by Julie Kibler
Mattie sagged against a tree trunk, as if she’d lost the ability to stay upright without it propping her. “Oh, Lizzie, what have you done?”
Lizzie couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t open her mouth. She’d done something so stupid, she couldn’t even tell her best friend.
But then Mattie took a deep breath. “I had relations with a man the day Cap died,” she said, spitting out the words as if issuing a challenge.
Now Lizzie pressed her back against a tree. She heard what Mattie said, but she didn’t quite trust it. “I know what you’re trying to do. I still ain’t gonna tell you. It ain’t safe for you to know.”
“Lizzie…honey, I’m not going to judge you. I know it’s hard for you to keep on—as hard as it is for me. Maybe for different reasons—”
“No. It ain’t that at all. I wouldn’t blow my chance—or Docie’s—for something as stupid as that. I’m strong now.”
“So strong, you won’t even leave the grounds?”
Lizzie sighed. “I know what I got to do.”
“Then tell me, honey, what could be so bad? You must be imagining some kind of sin that isn’t even real.”
Lizzie looked at her long and hard.
“I wasn’t lying,” Mattie said. “I did it. I…I had to.”
Lizzie knew then that Mattie was telling the truth—and she’d given Lizzie a secret she’d given no one else. Lizzie nodded, then stepped close to Mattie, but not close enough to touch.
“It’s May. She came back, and I got her tied up in the barn.”
Mattie gasped, and she shook her head, again and again and again.
* * *
—
All that afternoon, Mattie fussed at Lizzie whenever she was near enough. When she brought the little ones’ toast and milk up to the nursery and set the tray on the low table, she hissed, “What were you thinking?” Mattie avoided the nursery like it was a terrible beast, leaving this task to Olive or Gertrude, who worked in the kitchen with her. Gertrude was surely curious why Mattie had volunteered today. Lizzie pretended she didn’t care to wake the infant she rocked while Bertha cut the toast into small pieces for the toddlers. Mattie left glaring.
When Lizzie took the toddlers out to play, Mattie approached their quilt on the lawn. She kept her distance, loath to touch Lizzie now, though Lizzie had promised she cleaned up thoroughly every time she left May. “What’ll you do when they find out? And what about Docie?”
Lizzie could ignore her in the nursery with Bertha nearby. But on the lawn, she tried to make Mattie understand. “Brother JT says there’s no such thing as a lost cause. Think if they’d given up on me. Besides, they don’t want Docie going without a mama—ain’t they always drilling that into us?”
Mattie paced behind Lizzie. Lizzie made funny faces at the babies, and they laughed and clapped their hands and leaned to beg for more. She hid behind her hands to play peep-eye. Not a single thing surprised her—or terrified her—more than this work, caring for the littlest ones alongside Bertha. She cherished it.
“You can’t save the whole world, you know,” Mattie said.
Lizzie shrugged. “Ain’t I supposed to try? The Good Book says it plain.”
Mattie knelt in front of Lizzie, tucking her skirt down, though Lizzie caught a glimpse of her ankles. Usually skinny, they were like solid table legs beneath her stockings today. Mattie was taking on too much of pregnant Olive’s load in the kitchen; it wasn’t good for her. “I have to get back to work,” Mattie said, “but I’m a wreck. I’m mixed up in it now. How can I keep my mouth closed with you going behind everyone’s backs? How long do you plan to keep it up?”
“Long as it takes.” Lizzie spread her fingers just enough to give Leo a peek at her eyes, then popped them wide apart to give him a little scare before scooping him up to hug his neck and blow a raspberry in that sweet spot. “I ain’t asking you to lie. It’s on me, far as I’m concerned. If you’ve a mind to tattle, I won’t stop you. I won’t ask you to do nothing wrong.”
She watched Mattie press her elbows into her lap. Mattie’s eyes were as blue as Lizzie’s were brown, and she towered over Lizzie’s stumpy height.
But their hearts beat alike, more than Mattie even knew.
Mattie sighed. “Lizzie, what makes me mad is what I love most about you.”
Lizzie went back to her peeking game with the boys. “You got to decide for yourself. All I want is a warning if you think you’ll tell.”
“I can’t lose you.” Mattie looked sick, and guilt flew up in Lizzie. But her friend said, “I won’t say anything, not yet.” She pushed herself back up and brushed a hand along her apron to lay it flat where it had puckered. She glanced behind, then pulled an apple from her dress pocket. From the other, she gave Lizzie a bit of sausage in paper.
Lizzie smelled it before she peeked inside. “What’s this?” she said, but knew she’d won Mattie over.
“Don’t make me say it. Be sure it goes where it’s needed and you don’t get caught.” She made to go, but on her way, she stooped to kiss Lizzie’s forehead, so quick Lizzie scarcely had time to register it. “Your heart is as big as my mother’s was. She would have liked you.”
Mattie was as real a sister as any. Family had meant nothing but misery for Lizzie before.
Here, she’d found a true one.
* * *
—
After supper, Brother JT kept them late. “Dear ones, our coffers are nearly empty. We’re functioning on a shoestring budget—if we could afford shoestrings, that is.”
The girls chuckled. He nearly always cushioned the truth with gentle humor.
“We must operate leanly, taking only what we need, being frugal with soaps, and so on. We want you healthy, happy, and clean, naturally. But we mustn’t stray into gluttony. Our Father loves even a glutton, of course, but he thrills at the sight of a disciplined saint. Yes, ladies, you can rightfully consider yourself saints if you’re saved and sanctified.” His eyes twinkled at the snickers. “It’s true. The Good Book says so.”
Lizzie wondered how many of the girls pictured the Heavenly Father looking like Brother JT. It was easy. She twisted her dinner napkin in her lap, hoping no one could detect the yeast roll she’d tucked inside after taking two from the basket. But she had no time to worry.
* * *
—
That evening, after her visit to the old barn, Lizzie found Mattie pacing the back porch. It wasn’t quite bedtime, the sky still hemmed with orange fringes. Docie played nearby, in Mattie’s care after their supper, making pictures with a twig in a dried-up flower bed. The zinnias, puny and thirsty already, drooped like August instead of June.
Lizzie’s heart danced into her throat at the sight of the little face beaming with pure pleasure to see her, her eyes no longer hollow from hunger or from pain. Their separations had not always been so brief. Before Berachah, Lizzie had sometimes been forced to leave Docie with her ma and stepfather and his sons to seek work. She’d had little choice, but now she feared it had been her worst mistake.
That last time, when Lizzie retrieved her, Docie’s eyes had looked dead, and she was eerily silent. It still liked to kill Lizzie to think about it. She promised herself and Docie then that she’d never leave her again. If the vow had nearly killed them both, death—even in the bowels of a jail—would have been glory over that kind of hell.
The hug Docie gave her tonight was fierce, but just long enough to show her joy. Then she wanted to show Lizzie her pictures, dragging her by pudgy fingers. “Mama, see my pretty flowers? Now the real ones won’t be sad. You like them?”
They were the most beautiful Lizzie had ever seen.
Mattie perched in an old chair stripped of stain and missing an arm. Lizzie caught her tension halfway down the porch. She shooed Docie back to the flower bed to make more pretties, then approached cautiously
. “Just a few more days, I reckon.”
“In a few days, it won’t matter,” Mattie said. “Gertrude asks too many questions and I’m out of excuses. She knows you’re up to something.”
Lizzie sighed. Gertrude was head over the kitchen, so Mattie couldn’t avoid her, reporting to her as she did. Mattie had attempted every industry anyone set her on. In the printing office, she’d struggled to contain her temper at any inefficiency in their process. In the workshop sewing handkerchiefs and fancy work, her busy thoughts led to too many dropped stitches. Each time she blew it, she was right back in the kitchen. She was quick, but her blasted mouth and sharp mind ruined any opportunity beyond the talent as natural to her as breathing: She could cook like she was born to it. Everyone tucked into Mattie’s meals. Mattie had said her made-up recipes had pleased even her picky little sisters at home when her mama took sick, and when she went into service, the family had discovered in no time she cooked better than the wife.
But Lizzie knew Mattie was sick of feeding and cleaning up after other people and sweating over a stove. It took a lot of fire to feed forty souls. And it took more patience than she had to be supervised by Gertrude while doing it.
Gertrude was always in the middle of everyone’s business, tattling over some violation of the house rules hardly worth mentioning. Why, she’d even told on Docie before, as if the four-year-old, no bigger than one of the kid goats in the newer barn, could suppress curiosity and noise. Lizzie quietly told Docie to pay Aunty Gertrude no mind.
Gertrude might be more genteel, but if you believed the Good Book, she was as fallen as any of them. Gertrude blamed the world, smoothing over her part in what gave her a baby without a daddy. The Upchurches and Sister Susie seemed blinded by her piety. Lizzie wondered if they had any idea the different face she showed the Home girls.
Lately, Gertrude had been keeping company in the parlor with the young preacher who led their services now and then. She’d hinted they might have a notion to marry. Lizzie knew that chafed at Mattie. She had wanted to marry Charley so badly, but then he’d run off. It seemed unfair that Gertrude should have that so effortlessly when she had a real issue with humility. Lizzie herself wished the man would ask for Gertrude’s hand soon—before her britches split right off, for they grew tighter with pride every day. Her trials should have given the woman a humble heart, but she’d become an unbearable, self-anointed saint. Saint Gertrude. That was what Mattie called her, sometimes right out loud. It made Lizzie giggle—she couldn’t help it.
Lizzie could never begin to think of marrying again. For all she knew, Willis was dead—leastwise, he was to her. But their vows held her to him until she saw proof. During one of their first talks, Brother JT had explained what the Bible said unambiguously about divorce. The never-married girls, wrecked or ruined, had a chance. At least nobody could call Docie a bastard.
The kitchen door clattered, and Saint Gertrude herself emerged with a pail of scraps for the garden. Lizzie thought to volunteer to take them—maybe she could salvage something for May.
“Gossiping again, girls?” Gertrude said.
Mattie’s cheeks colored to match her strawberry hair. “Mind your own sins instead of worrying about everyone else—remember, a man doesn’t like a busybody.”
Lizzie gasped under her breath and shot Mattie a warning frown. But Gertrude swanned Docie’s way. “What’re your mama and Aunty Mattie up to, Miss Docie? They whispering things little girls shouldn’t hear?”
Docie gazed up at Gertrude, and then at Lizzie. Lizzie smiled helplessly. She’d never ask Docie to lie. But it bothered Lizzie something awful for Gertrude to put a child up to telling tales on her own mother.
Mattie walked hard to where Gertrude stood. “Don’t trick a little girl just because you’re jealous. Reverend Woods might have real second thoughts about courting you.”
Gertrude flushed, but she backed away, the pail tight to her chest. “Whatever do you mean? I’m only trying to help my sisters. Mind yourself, Mattie. Someone might think you’re jealous.” She flounced inside, the scrap pail forgotten in her arms. She might be forced to rise from bed to carry the pail out in the dark, or it would smell up the kitchen something awful by morning.
Lizzie had no pity. But she did worry whether, in the deep quiet of the night, Gertrude might hear something that would tip her off to the wild creature in the barn.
MATTIE
Arlington, Texas
SUMMER 1905
After Lizzie took Docie to bed, Mattie stole through the dark to the small clearing between the house and the narrow creek that ran through the property. Besides buildings and newly planted shrubs, the grounds were mainly scrub and dusty dirt, but here, like the front lawn, they’d sown grass seed, and it had flourished. Most of the trees on the property were donated saplings, with only a few live oaks and towering pecans there long before the Home was built. One day, there might be a fine grove, tall and thick enough for good shade and a cool breeze for sleeping instead of the suffocating heat already chasing away spring.
Beside a fledgling blackjack oak, Mattie dropped to her knees and inhaled the dusky aroma of earth, grass, and bark, and then she tried to pray. Tried to feel as if someone—anyone—heard her when she pleaded into the relentless cry of locusts. Their din made the responding silence deafening.
Then she allowed herself to imagine what might have been if she’d had better chances.
Even now, Mattie had bigger plans than Lizzie ever would. This thing with trying to save May—well, her friend could be even more shortsighted than little Docie, content with knowing when their next few meals would come and where they’d lay their heads to sleep, to the exclusion of all else. She was not nearly careful enough.
Mattie appreciated security, but she was already considering where she’d go from here. She’d healed in the welcome of the Home those first months, nothing required of her beyond grieving so hard it made her vomit at times, even when she was so weak from the weight of her pain she could hardly face eating. Any fat she had to spare had melted off her bones, leaving her gaunt and without any energy at all.
That physical dwindling had been better, in ways, than the nightmare leading to her arrival—though she’d bargain with the Devil tonight if it meant seeing her son again. She wished she’d found the Home sooner, but it might not have changed a thing.
After Mattie had been at the Home a few weeks, Sister Susie had thought to ask how she’d found it. She showed her the pamphlet from outside the doctor’s office but stopped short of mentioning the cleaning woman at the infirmary. Then, one cold January evening, the girls had gathered around the stove, their toes propped as close as they could get to the cast iron without burning them. “I miss Eunice,” Dilly had said, suddenly. “It was odd how she could hear just fine, but not speak—though she could make herself perfectly clear when she needed to. I miss her quiet wisdom.” She’d sighed.
Mattie usually tuned out the chatter, but she sat up straight. “When did she leave?”
Dilly had looked cautiously to the others before answering. “Oh, well, she was fine one minute, sick the next. She’d just gone to work in Fort Worth last spring, cleaning at the infirmary—no more than a week or so—and came down with pneumonia. We brought her back, and it only was a matter of days. We were terribly sad, but thankful she died here and not alone with strangers. She’s out there in the burying ground.” Dilly had nodded beyond the back of the house, and then carried on with her knitting while Mattie swallowed the lump in her throat. Even if she’d discovered the woman’s name, she would never have been able to thank her.
It comforted Mattie now, though, knowing that Eunice, with her compassionate and motherly embrace, rested here with Cap. If Mattie could only believe in an afterlife…
Had Cap been punished because Mattie strayed from her mother’s principles? If so, real faith was out of the question. How could she trust a
God who would allow such a thing?
She dreamed now of living anywhere but Texas, where summers were more than she could bear. She had put weight back on and then some, now she was cooking again, but she often went light-headed just climbing the stairs in the heat—another reason to avoid the nursery.
She detested being seen as a weakling.
And she had her heart set on a real job—in an office or shop, earning enough to cover a decent room and essentials. She’d settled for her basic school diploma when they’d needed her at home, but did that mean she had to settle for cooking for a living the rest of her life?
She sighed. Her mother’s voice, only six years gone, was hard to summon now, but her insight rang clear. “Smart as you are, you think the world should serve you,” she’d have said. “That’ll bring you nothing but heartache, my girl. Humble yourself. The blessings will follow.”
Except her mother didn’t know the humility Mattie had endured by now. She missed her something awful but was grateful Mama hadn’t witnessed her downfall—either of them. Still, Mattie wouldn’t wish away her years with Cap. She’d learned how far her heart could stretch, and that was no small thing. It was everything.
She ran her finger along the place grass didn’t grow to trace the letters of his name on the tiny stone marker. C-A-P.
Oh, Cap.
The only time she allowed herself to think his name was here, in the quiet space of the burying ground. When her mind obeyed.
She struggled back to her feet—it seemed harder each time she left, when logic said it should be easier—and shook out her skirts. Back inside, the girls readied for bed, brushing each other’s hair and sharing stories one minute, bickering over perceived slights the next, just like sisters. Sister Susie hovered in the doorway to remind them that arguing wasn’t very Christian (and Saint Gertrude wagged her chin).
Mattie missed her real sisters—all three. Sometimes she wanted to slap these girls for diminishing what she, and so many of them, had lost with one shortsighted choice. Thank God Lizzie made it tolerable, replacing family as best anyone could.
