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Authors: Geraldine Brooks
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created in six days?”
Yes, I said.
“All?” he repeated.
So the Bible instructed us, I said.
“Heaven and hell, also, were created then?”
So it says, and so we must believe. The look on his face was the very same as when he had speared a fine bass. “Then answer me this: why did God make a hell before Adam and Eve had sinned?”
This had never occurred to me to question, but I thought quickly, and replied to him. “Because God knows all, and he knew that they would.”
“Then why did he not scotch the snake before it tempted them?”
“Because he had endowed them with free will,” I said.
“And so do we endow our children with free will, yet you English chide us, and say they are unruly and should be flogged.”
Oftentimes, these exchanges vexed me, and I broke off and rode home struggling for self-mastery and resolving to have no further relations with this hard-headed pagan. Yet within a sennight, I would seek him out again, lingering in the places which by now were familiar haunts to both of us until he sprang up in his sudden way, materializing in the tall grasses or beech groves. And so it went on, as another year turned. We each of us grew and changed, gaining new responsibilities in our separate worlds, but always making a space where those worlds could collide and intertwine. As time passed it became harder for me to keep a bright line between my English self and that girl in the woods, whose mouth could utter the true name of every island creature, whose feet could walk trackless through leaf bed, whose hands could pull a fish from a weir in a swift blur of motion and whose soul could glimpse a world animated by another kind of godliness.
I had to work ever harder to put that girl from me when I rode back into Great Harbor. I had to learn to leave her behind in the woods; her loose limbed stride, her bold gaze and her easy manners. Lucky for me that I was so long used to considering every word before I spoke it, or I might have given myself away any number of times. Sometimes, when I came inside, mother would look up from her doughtrough or her spindle and, after admiring whatever I had plucked or gathered for the larder, would ask me what I had seen, abroad in the wide world for such hours.
I would share with her some small piece of news, such as a sighting of an otter in an unaccustomed pond, or an uncommon kind of seal I had interrupted, basking on the beach. She would nod, and smile, and pass some remark that fresh air was healthful, and she was glad I could go about so, since she as a girl had lived a town life that did not afford such rambles. One day, she reached a floury hand and touched my face, tucking in an errant hair that had come loose from my cap. Her blue eyes—much bluer than mine—regarded me gravely. “It is a good thing—for a girl,” she said. “It will not be so, when you are become a young woman.” She went back to her kneading then, and I set a kettle to boil the lobsters and we did not speak of it again.
It did not seem pressing then, this truth that my mother had voiced, that one day I would have to leave my other self behind forever: that it could not go on, this crossing out of one world and into another, that something was bound to happen to put an end to all of it. If I had thought clearly, and considered, and prepared my mind for it, I could not possibly have fallen so easily into the sin that brought God to smite us such a terrible blow. Looking back, it is hard to imagine how I could have been such a fool.
It was leaf fall, the third year of my friendship with Caleb. I had gone to the upland woods where huckleberries ripened late. He appeared, as usual, suddenly and unexpectedly from the shadow of a granite boulder. He had with him the catechism I had given him so long ago. He pressed it back into my hands. “After today, I will not walk with you anymore. Do not look for me,” he said.
This sudden pronouncement stung me like a switch. Tears welled
Yes, I said.
“All?” he repeated.
So the Bible instructed us, I said.
“Heaven and hell, also, were created then?”
So it says, and so we must believe. The look on his face was the very same as when he had speared a fine bass. “Then answer me this: why did God make a hell before Adam and Eve had sinned?”
This had never occurred to me to question, but I thought quickly, and replied to him. “Because God knows all, and he knew that they would.”
“Then why did he not scotch the snake before it tempted them?”
“Because he had endowed them with free will,” I said.
“And so do we endow our children with free will, yet you English chide us, and say they are unruly and should be flogged.”
Oftentimes, these exchanges vexed me, and I broke off and rode home struggling for self-mastery and resolving to have no further relations with this hard-headed pagan. Yet within a sennight, I would seek him out again, lingering in the places which by now were familiar haunts to both of us until he sprang up in his sudden way, materializing in the tall grasses or beech groves. And so it went on, as another year turned. We each of us grew and changed, gaining new responsibilities in our separate worlds, but always making a space where those worlds could collide and intertwine. As time passed it became harder for me to keep a bright line between my English self and that girl in the woods, whose mouth could utter the true name of every island creature, whose feet could walk trackless through leaf bed, whose hands could pull a fish from a weir in a swift blur of motion and whose soul could glimpse a world animated by another kind of godliness.
I had to work ever harder to put that girl from me when I rode back into Great Harbor. I had to learn to leave her behind in the woods; her loose limbed stride, her bold gaze and her easy manners. Lucky for me that I was so long used to considering every word before I spoke it, or I might have given myself away any number of times. Sometimes, when I came inside, mother would look up from her doughtrough or her spindle and, after admiring whatever I had plucked or gathered for the larder, would ask me what I had seen, abroad in the wide world for such hours.
I would share with her some small piece of news, such as a sighting of an otter in an unaccustomed pond, or an uncommon kind of seal I had interrupted, basking on the beach. She would nod, and smile, and pass some remark that fresh air was healthful, and she was glad I could go about so, since she as a girl had lived a town life that did not afford such rambles. One day, she reached a floury hand and touched my face, tucking in an errant hair that had come loose from my cap. Her blue eyes—much bluer than mine—regarded me gravely. “It is a good thing—for a girl,” she said. “It will not be so, when you are become a young woman.” She went back to her kneading then, and I set a kettle to boil the lobsters and we did not speak of it again.
It did not seem pressing then, this truth that my mother had voiced, that one day I would have to leave my other self behind forever: that it could not go on, this crossing out of one world and into another, that something was bound to happen to put an end to all of it. If I had thought clearly, and considered, and prepared my mind for it, I could not possibly have fallen so easily into the sin that brought God to smite us such a terrible blow. Looking back, it is hard to imagine how I could have been such a fool.
It was leaf fall, the third year of my friendship with Caleb. I had gone to the upland woods where huckleberries ripened late. He appeared, as usual, suddenly and unexpectedly from the shadow of a granite boulder. He had with him the catechism I had given him so long ago. He pressed it back into my hands. “After today, I will not walk with you anymore. Do not look for me,” he said.
This sudden pronouncement stung me like a switch. Tears welled
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