She said, “Women have babies. All the time. I figure I can.” To comfort him she could have said it might all turn out just fine, it usually did, but she was as much afraid as he was to think that way. She couldn’t tell him she had unbaptized herself for fear he thought it would harm the child. Why did she do it that morning? She could just as well have done it after the baby came. Then if something went wrong she wouldn’t have to wonder whether she was to blame for it. It was dread at the thought that made her ask him right then if once you been baptized you could ever just wash it off you, and he smiled and said no.
“Even if you wanted to?”
“Well, that’s probably about as close as you could ever come. But no. You don’t have to worry about that.” She was relieved, in a way.
She’d heard people say that a sad woman will have a sad child. A bitter woman will have an angry child. She used to think that if she could decide what it was she felt, as far back as she remembered, she could know that much, at least, about the woman who bore her. Loneliness. She pitied the woman for her loneliness. She didn’t want this child of hers to feel afraid with no real reason. The good house, the kind old man. I got us out of the rain, didn’t I? We’re warm, ain’t we? In that letter he had said there’s no such thing as safety. Existence can be fierce, she did know that. A storm can blow up out of a quiet day, wind that takes your life out of your hands, your soul out of your body. The fire went up and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning. And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning. She had copied this fifteen times. It reminded her of the wildness of things. In that quiet house she was afraid she might forget.
She thought, An unborn child lives the life of a woman it might never know, hearing her laugh or cry, feeling the scare that makes her catch her breath, tighten her belly. For months its whole life would be all dreams and no waking. The steps in the road, the thought of the knife, then the dread sinks away for a while, and how is a child to know why? She could only guess what all it was that Doll was afraid of, or ashamed of, but she lived her fear and her shame with her, taking off through the woods with an apple thumping in her lunch bucket and Doll wearing a big straw hat she must have hoped would shade her face enough to hide it a little. More than once Doll took her hand to hurry her along and wouldn’t let her catch her breath and never told her why. She always stayed back from the firelight even when the night was cold and even when there were no strangers there to see. Doane and the others saw, of course, but Lila was the only one she ever really trusted to look into her face. Well, child, Lila thought, I will see you weltering in your blood. And mine. Lonely, frightened, my own child. If the wildness doesn’t carry us both away. And if it does.
She looked after the gardens. She walked up to the cemetery to see to Mrs. Ames and the child, and now the boy John Ames and his sisters. No need to go out looking for ironing to do, the Reverend told her. There was a woman who had taken in his laundry for years, so there was no need for Lila to do that kind of thing at all. She should take care of herself. That was the best thing she could do. Everything would be seen to.
She had that room he called her study. The Bible was there, and her tablet, and a drawer of new pencils and erasers and pens and tablets. There were books with pictures of other countries in them, China, France, some of them from the library. Most evenings the Reverend walked with her after supper, her arm in his, pausing to speak to everyone he knew, however slightly, to say, This is my wife Lila. Every courtesy owed to him was owed to her also, now that she was his wife, and he wanted to be sure they, and she, understood this. When anyone spoke to her, she nodded and said nothing. Whoever it was always changed the subject to the weather, the corn crop. If they walked out past the edge of town he would put his arm around her waist, still shy of her and pleased to be alone with her, knowing she was relieved to be alone with him. She knew he was thinking and praying about how to make her feel at home. She had never been at home in all the years of her life. She wouldn’t know how to begin. But the shade of the cottonwoods and the shimmer of their leaves and the trill of the cicadas were comfort for her. The pasture smell. Elderberries grew in the ditches by the road, and they picked them and ate them as they walked. Sometimes it was dark when they turned back toward Gilead. Once, he noticed a bush glimmering with fireflies. He stepped into the
