Sufficient Grace (11 page)

Putting aside the wood, I hold up the empty nest with both my hands. ‘Daddy, guess we missed the adoption.'

‘Don't be silly. Grow up, girl.' His mouth is drooping, hanging open a bit, and he looks at me like I'm crazy.

But I was just pretending, being the baby girl he used to set on his knee or take by hand up the path. Daddy goes back to stacking, but I stand there stupid and staring; I'm wounded. He don't hurt Reuben like he does me, not looking me in the eyes when he says mean things — ‘good luck keeping a husband, Ruth' or ‘that face won't make a man forget a burnt supper' — always pretending after it's a joke when it's not. He must think I'm proud, too big for my boots. He needs to squash me, but Reuben don't need squashing. I put down the mouse nest and go back to stacking wood, but the tears come and I keep wiping my snot on the arm of my sweater.

‘Go help your mother, Ruth.'

Daddy hears my sniffing. He can't bear watching a woman cry.

‘Mom ain't doing nothing, though.'

‘Well, go and help her with that. Do nothing, just don't do it here.'

I throw down my wood and stomp toward the stairs. Even though he don't hold me no more, I know my daddy still loves me. Daddy didn't have any sisters, so he didn't learn nothing about girls. His insides are hard like the inside of a stone. Maybe my daddy's meanness is like when I loved those baby mice so much that I held them tight, tighter, until I crushed them soft and pink in my hands. Next time I find a mouse nest, I'll step on it; that'll show him what a girl I am then.

So I hunker down in my room for a couple hours, squished between pillows stacked high on the carpet like walls. I'm reading my devotions when Reuben knocks soft on the door. I act like I don't hear him, like I'm more interested in the Philistines — reading the scripture and checking my Bible guide — than my brother standing at the door. I wait until he calls my name to look up, with my eyes startled open, feigning surprise.

‘You want it?' Still covered in sawdust and grimy from sweating while splitting wood outside in the snow, Reuben holds out one of our last oranges.

Fruit in winter is a luxury we usually do without, our parents neither willing nor able to pay for food that's travelled up from Florida or California or some other sunshiny place. Outside of Grandma's dried apples and frozen strawberries, what few shrivelled oranges we have left now will have to do until summer. Store-bought canned peaches will sometimes make their way to our home; Daddy's got a sweet tooth and both Mom and Grandma try to keep him happy. But for Reuben to break into our dwindling rations means he must feel there's something he owes.

I love eating the white membrane of an orange, stripping back the peel to chew the soft fuzzy casing covering the flesh and dividing the centre like a wick. Reuben likes eating the orange's heart, especially any strange middle slices, stunted misshapen pieces holding the inside together. Your taste is special, what you like or what you don't. Like Naomi with crusts, I don't like to eat corn kernels but I will eat apples without any forcing. Eating corn — even fresh sweet corn and not mealy field corn meant for cows and folks up from Chicago — feels like I'm eating seed. Corn kernels are too inside out for me. Apples have cores and seeds, but I don't mind them. Oranges have seeds that folks spit out or chew. Fruit without seeds is something I don't aim to try.

Leaning on the door, Reuben holds out the orange, waving his arm up and down like a flag, like I don't see. I turn my head so he knows I'm looking, but that fruit ain't going to fix my hurt. My brother can't help his feelings, but neither can I. I look Reuben straight in the eye. He's angry himself now, having gone to the effort but getting skunked. But he's still going to try.

‘Ruth, if I never split the logs I'd never learn.'

It doesn't mean much coming from him, but I see his heart. I soften my eyes and walk to the doorway. When I take the orange, our fingers barely touch.

‘I can't always change it, but I believe I'll always try.' And he leaves my room, his boots clomping on the stairs.

I'm not able to see it, but I'm sure there are crushed lines of ice and sawdust marking his path out the door: melting piles of water and wood, boot prints tracing his way outside.

I'll save this orange for later, maybe give Reuben half after supper. It isn't that Daddy loves my brother more, maybe just better. I know that is what Reuben meant. But it isn't anybody's fault. Sometimes you have to split your own wood. I know that is what Reuben said. The orange's skin is dry and puckered; it was picked a long time ago.

‘Anything on your heart, Ruthie?' Getting ready for bed, Mom's babying me tonight, worried I'm still mad at Daddy.

She is combing out my wet hair, ready to braid it tight. Overnight it will almost dry, and in the morning I'll unwind it and wear it down and wavy like a mare's tail. She used to wash my hair in the bathroom sink: I'd lay along the counter and let my head fall back while she put shampoo and creme rinse through the tangles. I'm too long and old for that now, but those framed needlepoint black bears on the wall still tell me every day to:
Remember to brush your teeth. Remember to comb your hair. Remember to say your prayers.

This upstairs bathroom has locks on both doors. Other than opening them from the inside, only a nail will get you in from the outside. If Reuben gives chase when mad, I'll lock the doors and secret myself away amongst the towels in the closet. I don't need to hide when the doors are locked, but I do anyway, just to be safe. I rest for hours in the tub, soaking. Sometimes I sing and pray. A couple years ago I realised that I was meant to get clean in the water, not merely lay and ponder. Mostly it relieves my achy knees and my head full of worries. It soothes me, body and soul, to let the water wash over me.

‘If you're coming down with something, I'd rather know so we can head it off.'

She's done braiding, so I lean back into my mom's soft legs and chest and look up at her face. She gave me my straight nose and heart-shaped face. Her eyelids are drooping now, like mine will soon enough, and she's got little creases in the corners of her eyes. But she is still lovely, even with the worry that's worn her beauty away. When I was just born, Mom decided to get both me and Reuben vaccinated. Her bout with whooping cough didn't bring her or anybody closer to Jesus, so she reckoned the needles couldn't take us farther away. Daddy agreed in faith but I don't believe Grandma knows. Mom still frets, though; she lost a couple brothers in childhood.

‘Are you under the weather?'

There ain't nothing wrong with me. ‘I guess I'm just quiet.'

I look at the mirror. If you devote your heart to Jesus and stretch out your hands to the Lord, if you reject sin and strike it from your land and give no quarter to evil, then you can lift up your face. Hold your eyes high and straight, for shame is not on your shoulders, weighing you down. Stand tall and solid and strong.

When she left her family to make my family, Mom's picture was turned to the wall — not taken down and forgotten, but left hanging to be remembered. Above the fireplace in my grandparents' house, where I have never been, are the portraits of their family: my grandparents, my uncles and my aunts, and my many cousins. My mother's photo hangs backwards, the brown-paper backing and stapled twine showing instead of her small, square teeth. Reuben and I do not exist on that wall. Beneath that backwards photo, I don't know if there are even spaces waiting for children.

My mom is back-slid Holiness. Her Grandma Wyse was back-slid Amish. Generation by generation, we are a family of women who are slowly slipping away from heaven and toward the world. We don't ever see those Yoder grandparents. My grandma on that side says that we'll meet in heaven, or she'll watch us being sent to hell. But she won't cry, for there will be no weeping in heaven. She says that in the letter she sends every year on Mom's birthday to try and bring us back into the fold.

I don't know how the woman can judge; if it weren't for her own momma running away from the Cherokee River Amish down in the south of the state, she herself wouldn't know electricity or even motor vehicles. She can't see the sameness in her daughter and her momma. All she sees is that her daughter don't wear no prairie dress, and that she cut her hair to her shoulders and even wears fingernail polish now and again. You won't ever catch Mom in make-up or even persuade her an inch on ear-piercing, her own lobes or anyone else's, but Grandma Yoder can't touch my mom for fear of … for fear of something I don't know how to fear.

Of course my mom's parents didn't approve of the union. Even though my daddy came from clean farming stock, he wasn't Holiness and he wasn't ever going be. Grandma Yoder tried to scare her daughter off of the boy by telling her gossip about dancing and shrieking at the Pentecostal church. Grandma Wyse told Mom that we didn't know the way of salvation and that we were lost along with the world. But ever since my mom saw my daddy showing cattle at the county fair, she was smitten. She was all long blonde braids and strawberry cheeks, and he was dirty overalls and bucktooth shy. To hear Daddy tell, it was my Uncle Peter who spoke bold first and fell for her a bit as well. But it was my daddy and his shiny black bull that won her heart and the reserve champion ribbon too.

At first, their courting was done normal: Uncle Peter would drive and Daddy would buy Mom a malted milkshake at the Dairy Queen. But after Peter left for the navy, and Mom's parents forbid contact, my parents had to sneak. After her chores, Mom would take long walks through the field corn and Daddy would do just the same. Daddy says that's why Reuben's hair feels like cornsilk. Mom says she was afraid they'd be mistaken for deer and be shot dead in the field. Accident or not, gunshot from a .30-30 ain't a pretty way to travel. It's been said that deer hunting sorts out a lot of family problems in Failing. It's hard to believe how many fathers of bruised and black-eyed daughters accidentally wing their sons-in-law during the hunt. So gunshot wasn't far from my parents' mind all through their courtship. Mom said Daddy seemed to be all she needed then and forevermore; he was the one to both keep her safe and cure her lonely. Ingwald was in California, but Peter made it home special to be best man at the wedding. Mom's family wouldn't witness the union, so the wedding was small. Mom wore a plain church dress.

No matter what, even when she is lonesome for her family, my mom won't lay any fault in the whole thing, the shunning. She only says we all struggle against our sinful nature and that she knows Grandma Yoder is praying daily for our salvation, which can't be a bad thing. After Mom's car accident, she thought for a while that maybe she was being punished by God for walking away from the Holiness and her own grandma's walking away from the Amish. She was even angry at Daddy for him being gone in Alaska, and her needing to drive herself. She was thankful, though, that baby Reuben wasn't hurt — not a cornsilk hair on his head was harmed. He was proof that the Lord had protected them. Even though a car accident scares a body away from cars, it don't have to scare a soul away from God.

When they let her loose from the hospital, she didn't want to ride in a vehicle again. But she couldn't yet walk, and it was the only way home, so ride she did. Uncle Peter handed her a swaddled, sleeping Reuben, and she held him and prayed in the truck all the way home. And while Daddy hitchhiked from Alaska, desperately trying to make it home, Uncle Peter helped her learn to walk again. Mom says that you have to keep walking, just keep on walking. And when you can't walk no more, there ain't no shame in riding. Maybe she was outside the will of her momma, but I know she wasn't never outside the will of the Lord.

Troubles will be forgotten, remembered only like leaves on the current in the river, flowing by quick and tinkling. Even darkness will look bright enough to you. You stay safe standing or at rest; even laying down, you won't be afraid because no one will want to hurt you. With the Lord on your side, the righteous won't ever be lonely.
But the eyes of the wicked will fail, and escape will elude them; their hope will become a dying gasp.

Without noticing, I sometimes stare at my face.

Mom's peering at me in the bathroom mirror, everything backwards from our usual way of looking. I'm in my nightgown, and she traces me with her eyes: I'm filling out, too much so and too fast. My hips are spreading more than I'd like, with faint white lines squiggling across my skin. At night, my pushing breasts sag and hurt too much to sleep.

‘It's a burden, Ruthie.' Mom puts her hands on my shoulders and measures my reflection.

I feel my face flush and drop my eyes to my feet.

‘Beauty's a hard gift to bear.'

10

NAOMI'S HAIR IS LONG
AND BLACK
AND WHEN SHE DREAMS,
she dreams of trees. Even all the times I sleep over, Gloria comes to tuck her daughter in; they ain't embarrassed. Before bed, her momma brushes Naomi's hair with a hard bristle brush, and with each stroke it gleams until it crackles and sticks staticky away from her head like a coal halo. When she visits her sleep trees, Gloria has already braided Naomi's hair into a long rope down her back, swishing past her middle. Depending on the season, her trees are different.