She remembered Mellie peering at her the way she did when Lila had gotten a swat or a bee sting, curious to see if she would cry. She remembered them walking away, Arthur and Doane talking between themselves and Mellie tagging along after, and nobody looking back. They took Mellie along to calm her, like you would take an old dog along to quiet a horse or a cow you were going to sell, and Mellie understood, and it made her feel important. So Lila spent a long day in that no-name town, not even sure whether Doane meant they would come back for her, or Doll would, or whether they left her on the church steps because that’s where you ended up if you were an orphan. She walked up and down the street, two blocks, so she was always close enough to the church to see if anyone came looking for her. After a while a woman noticed her and brought her a piece of bread and butter. “You waiting for your mama, honey?” she said, and Lila couldn’t even look at her, couldn’t answer her. After a while the woman came back again. She said, “I got more work than I can do today. I’ll give you a dime if you’ll sweep up in front of my store.” Lila said, “Well, I got to stay by the church. That’s what they told me.” So the woman went and found the preacher. He was skinny and young. He looked like Arthur’s Deke playing at preacher. He bent down to ask her where her mother was, and who she was, and whether she had a mother, maybe a father, any family at all. She and Doll never answered questions like that. She said, “I figure I should just wait, I guess,” and the preacher said, “You’re welcome to wait here if you want to, and if you get tired of waiting you can let us know. We’ll find a place for you to sleep, if you decide you need one. We’ll get you some supper.” It was Doane who always told them not to trust preachers. This is how you got turned into an orphan. Then they put you in a place with other orphans and you can never leave. High walls around it. That’s what Mellie said. So she just shook her head, and he stood up and spoke with that woman about keeping an eye on her. And she could feel them keeping eyes on her, more and more of them, whispering about her and looking at her through their windows. Doane had waked her early that morning, so she was wearing the shabby clothes she slept in and hadn’t combed her hair.
When it was evening and again when it was night the preacher came to see how she was doing. The first time he brought a plate of food and set it down next to her, and the second time he brought a blanket. He said, “It can get chilly, sitting out here in the dark. If you’d like, I can spell you for a while. I’d sure like to have a word with these folks you’ve been waiting for. No? Well, I’ll ask again in an hour or so.”
And then she was just sitting there on the steps, wrapped up in the blanket, the town all quiet and the moon staring down at her, and there was Doll with her arms around her, saying, “Oh, child, I thought I never was going to find you!” Lila couldn’t quite wake up from what she had been remembering, and Doll knew what she was remembering, so she kept saying, “Oh, child, oh, child, this never should have happened! I never thought anything like this was going to happen! Four days I was gone!” And she kept hugging the child and stroking her face and her hair. Late as it was, the preacher was still keeping an eye on her, because he stepped out the door just then. He said, “You’re the mother, I take it?” and Doll said, “None of your damn business.” She probably wouldn’t have spoke so rough if he hadn’t been a preacher.
“Who are you?” he said. “I’d like to know who’s carrying off this child.”
She said, “I spose you would. Come on, Lila.”
But Lila couldn’t move. She wanted to rest her head on a bosom more Doll’s than Doll herself, to feel trust rise up in her like that sweet old surprise of being carried off in strong arms, wrapped in a gentleness worn all soft and perfect. “No,” she said, and drew herself away.
The preacher said, “This better wait till morning. I’d like Lila to have a chance to think this over.”
Doll said, “Mister, you ain’t nothing to her, and you ain’t nothing to me. Lila, you want to stay here?”
So the girl stood up and let herself be hugged, and let herself be guided down the walk. The preacher said, “She can keep the blanket.”
And Doll said, “I take care of her. She has what she needs.”
