The Book of Ruth

by Jane Hamilton

  He said, “What is it that makes this time of year so very very special, boys and girls?”

  All of us started to think; we wanted to get it right. Susan Abendroth said it was cold and they had to have more blankets on the bed. One boy told about how every single person in his family got the flu. Cassandra Kate said that they went to see Santa at the shopping center. When I heard the word Santa I remembered, and I knew what the Rev wanted us to say. I raised my white arm covered with goose flesh and the Rev pointed at me. In a voice no louder than a speck I whispered, “Pretty soon the baby Jesus is going to be born.” I mentioned that he was our Savior, come to save all men, and make everyone love each other.

  I don’t know how I knew all the information; they must have been priming us with the stories in Sunday school. The teachers had us waiting for so long, coloring flocks of sheep with their shepherds. I hit the jackpot with the Rev, make no mistake. I could see him wanting to say bingo! He came to my side and kissed my forehead. Then he put his hands on my shoulders and said that I was just right, that that’s what was truly going to happen to us. I kept saying the word truly to myself, and I thought that if I ever had an infant I’d name it Truly.

  Then the Rev sat back down and read from the Bible. He read that a young woman would conceive and bear a son, and that he would eat curds and honey when he knew how to refuse the evil and choose the good. “And in that day,” the Rev said, “a man will keep alive a young cow and two sheep, and because of the abundance of milk which they give, he will eat curds and everyone that is left in the land will eat curds and honey.”

  I wanted the baby Jesus to come in the worst way, with his curds and honey, choosing the good, refusing the evil. It seemed that surely he would come soon. I knew for fact that sheep did the job fairly quickly, but here the teachers had me confused; they said the baby didn’t have an earthly father, so I wondered out loud if it was like when the truck comes to the cow barn and the man gets out with his long syringe and then next thing you know the cows are fatter than a pig and groaning with every breath. My teacher started to laugh. Finally she said, “No, it wasn’t like that at all,” and there I was, left in the dark.

  When I wrote Aunt Sid about how I was expecting Jesus to come, and how he was going to whistle for the fly which is at the sources of the streams, Honey Creek, no doubt, and for the bee which is in some other land, she wrote right back and asked did I know what the word symbol meant, or the word myth? She said the Jesus story was a celebration of life but that an actual flesh and blood child wasn’t going to appear. I knew she was a liar then, because the Rev had said to me, “truly.”

  I wrote Aunt Sid:

  Dear Aunt Sid,

  You should read that book, The Bible, because in there it tells about the baby Jesus, and about the people walking around in the dark and then seeing a great light. We have a teacher in Sunday School, she tells us how to pray and we draw pictures of Jesus, I always put his mother in too, Mary is her name. She’s going to have the baby in the stable, and when he learns how to eat curds and honey he’ll be all set. The Rev says he has the good news, the baby is coming any day, maybe you didn’t get the word yet over there in De Kalb. The Rev wears white robes with a rainbow belt and right above him in church is a giant cross of real gold I don’t know where they got the cross, I never seen ones like that in Coast to Coast. I just know the baby Jesus is coming to save all men. We sing alleluia in church.

  Before she could write back it was Christmas Eve. In church they had a pageant, and they acted out the whole story. There in the creche was the postmistress’s baby. That baby was a girl, about three months old. Wouldn’t you know it, Laverna had to lift “Jesus” out of the straw because she started crying when the Wise Men came. Laverna had on a blue nightgown and I swear she forgot to take off the rubber thimble she wears on her thumb for sorting mail. Plus she has black hair. I’ve never seen pictures of the Virgin with black hair. She’s always a blonde. I couldn’t believe the way everyone in church tittered when the baby cried. It came upon me suddenly that Jesus was in the same league as the tooth fairy and the Easter rabbit, not to mention Santa himself. But with Jesus, for some mysterious reason, you had all the grownups kneeling down, praying to him. I was furious with the deacons and the Rev and the Sunday school teachers and the imaginary God who made the whole story unfold.

  I kept getting madder and madder, all the way to Easter. First, they had us waiting for a baby. It was going to be in swaddling clothes, but all I could see was Laverna’s baby girl smelling like the mess she had in her pants and howling at the frankincense they stuck near her nose. Then, in an instant, they were talking about Jesus as if he’s a full-grown man. They didn’t spend time on the pranks he pulled as a youngster or the names of his teachers. A few Sundays later, that baby, who as far as I could see wasn’t even born yet, is riding a mule through the streets healing the sick people and everyone’s waving branches at him. All the Jewish people want him to wash their feet and cut their toenails down to the bone. His favorite place is leper colonies. Then, the next thing I knew, they’re killing him and sticking him up on a cross like the one we have in church. I wanted to get an old dish towel and strangle it when I heard they killed him. And if that isn’t enough they throw him in a cave, push a boulder across, and then he isn’t in there when they look. He’s in heaven. The whole thing sounded very dumb to me, but mostly I felt sad, because I was sure there was going to be a child who would come to me and make the world light. I was sure I would wake up to find jars of honey out on the doorstep.

  I wrote Aunt Sid and told her that she was right after all, and that I was going to learn the word symbol so I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Aunt Sid said that Jesus was an example to people and we should try to behave like him, but in her opinion he wasn’t divine. I asked Miss Pin what this divine business was about and she said the word meant heavenly. I still didn’t understand one bit of it, or why it had been invented in the first place. They said something at church about Jesus coming back in the near future, but I wasn’t going to believe it. May herself said a person shouldn’t put all the eggs in one basket. It’s possible that May was in her usual bad mood all the time, just as I was for months after Christmas, because Willard Jenson had been her savior, and she was banking on his saving powers lasting at least until the end of her life. Instead, he came down to her and made everything seem so dandy, and then poof, he’s gone. The world was instantly and permanently spoiled for her. She didn’t have one thing left except a couple of teacups that smash if you let go. She didn’t care if Hitler took over the world or the Japs invaded California. She wanted Willard back. Probably it was Willard’s death that taught May the lesson about having two baskets for the eggs. And it probably didn’t help her, living in Honey Creek forever, where everyone knows what you are. They won’t let you change even if you feel like it. People were always saying May’s first husband, the one she truly loved, got killed, and how sad it made her. There wasn’t a single person in the area who didn’t know her story. Maybe she couldn’t be happy even if she tried, because folks wouldn’t know her then. They might think she was haywire.

  Five

  IT wasn’t until I got to eighth grade that I started seeing clearly how different we were from other people. It took Miss Finch to show me all the colors in the world, such as the people who live in jungles without clothes, hunting for berries and nuts.

  I had the job, for five years, of running Miss Finch’s tapes. She was the blind lady who lived in the stone farmhouse down the road. She had arthritis and was blind on top of it. She couldn’t string up a tape recorder so I’d go over there and thread the tapes and turn them on. They have books recorded on them. They were supposed to keep her company. The first time I went over she called me “my dear,” just like Aunt Sid, only she said, “My deeah.” For the longest time I couldn’t figure out what she was saying. I thought she was talking about an idea she had, but it never made sense in the sentence. She said, “My de
eah, why don’t you stay and listen? This book is one of my favorites.”

  I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to spend the entire afternoon sitting in a boiling room that smelled of old age. Her filmy eyes were hard to look at, and she blinked so slowly I had the urge to tell her to hurry up and finish. When I didn’t respond she said, “Well then, make yourself comfortable. Is the machine ready?”

  I switched it on, thinking I could sneak out of the house after a while, but I couldn’t help getting sucked into the book. It was called Oliver Twist. Miss Finch said, “I just adore Dickens, don’t you?” and again I said nothing. In the story there were evil people and exceptionally good ones also. I figured that must be like life, good and evil, otherwise people wouldn’t listen to blind tapes so hard. I wished I could meet Oliver Twist. I knew we’d have a million things to talk over. I pretended I had a cudgel and I beat up Bill Sikes and his little dog, too. Afterwards Nancy and Fagin and all the boys had a party to celebrate. Miss Finch said she meant to listen to new books as well as her old favorites, even the ones that pierced her heart, before she departed this world. After Oliver Twist we listened to a book about an artist named Picasso. I daydreamed through some parts, when they were talking about cubism, which I couldn’t figure out for the life of me, but I listened when the author, his mistress, talked about how the artist made her feel captive, and how she served him, and felt hollow. I listened when she told about sitting naked on the patio so he could look at her. Miss Finch often murmured that he wasn’t a very nice man, but mostly he made me feel small. He made me think about the strangeness of the world, and how very large it must be. I thought about Paris, France, a place full of buildings full of pictures, and I was stumped. Nothing I heard in the Picasso book related to Honey Creek, and yet I couldn’t help remembering the people, and how they were tied to each other.

  I got off the school bus every afternoon and went straight to Miss Finch’s house. There were a couple of people who took care of her, made her meals and gave her baths, and her son came home from his engineering job in the evening, but she was alone in the afternoons, and she got lonesome, you could tell. Her blind filmy eyes even looked excited when she figured I was in her room. She told me she had been a great reader all her life, that she gobbled books like candy, until her eyes went bad. “My deeah,” she said, “treasure your eyes and all that you behold.” I looked out the window and saw May in the distance cutting the lawn in her curlers and her apron. I thought I saw rocks being thrown up from under the machine; I saw her stop and lift something out of the grass, knowing it was probably a rabbit’s nest, or blind baby mice, which she would take inside and put in a warm oven and nurse with a doll’s bottle.

  At first I felt like I had to be prim around Miss Finch, sit up straight and pull up my socks, make sure I sat like a lady, but then it came to me that she couldn’t see one single thing. I stuck my tongue out at her as fast as I could. Nothing. Those eyes of hers were looking in two different directions. She didn’t care what I looked like or if I abused her until kingdom come. So I lay on the floor with my head on a pillow, like princesses get to, plus I sucked on the hard candies Miss Finch had by her bed. I tried to get candy out of the jar without Miss Finch hearing, but she always said, “Help yourself,” right when I had my greedy hands on the loot. Her ears were extra perked up.

  Sometimes I ran all the way from the school bus with my bag over my shoulder slapping my back. I couldn’t wait to hear the next chapter. I dreamed about the plots all day long without once touching down to real life. Once, we were listening to a book called The Mill on the Floss, and we were finally, after twenty reels, right near the end. I had a terrible feeling about Maggie, that her days were numbered, and that water was going to be responsible. I couldn’t bear it. I thought about her constantly at school, hoping the best, although my heart told me she didn’t have a chance in the world. I bumped into people in the halls and they pushed me away with their elbows. They didn’t know Maggie was the only person on my mind. I was desperate to hear the end. I raced down the school bus stairs and tore along the road while the boys leaned out the windows jeering at me. I took the porch steps by twos; I didn’t even call, “Hello, hello.” I was out of breath, heaving and gasping. I said, “Hi, Miss Finch.” I couldn’t keep it straight that she was married once and that her real name was Mrs. Finch.

  “Is that you, my deeah?” she asked. She didn’t wait for an answer; she said, “I don’t feel up to reading today. Why don’t you and I have a little chat?”

  “Huh?” I said. I couldn’t believe it. I stood there staring into her useless eyes. It seemed that every time we got to the juicy part in a book Miss Finch wanted to talk. I wasn’t going to listen to her mouth run on. I scowled and flapped my hands with my thumbs sticking in my ears. I hated for her to start in her slow, tired voice about how great it all was back when she was a girl in New England, and how they always ate Boston baked beans and she shoved the beans into a little drawer in the table because she couldn’t stand to eat them. I plugged up my ears but I couldn’t keep my fingers in my eardrums all afternoon and pretty soon the book magic occurred—that is, I sat there with my mouth hanging open, greedy for what she was talking about. She always said, “My deeah, I’ll tell you about the good memories. I don’t have any use for the unhappiness I’ve had in my life.” She told me about her husband, Mel, and his massive coronary attack. He was sitting at dinner and he dumped over into his chicken salad. She told me about their trips, all the beautiful islands, and living in the memories made her cry for the lost pleasures. She had a whole set of photo albums. My job was to describe each picture, and then she told about where they took place. There were pictures of lobsters she ate, and girls doing the hula dance. She went all over the world because Mel was a merchant. I’d go to the islands with her, sitting right by the bed, and remember my favorite parts for her.

  I started to bring Aunt Sid’s letters over to Miss Finch because she liked anything at all from the outside. I think I can imagine how it would be, not seeing a thing except all your past life swirling around in your brain. Any noise would be magnified: the clang of silverware, the mice scratching in the walls, the cats knocking paint cans over on the porch—all vibrations carrying noise long after it’s stopped. Miss Finch was always looking alarmed, saying, “What’s that?” when I hadn’t heard anything at all. So, just as it used to be with Miss Pin, Miss Finch got acquainted with Aunt Sid. Miss Finch, Aunt Sid, and I were a family, always eager to know the news about each other.

  Aunt Sid wrote me more about her life, now that I was older. She talked about her job teaching music at the high school in De Kalb. She said sometimes she closed her eyes while she conducted and she saw flocks of blackbirds leaving the basswood tree at the home farm in one gust, and then all of a sudden she had to perk up, because she realized the students were singing their song without mistakes. Sid was more than your average conductor. She had no children of her own since she never did get married—despite her stunning looks. She probably had so many offers she didn’t know who to pick. She wrote me about the pale green evening dress she wore for the spring concert, plus the white lily pinned to her chest. She had to stand on a platform with her arms stretched out like a goose flapping its wings right before takeoff. And when she brought her arms up in a certain way all the singers opened their mouths and blasted the audience to pieces. Miss Finch wouldn’t have been able to tolerate such a thing. The students usually sang songs by dead composers. Then, after they were finished, Aunt Sid had to turn around and bow to the parents. The entire auditorium rose up clapping and stomping their feet. I asked Aunt Sid to write and tell me every little thing in her life, because I wanted to breathe with her, and Miss Finch did too. She described the time she went to Chicago and heard a singer named Leontyne Price. She said she had dreams that she herself was a black opera star, and when she woke up she was awfully disappointed. I was shocked; I couldn’t stand to think of Aunt Sid as a Negro.

  I read the
letters to Miss Finch and she’d say, “Ask Aunt Sid what her house looks like.” So I had to write to Aunt Sid, “Don’t send a picture because remember Miss Finch is stone blind. She can’t see her own nose.” I confessed that I stuck my tongue out at her, just to make sure.

  When I got Aunt Sid’s letters I ran over and ripped them open, and then I read the news to Miss Finch. There was the one summer Aunt Sid took a group to Europe. They sang songs and people threw flowers at them. Before they left the U.S. they sold thousands of grapefruits to raise money, and it had to make me wonder if the grapefruits were those Elmer picked way down in Texas. It had to make me think that somehow, in a strange way, there are a few binding strands between us. Picture it—Aunt Sid selling Elmer’s grapefruits to go to Europe, to sing songs to the communists so she can write me, so I can read the letters to Miss Finch, and add something new to her brain. It’s all a big old chain. There isn’t one unconnected link.

  There were parts of the letters I didn’t read to Miss Finch. I’d skip sections like this:

  I know how hard it is to be a teenager. There is so much going on inside a person’s head and heart. It is sometimes difficult for me to watch my students struggling through adolescence; I think it’s much harder for your generation than it was for mine. You sound as if you have a good friend in Miss Finch, and I’m so glad you can share all the lovely books. I don’t think I could have survived if I hadn’t discovered the library in Stillwater, and Miss Ogelsvee, the choir director, who told me repeatedly that I had a good voice. Still, it is books that are a key to the wide world; if you can’t do anything else, read all that you can.