Death In The Family, A - James Agee [50]
While she was speaking, she was with her voice, her eyes and with each word opening in Hannah those all but forgotten hours, almost thirty years past, during which the cross of living had first nakedly borne in upon her being, and she had made the first beginnings of learning how to endure and accept it. Your turn now, poor child, she thought; she felt as if a prodigious page were being silently turned, and the breath of its turning touched her heart with cold and tender awe. Her soul is beginning to come of age, she thought; and within those moments she herself became much older, much nearer her own death, and was content to be. Her heart lifted up in a kind of pride in Mary, in every sorrow she could remember, her own or that of others (and the remembrances rushed upon her); in all existence and endurance. She wanted to cry out Yes! Exactly! Yes. Yes. Begin to see. Your turn now. She wanted to hold her niece at arms’ length and to turn and admire this blossoming. She wanted to take her in her arms and groan unto God for what it meant to be alive. But chiefly she wanted to keep stillness and to hear the young woman’s voice and to watch her eyes and her round forehead while she spoke, and to accept and experience this repetition of her own younger experience, which bore her high and pierced like music.
“Isn’t that so?” Mary repeated.
“That and much more,” she said.
“You mean God’s mercy?” Mary asked softly.
“Nothing of the kind,” Hannah replied sharply. “What I mean, I’d best not try to say.” (I’ve begun, though, she reflected; and I startled her, I hurt her, almost as if I’d spoken against God.) “Only because it’s better if you learn it for yourself. By yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Whatever we hear, learn, Mary, it’s almost certain to be hard. Tragically hard. You’re beginning to know that and to face it: very bravely. What I mean is that this is only the beginning. You’ll learn much more. Beginning very soon now.”
“Whatever it is, I want so much to be worthy of it,” Mary said, her eyes shining.
“Don’t try too hard to be worthy of it, Mary. Don’t think of it that way. Just do your best to endure it and let any question of worthiness take care of itself. That’s more than enough.”
“I feel so utterly unprepared. So little time to prepare in.”
“I don’t think it’s a kind of thing that can be prepared for; it just has to be lived through.”
There was a kind of ambition there, Hannah felt, a kind of pride or poetry, which was very mistaken and very dangerous. But she was not yet quite sure what she meant; and of all the times to become beguiled by such a matter, to try to argue it, or warn about it! She’s so young, she told herself. She’ll learn; poor soul, she’ll learn.
Even while Hannah watched her, Mary’s face became diffuse and humble. Oh, not yet, Hannah whispered desperately to herself. Not yet. But Mary said, shyly, “Aunt Hannah, can we kneel down for a minute?”
Not yet, she wanted to say. For the first time in her life she suspected how mistakenly prayer can be used, but she was unsure why. What can I say, she thought, almost in panic. How can I judge? She was waiting too long; Mary smiled at her, timidly, and in a beginning of bewilderment; and in compassion and self-doubt Hannah came around the table and they knelt side by side. We can be seen, Hannah realized; for the shades were up. Let us, she told herself angrily.
“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen,” Mary said in a low voice.
“Amen,” Hannah trailed.
They were silent and they could hear the ticking of the clock, the shuffling of fire, and the yammering of the big kettle.
God is not here, Hannah said to herself; and made a small cross upon her breastbone, against her blasphemy.
“O God,” Mary whispered, “strengthen me to accept Thy will, whatever it may be.” Then she stayed silent.
God hear her, Hannah said to herself. God forgive me. God forgive me.
What can I know of the proper time for her, she said to herself. God forgive me.
Yet she could not rid herself: something