Lila

by Marilynne Robinson

  “Does he say anything about why a child would be treated so bad in the first place?”

  “Well, he says, basically, that people have to suffer to really recognize grace when it comes. I don’t know quite what to think about that.”

  “What about them children nobody ever finds?”

  “My question exactly. In fairness to Calvin, he had only one child, and it died in infancy. A little boy. It was a terrible sorrow to him. He knew a lot about sorrow.”

  “A baby like that one in the Bible, just born, it wouldn’t feel what it was to have somebody take it up. Or it wouldn’t remember well enough to know the difference. So there wouldn’t be no point in the suffering.”

  “That’s true. But this is a parable. God had rescued Israel out of slavery in Egypt, so they would know the difference. Between suffering and grace. Ezekiel talks a good deal about the captivity. In fact, he was writing from the captivity in Babylon, another one. So I see Calvin’s point, if I look at it that way. I mean, the Old Testament does pretty well depend on the idea that Israel would know the meaning of grace, because they had suffered.”

  “So God let them suffer in Egypt. And they go on suffering afterward.”

  He shrugged. “That seems to have been the case. You know, I wouldn’t mind if you were reading Matthew, along with Ezekiel. Just a suggestion.”

  She said, “I’m interested in what I been reading. He talks a lot about whoring. Maybe I’ll read Matthew next.”

  He laughed. “Oh, Lila! I could explain about that.” He put his head in his hands. “Not that it’s so easy to explain. I just hope it doesn’t upset you.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I got my own thoughts.” Then she said, “By the way, I don’t use that word in front of folks. I know it’s practically cussing. Worse. I tell you, I surely didn’t expect to find it in the Bible. That’s interesting. There’s a lot in there I didn’t expect.”

  He said, “It is interesting. I guess I’ll have to read the whole thing over again. It is amazing how I always seem to be thinking about the parts I like best. And there are a lot of them. But there is all the rest of it.” There in the darkness they were quiet for a while, and then he said, “I guess I’ve had my time of suffering. Not so much by Ezekiel’s standards. And there might be more to come. At my age, I’m sure there is. But at least I’ve had enough of it by now to know that this is grace.” His arm was across the back of the couch behind her, and he touched her hair. He was still so shy of her.

  She said, “Well, that’s interesting.” She had to wonder what Mrs. Ames would think about it. Poor girl just trying to give him a baby. “I’ll reflect on it.”

  * * *

  Now that her belly was getting round she sat at the table in her room to do her thinking, but she still locked the door when he left the house, for the loneliness of it. He never came into her room, he never preached from Ezekiel, and he never asked her another question about Doll, even when he gave her back that knife. The morning after she mentioned it, it was just lying there on the breakfast table between the cream pitcher and the sugar bowl, the blade closed into the handle, looking harmless enough. She’d left it there. Seemed like he might want to know where it was, until he knew her a little better. Doll had whetted the blade till it was sharp as a razor and a little worn down, the polish gone off the edge of it. When Lila was alone, she opened it. Doll’s patience and her dread were all worked into that blade. She would be spitting on the whetstone and then there would be that raspy, whispery sound, Doll thinking her thoughts, working away at her knife, making it sharp as it could be. Never you mind. Then that one night she said, “Better you take it. Wash it down good, and hide it when you get a chance. Don’t you never use it unless you just have to.”

  It was the only thing Doll had to give her, too good to be thrown away and much too risky to keep, but what else could she do? It had a handle made of antler, shaped just enough to feel right in her hand, smooth and stained with all the hands that had held it. Doll never was the first one to own anything, and she wasn’t the last, either, if she could help it. There was always something to trade for, even if it was only a favor of some kind, and everything came with a story about the woman who got it from a fellow who stole it from somebody else, which wasn’t really stealing, since she never used it, and he knew she took it from a cousin’s house when he was dead, and he had brothers, so she had no right to it, but he felt bad anyway, so he was selling it cheap.

  Everything was as stained and worn by use and accident as a hand or a face. There were things you just had to respect, and that knife was one of them. Sometimes a stranger would settle himself at the fire, sitting on his heels the way folks do when they might want to move quick, and they’d study him to see what was at his back, what he carried with him, which was nothing at all and could be anything at all, like a shifting of the wind. And sometimes he had that Heck, I wouldn’t harm a fly! look that made Doane glance at Arthur, and then there would be the long, careful business of sending him on his way, meaning no offense, since he looked like the kind who might want to take offense, given the slightest chance. Snakes, knives, strangers, darkening in the sky—you felt some things with your whole body. What they might mean. It could be they were on their way to do harm elsewhere and you just saw them pass by, but how could you know? Maybe twenty people had owned that knife and only one or two had done any hurt with it. A wound can’t scar a knife. A knife can’t weary with the use that’s been made of it. Still.

  She was sorry there was nothing left of that shawl. It would have been a different thing entirely to tell the old man Doll had left that to her. When Doane held it over the fire it burned so fast it was like a magic trick. It was gone before the heat could touch his hand. It was so worn then, threads that stayed together somehow, you could see right through it. Gray with enough pink here and there to show where the roses used to be. He didn’t know what it was, why they kept it. It was useless, except for the use they made of it, remembering together. There wasn’t much that felt worse than losing that shawl. There is no speech nor language; their voice is not heard. That’s true about things. It’s true about people. It’s just true. So the knife was lying there where the old man had put it, on the kitchen table next to the sugar bowl, which was missing its cover and a handle because one of the children broke it, the boy John Ames. His mother and father remembered the day. The children were at home and inside because of a blizzard, and they were all in the kitchen because it was the warmest room in the house. There was bread baking. Days like that make children rambunctious, eager to be out in the snow. The old man said he always wished he remembered that day, too. Not that there weren’t always more blizzards, more days in the kitchen. But they made his father serious and his mother sad, so there wasn’t much pleasure in them. Lila told the child, “The world has been here so long, seems like everything means something. You’ll want to be careful. You practically never know what you’re taking in your hand.” She thought, If we stay here, soon enough it will be you sitting at the table, and me, I don’t know, cooking something, and the snow flying, and the old man so glad we’re here he’ll be off in his study praying about it. And geraniums in the window. Red ones.

  Don’t go wanting things. She said that to herself. Doll hated snow.

  She was still thinking about Ezekiel, as much as anything. The man takes up the baby that’s been thrown out in the field. Then washed I thee with water; yea, I thoroughly washed away thy blood from thee, and I anointed thee with oil. The blood is just the shame of having no one who takes any care of you. Why should that be shame? A child is just a child. It can’t help what happens to it, or doesn’t happen. The woman’s voice calling after them from the cabin, Lila probably made that up. She could never ask. Doll said, Nobody going to come looking for her. And for a while nobody did. There must have been someone Lila hoped would call after them, someone a little sorry she’d be gone.

  Why did it matter? Doll had washed away her shame, some part of it,
when she took her as a child. And then that night, when she hadn’t even seen her for a month, didn’t even know she was in the same town, Doll came to her all bloody. The scrawnier Doll got, the more time she’d spent on that knife, whetting it long after it was as sharp as it ever would be. Sometimes Lila would hear that sound, be waked by it, when Doll had trouble sleeping. Doll carried it open, tied to her leg, so there wouldn’t be any problem in using it fast if she had to. When Doll came to her finally, white and trembling, it took Lila a lot of washing even to find her wounds, because she had been hiding all day until it was dark, with her dress loosened so the blood wouldn’t dry the cloth onto the cuts. And the blood wasn’t all hers, either. Probably most of it wasn’t. The poor old woman seemed positively ashamed she hadn’t died. She said, “I do hate to trouble you, child.” She said, “When him and me went to it, I thought that would be the end of me for sure. I expected I might die this morning, or die on the way over here. I don’t know.” So Lila tried to be gentle and Doll tried to be brave, and there was just blood all over everything. The sheriff came the next morning. He said, “I never thought I’d see a woman your age mixed up in a knife fight,” and Doll mustered the strength to say, “He wasn’t no spring chicken hisself.” He laughed. “Looks like you won for sure. He lost, no doubt about that. Too bad for the both of you.” He was amusing himself with the strangeness of it all, and Doll knew it. But her face and hands were washed and her hair was brushed, and the rags were hidden away under the bed so some of the awfulness was put out of sight. Lila had slit Doll’s dress open with that filthy knife, and then pinned it closed again over the bandage, so she was covered, at least. They brought a stretcher for her.

  The sheriff said, “This your mother?”

  Lila said, “No, just trying to help. She come to my door.” And Doll was watching her. Maybe Lila’d just gotten tired, but by then she’d started saying the first damn thing that came to mind, even if it was true.

  “You have her knife?”

  “I didn’t see no knife. I guess she wasn’t carrying it with her.”

  “Well,” he said, “we’ll want to be sure about that. That thing must be sharp as the very devil.”

  It would have been just like Lila to say, I got the nasty thing here in my stocking, right against my leg, the first place any girl in Missouri would have hid it. The first place I’d expect you to look. She might even have said, If you don’t mind, I’d be glad to be rid of it. But she took the trouble to lie because Doll was looking right at her. When the sheriff said, “Somebody go get the stretcher, I guess we got to get her over to the jail,” Doll closed her eyes and set her lips and folded her hands and was satisfied. She didn’t even turn her head to the side to hide the mark. She said, “If ever a man had it coming.” All the time she spent sharpening that blade she was probably thinking where it would be best to cut, just one or two strokes to get him bleeding. It all worked out the way she wanted, except he didn’t kill her, too. At least not right away. When they took her off to jail, Lila stayed behind to take the knife out of her stocking. She dropped it behind a rain barrel in an alley Doll must have passed through coming to find her. Anyone looking for it would have seen it. But it was there three weeks later, when Doll was gone and people had stopped talking much about her. So Lila slipped it back into her stocking.

  Doll was very frail, not fit to stand trial, they said. After she’d healed a little, the sheriff put a rocking chair out on the sidewalk in front of his office and she sat there in the sun in the afternoons with a blanket across her lap, wearing a huge brown dress somebody had found for her. People came to look at her and she looked at them, calm as could be, a proud old savage, that mark like a bloodstain she chose not to wash away. They kept their distance, even though they were fairly sure her ankle was cuffed to the chair. Lila came as often as she could, and Doll turned that same look on her. And all she said to her was “I don’t know you.” Then somebody forgot to fasten the chain, or somebody wanted her to know that the law just couldn’t bring itself to deal with her, so she walked away one evening after supper, leaning on the cane they had given her, and lost herself in the woods or in the cornfields. They said she couldn’t have lasted long or made it far, but they didn’t find her, and Lila didn’t find her, and finally the snow fell.

  I don’t know you! Why did she say that? They’d talked the whole night. Doll was still expecting to die, so she told her things. Then why did she turn that cold look on her? Sitting there, rocking on the porch, the molasses cookie Lila brought for her just there in her hands like she didn’t really notice what it was. She wished she could ask the old man about it all, but she’d have to tell him the whole story or he wouldn’t understand. And what would he understand if she did tell him? That Doll was wild when she was cornered, like some old badger. Nothing the least bit Christian about her when she was cornered. She’d better tell him other things first, maybe even how she stole Lila off that stoop. Why be loyal to a secret? What did it matter to anybody now? Talking to the old man about it would just be her giving in to the idea that it would feel better to say a few things out loud to somebody. Maybe she would even have to tell him that her first regret, when she found out Doll was gone, was that she hadn’t thought of some way to get that knife back to her. Off on her own like that, she’d need it so damn bad. Well, Lila thought, I am going to see him at the church, so I can put my head on his shoulder. He won’t ask me why. He’ll just stroke my hair.

  That was the first time she walked down to meet him in the evening. And there he was, in his gray not-preaching coat and the white shirt she had ironed all over again since she did that better than anybody. When he saw her at the door, she could tell he was moved, almost saddened. She thought, A man this old knows there won’t be so many more evenings. Can’t go thinking about that. She decided then she would always come to find him and walk home with him. Not that the word “always” ever did mean much. He was surprised to see her there, concerned at first. Those thoughts of hers. He could see them in her face. She said, “I been missing you.” And he said, “Oh. Well then.” And he put his arms around her, just the way she knew he would, just the way she meant for him to do. She was like all the others who came to him with their grief, and that was all right. She didn’t mind. He was blessing her. He was doing that to people all the time. He rested his cheek against hers, too, and that was different. She felt his breath against her ear. She was his wife.

  She’d had one dream a hundred times, and she had it again that night. It was still there after it woke her up. The hair as stiff as the cloth of the dress, all of it weightless and crumpled in on itself, the way anything is that lies out in a field through a winter. And there would be too little of it, because winter does that, parches things down to their husks. Maybe critters been at it. You wouldn’t dare touch it, it would fall to pieces. She was afraid to see the face, and the face was hidden, from shame at just lying out in a field like that, or because it was turned away from her, “I don’t know you.” Once, Mellie found a dog, what was left of it. She never could let anything be. She pushed at the carcass with a stick, and there were teeth lying there. Lila thought, What would it be like to have different dreams. Or no dreams at all. Well, he was praying for Doll. Lila would say, I got a real preacher speaking for you, speaking to the Almighty. And what would Doll say then? Child, why’d you want to do a thing like that! Best He forget all about me. Lying there with her cheek in the mud, stubborn as ever. Lila would say, Ain’t much else I can do, is there. You never let me find you. And Doll would say, I’m hiding real good here. That Almighty of yours can’t even find me. She’d be sort of laughing.

  Lila thought, The dream, again. Seems like I can’t even close my eyes. Well, but she had this old man now, lying here beside her, and he didn’t give any sign at all that he was getting tired of having her around. And men don’t last so well. A woman said once that when men get a few years on them they’re harder to keep than a child. She said, They can look all right and
then one day they’ll just drop in their tracks. Lila had seen it herself, out harvesting. And wouldn’t she feel like a fool if all she’d been thinking about was Doll, when here she was with this warm, breathing man beside her, for now at least. He was always worrying that she might be tired or cold. Or sad. He brought her a dictionary, and it was very interesting. She’d never even have known to want it. She could put her hand on his chest right now and feel his heart beating. Hair on his chest, all soft and silvery. She was going to put some thought to being kinder to him. He liked seeing them geraniums. “The woman’s touch,” he said. Well, she thought, I guess so. She didn’t know much about that.

  That money of hers was still out there at the shack, most likely. She could buy him something with it. Wouldn’t have to spend it all. She’d just want the money in her hand to make sure somebody hadn’t come along and settled into the place and found where she hid it. It would be a hard life now with the cold coming on, but you never knew. If they’d found the money, they’d think it was theirs for sure and they might not want to give it up. She thought she could bring that knife along, and then she thought no. If he saw it was gone, he’d start wondering. Just showing a knife can be trouble, and here she was pregnant. What was she thinking about. She had no business at all carrying a knife. She wasn’t even supposed to be biting her nails. But the money was so much on her mind that she couldn’t go back to sleep. She remembered that the Sears catalogue was on the shelf in the kitchen, and then she had to get up and look through it. There was everything you could think of in there.

  When she heard him stirring the way he did when he was waking up, she put the catalogue back on the shelf and set the table. Ham and eggs and a pot of coffee. Nothing hard about that. Toast and jam. He came downstairs whistling, scrubbed and shaved and combed. “Ah,” he said, “wonderful! And how are you two this morning?”