My heart and my flesh

by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

In Mome there was nothing commonplace and dreary. There time never waited upon a fly-blown afternoon. Quick sayings flashed on the lips of men there, true finalities or bright quips—jests with the sudden tilt of quicksilver.

The people came to the church on Sundays wearing rustling clothes, some of them riding in carriages that were harnessed to plow horses or to driving nags or gay well-bred roadsters. In the church the ladies taught lessons of the regeneration of the elect and the death in Adam, all men born in a state of sin, of Eve who had eaten the fruit and had given of it to Adam, that what God did foreknow that he did ordain. The words would be confused with drowsiness and weariness, and the foreknowledge of God would settle to the odors of the yarn carpet and the dry melancholy of the village Sabbath, sin being any want of conformity to or transgression of the law of God. A savory wooden tray would be passed about for the collection, a tray smelling of rich cedar wood and varnish. The savor of the tray being passed and done, the lady would draw the mind back again to the hard matter of Eden and sin, to the fearful definition which was heavy with meaningless wordings. Was it for this, these laborings with odorless words and long unregenerated sayings, that she, Luce Jarvis, that she, Theodosia Bell, had put on her new white dress and her silk sash? It was an impenetrable matter. The foreknowledge arose from the carpet in an aromatic stench, but the desire to cough would not follow. There was no relief. Want-of-conformity-to took Transgression-of into a great stale book and closed flat the covers, and in Adam all men were born in a state of sin. Eve was a woman and a terrible instigator of Want-of-conformity-to. The lady teacher was severe upon Eve. But Adam, said the lady, was equal with her in guilt.

Each Sunday came the gayety of putting on the favored dress, the best muslin. There would be the tying of the sash, an anxious ceremony, a flutter of petticoats brushing at the knees, the happiness of the Sunday hat. There would be the sprig of honeysuckle to wear at the breast, or a rosebud brought in from the garden for Theodosia, brought by her grandfather and presented, “A morning gift to a little lady, a posy to set off her pretties.” Then, in the church, the clatter of greetings and pleasure in one’s coming. “Here’s a seat. Sit here. Glad you came.... How sweet she looks.... How sweet we all look, all the little folks. This bright Sabbath morning....”

Then the business of getting settled, the text asked all around. The hour grew long and time was suppressed. Time lost all elasticity and became a fixed substance. The seat turned hard like the impenetrable words; the seat pressed with infinite woodenness at her flattened thighs and her pointed spine. Adam was equal. Moses had been given the law. Holy Men taught by the Holy Ghost had written the book. They were all undiscernible with age, older than the earth, Adam, Eve the woman. Would she be Mrs. Eve? Or Miss Eve? Who ever heard of a woman named Eve? She was rejected entirely. The whole hour was sunk, Adam, Moses, Eve, God, Want-of-conformity, Holy Men, sunk into unyielding time. Men far across the church were shaking hands, curious persons, playing at living, but in earnest about it. The foreknowledge continued to arise with Adam, who was in all equal, and through him we are all born in sin. Once into the hour flashed a meaning, a clear thought, a sum toward which all was momentarily moved, the relation never clear but the summary comprehended: To do good, to act right.

All the little girls were dressed in muslins and some of them were perfumed. The lady teacher wore tight kid gloves and smelled of some sweet stuff, her shining shoe just peeping from the edge of her dress. One little girl would tell of a sin she knew of. Somebody she would not name had said a book was hers when it was really her sister’s.

“That was very wrong,” the lady said. “That was a lie, and God looks into our hearts and knows when we lie. You can deceive another person but you cannot deceive God, for God knows all things.”

“And I knew a boy,” another child said, “and he found a ball and kept it for his own because he found it.”

“That was wrong too,” the lady said, a hard voice, “for he might have found the owner of the ball if he had tried. You cannot escape the eye of God. He sees all we do and looks into every heart. We can never deceive God, for He knows our inmost thoughts.”

Moll Peters was a friendly person, always kind to a child. She worked in a house where boarders were kept and where there were two other servants, a dark thin girl and a man named Berry. Other negroes would come to the kitchen, two or three men often, for Moll would slip them a bite of something to eat, a fresh hot pie or a cookie or a piece of bread dripping with rich hot gravy. They would laugh loud over their stories and carry forward their jokes from day to day. Or having been reticent because of the presence of a child, speaking in half-syllables and signs, they would suddenly flash quick fearful stories they knew.