A Book of American Martyrs(14)

The pillow was pressed a little harder against Edna Mae’s face, and now she began to move her head, and to struggle. And still, I pressed the pillow harder, and at this Edna Mae began to writhe as a cat might writhe, in a sudden eruption of panic, not clawing at my hands (as I’d feared) but gripping my wrists, to shove them away; and through the pillow I could hear muffled cries—No! No no . . .

At once, I lifted the pillow from the contorted white face. Now spittle covered the lips and the eyes were blinking frantically.

“Edna Mae, dear you are having a nightmare . . . You have been choking in your sleep.”

It was true, Edna Mae had been making strangulated noises in her sleep. Her breath came in quick spurts as if she’d been running. Now she was sitting up in bed frightened and confused like one who has no idea where she is.

As Edna Mae was panting, and half-sobbing, gently I gripped her thin shoulders and shook her, to steady her.

“Edna Mae! Stop! It was only a bad dream—you’re safe now.”

I groped for the bedside lamp, that seemed to have become overturned as if in a struggle. Carefully I set it upright and switched on the light. In the dim light Edna Mae stared at my face as if trying to identify me.

The pupils of her eyes were dilated and appeared all black. On the little table beside Edna Mae’s side of the bed was Edna Mae’s well-worn Bible (which she had had since she’d been a girl) and one of Daphne’s small stuffed toys, that looked like the fuzzy cinnamon-colored bear I had disposed of weeks ago.

“You were sleeping on your stomach, Edna Mae, with your face in the pillow. You panicked when you couldn’t breathe. See, the pillow is wet from your mouth . . .”

With something of her former fastidious distaste Edna Mae shuddered. It is embarrassing to her to be reminded of such behavior, or any kind of personal slovenliness. I would not reproach her.

My way with the family and with any young person is to speak gently and kindly and without any harsh judgment for that was a key insight from my training as a (lay) minister.

A Christian is one who makes others feel good about themselves, and hopeful. Not ashamed, or sad, or anxious.

Edna Mae stared now at the bedside clock. The numerals were 2:11 A.M. which she did not seem to comprehend, for the hour was so late for us it did not seem real. Both windows of the room showed only darkness outside pressed flat against the glass like a face so close you cannot see its features.

“Oh, Luther! I’m sorry. I’ve been keeping you awake . . .”

I told my dear wife not to be silly, she had not been keeping me awake.

With a murmur of apology Edna Mae pushed herself from the bed.

Through the cotton nightgown the vertebrae of her spine were outlined, the poor woman had grown so thin. When I offered to help her she pushed away my hand with a little laugh of chagrin. For it seemed now that she was fully awake. With some effort she made her way unsteadily out into the hall and into the bathroom just outside the door.

So softly she moved, barefoot, I could not hear her footfall. I hoped that she would not collapse, and I would run to her, and the children would be wakened and hurry from their rooms . . . By this time I was sweating profusely, and wiped my face on an edge of the sheet.

A sensation of sickness deepened in my bowels, I could not believe what I had contemplated doing to my dear wife—smothering Edna Mae? Putting her out of her misery?

“But that is not allowed. I know, that is not allowed.”

These words I spoke aloud in a kind of childlike wonder. If Jesus was a witness I wanted him to hear.

From the bathroom I could hear a toilet flush, and I could hear the faucet. The pipes are old in this house and should be replaced, soon. I could hear the click! of the medicine cabinet when it was opened, and I could hear the shaking of pills out of a small container, onto the palm of my wife’s hand.

Almost, I could see my dear wife’s hand shaking.

And yet, so tired had I become, and how heavy-lidded my eyes, I understood that I could not really see Edna Mae shaking her white pills into the palm of her hand, through the wall.

Then, there was another sound. Pills slipped through Edna Mae’s fingers onto the floor. There came a sharp little intake of her breath—“Oh! Oh God”—as she stooped to grope for the small white pills and to pick them up one by one from the linoleum floor, that was not a clean floor.

Again now there came a running of water, and a moaning sound of pipes. And the click! this time of a glass being set upon the porcelain sink just a little too hard.

When Edna Mae returned to our bed she was yet more unsteady on her feet. Her face was papery-white but mottled a rough red in the cheeks as with hives. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot and yet (I saw) there was something sly in those eyes, the stubbornness of secrecy. Her hair was matted and sticking up in tufts like the feathers of a scrawny chicken.

My beloved Edna Mae! My heart was suffused with love for her, not as she was now but as she had been, when I had first seen her in the church at Mad River, at the age of seventeen in another lifetime it seemed, before she’d lifted her shy eyes to see me.

So young, both of us! By then, I had dropped out of high school. I had decided to make my own way and not to work with my father as my father had wished and instead to spend the summer with my uncle and aunt in Mad River thirty miles south of Muskegee Falls working on their dairy farm.

If I had not gone to stay in Mad River that summer.