When the Morning Glory Blooms (16 page)

When they finally left, pressed for time by the setting sun nipping at their heels, I noted that I was both drained and refreshed—an odd combination, but as real as the floorboards
under my feet. I found myself wishing Puff lived on the “propity” so I wouldn’t have to wait to share the story with him.

And so another thought blossomed, a crocus of thought pushing its way through snow.

11

Anna—1890s

With the Pastor and Lydia Kinney’s blessing, the seed money was used to buy linens and other household goods and to stock the pantry. On Puff’s advice, I bought a milk cow and a sorry-looking but dependable horse to pull the wagon that had been sitting idle in a corner of the barn.

Also with Pastor and Lydia Kinney’s blessing, I invited Puff to live in the tack room in the barn. How could I offer him such crude accommodations? I would have been quite comfortable having him in one of the upstairs rooms in the house. But propriety wouldn’t allow such a thing. I was no doubt still inviting wagging tongues by having him on the premises at all. But it was obvious God had His hand on that man and had laid His plan on Puff’s heart. Who was I to argue, no matter what it cost me in gossip?

With a little fixing up, the tack room was “near close to cozy,” as Puff described it. He had a comfortable bed, a small table and two straight-backed chairs, a rocker for “resting his bones,” a bookcase of rough wood for his surprisingly large collection of books, and a woodstove small enough not to overwhelm the room with its size or its heat.

Puff cut a hole in the outside wall for a larger window, which we scavenged from a pile of discards in back of the barn. The additional light in the room, coupled with the rag rugs I made for the floor and the patchwork quilt Puff brought from his old home, warmed it up.

He wouldn’t let me go with him on his trips back and forth from his old place. I never did see it. He seemed so tickled with the tack room that I was tempted to ask if he’d had a roof and walls where he’d lived before.

As a bonus in the deal, Puff’s chickens came to live with us. And the pig we called Ham. I guess in choosing that name we wanted to remind ourselves that he wasn’t a pet but the promise of meat for the smokehouse and larder. I had other names for the animal.
Trouble. Stinky. Bother. Mudpuddle
. Puff now reminded me to call him Ham.

The comfortableness of our unspoken but heaven-assigned duties each day made for pleasant living. Puff cared for the animals, although I was happy to gather the eggs. He kept busy enough for three people, making repairs on the house, the outbuildings, and the fences. I clanged a rusty old cowbell hanging off the back stoop to call Puff to breakfast and dinner. He most often ate light for supper, taking leftovers or a bowl of soup to his room. I suspect he read a lot in the evenings. Times when I needed him for something, I always found him in his rocker with a book in his lap or resting on his chest.

It warmed me to my toes to see his big black Bible always sitting out on his table. Never sitting in exactly the same place or open to the same page, it was used enough to get ragged around the edges. I purposed to see to it that mine grew ragged from use, too.

Some might question, but I knew it was a miracle that Puff’s hens started producing more eggs than we could manage. It was as if they wanted to contribute somehow. Once a week, I
had enough eggs to take to town to trade for flour or sugar or chicken feed at the mercantile. I knew, of course, that the “seed money” wouldn’t last forever, and that we couldn’t sustain ourselves for long on egg money. But it was a start.

When I had extra cash, I spent it on paint and wallpaper for the upstairs bedrooms. They all needed it. Elbow grease wasn’t enough to perk them up without paint. I chose colors that raised the store clerk’s eyebrows, but I figured she wouldn’t have to sleep with it, so what did it matter?

“I’d recommend basic white,” Mrs. Witherspoon offered. “It’s clean. Versatile.”

And institutional
, I said under my breath while reaching for the topaz and persimmon.

I painted one room deep lavender, in honor of Lydia Kinney. Not in the least to pacify Edna Witherspoon, I painted the woodwork white, pure-as-the-driven-snow, though-your-sins-be-as-scarlet white. I was finishing work on a quilt with appliquéd violets when, of all people, Lydia drove into the yard.

The quilt frame Puff had built for me, bless his heart, was set up in one of the front parlors, the one I considered an office of sorts, because the light was so good in there, and because it allowed me to leave the project to tend other duties without having to climb the stairs so often. So I had a clear view when Lydia’s buggy pulled up in front of the house. I was at the door before she reached the bottom step.

“What a delightful surprise!”

“I hope I haven’t come at an inconvenient time.”

“Not at all. You’re always welcome, Lydia.” She balked when I called her Mrs. Kinney. “I’ll make us some tea.”

I recognized humbly that it was because of the gift she and her husband had given me that I was able to offer my guest tea. Somehow the thought framed the moment in holiness.

Lydia walked with me through the house to the kitchen and sat at my table while I fussed at the stove. I was grateful, so grateful, to have biscuits left from breakfast and fresh wild strawberry jam. Another divine provision. The ditches along the road were a jewelry case of wild strawberries waiting for an appreciative hand to pick them.

I stirred a dollop of honey into my tea. Lydia preferred sugar. Her spoon clinked delicately around her cup as she stirred and stirred and stirred, her gaze lost in the caramel-colored liquid.

At long last, she laid her spoon aside, clasped her hands in her lap, and let out her breath in what appeared to be a courage-summoning sigh.

“Anna, how near are you to being ready?”

“Ready?”

“For a  . . .  houseguest.”

“Oh.”

“There’s a young woman  . . .  a girl, really  . . .  who is in need. The niece of a friend of ours from our old church in Selena. A darling girl who thought she was in love.”

“And her family?”

“They  . . .  cannot  . . .  cope. They are not open to her staying with them.”

“How old is she?”

“Fifteen.”

“Oh, my.”

“I shared your story with my friend after she wrote to me of her family’s struggle, trusting you would approve.”

“Of course. Is she showing?”

“She will be soon.”

“Then I’m ready.”

She arrived in the middle of the night, like a fugitive cloaked in shadows. Her knock at the door was timid, uncertain. But it pierced my sleep and awakened every sense in me. With my robe wrapped tightly around myself, I slipped down the stairs from the servants’ quarters I now occupied, lit the lone lamp in the entry, and held it high as I opened the door to her.

The girl, named Elizabeth, lifted her eyes only long enough to receive my nod inviting her in. She turned, but the couple in the moonlit wagon at the far end of the drive did not nod or wave to her or blow kisses or in any way acknowledge she was their child. Once they saw that the door was opened to her, they tapped the reins on the horse’s haunches and left the premises.

It was a scene revisited many times through the years. One to which I would never grow accustomed. One that would haunt my sleep and feed my grief and keep me willing to open my door in the middle of the night.

My welcome routine changed later to accommodate record-keeping and house rules and a covenant agreement. But that first night with my first girl was filled with awkwardness and uncertainty. As uncomfortable as she must have felt in a new environment, so did I in my new role. Looking back, I only did one thing right, to speak of. I loved her.

“Come on in, dear. Don’t be afraid. You’re welcome here.”

I took the small satchel from her hands and set it on the floor at our feet. Then I wrapped my arms around her and drew her into my embrace. The way she cried into my shoulder, I wondered if she had been allowed to cry at all to that point. Her sobs shook us both. Down to our toes.

On second thought, I did two things right. I cried, too. I cried for the circumstances that brought her to my door. I cried for the dreams immature passion had shattered. I cried for the losses she was experiencing. I cried for the
estrangement of her family. I cried for the ridicule she would bear, for the labyrinth of trials that lay ahead for her, and for the babe she carried in her womb.

How had Puff heard us? It was quite some distance from the front entry clear through the house, across the yard, through the barn to the tack room. And with Puff’s self-confessed locomotive-like snoring, too! But there he was, lighting more lamps. Carrying the satchel upstairs to the lavender room. Turning back the covers. Lighting a chill-chasing fire in the white-washed brick fireplace while we women stood in a puddle of tears. He laid one big, shudder-stopping hand on our shoulders for just a moment, then disappeared back out into the night. How could he not be an angel? Who else would have known we needed him?

Sleep came, only because I’d exhausted myself with concern. When I checked on Elizabeth in the morning, I was grateful to see that she, too, slept. The violet quilt was tucked tightly under her chin. Her burnt-sugar-colored hair spilled recklessly over the pillow. Even in sleep, fear and pain and despair were written across her milky complexion.

I closed the door soundlessly and did what I would so often do. Kneeling outside her door, I prayed with stomach-twisting fervency for her and her child.

It was two full days before she spoke more than one-word answers to my questions.

“Are you comfortable in your room?”

“Yes.”

“Do you need anything?”

“No.”

“Is there any way I can help you get settled? Launder your clothes?”

“No. Thank you.”

On the third day, she began to ask questions.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Why did you take me in? Even my family can’t stand to lay eyes on me. Are they paying you? Is that it? Are they paying you to take me off their hands, to get rid of their ‘problem’?”

“No, Elizabeth. They’re not paying me. I’m not asking for money.”

“Then what?”

Good question. What was I doing? And why? And did I have any hope of succeeding? Were my motives as pure as I wanted them to be? How could I explain what even I didn’t fully understand?

“Elizabeth, all I can tell you is that God said I should open my home and my arms and my heart to you.”

“Why would He do that? He knows what I am.”

“What are you?”

“A whore!”

“Elizabeth!”

“That’s what my daddy calls me now.”

House rules about language and expressions of anger flashed through my brain faster than I could process them. “Elizabeth, please refrain from using that kind of language.”

“But that’s the kind of person I am.”

“Are you?”

“That’s what people think.”

“
Are
you?”

She chewed her lower lip, looked toward the ceiling of sky, and studied it for a few moments. “No.”

“What happened? Do you want to tell me? It might help.”

She and I were walking the lane, partly for the fresh air and partly for the introduction of conversations such as this. At the bridge over the creek, we stopped to lean over the rail and watch the endlessly burbling water.

Elizabeth brushed a stray leaf off the railing. It floated slowly to its new resting place on the water’s surface, then twirled in the eddy until a flash of current picked it up and carried it far downstream.

“It wasn’t like we weren’t in love.”

As if that lessened the impact of the changes happening in her body  . . .  and in her life.

“Tell me about him.” I kept my voice even.

“He’s older. Eighteen.”

Oh, child!

“We would have gotten married last summer if my parents would have let us. They insisted he have a job first. But it’s not always that easy! Nobody was hiring. And he doesn’t have much for skills yet because he sometimes is hard on himself and then he gives up trying. But we could have made it. I can work  . . .  or at least I could have.”

For the first of what I believed would be many, many times, I chained my tongue to the roof of my mouth and forced my heart to listen when it wanted to talk.

“So we started sneaking off,” she said. “If my parents hadn’t been so stubborn—!”

Elizabeth broke off her sentence and cringed, revealing her conscience. She knew it was foolishness to look anywhere but to her own actions for blame.

“Where is he now?”

“My folks run him off.”

“They did? Does he know about the baby?”

“I told him.”

“How did he react?”

“He was mad at first. I can understand that.”

You can?

“And then he got real quiet.” Elizabeth pressed her lips into a trembling line, then sighed. “I never saw him after that night.
I’m sure my dad told him not to show his sorry head around there anymore. That must be it. Or he would have come for me.”