Gagging, she physically swallowed down the sour bile as she fought the nausea, slowing her hand at work with the smooth, peeled twig between her legs.
It made her as sick to think of what blessings had been given her family as it did to plunge the twig deep inside herself, searching out the demon seed that had attached itself to her womb.
“Dear heavenly Father, we are grateful for the bounty Thou hast set before us this day. Thy gifts are the fruit of our hands. Bless this plentiful harvest to nourishing our bodies, and Your holy word to nourishing our hungry souls,” Gritta whispered quietly, her lips barely moving as she fought back the waves of nausea bordering on pain.
What needed doing now had needed doing more than once since that bright day the man had come and took her from the home she had made for her family.
“Watch over and protect these three children of ours, the youngest of your creation,” she continued her recitation of grace. “May we never turn from Your face, our heavenly Father—forever praising You in the name of the Savior of man, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
She felt the warm, sticky flow over her hand then. Hoping she had torn Usher’s seed from her womb, praying her body would flush it as she had each time before.
Exhausted, Gritta sought out something more to hang her thoughts on as the pain rose low in her belly. Slowly she dragged the smooth twig from her body and lay panting, sensing in some dull, primitive way that she was bleeding again. That was good. Only through the bleeding would she flush the demon seed.
“Now I lay me down to sleep,” her voice came from deep within her, as deep perhaps as she had been probing with the twig. It was a child’s voice that rose quiet and eerily from her throat. “I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die … if I should die …”
Gritta clenched her eyes shut, trying to hold back the hot tears of pain, of failure at her attempts to kill herself.
“Before I wake,” she sobbed. “I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
She knew God would not take her now. Not after what she had done with Usher. Not after all this time. How she wanted to die and have it done with—just how much worse could hell be than where she was right now?
Pulling her closer and closer to death was Gritta’s belief that her children had gone on to a better place. Too long since she last saw the boys.
“Now I lay me down to sleep.”
Remembering how she always got down on her knees beside the bed the boys shared, kneeling between them. Each night Hattie knelt at her small bed nearby.
“I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”
She hadn’t seen her daughter in almost as long as she had missed the boys. Couldn’t remember—Hattie’s face. For so many years there it had been like looking back on her own childhood, so much did Hattie look like her mother.
“If I should die before I wake.”
But she would never see them again. Not living. Not in death. They had gone on to heaven, and she was going to hell for all that she had done with Usher.
“I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
How fervently she prayed that last line, repeating it over and over as she grew more and more faint, without the strength to hide the smooth, peeled twig beneath one of the table’s leg supports. It was there she had kept it over all these seasons and miles and operations she performed on herself.
Cursing her womb that had given birth to three children who now lived with God. Cursing her womb, desiring to scar it irrevocably so that no chance would the devil’s own seed stand of finding sustenance there and growing.
How long had it been? She dug at the thought the way her fingers dug at the hard, flaky soil.
She sensed again that fleeting remembrance of being bedside with the children, saying the prayer before diving between the cold sheets and blankets and the thick comforter.
Then Gritta was struck with the fact so cold and smooth, it was like the limestone walls of the springhouse where they kept the milk and butter cool. She could not say where she was, how long it had been, nor how old she had become. Nothing to relate to space and time.
The warmth between her legs was turning slightly colder now.
None of the rest mattered anymore, for the children were all gone and with God now. Only her regrets that she would not live for eternity with them in the glory of the Lord’s love. And J—…Jonah himself must surely be dead. Not come home from the war for so long. Not come after her. He was surely dead. Killed by the Yankee soldiers Sterling Price wanted to drive out of Missouri. How much longer would they be fighting?
She knew these men who rode with Usher fought and then marched back north to spend the winter. It must be a long, long war for the fighting to go on and on and on this way.
