Past Forward Volume 1 (18 page)

The same little voice replied, “Our mommy
died, so she isn’t ‘pawed about anyfing anymore.” A carefully
calculated expression followed. Had she not seen it for herself,
Willow would never have imagined that such a little girl could
produce an expression so decidedly designed to garner sympathy.

As the second girl looked at Willow, genuine
tears in her eyes, Willow realized that the girls were identical
twins. “My mother just died a couple of weeks ago, and I want to
please her now more than ever. It breaks my heart to think of her
in heaven and disappointed because I behave badly.”

The little girls exchanged looks and then
gazed frankly at Willow. “Did your mommy really die?” queried the
child with tears splashing on her cheeks.

“Yes. I miss her.”

“Did she die in a caw axe-dent like our
mommy?” The first girl’s lip quivered slightly.

“No, she died in her—” Willow paused. Would
hearing about dying in your sleep frighten a child? She wasn’t
sure. “Something was wrong in her head and it killed her.”

Silence filled the barn until Willow felt a
little smothered by it. Eventually, the twin who was obviously the
leader of the pair asked hesitantly, “Do you weawy think Mommy
would be mad if we pwayed with the puppies?”

“No. I think your mommy would love for you
to play with the puppies, but I do think she would want you to
listen to your big brother and eat lunch first.”

Lorna, brushing the tears from her eyes,
stood decidedly. “Come on, Cari. I don’t want to get in trouble
‘gain. I’m going in.”

Willow took the child’s hand and turned away
from the shocked Cari. As they neared the barn doors, Willow felt
Cari’s hand slip into her empty one, and she smiled down at the
girl. “Do you have a favorite puppy? I have to pick one to take
home.”

While Chad made the pup comfortable on the
back porch, Willow changed out of her nicer dress. Minutes later,
dress in hand, Willow jogged down the stairs and out to where Chad
was introducing Othello to the puppy and setting up her bowls.
“Chad, what do you think of this dress?”

Chad choked back a laugh and scrambled to
find an answer that wasn’t destined for a noose around his neck. “I
think it looks made for you.”

Nodding her agreement, Willow disappeared
inside once more. Chad watched the screen door shut behind her and
wondered how else he could have answered the question. He carried
the pup inside with him as he followed to see how big of a hole
he’d started to dig.

Willow saw Chad enter with the dog and shook
her head. “Take her outside.”

With a deep sigh, he nudged the dog outside
and turned to apologize. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to upset
you.”

“What? I’m not upset.”

The confusion on Willow’s face verified her
words, leaving him scrambling more than ever. “Oh. The dog and the
dress— I just assumed…”

“I don’t understand. I said I don’t want the
dog inside.” She frowned. “Wait. What about the dress?”

“I thought you were upset at what I said
about it.”

“Why would you be? I just wanted to know
what you thought of that dress. I noticed it’s very different from
a lot of what I see other women wearing. It made me wonder.”

Chad’s mouth opened to protest and then
closed. It was genuine. She wasn’t saying what she thought he
wanted to hear, and she wasn’t stuffing down her own emotions.
Willow meant it. She didn’t want a puppy in the house and she
accepted his comment about her clothing without question. She
fished for trout, not compliments.

“Well, I will agree that some of your
clothing is a little different than current styles, but I just
think it defines you. Have you seen Alexa Hartfield? It seems like
she never wears the same style twice.”

Willow grabbed an armful of jars of canned
peas and carried them to the empty shelves of the pantry. Chad
followed with another armful and watched her organize them as he
brought jar after jar into the room. While she added the jars to
the corner, Chad counted forty-eight pints of canned peas.

“That’s a lot of peas.”

Willow backed him out of the pantry. “It’ll
get me through fall and winter anyway. We usually can double that,
but I thought it’d be silly to can food for Moth—” Swallowing hard,
Willow tried again. “I didn’t need to can as much this year, but we
planted the same amount. I don’t know what to do with all the extra
peas, though.”

“Sell them?”

She looked at him sharply. “How?”

They discussed the possibility of selling
her excess produce as she grabbed a stack of buckets and went out
to the garden. Chad watched her pick tomatoes until he thought he
knew how she determined which to pick and then grabbed a bucket and
went to work. As he dropped the first filled bucket beside the
empty ones, Willow shook her head.

“You’ll ruin your shoes.”

“They can be cleaned. What’ll you do with
all this?”

Willow grabbed another bucket and started on
another row throwing an occasional tomato worm in an empty bucket
as she worked her way through the row. “Tomato sauce and stewed
tomatoes. I can have spaghetti sauce all winter, and we add the
tomatoes to stews and chili.”

Chad found himself sitting at the table
eating fresh strawberry shortcake, sans the whipped cream, while
Willow chopped tomatoes. “How do you have so many early
tomatoes?”

“We plant early with water walls and cover
the ones too tall for them with canopies whenever there’s a late
frost.”

Chad saw a journal lying on the table. “Is
this one of the journals you use to know when to do what?”

Willow glanced at the book in his hand. “No,
that was one of Mother’s personal journals—her first I think. You
can read it if you like.”

Feeling awkward at the idea of reading
someone’s private thoughts and memories, Chad started to put down
the journal, but curiosity overcame his reservations. He opened it
to the place marked and read the entry. Halfway through, he sat it
down and poured himself a glass of cold water from the pitcher in
her icebox. He saw Willow wipe perspiration from her forehead with
the back of her arm and passed the glass to her before he poured
another glass for himself.

Chad settled back in the chair and picked up
the journal, reading the entry from the beginning.

December 1983-

The house is quiet. It is also cold. I use
the heater because I have to, but I need a woodstove for next year.
The fireplace is worthless.

I already feel better physically. I don’t
feel as sick, and I am not nearly as tired. The nightmares won’t
leave. I’m afraid to sleep, but exhaustion forces me. I wake up
screaming or crying, but there is no one there to comfort me. I
don’t know if I can do this. Can I be so alone?

What if I can’t bring myself to keep the
baby?”

Chad looked up again. Willow had read or was
about to read this entry. How would she feel about her mother’s
fears and uncertainties?

Willow caught his gaze and smiled
sympathetically. “She was amazing, wasn’t she?”

“Amazing?” Chad didn’t know how to respond.
Had Willow read the passage yet?

“Yes. She was all alone, terrified, plagued
with memories and dreams that she wanted to forget. She worked to
learn everything she’d need to survive here—with me. She did it not
even knowing if she had the strength to raise me.”

“So many women would have had an
abortion.”

Surprise flooded Willow’s face. “Why would
Mother kill me? It wasn’t my choice to be conceived.”

“It wasn’t your mother’s either. She had the
one excuse even some Christians understand.”

Willow shook her head. “Mother was too
sensible for that. She’d never try to erase a wrong by committing
another one.”

Chad watched as she washed tomato after
tomato. Once they were clean, she piled them back in the buckets
and left the kitchen. A glance out the window showed her leaving
for the barn. He grabbed two buckets and followed her quickly.

“How many more do you need?”

“There are three more buckets on the floor
by the sink. I could get these on the stove if you would bring them
out.”

Chad brought the buckets, both kitchen
chairs, and the journal. He tried to offer help, but she waved him
back insisting she didn’t know how to work with someone “in her
way.” While Willow cooked whole tomatoes and boiled jars, Chad
opened the journal once more and finished the entry.

On a brighter note, I’ve made a few
decisions. I’ve been reading Thoreau and am struck by the line
“live deep and suck the marrow out of life.” I want to do this. I
have decided to live purposefully, but unlike Thoreau, I don’t
think the answer is in an ascetic life but in one that is lived,
embracing the beauty around you and in creating beauty wherever you
can. We will do this, this child and I. We will do whatever we do
to the glory of God.

Christmas is coming. I wonder if Mom is
making shortbread. Are they looking for me? I thought about sending
a card, but I’m afraid. If I give them hope that I’m alive, won’t I
risk discovery? If Mr. Solari knew about the baby, I think we’d be
in danger. Paying off a son’s mistakes is one thing. The
possibility of a scandal involving a child is another—especially if
I could prove the rape—I think we’d be in danger or at least the
baby would.

It is late. I must sleep. As in the old
children’s prayer, I pray the Lord my mind to keep. Keep far away
from the sleep robbers of memories and fears.

Hours later, after a ham sandwich, several
dozen quarts of canned tomatoes and tomato sauce, and most of the
journal later, Chad reached the entry of Willow’s birth. His eyes
widened in horror before his face hardened—cold. He thanked Willow
for dinner, declined several attempts to draw him into conversation
or a game, and left abruptly.

At the end of the driveway, Chad sat, head
resting on his hands as they gripped the steering wheel and wept.
For several minutes, he fought to control his emotions, but anger
boiled over, and he railed at God. “Why Lord? Why was she so
scared? Why was she so alone? Where were
You
?”

Using his sleeve to mop his face, Chad’s
features slumped into the picture of defeat. “And why is it that
every time I think I have her settled so I can walk away, something
drags me back? She has the pup. She has Othello. She has the
animals and Bill. She shouldn’t need me too!” Furious, he pealed
out of the gravel lane onto the highway, sending rocks flying.

Willow heard the sound and shook her head.
She grabbed the pile of fabric catalogs and carried them back
downstairs muttering, “Lord, that guy needs to get a life. He
doesn’t want to be here so why does he even come?”

The swing hung from sturdy ropes tied to a
branch and strung through a well-sanded board. An old garden hose
protected the tree from the cutting motion of the ropes as the
swing flew higher with each pump of little legs. The child’s braids
flopped backward and then forward again as she swayed with the
rhythmic motion.

“Look at the cloud, Mother! It looks like a
face! See the eyes and the straight line? The face is angry!”

The woman shielded her eyes with her hand as
she tried to see her daughter’s cloud face. “Look next to it on the
right. That looks like a penguin.”

“What makes clouds, Mother?” The little girl
jumped from the swing and rolled onto her back in the grass.
Dandelions grew freely there. The wind wouldn’t blow them into the
front yard from this side of the barn so they’d chosen to hang the
swing from a tree surrounded by a field of dandelions.

The woman explained the difference between
liquid water and water vapor and described evaporation and
precipitation. She pointed out the shapes of the clouds, and in the
space of a half an hour, the child had a solid, if basic,
understanding of cloud formation and the water cycle. This was how
the child always learned—each lesson flowing naturally from a life
lived deliberately.