When the Morning Glory Blooms (9781426770777)

by Ruchti, Cynthia

  “And that they don’t waste time because they can’t afford to have their weapons out of commission for long in certain areas. I can tell he doesn’t want to scare me, though. Those kinds of comments aren’t frequent. He said the biggest surprise for him was that the whole country smells like an outhouse.”

  “What?”

  “The Koreans use human . . . excrement . . . on their fields. The whole country smells like it. Others warned him on the ship over. He worked on his dad’s farm as a kid, so he laughed them off. Until they landed.”

  Anna pinched her nose. Then she held her hand to the side of her mouth and said, “I half expected the same thing here.”

  “Me, too. I’m glad we were both wrong.”

  The pause between them hinted of the separation to come.

  Ivy skipped telling Anna about the friends Drew had seen cut down by the enemy, about the minutes-old orphans crying through the smoking villages, about the villagers so wracked by starvation that they ate—. Time for another subject. “He draws.”

  “Sketches? Of people?”

  “Other soldiers. Jeeps. A Sherman tank disguised with rice straw. An amphibious duck.”

  “Aren’t all ducks amphibious?”

  “This one was half tank, half boat.”

  “Oh.”

  “Their camp. The mess tent.”

  “Is he a good artist? Could I see some of his drawings?”

  Anna played the role of mother and grandmother and favorite aunt and much older sister in Ivy’s life. Friend. Her only friend. Friends shared things like quotations and sketches from love letters.

  Ivy slipped the thin pages from the envelope, unfolded them with reverence, and flipped through to a series of sketches on a page by themselves. “I think he’s as good as a lot of the war cartoonists I’ve seen in the newspaper.” She handed the page to Anna and held her breath.

  “Oh, my. You’re right about his talent. These are wonderful. Oh, to have a treasure like this from—” Anna’s eyes glistened, but she stopped talking.

  “I like the one of the soldier sitting under his poncho, with his back against that broken-down shack . . .”

  “His boots and socks on the ground beside him.”

  “Soaking his feet in his helmet.”

  The two shared a moment of laughter in an otherwise humorless scene.

  Anna squinted and pulled the paper nearer. “He’s writing a letter, it appears.”

  “I guess so.”

  “To his sweetheart? I wonder.”

  “Drew says . . . ”

  “What?”

  “He says so many of his buddies worry about the women—wives and girlfriends—they left in the States, worry that they’re not being faithful to them. It drives them a little batty.”

  Anna pressed her hands to her heart. “How difficult not to trust the one you love, not to be assured that their word is true.” Her gaze drifted to the window.

  Too much talking. Ivy hadn’t allowed her mouth so much exercise since . . . ever. And for good reason. Look where talking could lead—into inescapable corners. Now she’d have to use more words to climb out.

  “See the benches and the rough podium in this sketch, Anna? That’s where they have church. No walls. No stained glass. Their chaplain is a character, from what Drew says.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “And this one.” Ivy pointed to the lower right-hand corner of the paper. “I . . . I can’t look at this without getting choked up.”

  “A child.”

  “One of the Korean children from an orphanage his unit visited. The little face seems to say so much, doesn’t it?”

  “It says a great deal about your Drew, too, Ivy. That the face of a child would so capture him. That he would sketch that face with such a tender touch and such vibrant expression. Mmm. A good man. He’ll make a good father.”

  Words. Too many words. Ivy’s long-braced resolve dislodged. “He . . . he doesn’t know.”

  Anna held the sketches toward Ivy. “Most men doubt their abilities to be a good father. That’s only natural. It’ll come to him. He has all the signs.”

  “Anna, he doesn’t know I’m carrying this child.”

  The older woman plopped her hands down along her sides on the bedcovers. “Oh, Ivy, you’ve been working so hard to hide the truth. You must be exhausted. Honesty takes so little energy. Dishonesty can wear a person out.”

  The smell of Salisbury steak and creamed corn signaled Anna’s supper was on the way into the room, which meant Ivy needed to be on her way out.

  “Get the letter written tonight, Ivy,” Anna called out as Ivy collected her purse, the pieces of the letter, and the notebook with Anna’s latest story. “We all must risk rejection in order to live honestly. A man like that deserves your whole, true heart.”

  17

  Anna—1890s

  It became routine for Mr. Grissom and me to share tea or coffee and sometimes a light meal after an adoption signing. His volunteering to come to the house, rather than our making the trip to his office, was much appreciated. The Kinneys stayed on occasion as well. But more often than not, other duties called them, leaving Mr. Grissom and me to reflect on the proceedings and speculate on the outcome.

  Puff always seemed to be otherwise engaged. I assume he was not comfortable with anyone observing how the loss of our tiny houseguests registered on his face. I, on the other hand, had too little shame. I didn’t even attempt to stop the flood of tears when they pressed.

  Defying explanation, Mr. Grissom always waited patiently for my tears to subside before launching into discussion. He busied himself with paperwork or leaned his head back against his chair and closed his eyes. I imagine he prayed. I suspect he often prayed for me.

  A team of permanent backers. That’s the phrase Josiah used in describing the phantom people yet to reveal themselves. As grateful as I was for Puff, Lydia and Pastor Kinney, Dr. Noel, and Josiah, I had yet to discover those with the means and the desire to invest financially in homegrown acts of redemption.

  The church was slow to be convinced. Wouldn’t one think that the forgiven would be quickest to forgive others? That the redeemed would fall over one another in their rush to carry the song of deliverance to those who had yet to hear its calming melody? That those who had found refuge would do everything in their power to light the way for others?

  But despite Pastor Kinney’s best sermonizing on the subject, the church people seemed to see only sin and rebellion, bulging bellies of disobedience to God’s plan of purity. They raised their chins and crossed the street to avoid us, as if their own white robes of righteousness might turn gray if they walked through the same patch of air. As if He whose hands had fashioned their robes had reached His limit of sinners to love. As if He’d exhausted His supply of grace.

  Puff assured me the townspeople were not hopeless, just stubborn, steeped in traditional taboos, bound by fears that they couldn’t love the sinner without being tattooed with her sin. Imagine what they thought of me! I must have seemed a carnival freak, every inch of my skin branded by the stains of the young women who sought refuge in my home.

  The congregation might have run me out of town if they could have seen the stains on the inside of me, the pain I’d caused.

  I recall an afternoon’s conversation with Lydia that almost forced a confession.

  “Your face is as gray as a November sky, Anna.”

  I wasn’t hiding my disgust at the latest snubbing from the president of the Ladies Aid Society. Insightful to a fault, Lydia would have noticed even if I had successfully masked my disappointment.

  “Anna, I know the joy is there, somewhere behind the clouds. But at present, you are casting shadows.”

  “Lydia, I don’t understand how you can be patient with these people.”

  “Our parishioners? They need grace, like anyone else.” She crossed her arms as if that were the end of it.

  “They’re pigheaded and rude and self-righteous and
—”

  “And your words just now were . . . were what, Anna?”

  “But their hearts are Siberian! They’re cold and unfeeling toward these unwed mothers. How can they not see that the girls don’t need more judgment and shame, but love and careful guidance and encouragement and . . . and understanding that when people are in trouble, they need more grace, not less.”

  Lydia, always the wiser of us, waited a moment before she spoke, allowing the poignancy of what I’d spoken to seep into my own soul.

  “They can’t see, Anna, because we haven’t shown them.”

  “But—”

  “We have talked at them, not with them. We’ve responded to their disgust with disparaging looks and remarks of our own. Their arrows of prejudice against these hurting women are returned by our poisonous darts of judgment against their judging others! How can that honor God?”

  “Lydia, I know He wouldn’t want my girls to be shunned by His people.”

  “Nor would He want us to grow bitter toward those who have yet to plumb the full depth of His grace.”

  Had I plumbed the full depth? Obviously not. I’d seen it. I lived because of it. And my mother died at its hand.

  Lydia’s comment stung in a healing way. Medicinally. Like iodine. “They deserve the very kindness I’m asking from them?”

  “Yes, Anna.”

  “My most challenging assignment yet.”

  “But might it also be among the most rewarding? Few things are as beautiful as the scene when the Son parts the clouds.”

  The dinner party almost a year into it was Lydia’s idea.

  I’d always answered honestly when asked about the financial picture for the home. “God is good. We have no reserves. But God is good.”

  I often tacked a faith statement onto both the front and back of our needs, like a train with a locomotive at each end. There were times, many times, when the cars in between reached far down the track, around the bend, beyond my sight. But I was often reminded that where God is concerned, there is always a locomotive at each end.

  Lydia suggested a formal dinner party with a table full of prospective contributors. She’d handle the guest list if I’d see to the food and prepare a compelling appeal about the value of my home for unwed mothers.

  Its value? I wasn’t yet convinced of its wisdom. I wavered like a newborn colt, eager to run but handicapped by my own weaknesses and clumsiness. The meal would be the less taxing of the two chores.

  For some reason, Lydia felt it necessary to keep the guest list from me. I was informed there would be twenty of us dining together on the chosen Saturday evening. That was all I knew.

  Puff helped me put all three leaves in the thick-legged table in the dining room days ahead of time to allow me the opportunity to fuss and fiddle. A snowy damask tablecloth served as foundation. And upon it I would put what? The dishes we were content to use any other day seemed as coarse as burlap for this event, and woefully mismatched. Six milky blue. Seven bright cobalt. A handful of white bread-and-butter plates. All hand-me-downs for which I’d once been grateful and now found embarrassing.

  But not for long.

  Dr. Noel paid an unexpected visit the afternoon of my fretting over the dishes. He was on his way home from setting the broken leg of a neighboring farm boy whose hayloft acrobatics cost him a bit of time off his feet. The family paid Dr. Noel in the currency in which they were accustomed to dealing—gooseberry preserves, pillow slips, and an odd assortment of china. Two of this, one of that, three of another—bowls and cups and saucers and plates. White, pale blue, and silver-rimmed.

  “The preserves I intend to keep for myself,” he said. “But I have no use for the pillow slips or the plates. Could you use them?”

  As so often happened, I’d been unable to create an answer to my need. Why had I assumed it was up to me? Why did I repeatedly falter when my own imagination ran dry of ideas? Didn’t I know by then that the Lord delights in surprising His children with answers beyond imagination?

  Each of the twenty place settings was unique, a quality I hoped my guests would find more appealing than symmetry. From the scrap box, I pulled a generous remnant of soft yellow cotton fabric. Measuring carefully, I cut from it twenty equal squares for dinner napkins. Bachelor’s buttons and marigolds in milk-glass vases would help the setting look intentional, I prayed.

  The flatware would accompany Lydia. Her mother’s. She promised to arrive early enough to have it safely tucked at each place before the first guest arrived.

  My attention turned to the meal itself. Had I the foresight, I long ago would have recognized that Puff’s insistence on inviting his pig, Ham, to live with us was the divine preparation for this very meal. Ham’s hams were well smoked and ready. Potatoes and beans from the garden. Pickled beets from the root cellar. Creamed cucumbers. Herbed biscuits with blue violet jelly. And apple-something for dessert.

  The kitchen was a laboratory for apple experiments. When the harvest is plentiful, the laborers must be creative. Caramel apple cobbler with thick clouds of whipped cream seemed just the thing to sweeten and soothe the guests’ stomachs before they were subjected to my financial appeal.

  When young women lived with me, they worked beside me because their help was needed and because work is both healing and character building. At the time of the dinner party, I was alone in the house, more particularly in the kitchen.

  Until Josiah Grissom arrived.

  I never asked what prompted him to show up at my door two hours ahead of schedule. I was learning not to question the miraculous. As organized as I thought myself to be, the enormity of the task was overwhelming, a fact made evident by the flour-strewn but aromatic chaos in my kitchen.

  Josiah shed his tailored jacket and silk tie, rolled up the sleeves of his crisp white shirt, and tucked a linen dish towel into his waistband for an apron.

  “What can I do to help?” Six beautiful words! I may have wondered at his prowess in culinary endeavors, but I did not doubt his sincerity.

  “Peel potatoes?”

  “Are you asking if I can or if I will?”

  “Both.”

  “Yes. And yes.” He brushed a smudge of flour off my cheek before tackling the mound of freshly scrubbed potatoes. I think . . . yes . . . I can still feel the sweet pressure of that brief touch.

  We worked in silence, for the most part. Puff joined us from time to time, lured by the heavenly aroma of the smoked ham and the hope that he might help taste test. He offered to start the coffee, a task I would’ve forgotten in my fervor to get all the food hot and ready for the table at the same time.

  Puff and Josiah collaborated quietly as we neared the end of our efforts and as the clock crept closer to the appointed time for guests to arrive. Josiah took the pan of biscuits from my hands and shooed me upstairs to pull my frazzled self together, claiming that the two men had things well in hand.

  One glance in the upstairs hall mirror told me I should have allowed more time for primping. My face was flushed and glistening. My hair hung limp and windblown, although the only wind I’d faced was self-generated as I’d flown from project to project. My work dress held evidence of every dish to which I’d put my hands.

  I could hear the Kinneys’ buggy wheels in the drive as I stepped out of my dress and into the navy skirt and white blouse Lydia always said was too “school marmish” for me. She was probably right. But my choices were limited, as was time. I wrestled with my hair, frustrated with its cumbersome weight and stubbornness. I quickly redid its braiding and let the braid hang down my back, fearful that I would miss the arrival of my guests if I took the time to pin it up. The wide navy satin ribbon from a hand-me-down hat held strays in place at the top of my braid. A small silk sunflower from the same hat became a brooch at my neck. Not until I began my descent down the stairs did I realize that I’d dressed myself to look like the dining table.

  Josiah—fully dressed and none the worse for wear—and Pastor Kinney were conversing in the f
ront parlor when I reached the bottom of the stairs. The faint clink of silverware and china let me know where Lydia was occupied. Puff had disappeared. Pastor Kinney called to us from the parlor, inviting us to share a brief season of prayer before the other guests arrived. Prayer, balm I needed.

  Grateful again for divine timing, I raised my eyes following Pastor Kinney’s decisive “Amen!” to see the dust clouds of an approaching carriage that was turning into my drive.

  Puff had shaved! I’d never seen his face clean shaven. Or the black suit coat and collarless white shirt he wore over his best wool pants.

  I’m certain some of our guests were startled that Puff did not slip into a servant role but into the chair Lydia offered him at the table. Had any of them voiced a whimper of complaint, or even raised an eyebrow, I might have embarrassed myself with rage. The room grew noticeably quieter, but Puff nodded toward the other seated guests, who nodded back, and the moment passed.

  Around the table with me sat my Mount Everest. Five of them were already friends: Puff, Josiah, Pastor and Mrs. Kinney, and Dr. Noel. Each of them already gave to the effort more than I would ever have dared to ask. That reduced the number of potential donors to fourteen. The unconvinced out-numbered the convinced.

  Some moments are etched in our memories as if chiseled there, not just written in pale ink on a colorless, thin page. I have lost much of the conversation of that evening. I can’t tell you what comments were made about the food or the weather. But I clearly remember two incredible moments. Pastor Kinney rose, as if to pray for the meal we were about to enjoy.

  “Anna, with your permission, I’d like to ask Josiah to lead us in prayer.”

  It seemed to me an act of pure-hearted humility for the spiritual leader of our community to recognize and defer to his brother in Christ, his friend and mine, such a key figure in the success of this endeavor. And oh, the words that came from Josiah’s mouth—no, heart—that night. I was certain the ceiling was raised several inches by the power of his prayer propelled heavenward.