Sufficient Grace (33 page)

He is the Lord, but there will be no rattling sound, no noise of the bones knitting together, bone to bone, with tendons and flesh appearing and skin covering. There will be no bodies, so there is no need for breath. There will be no breath prophesied; the sons of man will not call the four winds to come and breathe into the slain, that they will live. No wind will come and none will arise to his feet. There will be no vast army of the Lord. We are alone here, the living. Alone amongst only the awake; we will not call those already asleep. We are waiting to die.

Almost collapsed, Ingwald kneels beneath the picture of Christ. ‘I am dead. I am dry. I am old, dry bones.'

Samuel just walks; he don't look right or left. He sure don't look at her or me. He sees us lying on the pews and he whispers as he passes. ‘I didn't do nothing.' Three times he's denied us now, and he walks out of the church.

And as Samuel leaves, Mom catches the door and comes in; quiet in the pews, she holds me and rocks me. I am on her lap and she questions another time. I'm still and saying nothing even though Reuben was ‘yes' to the men, and again Naomi is ‘yes' to our mommas, and those liars are ‘yes, yes' to everything ever asked. Naomi cries and they listen to her cries. Everything I gave — everything I now am — is for nothing. My wounds, on my hands and feet and heart, are only scars.

Now Gloria is here too and she has Naomi, and they are both crying; the momma hurting so with, ‘Samuel, Naomi, my babies,' over and over. We are covered in our mothers and their coats. We are wrapped like the little Amish infants, swathed both summer and winter: too hot in warm but barely thawed in cold. Tiny faces peek out beneath black wool bonnets with cloaks hanging down, held in their black wool mommas' arms. In winter, the wool smells wet always, even on pink babies with still-closed eyes.

My momma is too pretty, skin too soft and hair too shiny. There are maps that show what grows, beef or wheat or corn; men see us the same. Our dresses are too thin and show what women have to give: mostly guilt, never-ending. A black cloak hanging down, like the Amish, could save us those stares.

We should've all stayed covered, just to be safe.

Gloria's talking and can't stop. ‘Ingwald hasn't touched me since I was healed. Never. I've so missed being loved; my heart has withered away.'

My mom is crying now and reaches over to touch Gloria's face. Gloria grabs and holds Mom's outstretched hand; she pulls it to herself.

‘My Glory, I get lonesome too.' My momma is trying to take some of the woman's pain.

But Gloria's face hardens. She straightens her back and stares. ‘You know, Marie?' Anger coarsens her voice. ‘All these years, watching those two men adore you almost killed me.'

Mom snatches back her hand, nearly hitting me in the face. ‘I don't know what you mean.' She can't breathe. She straightens herself and pushes me off her lap, stern.

Gloria drops her head. ‘My husband and I don't even share a bed. But you have more than enough love.'

The breath comes in and the breath pushes out. My mother loves Uncle Peter.

‘I can't begin to know what you mean.' My mom's shoulders slump down and she puts her hand to her forehead.

Glory is weeping again; we can barely understand her words. ‘But you do.'

‘Sometimes it takes two men to make a whole.' And Mom drops her head for a moment, a silent slump into sorrow. ‘I could have never left Reuben behind, and then the Lord gave me Ruth as comfort. Glory, girls, we can't always choose who God gives us to love. His ways are not our own, and His timing is His.' She raises her head. Mom is no longer crying.

The lights in the sanctuary buzz, and the seats are hard and rough beneath us. Naomi is crying, but I am at peace for I already knew: it is well with my soul.

Keeping silent, my heart knows how I move inside the living things: I bring wholeness. And come spring, there is no matching the beauty of the trillium. Three white petals of sweet flower, they push up along the banks and in the meadow. Each petal is like clean milk in a pail: in some light it leans toward blue, but it smells pure and white and white alone. I look down deep inside where the three parts swirl into one: Mom, Daddy and Peter made me. My spirit is the very breath of God.

‘We all have our sorrows, our brokenness.' Gloria is waving her tiny hands. ‘Eric is a man of faith. Ingwald is a man of faith.' She breathes out. I can see her chest rise and fall. ‘And Peter would never let harm come to us.' The light is pushing but fading against the windows of the sanctuary.

When Samuel sat here before, the elders weighing him down, he seemed to wear a halo. It shimmered about his head. But now, I slant my eyes and see it was just the angle of the light; it was just the dying light all along.

The change has come in her heart; Gloria is quivering and she takes ahold of Naomi's shoulders to still her hands. My aunt will bury her sin — Samuel — deep again. My momma will do the same. Each woman will breathe it in and keep it down in her bottomless soul.

‘Our husbands' faith can overcome any unbelief.' Gloria stretches out one quaking hand to my momma. Their hands tie together.

Whatever happened before must remain unsaid: whoever has loved, whoever hasn't. Both babies — Gloria's and Naomi's — just confused the time. And my momma just found too much love. Even I can see as much: a man could give it to the Lord and that sin would be forgotten, struck from the mind; but if a woman told, she would be pressed down all the rest of her days. So she's got to hold it tight and hold it herself. Her burden is her own.

I'm sure that love was good once, what comfort or tenderness or plain slow-down rest there was. I believed them when they said so, even if I don't anymore.

And now we come together in prayer, and they say it again. We four, who are women and can still speak to heaven, make the sounds together. I say it for them.
My soul to take
, we still have the words. We are praying for the second coming: the sea will give up her dead and the land will follow likewise. We want the world to break open. It will. And when it does, we will fly away. We will fly away, swiftly home.

39

A SNOWSTORM IN THE MORNING CONTAINED ME, BUT THIS
afternoon I couldn't stop walking. After all day yesterday in Grandma's house and all night in the church, I can't be trapped today. Once I could see my hand in front of my face, I was out the door, skirting the woods and up over the hill to Uncle Peter's place. The same trees and paths, the same snow. It wasn't blowing anymore, but I could hear the snow nonetheless: not falling, but swirling, closer to wings beating. Past the woods, with snow piled on the evergreens, coating each needle and clumping them fat. The branches hang heavy and low. The birds rest somewhere within the shadows, at least the ones that are left.

I slide open the door and Uncle Peter looks up; he is sitting on the base of an upturned ten-gallon bucket. And in his eyes, I see my eyes.

And I see — as if in a dream — a young man weeping behind the milk shed, building an altar, collecting the wood for a burnt offering. He asks the sky, ‘Where is the offering? Where is the lamb?' There is no reply from the sky. Instead, inside Peter, the Lord's voice speaks in his blood: there is evil in this child — evil in Samuel. But as Peter stretches forth his hand and takes the knife to slay the child, an angel of the Lord calls unto him out of heaven. The angel of the Lord — Reuben — cries, ‘Here am I. I am the sacrifice.'

And I see behind what is not a dream. When Peter took two babies behind the shed, he did so because he saw evil in one and love in the other: Samuel was destruction and Reuben was life. One boy would one day divide us and one boy would keep us together. When Peter chose not to slay Samuel, he also chose not to slay Reuben — even though it meant my mother would never be his. Peter's sacrifice was both evil and good. For the first time in my life, I believe I finally know what it means to love. And for the first time in my life, I know I am looking at my true father.

My dreaming and my awake, my time spent inside trees and fish: these are not burdens, they are gifts. And these are gifts straight from God through Grandma — straight from Grandma through Peter to me.

‘Didn't see you there.' Peter gets back to sharpening the blade of his axe with the diamond stone he rubs slow and perfect along the edge.

Even from inside Peter's shed, I can smell the snow in the air — like the change between noon to midnight, or winter and summer, or wind from stillness — and I can feel it melt on my mittens, dripping. The man slides the stone along the arc, and then he burnishes the edge with his callused palm. As sharp as it is, the blade just bites his skin. And it is dead skin anyway, thick and unfeeling.

‘What you need, Ruth?'

And I can tell it is time now, like when the bucks sniff the air. I'm afraid, with my mouth not making sounds. His old, rusty shotguns are laid out on the workbench, a butcher's block scarred by knives hacking bone or missing. A small pile of plastic shavings is gathered neat beneath the vice secured to the bench; he's already trimmed the shotgun shell.

The wind picks up outside the shed. The snow might have stopped or not. I can't hear it or smell it now; the weather goes on without me outside, and I have no say.

Sacks of birdseed are stacked by his knee, just enough to get the little ones through what remains of these cold seasons. He's remembered the oily black seed is their favourite. Peter remembers more than I know. But I do know that biting early into an apple discolours the white. It ruins both what is and what was to be. Things must wait to change natural; bite early into an apple — stain it with blood from the bite — and it browns.

Even still, I place my mitten on Peter's shoulder and then I bend down and put my lips on his crooked mouth. My eyes are shut, like a kitten's, but I feel his warmth in my mouth. My lips are soft, and his are hard, chapped from wind and snow. He smells of chewing tobacco and cider; I breathe deep. I feel his flat teeth. When it stops, I know it is my first one, the only time I've chosen a kiss. And it possesses me.

His arms push my shoulders back, but light, and he rises up still holding the axe.

‘You're a beautiful woman, Ruth.' Big shoulders moving beneath his quilted flannel, he looks me square in the face. ‘You look so much like your momma.'

There is a sway and a creak in the shed, and my blood pushes against my skin.

His finger traces the edge of the axe, feeling the smooth and feeling the sharp. Then he puts the leather cover on the blade, turns his back and walks out the door.

The Lord hears us when we talk to each other; He listens and hears. There is a scroll of remembrance that was written in the Lord's presence describing those who feared Him and honoured His name. The Lord speaks and calls us His:
they will be Mine.
We are His treasured possessions, His jewels.
I will spare them, just as in compassion a man spares his son who serves him.

The shotguns are ready, and it is still snowing. Now is the time. Whatever birds remain will have seed. The door swings open and brings the weather inside.

Now Peter stands at the door. ‘Fetch Samuel.'

I wrap my hands around the carved stock of the oldest shotgun; it was my Grampa's gun and will someday make a good companion for me. The gun feels warm and ready. My body can tell the time.

‘Fetch Samuel.' Peter is done waiting.

So am I. And I will.

They are looking for him everywhere, in the woods and along the river, but I know where he is even without looking. Samuel is sulking, and he sulks in Grandma's barn. I heard the old tractor sputter to a start, and I can hear it running still. He is always poking around that damn tractor, always messing with what he don't understand. Quietly, I sneak across the farmyard toward the barn. Be sure, I'll find him out; he can't hide forever.

As I fling open the barn door, Samuel startles and looks up frightened from the back of the coughing tractor. But when he sees that it is only me, he smiles, but now I see those teeth as a sneer.

‘Get, girl.' And his heart says
we got enough that's used and broken-down in here.
He jerks his head and sweeps his arm toward the door. He wants me gone.

With a roar, the tractor's power take-off grabs the dangling sleeve of his barn coat and wraps it around and around until Samuel's arm is tangled into the metal. He is screaming as the machine whirls him around and smashes him against the wall. He grabs at his entangled arm. In an instant, his left arm is torn off almost completely. The other stump is still being chewed. Both Samuel and the tractor are screaming, but the only sound I hear is the barn creaking in the wind. He is meat, bone and sinew; he is white fat and red membrane. He is stuck.

He looks up at me and begs me with his eyes, like a coyote with his foot caught in a trap; he wants mercy. ‘Ruth. Ruth. Help me.'

I don't know if the Lord is saying yes or no, but I know He needs to start speaking louder now. Samuel must be bleeding heavy, because he is slumped in the midst of a dark, red stain on the oily floor. In the middle of the pain, he keeps saying that God hears him and He is answering his prayer. I know that He hears, and I believe that He answers; I just think I'm having a hard time hearing His voice over the sound of Samuel.