Lila

by Marilynne Robinson

  Lila was called Rosie because no one else was Rosie, and the pink dress fit her well enough. Sal and Tilly showed her how to tie her hair up in rags so it would curl. They rinsed it with henna first. Mrs. charged her a quarter for the henna and five dollars for a pair of pink high-heeled shoes that were half worn out but she’d never find any cheaper. She could pay a couple dollars a week for the dress. Buying it would put her too far in debt, but she could rent it. So she was seven and a quarter dollars behind already, sitting there with her hair in rags and them about to punch holes in her ears with a darning needle. Then there was room and board, but that could wait till she’d made her start, Mrs. said. Once you’re bringing in some regulars. Lila was just listening to all this, trying not to do the arithmetic. She should have walked out right then, but the other girls stayed there and put up with it, the damn credenza and the ugly gentlemen and all of it. After a while she was one of the older girls, and when a young one came to her all upset, she would say just what they all said, Don’t you come crying to me and What did you expect when you come here? Then Lila would be patting the girl’s hands or putting her hair in pin curls just to quiet her down. When they weren’t working or fighting they were usually setting each other’s hair.

  That one day Mrs. asked her, “Do you have any little treasures you want to keep safe? Anything you want to give me?”

  And Lila said, “I got a knife. That’s the only thing. I been wanting to give you my knife.” The words were just there, and she said them, and she meant them, too.

  “Bring it to me. Let me keep it for you, dear. We don’t want a knife lying around the house.”

  So Lila went to the closet and found it still hidden there and took it and handed it over, amazed as she did it, thinking, This is it. I’m here now. This is the life I’m going to have. Mrs. just looked at it lying there in her hand like it was an ugly thing, so Lila said, “Somebody killed my father with it.” And then, because she didn’t want to lie to the woman, she said, “He might’ve been my father.” Mrs. smiled a little. She said, “I see.” And Lila watched her lock it away. Well, she’s got me now. And what sense did that make. But she felt that way, and it gave her a kind of ease.

  Standing right there by the credenza, with the key still in her hand, Mrs. looked Lila over like she’d never seen her before and said, “You ain’t a pretty girl, but you might try smiling, Rosie.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Yes, I will.” Talking to her like that, calling her ma’am. It was a thing Lila blushed to remember, how much she was giving that woman. Doll’s knife. But why shouldn’t she stop being Lila Dahl and take another made-up name and let herself be glad there was someone telling her what to do every minute, no matter if she hated it. She could smile if she had to. People smile. When she was trying on that pink dress, Mrs. had the girl Lucy come in and pick up the dress she’d been wearing and her shoes and leave her an old flannel nightgown. Lucy said, “I guess you won’t be going nowheres now.” Lila blushed to remember how hurt she was that Mrs. thought she might run off. She’d thought, Now I gave her my knife, she’s got it locked up, the one thing in the world I had that was mine. And she was glad that she’d given it up, that Mrs. didn’t have to find it and take it from her the way she did that girl’s letters. Lila had tried to think of anything else she could give her. As soon as she started earning a little money. My locket. What was she thinking? It was the old man’s locket. She didn’t even have it yet when she lived in that house. But if she had—she blushed at the thought that she’d have asked for her help with the clasp, and that she’d have been glad to feel her lift it from her neck, to see it lying in that claw of a hand. She loved it that much. Lila said out loud, “You poor child, your mother is a crazy woman.”

  The dress they gave her to wear had net under the skirt of it, like tiny little chicken wire, and the top just covered what it had to, and the rest was bare. Then those pink shoes she could hardly walk in. Peg would sing, You’re all dressed up to go dreaming, and laugh, which was a mean thing to do because some of them just loved that song. It was bare feet and a raggedy old nightgown, except when there were gentlemen. Mrs. never even looked at her. She treated her like she was nothing at all. Lila tried smiling.

  They’d be dressed up the best they could and dancing to the Victrola when the gentlemen started coming in, one uglier than the next, but all of them feeling rich because they could pay for an evening. There was one the girls were scared of because he was always drunk and mad and telling them he’d see to it that they all died in jail, telling them that he’d had his wallet stolen one time and when he figured out who’d done it he swore he would beat her within an inch of her life. Mrs. never made him go away. Ten dollars meant that much to her. It was the other gentlemen who put him out the door if anybody did, because some of them liked a little talk.

  How could she tell the old man about things she didn’t understand herself? First there was Doll saying, I don’t know you, and then there was that box with somebody in it that could have been her father, and all those cousins or whatever they were turning their backs on her, as if a bad joke had been played on them that she wasn’t any more than she was. And then looking for Doll everywhere, creeping down through cellar doors, even, hoping she might be out of the weather, then walking out into the cornfields where a person could hide or be lost till the buzzards found them.

  There was one man they called Mack. He didn’t have much of anything wrong with him, but he liked to come by, and the girls liked to have him there because he teased them and brought them chocolates and they thought he looked like a man you might want around even if he wasn’t paying. He was always laughing or about to laugh, and it didn’t matter if there was something a little mean about the way he did it. He was a workingman, you could tell, but he knew some ballroom dancing, the waltz and the fox trot, so they’d put the Victrola on and he’d dance with every one of them, even with Lila. The parlor wasn’t big enough for more than three couples, but they’d push the chairs back and dance themselves winded. Sal said once, “This is what it sposed to be like!” They all loved Mack, but he favored one girl, the short, plump one they called Missy. And after a while he’d start up the stairs and she’d go tagging after him, because that’s how it was.

  Lila was horribly in love with that man. You can’t go on forever thinking about nothing at all, and he had a nice face and that laugh, and what harm was there in it since she could hardly even bring herself to look at him. But he could tell somehow, and he started teasing her about it. Rosie, Rosie, give me a smile, he would say, and she couldn’t do that at all because she just wanted to hide her face. Rosie, give me a peck on the cheek, just a little one, making a joke of her when he was the only thing she cared about in this world and he seemed to know it. When just a few gentlemen came, Lila was always left sitting, and if Mack saw her there he’d say, “Rosie here is the kind of girl a man could want to marry. There are good-time girls and there are girls you’d want to take home.”

  Missy would say, “Why, she’s tough as a mule. I guess you might take her home if you needed some plowing done.”

  And he’d say, “A man wants a girl the other fellas ain’t gonna come hankering after.”

  And she’d say, “Well, I guess that’s old Rosie, all right. There’s nobody comes hankering, that’s for sure.”

  But it made Missy jealous that he said those things. Once, she flew at Lila for nothing and pulled her hair all this way and that so the pins fell out and the other girls laughed as if it was something they’d been wanting to do themselves and hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

  Lila never knew people could be so mean. She was mean, too, because the sadness in that house was like a dream that made everything strange and wrong. Mack could run his finger along her cheek and she would feel the warmth rising to follow it. He would touch her neck sometimes, and it would make the tears come every single time he did it, no matter who else was watching. It was terrible, and it was mostly what she lived for. The other
girls laughed at her, and they were jealous because he paid even that kind of attention to her. So she made a kind of plan. There was an old man who was supposed to come before sunrise to stoke the coal furnace. Sometimes he did, and sometimes he just wandered in when he felt like it. There was nothing any of them hated more than getting up to a cold house. Lila liked that kind of work a lot better than what she’d been doing, or trying to do. She owed Mrs. more money by the day, and she couldn’t think of any other reason she was kept on, except to make everybody else feel like they were better. She couldn’t walk in those damn shoes and she couldn’t keep “that look” off her face. A couple of times Mrs. slapped her for it, but that didn’t help. Once, Mack touched her tears with the tip of his finger and then touched the wet to her lips. “She’s a sweet girl, Missy. See that? Like a little child.” She couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t even breathe. And there he was watching her, smiling.

  So the next morning she went down cellar in her nightgown and bare feet, and stood there in the darkest dark with her back to the furnace for the warmth. If she stoked it too early, Mrs. would be after her for the coal she wasted, and if she waited too long, the old man might come to do it. If he did come she decided she’d shake the shovel at him a little and he’d probably run off the best he could, scrawny as he was. Mrs. had to pay him something, but Lila would be working off a debt, so Mrs. would see it was best to let her have her way. Then she’d scrub down the kitchen, which needed it something terrible. It was high time somebody beat those rugs.

  Just standing there in the dark felt so good to her. She’d get all black and filthy with the coal dust, and when she came upstairs who knew what they would say, and that was all right, because she had this time to be quiet with herself. How long had it been. She was standing there, leaning against the warmth with her eyes closed, and she began to have bright dreams about waking up before dawn with Doll’s arm for a pillow and the sound of a fire and Doane talking with whoever else was awake first. It was always Doane who got the fire going, and then Arthur would start the coffee when they had it. And Doll coaxed her awake. They would fry whatever there was, the light coming up and the birds singing. Dew on everything, beaded on cobwebs so it fell like a little rain when you broke one. Then Doll looked at her and said, “You’re standing in a coal hole.” No, Lila must have said that. She’d started talking to herself and they teased her about it. She knew nothing about anything but fieldwork and making change. And housekeeping, from the time in Tammany. When she lived in that town where they didn’t hang Doll and she worked in the store, sometimes she would walk out at night, because then you can see into people’s houses. The accounts always came out just right when she was working there, never a penny short. She was saving up a little money. There was nothing wrong with working indoors when a place was as clean as that and smelled so good. Ham and coffee and cheese and apples and flour. Spools of ribbon and bolts of pretty cloth. She’d watch how the women were dressed and what they did with their hair, listen to the way they talked. She’d really wanted to know those things. Well, she’d been learning some things lately, that’s for sure.

  “You’re standing there in the dark in a filthy old cellar.”

  I like it down here. That was her talking to herself again. I ain’t cut out for this life.

  Doll said, “I tried to tell you about it. Didn’t I tell you?”

  No, you didn’t. Just to stay away from whorehouses. Just that you got that scar. Anyway, I had a decent job, and then you come bleeding all over everything, fouling the place.

  She nodded. “I shoulda give that more thought. But where’s my knife? Why you let that woman have my knife?”

  It’s the only thing I had to give her.

  That don’t make sense. Lila was the one who said that. But Doll would have said it. If Lila had had the knife and a gold watch and chain, she’d have handed them all to that woman, seen them lying there in her hand and wished there was something else to give her. It was a bitter sorrow to her that Mrs. hardly even bothered with her anymore. Never smeared rouge on her face or told her she might try smiling. The gentlemen come here for a good time. You look at them like you hate them.

  She hated them, for a fact. They were the worst part of the whole damn situation. It was them that made her think sometimes she’d like to have that knife back. No, because she couldn’t go anywhere so long as it was locked away. Safekeeping. There was a picture in there of Peg’s sister, and Mrs. only let her look at it once in a while. She’d say, Peg, I was going to let you look at that photo, but the way you been acting lately— Then there would be Please, and I’m sorry, and I won’t do it again if you just tell me what it was I done, and Mrs. would say, Like you don’t know! Next time I’ll just toss it in the fire. Begging only worked sometimes, not quite never, but they did it anyway, till she slapped them for it.

  Lila said, “I never knew there was such a place.”

  And Doll said, “Didn’t I warn you.” No, you didn’t. But I guess you must have told me something. How else did I know to come here to just purely hate my life, hate everything about it, my damn body, my damn face, the damn misery in my heart because I got nothing to care about. How did that Mack get in there to devil me the way he does, when I never meant him one bit of harm? She thought, If I could hate him, too, that would make things easier. Nothing was supposed to be easier, she knew that. Once, when Mrs. was gone, somebody left a door unlocked and a preacher got in. He said a word or two about hell before they pushed him back out. She’d heard about it before anyway, at a camp meeting. Maybe that’s how she knew to come here, thinking it might be where she belonged. But it was taking so long. Worse every day, because it was the same every day. It wasn’t the end of anything. And she was beginning to think now and then about sunshine, and the smell of the air. Trees. She thought, I’m just doing that to devil myself.

  Well, she better start shoveling the coal. She was only used to a wood fire. So she’d have to be careful not to put too much in too fast. Stir the coals and then build up the fire so she could see what she was doing. She knew a boiler could burst if something happened, it got too hot or heated up too fast. Then the coals would fly everywhere and the whole damn house would burn down, probably. She could fill it up, leaving just enough room for her to crawl in after and close the door. Boom! She’d go flying, a flaming piece of her right into that girl’s face, that Peg, and another one into Rita’s lap, where she was always picking at her fingernails until they were bloody, and another one into the room where they kept the dress-up clothes when the gentlemen weren’t around. And Mack would see her, all fire like that, and he’d probably be laughing, thinking he’d done it. He’d touch her cheek and the fire would come away on his hand and he’d probably just lick it off. He’d say, Now, that’s the kind of girl a man would marry! Telling that damn lie again just to see if she could burn any hotter than fire.

  Doll said, “You’re standing here in a cellar, barefoot in the dark, talking to yourself. This ain’t how I brought you up.”

  Lila said, I got that plan about working around the place.

  “You know how I got this scar? A girl just as crazy as you’re getting to be heated up an iron skillet as hot as she could make it, and then when I come in the kitchen she hit me with it. Broke the bone in my cheek and who knows what all. I was as good as dead for a long time, and when I woke up, I had this face for the rest of my life.”

  Lila thought, How do I know that? Did she tell me sometime?

  “You was a sickly child, and I told you old stories because my voice was a comfort to you. You remember.”

  I’m talking to myself. Seeing things in the dark. Slipping away. Maybe it don’t matter.

  Doll said, “Well, I tell you what. If I was still living I wouldn’t waste it standing around in no cellar wishing I was dead. You sure never learned that from me. I’m surprised you can hold up your head.”

  Most times I can’t.

  Do it anyway. That was her way of speaking.<
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  There she was, missing Doll again. For so many years she had belonged to somebody. The cow and her calf. That was all right, because Doll wanted her there beside her. The way they used to laugh together, half the joke being that nobody else would know what the joke was. Now here she had this preacher, maybe the kindest man in the world, and no idea what to do with him. And here she had his baby, and what did she know about bringing up his child? She was reading the Bible, thinking she might understand what he was talking about sometimes, what he and old Boughton were laughing about, arguing over, but her mind would go off on its own and she’d be back in the cellar, farther away than ever. Or she’d be slipping off with that child in her arms, and she’d be whispering right in her ear, her cheek against the child’s hair, telling her what there was growing by the road that was good to eat and what was good to heal a sore, and they’d be whispering and laughing together when they found a way to get out of the rain, singing old songs together, the ones everybody knew that still felt like secrets when you taught them to a child. Sometime they’ll begin singing, and these are the words, you know them, too. Shall we gather at the river.

  She had thought about all that, stealing off with a child, in the house in St. Louis. She came up out of the cellar that first morning and went straight to the kitchen, filthy as she was, and began scrubbing. Everything was greasy, and there was food scorched onto the pots and pans so they gave off smoke every time they were put on the stove. Everything was dusky with old smoke. Mice in the pantry. Mrs. came in and watched what she was doing for a minute or two. Lila saw that shrewd look on her face she expected to see, as if the whole thing were her idea. A cleaning woman came in now and then and wiped up just a little, since Mrs. hardly paid her anything at all. But Lila was working off a debt, so there was still a savings for her, small as it was. “The floor needs mopping,” Mrs. said, which meant what Lila was doing was all right with her. After a few days she decided to look around in the closets and drawers to find her own dress, and then she could go outside to beat the rugs. It made things nicer, so there was pleasure in it.