Stories from the Heart

Whoever Receives This Child
Pamela J. Tinnin

Did you read in the papers bout that woman in Africa who was going to be stoned because she had a child outta wedlock? Seems this woman’s husband had left her, thrown her outta the house. Well, she musta got lonely, cause she took up with some no-count who told her he’d marry her—some women seem to have a way of findin’ the worst kinda men. I imagine he had his way with her and she was left with nothing but a baby and hopes for a second start that came to nothing. Somebody, some nosy neighbor more ’n likely, turned her into the priests, and next thing she knows, she’s locked up in prison—was there for a while, too, cause the baby that caused all the trouble’s near two years old, leastways that’s how the tv tells it.

Course, the Bible tells of women who got caught foolin’ around and were stoned. One Sunday Preacher Allen told how they would bury the woman up to her neck, just so’s her head was stickin’ outta the ground. Then they’d pick up stones—not little rocks, big stones, boulders more like, and start throwin’. You know, how could they do that, her head there in the sand, starin’ up with her eyes all sad and scared? How could they look at her, at the blood and all, and just keep on?

My husband Murray says I think too much, but last week the pastor read in Mark how Jesus said that if a man puts away a woman and divorces her, then remarries, well, he’s guilty of adultery, just like a woman would be—course you don’t never read about a man gettin’ buried in sand up to his neck and the life knocked out of him cause he got caught messin’ around on his wife, do you?

And over there in Africa, the man she said was her father’s baby? Turned out to be married himself. Nothing happened to him, specially after three friends said he never touched her. Guess that’s been the way of the world for a long time.

But Jesus is gettin’ at something in that scripture. He’s sayin’ that if there’s a sin, both folks are guilty. Then I remember that story, the one of how some men brought this woman to Jesus and demanded that he go along with stoning her. Remember that? First off, Jesus drew in the sand, then he reached over and picked up a rock, and he held out that rock and said, “He who is without sin, cast the first stone.”

When I read that story, I half expected one of the crowd to take the stone and hit her, what with folks havin’ a way of bein’ blind to their own faults. But they all snuck away, ashamed of themselves. Jesus is sayin’ is that we all sin in relationships, men and women—it’s just human nature, and one sin is the same as any other. Thing is, we got to learn to forgive, we got to learn to make things right.

Course, we don’t stone folks any more, cause Jesus spoke up and changed the law, right? But thinkin’ on the scripture this week, I got to rememberin’ somethin’ that happened a long time ago, back durin’ the Vietnam War, when a lot a the boys round here went off to the Army. Murray had himself a punctured eardrum, so he was safe from the draft, but five or six outta our class got a letter not a week after graduation.

Murray and me had got married in a double weddin’ with his cousin Delmer and his girl, little Racine Hopkins. Delmer shipped out three days later. He was the best shot in Kent County, so the army had got themselves a ace sniper.

Racine was awful young, only 16, so she lived with her folks while Delmer went off to fight in the jungles. She helped out in their feedstore and put her Army checks in the bank cause she and Delmer was savin’ up to buy a house. About a month before Delmer was due home, him gone more ’n twice the 11 months he’d told her at first, I stopped by the feedstore for some cracked corn. Racine hadn’t been in church the last few Sundays and wasn’t in the feedstore either. I asked her momma if she was to home. Mrs. Hopkins said yes, she was, but that she was too sick for company.

I started to walk on home, then thought, well, I’ll just stop by and say hey. The Hopkins lived in a little wood house a block over with climbin’ roses at the gate and honeysuckles growin’ all along the fence that smelled so sweet in the evening. I knocked and knocked—finally the door opened a crack. Raceen’s voice came then, soft and whispery. “Just go on, Tawana,” she said and I could tell she was crying. Then I saw her belly—bout five months along looked like to me, and I knew then why she hadn’t been comin’ to church or workin’ at the store.

I walked home cryin’ myself, not knowin’ what to think, nor what to tell Murray, he and Delmer bein’ close as brothers. By Sunday the whole town had got wind of the situation and the whisperin’ that mornin’ in church sounded like a bunch a old hens in a chicken coop.

In the weeks after that, I shoulda gone back, shoulda wrote her a note or somethin, but I didn’t. Racine’s folks stopped comin’ to church; when you saw ’em at the feedstore, they didn’t have much to say, and to be honest, no one said much back. I heard tell that Preacher Allen went to the house and told Racine that she needed to come to the church and stand before the congregation and confess her sin. “Then you could get right with the Lord,” he told her. We all heard how Racine’s daddy invited Preacher Allen to leave and used his boot to help him along.

Then the day come that Delmer was to come in on the bus from Lexington. He was gonna go right to his folks, thinkin’ that Racine would be there waitin’ for him, along with the rest of the family, includin’ Murray and me. We crowded into his folks’ living room, hardly bigger than the porch it was, one of the houses built by the company back in the Twenties, but Racine—well, she was nowhere to be seen.

The car drove up outside, Delmer and his daddy. They came up the walk real slow and I could see that Delmer had a cane and was favorin’ his right leg. He was dark as an Indian and terrible thin. Worst of all was his face—looked like it was carved from stone, his eyes angry and sad all at once, with the mark of tears. He tried to act like there was nothin’ wrong, but we knew his daddy had told him the news. Murray hugged him long and hard, but Delmer stood there like he was no more alive than the statue of the rebel soldier that stands in front a the courthouse, blank eyes starin’ off into the distance.

We tried to make a party, but it was no use. Suddenly Delmer stood up, told us he appreciated all the trouble, but he couldn’t stay…he just couldn’t, and he went out the door and got in his daddy’s pickup, throwin’ gravel as he drove away. We heard later that he bought a quarter of white shine whiskey from old man Toller and drove up highway 19 into the mountains where he’d gone huntin’ when he was a kid. Stayed there all night.

We heard later it was early the next mornin’ when Delmer knocked on Racine’s door. “I was still in my robe,” she said, “my hair all in knots, and there he was, standin’ at the door, still the best lookin’ man I ever seen. I could smell the whiskey on him, and hoped he wasn’t crazy drunk, but he just stood there, lookin‘ at me, and me lookin’ at him. Then he walked over to me and knelt down, right in front a me. He touched my face, and my arm, and placed his hand real gentle like on my belly. Then he asked me, “Do you love me, Racine?”

Then I told it all, Tawana. “I done okay for a while, Delmer. Then you sent that letter sayin’ how you were gonna stay over there another year. I got to feelin’ like you didn’t wanta come home, like you didn’t wanna be with me. I felt so alone and lost, like nobody wanted me,” I told him, “but Delmer, I never quit lovin’ you…never.”

Then Delmer said the strangest thing. “The Lord knows I have seen enough death to last me the rest of my days.” Then he was quiet for a long time, Racine said. “He took a long breath and told me, We are gonna have ourselves a baby,” and he put his arms around me and put his face in my lap, like he’d come home at last,” and Racine smiled then, a smile that had enough light and love to fill that room.

That next Sunday they come into church, Racine with tears on her cheeks, havin’ a hard time lookin’ at folks, but Delmer straight and tall, aholdin’ her up, his eyes darin’ anyone to shame her. Funny thing—when the baby come, a lot of folks told Delmer the boy looked just like him.

Life is so hard sometimes—people get lonely and afraid…they forget who they are and do somethin’ stupid. But the Muslims ain’t the only ones that turn against you with a hard heart, and they ain’t the only ones that pick and choose the scripture to live by. It beats all how human beings can be mean as snakes, any one of us. What we all gotta remember is what Jesus kept tryin’ to tell us over and over…that more than laws and rules and blame, we got to learn to forgive, to make things right, We got to learn to be like a little child who don’t hold on to his anger.. It’s either that, or livin’ mean, waitin’ for an excuse to throw stones. And who of us hasn’t sinned? Who?