own feelings, but they had never practiced a language that would express them. Aldah didn’t have the language either, but when she pulled her head down into her shoulders, her message of distress should have been clear to everyone. The corners of her mouth sagged, and her eyes grew dim. The voice of her whole body said, “Stop. Just stop.”
Alice’s mother finally did break into actual speech with her usual sense of bad timing: “We are worried about Aldah. She’s shutting down more and more.”
The trouble with her mother and with the dreadful words that often did bubble out of her mouth was that she was often close to the truth. This may have been one of those moments. If Aldah was a canary measuring the toxins in the atmosphere around the table, she was, as her mother cruelly pointed out, shutting down. She could sit like a frozen icon of something no one could explain.
But after her mother’s comment, Alice had to wonder: was Aldah absorbing their moods and showing them what they looked like, or was she developing a new problem? Alice was only two and a half when Aldah was born so she had missed Aldah’s early health problems. Alice remembered that Aldah was taking digitalis as a child, and she had terrible ear infections. Alice remembered the screaming and how Aldah held her little hands over her ears. She was a wobbly kid and could hardly walk when Alice started school. By the time Alice was a teenager, her mother had given up on Aldah. Alice hadn’t. She did some reading and knew that their family wasn’t alone in this journey. Alice would crunch up zinc and selenium and pretend to put some in a glass for herself and some in a glass for Aldah. When Aldah saw her older sister drinking hers, she’d drink too. She’d do anything that she saw Alice doing, so long as Alice smiled at her first. She would have walked over a cliff behind Alice if Alice smiled at her first.
Her parents went on talking about Aldah as if she weren’t there. Aldah gave no hints that she was listening or that she understood. Alice knew better: Aldah heard and understood every word. Even her father spoke as if Aldah weren’t there.
“Maybe it’s time,” he said.
“I think so,” said her mother.
“We’re not specialists,” said her father.
“There’s state money,” said her mother.
“I know,” said her father. “I checked that out.”
Aldah picked at her food, then reached for the sugar bowl and sprinkled two teaspoons of sugar over the Hamburger Helper. No one stopped her.
The discussion, such as it was, dropped off a cliff. Her father said a quick closing prayer that asked for strength and for the forgiveness of their sins. It was one of his autopilot prayers, predictable and brief. He stood up. Her mother stood up too while Aldah went on eating. They evidently weren’t going to talk about Aldah any more—they weren’t going to talk about anything. Alice could hear the unspoken message that trickled down through the generations: Zeg maar niks. Don’t say anything. It was away of dealing with problems by keeping your mouth shut.
When her mother walked outside to the screen porch after closing devotions, Alice followed her, leaving Aldah alone to digest the sugary hotdish and what had been said about her.
Alice stepped into the porch to find her mother sitting in a metal lawn chair. Alice stood off to the side, not close—but she was there. No matter how much her mother repulsed her much of the time, Alice took the first step in making amends. She had come to smooth things over, to find that little window of hope to connect with her mother, but she kept a good four feet distance.
“Are you still worried about Aldah?”
“Aldah is beyond worry.”
“Mother.”
“The farm is beyond worry. The world is beyond worry.”
Her mother looked relaxed and tense at the same time—like a petrified rag doll.
“Not everything is lost,” said Alice. “Dad said cattle and hog prices could go up. You have to believe that something good could happen.”
“For somebody who thinks she’s so smart, you can’t even see the elephant that’s stepping on your toes.”
“Please stop. I came out here because I was worried about you.”
“The only person you worry about is yourself.”
“You just walked out of the kitchen. That’s not like you.”
“How would you know?” said her mother. “Just how would you know what is like me?”
“Why can’t you ever believe me?”
“Okay, you were worried about me.”
“I was. So what’s going on?”
“I was just thinking.”
“Okay. About?”
“About you. About your father, about Aldah, about us, about the world. About the grand arcs of history, about the miniature dramas of family, about the futility of our will.”
Alice moved a little closer. “Good God, Mother.”
Now her mother looked at her. Alice noticed that she had jutted her own left hip out and had her right hand on her right hip. Her mother might see this as an arrogant stance and think that Alice was mocking her. Alice let her arms fall to her sides and leaned humbly forward. Her mother noticed, but her expression was puzzling. She wore an unfamiliar expression, almost an aggressive look, as if she was ready to take on something bigger than Alice or Aldah or anything Alice could understand.
“You okay?”
Her mother turned her eyes from Alice and leaned forward. She tried to turn the metal lawn chair into a rocker, which only made a rhythmic grating sound on the porch floor. “As okay as okay can be.” She lifted her head and stared out through the screens, not at Alice. “It’s just life,” she said. “I don’t think my faith can sustain me.”
Alice didn’t know if her mother was pushing her away with that comment or inviting her in. Alice stepped in: “Sustain you through what? What are you going through?”
“You don’t know? Intelligent as you think you are, are you really telling me that you don’t know?” There was an edge to her mother’s voice, almost disgust—as if she thought the answer was so obvious that only a fool would ask.
Alice paused and took a deep breath. “No, I don’t know. What are you going through?”
A steer moaned mournfully from the feedlot, and Alice worried for a second that she might have missed some ailment when she fed them. Then another steer moaned in response. They were just talking to each other in a sweet eunuchs’ conversation.
“What does any person go through when they realize there’s no hope,” said her mother. “And that there should be no hope. Hope is not a way of honoring the Lord, it’s a way of insulting Him. Selfish wishes. Hope is greed disguised.”
Never before had Alice imagined that her mother’s scattered and so often scathing thoughts could come together in such chilling generalizations. “Mother,” she said, and she paused and thought before going on. “How much time do you spend
