“I don’t even remember when or how I left the barn, or how I spent the rest of the afternoon. But I remember the night distinctly enough. He took me into town again, and it was an absolutely horrible evening. My father joined with the men in saying things about me—half of them I didn’t even understand, but I felt ugly and small and dirty just from the looks and laughs and winks that went along with their words. And that night he made me go to a man’s room alone. Nothing much happened; I suppose once he got me alone the man felt sorry for me because of how young I was, and he was almost nice to me when he saw how terrified I was.
“So he took me back downstairs to my father a little later. And then on our way home, out somewhere desolate where even if I did scream no one would hear me, my father gave me the worst beating of my life. He never said a word. He didn’t have to. The message was clear enough: I must never speak boldly to him again like I had that afternoon in the barn. I had to stay in bed for two days. My mother hardly even came into my room except to give me something to eat. I knew she felt guilty, but powerless at the same time. So she did the worst thing of all—she did nothing. She didn’t even offer me so much as a look or a smile of consolation, not even a glance to say, ‘I understand . . . I’m sorry.’”
Almeda stopped. Her voice had grown quiet, and now she looked down, took a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed her eyes.
“You know,” she went on in a moment, her voice soft and husky, “during all the years I was growing up, I never once remember hearing the words I love you. Not even from my mother. Love was nonexistent in our family. I don’t know what my two sisters felt. But all my life I felt unwanted, that my parents would have gotten rid of me the moment I was born if they could have.”
She paused again, crying now.
“Do you have any idea what it’s like,” she said through her tears, “never once all your life to be told that you are loved—by anybody? Not once. Never to be touched except in anger. Never to be held . . . never to feel arms wrapping themselves around your shoulders in tenderness . . . never to—”
She couldn’t continue, but finally broke down and sobbed, her face in her hands.
I don’t know what Katie was thinking. Part of me didn’t want to look at her. Besides, I was far too occupied with my own thoughts and feelings. I was shocked, of course, but that was only part of my response. I could feel the hurt, the ache, in her voice. And because I did love her—oh, so much!—it made what she’d gone through so much harder to hear. I just wanted to go back and take that girl she had once been in my arms and wrap her up and protect her from any more hurt and any more unkindness.
On another level, as I listened I could hardly believe what I was hearing. From the very day I had first seen her, Almeda had been to me the absolute picture of strength, and Christian virtue, and maturity. I had never seen her “weak.” There was never a time when I didn’t know she could be depended on, no matter if everyone around her fell or faltered or even ran away. To hear her describe her past was like looking into a window inside of someone else. And I couldn’t manage to make the two images come together into the single person I had always known. Suddenly there were two pictures of Almeda—the stately, solid lady, full of grace, capable and mature, and the young girl, frightened, alone, and unloved.
How could the two be the same person? Yet there sat Almeda, the same loving woman I had always known, my stepmother now, opening up this window into her soul.
Slowly I got up from where I was sitting and walked over to Almeda. I knelt down in front of her, took one of her hands in mine, and looked into her face, red with tears and the anguish of reliving the ugly memories of the past.
“Almeda,” I said softly, “I love you . . . I love you more than I can ever tell you!”
At the words a fresh torrent of weeping burst out from Almeda. I put my hand around her waist and tried to comfort her, but she had to go on crying for another minute or two.
“Oh, Corrie,” she whispered at length, “you’ll never know how precious those words are to me! Your love is such a priceless treasure to me . . . words cannot express the joy you give me.”
She blew her nose, then looked down at me with a radiant smile. I guess it’s true that pain makes a person more capable of love. Almeda’s face at that moment was more filled with love than any face I’d ever seen. Our eyes met and held. I felt I was looking right through her, not into her heart or into her past life, but into the deepest parts of her—the whole person she was, the person she had always been, the person she was still becoming. Maybe in those few seconds I had a tiny glimpse of what God sees when he looks deep into us—a glimpse into the real person, the whole person—apart from age or appearance or past or upbringing.
All these feelings passed through me in just a second or two. Then Almeda gave me a squeeze and took a deep breath.
“I want to finish,” she went on, “or I might never get this far with it again. And I want both of you to hear what I have to say. I care about the two of you, and I want you to know me—to know all about me.”
I stood up and went back to where I had been sitting.
“It’s difficult for me to describe what I was feeling back then,” she continued, “because I suppose I didn’t even know myself. I was terrified, and yet at the same time I was growing more and more determined to escape from that awful life. I suppose there was a part of me that was a fighter. I’ve been called headstrong more than once, as you know, Corrie, from the very first day when we saw each other.”
She looked over at me with a smile.
“You weren’t afraid of anybody when you went into the saloon looking for Uncle Nick, that’s for sure,” I said.
“No, I don’t suppose I was,” she replied. “And as afraid as I was of my father, by the time I was sixteen a part of me inside was biding my time until I saw an opportunity. And after he’d done it once, my father started trying to make me go upstairs alone with men again. The next time it happened, knowing what I was in for, I refused to go. ‘I just won’t do it,’ I said, which silenced the joviality around the table where we were sitting. And the look of daggers my father threw at me told me there was a beating waiting for me, the likes of which I’d never felt.
“And of course after that, nothing my father could say would make the man he’d been talking to take me away anyway, even if I’d given in. So I just sat there in silence, trembling about the ride home.
“Luckily my father had an appointment the next night with another man, a whiskey distributor I’d met before. I had never liked him one bit. The smiles he would give me, and the pinches and little jabs, were so horrible. It never took long in that man’s company to know what kind of man he was. My next younger sister still had a black eye from the hand of my father, and he wanted to make sure I was presentable because whiskey was one of my father’s main sources of income. So he didn’t beat me that night, although he made sure I knew full well that as soon as the next night was over, I was going to be so black and blue I would be in bed for a week and would never refuse to do anything he asked of me again.
“All the next day I plotted my escape. I stole what money I could find in the house, packed a few clothes in a bag, and hid it in a field nearby. Then I waited for evening to come, filled with fear and anticipation all at once.
“This time I was as nice as I could be, and I just smiled when the men called me ‘Honey,’ as if I enjoyed it, and I went right upstairs with that awful man. But on the landing I managed to get ahead of him, and since I knew what room we were going to, I ran in and locked the door behind me, then climbed out the window onto the landing and scrambled down to the alley.
“I ran away from there as fast as I could, hardly even knowing what direction I was going. I ran and ran, through alleys and streets, but always with the vague intent of moving in the direction of our home, which was on the edge of the city.
“After that it all becomes a blur. I can’t even say how I spent the rest of that night or the n
ext few days and nights. I managed to retrieve my bag of things, but where I went and what I did after that I honestly can’t even recall. There are just images that sometimes flash into my mind—a face, a place, or a set of surroundings.
“Actually that’s all I remember for the whole next year. How I survived I don’t know. Now I can say that the hand of God was upon me, but then I knew nothing of God, and certainly cared even less. If I thought it had been bad at home with my father, now my life turned black indeed. I don’t even want to remember all the things I did, or what I got myself mixed up in. I lived on the streets, sometimes in the countryside, in saloons and cheap hotels, getting what jobs I could find. I stole, I drank, I used people if I thought it might get me a free meal.
“I knew my father probably hated me all the more for making him look foolish, and that he was no doubt looking for me. But I didn’t care. I told people who I was and exactly what I thought of him. Over the next several years, as I got older and more capable, I was able to hold jobs for longer, and even to do a man’s work when I had to. Living like I did made me tough and independent. I could take care of myself, and I wasn’t afraid of my father finding me. I knew he’d never be able to get a hold on me again. I suppose I even had something of a reputation as a pretty hard, tough young lady—which no doubt is how Franklin found out about my past last year.
“To make a long story short, when I was about nineteen or twenty I fell in with a man who more or less took me under his wing. He was a confidence man, a card shark, a high-stakes swindler, but he lived a fast life, and I found that appealing. I didn’t love him, and I know he didn’t love me either. I was just a pretty girl for him to have around. I had no idea what love was and at that point in my life never stopped to even ask if such a thing as love existed. Life was survival. To survive you had to be tough, you had to take advantage of what opportunities came along, and you had to put yourself first. If other people got hurt in the process, that wasn’t my concern. Life had dealt me a pretty bad hand, and I wasn’t about to start getting pangs of conscience over anyone else.
“So I lived with him for a while, stole for him, set people up for him, and in the process lived better than I had for several years. At least I knew I was going to have a roof over my head, a warm bed, and a good meal. It was the closest thing to stability I had known in a long time. How much longer it might have gone on like this, or what might have become of us in the end I don’t know. Because then something happened which changed everything.”
Again Almeda stopped, and again I knew from her face and the tone of her voice that she was struggling within herself for the courage to say something that was painful.
The room was silent for a minute or two. I chanced a quick glance in Katie’s direction. She was looking intently at Almeda, listening to every word. Every trace of anger was gone from her face.
“There was a child,” Almeda said at last. She stopped again and hid her face in her hands.
I saw Katie gasp slightly, and I felt myself take in a quick breath. I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard!
“I’m so ashamed to tell you what I have to say next,” she went on, crying a little again. “The minute he learned I was pregnant, I was nothing to him but baggage. I woke up one morning in the hotel we’d been staying in to find myself alone with nothing but my carpetbag and a few clothes left in the room. I never saw him again. He left me ten dollars, and I was back on the street.
“I was too angry even to cry. It just drove my bitterness toward men—toward the whole world, and I suppose toward God too—deeper. The old hard determination rose up in me again, and I struck out after that day all the more mistrusting, all the more independent. I was a different person, I tell you—selfish, hateful, caring for no one but myself.
“When the baby was born—God forgive me!—I took it to an orphanage. I didn’t want to—”
Almeda broke down and wept. I wanted to comfort her, but I was so stunned by what she’d said that I couldn’t move.
“Oh, how many times I’ve relived it in my memory, wondering where I might have changed this course I was on, wondering if I did right or wrong. I was so unprepared to be a mother. Yet something in me has often wished—”
Again she stopped to collect herself, then continued.
“The birth of my baby sent me lower still. By now I was in my early twenties and something in that hard independent spirit slowly began to break. Guilt over what I had done began to set in. Gradually it ate away at me, burrowing deeper and deeper into my heart. I didn’t realize it at the time, but now I see that all the hard, determined independence was only my young way of covering up my desperate hunger to be loved. The more I tried to assert my strength, the more my soul was being torn apart. I didn’t have any idea who I was. My whole identity had come from my father. To him I was just an object to be used. No one had ever loved me. How could I do anything but despise myself? And even the most precious thing a woman has—that purity which is the only thing she has to offer her husband—I let slip away. And I gave away the child that should have been the wonderful outcome of love between a man and a woman. I was no better than my father! I didn’t even want my own baby! Oh God . . . how could I have been so shameful . . . how could—”
Again she broke down and sobbed quietly.
“There is no way I can tell you what that time was like for me,” she finally said after a while. “I felt so guilty, yet I tried to hide it. Inside I was slowly dying to all that life should be, sinking into a pit of despair, yet making it worse by the obstinate hard-bitten image I tried to keep up.
“I started drifting, caught trains to New York and Philadelphia. I worked here and there, stealing what I needed, living among some really rough men and women. I even got to be pretty handy with my fists when I had to be. It was a dreadful life! It wasn’t life at all, it was a living death.”
She paused once more. By now her tears had stopped. She breathed in deeply, and looked out the window off into the distance. As if she had suddenly become unaware that Katie and I were in the room with her, she seemed miles and years away. I’d seen that look before, a look of mingled pain and remembrance. Now at last I knew why those clouds had passed across her face.
She continued staring out the window for a long time, then suddenly came back to the present and turned and focused her gaze onto Katie.
“So you see, Katie,” she said, “when you spoke of me as someone who’s always so good, as if God was somebody I could understand but you couldn’t, do you see why your words bit so deep? I wasn’t good, Katie! I was about as despicable a person as they come. For the first twenty-five years of my life, I did everything wrong! I did not know love. I was miserable. I was mean and bitter and vengeful. I hurt people, I did more horrible things than I could count.
“If you’re going to think of Christianity as something that’s only for a certain kind of person, then you’d better leave me out altogether. If you think God reserves his life for churchy ‘good’ people, where does that leave me? All those things you said about me—nice, always smiling, holier-than-thou, forgiving, doing good turns, never getting upset, never getting angry . . . don’t you understand, Katie—none of that was me at all! The person you think you see, the person you have known these last couple of years, wasn’t me at all not so very long ago. I don’t say that to be critical, Katie. But if you’re going to criticize me for how I am now, then I think you should know the whole story. And that’s why I wanted to tell you.”
Still Katie just sat numbly, not saying anything.
“So what happened?” I asked finally. “How did you . . . I mean, how could everything have changed so much?”
Almeda turned toward me and smiled. Her eyes were a little red still, but the radiance that was normally on her countenance had returned. Having told us everything, reliving it as she did, she was ready for the sun to come back out.
“That,” she sighed, “is almost an equally long story.”
Chapter 37
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Encounter with a Shopkeeper
One day,” Almeda began again, “when I was back in Boston, I was walking in one of the better sections of town. I don’t even remember why I happened to be on that particular street because it really wasn’t a part of town I went to very often. Fate, I suppose I would have called it back then. I would call it something else now.
“In any case, I walked into a shop that sold a mixture of many things—dry goods, some fine linens, with one glass case of some very expensive jewelry. I wandered in, probably looking every bit the street-tramp that I was. I must have stood out like a sore thumb, but I didn’t really think of that myself.
“As you might imagine, my eyes immediately focused on the case of jewelry. I sauntered toward it, saw that it was filled with expensive gold and silver rings and necklaces and pendants. The proprietor of the shop was occupied along one of the far walls with a lady who was picking out some fabric, and the jewelry cabinet was out of the man’s direct line of vision. All I would need would be a second or two. If I could get my hand inside the case and snatch three or four pieces, I’d be able to dash out the door and all he’d see was the back of my heels. I’d done the same sort of thing a hundred times and had the utmost confidence in my cunning and my speed once I lit out. The only question was whether the case was locked.
“I moved up to the case and searched quickly for a lock but didn’t see one. The back seemed to be open. I eyed the pieces I thought I could nab. Then with one motion I stretched over the top of the case and reached into the back. My fingers grabbed two or three rings. I hurriedly put them in my other hand, then stretched out again and reached for two pearl necklaces that were close by. Just as I’d laid hold of them and pulled my arm back, ready to make a dash for the door, I felt the grip of a strong hand seize my shoulder.
“The store owner had sneaked up behind me and now he had me red-handed. I winced from the pain because he’d grabbed me tight. His only words were, ‘Drop them on the counter, Miss.’ There was no anger in his voice, only a calm tone of command. I instantly did what he said. I had no choice.
A Place in the Sun Page 18
