The Fragrance of Geraniums (A Time of Grace Book 1) (5 page)

“H
ey, Ma,” Grace
heard Ben say. It was his typical way of starting conversations that he didn’t
want to begin in the first place. Poised halfway down the staircase, Grace
stopped stock-still, barely breathing. She didn’t want to let Mama or Ben know
that she stood just on the other side of the kitchen wall, its thin boards
releasing nearly every sound into her hearing. Grace clutched her church dress in
her hands; she’d been on her way to iron it.

Thwack. Thwack.
Thwack.
Mama’s knife hit the table with a sure, unmusical rhythm as it cut through the
raw carrots, surely for a soup tonight.

“Mama…” Ben dragged
out her name again when she didn’t reply to his first statement. A pause
ensued, and Grace figured that Mama must have glanced up, urging him with
raised eyebrows to continue.

“Mama, I gotta
go back to the track, you know.” Ben paused. “Got myself a good job there.”

Mama snorted.
“What, as a gambler?”

“Aw, no, Mama,
I’m a groom for some big-shot politician. The guy says he’s gonna be a senator.”

Mama didn’t
speak, just kept chopping those vegetables.
Thwack. Thwack.
Ben waited
through a few moments of anxious silence, then kept going out of sheer
nervousness, Grace figured. “You don’t need me around here, Mama. You got
Cliff-”

“Cliff,” Mama
repeated, and Grace could imagine Mama’s eyes rolling around. The knife stopped
its beat, and Grace heard the sound of the carrot pieces falling over each
other as Mama poured them into the iron pot for boiling. “You think your
brother Cliff is a help to me? A thirteen-year-old boy who can’t be trusted to
water the chickens? Who plays hooky every chance he gets?” She blew out a
disgusted breath. “Cliff’s gonna end up like his father.”

“Cliff ain’t
like Papa,” Ben ground out, a rabid tone leaping into his smooth voice. “That
good-for-nothing…” His words trailed off, and Grace could only hear the water
running into the pot as Mama filled it at the sink.

“You know what I
found out the other night, Mama.” It was a just a statement, no question hidden
among its folds.

Quiet, then,
“Told you not to go to Uncle Jack’s,” Mama nearly whispered. Then, “Yeah, I
know what you found.”

Quiet again. “I
knocked out his tooth, Mama,” Ben said.

“You what?”

Grace heard Ben
begin pacing, his boots thudding on the wooden floor.

“Busted out his
front tooth. At least one. There was a hole there when I left Uncle Jack’s and
blood dripping down his blasted chin.”

“Ben, why’d you
do that? Now your papa’s gonna have to see if he can get it fixed and-”

“Don’tcha get
it, Mama? He’s cheating on you!” Ben burst out. Grace heard his hands slam on
the table. “How can you care about that man’s teeth when…” Again, he let his
words fade out, an explosion of empty shells. Ben would never use bad language
in front of Mama.

Grace crept down
the rest of the stairs, skipping the step that groaned. Hidden by shadows in
the unlit living room, she peered through the crack between the kitchen door
and the wall.

Over the bubbling
pot, Mama stood slicing onions as if her life depended on it. Wiped her eyes
with the back of her hand once or twice every ten seconds.

Ben moved over
to her side, his steps slow and tired, sore from walking the valley of the
shadow so many of his twenty years. He tenderly lifted Mama’s chin with one
work-hardened hand and gazed into her round eyes set in that tough little face.
“Mama, why don’t you just leave him?”

Deep silence
reigned for seventeen heartbeats; Grace counted them. Then Mama removed Ben’s
hand from her chin. “Son,” she said, “you don’t know nothing. You think you’re
so smart, bringing your big-city notions here. You think the neighbors don’t
know what your papa does? They know, and they snicker behind my back and the
children’s. What do you suppose they’d make of a mother of six – seven come
February – leaving her husband? And what about the priest?”

“Seven… You’re
gonna have another one, Mama?” Ben sounded incredulous. His eyes dropped to her
midsection, then rose again to her face.

Mama nodded,
staring at him with defiance for a moment. Then she turned back to slicing
onions. They plunked into the pot, finding nests among the carrots.

“Since he’s got that
other dame, you’d think he’d leave you alone at least!” Ben growled.

Mama darted Ben
an angry glance. “Don’t say that about your papa, Ben!” She kept slicing the
onions, wiping her eyes. “Besides, I know he loves me, no matter what he does,
ya know.”

Ben grunted.
“Yeah, Mama, he loves you. Just like he loves us, right?” The words crawled
out, so acidic that Grace cringed in her hiding place in the shadows.

“I’m leaving
now,” he stated more softly. “Don’t know when I’ll be back.”

Mama barely
nodded.

“Do me a favor,
Mama.” Ben grasped Mama’s shoulders and turned her to face him. “Take care of Grace,
okay?”

Mama twisted out
of Ben’s grip. “Take care of Grace?” she repeated. “Why? What’s she done?” Her
voice colored with suspicion, and Grace tensed, wondering what Ben would
reveal.

“She ain’t done
nothing. Listen, I know you need her around the house and all, but she wants to
join this choir-thing at school.”

“Choir? You
mean, singing? What’s she gonna do with a choir?” Mama sounded skeptical, and Grace
held her breath. “Sounds like a waste of time. Besides, I’ll need her here to
help with the new baby soon. Lou and Nancy are too busy powder-puffing their
noses to do me any good.”

“Yeah, but Mama,
just think on it, alright? The kid’s gonna bring you a permission slip to sign.
I think it’s only for a couple days afterschool every week, or something like
that. Evelyn could help you on those days, too,” Ben coaxed.

“Evelyn’s got
piano lessons to practice for,” Mama replied quickly, “and she’s too frail to
do much in the house.” Then, looking at Ben’s serious face pleading with her, she
added, “But I’ll think on it, Ben.”

He grinned and
kissed Mama’s cheek, flushed hot from the boiling pot. “Thanks, Mama.” Without hesitation,
he picked up his old leather pack, inherited from a second-cousin’s Great War
days, slung it over his shoulder, and moved toward the door. “I love you,
Mama,” he murmured, turning the knob but not his head.

Grace saw Mama
nod and wipe her eyes again from those onions. Ben paused for a moment, then
left. The door-latch lisped shut behind him.

E
mmeline barely
could keep from beaming her smile straight out at Doctor Philips. In her
woman’s heart, Emmeline knew.
Knew
that God had granted her prayer at
last. This long list of questions, this poking and prodding was all very well…
but Emmeline didn’t need them. For she
knew.

But Doctor Philips
took his position as a medical practitioner very seriously, so Emmeline had
humored him for the past twenty minutes or so. She’d sat atop his paper-lined
examination table, not minding the cool office air or the glare from the lights
shining in her eyes.
Blue or pink,
she mused, thinking of that room
upstairs in their home, the one that presently housed the piano. Geoff would
have no objection to her turning it into a nursery. The piano could stay; she
would play hymns softly at night, soothing lullabies…

Maybe yellow…

“Mrs. Kinner, the
bleeding you say that you’re experiencing concerns me. Very much.” The doctor
kept his eyes on his clipboard as he scratched out notes. “You’ve had the same
bleeding with each of your previous pregnancies. And none of them were viable.”

Startled, Emmeline’s
mouth fell open. “Really? But when I used to help my mother with her midwifery,
many of the women had some bleeding early in their pregnancies. It usually
wasn’t an issue.”

The doctor
didn’t say anything. His grave eyes met hers, robbing the last of the hope she
felt.

Her heart began
a slow hammer in her chest. “I know you’re a careful man, Doctor Philips, but
really… I would think with something so common as…” She trailed off when she
saw the doctor’s already-somber face fall into grimmer lines.

“What’s wrong?
Is it not…” She couldn’t finish the question, didn’t know what she even meant
to ask, as she gulped down the lump in her throat, questing for air. “I’m in my
fourth month now. I’ve always lost the pregnancy
before
even two months
passed.”

Doctor Philips
shook his head. “I know how much you and your husband want this baby, Emmeline.
However, as your doctor, I can’t assure you that this pregnancy will end
happily when…” He paused, then released a heavy sigh. “When I’m certain that
you will lose this one just as you did the others. In fact, I believe that you
are undergoing a slow spontaneous abortion right now.”

Real
apprehension lurked in the doctor’s expression. Seeing that, Emmeline swallowed
back the tears that stung her eyes and threatened to close off her throat. She
forced her lips to turn upward, her lungs to expand and deflate. “I see.”

Doctor Philips
tapped his pen against his lips. “Emmeline.” He hesitated, evidently taking his
time with phrasing what he wanted to tell her. “Some women are not capable of
carrying a baby to full-term. This is the fifth pregnancy you’ve lost since you
married four years ago. You and your husband may need to come to terms with
that.”

Emmeline’s mind
moved slowly from the shock. “Come to terms with what?” she heard herself ask.
Was this conversation really happening?

“That you will
never have children of your own.”

Stunned to hear
the doctor voice her deepest fear as a probable reality, Emmeline stared at him
wordlessly.

Doctor Philips’ tone
softened. “And you can still have a full and productive life without children.”

You will never
have children of your own…

Nodding, she
moved to get down from the examination table, using the little stool that stood
there for that purpose. She heard her own heels click loudly on the tile.
Keeping her eyes down, she carefully adjusted her clothing. She fetched her
good hat from the table near the door and placed it on her carefully-styled
hair before turning. She met his eyes again at last. “Thank you, Doctor.”

He bobbed his
head brusquely. “Because this pregnancy has progressed so far, the loss may be
more painful and difficult,” Doctor Philips said, then added, “Physically, I
mean. So please call the office if anything changes. Anything at all.”

“Yes.” She
forced the words out. “Yes, I will.”

If asked, Emmeline
wouldn’t have remembered the rest of her conversation with the town’s general
practitioner. There wasn’t much to it; that she would have known. A good-bye,
to be sure, and certainly well-wishes to be passed on to Mrs. Philips, the
doctor’s wife and chairwoman of the Sunday School at the Kinners’ church.

Life had a way
of turning out funny, Emmeline mused, as her feet found their way out the
doctor’s door, down the porch’s two steps, and along the walkway toward home.
She’d been counting on Mrs. Philips’ gossipy tongue to spread the happy news which
Emmeline had been sure the doctor would give her:
Emmeline Kinner is in the
family way! Can you believe it? After four years of marriage and all those
losses… and here she is, going to have a baby at last!

But those words
wouldn’t come from Mrs. Philips’ mouth now.
Though other words certainly
will,
thought Emmeline as she passed a red-haired young man, roughly
dressed, carrying an old army pack. His face looked as grim as she felt.
May
You give him Your peace,
she prayed, barely realizing she’d done it. During
all of Emmeline’s growing-up years, her mother had emphasized the importance of
prayer. Prayer for those closest. Prayer for enemies. Even prayer for those she
met on the street, whom she might not speak to or ever see again.
“You do
not know if you are the last remaining link to glory for that one. If God
places you in anyone’s path, it’s for a reason. Pray for them, Emmeline.”
Though
her mother had died two years ago, her words still echoed in Emmeline’s heart
as she passed that cheerless young man. So Emmeline prayed, though her own grief
encircled and choked her.

What will I tell
Geoff?
The question shouted at Emmeline as she crossed the street.

I have no idea
what to tell him,
she finally admitted to herself. Then, the thought-prayer burst out:
I
didn’t prepare for this. I didn’t ask for this, Lord. I didn’t expect this, and
it doesn’t seem fair. I even waited until the fourth month to be sure.

The tears sprang
to her eyes, and on this quiet stretch of street, lined with houses full of
busy mothers, Emmeline let a drop escape to run unchecked in protest down her
cheek.
I expected You to have answered me. I… I asked for bread, and I feel
like You have given me a stone. Or that my bread has turned into a stone…