The teacher was just a girl herself, a gentle girl. She helped Lila read and write, add and subtract, the things she would most need to be able to do, because Lila was the kind of child who would leave school the minute she could, or the minute her mother decided she had to. The teacher let Lila stay in the classroom working on her spelling and numbers when the other children played outside. She was glad to be by herself with something to do. She hated the other children because they had laughed at her, because they were town children, because she would never stay there anyway and they knew it. The teacher said she was a bright girl, and called on her to spell words or do sums in front of the class as soon as she knew Lila would probably get the right answers. That was all that made her bother learning them, but it made her like learning them because she was good at it. At the front of the room there was a map of the United States of America. A painting of George Washington. A flag with forty-eight stars and thirteen stripes. These things had a kind of importance about them that Lila had never even heard of before. She’d thought the world was just hayfields and cornfields and bean fields and apple orchards. The people who owned them and the people who didn’t. And towns. Doll wanted to give her another kind of life. She didn’t know how to go about it, rough and ignorant as she was, but she did try.
She heard herself say, “There was a woman who took care of me. She wanted me to marry an old man. But I couldn’t. A young girl just has other ideas. She told me there wasn’t no more for me to expect.”
He said nothing. They walked the rest of the way home, neither speaking a word. She felt the old loneliness seize on her from one heartbeat to the next, the old, hard awkwardness of her body. How could a child stay alive in a body that felt so dead? Best that it shouldn’t. There was no place for her to be alone now except in his house. She would leave the next morning, before he was awake, before it was light. There was nothing left in that cabin. She’d take a blanket off her bed, and a kitchen knife. Maybe her money was still out there where she hid it.
He opened the door for her and switched on the light. His face was slack and his lips were pale. He took the coat from her shoulders and hung it up. Then he just stood and looked at her. He said, “I’m at a loss. But you’re right.” His voice broke, so he cleared his throat. “You should stay here until the baby comes. After that, of course, you can do whatever you think is best.”
What could she say? She said, “You know how I stole that sweater? I done it because it had your smell on it.”
He laughed. “Why, thank you, Lila. I mean, I guess that’s a sort of compliment.”
“Then I was sleeping with it for a pillow.”
“I’m honored.”
“I used to make believe you was there and I was talking to you. I was thinking about you all the time. Seemed like I was going crazy.”
“And I was thinking about you. And wondering about myself. So what do we do now?”
She shrugged. “Just what we been doing, I’d say.”
“So maybe I’m not just any old man?”
She said, “You surely ain’t.”
“Well. That’s a relief.” Then he said, “Do you still pretend you talk to me? Now that I’m here and all? Do you ever think of telling me the things you used to imagine you were telling me?”
“Asking, more like. And you just seen what happens. Whenever I talk.”
He said, “I liked the part about the sweater. That was worth all the rest of it.”
So she put her arms around him. So she put her head on his chest. “You’re a good-hearted man,” she said, enjoying the feel of his shirt. Of him stroking her hair.
“I believe that’s true enough, most of the time. And very trustworthy. So there’s no need to cry.”
She said, “Yes, there is. I just now come near scaring myself to death.”
“Hmm. We can’t let that happen. We’re supposed to be taking care of you.” He kissed her forehead and touched tears off her cheeks, and then he said he had to go to his study to finish a little work. She thought, You mean, to do a little praying. Because I come near scaring you to death, too. So you have to talk me over with the Lord. Better Him than Boughton, I suppose.
But she had told him the truth about something, and it had turned out well enough. Now all she had to do was give up the other thought, that if she had minded and married the first old man, maybe Doll would be alive. He was probably about as ignorant as they were. At least he might not have known any more about the Judgment than they did. Then even if Doll had died, Lila wouldn’t have to think of her standing there all astonished and ashamed, in the same raggedy clothes she was probably buried in, if she was buried, because why would they even bother to straighten her back and take the weariness out of her face if they was just going to say “Guilty” anyway? That voice above the firmament. Doane
