Till Morning Is Nigh (10 page)

“I’ll take her,” Joe told his sister. “You rest. I know you’re not feelin’ the best.”

It had never occurred to me to feel Lizbeth’s forehead while I was checking on the others. And she hadn’t said a word. “Have you been feeling poorly too?” I asked her now.

“It’s not so bad,” she said. “Like Mr. Wortham says, it’ll pass.”

“Fever? Stomach?”

“Little a’ both, I guess.”

“Will you please take some of that medicine and lie down? Let me have the baby.”

She hesitated, but she did as I asked, and I took Emmie in my arms. She didn’t seem as warm as she had before I went upstairs, thankfully. But Lizbeth. Dear Lord. Everybody around here leaned on Lizbeth.

Samuel went quietly to the kitchen to put the medicine back in the cupboard. I sat in the rocker and sang softly with Emmie against my chest. Soon she drifted back to sleep. Harry too, though it took him a little longer. Then it was only Lizbeth and Joe still awake with us, the oldest two, except for the big brother we expected back home for Christmas.

It had taken Samuel a while in the kitchen, and when he got back in the room he had a chunk of my homemade bread in his hand.

“Mr. Wortham?” Joe asked in a whisper. “What’d you find out about Pa?”

I could see Samuel’s hesitation. But he answered. It wouldn’t have been right not to. “Nothing, son. Not really. He’s not home. I couldn’t find out where he went.”

“Drinkin’?”

“He got some liquor,” Samuel admitted solemnly. “But he took off with it. I don’t know where.”

Joe got quiet. He hung his head, and I wished I could hug him. I stood to my feet carefully, hoping to lay Emmie on the mattress again so my arms would be free.

“Maybe he’ll be back in the morning,” Lizbeth told us, her voice sounding far away. “He’ll have to sleep off the drunk, but he’ll be all right.”

“Not if he’s still tired a’ livin’,” Joe said, an awful ache plain in his voice. “He tol’ me that. He tol’ me he was tired a’ livin’ without our mama. An’ he didn’t think he was doin’ us no good anyhow.”

“When was that?” Samuel asked.

“Month or two ago. I wondered then if it wouldn’t get worse at Christmastime.”

Samuel shook his head. “He promised me after last Christmas. He promised me he’d be here for you and do all he could.”

“He did good for awhile, Mr. Wortham,” Lizbeth said, her voice suddenly moving toward tears. “He really did.”

I went to her. Samuel went to the davenport with Joe. There wasn’t much we could tell them, or anything at all we could do, except to encourage them to be hopeful. As far as we knew, their father was fine. He might well be home already, or at least home in the morning like Lizbeth said.

It was hard to get back to sleep that night, tired as we all were. Lizbeth and Joe were so brave, and shouldered so much for their younger siblings. I was proud of them both.

Morning broke over us windy and bright. Yesterday’s snow blew and drifted and made piles and swirls outside where our garden had been. I was thankful it hadn’t snowed enough to block us in, or get Samuel stuck somewhere else last night.

Berty, Emmie, and Rorey all seemed to have a touch of the fever when they woke, but not like Harry and Lizbeth. Both of them had wakened with chills and looking pretty miserable. I gave them more medicine and started a pot of chicken soup.

Berty was raring to go to work on our manger scene again, but I had to put him off till breakfast and cleanup were done and I’d seen to Lizbeth and Harry a bit. Samuel did chores by himself, and then left to take care of chores at the Hammond house, talk to Ben Law, and then check on the Posts and return their truck.

Crayolas, and all the figures we had in progress into the sitting room again, and most of the children started decorating the wide, cone-shaped robes or cutting out little pieces of paper to use for shepherds’ headgear or kings’ crowns. Berty hadn’t forgotten yesterday’s favorite song. But he seemed to get stuck on one line and sang it over and over. Finally he stopped and looked quizzically across the room at Lizbeth.

“What’s lowing mean?” he asked her. “The cattle keep on doin’ it in that song.”

“I guess it’s the same as mooing,” she explained. “Don’t know what else it could be.” She sat up on the edge of one mattress with a blanket draped around her shoulders. I would have preferred her to try to lie down longer, but she wanted to be up. She wanted me to bring the manger scene work right here in the sitting room too, so we could spread out like yesterday.

“Why didn’t whoever made up that song just say mooin’ if the cows was mooin’?” Rorey questioned. “That woulda made a lot more sense.”

“I think lowing is an old word for mooing,” I tried to explain. “Like people used to say ye instead of you.”

“The cattle are mooing,” Berty started to sing, and then giggled. “I like that. Can we make cattle?”

“Goodness,” I exclaimed. “Sheep are enough of a challenge to think about.”

“But the song says there’s cattle,” the little fellow persisted.

“I suppose there were. And maybe we could try. But I just don’t know. That seems awfully complex.”

“The cattle are mooing,” Berty sang again and then stopped. “We could makes ’em like sheep, only bigger! An’ no woolly stuff on their sides.”

“Do you have any cotton, Mrs. Wortham?” Lizbeth asked me.

“A little.”

“I think I could figure out a sheep. And some cotton would make it look real nice. But cattle might be harder, Berty. If we can make one at all, maybe it ought to be just one.”

“One cattle,” Harry laughed. “Our teacher’d say that weren’t good English.”

I appreciated the bit of humor from him. Hopefully it was a sign he was doing better. He was on the davenport again, wrapped in a blanket but watching us.

“I’m making Mary’s dress especially beautiful,” Sarah told me. “Because she’s Jesus’s mother.”

“And I’m making this angel’s dress beautiful too,” Katie added.

“They’s not dresses,” Rorey corrected them both. “They’s called robes. And angels don’t wear pink.” She tugged my sleeve and pointed at Katie’s angel. “Look. That girl thinks angel robes is pink.”

I only smiled. “I suppose angels can wear whatever color they want to wear, don’t you? God surely likes all colors since he made such a colorful world.”

“They’s supposed to be white,” she said with a sniff.

“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her, hoping not to have another day like yesterday with her.

“I’m fine, I guess. Not so icky in the tummy.”

“Good. That’s very nice to hear.”

“Can we make cookies?”

I was very surprised Rorey would ask. She’d been less than enthusiastic when I’d mentioned the possibility yesterday. “Yes. But not right now. I’m hoping everybody will be feeling a little better first.”

“An’ we can finish all this,” Franky suggested.

“Or at least a good bit of it.”

“Where did Mary and Joseph come from again?” Sarah asked me. “I know you read that part in the story last night, but I can’t remember.”

“Nazareth,” Franky told her before I had the chance.

“Boy, Franky,” she commented. “You’re smart about this.”

Rorey scoffed immediately. “He is not! He just remembered. So did I. He just said it first.”

“Rorey,” I warned her. “Do not start making ugly comments about anyone, or I’ll sit you in the corner.”

She sulked. She colored her shepherd’s robe a streaky gray. But then she brightened a little and started putting stripes on her crying angel’s robe. “These is going to need wings,” she told me.

“We can do that. Eventually.”

“Well, where’s heaven?” Sarah suddenly asked.

“What?”

“If Nazareth is the cupboard, and the east is the pantry shelf, where’s the heaven for the angels to come from?”

“Upstairs,” Harry suggested. “That makes sense.”

“Yeah!” Sarah’s eyes were lit with enthusiasm again. “That makes sense.”

By the time Samuel came home, we had three finished angels, complete with wings, and two nice-looking shepherds, one happy, one sad. Plus Mary and Joseph, each with little paper arms pasted on. And three tall kings with pointy-topped crowns. I wanted to put them all on the table again, together as a centerpiece where they’d be up out of harm’s way. But Sarah whisked the angels away to run them upstairs to “heaven” so they could come swooping down from there again. Berty took Mary and Joseph back to the cupboard.

“I don’t guess they’s left yet,” he told me.

And then Robert solemnly returned the kings to the pantry. “They haven’t either,” he said. “Of course not. Nobody made a star.”

Samuel sat at the kitchen table with the milk and eggs from the Hammonds’ farm, enjoying the children’s merry antics and warming up with a cup of coffee. When the room cleared, he told me how glad he was that I could keep the kids so happy, rather than worrying about what was happening with their pa.

Ben Law had no word. There’d been no sign of George anywhere. But Louise Post was feeling a little better. And Barrett said we might need the truck more than he did. He’d sent Samuel home with it again.

“We need to do something extra special for them for Christmas if we can,” I said.

“I’d like to,” Samuel agreed. “But what do you have in mind?”

“Baking is the only thing I can think of. I’m sure they’d appreciate it. Louise may not be feeling up to it, and probably shouldn’t be doing much.”

“Do we have flour enough?”

“I hope so. But we’re awfully low on sugar. I’m hoping to make holiday cookies with the children, but I’m just not sure how far it’ll stretch.”

He hung his head a little. I knew our lack had been awfully hard on Samuel all along. “Remember the little cedar box I made this fall?” he asked me. “I’ll take it to town and see if the grocer won’t trade.”

I nodded. “We can spare a few eggs, and some of our milk, I think. Since we have the Hammonds’ here to use as well.”

He looked at me uncertainly. And I didn’t realize anyone else had heard. But Joe was suddenly standing in the doorway. “Take all the milk an’ eggs to town you need. It’s as much yours as ours anyhow. You’ve fed us more times than I can count. An’ that ain’t even half what you’re doin’.”

Samuel nodded to him. “It will help,” he said. “To be able to buy a few groceries. Even just the sugar so your brothers and sisters can help make the cookies and things. They’ll like that. Thank you.”

Joe just sighed. “We’re all in this together. I’m glad about that.”

Again, I wanted to hug him, just as I’d felt in the night. But Berty came running in suddenly, and not far behind came Harry in his bare feet, swinging a pillow.

“Harry! Goodness, what are you doing? Where are your socks?”

“Didn’t need ’em when I was layin’ down.”

I took the pillow from his hand. “Now that you’re feeling well enough to be up, put your socks on. The floors are too cold to be running around without them. And no pillow fights. Especially in the kitchen.”

“He put a angel on my head.”

“Well, I can think of far worse things. Take care of those angels, please. The girls worked hard on them.”

“Oh, Sarah’s got ’em again. They’s on the stairs practicing what they’s supposed to say on Christmas Eve.”

I could hear Sarah’s voice just a little bit now as Harry and Berty galloped away. And it sounded like Katie’s voice was joining in the joyous song. I couldn’t help but smile.

“Hark, the heral’ angels sing! Glory to the newborn king! Peace on earth an’ mercy mild! God an’ sinners reconciled . . .”

They didn’t seem to know any more of the carol. But I did. And I sang out the rest loud enough for them to hear me, much to their delight. They came running into kitchen, paper angels in hand. “Mommy! Mommy! You can be in the choirs of angels!”

Somehow, for just a moment, in the midst of these nativity-loving kids, I felt that I already was.

No Crying He Makes

F
ranky didn’t run around the house and play like the other children. He was concentrating on the problem of how to make the baby Jesus and sheep that stood up. Finally he decided on a reverse design for the baby. A paper tube for the body and an inverted cone in the end of it for a head. He sealed the top with a circle of paper and wrapped his little “baby” with a blanket of paper, bringing one corner up “to keep his head warm.” Sarah loved the little paper baby, but she was a little distressed, especially when I set the figure on the table.

“Mommy, it isn’t Christmas. He isn’t supposed to be borned yet.”

“He was born a long time ago, sweetheart. We’re just making a display—sort of like acting it out in his honor.”

“But we want to act it out right, Mommy! He can’t be in Bethlehem yet.”

“Fine,” I told her, just a little impatiently. I set the paper Jesus on the cupboard, next to Mary.

“That isn’t right either,” she complained. “Because he isn’t borned.” She whirled around and yelled, “Franky! Where was baby Jesus before he got borned?”

“In heaven, I guess,” Franky answered simply, barely looking up from his second attempt at a sheep.

“Oh yeah. I forgot.” She turned to me again. “Mommy, can I take him upstairs?”

I could almost have laughed, but I doubt she would have appreciated it. She was so straight-faced, like this was terribly important to her. “Sure. But when you’re finished playing, please put it up so it doesn’t get stepped on. Franky did such a nice job.”

She ran off happily, and Berty suddenly came back in the kitchen and climbed into a chair. “I don’t feel so good no more.”

Not again. “What’s the matter?” I asked him.

“I think I runned my stomach all jiggly.”

I looked at Samuel with a sigh. “Just when I think we’re getting on top of it.”

He wasn’t worried. “Nothing has kept Bert down for long.”

“You’ll have to sit awhile, or lie down,” I told the boy. “Settle down and rest quietly. That was the point of no school for anyone today, after all. Not a giant recess.”

“I don’t get recess,” he claimed. “’Cause I school at your house.”

“You don’t need recess,” I informed him. “Because everything is play to you anyway.”

Emmie was toddling about, holding Joe’s hand. Harry was jumping on the stairs, evidently feeling much better. Rorey didn’t seem so peppy, sunk in a sitting room chair with Sarah’s doll on her lap.