CHAPTER 31
“Miss Emily. Wake up.” Ginny shook her, then shook her again. Emily opened her eyes, started up from the sofa, her focus on Ginny’s face coming slowly. “You all right, honey. Just you wake up now.”
Emily sat, her hands against her temples, shaking her head.
“What you dreaming, child? You moaning like somebody dead. I can’t hardly wake you up.”
“Oh, Ginny.” Emily lay back against the sofa, her arms limp at her sides. “I—yes, it felt like death. It was, Ginny. It was death.”
Emily stared at Ginny, laid her head against her bony shoulder.
“I was wading in the swamp, following a snake like a brilliant underwater rainbow. The water got all stinking and foul. And there was a bird, like a fragile peacock made of lace and filigree, dying in the water. Everywhere I touched, it fell apart. I loved it so, Ginny. But it was dying and decaying, making the water deadly. And I saw a young blue heron there behind it, so dull, but vulnerable and alive, and I knew it would die in this putrid water. When I touched it, it was soft, and I clung to it, staring at the color of the dying bird I could not save. And though I loved it so deeply, I had to let it die to save that young blue heron. It was such a grief, Ginny, like the grief—” She stopped, choking on her breath.
Ginny stroked her hair and hummed some tune that sunk into Emily with familiar comfort. They sat like that, the mistress and her servant, the servant with her sister-child.
“Miss Emily, I got something to say. You know the Bible talking about Eden, how Eve and Adam sinned, eating that apple or whatever it was, and God run them out and set that angel with the fiery sword to punish them?”
Emily nodded against Ginny’s shoulder.
“You know what that fruit really was? It was the Truth. The knowledge of good and evil. Those two just got a wild longing for truth.” Ginny shifted her weight. “Now I got another story for you. About yourself. You been trying all your life to get back into Eden. You think that’s what life’s supposed to be about, finding Paradise again. But it ain’t. You been spending your whole life headed the wrong direction, looking over your shoulder wishful for that garden, like Lot’s wife looking back. Mercy you ain’t turned to a pillar of salt. Now, you got to look the other way, look toward life the way it is. And life the way it is may not be so fine, but it’s life. God didn’t put that angel with the flaming sword at the gate for punishment. No, God put that angel there for protection. That’s a strange grace, I know. But God knowed it was way too dangerous for us to go around pretending life could ever be Eden in a world so broken as this one.”