All the Forgivenesses

by Elizabeth Hardinger

And then I felt myself break to pieces inside. Thoughts come through that’d been hidden in me for a long while. It seemed like the very flesh of my children bore God’s rebuke. There was plenty of reasons. I stabbed my own daddy, I wished him dead, and I was short with Dacia, impatient with her ways, and most of all, jealous of how Mama’d ruther spend time with her, even as a baby, than me. And Mama, how come I left her and went to the backhouse, and her all alone when she died? Worse yet, I never kept the family together. On her deathbed she’d give me a sacred task, to look after the children, and I failed it—I let things get worse and worse till there wasn’t nothing to do but everbody go different ways. And Will, when his cold face touched me I throwed him on the floor. And Timmy, I hadn’t thought about him for a long time, Timmy who I let wander off and drown in the Tenmile, wedged in the rocks. And then in spite of all I done wrong, God had give me Sam, who loved me more than anybody ever had, and now I’d lost two of Sam’s children, and who knowed when he would come back from the war so we could try again? Or if? I wondered, would I ever have children of my own, and the very thought made me lose all my breath.

Guilt is so difficult to live with