The House on Malcolm Street

by Leisha Kelly

  For a moment I wondered if I might have done something wrong. But Eliza was clinging to me, Marigold was asking her friends to continue their prayers, and despite my misgivings about coming here, I knew that my heart had made an important stride in the right direction.

  “Are you all right, dear?” Marigold asked me as we were finally getting ready to leave.

  I managed a nod. Eliza held tight to my hand. “Did you cry the sad away, Mommy?”

  The tender question brought tears to my eyes again, and I hugged her. “I’ve been needing some time in the Lord’s house, I guess.”

  Marigold smiled. “We all need to lay our hearts bare before the Lord sometimes. Would you like to talk about it?”

  “No, thank you, ma’am,” I said rather shakily. “Not yet, at least.”

  She accepted my words without a hint of offense, gathered her shawl and Bible, and started for the door.

  For some reason I was watching for Josiah as we left the building. It should have been no concern that a grown man would choose to leave church promptly and walk across town on his own. Yet it did concern me. Almost as though as soon as Josiah had asked me not to try to be his friend or help him, I had a heightened desire to do both. Maybe I was just contrary, like he said.

  “He’ll surely join us for Sunday dinner,” Marigold whispered to me, and I wondered how it could be so obvious to her what I was thinking. She squeezed my hand and smiled, and I felt like asking her if my thoughts during the church service had been transparent too.

  Thanks for not giving up on me even when I wanted you to, I said to the Lord in my head. Thank you for Marigold.

  Suddenly I was exhausted. It seemed that opening myself up just a little to acknowledge the God of the universe, or perhaps breaking through the wall that had kept me from it, had drained away all my strength. Walking to Rosie Batey’s car was an unexpected struggle that I tried my best not to show.

  Marigold invited Rosie in to dinner, but Rosie was already planning to go and meet with grandchildren across town. So Eliza and I alone accompanied Marigold along the front walk to her house. Again I thought it would be nice to be by myself to collect my thoughts for a while, to set in order all the things I’d been feeling toward the Almighty. Marigold might understand, but I did not want to push Eliza away. She was careful to keep hold of my hand and stay right at my side.

  I looked around a bit for Josiah now that we were home again. I had mixed feelings about that for sure. If he wasn’t here, Marigold and I would both wonder. If he was, he might ask me questions I wasn’t yet ready to answer. Like, what happened at church today? Why the tears? What exactly were my feelings toward God?

  He probably wouldn’t ask, not out loud at least. But I would probably think I saw the questions in his face and have to struggle with them anyway. When I would rather busy myself with something and try to put it out of my mind, at least till I could be alone.

  Marigold took my arm as we climbed the porch steps. There was no sign of Josiah, though perhaps he was inside.

  She glanced toward Mr. Abraham’s house wistfully and spoke almost under her breath. “Wouldn’t it be dandy if we could invite the neighbor to Sunday dinner?”

  “Oh, Aunt Marigold, why don’t you?” I replied immediately. “It would be dandy.”

  “He wouldn’t come. Not with his father in the house. The old man does not approve of me.”

  That was plainly put. I had thought his father’s poor health was the only reason we’d scarcely seen Mr. Abraham for days. “He’s far from a child,” I ventured to say. “Must he allow his father to keep him from friends?”

  “He wouldn’t have to,” Marigold conceded. “But he made a promise years ago, and he has chosen to abide by it, much to his own detriment, in my opinion. But I certainly respect his fidelity in the situation.”

  “What promise?”

  “That he wouldn’t consort too closely with a Christian woman as long as his father was alive.”

  “Oh, Aunt Marigold.”

  “I know,” she answered solemnly. “I might not have remained a widow for nearly so long had the neighbor refused his father such a maddening pledge, but there’s nothing to be done but take the matter to prayer. We can hardly wish a man dead. There’d be such sadness in that family.”

  I was rather stunned. “Then you really have considered marriage, quite seriously, with only this to hold you back?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” she said. “Nor venture to answer for Saul in the matter. I can’t accuse him of impropriety in his father’s eyes. But he did tell me once that his heart skates a rather fine line.”

  I’m sure my eyes grew wide. “What did you say to that?”

  “I told him I like to skate.”

  Eliza may not have purely understood such a conversation, but I was left with my heart rather in a flutter about it, especially when three separate automobiles pulled up outside the Abrahams’ house before we even got dinner on the table. What if the old man lay dying already and they had called the family in to be at his side in the final moments? It just wasn’t right to think of it, and I’m sure it must have been a struggle for Marigold when she noticed. But she bowed her head and said a prayer for the man’s soul as well as his body, and I wished that I could one day stand with my heart so blameless before the Lord.

  “Do you really love Mr. Abraham?” I dared to ask her.

  “Of course I do,” she said abruptly. “Or there’d be no use discussing it.”

  “Do you think he will come to know the Lord?”

  “Perhaps. One day.” She glanced out the window at an unfamiliar young man standing on Mr. Abraham’s porch, but then turned her attention back to the mashed potatoes. “What do you think? Do these need more butter?”

  I didn’t bother to taste them. “Surely they’re fine. You seem to season everything to suit my taste.”

  “You’re just easy to please.”

  Josiah hadn’t shown himself, and I wasn’t sure he’d come home, but Marigold asked me to call him down from his room, if he was there.

  I half expected not to find him but he was upstairs, barefoot again, in an undershirt, and with his hair even more disheveled than the last time. He must have been lying down.

  Once again he asked me if I’d rather take dinner without him.

  “No,” I said. “Because Marigold wants you to come now.”

  He shrugged. “It’s her house.”

  He turned and shut the door to his room without another word, and I knew he would be getting himself dressed appropriately for Marigold’s dinner table. I thought of the things he’d told me, that he was a distant relative of Marigold’s late husband. No wonder John had never mentioned him. They were no kin at all. Josiah was just an old acquaintance who had gotten him in trouble with his mother one summer.

  Marigold had amazing patience. Waiting for Mr. Abraham. Enduring her husband’s moody relative, Josiah, all this time. And me. How did she see me? Teary. A charity case or mission project. Such thinking had me a little testy as I descended the stairs and returned to the kitchen.

  Eliza was singing beside the table, carefully laying napkins beside each place setting. Marigold was arranging carameled carrots around the roast beef on a platter. This was a meal fit for company to be sure. Too bad she could not have the guest she wanted, at least not yet. Watching her, I thought of how comfortably we’d worked together for the last few days. I’d thought of her as a pleasant grandmotherly type, simple and easy to become acquainted with. But did I really know Marigold at all? How could I, in less than a week? There was certainly far more to her than the limp and the fruit harvest.

  I sat at the table and felt like crying again. Somehow the tears at church had been cleansing, maybe even healing in a way, and I’d felt that perhaps I could start over with God and find solid ground again in my heart and my thinking. But this, these feelings now – it was as if some invisible thief had snuck in and stolen away the peace and hope I had found. We were stranded
here. Penniless. With strangers who would not necessarily care to cope with us for much longer. Marigold’s heart was not in her boardinghouse at all, but next door with the neighbor. And Josiah. His heart was simply lost with the grief and the guilt he would probably never come to terms with.

  I’d been awed by thoughts of God’s creation, his majesty, the very bigness of all he’d made and all he was. But how could I translate such feelings into the small space of my life, which looked so bleak and pointless? What did it matter that I could respect the Maker of the universe, when I still failed to truly trust him for tomorrow?

  Surely it was my own failing, my own finite view of things and pessimistic attitude causing my unrest. But it was far too easy to let the old bitterness creep back in.

  If you can create the world, Lord, if you can make the stars, why can’t you give me any assurances? Why can’t you show me why the things you do make sense, and help me find a way to make a decent life for my daughter? We can’t stay here! Not for very long. Can we?

  Eliza stopped what she was doing and gave me a hug. “Feel better?” she asked. I nodded, unable to tell her that the truth was quite the opposite.

  Josiah came in behind her, looking like he was dreadfully unhappy to have been disturbed. I knew he was still upset with me, though the reasoning was bizarre enough that my daughter would never understand. I wouldn’t promise to despise him as he apparently despised me. I wouldn’t pledge to refuse him any potential help or possibility of friendship. What an absurd place to be in.

  Of course, Marigold’s wonderful meal was eaten mostly in silence. She surely noticed, but I know her attention was distracted by whatever might be taking place at Mr. Abraham’s house. We heard the door several times. Two automobiles pulled away only to be replaced by two more.

  She said nothing of it. And when we were finished with the meal, she surprised me by inviting Eliza to her room to listen to the Victrola. “I’m not feeling all that chipper right now,” she told me. “Would you mind cleaning up without me?”

  “No, of course not. Not at all.”

  She took Eliza’s hand and started away. I expected that Josiah would simply go and seclude himself in his room again. He probably expected that too, but as she was leaving, she turned her head suddenly and addressed him with a somber expression. “Josiah, every single knife in this kitchen is dull as an old sugar spoon. I would appreciate it if you would sharpen them for me.”

  He sat and stared. He didn’t say a word. And then when she and Eliza were gone from the room he slapped his hand against the table with enough force to rattle the dishes. I carried the platter to the stove top, careful not to look at him. Was he angry at Marigold? Probably. Her words had certainly seemed designed to prevent him from separating himself this afternoon. Maybe even to make him work alongside me, or at least tolerate my presence for a few minutes as he gathered whatever he needed to work elsewhere.

  I thought he’d jump up, grab every knife he could find, and go outside. But he surprised me completely. He didn’t move again as I cleared the table, except to lean forward and put his head in his hands. And then as I began running water for the dishes, he thumbed through Marigold’s old Bible, apparently found what he was looking for, and read it in silence. Finally I could hear him behind me, closing the big book, rising to his feet, and pushing the chair back.

  “How many knives to be washed?”

  I was so startled at his voice that I didn’t catch the words. “What?”

  “How many knives need to be washed? Lay them aside when you’re finished, and I’ll get them when I’m done with the rest.”

  “Um, it looks like two.”

  “Steak knives?”

  “Oh, four more then. I meant the carving and paring ones.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  He walked closer and opened a drawer. “I guess she’s probably got more than a dozen if you count every type. And she did say every.”

  I found his mellow compliance somehow disconcerting. Too bad he hadn’t stood up to Marigold and insisted that he could do his job later, after I was done in the kitchen. But his next words confirmed to me the condition of his heart in the midst of the outward obedience.

  “It’s her house. Bottom line.”

  Noisily, he filled his hands with the knives from the drawer and plopped them all onto the newly cleared table. Then he pulled something wrapped in cloth from the very back of the dishtowel drawer.

  “It’s only been about six months. They can’t be all that bad. Course I didn’t do them all then.”

  I wished he would stop talking and take everything outside. But he sat at a kitchen chair, unwrapped the knife sharpener, and began the steady skritch-skritch sound of the polishing stone on metal.

  “I’ve done this twice for Aunt Mari,” he said with a strange calm in his voice. “Both of the other times she was looking for a way to busy my hands while she tried her durndest to talk some sense in my direction. Wonder what she’s up to this time. It’s been a long spell since she’s played her Victrola.”

  “Maybe it’s because she has a child here with her,” I dared to say. “She tries very hard to make Eliza comfortable.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  Why was he talking to me? Even more, why was I responding? Was that what Marigold had in mind? I bumped one drinking glass into another and had to carefully inspect them both to make sure they weren’t chipped. Behind me, the skritch-skritch continued.

  We were both quiet for several minutes, and I was beginning to hope that I could finish my job and leave the room before any more words were spoken. But he callously shattered the silence before I even finished with the silverware.

  “Why are you here, anyway?”

  “Excuse me?” I asked, immediately feeling hurt and defensive.

  “Why are you here? I mean in Andersonville and not some other place.”

  “I told you, your – um – Marigold invited us.”

  “I know you said that. But why’d she invite you? What’d you say to give her the idea that she should? And why’d you take her up on it?”

  How could he ask such a thing? He knew of John’s death. Did he think I had abundant means, abundant options?

  “I . . . uh . . .”

  How could I answer? By spilling out the woeful story of selling our household goods bit by bit, losing our home, sleeping in the park? My eyes filled with tears. Maybe he was trying to drive me away. But where could we go? I still had nothing.

  “You got family of your own?”

  I choked down what I could of the anger and despair rising in me. “Very little.”

  “’Nuff to write letters to, I guess.”

  Words spilled out before I could stop them. “Isn’t it my business if I choose to write letters, and none of yours what Marigold and I agree upon?”

  “Yeah,” he acknowledged. “But I’m a prying cuss that wants to know why you didn’t just go and stay with those other folks you’re close enough with to be writing letters back and forth.”

  I dropped a fork and left it where it lay as I made an attempt to answer him. “I wrote to an old neighbor in St. Louis. I did ask her once if we could stay with them. She . . . she said she didn’t have room and her husband wouldn’t allow it.”

  He was quiet for a moment. A solitary tear dropped to my cheek as I swirled the dishcloth around a bowl in the dishwater.

  Maybe he was thinking. But he was just hardheaded enough to push me a little farther. “What about the other letter?”

  “I – I wrote to my father. Anna – the neighbor – said he hadn’t been well. But we can’t stay there. And – and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop asking me questions.”

  Skritch-skritch. There was no other sound from him as I hurried with the rest of the regular dishes. And then again as I was just getting started with the pans, he broke the silence.

  “See what I was telling you last night? There’s no help in a conversation with me. Nothing particularly friendly, either.
”

  I didn’t answer. I prayed he’d go away.

  Skritch-skritch.

  “So why can’t you stay with your father?”

  Skritch.

  “It’s none of your business! None at all! We just can’t!”

  “Is he a hateful drunk like mine?”

  I set the pot I was holding upside down in the wire drying rack, took a dishtowel with me, and headed straight for the back door. I didn’t need his questions, didn’t need the onslaught of suspicion and spiteful distrust. I’d gotten most things washed. I’d finish later. When Josiah was out of the kitchen.

  I sat on the back step for a moment with the towel in my hands. A dark-haired woman was walking with a tiny child in Mr. Abraham’s backyard. She glanced my way and then turned her head.

  Why, Lord? Why am I here where I’m unwanted? What does Josiah have against me and who gave him the right to question me anyway? What should I do now? And why are you so silent – every time I need you?

  The woman and her child next door went into the house, and I glanced toward Marigold’s garden. I could weed a little more. Of course it needed it. But I really didn’t feel like doing anything. The tears blurred my vision, and I wiped at them with a corner of the dishtowel. We should move on. I would, if there were any way possible.

  Behind me the door opened slowly, and I hoped it was Marigold, or perhaps Eliza ready to place her comforting arm across my shoulders as she’d done before. But I could tell by the footfalls that it was Josiah. Following me. I rose to my feet.

  “Please don’t walk away,” he said, his voice strangely sad.

  “Why shouldn’t I? You don’t want a conversation, at least not a friendly one.”