When the Morning Glory Blooms (9781426770777)

by Ruchti, Cynthia

  Shortly following Josiah’s robust but reverent “Amen,” Lydia nodded toward the doorway. I followed the path of her sparkling eyes to find two of “my” girls standing ready to serve. They wore shy but grateful smiles. Beyond a gentle roundedness that defined them as women, their work-trimmed bodies bore no tell-tale reminders of the babies they’d birthed here less than six months earlier. But I read it in their faces, in those beautiful, humble faces. They were mothers now . . . and it had changed them forever.

  Both Meg and Dania had chosen to keep their babies . . . with my blessing. They were not flighty, fantasy-minded young women. Their decisions were carefully weighed. They chose to share a small house in town, and to share caring for their children—Meg watching Dania’s bright-eyed little son while his mother worked part-time for the Witherspoons, and Dania caring for Meg’s darling daughter so she could fill orders for sewing and alterations . . . skills she’d learned under my roof, I noted with joy just short of pride.

  Life did not hold the promise of ease for them. I couldn’t let myself think long on the hardships that lay ahead, but I admired their determination to love and care for their children.

  And now they stood in the doorway of my dining room, prepared to serve me and my guests—guests I hoped would help fund the next few months of operation, the next few young women who needed shelter. A cyclic gift. A moment I keep tucked in a pocket of memory near my heart.

  It crossed my mind to wonder who was tending their little ones. Then an intersecting thought—Lydia would have seen to that detail.

  As they bent over the guests, serving us graciously, bringing platters of food from the kitchen, refreshing water glasses, pouring tea and coffee, removing plates, and serving dessert, it struck me that the home and its work was not the reason for the dinner party.

  Certainly I was not. They were. These reclaimed lives. These grace-bought women who would go home to healthy children at the evening’s conclusion. As they brushed past me, their very presence strengthened my resolve.

  The dinner party retired to the front parlor following dessert. Meg and Dania stayed behind to clear the table. I took them aside for a brief moment.

  “How can I express my gratitude to you?”

  Both girls objected and attempted to throw the gratitude back my direction.

  “Please leave the mess in the kitchen and go home to your babies.”

  Dania answered me with a lingering hug, and whispered that they would be praying for me. I would need it.

  It has been my observation that those whom the Lord calls to an unusual task are rarely blessed with a passion for drumming up the dollars to support that calling. I then had (and still have) no stomach for fund-raising. I understand the need and the value, but it is a joyless, unnerving task for me, no matter how noble the cause.

  The night of the dinner party—the first of many to follow, I now know—my heart raced, as frantic and directionless as the water bugs skating on the surface of the creek backwater. My stomach relocated ten inches north, pressing rudely against my throat, hampering my ability both to speak and to swallow. Hospitality was easy to feign. A calm spirit, impossible.

  “Breathe, Anna.” Josiah’s whisper and smile could be hawked as nerve tonic. “No one here was forced to come. They’re here because they care, or they are at the least curious. They didn’t respond to a gun barrel pressed to their backs, or merely to Lydia’s sociable invitation, but to the wooing of the Holy Spirit and the pull of compassion for the women who flee to this city of refuge.”

  City of refuge. The picture Josiah painted with his words eclipsed the illustration I’d planned to use. With the clink of silver on china and the music of companionable conversation swirling around me, I mentally rewrote my plea.

  “Until just a few minutes ago,” I began when I’d gained my guests’ attention, “I was unaware that God wrote about this house in His Word. Thousands of years ago, He established the concept of cities of refuge to which His children could run when their passions or inattentiveness or carelessness or clumsiness got them into trouble. The Lord designed cities of refuge not for the innocent but for those whose actions caused pain, even death. In these designated refuges, the guilty found safety, help, and hope. It was God’s design.

  “Even before Adam and Eve sinned against Him, God set in motion the plan by which He could offer them forgiveness, redemption. In this birthing home, forgiveness is reproduced.

  “I don’t pretend that the women who come to me are innocent victims of circumstance, although some are. Most made foolish choices. They broke God’s laws. This house and my arms are offered as a city of refuge for them, a place where they and their babies can find what they most need. Healing. Protection. Love that makes it safe to explore the possibility of forgiveness . . . and self-forgiveness. Within these walls they gain tools to help them face future temptations fully armed and equipped to resist rather than fall prey to their deceptions.

  “I can’t turn my back on these girls. The world will swallow them up like a wolf hungry for the taste of fawn. It is my prayer that you will not be able to turn your backs, either.”

  Did the table groan that night with the weight of gold bullion and silver coins my guests pulled from their pockets? No. But over the course of the next few weeks they all gave what they could. I was humbled by their trust.

  And this is the wonder of wonders. Those first dinner guests became advocates for the cause. Other community members began to share their resources at the persuasion of those Lydia handpicked to attend. Never, in all the history of that home, did we have an excess. But we turned no one away for lack of provisions.

  I misspoke. We knew a brief period of abundance. As did the Old Testament Jacob’s discerning son Joseph, we stored it away in anticipation of lean years ahead. What would we have done without it when the locusts came?

  18

  Ivy—1951

  An echoing, rhythmic shuffle in the stairwell let Ivy know her father was home early from the bowl-a-drome. Was he ill? That rarely happened.

  She closed the cover of the notebook that held Anna’s story, and from her place at the table watched the apartment door open and her father enter, more stoop-shouldered than normal.

  He looked around the kitchen, as if exceptionally reluctant to make eye contact with her. Ivy followed his gaze. Sink empty of dishes. Counters clean—as clean as possible, given their age and wear. No extra lights left on. No overflowing wastebasket. What?

  She stood and turned down the radio dial. Dinah Shore—“My Heart Cries for You.” Ivy’s musical choices were a good twenty years younger than his and somehow irritating to his ears. Still, no word from him. She turned the radio off. A deeper silence.

  He set his black and pearlized vinyl bowling-ball bag just inside the door and moved through the kitchen to his chair in the living room. Was she expected to follow? Ask about him? Leave him alone?

  Something in the curve of his shoulders said his current burden outweighed hers.

  She sat on the corner of the couch, only the lamp table separating them. He hadn’t turned on the television, though his eyes were trained in that direction.

  “Dad, are you okay?”

  He looked at her then, his face a puzzle. “I got a promotion today.”

  That was his bad news? They’d sat through supper, across the table from each other, and he’d not said a word. He’d left for bowling league with that information unexpressed.

  “Dad, that’s wonderful! I’m . . . I’m proud of you. You deserve it. I don’t know anyone who’s worked harder for that company.” Ivy stopped herself. So many words. Too many words.

  “The deal is,” he looked toward the blank-faced television screen again, “the first thing I wanted to do when the boss let me know was tell you.”

  Did he hear the gasp caught in her throat?

  “But I didn’t know how.”

  Ivy pulled her blouse away from her belly. “Is that why you came home early from bowling?”


  He leaned forward, forearms on his thighs, hands clasped together. “No. I quit the league.”

  “What?”

  “The reason’s not important.”

  She waited. His claiming it wasn’t important hinted at the opposite. The sagging drapes at the window moved. She’d left the window open. Not that it helped any. The air was stifling, despite the promise of rain. Or storm.

  This time, unlike the others, so many others, the silence forced an answer from him.

  “The guys said . . . said something . . . about you and your . . . condition. And I . . . might have thrown out a few colorful words. Stupid gossip.”

  Where had the guys at the bowling alley heard about her? Was Jill making it her ambition to ruin her life? Wait. Her father stood up for her? Her evicting father. Her emotionless father.

  “So I quit.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Nothing to say about that.”

  Ivy let the moment swirl around her, knocking her equilibrium off but in other ways anchoring her to a thread of hope she didn’t know was there.

  “We’re leaving this apartment.”

  The reality of her situation flooded in like blood swelling a hammered thumb. “I know, Dad. I’m looking for a place. I haven’t found anything yet that I can afford. And I lost my—” She rehearsed his statement. “We?”

  “I’ve always hated this place. Don’t understand what you found so appealing about it.” A rare smile broke the monument of his roughly sculptured face, bumpy, as if the sculptor had been interrupted before having time to smooth the clay.

  “We?”

  “There’s a place out toward the fairgrounds that’s been for sale longer than most. It’s got some problems, but it’s also got three bedrooms.”

  She held her breath until her eardrums started to bulge.

  “I talked to a friend of mine. He thinks I can get it, with this raise and what I’ve been putting away every week, and still have enough to get a used car on credit, if it isn’t too fancy.”

  His words died out then, the rush of them exhausted like a sudden air pocket in a bathroom faucet. Spurt and done.

  He pushed himself out of his chair and angled for his bedroom.

  At the doorway, he paused and turned to face her. “It weren’t right that I meant to kick you out. House with three bedrooms? What would I do with all that space . . . without you?”

  The tears she’d squeezed back rolled freely now—a hot, wide river on her cheeks.

  He nodded toward the billowing curtain. “Don’t forget to shut that window.”

  Anna spit toothpaste into the curved enamelware basin Ivy offered her. “He said, ‘Don’t forget to shut that window’?”

  Ivy used the damp washcloth in her hand to wipe a remnant of toothpaste from the corner of Anna’s mouth.

  “I can do that myself, dear.”

  “Yes, of course, Miss Anna. And yes, that’s what he said.”

  “To what do you attribute his change of demeanor?”

  Ivy handed Anna her mother-of-pearl hand mirror. “I don’t know. I stared at the ceiling all night asking myself a similar question . . . and praying I hadn’t just dreamed his kindness.”

  “Praying, Ivy?” Anna stroked her hairbrush through her silver strands, dividing her attention between the mirror reflection and Ivy’s reaction.

  “Yes, praying. You’ve had a stronger influence on me than you know.”

  Thin silver eyebrows arched coyly. “Did you two talk at breakfast this morning?”

  “Some. Fewer words. It’s been a long time since things have been right between us.” Did Anna mean God or my dad? Either way, the answer stands.

  Anna drew a long, slow breath. “Sometimes you have to travel a long distance to get to where the real adventure begins. And sometimes the adventure is what happens along the way. Healing takes time. Wish I were going to be around to witness the fullness of yours.”

  Ivy gripped the steel footboard of Anna’s bed. “You’ll . . . you’ll be around . . . for a long time.”

  “Neither of us has many more days here. Have they hired your replacement?”

  Ivy’s grip relaxed. “No. But Friday’s my last day no matter.” Just in time to save her from having to purchase maternity uniforms.

  “I will miss you, dear Ivy.”

  “We’re not done writing down your stories, Anna.”

  Was the mist in those dove-gray eyes for the loss of Ivy or for the incomplete stories? Ivy thought of all the after-hours moments they’d shared, filling the lined pages of the steno pad, Anna’s aged voice blessedly slow enough for Ivy to keep up with the pace of her storytelling. The hope tucked between the lines. The light Anna’s words shed on Ivy’s shadowed existence.

  “I talked to Dad about you this morning.”

  “Me?”

  “About you moving in with us.”

  “Oh, glory, child!”

  A noise at the door drew both women’s attention. “Mrs.—I mean, Miss—Carrington, other patients are waiting for their sponge baths.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Philemon.”

  “What you do on your own time is your business. But while you’re on duty—”

  “Yes, ma’am. On my way.”

  Anna—1890s

  Puff kept a remembrance key in his pocket. An orphan key. The lock into which it once fit was long gone, he said. One might think it worthless then. No. It spoke to him. When he dug his thick-fingered hands into his pants pocket and brushed against the cool metal of that key, he heard its singsong, “Puff, you’re a free man. A free man. A free man.”

  When my mother’s nerves troubled her, she fingered the tatted edge of a silk handkerchief given by her own mama . . . when they were still speaking to each other. Before I was born. I imagined those jittery fingertips engaged in a silent language perhaps even she didn’t understand: “Oh, Mama, I need you! I need you!”

  Aunt Phoebe’s remembrance went to the grave with her. She asked to be buried with her silver locket around her neck . . . and the hinge open so the tiny tintype inside showed. The tintype captured Uncle Raif and Aunt Phoebe when love was young, their skin taut, their eyes bright, their future an unknown adventure. I believe she expected to be that precise age in heaven, and wore the locket as a means of introducing herself.

  On Josiah’s desk, at home among the files and papers and brass inkwell and marble paperweight, lay a feather—his reminder. Not an iridescent, showy, peacock feather. A simple drab-brown feather discarded by a common sparrow with one to spare. His cleaning woman dusted around it, except for the first time when she tried to treat it as garbage.

  When Josiah leaned toward worry about his workload or his clients or his children, the feather would pipe up, “Consider the birds of the air! Not one sparrow falls to earth without the Lord knowing about it. And are you not more important to Him than a sparrow?”

  My reminders stay with me, a permanent part of me, to prevent me from misplacing them, I suppose. I run my hands over their pink, numb, erratic trails each morning when I pull my stockings over the scars.

  They remind me that love always carries risk and not infrequently pain.

  Ivy’s pencil paused midair. She was about to hear the story of Anna’s scars—the ones that showed.

  From the moment I welcomed Marie into my home, I could sense her undercurrent of fear. A violent act had spawned the baby in her womb. She fought a constant, courageous battle to accept the child as it grew within her, without linking it to the attack and her attacker.

  Marie was out visiting Lydia, taking piano lessons more for the diversion than for the music, the afternoon he showed up at my door. I recognized him from the pictures Marie had painted of him with her words. The snarling mouth of a hill badger. The evil eyes of one from whom all goodness had been extracted.

  He did not actually show up at my door. He burst through it as if the place were a tavern party waiting for his arrival, rather than a home. My home.
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  “Where is she?” he demanded when I reached the front hall in which he stood, or rather staggered.

  “Who?”

  “Marie!”

  How my heart pounded! “Not that it is any of your business, but she is not here.”

  “Not my business?”

  “Sir, I’m going to ask you to kindly leave the premises.” I straightened my posture but still failed to gain any height or power.

  “I ain’t going nowhere until she comes with me.”

  “You will have a great deal of difficulty convincing her of the wisdom of your plan.”

  “Don’t have to convince nobody. She’s mine. And that kid she’s fixing to whelp. I’ll kill anyone that tries to say different.”

  I gripped the sides of my skirt with my clenched fists to keep my hands from striking out at the beast that was fouling the air and curdling my blood. “She’s not here. And she’s not yours,” I added, growling the last words.

  The look he hurled at me was so venomous that I felt flush with the poison. “Take your argument elsewhere, sir. You’re not welcome here.”

  What made me think the encounter was over? He exited, no less agitated than when he’d arrived, and I retreated to my office parlor, closing the tall double doors behind me, shutting out the stench of his presence. I collapsed into the chair at my desk, quivering with rage and concern. How would Marie’s life ever be free of this man? Who would protect her and the child from his appearing at their door someday in the not-too-distant future, hissing and staggering and threatening?

  It was many minutes before I stopped shaking. Puff and Marie were due back from town, and Josiah was expected to join us for our evening meal. Kitchen duties called to me. The chicken stew would not cook itself.

  Would not cook itself. Those four words lodged themselves in my brain, stuck to the walls of it as though it had been branded with a hot iron. They were the last words I entertained before the rock shattered the window, before the flames danced up the drapes and raced across the floor toward me, before I discovered the doors to the office had been barricaded from the outside, before the smoke wrapped its vicelike hands around my throat and squeezed for all it was worth, before the darkness won . . . would not cook itself . . . would not cook itself.