On Shifting Sand (48 page)

“We’re all here,” I say.

Russ takes my hand. “Gathered in agreement.”

I reach back and feel Ronnie’s crusty, dry grip—the hand of a man—in mine, and we join our voices in reciting the Lord’s Prayer. This is not something new to our family, but it is the first time I’ve ever spoken these words having been delivered from evil. Or at least I thought I had. Now it seems evil has taken up residence in the tiny lungs of my daughter, punishing me for the shame I’ve brought into this home.

After our chorusing amen, Russ prays for a healing in little Ariel’s body. A full and complete restoration of her lungs, and an end to the infection that causes the fever to rage. I join him, silently, and stay by his side long after Ronnie takes himself to his own bed.

Russ shuts off the lamp and we sit in the darkness, the only sound that of Ariel’s breathing, which soon levels into sleep.

“Go to bed, Nola.” He shifts himself into a more comfortable position.

“Come with me.”

“One of us needs to stay with her.”

“Just for a minute.” I stand and take his hand, pulling it to reinforce my intention.

He follows me to where the only light comes from the lamp softly glowing in the front room. I lead him to our threadbare sofa, the very one that was cast off to us when we first moved into this apartment
before Ronnie was born. Sitting, I draw him beside me, and he fidgets like a boy, ready to leave.

“Listen.” I calm him with my voice. “I have lost too much to this place. We have two babies buried in the churchyard. My father and my friend died, drowning in dirt. The farm is gone, the church is dying off, my baby is sick, and our oldest is going to shake us off his shoes first chance he gets. And I—”

“You what? There’s something that hasn’t been right, Nola. Not since before you got sick.”

“I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t feel safe.”

“Darling, you know you’re safe with me.”

“Please, please. We can’t give her much, I know. But shouldn’t we at least be able to give her the best air to breathe?”

He rakes his hands through his hair. “And what would I do there, Nola?”

“What you do here. Help people. Preach. Be a father. God’s call on your life doesn’t have to end here. But think about the patients you saw at the hospital. The ones who got better. What did the doctors tell them to do?”

He stares at the floor. “Get away. If they could.”

“We can.”

Russ lifts his head and looks at me, the light glowing on his face. “Not until she’s better.”

Early the next morning I go to the Browns’ to call in a telegram to Greg.

ARIEL VERY SICK. DUST IN LUNGS.

Within an hour, Clarence Wallis knocks on our front door with his reply.

4 FIRST CLASS TICKETS PAID FOR ON RESERVE AT B.C. STATION

I carry the slip of paper as if it is as precious as the hundreds of dollars Greg no doubt paid for the tickets, but the grim look on Russ’s face calls for me to fold it carefully and drop it in my apron pocket.

“Is our girl ready for breakfast?” I keep my voice cheerful, for though Ariel can’t see us, she will certainly worry if my tone matches her father’s expression.

“Maybe in a bit.” Russ chooses to be quiet rather than force an optimistic tone. “Take her into the bathroom, run the water as hot as it’ll get. Let her breathe in the steam and encourage her to cough. The more she can cough up and out, the better.”

“All right.”

“And seal up the door, to trap it in. I’m afraid it won’t be pleasant for you.”

I lift my face in a haughty pose. “It’s supposed to do wonders for the skin. I saw that in a movie once.”

Worried that the precious telegram in my pocket might wilt and fade in the steam, I go to the kitchen and slip it next to Greg’s photograph. Then, in the bathroom, I tell Ariel we are going on a tropical adventure, and while the water fills, I plait her hair into two tight braids. I’ve brought in the stool from my dressing table, and set her on it like a Polynesian queen while I stop up the doorway with wet, rolled towels, just as we’ve learned to do to keep out the dirt.

The room fills with moist, warm fog, and I encourage Ariel to lean over the tub so she can inhale the steam closest to the source. I rub her back the way I’ve seen Russ do—long, deep strokes—and give praise for her lung-clearing coughs. I can feel each little vertebra bumping beneath my palm. We didn’t take such measures with Pa, not that he would have allowed such a thing, so when she asks if she has the same sickness he had, I lie.

“Of course not. You’re a little girl. He was an old man. God wouldn’t give two different people the same thing.”

Russ would have been angry at the last bit, filling the child’s head with something made of fancy rather than faith. But we are alone in a cloud too dense to even see the door, and it sounds as good as any truth I can muster.

When the hot water runs out and the steam drops to nothing but a thin film of water, I get Ariel back in her bed and bring a tray with a big bowl of bright-red Jell-O and a cup of broth from a can of soup Russ heated up during our steam.

“This is what your mama had when she was in the hospital,” I say, trying to sound sunny. “And look, I got all better.” Another lie, but she valiantly sips the warm broth—the price to pay for the tastier dessert. If we stay, she might grow up to be like me, her whole life played out in this barren place, her tiny body wasting away for lack of life.

Her two little hands grasp the cup, and she hands it to me, still half-full. “I don’t want any more.”

“You need to finish.”

“But I don’t like it.”

I start to say what my father would have said, what Russ would have said, that sometimes in life we have to do things we don’t like to do. I think about what I would do in her place, how I would sip the broth, hold it in my mouth, and let it seep into my napkin as I dabbed my lips. But here is my little girl, honest in her heart’s desire, so I smile, take the cup from her, and declare she drank enough. She is only able to take a few bites of Jell-O before appearing too weak to even lift her arm, and only two more before turning her head away when I try to feed her. The fever remains, but I don’t think it is my imagination that it seems lower than the night before, and after encouraging her to take a few sips of water, I leave her in a sound sleep.

In the kitchen, the smell of coffee welcomes me, even though Russ doesn’t, as he sits at the table, head resting on his folded arms. Neither of us slept much or well the night before, and I hoped to encourage
him to go to bed while Ariel sleeps. I touch his shoulder, and without lifting his head, his hand covers mine. I kneel beside him, ignoring the grit against my knees.

He lifts his head, his eyes red-rimmed but dry. “You have to understand,” he says, as if we are already midconversation, “I’ve already run away from one war.”

That’s when I see the folded telegram, now open, lying on the table in front of him.

“Oh, Russ. You didn’t run away, and this isn’t a war.”

“I hid.”

“You weren’t hiding. You were serving God. You still are.”

“I could have served God in combat. I should have been one of them. I should have sacrificed—”

“Listen to me.” I clutch at his shirt, the fabric the only thing keeping me from digging my nails into either his flesh or mine. “You were—you
are
—a good and noble man. You would be the same man whether or not you went to war, or here, or—” I take a deep breath—“in Baltimore.” I relinquish my grip. “But I wouldn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

I feel everything within me go soft, like I’ve been holding a thick, solid breath that melts and comes pouring out in unchecked tears.

“I’m s—” but the word clogs my throat, and I swallow it in a heave that rivals anything my daughter produced in the thick of the steam.

“Nola, darling? What’s wrong?” In a single, smooth motion, Russ backs the chair away from the table and sweeps me into his lap, where I bury my face in his neck, the safest place I know.

I try again. “I’m sorry.”

He rocks me and makes soft noises.

“I’m sorry I want this so much. I’m sorry to be so unhappy. I don’t have a right to be unhappy.”

He sounds mildly amused. “Everybody has the right to be unhappy every now and then.”

“I don’t. Not when you love me so much.”

Now he does laugh, low and rumbling, and I realize his heart is so pure, he can’t fathom mine is anything less. He comforts me the way one would a child, christening me with an assumption of innocence. I know I can be brand-new again, that I can be fully restored to the woman and wife I was before my fall. But I can’t do it here, not with my temptation pacing, always, to and fro, just beyond our sight.

A cry from Ariel’s room brings me to my feet, Russ following suit, and we nearly trip over each other—our conversation forgotten—in a rush to her side. There she sits up in bed, crying, claiming she is melting.

“What’s that, sweetheart?” I say, dropping myself to the edge of her bed.

“All that hot. It melted me.”

The last word is a long, hoarse wail, and I take her into my arms, immediately understanding. She is drenched in sweat, soaked clear through her nightgown, and I press my cheek to hers. “Thank you, Lord.” I reach one hand out to Russ. “Thank you, Jesus.”

The fever has broken. God has delivered my child, and in that moment I allow myself the fleeting hope that God will deliver me.

If thou return to the Almighty, thou shalt be built up,

thou shalt put away iniquity far from thy tabernacles.

Then shalt thou lay up gold as dust,

and the gold of Ophir as the stones of the brooks.

Yea, the Almighty shall be thy defence,

and thou shalt have plenty of silver.

JOB 22:23-25

  CHAPTER 30