All the Forgivenesses

by Elizabeth Hardinger

Now I have to tell the part I always left out of the story. When I got out of bed to check on the baby, I couldn’t see good in the half-light, but things was so quiet I had a real bad feeling. I never reached down and touched him and found him cold—that’s just the way I always told it. Truth is, I picked him up and pulled him close, and when his little cold face touched the flesh of my neck—well, I can’t hardly stand to think about what happened next. Lord help me, I throwed Will down on the floor. I done that. It was like my very skin couldn’t abide the feeling of him cold on my neck. I throwed my baby on the floor, I did. Then I stood there still and silent, seeing would Sam wake up. Seemed like the whole world would have heard that sickening thump. Standing there in the darkness, it felt like my spirit was cut open like raw meat, and something touched the rawness, and pain went through me, and if I could have took back what I done, I would. I surely would. I wanted to go back five minutes in time, just five minutes. I felt like I could live with him dead, maybe, but not with what I done, and then I thought, No, go back five hours or whatever it needs, make him alive again and warm against me. Now according to what Mama told me, wishing unnatural things contrary to the Lord’s will, that’s blasphemy, it’s defiance, it’s disobedience. And I said to myself, The hell with the Lord, where was the Lord when this innocent child breathed his last, ain’t nobody taking my baby. Wi...