...when Rebecca also had conceived... (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil...) It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have loved, but Esau have I hated.
                                                       --Romans 9:10-13

Luke’s journal, continued

October 30, 1766

Father has found out about the gambling debt. It won’t be long before he also learns of the slave deal with the Southern plantations. He thinks we are far above the owners in the South, saying we treat our slaves kindly and fairly and they do not. I have seen the market enough times to know the slaves suffer much, no matter where they are sent. Slavery is slavery. Father is a hypocrite. Either the blacks are human, or they are not. Even if they are not, do animals suffer what slaves do?

As for me, I wanted the money and the excitement of seeing if I could do this, but more, I wanted to avenge my eldest brother for leading the others to treat me with such hate when I was a vulnerable child.

Today Father called Asher into his office. Father’s voice was loud enough for all to hear. I made certain I looked innocent of blame so that Asher wouldn’t retaliate against me. I couldn’t help but smile when Father said, “How can I trust you ever again?”

But Mother’s words still echo in my mind: Mend your ways… mend your ways. If I don’t change, she will surely tell everything I’ve done. As the saying goes, can a leopard change its spots? My nature is no mere collection of spots. It goes so deep I drown in it. Does she understand that about me? If she doesn’t, she has no idea what she’s demanding. And if she does, she can’t possibly love me anymore. Can I win her love again? I have to try! I have to erase those spots if I intend to be more than scum in her eyes.

October 31, 1766

This morning, Mother showed so much pity for Asher, she told Father, “He can’t possibly have done what you accuse him of! Asher doesn’t steal. And Asher doesn’t gamble. You can’t lay the blame on him. It must have been someone else!” She all but named the someone else.

After I came home from school, she requested I take a walk with her. We ambled through a secluded area of low hills not far from home. She breathed with difficulty and walked slowly, so I took her arm. “I read the rest of your journal,” she said.

I swallowed. “Can you—possibly still love me?”

She looked at the scattered leaves at her feet. “It is hard to.”

“Then you hate me now?”

“No. I just don’t understand you. I used to think I did. I’m so disappointed!”

My words rushed out unbidden: “If you hadn’t invaded the only real privacy I have, you wouldn’t be.”

“At least,” she breathed, “there may be a chance you can make things right again.”

“They never were right, Mother! I was born to disappointment. My soul was tainted from the beginning.”

“You live a lie,” she added.

“It’s all I have. If you tell Father—if you tell anyone—what little happiness I have will be lost forever.”

“Luke! If I don’t tell, or you don’t confess, what will happen to Asher? He denies taking Father’s money and squandering it, but your father isn’t listening. It’s not just my heart you’re breaking. It’s your father’s as well. And he doesn’t even know who’s really breaking it! How can you put the blame on your brother?”

Six years of inner agony erupted. “Because Asher is the one most responsible for destroying me!” I shouted. “He led all the others in attacking me ever since the day I turned five. He made certain I was beaten up, spat at, called horrible names, and rejected by everyone I knew! What would you do if someone did all that to you?”

“I would have to forgive him,” she said.

“That’s easy for you to say. He’s your real favorite, isn’t he?” I fumed.

“I wish I had never picked a favorite.” She stood on the path now, bent over. “It was—wrong.”

“You—you were the one who believed in me in the beginning, gave me hope, made me believe I mattered!” My voice rose even louder and I lost all control. “Ever since I found out I don’t, I’ve been trying to matter, and I will!”

“Luke… Lucas…”

“So help me, I’m going to make a difference in this world, and if you get in the way, you might as well just go away!”

Mother cried out. She was holding onto her belly. Suddenly, she fell forward.

I was too distracted, too slow to catch her.

Go away… Had I meant… ? I wasn’t sure what I’d meant. Where would she go? She had Father and all nine of us to take care of, and soon the new baby to—

She was screaming now, rolling on the path and onto the grass, no longer saying my name.

My heart pounding, I reached for her hand, wondering if I could pull her up, and, even if I did, how I would get her back home. I began yelling for help. When no one came, I tried to pull her up, but she had fainted and was like dead weight. I found myself yelling a stream of curses. I felt tears sprout in my eyes, but I had no time to think about that. I sat down beside her on the grass. Looking up into the blue sky, I attempted something I had abandoned years ago: I said a prayer that was not a pretense. “God, please! Bring some help, get her home, I didn’t mean what I said! I need her!”

Not daring to leave her but afraid if I didn’t she would die right there, I yelled again.

No one else was in sight.

I prayed again, angrily: “I said I didn’t mean it! Please don’t let her die. If she has to lose the child, so be it, but let my mother live!”

I found myself standing up and running home. Margaret, Asher, and Father were there, and, after sending a slave out to fetch a doctor, they all came out to help Mother back home. I tagged along, but they paid me little mind. Mother was still unconscious.

My sister, father, and brother carried her into the master bedroom. I tried to follow, but they shooed me out. “Go find a midwife!” Father barked.

When I came back with a midwife, I heard screams from the bedroom. The midwife marched into that room, slamming the door in my face. I thought I glimpsed the doctor leaning over the bed.

I think only a few minutes passed before I heard other screams, the kind that came from a tiny throat. I remembered my mother saying the baby was likely to be a boy; I remembered her tears after she had cooed over the crib. A few muffled words I couldn’t make out—I thought they were Mother’s, but I couldn’t be certain. Then, except for the infant’s screams, a long silence.

I knew deep inside something was terribly wrong.

The midwife came out carrying the tiny child, bouncing it in attempt to stop its screams. It was still bloody and ugly. I felt something like hate stir within me, especially when I strained my ears to hear Mother’s voice and did not.

The doctor came out next, wiping blood off his own hands. I stared at him, but he didn’t seem to notice me. He was shaking his head. That was all I needed to know my fears had come to pass. I jumped up and tried once more to enter the bedroom.

Father met me at the door. He lifted his head to his brow and pushed his white wig right off his head. It fell on the floor. I looked down at it as if it were a dead animal. “The baby’s name is… Benjamin,” Father murmured.

“Mother’s asleep?” I asked.

He looked at me and sighed. “Er, yes, asleep. We will… not be seeing her again this side of Heaven.”

“What?” I demanded.

“Jesus took her,” he said quietly. “God surely had his reasons.”

“God?” I spat.

He didn’t seem to notice my outcry. With slumped shoulders and haunted eyes, he added, “Must need her in Heaven more than here.”

“I can’t imagine why!” I cried. “We need her. I need her. But when did God ever care about my needs?”

I was almost surprised Father didn’t rebuke me for blasphemy. He shuffled past me and stumbled to a chair. The midwife walked away with the screaming baby, but I didn't care where she was going.

I at last got into the bedroom. Linens covered something on the bed, and blood was all over them. I pushed past Asher, who stood with his lips trembling, and I pulled back the covers to reveal the face.

It didn’t look like Mother. For a wild moment, I thought some other woman had replaced her while I was gone. The staring eyes were glazed over, the face so still I couldn’t imagine it had ever moved to speak or smile.

“S-sorry,” a voice said, as a hand entered my field of vision and closed the light-blue, empty eyes. Margaret’s voice, I faintly registered.

I dropped to my knees and flung myself onto my mother’s motionless frame. “Why?”

Why does everything have to be my fault?

My hands closed into fists. So this was the way God chose to answer my prayer--just when I intended to mend my ways, too. I thought of Esau begging his father, “Hast thou but one blessing, my father? bless me, even me also.” The Bible says God loved Jacob and hated Esau before they were even born, before either had done any good or bad. This thing that’s happened today is further proof that no matter how I act, I’m an Esau to Him.

I felt my heart ice over, colder than ever before. I thought of Judas betraying Christ, wanted to do something similar if I could… but Judas regretted his action so thoroughly he hanged himself. Would I—should I—do the same?

I clenched my teeth. It wasn’t fair. I hadn’t wanted Mother to leave like this! I hadn’t really meant for her to leave at all. “Mother!” I cried, pounding the bed. “Come back!”

“Come on, Luke.” Margaret tried to soothe me as she pried me up off the bed. Her sugary voice was a contrast to my raw despair. I imagined her saying something like, “Women die in childbed every day. Don’t carry on, Luke.”

But this wasn’t “a woman in childbed.” This was the one and only Katheryn Fleeland, the only person who could possibly love me. And God had rewarded my first prayer in years with a resounding “No.”

I am not to be loved. Ever.

I shall respond to that No with a No of my own. No more prayers. No trying to be good for a mother who will soon be covered in dust in a grave. She was needed here, not in the churchyard. How we will all do without her, I cannot say. Families always continue with missing parents. It happens all the time. All make do.

As the old children’s rhyme about the Plague says:

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!

“I didn’t mean it,” I whispered to the body on the bed as my eldest brother and eldest sister dragged me out of the room. “Even though you betrayed me, too.”