Good Heavens (28 page)

Ursula was so disgusted with Elmwood she said, “He must have fallen off a turnip truck!”

And I nearly fell out of my tree!

Well, it was Ursula who did the asking, and Ringstaff said he would pray about it. I had no doubt in my mind but what it was the Lord's will that he come, so I made out a schedule that gave him prime time. While Ringstaff worked on the piano in the mornings, we would have Praise and Prayer, then do our chores, and after lunch, have the Bible class. Ursula thought one of us, either she or me, should sit in on his classes, and boy, that tickled me pink!

Was that man ever smart! He knew the Bible forward and backward. Linda must have sat up all night thinking of questions to ask him. It was plain to see she was out to shock him when she said she didn't believe “all that stuff about Mary being a virgin when Jesus was born.” Well, Ringstaff was not ruffled in the least. He listened
with both ears, then took pains to give her reasons for believing Jesus was born of a virgin.

I doubt Linda understood everything he said, but they talked back and forth until she ran out of comebacks.

It warmed my heart the way Ringstaff went through the Scriptures, explaining things like that. I asked him to tell the girls, the way he had told me, why Jesus had to die in order to forgive us. Hearing it the second time, I took notes, and that helped me get that down pat.

A few days later I wrote Beatrice in care of General Delivery, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and sent her copies of my notes. It was like I told her in that letter, Albert Ringstaff was a fine Christian and the sweetest, dearest man a body could ever meet. There was not a woman at Priscilla Home who didn't sit up and take notice when he was around. Especially Lenora. I believed that she was starting to live again. She fixed her hair, put on lipstick and a little blush. I told myself that the day she laughed, I'd know she was altogether alive.

Since Ringstaff always went on about my fried apple pies, I saw that he got a fresh one every morning when we served him coffee. I'd get up real early so I could make the pies before Brenda and Melba came down to do the cooking. Now, the kitchen window opened onto the front porch, and I'd open it first thing to get some fresh air. At that hour, everybody in the house was sound asleep, so I could sing to my heart's content. One morning I was singing “Power in the Blood.” I love them words:

After I stopped singing, I heard somebody get up from a rocker on the porch and open the front door.
Uh-oh. Who can that be?
After wiping the flour off my hands, I turned to see Dora leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen. “Oh, so it's you, Dora?” I turned to slide the pies on the grill. “Guess you heard me and thought there was a screech owl let loose in here.” I laughed. “Well, it wasn't no screech owl. It was me and what I call singing.”

“I like hearin' you sing,” she said and straddled the stool on the other side of the counter. “There's naught of music in Angela's singing, however high and sharp it be. Your singing comes from having heart. It comes from a bubbling spring in the heart of yon hills and streams down in falling water a-tumbling over rocks a-findin' its troublesome way—a-splashin' white water an' a-tossin' drops ever' whichaway to catch the sun.”

I stood there with my mouth open. “Say that again?” She ignored me and propped her elbows on the counter.

I poured us both a cup of coffee. “You're up early,” I said.

“In my holler, a body who ain't up afore sunup is bound to be sick unto death, ready to be laid out.”

I laughed. “Well, whether or not a body gets up before sunup, he's supposed to have three score years and ten before he leaves the planet.”

I kept messing around in the kitchen, waiting to turn over the pies. I figured Dora had something more she
wanted to say. I figured she was putting her words together as she sat there with her hands around her mug of coffee. Once she was ready, she drank that hot coffee straight down. It would have scalded me!

“Miss E.,” she said, “when I been a-readin' them words wrote by John, there's come a flicker or two of foxfire, but this morning, a-settin' in the day room a-readin', there come a big flash. It lit that stub of a candle inside o' me, an' it's a-flickerin' still. I set on the porch a spell, thinking about what was a-happenin', and I don't yet know. Maybe tomorrer there'll come a steady blaze to set my soul afire for good.”

I knew exactly what Dora was talking about. Maybe that meant I was wicky-wacky, but I knew good and well she was telling me the Spirit was shedding light on her and bringing her closer to Jesus.

After that, whenever I came out of my room of a morning, I'd check the day room, and, sure enough, Dora was always in there reading her Bible. I knew better than to ask her if that “steady blaze” had set her soul on fire. We would all know when it did.

The Lord knew I needed encouragement, and letting me see how he was working in Dora was not the only way he blessed me. I was seeing a change in Ursula too. The girls told me that when it was her turn to sit in on Ringstaff's class, she sometimes asked a question, and they said in counseling sessions she was using the Bible more.

I even saw a change in Linda; she was actually learning
the memory verses Ringstaff gave the class. I assigned her laundry duty so that while the clothes were in the dryer she could spend that time learning verses.

These encouragements was such good news, I couldn't wait for the Willing Workers to pay us a visit so they could hear all the good stuff going on at Priscilla Home. Clara had called and said that she, Thelma, and Mabel could come the middle of the week for two or three nights, if that would be convenient. Of course, it was convenient. Ursula said two of them could sleep in the guest room downstairs and one could sleep on the studio couch in her apartment.

During Praise and Prayer I told the girls that three of my friends from Live Oaks were coming to pay us a visit, and I got kind of carried away telling them how much the W.W.s had meant in my life. “I really want to show them a good time,” I said. “You got any ideas?”

Well, of course, they did. They had been wanting to go to Grandfather Mountain, and having visitors was a good excuse for going. Sounded like a good idea to me.

After Praise and Prayer, Portia followed me upstairs. I was surprised. She was so cowed, so browbeat, I couldn't imagine her following me. At the top of the stairs I turned around, and she just stood there. “Portia, you not going outside with the others to smoke?”

She shook her head.

We walked on into the hallway. “No money for cigarettes?”

She shook her head again. “I quit.”

I didn't know whether to believe her or not. I took a good look at her. Whatever was in her dark eyes that I had not seen before, I saw then, and it tore away at my heart. It was a hungry look.

“You did? You stopped smoking? How?”

She said one word. “Jesus.”

I tell you, that sent a chill up my spine. The women tell me it's harder to quit smoking cigarettes than it is to quit heroin.

“Miss E.,” she whispered, “would you go in the clothing room with me?”

“Sure,” I said and handed her my Bible so I could look for the key on my ring. “You need something?”

“If company's coming—” She broke off in the middle of the sentence. “Do you think you could find me a turtleneck?”

“Sure. Let's look.”
A turtleneck. She wants to hide that tattoo
.

We found three tops in her size. “Now could you use some pants?” I asked. She said she could, so we looked through the racks and finally found a couple that matched her tops. She thanked me, and with her arms full of clothes and my Bible on top of them, she peeked out the door, making sure no one would see her, and ran to her room.

As I was locking the door, I figured Portia was hiding those clothes so Linda wouldn't make a big to-do about them.
“She's got fear worms
,” Dora had said.
Well, Lord, let's see if we can't do something about deworming that poor child
. And I followed Portia to her room.

Sure enough, she had stuffed those clothes under her
mattress and was smoothing out the covers. She jumped when she saw me, then quickly picked up the Bible and handed it to me.

I smiled.
She thinks I've come after my Bible
. “Portia, may I sit down?” I sat on the bed and patted the spread beside me. “Come, sit here.” I waited and didn't watch as she eased onto the bed. I could actually feel her body trembling.
Dora's right
, I thought.
This girl is afraid of her own shadow
.

I had to set her mind at ease that I was not going to fuss at her. “Portia, I'm glad to see you like my Bible.” I opened it on my knees. “I guess you like to read all these little things I keep filed in the pages?”

She nodded. I kept flipping through the pages and looking at slips of paper with sayings, poems, this and that. A yellowed page of a letter Bud wrote from Vietnam . . . a pressed flower from my mother's grave . . . a bookmark made of olive wood from the Holy Land. More than anything else were the poems and sayings. When I was satisfied that Portia understood I was not going to hurt her, I started to close the Bible, but Portia whispered, “And the verses.”

“The verses?”

“The ones you marked.”

“Oh yes,” I said. There were scads of them highlighted or underlined with different-colored pens.

She timidly pointed her finger at something I had written in the margin. I held the Bible up close so I could read what it was. “Prayer is helplessness casting itself upon power.” For the life of me, I couldn't remember who said that. “That's a good one, ain't it, Portia?” I said.
“I don't remember when I scribbled that in there. I'm surprised you can read my writing.”

She wanted to show me another place, so I handed her the Bible. A few pages over, she found it and I read it aloud. “Sunday is heaven once a week.” I didn't feel too good about that one. It reminded me that since I'd been at Priscilla Home, I was too busy on Sundays to really enjoy the Lord's Day. “Portia, I use to keep Sunday better than I've been doing here lately. Seems there's always so much going on around here. But when I lived in Live Oaks, there was nothing like coming home from church, eating a good Sunday dinner, then putting up my feet and spending the rest of the day with the Lord.”

We kept going through the Bible. On every page or two, there was a reference, a date, or something written in the margin that had meant something to me. I was amazed that my scribblings meant so much to Portia. That poor child was so pleased that I was enjoying this, she had stopped trembling and seemed excited. She turned some pages and pointed with a finger to what I had wrote: “My knowledge of the Maker will determine my expectations.” Good heavens, it had been years since Pastor Osborne had said that in a sermon.