His moment of praise turns, as thunder rumbles in the distance, into a tearful apology.
“Dear father,” he says, reaching his hands back toward the ceiling. “Forgive me. Forgive me for my weakness. Forgive me for trying to walk in your path. Oh, Dear Father, forgive me.”
Emma’s mother leans close to her daughter, thrusting her hands upon her belly and dropping her face between them. She buries her face into Emma’s dress while crying tears of joy.
“My angel,” she says, a muffled voice. “You’ve come back.”
“Yes mother,” whispers Emma, touching her mother’s hair with soft strokes. “I’m here. I’m here mother.”
5.
Not Ready for Our Angel
The aftermath of disaster never feels as bad as perhaps it should, considering the worst is often just beginning. The fear subsides in survival, and it’s the affinity for hope that pushes us that way, toward resolve, and quickly beyond what we don’t want to see or feel from the troubling moment that has just fallen upon us. That’s undoubtedly why Emma hears her mother singing an upbeat hymn when she opens her eyes.
“Joyful, joyful, we adore thee,” she hears her mother singing.
Dishes are clanging in the kitchen. The smell of frying bacon permeates the room. Emma clutches her pillow, twists, and smells it.
She is home, in her room. She rubs her eyes.
“Ahhhhh,” she says, grimacing.
Emma recalls the snakebite, but wonders if she had a dream. She reaches for her neck. She touches a bandage.
“Owwww.”
A simmering summer morning sun is pouring through the window. Emma squints, and looks away. She hears a Mourning dove cooing just outside her window, and locusts whirring in the distance.
Emma sits up, slowly, and looks out her window, toward the Denton farm. She can see the edge of the blacktop and ripples of heat wafting up from it. She wipes thick crust from her eyes, and twists her neck around to shake the stiffness.
Emma gets out of the bed, pulls a robe from her closet, slips it on, leaves the tie dangling open, and walks taking careful steps in her slumbering state to the kitchen.
She sees her mother standing over the stove, watching the bacon frying in a pan that is spewing smell throughout the house.
Her father is at the breakfast table. Her parents look to her simultaneously.
“Why, good morning Glory,” her mother says. “We thought maybe you really did up and die and go to Heaven.”
Emma’s mother laughs.
Emma clutches her neck.
“Nope. Heaven was not ready for our Emma,” her father says. “He had other plans for you.”
“What day is it, Mother?” Emma says.
“Another day behind on your chores,” he father says.
“Thursday dear,” her mother says. “It’s Thursday. You’ve been in the bed since Sunday night.”
“Thursday? Since Sunday night? What happened, Mother?”
“Why Emmaline Margaret Mays. What happened? You don’t you remember?”
“Tell me, Mother. I don’t really. What happened mother?”
“God even blesses the troubled,” he father says. “He is relieving you from the pain by sparing your memory.”
“I don’t want spared,” Emma said. “What happened? Tell me, exactly.”
“Emma, Dear, you know, why … you were bitten by that snake. Your father said it was all a mistake, of course. He was holding the snake and says he did not let go. His entire fault, he said.
“Why God put you in the way of that snake we don’t know. But you are alive today. Praise God, Amen.”
“The serpent was confused, Emma,” her father says. “Confused, that’s all.”
“It’s nothing to worry about,” her mother says. “It’s all over now, Dear.”
Emma takes a seat at the table.
“It’s nothing to worry about, Dear,” her mother says, again. “You father already has his sermon written for Sunday, explaining to everybody how the serpent sometimes gets confused and bites the wrong person.”
“The Lord can giveth,” says her father, “and the Lord can taketh away, whenever he wants to. The serpent struck at you wrongly to test our faith –- to see if we would trust Him. He brought you back to us because we did trust him, and because you are pure in your heart, Emma.”
Emma stares at a row of bright red, round tomatoes the size of softballs lining the windowsill.
“I picked those this morning, honey,” her mother says. “Don't they look good? Just doing your chores for you while you rested. Looked like they needed picking. I know you like to do it.
"Your father said that would be okay. You’ll be back up to picking tomatoes soon.”