Emma's Gift

by Leisha Kelly

  “Oh, Mrs. Gray,” Lizbeth said, but that was all. For a moment her face changed just a little, and she looked like she might say something else or even break down and cry. But the moment passed. Her eyes were soon hollow and hard again, and she was scolding Harry for pulling his socks off and throwing them in the potato bin.

  “We let off Orville to help the digging,” Alberta suddenly told me.

  Her son, along with Louise and Elvira’s husbands. Doing all they could, when they didn’t have to do any of it. And these ladies didn’t have to help clean this house that Emma’d called mine, though Louise and Elvira had already started. They didn’t have to bring in food nor willing hugs. But for Emma they’d do anything, just like she’d have done anything for them. Even when it killed her.

  Robert and Willy had started shoveling paths through the snow, and I wondered who told them to work so hard. I hadn’t thought to, that was for sure.

  Louise put on water to heat, and we were doing baths for the kids soon enough, though there wasn’t a one of them that wanted anything to do with that in the wintertime. We portioned off a corner of the kitchen and no sooner had one child clean than we started in on another. Rorey cried when I brushed the tangles out of her hair, and Sarah sat as solemn as a stone.

  “I don’t want all these people,” Sarah told me when I was almost finished with her. “I just want me and you and Bessie-doll all by ourself.”

  I had to hold her a minute. I surely understood. The poor child, used to being my baby and my shadow, had to wait her turn just to have me look her way. “I’m sorry, pumpkin,” I whispered. “It’ll get better.”

  “No, Mommy,” she protested. “You haves to get wider and wider, to cover up where Rorey’s Mommy used to be.”

  Such a picture. But surely it was true. At least for a little while.

  Covey Mueller was helping Samuel with the coffins, and it sure speeded the job. Franky came in at one point and told me that Samuel had started carving flowers on the lids while Mr. Mueller was putting the boxes together. “The flowers was my idea,” he announced. But I wouldn’t go and look at them up close. It still bothered me that Franky was in the middle of all that. But there was nothing I could do about it. Samuel let Franky stay as much as he wanted to, and he’d let Kirk take the horse too, because the boy wanted to see his father so badly and be with his older brothers. Pastor was there, Samuel assured me; Kirk would be okay. I just hoped he was right.

  Nobody wanted lunch, but Louise cut the chicken pie anyway, shoved a spoon into a potato casserole, and tried to persuade everyone. Once they got started, Robert and Willy could eat, after all that work they’d done. But nobody else had much, except maybe Bonnie Gray, who as soon as she finished, volunteered to carry food to the men in the timber. But Alberta told her that Covey would be going that way soon enough and could take the food then.

  Sure enough, not long after lunch, Samuel and Mr. Mueller were loading the two long boxes into Mueller’s wagon. It was hard to breathe suddenly, looking out and seeing that. I didn’t know how they could’ve gotten it done so fast, even with the both of them working together. They had put brass handles along the sides; Barrett Post had brought them, and he wouldn’t take any payment either, for that or the wood. I prayed for him and Louise, that God would touch them some way and bless them for their generosity.

  Bonnie helped Alberta pack a generous amount of food in two baskets, one for the men in the timber and one for George and his boys and the pastor. Then they put their scarves and coats back on and charged outside with the baskets.

  Samuel and the Muellers rode off together, and I felt a heaviness just watching them go. Everybody else seemed to change somehow too. Lizbeth sounded extra short trying to get Bert down for a nap. And Franky came in and just sat in a corner, staring into space.

  Louise and Elvira were fluttering about, setting our house in shape and then picking out a few things Emma’d been especially proud of to set out and show. I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t like what they were doing, fingering her things and talking about her. They respected her, no way I could question that. And they were kind. But they didn’t know her, not like they thought they did, because they didn’t know it was God that had mattered most to Emma. They’d never understood that. All of the Posts were good enough people, but none of them concerned themselves with God at all, and they didn’t seem to know what a burden Emma’d had for their souls.

  I remembered what she’d told me once. “Oh, Juli, Barrett’s closed his eyes, and the rest of ’em ain’t no better. They’s turned their backs on the ever-lovin’ Savior, and him all the while just a-callin’ so fond.”

  I prayed for them all over again, because Emma would’ve done it, and I wanted to do it for her. And then I told the Lord that there ought to be church ladies selecting some of her things, because they would understand what Emma would want people to see—and think about—at such a time as this.

  As if in answer to my prayer, Mrs. Gray walked up to Elvira and suggested that Emma’s Bible be placed right in the center of the little table they were going to use to display her things.

  “Emma’d like that,” Bonnie told them. “The Word of God front and center. She’d tell you the same thing if she were here.”

  Rorey came up to me in a blue dress of Sarah’s, her wild curls waving every which way, just like her mother’s. “Mrs. Wortham,” she said solemnly, “what are we going to do about Christmas?”

  She didn’t ask about her birthday, though I knew it was only a day after the holiday. She didn’t mention the cake her mother had promised to make, though I’d heard about it from Sarah, as much as three weeks before. She didn’t say anything else at all, only stood there with her eyes wide and fearful, waiting to know what I would answer.

  “The Lord will provide when the time comes,” I heard myself tell her. “One day at a time right now.”

  Not two minutes later, Barrett Post came driving back in his sleigh with people bundled up in his back seat. Pastor Jones’s wife Juanita and Delores Pratt and her teenage granddaughter Thelma. All from church.

  “The preacher asked me to go an’ get ’em,” Mr. Post explained. “Best go and relieve him at the digging now, though.”

  The preacher? Digging? Almost I said something, but Mr. Post must’ve seen my expression.

  “Oh, he ain’t the only one, don’t worry. He only come out to ask the favor and fill my spot till I come back.”

  “How is George?”

  “Ain’t seen him today. Ain’t talked to him. His oldest boy never said nothin’ either.” He shook his head. “That’un can work, though, let me tell you. I tried to send him home after he marked the spot for us, but he stayed feedin’ fires and then tore into that diggin’ fierce.”

  Juanita and Delores were bringing beef stew, fried cabbage, applesauce, and a lemon custard into the house with them, and Thelma had two loaves of bread. Juanita gave me a tremendous hug, and Louise sat her husband down to a cup of coffee and a generous lunch.

  “Everybody keeps bringing food,” I said.

  “That’s what’s done,” Juanita told me. “Sit down, honey. We’ll take care of this.”

  For the first time, it occurred to me that everybody was treating Samuel and myself as though we’d really been family to Emma, and doing most of what they did so I wouldn’t have to. And I thought it was too bad about Albert and his wife. But then I remembered somebody else.

  “Didn’t Emma have a cousin somewhere?”

  “Mary Lou Friday, her cousin Alice’s girl,” Mr. Post confirmed. “Albert said he’d tell them the news. And Ralph Watts, that’s another cousin out West. I don’t be expectin’ them though, with s’ far to come.”

  “Miss Hazel said she’d try to make it,” Juanita suddenly told us. And I tensed inside. Hazel Sharpe? Lord have mercy. Right outside the church she’d snipped at us something fierce over our living here. She’d even told Emma it’d be the death of her to leave the boardinghouse and come back hom
e. And it was.

  I thought back over the months we’d spent, and I knew Emma’d been happy. Emma wouldn’t regret a single minute of it. But what about Miss Hazel? What about other people?

  Harry came and poked his finger in the custard, and I didn’t have the energy to tell him no.

  “You want some, precious?” Delores asked him. That was the way she talked. Anybody under six or seven years old was “precious,” and most other folks were “honey” as often as not. She scooped Harry out a bowl of custard and set it on the table with a spoon. He sat right down and started eating with his fingers, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “Time like this,” she told me, “the important thing is to keep ’em eating. Don’t matter so much that they have the regular time nor if they eat their dessert first nor nothin’ like that, so long as they fill their bellies. Folks mournin’ forget to eat sometimes, an’ that ain’t good for children. You got plenty down ’em today?”

  “We tried.”

  She stepped closer, eyeing me sympathetically. “What about you, honey? You eat any lunch?”

  I honestly couldn’t remember if I had or not, though I wasn’t pleased to be such evidence of her notion. I hadn’t forgotten. I just…hadn’t remembered to think about it when I was thinking about something else. She clucked her tongue and handed me a bowl bigger than Harry’s. Then she sat beside me, though I really didn’t want her there, and whispered, “We all loved Emma so.”

  “Yes,” I said. I put my spoon in the custard bowl and then rose to see where Rorey had so quietly gone.

  “Not a single bite,” I heard Delores say sadly. But I didn’t care. Let Harry eat it.

  “Rorey?” I called softly. She was sitting on the floor by the fireplace in the sitting room. I hoped she wasn’t upset with me for not giving her any clearer answers about Christmas. Maybe she just wanted to soak up the coziest spot in the house.

  Sarah was coming downstairs with the little book I’d gotten for her once in Pennsylvania. I waited for her and sat with them both.

  “Rorey, I didn’t mean to stop talking to you if you had more to say. It’s just the company coming. That’s all.”

  “Okay,” she said sadly. “Are you gonna have Christmas?”

  It was still on her mind, and I didn’t know what to say. Only four days away. “I guess we’ll try,” I said, though at the moment I couldn’t imagine it.

  “We can’t have Christmas,” she’d decided. “Not without Mama.”

  “Yes, you can,” Sarah jumped in. “She’s an angel now, and Christmas is angels too. Right, Mommy? Rorey’s Mommy can be one of our Christmas angels! Emma too!”

  Rorey looked at her in surprise, and I hugged them both, not knowing what else to do. Every year, Sarah and I made Christmas angels cut out of paper to decorate the wall behind our nativity set. I knew Sarah would want to do it again. But after Christmas last year, I’d given our nativity away because we’d been forced to move and there was just no way to carry it.

  “Can we, Mommy?” Sarah pressed. “Can we make the Christmas angels? Can Rorey help?”

  I was surprised at her, I really was, but ever so glad. Surely we could make the nativity from paper too. Maybe it would do them some good. “You can draw them,” I told her. “You and Rorey can start today if you want. Color them pretty and get them ready. But we won’t cut them out yet. Not with so many people here just now.”

  Rorey looked at me with her face all scrunched up, the way she got when she was puzzling over something. “Is Mama really an angel now?”

  “I don’t see why not. She’s in heaven. I know that.”

  I got up and found some paper and Crayolas, and Sarah spread them out on the floor. I hoped Franky would be interested in joining them, but he only sat and watched.

  The afternoon passed us in a slow haze, with the ladies cleaning all around me and trying to be of some comfort. They moved the bed out of Emma’s room to make enough space for the caskets, and I wished I could sleep through all this like Emma Grace and Berty were doing. But even they were awake soon enough, crying for somebody’s arms.

  Before I knew it, Samuel and the Muellers were back. It was like a dream, those long boxes coming in the house. Not real. Not right.

  Pastor Jones came with them, and I suddenly didn’t want him in the house, though I dearly loved both him and his wife. Don’t talk to us, I wanted to tell him. Don’t say anything at all, because anything you say will sound so final, so real. And I don’t want it to be real.

  They weren’t done with the graves yet. That’s what Samuel said. They’d let a couple of fires burn all morning, and the digging still wasn’t done. I didn’t acknowledge what he said. I hadn’t wanted to hear it.

  It’s too cruel, Lord. It’s too cold, what we have to do. There should be something better for Emma. Not just a long pine box in her bedroom and a hole in the frozen ground.

  Remember heaven, she would tell me. Remember the streets of gold where there is no sorrow, no pain. But here there was pain aplenty just looking into the wounded eyes of Wilametta’s children.

  “George wouldn’t come,” Alberta told me. “Not yet. I declare, I never seen a man s’ outta his mind for grief. He musta loved her, surely, but what’s ta come a’ him, I don’t know.”

  What’s to come of his children? That’s what I wanted to know. Like Franky, who rose up off the floor only when he heard the wagon, and now was sitting with his hand on the handle of his mother’s coffin. And Rorey, solemnly drawing angels with tears streaming down her cheeks. And Lizbeth, who was once again consoling a pouting baby and looking nearly dead on her feet. And Willy and Harry, just acting as though they were trying to ignore it all. And little Berty, too confused by all the people to understand.

  But I wondered about the big boys most. Sam and Joe, and now Kirk, perhaps with their father or perhaps digging in the timber, away from Juanita or Elvira or anyone that could give them a comforting hand.

  By four o’clock it was dusky, and Barrett Post and his son, Martin, Elvira’s husband, Clement, and Alberta’s son, Orville, came up from the timber. The graves were done, and they’d already fashioned temporary markers until someone could arrange for ones of stone. The funerals would be in the morning, early, with a gathering at the graveside for anyone who could manage to get to us through the snow.

  Louise and Bonnie tried again at feeding everybody, and the Muellers all went home. Frank Cafey and three or four other neighbors made their way out in the cold that night to pay respects. And after they’d all come and gone, the Posts went home too.

  It was a strange comfort having Bonnie Gray, Delores and her granddaughter, and Pastor’s wife, Juanita, stay the night. But Pastor Jones, after speaking to nearly all of the children, determined to go back over to see the night through at the Hammonds’.

  As he was getting his coat, Samuel took me aside for a minute. “George asked if we’d see to the kids,” he told me. “He said he didn’t want to go on another day. Hard to say what he might do.”

  See to the kids? As if we hadn’t already been doing that! I wanted to get a hold on George right then! What right did he have to ask us more? What right did he have to stay away so long in his pitiful madness, not even trying to be a comfort to his own flesh and blood? Those boys were over there having to be strong for their father, having almost to father him instead of the other way around! I wanted to shake him, knock his eyes open maybe, to make him see what he was doing to them.

  Samuel wouldn’t let the pastor head out alone through the snowy dark timber, though it was only a mile and Pastor Jones was young and plenty sturdy. Sam took a lantern, and they struck out together. It was a warmer night, and I was grateful for that. I stood out on the porch and watched them walk away down the trail already made by men’s feet, Mueller’s wagon, and Barrett Post’s sleigh. And when I could see them no more, I looked up at the sky and saw the stars. Emma’s stars, finally shining brighter than they had in a month of Sundays, just as if they wanted
me to know they understood. Saints come home.

  Reluctantly I turned and went inside, thinking how good it’d be just to stay under all that clear sky a little longer, to “see up to God’s heaven” like Emma had said. I thought maybe I could lay the hurt aside a little and think about the good that was waiting for all of us somewhere beyond those glorious stars.

  But my Sarah’s arms were waiting for me inside, and Rorey’s, and maybe more besides. Because even with the others there, the kids still wanted Lizbeth or me more often than not. And all of my thoughts, all of my sorting things out, could wait for their sakes. Surely it had to be so.

  It was strange sleeping that night, knowing that Emma and Wila were with us. Willy had a hard time even managing to lie down. Franky wouldn’t leave his mother’s casket, and I had to wait till he finally nodded off, and then carry him to the other room. Harry, bless his heart, kept asking where his mama was. He and Berty still just didn’t understand. Rorey cried herself to sleep for the second night in a row, and she and Sarah clung to me all night, just as I’d expected. I laid there and prayed for all of them, especially for Lizbeth, though she was seeming almost like herself again, bearing up surprisingly well.

  Late into the night I dreamed that Emma had come back and was walking through the room, praying for each one of us in turn. But then I woke and saw that it was Juanita up and praying. I hugged her and cried till she cried too, and then I felt better.

  Next morning was anything but real, feeding children and fixing them to look as nice as possible in their old clothes. The Posts were back before we were ready to see them, and then the Muellers too. Rita McPiery, Emma’s dear friend from the boardinghouse, and her brother Daniel came out, both of them looking red-faced as though they’d cried on the way. Frank Cafey was back, smelling faintly of liquor. And other neighbors, and the Henleys, who lived just a mile outside of Dearing. When Pastor and my Samuel got back with Kirky and Joe, the service started, though George and young Sam had not come in.