“I came here to get your blessing,” I told her.
Leopolda glared at me, the spoon tight in her claw. She looked suspiciously at Zelda, who smiled in her ignorance.
“Bless my girl too,” I said. “She might have a vocation.”
There was interest. I was certain. She was hooked by the thought.
“God will decide that.”
“Your blessing might help her.”
She finally nodded.
Here was my plan: I would let her give Zelda the blessing, and then I would kneel before her to receive my blessing too. But just as she prayed over my head, I would lunge forward, taking her off-balance. I would go straight for the spoon, snatch it from her, have it, take it back home up the sleeve of my royal-plum dress that was certainly no shroud.
Zelda went down on her knees, and the nun’s hand went up. I thought Leopolda would be a good half hour at her blessing prayer, so much did she enjoy this chance. Her right hand made numerous signs of the cross or rested skeletal on the hair of my girl. Her left hand gripped the spoon forgetfully. But she did not put it down.
I was about to make some move to get this over, when Leopolda came to the end of her speech and wound it up. She made a few parting waves overhead, and Zelda staggered to her feet. I kneeled down then, at the side of the bed, and rested my folded hands on the coverlet in good reaching distance.
Kneeling there, I was surprised how it affected me.
My heart was beating in my throat. It was like I had gone back years and years to the old Marie who was spoken to by the dark. It was like I had come full circle to that rough girl, again, for one last fight with Leopolda before she swirled off and was nothing.
When I smiled into her face she smiled back. It was the huge bleached grin of a skull. She lifted her hand.
But it was not the right hand of her blessing she lifted. It was the other hand, the left hand, still gripping the iron spoon. The hand went up. Our eyesights locked. She lifted half out of bed, with her deathly strength, to give herself the leverage she needed to connect a heavy blow.
I went up with her, drawn by her gaze, knowing her intention she spoke it. The arm smacked down, but I somehow had as I I grasped her wrist, and now we leaned into each other, balanced by hate.
“Down!” she said.
“No!”
And then, with my other hand, I tried to take the spoon from her weakened grip. But she clung to the iron handle with both hands and kept grinning into my face. I grinned back at her, just to even things, and that was when I felt she got the better of me, for suddenly my face stretched and the air around me flattened.
On her breath, in which I kneeled, was the smell of turned earth.
Her gaze, in which I struggled, was a deep square hole. Her strength was the strict progress of darkness.
“Hold on!” I yelled, frightened, for it seemed just as if I was falling fast into her eyes and would be covered up by flowers and clods of earth unless she pulled me back.
And she did pull. She stood me up, and then I sat down on the bed with her. Once I was there I let go of the spoon. It dropped heavily on her starved breast and lay as spent of power as she.
Her body was so shallow I could hardly tell if she breathed, the covering of her bones so frail I could see the heart pumping in her breast.
I sat with her a long while, in silence.
The earth was so mild and deep. By spring she would be placed there, alone, and there was no rescue. There was nothing I could do after hating her all these years.
We were quiet walking back down the hill, through the woods.
The path in the trees was shadowy and almost cold after the blaze of road. The sun flickered in the brush. Each leaf balanced in the air.
Watching Zelda walk in front of me, SO Sure of herself and thin, with a cutting edge, with a mind that wasn’t made up, with pure white anklets and careful curls, I felt an amazement. I remembered the year I carried her. It was summer. I sat under the clothesline, breathing quiet so she would move, feeling the hand or foot knock ‘just beneath my heart.
We had been in one body then, yet she was a stranger, We were not as close now, yet perhaps I knew her better.
Her black hair swung calmly with each step. She looked so young.
“I might go up there someday,” she said, “up the hill.”
“And stay with them?”
“Yes.
That did not surprise me. Yet I felt a sinking surge, a regret, a feeling like I should clutch her by the shoulders, although it plagued me that she couldn’t make up her mind. “Don’t make any hasty decision about your life,” I said.
“I should get a job like Gordie did!”
“No! You shouldn’t!”
I was on the verge of saying how I needed her, at the house, but I didn’t say it. After all, I thought, she should be free to go.
As we came through the woods to the field, I heard Nector’s shotgun.
The boys were hunting ducks at the slough. The house looked quiet. I could see Aurella moping in the yard with Eugene and Patsy, the little ones I left in her care. No doubt she wanted to be hunting with the boys and June.
“Go on after them,” I said, as we walked in the yard. Aurelia got up and ran. She did not have to be convinced. She liked a boy down the road, a friend of Gordie’s. She never had trouble making up her mind.
Zelda went in the house before me, to change to her over halls
I stood in the yard. Nector was not home. I picked up the baby I was keeping for a young girl across the road, because he cried when he saw me. I looked over at the door.
Zelda was standing there, shadowy, behind the screen.
“Hurry up and change,” I said. The cow was bawling.
But she didn’t move when I told her to move. She said nothing. It gripped me in the throat that there was something wrong.
As if he would protect us, I kept the baby in my arms. I walked up the steps and stood on the other side of the screen. She looked at me, steady, and then I pulled the handle toward me.
“Here, Mama,” she said, handing me the letter.
I stood in the kitchen, with the letter in my hand, not moving.
“Go on,” I said, “change.”
So she went. I opened the paper and I read.
Dear Marie, Can’t see going on with this when every day I’m going down even worse. Sure I loved you once, but all this time I am seeing Lulu also. Now she pressured me and the day has come L must get up and go. I apologize. I found true love with her. I don’t have a choice.
But that doesn’t mean Nector Kashpaw will ever forget his own.
I folded the paper back up and put it in my dress pocket.
Zelda stepped back into the room.
“Where did you get this?” I asked her.
Under the sugar ‘ar.
She pointed at the table and then we both looked, as if the table would tell us what to do next. I concentrated very hard on what I saw.
The box of spoons. The butter plate. The can of salt.
Somehow these things looked more full of special meaning than the sugar jar. It was just smooth clear glass, decent and familiar in the sunlight, half full. I looked back at Zelda. We gazed at each other.
Her eyes were wide, staring, but I wasn’t sure if she had read the letter or just been scared by the oddness of a piece of paper with my name on it, sitting on that table. I couldn’t tell.
Listen to that cow,” I said. I felt my heart bang hard. My throat shut. I wouldn’t have been able to say another word.
Zelda listened. She turned slowly, put her hands in her pockets, and walked outside. I went into the other room with the baby and sat on the bed. The paper crackled in my pocket. I needed the quiet. I could hear Patsy humming outside the window. She was safe. The cow went still. The rest of them were occupied. I could think.