Emma's Gift

In memory of
Juanita Lane,
with special thanks to Mom and Jan for all your help.

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

One: Julia

Two: Samuel

Three: Julia

Four: Samuel

Five: Julia

Six: Samuel

Seven: Julia

Eight: Samuel

Nine: Julia

Ten: Samuel

Eleven: Julia

Twelve: Samuel

Thirteen: Julia

Fourteen: Samuel

Fifteen: Julia

Sixteen: Samuel

Seventeen: Julia

Eighteen: Samuel

Nineteen: Julia

Twenty: Samuel

Twenty-One: Julia

Twenty-Two: Samuel

Twenty-Three: Julia

Twenty-Four: Samuel

Twenty-Five: Julia

Twenty-Six: Samuel

Twenty-Seven: Julia

Twenty-Eight: Samuel

Twenty-Nine: Julia

About the Author

Also By Leisha Kelly

ONE

Julia

D
ECEMBER
19, 1931.

Joe Hammond came racing up our lane in his father's wagon. I'd never seen their team move so fast, and it set my heart to pumping. Something was wrong. Before the horses half stopped, Joe jumped down and came flying toward our front door like he'd seen a ghost. Samuel opened the door for the boy, and Joe sucked in a giant breath of air before he could manage to say what had brought him here in such an awful hurry.

“Mama's sick again,” he said, looking nearly as pale as the white winter sky. “I come to fetch Emma. And you too, Mrs. Wortham, if you'll come.”

I dried my hands and pulled off the bib apron. Of course, we'd go, though my stomach was already wrenching sideways. Emma would never refuse to help the neighbors. Not ever. No matter how sick she was feeling.

Emma set her teacup on the table. “Don't you be worryin', Joey. Sit down and catch your breath while I get ready.”

That was it. Calm as a May breeze. Emma Graham never refused to answer a call.

She shoved her clunky wheelchair away from the table and waved my husband back when he offered to help her. “Go get m' coat an' boot, if you don't mind,” she told him. “You'd be quicker'n me about it. Not every day Wilametta asks for help.” She sounded awfully hoarse. “What is it she's complainin' of?”

“Mama didn't ask,” Joe said, twisting his dingy blue stocking cap around in his hands. “Pa sent me.”

Emma didn't answer him right away. George Hammond asking for help was surely worse, and she knew it as well as I did.

“I'll get my coat,” I told them. “What else do we need to bring along?”

“Lap robe for the wagon,” Emma answered. “An' your doctorin' herbs, 'case they ain't got what we need over there. Do you know what it is ailin' her, Joey?”

The wiry thirteen-year-old glanced at the door and then down the hall where Samuel had gone. “Pa said nerves, but it was never this bad before.”

“She been outta bed today?”

“No, ma'am. She don't look just right for color, neither, I don't think.” He hadn't sat down. Wasn't about to. I turned to the kitchen cupboard and started pulling down jars.

Samuel came rushing back with Emma's coat and mine. God bless him, he knew how to rise to an occasion better than I did sometimes. Robert and Sarah followed him and stood there looking at me. “Don't worry,” Samuel said as he gave me my coat. “We'll be fine till you get back.”

I stood for a minute, at a loss for what to say.

“No tellin' how long it'll be,” Emma told us. “'Specially if the snow keeps up. If you wanna stay, Juli, I'd sure understand.”

“I'm coming.” I hadn't even noticed that it had started to snow, and I barely gave it a thought. I just looked at Samuel's deep gray eyes and started pulling on the coat.

It ought to be Emma staying home. She'd been so weak lately that it scared me, her going out at all. Surely I could handle whatever was ailing Wilametta. But there'd be no talking Emma out of going. She'd known Mrs. Hammond for twenty years, and she'd sooner die than not come when there was a need.

It was snowing thick by the time we got outside, making it hard to see down to the road. We bundled Emma up in her fur-lined coat, and Samuel lifted her into the wagon seat. She looked so small sitting up there. Like a child, but for the thin gray hairs showing under her woolly hat and the deep lines defining every inch of her face. I spread one quilt on her lap and another around her shoulders.

“Don't fuss on me, now,” she scolded us. “We gotta be going.”

Samuel set my bag in the back of the wagon, and I turned to the porch long enough to tell Sarah and Robert to stay in while I was gone.

“Don't worry,” Samuel told me again. “We'll be all right here.”

Tears filled my eyes as soon as he said it. Of course, they would be. There wasn't any reason to doubt it. But I was scared pitiful nonetheless and not about to say so.

Snowflakes were circling down and falling on my gray wool skirt. I climbed up beside Emma and pulled the edge of the old quilt over my lap too. Joe Hammond hardly waited till I got sat down—we were off down the lane as quick as he could make those old horses go, and I held onto Emma with one hand, the seat with the other.

George Hammond was out to meet us. He didn't say anything at all, just reached Emma down off the seat and started for the house with her.

I jumped from the back of the wagon, my mind whirling and trying to pray.
Lord, heal Wilametta. Keep Emma strong.

George hadn't waited for me and neither had Joe, who ran ahead of his father to open the door. They both went busting in without slowing down. I hurried behind them with my bag.

Inside that house was a wilder scene than I could ever have dreamed up. Three-year-old Bert was standing by the door, bare from the waist down in the draft and hollering at the top of his lungs. His brother Harry was sitting on the floor in a puddle of something, twisting up a dishtowel he was probably supposed to be cleaning up with. Two boys sat at the table, managing to slurp down some gray mush and argue with each other at the same time. They only hushed when one elbowed the other and pointed at Emma.

Lizbeth stood at the stove, wrestling a steaming pot away from the heat with one hand and holding her fussy baby sister with the other. The poor girl looked like she could cut loose and cry too.
Or maybe she had been, not long ago,
I thought. And there was one other boy, sitting on the loft ladder in a shirt twice his size, watching everything. He had puffy, hollow-looking eyes and the dirtiest cheeks you ever saw. Little Rorey was nowhere in sight, nor was the oldest boy, Sam, who was considerably taller than me.

George didn't pay the slightest bit of attention to the kids. He took Emma straight back to Wilametta's bedroom without taking the time to help her off with her coat. I followed after them, scarcely able to breathe. The whole house smelled like camphor and waste, stale food, dirty diapers, and a hundred other things. The Hammonds had always been a crazy household, wild and disorganized and loud. But today something different hung over the place. An angry kind of hopelessness.

Wila lay on the bed, sleeping or unconscious—it was impossible to tell. Six-year-old Rorey was beside her, stubbornly clinging to her mother's hand. As George set Emma down on the edge of the bed, most of the kids came clustering in, waiting to hear whatever she would say.

Emma pulled off her big winter hat and leaned real close, listening to Wila's breathing. She felt her forehead, then turned around to pull the blanket back and look at the woman's swollen feet.

“Juli,” she said, “take your coat off. We're gonna be here a while.”

Franky, the boy who'd been sitting on the ladder, pushed his way to Emma's elbow. “Whatcha gonna do?” he asked with his fingernail in his mouth. “Can I help?”

Joe looked at his brother in disgust. “Shut up! Nobody asked you to get in the middle of ever'thin'!”

Emma glanced at them as Lizbeth squeezed in behind me. “She was feverin' yesterday, an' I been bathin' her head,” the girl offered. “She was awake a little bit, early this morning, but she ain't took in nothin' at all.” In her arms, the baby, Emma Grace, squirmed and let out a cry.

Little Bert climbed up on the bed next to Rorey, and Emma looked them all over with a sigh.

“George,” she said in a quiet voice, “Wila's gonna need some good solid rest. And quiet. I think you might oughta take the young'uns over to Samuel. Won't hurt 'em to be a while at my house again.”

George didn't answer for a minute. He looked at Emma and his wife, then bowed his head and looked at the floor.

“We can be quiet,” Rorey protested in a whisper. “Honest! I been real quiet.”

But George shook his head. “Go get your coats. All a' you.”

Lizbeth was horrified. “I need to stay, Pa. At least me an' the baby. And what about the snow?”

“The little one been drinking your goat's milk?” Emma asked.

“Yes, ma'am.” Lizbeth had tears in her eyes. She hardly ever left home; she was always so busy helping her mother. And she sure didn't want to leave now.

“The little one'll be fine if you wrap her up good,” Emma maintained. “If you got milk left from this morning, take it along.”

“We got milk left,” George said.

“But Pa—”

“You can't do no more right here,” George told his eldest daughter. “You'll have to keep your brothers in line over there. Do whatever you can.”

Lizbeth just stood for a minute, her lips quivering like she was all set to argue. But she took one more look at her mother, then one at me, and turned and fled the room.

Nobody else moved.

“Don't you worry,” Emma told the rest of the kids. “I'll get your mama all fixed up. We just need some good, quiet space. Go on! You can play with Sarey an' Robert over there. They'll like that.”

“Get your coats,” George ordered again and then noticed his half-naked youngest son. “Willy, climb up and get your little brother's pants. And shoes. Get on, now. All a' you.”

As the room slowly cleared of children, I wondered what Samuel would think of them showing up at our doorstep. I thought maybe Lizbeth should stay here after all, and I should be the one to go back home.

But no, I knew I needed to be here for Emma. We'd taken her canes, but she'd have considerable trouble getting around without the wheelchair Samuel had made. I had the feeling, anyway, that she wanted all the kids gone for their sakes as much as ours, so they wouldn't be here watching and worrying.

“Where's that big boy a' yours?” Emma asked George.

“Gettin' the stock in.”

“I'm thinking maybe you oughta send him to take the younger ones for you and then go on into Belle Rive after the doctor.” She said it real slow and quiet.