Certain Women
For if there is no darkness for the light to
shine against, we cannot see the light.
Pray all you like, ask anything you want, but
don't forget he never promised he'd say yes.
He never guaranteed us anything. Not anything
at all. Except one thing. That God cares about
what he has made. Never forget that, child.
That is enough. It is why I write what I
write...
One of my professors called me "our wild
little savage," and flattered me, and seduced
me in his office. I didn't understand what was
happening, but I felt that I was being treated
- oh, not as a person, but as a thing.
Alice:
It wasn't the ugly violence that happened to
you.
Emma:
Maybe it was even uglier because it
masqueraded as something else. The intent for
violence was there.
Alice:
I suppose. Yes. Using people for your own
lusts is always violent.
What I'm trying to say is, Papa thrives on
sunshine. When those around him aren't shining
on him, he turns to someone else.
Why can't you work your problems out
instead of dumping them down the drain and
turning to some new female to fix it all for
you?
What is it that blinds you to what you're
doing? Don't you know she loves you? Don't you
realize what a treasure you had? Don't you
even care?
I think we have to remember it all before we
can forgive it.
top
A Live Coal in the Sea
"What's come over you, Camilla, suddenly
going all hard like this?"
"I don't talk this way, throwing myself all
over someone. I'm sorry. I don't know what got
into me."
"Don't be sorry. You've been being real,
being who you are, with no brittle
sophistication."
"I suppose I was grieving, and grief is
embarrassing."
She was joyful, actively joyful for the first
time in several years.
"Frank is good for the world, actively good,
and the best most of us can say is that we
don't do it any harm."
Mac put his hand over hers. "But you listen
to the singing heart of a tree. Does it tell
you anything?"
She shook her head. "I just listen to it
sing. That's enough."
It is the story, the myth of the people, that
matters.
Reality broke in when my father returned from
the First World War. Each war has its phrases
that come into the vocabulary. "Shell shock"
was the one that war brought in."
There was a fine line between confession and
discretion, and she did not know where it lay.
Olivia sighed. "It's hard for us to overturn
our background. I, too, was brought up not to
ask. It's almost impossible to unlearn."
But all the wickedness in the world which
man may do or think is no more to the mercy of
God than a live coal dropped in the sea.
-- William Langland, ~1400
Camilla shuddered. Mercy? If she accepted
mercy for Olivia and Art, for Mac, she had to
accept it for herself, for Rose, for whoever
had fathered the baby.
He who would do good to another must do it
in minute particulars. General good is the
plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and
flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist
but in minutely organized particulars. --
William Blake
He's come to a place of fearsome,
imperturbable integrity.
You were real. I felt your realness. That's
why I wanted to see you again. I thought I
could be real with you. And you've let me.
Dr. Edith said that wrong breeds wrong. When
one wrong thing is done, then other wrong
things are going to happen.
"But do you?"
"I don't know. Sometimes I feel nothing but
scar tissue, and scar tissue doesn't feel."
"And you blame yourself for not feeling?"
"Of course."
"Don't. You're not responsible for how you
feel. You're responsible for what you do, and
considering everything, you and Mac have done
pretty well."
top
The Love Letters
That's not part of the bargain. Pray all you
like, ask anything you want, but don't forget
that he never promised he'd say yes. He never
guaranteed us anything. Not anything at all.
Except one thing. ... That he cares.
"I know that I should have learned more about
love. Sometimes I think that I don't
understand it at all."
"Then learn with Sister Joaquina. There is no
virtue in loving the lovable."
The Other Side of the Sun
Aunt Mary Desborough gave a funny, sad little
laugh. "Please don't think I'm awful, but I
was happy during the war, happier than before
or since. Oh, it was all terrible, but when
Mado and Theron brought us to Nyssa -- that
was our cousin James's plantation, Stella --
and we turned the house into a hospital, I --
I was of use. People need to be of use."
"All right, all right, you go right on
thinking you're an act of God created in his
image, and I'll go right on thinking I'm
descended from an ape. When you look in the
mirror I should think you'd feel pretty
discouraged; I wouldn't be happy to look at
myself and think that my face is an
Imago Dei. It wouldn't make me feel I'd done
very well by God. But when I look in the
mirror and think that I'm descended form an
ape, I feel I've done remarkably well.
But Illyria was always home, the place of
love -- and why? I have been more afraid, more
filled with anguish, in Illyria than any place
on earth. The answer has something to do with
love. Love that has to go through darkness and
pain and endurance and a stark acceptance
before it can come out into the far light of
the sun. Love I hadn't dreamed of, and
wouldn't have wanted to dream of, before my
husband sent me to Illyria to wait for him.
"Honoria, when we were all young you used
just to call her Mado."
Honoria gave her a strange, disturbing smile.
"When I was a chattel of Mr. Claudius Broadley
I called my friend Mado. When I became my own
self I deemed it necessary to call her Miss
Mado."
"There no magic in the ring, Miss Stella.
Virtue be not magic. But a thing may hold
within it something of them who make it, or
who touch it, or wear it and give it grace.
Then it be no longer a thing. But this be not
magic."
You can't put a curse on anything that hasn't
been blessed.
