are praying for him. Your books are going far and wide, Aunt Hyacinth, blessing our men in this awful war.”

  I reached down to touch her stone, so wishing it was her frail hand I could touch again, feel her warmth and see the joy in her face that I knew sharing her books—the ones she’d preserved and collected over her lifetime—could bring.

  “I’m teaching a class for adult readers over at Saints Delight Church on Friday evenings, and I love that. I especially love the children who come to the library. We still have our battles and cruel lines of segregation here. It seems it’s easier for us to condemn the Germans for hating Jews than to own in the mirror what we do to each other. I guess it’s one step at a time, one foot in front of the other.

  “Your friend Biddy is getting on but still writes when she can get letters through. The war’s terribly hard on Britain. Jesse and I share her letters and we pray for Biddy and her family every day. He misses you so.” A sigh escaped my lips, but I gritted my teeth, determined not to cry this day. “You know I do.

  “I’m sorry for the secrets we kept so long—yours, mine, Mama’s, our family’s. They’re never worth keeping, are they? Secrets hurt. They shame, sometimes even where there is no real shame.

  “It’s taken me all this time, but I know now that shame doesn’t come from God. I’ve wasted so many years believing God couldn’t love me, that He was ashamed of me and didn’t want me, that I wasn’t enough as I am for Him to look at . . . and that I deserved all the punishment from my father and Gerald because I was bad—so bad at my core and so dirty inside. I thought He was standing over me, ready with a sledgehammer, waiting for me to trip up. I know now that God’s not like that. He’s not like sinful man. I’ve learned that believing in the everlasting love of God is a choice I can make—a choice to believe—each day, if I need to.” I could not stop the tears. “I won’t waste one more day, Aunt Hyacinth. I promise. You taught me so many good lessons.”

  “She’s still teaching us, isn’t she?” Jesse stood beside me.

  I jumped, startled. “I didn’t hear you come.”

  “Don’t worry.” His eyes twinkled. “Just arrived. Your ‘secrets’ are safe with me.”

  “Now I know what you heard. I suppose I should feel embarrassed.” I smiled. “But I don’t. You’re coming up the mountain? For Granny Chree?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it.” He hesitated. “But there’s something I want to tell you first, before you hear it elsewhere.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “Not ominous, but it could be lengthy. Possibly lengthy.” He seemed nervous, anxious.

  “Jesse? What is it?” I laid my hand on his arm.

  He pulled an envelope from his coat pocket—an official-looking return address stamped in the top left corner. “My chaplain’s orders have come through. It’s time I walked in the footsteps of our old friend Oswald Chambers. Do more than talk the talk.” He smiled.

  I tried to smile in return.

  “I’ll go for training, but eventually I’ll be stationed overseas, at least I hope so. I don’t know where yet, an
d I don’t know if I’ll be allowed to say. But I know it’s the right thing. I know the Lord is leading me for the sake of our men and boys who know Him and especially for those who don’t.” His eyes searched mine.

  The lump in my throat swelled and wouldn’t go down. I turned back to Aunt Hyacinth’s stone. I’d known he would volunteer. Somehow, I’d just known. What would No Creek do without him? What will I do without you?

  I nodded, doing my best to get hold of my emotions. “When do you go?”

  “Five days.”

  “So soon?”

  “I’ve known for a couple of weeks but didn’t want to say anything until arrangements were finalized for another pastor, and well, because goodbyes are hard. Reverend Peoples will arrive on Monday so I can introduce him to the congregation Wednesday night, before I go. He’s a good man, an older man with much pastoral experience.”

  I looked away. “That’s good. We’ll need someone who . . .” But I couldn’t finish. I drew a ragged breath, staring at Aunt Hyacinth’s stone, willing it to give me strength. “I’ll carry on writing to Biddy and save her letters for you—every one.”

  “Lilliana.” He turned me to him, but I couldn’t meet his gaze. “Lilliana, look at me, please.”

  I tried so very hard to keep my face composed.

  “I know it will be another year before you’re legally free. I’ll be gone during that time and for who knows how long this wretched war will last. But I’m hoping we can—I—”

  I pressed my fingers against his lips. “Don’t. Not now.”

  He closed his eyes, drew a breath, and nodded, releasing me and stepping back. “No. You’re right.” He breathed again and opened his eyes. “May I write to you? Will you write to me?”

  “Yes.” I smiled, genuinely glad for that. “Yes, I will write as often as you write me.”

  It seemed in that moment that the sun came out in full.

  “Good.” He took my hand and pressed it between both of his own. “That’s good.”

  We turned back to Aunt Hyacinth’s stone. I traced the letters in her epitaph with my finger: She Loved Well. “That was her legacy to us all, wasn’t it? I hope that can be said of us one day.”

  Jesse smiled, pressed my hand to his lips, to his heart, and released it. We turned as one and together walked up the mountain.

  Note to Readers

  YEARS AGO, MY BROTHER, Dan Lounsbury—wonderful writer, editor, and friend—took me for a drive in the foothills of North Carolina, not far from the farm where we were born. He showed me a street and a church he knew I’d appreciate because of the irony of their name: No Creek. Named because, you guessed it, there was no creek.

  Now that might not seem too surprising until you realize that we were viewing a Baptist church, and nearly every older Baptist church throughout the foothills of North Carolina was built near water, most often a creek. Creeks, as Rosemary Belvidere said, “run like a widow’s tears” through those foothills. Churches were built near water for the purpose and convenience of full-immersion baptisms and were often named for the creeks by which they reside: Grassy Creek Baptist Church, Mountain Creek Baptist Church, Big Ruin Creek Baptist Church, and so on.

  My brother and I sat in the car, staring at that No Creek sign just because he knew I’d want to. In that moment the name of a community was born in my mind. Fully blown characters as real as the man who ran my small-town post office sprang to life and peppered the No Creek of my imagination. I knew those characters’ names, their quirks, their faults and failings and their strengths beyond measure. I was privy to their backstories, and I dearly loved them. So I wrote their stories—short stories.

  Sometimes I read those short stories aloud in café open mic sessions. I saw that listeners responded to those colorful characters—loved them—nearly as much as I did. But my stories were vignettes, moments in each character’s life. There was no overarching story to connect them, nothing to tempt a publisher of full-length novels.

  So for years, those stories and the very real-to-me people that filled their pages sat in a drawer . . . until I realized that no story line from the people of No Creek could unite them. They needed characters drawn from the outside, people who didn’t understand them but wanted to gain acceptance, who’d come from far away with issues of their own, to live and thrive—or die—among the locals in that time and place.

  Questions of faith, concern for the oppressed, and stands against injustice claim the heart of my books. Exposing and fighting marital and domestic abuse and race violence have long been passions of mine. Readers may know that from the books I’ve written, might have guessed it based on my upbringing in the South through years of the civil rights movement. Jim Crow, following the failings of Reconstruction cut short, created a rough and ragged world of its own. Those remnants and attitudes sadly, tragically, have not altogether disappeared. We’ve come far, but there is still much work and healing to do and it can only be done when we reach out to others in compassion, respect, and appreciation.

  What might not be so clear, because of my great love and respect for the church and the faithful of God, is that I’m also passionate about exposing the dangers of church leadership abuse and bringing healing to its victims. As Christians, we don’t want to think such abuse exists. We hate the very idea. We want to believe that shepherds of our flocks are trustworthy, blameless as far as humanly possible, and embody the list of qualifications for elders and deacons found in 1 Timothy 3. But where there is power there is temptation to abuse that power, and reports in our daily news make it clear that in some places, in some churches, terrible abuse exists.

  The horror of abuse—physical, emotional, mental, spiritual—reeks not only in those churches reported in the national and global news, but in churches, priesthoods, elderships, and pastorates not yet exposed. Dirty secrets are known to hide within the confines of cults, but they can also be hidden within the walls of legitimate churches. It is for the victims of abuse—those who’ve known intimidation, indoctrination, and physical, emotional, and spiritual trauma—that my heart bleeds. It is especially for them and for all who are willing to help in the healing process that Night Bird Calling is written and prayed over.

  If a person has never experienced abuse, it is sometimes hard to understand why a victim tolerates it—why they don’t report it, stand publicly against it, expose it, or simply leave the abuser or abusive community. Sometimes those abused are too intimidated, too afraid of what will follow for themselves or loved ones if they expose an abuser. Sometimes they know of nowhere and no one to run to, no one to trust—have even been taught not to trust outsiders or the police, or are so beaten down they don’t believe in their own worth or that they deserve love or protection. They may even believe they deserve the abuse and become unable to stand for themselves. But sometimes even the severely downtrodden can be roused to help and protect others they deem in need of protection. That God-given desire to help and protect is where Lilliana of this story, abused herself, finds some of her strength to help Ruby Lynne.

  It was pointed out to me, during a vulnerable time in my young life, that God hates abuse and that oppression is one of the reasons He severely warned and chastised His own people, Israel. Bottom line: God does not tolerate abuse. Never has. Never will.

  It was a revelation to me at the time that allowing oppressors and abusers to go unchecked is not a sign of forgiveness or a freedom or gift to them—even if they stand in places of marital, administrative, political, or spiritual authority, no matter the moral lens of the time or place. I learned that for the sake of the abuser as well as the abused, abuse must be stopped and the horror exposed. We were not created to be doormats.

  The Scripture pointed out to me that registered, that allowed me to say, “No more!” is found in Matthew 18:6—“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

  T
hat is the message Lilliana discovers in this story. No matter how she feared and had suffered, she did not want that millstone to be the end for her abuser. She just needed the abuse to stop.

  Night Bird Calling is a work of fiction. Its characters are fictitious, except for the offstage characters of Oswald and Biddy Chambers. Theirs is a love and lifelong-ministry story worthy of books, despite the fact that Oswald’s life was cut short. His wife, whom he affectionately called “Biddy,” recorded his talks in shorthand and faithfully transcribed them. Those writings, particularly in the devotional book My Utmost for His Highest that Biddy published after Oswald’s passing, have long been a great blessing and source of conviction for me. In that book you will find insights upon insights into life and following in the footsteps of Jesus, into building an intimate, full, and rich relationship with Him.

  I hope, as you read Night Bird Calling, that you will consider those around you—family, friends, colleagues, students, even strangers. If someone you know is or was intimidated or abused in any way, please reach out to them and let them know that abuse, oppression, attitudes of control or lording over a person or over a congregation do not come from God, do not come from the lover and Creator of life. Lovingly point those abused and those who abuse to our Savior, who forgives the repentant, who loves and heals each of us, cruelly broken though we may be. All we have to do is ask Him. Know that He holds accountable those who abuse authority and power, whether in relationships of marriage, family, community, or the church. Know that the pain of those abused is not forgotten and that the abuse is not their fault.

  Show others that you love them—love them with the perfect, healing, unrestrained love of Christ.

  Scripture tells us that we are so dearly loved and delighted in that we are rejoiced over with singing. With great loving-kindness has our Father drawn us. He never means us harm but offers each of us hope and a future.

  God’s great love and blessings for you,