Ready or Not (Aggie's Inheritance)

by Havig, Chautona

  William seemed surprised. “You’re not going to wake them up?”

  “Are you nuts? Have you not heard the old saying ‘let sleeping dogs lie?’ I’ll deal with the culprit after we’ve all had a good night’s sleep.” Aggie was utterly bewildered.

  William shook his head and headed for the door. “It’s getting late. I’d better go.”

  A broken William rushed out the door. Aggie considered letting him go but couldn’t. She raced after him, calling his name. “William? Come on, William, talk to me.” As she reached his side, Aggie grabbed his arm and turned him, so she could see his face. Moist eyes confused her further. “What is going on with you? Every time you are at my house, you are agitated; right now, you’re almost distraught. What’s going on?”

  William visibly sagged. He led Aggie to a very large oak tree in a field across the highway. Sitting down, William breathed the deepest, most pain filled sigh Aggie had ever heard. Moments later, he began to sob. It was heart wrenching. She’d seen men cry so seldom that, by contrast, his cries seemed wrung from him by force. Shocked, Aggie, unsure what else to do, wrapped her arm around him and tried to hold him. Being so much smaller, it seemed an exercise in futility.

  “Cry it out, William. You’ve held in whatever this is way too long. Everyone keeps telling me that we need to cry when we’re hurting.” She hoped it was the right thing to say. The grief tormenting him overwhelmed both of them-- William as he tried to gain control and Aggie as she struggled to console him.

  After what seemed to be hours, William was dry. He couldn’t have cried another tear. A long silence followed before William said, with a voice ragged and soaked in pain, “Thank you, Aggie. I--”

  Aggie listened. Everyone opened up to her in ways they wouldn’t with others, and William was no exception. Once started, the story seemed to gush forth as if unstoppable. “You know, Aggie, how you call that house the ‘Shambles?’ It’s almost ironic. That is exactly what that house represents to me; the shambles that my parents made of my life.” He sighed. “We moved into that house when I was four. I couldn’t wait to leave.”

  When William spoke of his father, Aggie noticed a strange dichotomy. One minute, he sounded as if he held a hero-like worship for the man, and the next, his anger flared again. “Why would a man leave three helpless children with a woman like my mother? Why didn’t he take us with him? He just went to work one day and never came home.” Unsure of what to say, she waited for him to continue but her heart dropped at his next words. “Mom blamed me, you know.”

  “Oh, no! I’m sure--”

  “No, Aggie. She really did. Anything she could blame on one of us children, she did. She blamed us for being born. It was insane!”

  William seemed on the verge of tears again. As concerned as she was for him, she was human enough to be curious as to the end of William’s story. She didn’t have to worry. Once William began talking, it seemed as though he couldn’t stop. He spoke of beatings that he, his little sister, and baby brother endured. His mother’s rages, while unpredictable, had often seemed to punctuate almost any event, which invariably meant a beating for one of her three children. However, when Mona Markenson left her eighteen-month-old child unconscious, ten-year old William made a decision. He determined she would never hurt either of his siblings again.

  “I remember being confused as to why my brother and sister wouldn’t have anything to do with me. For some reason, Social Services left me with my mother. I had no evidence of broken bones from the x-rays, but Pam and Mike did. They believed Mom when she said my father caused the breaks. They took Pam and Mike from us because Mom didn’t get them proper medical attention when our father supposedly beat them, but they left me because she wasn’t a danger to me. Isn’t that pathetic?”

  Aggie nodded. She was speechless. The raw pain in William’s eyes was hard to swallow. She wanted to say something, anything, but was speechless. “I’m sorry.” She meant it, but it sounded so trite.

  “I’m sorry too. I overreacted with Tavish that day with the stairs. My mother used to lock me under those stairs. It was dusty and often filthy. She’d forget about me until I’d give in and beg for her to let me out. Then I’d get a beating again, but at least I was out. It was worth it at that point.” He was silent for a moment before going on.

  “And Vannie’s room.” He swallowed hard. “I found my baby brother beaten and half-unconscious in there. I found out later that she broke two ribs that time. I had to take him over to Mrs. Dyke for most of the day so that Mom wouldn’t get angry and hurt him when he cried with the pain of it all. She tried once.” He pointed to a small half-moon near his temple. “I have this scar from it. I stepped between her and Mikey, so she threw the fireplace shovel at me. She would have killed him, I know it.”

  Aggie remembered something and asked William what he meant when he said that his brother and sister hadn’t forgiven him. “For what? What did you do?”

  William sighed. “I didn’t go too. They thought I defended Mom and said she didn’t hurt us. They had no idea that my staying behind made it worse for me. I guess I can see why they thought what they did. I hoped that when we were all adults we could reconnect, but we never did. They still won’t speak to me. They stayed with the same older couple for their whole childhood. They didn’t move around like some kids have to. I’m glad for that.”

  “Why didn’t Mrs. Dyke do something? Couldn’t she have called the authorities?”

  He shrugged. “I never asked. I think they are the ones who finally got the little kids out of here, though. I just didn’t want to know, you know?”

  “Afraid to damage the only solid relationship you had?”

  “Well,” he admitted, “questioning them like that seemed to be a poor way to thank them for all their support over the years.”

  William seemed calmer. He was silent for a long time and then looked at Aggie. Her face, always expressive of her heart, showed the concern and empathy she felt for him. He seemed to get the burden off his chest, but now she felt an awkwardness come over him. “William?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Thanks for trusting me with your story. I guess I see why you didn’t want to talk about it before. It’s not the kind of thing you share with someone you hardly know, is it?”

  “It’s never been something I shared easily with anyone. It always feels like it’s not real if I don’t acknowledge it.”

  That statement produced an unexpected reaction. “I think you’re wrong. I think you keep stuffing it down until you’re ready to burst with it. It might be time to accept the reality of it when memories arise and then move on, instead of trying to pretend they don’t exist.” She shrugged, sheepishly. “That’s what I keep trying to remember with the children anyway.”

  He looked down at Aggie. “You’re really good with them. I mean, you’ve had quite a few mishaps, but they aren’t afraid of you, and they’re coping with the loss of their parents. That’s pretty incredible from my viewpoint.”

  William sighed. “You need help though, Aggie. It’s too much work for one person. God didn’t intend for children to be raised with only an extremely young mother.”

  She started to answer, but William didn’t seem to notice. “Aggie, I wonder…” His expression looked expectant, but he said nothing more.

  “I think that maybe you should finish before I can respond.” She tried to interject a little lightheartedness.

  “Do you think that we could try again? That date we had-- it was such a disaster.” The indignation that appeared on her face sent him scrambling to clarify. “I know it was my fault! I’m not trying to make excuses, but let’s face it; I ruined it.”

  “I don’t know…” Aggie was a little surprised. She knew they had become much closer friends, but she thought they’d had an unspoken understanding that neither of them was interested in that sort of relationship. “Why?”

  “Well, Naggie Aggie, I’m not sure, but with the last wall between us torn down, it seeme
d reasonable to consider it.”

  Aggie was thoughtful. After their disastrous attempt at a date, she was certain that she was through with dating all together, and she wasn’t interested in trying it again. Then again, if they both hadn’t wanted to consider a relationship, and now William did, perhaps the Lord had other plans for her. “I guess the worst thing that would happen is we’d find out this isn’t what the Lord wants for us…”

  “Well, if that isn’t the most unenthusiastic “yes” I’ve ever heard…”

  “You know, I won’t have much time for this. Between my responsibilities with the kids, the work still left on the house…”

  “We’ll take it as it comes, if it comes, then. I just thought,” William seemed to struggle for words, in an almost Luke-like manner, “it made sense for us to see. Meanwhile, I’m on duty in the morning. Wade’s grandmother died, and I took his shift.”

  They walked back to her house, where William climbed into his car and backed out of the driveway. Aggie smiled to herself as she climbed the steps to her newly refurbished home. “Lord, it’s a good thing that life isn’t supposed to be like a Hollywood movie. This one would have flopped big time. There wasn’t any music swelling into a crescendo, we didn’t have those nauseating long, lingering glances at one another, and thankfully, there was no passionate kiss,” she whispered, relieved. “You know, Lord, there has to be more to living than Hollywood’s shallow imitation of life.”

  As she crawled into bed, the irony struck her. The Shambles represented pain and rejection to William; however, as Iris had said during the toast of lemonade to her family, this house had most definitely become Aggie’s and her family’s haven. Almost six months before, ready or not, the Lord had thrust her into the most unfamiliar life she could have imagined. Chaos often characterized her days. She rarely knew what she should do, but thanks to an unlimited p-mail account, a generous supply of hymns, the comfort of the Bible, and dear friends and family to bolster her, Aggie’s life was as imperfectly perfect as she could desire. She wasn’t ready yet, but she’d come a long way.

  The End

  Libby’s Blackberry Cobbler Ingredients

  1-1/2 sticks butter (Forget margarine, eat the real thing!)

  2 cups all-purpose flour (If you want whole wheat, fine… but it won’t be as good)

  1-1/2 cups sugar (Yes, the lovely white refined kind)

  4 tsp baking powder (Stephen always said was a housewife’s gunpowder!)

  1 tsp salt (Zeke, it won’t raise your blood pressure if you eat just one piece!)

  1 TBS Lavender blossoms (optional)

  1 cup milk, half & half, or whipping cream (I recommend whipping cream)

  2 tsp vanilla extract (Everything is better with vanilla)

  2 TBS tapioca pearls

  4-1/2 cups (2 average-sized packages) frozen blackberries, thawed and drained (You can have the taste of summer all year round thanks to the lovely invention-- the deep freeze!)

  Bake in a 13” x 9” pan (Think of it as dessert casserole!)

  Preheat oven to 375 degrees. As the oven preheats, add the butter to the baking dish and place in the oven. Remove pan from oven when butter has melted. (Hint: You really do want to keep an eye on it… burned butter just isn’t the flavor you’re trying to achieve.)

  Meanwhile, mix flour, sugar (reserve half a cup), baking powder, lavender blossoms and salt into a large mixing bowl. Next add milk (or if you want an exceptional product, cream!), and vanilla extract to the dry mixture, and mix well. As you mix, remember to thank the Lord for creating berries!

  Spread the batter evenly over the butter in the baking dish. Next, arrange the blackberries over the batter, and then sprinkle the tapioca and half cup of sugar over the berries. Place the baking dish in the oven (DON’T forget to use potholders! That pan is just out of the oven, and if you’d been in the oven at 375 degrees you’d be hot too! You can burn your hands so fast it’ll take prescription strength salve to soothe them-- not that I’d know anything about that) and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour (until the crust is golden brown). To test doneness, insert a toothpick into the batter. A “clean” toothpick indicates a done dish (which in cooking is a done deal)!

  Serve with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

  Don’t miss the next installment of Aggie’s Trials with

  For Keeps

  Six months after Aggie Milliken “inherited” her sister’s eight children, life seemed settled if a bit chaotic. But, then a letter arrived that has the potential to change everything.

  Between chicken pox, mishaps, and daily living with a brood of children, Aggie feels like she’s losing her marbles and now must decide if she’s playing For Keeps.

  Available now in paperback, on Kindle and Nook or PDF for your reading pleasure.

  Visit www.chautona.com for more details.