Stones for Bread (42 page)

I love when we’re together, but sometimes I want her all for myself.
This is my second sleepover, and even though she’s old and gets tired and needs to nap every day, we still have fun. She lets me play with her delicate tea set and the china dolls she collects, and I have tea parties with real tea and cakes. We watch cartoons of Tom and Jerry or Sylvester and Tweety, Grandmother laughing even harder than I do. She teaches me card games two people can play without anyone else. And she takes me to the German market, where other old ladies speak to me in
Deutsch
and Oma tells them my mother hasn’t taught me any of her mother language, and they cluck their tongues and talk even faster. It hurts her that my mother hasn’t raised me bilingual. She replies to the women, and even though I don’t know the language, I realize she’s making apologies for her daughter. Or perhaps blaming my father; I hear her say
Katholik
.

Her kitchen is brighter than ours, cabinets made of thin wood with no doors and painted yellow, walls covered in paper printed with cherries who have eyes and noses and smiles.
Are we baking?
I ask when she ties a half apron around my waist and sits me on a chair she’s dragged close to the counter.
Nein
, she says.
It is time to learn
.

About talking German?

She slides a stoneware crock in front of me.
Über Sauerteig
.

About sourdough.

Opening the crock, she holds it beneath my nose. It smells strong and bitter, with a hint of something I recognize from my mother’s party punch. I sniffle and turn my head, but she follows.
Breathe deep. You must know how it is
.

I don’t like it
.

It makes the bread you eat
.

That?

It is Anfrishsauer. It is very old
.

Is that why it smells?

It smells because it is good
.

I pinch my nostrils and peer into the jar. Inside, a sticky beige foam clings to the walls.
It doesn’t look good
.

It is very good. A long time ago my own Oma took dough and put it in this pot with flour and water to make Anfrishsauer. The dough is
Anstellgut
; it is saved from the baking early in the day. Oma mixes the Anfrishsauer and keeps it warm and gives it more flour to eat so it becomes
Grundsauer
. More flour, more water, more warmth and time, and it changes again. Now it is
Vollsauer
and can be made into brot. A little bit of Vollsauer becomes the Anstellgut, fed to the pot with water and flour to make more Anfrishsauer. Again and again, every day so the children have brot. Always something is in this pot, waiting to eat
.

I poke my finger into the crock; the gooey mass surrounds my nail and tries to suck in the rest of my pointer. I yank my hand away.
I didn’t know bread was so hungry all the time
.

We are all hungry all the time. Every living thing
. Oma caps the pottery jar and holds it close.
You will try to know this always, Liesl. Please try
.

I nod, the strange and lovely words already fading from my mind.
I will try
.

Sunday. The day of rest. I stay in bed and ignore the cell phone rattling on my nightstand, Jude’s number flashing on the screen. I had told him I’d drive him to church, but I have no desire to go now. I should answer and let him know; instead, I wrap the flattened pillow around my ears and block out the buzz and shimmy. He’ll figure it out.

Eventually my phone goes still.

Tee’s right. I don’t care about people.

With the body idle, the brain moves faster. I try to shut it down, first with vain attempts to empty it of all thought, and then by actively directing the images in my mind. This also fails, each seemingly innocuous mental snapshot conjuring another that only aggravates my gloom. Fat, fuzzy cartoon sheep jumping fences become memories of the fiber tour, my first outing with Seamus and Cecelia. Images of
hands kneading dough start me thinking of Xavier, or Jude, or my mother. I try tapping my knees together and counting each beat, but the motion focuses me on my joggling thighs and I begin craving a hairbrush, despite not having hit myself in years. I’m a dry alcoholic of self-harm.

Every sensation begins irritating me—the sheets against my toes, my hair on my neck, the elastic waistband of my flannel pants. I grunt, throw off the covers, and take a shower, scrubbing all over with a bath puff until my skin settles. I dry and use a little olive oil to soothe the inflammation; my only lotion is scented and will burn the places I’ve washed raw.

I rake my hair into an elastic without brushing the snarls from it, fashion myself a skirt from my bath towel, and search my drawers for my softest T-shirt. My Bible stares at me from atop the dresser. I’ve been better about reading it, just a few verses here and there, but I felt the inklings of accomplishment the past week or two.

I hurl the book across the bedroom. It thumps off the wall, falling like a bird that has bashed into a clean, closed window, stunned. Or perhaps dead. I don’t know. I don’t care.

I’m angry.

Finally, all the flotsam I’ve spent twenty years siphoning down, down, down foams to the surface. It’s triggered by loss, all of it. Xavier, gone. Seamus, left. My father, around in body only, and then escaping into the church. My grandmother, taken too soon.

My mother.

It’s not her fault. Not her fault. Not her fault
.

“Yes, it is,” I say aloud.

And I hate her for it.

Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?

My mother gave me stones instead of bread.

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him
.

“I don’t want you,” I whisper, crying. “I want her.”

She loved me so much, my father told me, she chose adoption so there was no chance I would inherit her illness. But she didn’t love me enough to stay. To her, ending her pain through death was better than all those milestones I had and will have without her—my first period, my first kiss, my wedding, grandchildren, Wild Rise, birthdays. And bread.

It isn’t like I can believe she had one microscopic moment where she thought,
I wish it was over
, and in that moment pressed a gun against her temple and fired. No. She had to choose to sit in that car until the carbon monoxide overtook her. How long was that? An hour? Two? Was there no part of her, in all those minutes, that said,
Liesl. You have Liesl
, and if there was, why didn’t it compel her to turn off the engine?

I know all the psychological explanations, that she was unable to reason such things in the throes of her depression. But what does reason mean to a twelve-year-old with a broken heart? Which is why I hide in the bread and have refused, until now, to open myself up and be vulnerable with another person. Which is why I am afraid to marry Seamus because, what if he, too, decides I’m not enough? What if, in all my brokenness, I can’t be enough?

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness
.

Then why can’t I feel it?

“Oh, Jesus. I want to believe. Help my unbelief.”

There is no sudden crash of peace over me, no tongues of fire, no physical sensation of the Spirit coming over me. Not even a still, small voice. I sit on the bed, rocking gently back and forth, humming “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen,” and, cautiously, I allow my mother’s face to come into my mind.
I forgive you
, I think, and I exhale until my
lungs are so empty they hurt. Then I stand and finish dressing. I have dough to prepare for tomorrow and a plane ticket to buy.

My God has provided a new home for me.

I will go to Seamus.

The twelve stay.

They eat a final meal with Jesus, and with his hands he tears the unleavened bread and holds it up to them.
This is my body
, he says.
Remember me
. And he tells Simon that the adversary has asked to sift them all like wheat, but their faith will be restored. The next day the Christ is lifted up at Golgotha, nailed to a tree, dead before sunset. And when his Spirit leaves him, the temple curtain rends, a veil between God and man. Left exposed in the holiest place is the ark of the covenant, and in that, the manna given to the Hebrews in the desert, life-giving for those who ate of it, but only for a short while here on this earth. And the people remember his words on the shore of Capernaum:
Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh
.

His body, crucified, given for them so they may taste eternity.

Three days later, resurrected, so those who believe can come to his banquet table and be filled.

His followers obey. They devote themselves to the breaking of the bread. They remember him each time they eat of it, and offer thanks. They are sustained in the world and rescued from the world because God became man, and man became bread.

There are phone calls to make.

Not Seamus. I will surprise him, certain he will still have me. But
telling him gives me too much accountability. I don’t want his anticipation driving me, his knowledge of my arrival ensuring I’ll still go. I do have to tell my father, praying briefly before I dial he’ll pick up, and he does.

“I have news,” I say, and I explain the situation.

“I thought there might be something between you two,” Alistair says, “that day they taped the show. But, Liesl, are you certain? You’re giving up . . . well, everything.”

I hesitate. Leaving Wild Rise doesn’t seem so frightening anymore. Seamus was right—I can bake anywhere. I have the prize money, if I want to use it to begin another business. I no longer feel as if the opportunity to travel to Europe will never come again. If the Lord wants me to have the trip, I will.

Leaving my father, it’s more difficult, but he isn’t alone; he has community too, those who have worshipped alongside him these two decades, who accept his quirks and who were so faithful to love him out of the shadows of his grief. Those in his church, they were Christ to him. He will be fine.

No, what scares me now is this faith to which I’ve been called. It’s larger than me, outside of me, against my control. My first real act of submission to him. To God. “I’m not sure,” I say. “But it’s obedience.”

“That I understand,” Alistair replies, and in his voice I hear the joy of a father who is watching the seeds of the sower sprouting in the good soil.

After we say good-bye, I take a deep breath and call Mary Preston. She’s not home. I leave a message with my cell phone number and let her know, honestly, I hope to hear from her soon.