All the Forgivenesses

by Elizabeth Hardinger

There’s a certain velvet sheen to the eyelids of a sleeping child. Some baby animals have it, too.

“So I said to her, said, ‘Bertie, I sure would hate to think Jesus got nails pounded into his hands just so I could tell a lie and get away with it.’ ”

So I swallowed them feelings down deep as I could.

Ain’t no place deep enough to where they don’t eat at you anyhow, whether you know it or not, but I didn’t know that then. * * *

I counted on her for the things I didn’t know, and I learned ever day how many things that was.

“I hope I never get as tired as she was.” She squeezed my arm till it hurt and I pulled away. Then

You do what’s in front of you, hour by hour, and you hope to fall asleep at night before you think too much about where you’re headed.

Only thing I was worried about was, did he like me as much as I liked him. If he did, wasn’t nothing going to stop me from marrying him.

“Worry is interest paid on troubles you ain’t had yet.” That

never forgot how I felt that winter. It’s like you’re a bug crawling around in a circle that don’t get no bigger nor smaller, and you don’t feel like you have no reason to keep crawling, but you do.

Being around the baby, even just smelling her, it made me feel like there was hope in the world again.

As time went by I felt my black misery calling to me, only this time I pushed it away. I seen clear, as clear as anything I ever seen, that this time it would kill me if I let it. I felt like I couldn’t dip a toe in it, I had to harden myself against it, and day by day I stared straight ahead and swallowed back my feelings and got stronger. I found out, I could wake up ever day and do what had to be done, and I let it be enough.

He had loved me for years now, and I just now understood—you have to have somebody to love just as much as you have to have somebody to love you. Maybe more. I was glad we was on our way home, and I couldn’t hardly wait to get there.

“She ain’t never coming back.”

“The way I look at it, she’s another one we lost.”

But what I couldn’t explain was the feeling I had, like I’d just took the first deep breath of my life. Like it was the first time I ever filled my lungs clear up to the shoulders. Like I was breathing in air through my skin, my hair, my fingernails, my eyelids. Like I myself was made out of breath, like I was breath itself. But now, instead of feeling empty, I felt light. Light was shining

and in me, it was filling me and lifting me. I felt like I didn’t deserve nothing, but, somehow, I had everthing. Out loud I said, “Is this what grace is?”

strong. And I knowed I had what it took, whatever it was, to do whatever needed doing, and whatever I done would be blessed, and I had everthing I ever needed or hoped for, beyond my desire, beyond my ken.