Emma's Gift

by Leisha Kelly

  Julia didn’t cry at such a thought, the way I might’ve expected her to. She just sat down and looked around a little. I thought she must be thinking how awfully hard this was going to be for the children. But then she turned her eyes on our kind pastor and startled him badly, I’m sure.

  “It’s not right! None of this is right at all!”

  I took her hand quickly when she said it, but there was no stopping her from saying the rest.

  “Emma should’ve died right here where she wanted to die, Pastor Jones! Not have to be carried back in somebody’s wagon! Why couldn’t God grant her something so small as that? Why? And Wilametta! George knows it’s not right. That’s why he’s gone near crazy. It’s not his fault he can’t handle it. There ought to be some things right in this world. There ought to be some kind of sense to be made of it all!”

  Lizbeth turned and looked at Julia with the pain so awfully sharp in her eyes. I was glad the rest of the children, except the baby on her lap, had gone upstairs.

  “Julia,” Pastor said in a gentle voice, “we don’t understand it. I can’t argue that. But we know the Almighty has a good plan for each of us and that our loved ones are better off than they were here below.”

  “You just make the best a’ things,” Mr. Mueller added. “You’ll get through. George too. You’ll see.”

  But there was no question that George wasn’t near through it yet. Maybe moving Wilametta and Emma from that bedroom might help.

  I looked over at Lizbeth. She should’ve cried with all this talk going on in front of her. She was the oldest that wasn’t with her father, and Pastor wanted to include her because her brothers had asked him to. But she shouldn’t have taken it all so silently.

  “Mama wouldn’t mind a funeral ’long with Emma,” she finally said. “There weren’t nobody she admired more in this whole world.” Baby Emma Grace was twisting away at Lizbeth’s long hair with her pale little fingers, but Lizbeth didn’t seem to notice. “By the birches,” she added. “That’s where we oughta put her. She always did like the birches.”

  I walked outside with Covey and the pastor when they went to leave, and they were both so solemn and quiet. I knew they had something more to say to me. But I wasn’t expecting to hear what I heard.

  “George threatened to light the house afire and burn himself up along with it,” Covey told me. “I never did know anybody quite this bad.”

  “No use the rest of the kids seeing him this way,” Pastor told me. “They don’t need that on top of everything else. We need to pray it’ll be different after the funeral.”

  “Yes,” I said, wondering how near to such an action George could possibly be. Hard to believe he’d ever do such a fool thing. Surely it was just the hurt talking.

  “Samuel,” Pastor said solemnly, “he won’t eat. He would scarcely talk to me. As soon as tomorrow he’ll have to face all this, the funerals the day after that. He needs to face his children at the same time and see that they’re hurting just as much as he is. But he might need help—he might need you and Juli to keep on watching at least part of them sometimes, at least for a while.”

  “We’ll do what we can.”

  “Thank you. You’ve been a godsend, Samuel.”

  I had a difficult time picturing that. I hadn’t done much. Certainly not anything worthy of special notice.

  “I’m going back to be with George and his boys overnight,” Pastor told me. “Pray for me, please. He may be less than pleased to see me again.”

  “Threw his wife’s Bible at him,” Covey added, though the pastor gave him a reproachful look.

  I wondered how we were going to face the night and the next couple of days. Louise had wanted to come, Barrett had said earlier. And maybe it would’ve been a good thing if she could have, or the pastor’s wife, or some other woman the children knew.

  Juli and Lizbeth were both quiet when I came in the house, as if they were too numb for words. But then all of the children came downstairs, asking questions or sitting and sulking or, in the case of the two youngest, bawling their eyes out.

  Harry and Willy were both complaining that they hadn’t been able to go with Pastor and Mr. Mueller. And I could see that Juli was just about at the end of her rope.

  I knew I should offer a story. But my mind was blank. What could I possibly say? Any of my little stories would seem so frivolous and cheap. Franky had quietly gone and seated himself in a corner, his head down across his folded arms. Juli had the baby now, and Berty was fussy in Lizbeth’s arms. Willy and Robert just stood by the fire, as if they were waiting for it to need something from them, and Kirk was pacing, first in one room and then in another, like a caged beast. Sarah and Rorey were mercifully quiet, sitting on the floor with Sarah’s doll between them, both looking up at Juli and Lizbeth as if they were waiting to be told what to do.

  “Let’s get the beds ready,” I said, and at first no one responded to me.

  Then Sarah stood up. “We gonna all sleep downstairs again, Daddy?”

  I wondered for a minute. It sure would be nice to be alone with Julia a few minutes in our room upstairs, to talk things through a little. And some of the children would be fine in the other room upstairs, with the rest down here closer to the fire. But it was strange and different and sad and probably scary for the Hammonds. Not one of them should really be too far from the rest, or from us, tonight. I looked at Juli, and she nodded. “Probably we better,” I told Sarah. “So we can all be close.”

  I got the big boys to help me again, getting mats and bedding and everything to the living room floor. And then sudden as anything, we heard a vigorous knock at the back door.

  Barrett Post. Followed immediately by his wife and their sister-in-law, Elvira, the schoolteacher, both carrying more food.

  “Louise plain insisted,” Barrett explained. “Said we had no excuse, us having a sleigh. An’ you all hadn’t oughta be alone on a night like this.”

  I wasn’t sure if Juli or Lizbeth was glad to see them or not. They both looked so exhausted it was hard to tell.

  Louise and Elvira set their dishes down in a hurry. Louise grabbed the baby and took her straight to Emma’s rocker by the fire, and Elvira offered to read Harry and Bert a story.

  “Lizbeth!” Berty insisted. “I wan’ Lizbeth t’ read!”

  “Well, then, you’ll have to be good and quiet, won’t you?” Elvira maintained. “Nobody, nobody wants to read to boys who holler and yell.”

  She took off her coat after producing two thin books from one pocket and sat on the long side of a mattress. Even though she wasn’t Lizbeth, Berty went to sit beside her and look at the pictures. Sarah joined them, and across the room Franky raised his head, watching all of us and listening.

  But Rorey folded her little arms and stamped her foot. “Why are you all here? I don’t want you here!”

  “I want them here,” Juli declared pointedly. “And that’s good enough. Now go sit down and listen to the story!”

  Juli turned away from all of us as soon as she had said it. Her hands were shaking. Suddenly and without another word, she stepped alone into Emma’s room and shut the door.

  “Leave her be,” Louise told me. “Sometimes a body’s got to get alone and have ’em a good cry.”

  But I knew Juli. She liked being alone all right, in the happy times when she’d go singing around the kitchen or picking something outside in the summer sun. But not now.

  I opened the door. I had to go in quick and shut it again, because Rorey and Harry wanted to follow me. Julia was sitting on Emma’s bed, already in tears, bent down almost to the pillows. I hurried over to hold her. I climbed right up on that bed, boots and all, and took my Juli in my arms.

  “I can’t do this,” she cried. “I just can’t! I should never have talked to a little girl that way! She can’t help it! But sometimes, oh sometimes—”

  “Shhh, honey.” I just held her while she shook and sobbed. I’m not sure how long we sat there. I could hear Louise s
inging to the baby, and a mingle of other voices, including Elvira’s, reading now. Thank God they’d come. Thank God for people, people who just stepped in and cared, even these that didn’t know the Lord.

  “Now what’ll they think of me?” Juli whispered.

  “Doesn’t matter what they think. You’re entitled to grieve, honey. You have to, I can see it, or you’re going to burst.”

  She took a deep, difficult breath. “Here we are in Emma’s room.” Her voice cracked, and I knew the tears were falling again.

  “She’d be glad,” I said. “Strange as that sounds, she’d be glad we’re here.”

  “Are you sorry?” she suddenly asked. “Are you sorry you didn’t take the deed when she offered it?”

  “No. We need to show Albert due respect. This was his grandfather’s place, not mine.”

  “Oh, Sammy, I miss her! Imagine what Lizbeth and Rorey and all the rest must feel missing their own mama! And here I sit just thinking on how much I miss Emma when she wasn’t even family, not the same way—”

  “She was family. The truest family I ever had, except you and the kids.”

  “I wish she’d lived a hundred and twenty years, like Moses.”

  “But she’s glad. You know she’s glad to be home now. It’s not this home that matters so much as that one.”

  We had to rejoin the others. Harry kept tapping at the door. Rorey was sitting in the middle of a mattress, pouting, when we came out. Harry grabbed for Julia right away, but I took his hand and led him toward his brothers so Juli could sit down beside Rorey a minute and put her arm around the little girl’s shoulders. Even Barrett stayed, eventually sitting down with Harry in his lap.

  That night was hard, like nothing else we’d ever had to handle. We were laboring for hours just trying to get all the children to sleep. Then every little while somebody was awake, somebody was crying or just up walking around like they didn’t know what to do with themselves. I wondered how Joe and young Sam were doing now and if our pastor, who was younger than me, was having a hard time of it over there with George. I wondered too how Wilametta had managed with ten at bedtime every night. But then it wouldn’t have been like this.

  Nobody asked me for a story. And I was glad, because I wasn’t sure I could find anything to say to them. Franky came and curled up beside me, and I wondered if Robert would be upset about it like he’d seemed to be earlier. But I couldn’t turn Franky away. He cried a long time, just lying there kind of quiet, and when I went to sleep, I wasn’t sure if he weren’t crying still.

  ELEVEN

  Julia

  I’d been dreaming about Emma dancing around in the strawberry bed when her namesake, little Emma Grace, woke me with a wail so loud it shook me clear to the bone. Poor Lizbeth was so tired from soothing one sibling after another all night that she could barely turn over. But Louise must’ve been up already, because she got to the baby before I could stand up.

  Samuel had already fed the fire and gone outside, even though it was still dark. Early as it was, I wondered how I’d been able to sleep that long. Especially since my outbursts of yesterday were plaguing me terribly. Nobody needed to hear any of the bitter stuff churning around in me, least of all Lizbeth. I’d have to keep my thoughts to myself or wait for a minute when I could share them with Samuel again. But maybe that wasn’t for the best either.

  I couldn’t get the picture of Emma out of my mind—on the floor in Wila’s room, utterly broken. She would’ve lived a little longer, I was sure, if Wilametta hadn’t gone first. And that plagued me too. I should’ve been bolder. I should’ve insisted on going to see about Wila by myself, so Emma could’ve rested the way she needed to. She might’ve been here then, when I got back. She might still be here, to comfort all these dear souls.

  I got myself up to make sure the kitchen stove was lit, but when I saw Emma’s rocker across the sitting room floor, I just stopped. Louise came over beside me with the sniffling baby.

  “Don’t worry on breakfast,” she said. “I’ll start something. Got plenty of eggs?”

  There were eggs. Yes. Because Emma’d brought four hens with her when she came back home. And there were sixteen chickens now. We’d raised the rest over the summer, even butchered some. Everything about us coming here had seemed touched by the hand of God. So why did God feel so far away now?

  “There are eggs,” I told Louise. “They’re down in production since it’s been cold, but there’ll still be some out there. I’ll send Robert to check pretty soon.”

  “Barrett’s gone to tend the chores at home,” she said. “Maybe he’ll think to bring our milk and eggs back over with him too. They’ll be gettin’ an early start in the timber.”

  Digging. Of course, they had to do it, but I wondered how they could. And Samuel, with the job he had to do. He would do it well, I had no doubts about that. But I couldn’t have done it, though I’d laid Emma out on that bed. I couldn’t have made her a box nor set her in it, and I sure couldn’t put her in the ground.

  Somebody had already lit the cookstove. Robert, usually an early riser anyway, was stirring around pretty quick, and I sent him out to gather whatever fresh eggs there might be. Kirk wasn’t up yet, nor were most of the others, so I decided to go ahead and rinse the milk pail and see to the milking myself. I sure didn’t want Samuel to have to think about it this morning, with all he had to do. Tomorrow were the funerals. People would be coming, what people could get through, anyway, to pay their respects. How would I, how would we all, make it through seeing Emma and Wila in their stillness one last time?

  All through the milking it bothered me. They’d be bringing Emma and Wila here. It didn’t feel right. But nothing else I could think of came even close to feeling righter. Pastor knew going to town would be difficult, and not really like Emma or Wila, who both loved home so much. Oh, that it could’ve been spring, so we could all just be outside, surrounded by Emma’s bounty of flowers.

  I was nearly done when Franky came out to the barn, looking to help Samuel at his job. I made him come in with me, but he wouldn’t stay. Had to help, he said. Owed it to his mama.

  “He’s worrying me,” I told Samuel when I brought him coffee a little later and shooed Franky back inside to eat some breakfast. “He hadn’t ought to be out here with you this way, watching this.”

  “What else is he going to do?” Samuel asked with sad eyes. “He’s thinking on it, Juli. It’ll be on his mind no matter what. At least he feels like he’s contributing something.”

  “I could put him at something in the house. Louise is mopping in there to beat the band.”

  He sighed. “But we all have to deal with things in our own fashion. I don’t understand it either, but maybe this is his.”

  Those simple words made me angry. We couldn’t deal with things in our own fashion. I didn’t even know what my fashion was. Maybe none of us did. We had to help rescue George and hold babies and try to keep from saying anything else as stupid as what I’d said last night. We had to be what everybody thought we should be and not fall apart any more than we had to. Just go through the motions, like Lizbeth was doing. I didn’t even have a clue what I might be like if it was just me with this pain. Maybe I’d scream. Maybe I’d fling another cup of apple-mint tea into Wilametta’s fireplace. Maybe it was better never to know.

  Barrett Post came riding in with the milk and eggs from their place. He handed them to me to take inside, took a package of something in to Samuel, and then was gone, hardly saying two words.

  When I went in the house, Sarah had broken a saucer and was sitting at the table in tears. Louise was doing her best to sweep it up with Harry crawling around all the chairs.

  “Berty smelled up his pants,” he announced as soon as he saw me. I took the milk and eggs to the cellar steps, thinking about poor Lizbeth. Having that to deal with, and baby Emma Grace too. But it was Elvira who had the baby just then, and I was grateful for that.

  Rorey woke up sopping wet and crying, either from
the shock or the embarrassment. And just then I might’ve screamed at George and Wilametta for having so many kids.

  Where are you, George? I wanted to wail. Confound it! When are you going to be here for them? When are you going to take care of your own problems?

  Before we had Rorey and Berty in fresh clothes, Kirk had decided it was time to take his father’s other horse back home. I knew I couldn’t stop him. There’d be no escaping the awfulness of the situation, regardless of which place he was at. “Just talk to Samuel first,” I beseeched him. “He’ll know if your father said anything about that.”

  They’ll be moving the bodies today, I kept thinking. What an awful thing to be in the middle of.

  Robert and Willy shoveled out Lula Bell’s stall, God bless them, and gave her clean straw. Then they carted new straw to the chicken house too. Covey Mueller came back with Alberta as I was washing the big sitting room window. I hadn’t seen a wagon on runners like theirs since Grandpa Charlie’s when I was a little girl. Clarence and Pet, the Mueller’s team, were the biggest horses anywhere in the area.

  Alberta came charging straight in the house with her quick little steps, despite having her arms full with two covered pans. Chicken pie and a frosted cake. I set them on the counter and almost forgot to say hello. Mr. Mueller went straight out to the barn.

  Alberta gave me a big hug, though I didn’t know her all that well, and asked if I knew how many of the folks from the church in Dearing would be coming.

  “We’ll just have to see,” I told her. “I don’t know how there could be many with this snow.”

  But not twenty minutes later, Mrs. Gray, the Sunday school teacher, came riding up on a sturdy gray mare. Bundled in layers and carrying a sack, she came in the house looking like Santa Claus. She’d brought beet pickles and quince preserves wrapped up in towels, and a deep-dish apple crisp that I couldn’t picture how she’d managed not to spill. She went straight for Lizbeth and hugged that girl’s neck like I’d never seen anyone else do, ever.