Four elderly southern women share a house, a history, and heartbreaking secrets.
Baby girl, I hope you’re listening real good to what I’m gonna tell you about that sure-enough miracle we got us. Had to be a miracle, because in all my born days, I didn’t never think it could turn out like this. Didn’t never think you’d be sitting right here on this very porch with me, hearing me talk about all us folks you don’t know nothing much about yet.. . . Back then, I didn’t really know that all the folks who came ahead of us are like the brown roots of a big old vine growing close to the porch, and even though those roots are way down deep in the ground where we can’t see them, they’re still there.
And we grow from them, our whole lives, and then, if we’re lucky, others grow from us. Well, I expect that the ones who came before us—black and white—had things they had to keep still about, too, just like me and Miss Cora. Things we had to do, whether we liked it or not. And then never speak of them again.
Augusta Trobaugh is the acclaimed author of fine novels including PraiseJerusalem, Sophie and the Rising Sun, and coming soon, Music From Beyond the Moon.
Elements of southern gothic abound in Trobaugh's richly textured testament to the strength of the fundamental ties that bind. At the core of a properly eccentric cast of characters, four elderly women share a house, a heritage, and a host of long-buried secrets. The faded rooms of their once grand home fairly reverberate with the unspoken, yet omnipresent, horrors of their youth. When Pet, the faithful black servant/quasi-family member, begins receiving visitations from her long-deceased grandmother, she reluctantly realizes that it is time to unleash the demons of the past in order to conquer them. As Pet reaches back in time, resurrecting long-buried memories, a grim tale of rape, murder, and racism unfolds. Though the truth initially threatens to destroy the tenuous harmony the women have clung to for decades, it eventually liberates and redeems them. A contemporary southern masterpiece penned by a writer of extraordinary talent and insight. -- Margaret Flanagan, Booklist
In Resting in the Bosom of the Lamb, Augusta Trobaugh has more than upheld the Southern tradition of fine story-telling. Her black narrator, Pet, weaves a delicate and mysterious spell around the past and present lives of the characters who have weathered like the old house to the color of fine wood. --Bettie Sellers, poet laureate of Georgia; retired professor of English at Young Harris College
A new voice from and for the South, as complex and resonant as the region itself. This is a novel to remember. --Anne Rivers Siddons, best-selling author
Augusta Trobaugh once again writes a remarkable, triumphant story of people faced with themselves. This beautifully, sensitively realized story is a truly memorable reading experience. --Terry Kay, author ofTo Dance with the White Dog
I was much impressed with Augusta Trobaugh's sense of place and knowledge of people in Praise Jerusalem, and I am pleased to see that these qualities are also fundamental to Resting in the Bosom of the Lamb. Ms. Trobaugh knows her scene and characters inside and out, and she tells her story in a language true to its time and grounded in the reality of the situation. Her work is now poised to take its place with that of Terry Kay and other well-established contributors to Southern fiction. --Rayburn S. Moore, Professor Emeritus of English, University of Georgia
Resting in the Bosom of the Lamb is a delightful read! Authentic southern characters, tension that builds until your mouth goes dry. Don't miss this one! --Virginia Lanier, author of Blind Bloodhound Justice
What especially appealed to me was the rolling narrative that sweeps the reader along in the story. I also appreciated the humor that accompanied a sometimes heart-breaking story: the woman who squirted her water gun at the devil, the adventure of the two old women searching for their families, and the tackiness of the new funeral parlor party lightened the novel. --Fran Teague, professor of English, University of Georgia
You'll want to stay awhile in Resting in the Bosom of the Lamb. Kick back on the front porch, feel the breeze, smell the cornbread baking in the oven. Just don't get too relaxed, because Augusta Trobaugh is about to deliver another blow to your spiritual complacency. -- Janice Daugharty, author ofEarl in the Yellow Shirt
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They Share The Ghosts Of A Past That Must Not Be Forgotten
Elements of southern gothic abound in Trobaugh's richly textured testament to the strength of the fundamental ties that bind. At the core of a properly eccentric cast of characters, four elderly women share a house, a heritage, and a host of long-buried secrets. The faded rooms of their once grand home fairly reverberate with the unspoken, yet omnipresent, horrors of their youth. When Pet, the faithful black servant/quasi-family member, begins receiving visitations from her long-deceased grandmother, she reluctantly realizes that it is time to unleash the demons of the past in order to conquer them. As Pet reaches back in time, resurrecting long-buried memories, a grim tale of rape, murder, and racism unfolds. Though the truth initially threatens to destroy the tenuous harmony the women have clung to for decades, it eventually liberates and redeems them. A contemporary southern masterpiece penned by a writer of extraordinary talent and insight. - BOOKLIST
We see God’s grace working through heinous sin to provide hope and healing – MOODY
You will want to read this delightful book....Don’t miss this one! -- Valdosta Daily Times
[A] gripping tale. -
Southern Living Magazine
Prologue
Baby girl, I hope you’re listening real good to what I’m gonna tell you about that sure-enough miracle we got us. Had to be a miracle, because in all my born days, I didn’t never think it could turn out like this. Didn’t never think you’d be sitting right here on this very porch with me, hearing me talk about all us folks you don’t know nothing much about yet.
Oh, I sure do wish my sweet mama could’ve seen it! But she’d been gone to Glory a long, long time when it all happened. I could still feel her with me though, kind of like a sweet little breath of air hovering close. And not just her, mind you. No, indeed! But her very own mama too and all those good, strong women we come from—all the way back to Mama Sunrise herself. And you’re truly gonna like hearing all about her, because you’ve got a lot of her in you. You just don’t know it yet.
Back then, I didn’t really know that all the folks who came ahead of us are like the brown roots of a big old vine growing close to the porch, and even though those roots are way down deep in the ground where we can’t see them, they’re still there.
Always.
And we grow from them, our whole lives, and then, if we’re lucky, others grow from us. Well, I expect that the ones who came before us—black and white—had things they had to keep still about, too, just like me and Miss Cora. Things we had to do, whether we liked it or not. And then never speak of them again.
So before we got our miracle, I was nothing but a barren old branch, all wore out from not saying things that should have been said right out loud and face-to-face and from still trying to send my own pretty green shoots way up high, to twine all around the gingerbread trim on Miss Cora’s big front porch. Twine around and hold on. And grow.
But somehow or other, time got away from me, and I turned into this ugly old woman you see sitting here before you. Hair like cotton left too long in the field, and knees gone all thick and bony, and all these deep lines plowed into my face. Goodness! Me wearing ugly old thick stockings, just to keep me warm—even in the summertime. And my hands—why, you just look at them! Skin like dead leaves and all these big veins roping along so close to the top, like maybe my heart has to pump harder and harder, just to keep me going.
Me nothing but an old black woman sitting in a rocking chair at the very back of Miss Cora’s porch. But you’re young and you grew up in a different time, so maybe you don’t know how black folks always had to sit way in the back. Me and my mama and the ones who came before us, who were really a part of Miss Cora’s family for all those years.
But not a part.
Us black and them white and us all tangled up in every sort of way and twined around each other. But still separate. Because that’s the way it had always been.
Sitting there together and keeping secrets that pretty much sopped up our whole lives, before we even realized it. It sure cost us something, let me tell you! And—Lord, have mercy on us—it was hard!
Felt like trying to hold onto a piece of ice on a hot summer day.
Because I was born in this house and grew up here with my mama—who cooked and cleaned and took care of things for Miss Cora’s family, just like her mama did before her—and when I was a little girl, I used to lurk around, waiting for the iceman to come, those long, hot summer-times. Oh, I’d be so sweaty and sticky, I couldn’t think of a thing in this world except snitching me a little piece of that ice and sneaking out to the back porch where I could suck on it without Mama seeing me. Because Mama said snitching was the same as stealing. But I did it anyway.
But you know, almost every single time I managed to get ahold of a little piece, it went and melted right there in my hand before I even got out on the porch with it, and a cold, wet place on my palm was all I’d have left of it. While I’d stand there wondering about it, even that was gone.
That’s almost exactly what it felt like all those years I kept my mouth shut about our secrets. Because once my hand warmed up, those secrets almost never crossed my mind again in all creation. And, honey, do you know what that would have meant? Those old secrets would’ve turned into things that just never happened at all.
But I’ve always wondered: Where does ice go when it melts anyway? After you’ve wiped your hand on your apron and your palm is all dry and warm?
1
It all started in the saddest old November I ever saw. Don’t know why it was so sad that year, because it wasn’t one bit different from all the other Novembers I’ve lived through, not that I could tell. Just dark coming earlier and earlier every day, so it seemed like daylight hardly got itself going good before the dark came and ate it all up again.
Long, windy nights, and that old crepe myrtle tree scratching against the side of the house right by my window. A most mournful sound—like old finger bones; and even in the daytime it wasn’t much better, because it was always gray and cold, and the windows were all speckled over with rain. There wasn’t a thing to see outside anyhow but dead leaves still clinging on that old sycamore and rattling against the cold, gray sky.
Me thinking the strangest thoughts, like how green and hopeful all those leaves were last summer, laughing and fluttering way up there against the blue heavens.
But the saddest thing about that November was that I kept hearing a voice that whispered to me whenever that cold wind tried to squeeze itself under the eaves of the house or around the cotton batting we’d packed into the cracks along the sides of the windows.
And what it whispered was this: Give . . . me . . . the . . . baby! Nearly scared me half to death!
First off, I thought it was Miss Cora saying something to me. Because she’ll talk and talk to me, when she’s way up front in the parlor and I’m in the back hallway or the kitchen, and she thinks I can hear what she’s saying all that far away.
What’s that you say, Miss Cora?
Pet? she called back. You say something?
Yes’m, I yelled. I said, were you talking to me?
Didn’t say a thing, she hollered back, and then because it’s her way, she came to the kitchen doorway in a minute or so and stood there watching me, all suspicious-like.
You’re probably having another one of your spells, she pronounced in that solemn-sounding way she can do. Just like an old judge, I tell you.
No, ma’am. Just thought you were talking to me, is all.
That’s what I said and got myself busy as could be, trying to get the corn bread to come out of the pan in one piece. But I was worried, sure enough. Why, I’ve read about folks who hear voices that aren’t there, and I know what that means—they’re crazy.
So I knew better than to say a thing to Miss Cora about that strange voice I heard, but I walked around with goosebumps on me almost all the time and some kind of a heavy hand or something pushing down on my shoulder. And I knew I better watch out, or something bad was gonna sneak up on me in the dark.
Maybe whatever it was that whispered: Give . . . me . . . the . . . baby.
Well, Miss Cora had her own way of handling sad feelings whenever they tried to get ahold of her, though I don’t think she heard anybody whispering to her, like I did. So that sad November, she just backed herself right out of the here and now, just as pretty as you please, and spent all her days living in the past, reading her Family Book and talking nearly all the time about her folks and telling me their stories. Again.
Whenever she got started on that old book, I knew good and well what was gonna happen. She’d get a bee in her bonnet about that old grave she’d been trying to find for years and years, down to Brushy Creek Baptist Church Cemetery. She’d remember it for sure, and then harp on it every single day, until maybe she forgot it again for a little while, and I could have me some peace, until she remembered it again.
So while the wind blew and the rain spattered against the windowpanes, she told me stories out of the old book, and sometimes she even untied the cords that held on that fine leather cover and put in new pages she said we were gonna need when the family started growing again.
Oh, the Family Book’s a great big old thing, let me tell you! Old as the hills and almost too heavy for anybody to tote. But the covers are still soft and shiny, from so many folks rubbing their hands over them, I expect. Heaven only knows how many generations of folks have stroked it and written their stories in it and read them aloud to anybody who’d listen.
Because, baby girl, these folks can sure talk and talk and talk some more! Talk all the time, seems to me. And if they sometimes run out of steam or if other folks get all filled up with the stories and just can’t listen to one more word, then they take to writing it all down in the Family Book, so they can keep right on talking, you see—just not out loud. And then when they get their steam built back up again, they’ll corner anybody they can find and read them the stories.
Why, I guess that book has all the stories of everybody who’s ever been in the family. And that’s why Miss Cora loves it so much. And that sad November, she hung onto it even harder than usual.
It’s all here, Pet, she said, running her hands back and forth across the pages. In my great-grandmama’s hand and my grandmama’s and my mama’s and now in mine. And someday, others will take care of it and read the stories and add more to it, and no one will ever forget us. I’ve even put a little mention about you in here!
Why, she beamed at me just like she’d handed me the gift of everlasting life!
And we’ll pass the Family Book on to the ones who come after us, so they’ll know who we were, and they can put their own stories in here for the ones who come after them.
Not gonna be a living soul coming after us. Not gonna be any new stories, either. That’s what I thought; but, of course, I didn’t say a thing.
Because Miss Cora thinks we’re maybe like the trees—that we can lose all our leaves in the fall and then grow new ones the next spring. And if that’s what she wants to think, I’m sure not gonna be the one to spoil it for her. No harm I can see in her dreaming about the family going on and folks coming after us to read our stories and tell their own.
But the truth was, there wasn’t nobody but old folks left in this big house back then. Me and Miss Cora, of course—and Wynona and Lauralee too. They’re the daughters of Miss Cora’s sister, Miss Emma, and they’ve lived with us since . . . well for a long time.
And there wasn’t nary a soul going to be coming after us. Or so I thought.
But I can sure remember way back to a time when we were just brimming over the rim with hope, even going back to when Wynona and Lauralee were little girls and started spending their summers with us, right here in this very house. They lived the rest of the time with their mama and papa in a little sharecropper’s shack on Mr. Bondurant’s land. And even further back than that—to the very day Wynona was born. Because my mama told me all about it, so it was just like I was there myself.
Mama was the one who brought Wynona into this world, because neither Miss Anne–Miss Cora and Miss Emma’s mama–nor any of the aunts would’ve gone out to the Bondurant place themselves. They were still mad as fire about Miss Emma up and running off with Mr. Sam, and her just a girl of sixteen years! They said she’d married so far beneath her, and that a gentleman–which, of course, they said he wasn’t–wouldn’t have encouraged a child like Emma to run off with him like that in the first place, and he sure wouldn’t have gotten her with child until she’d had a chance to settle in as a married lady. A respectable length of time, you see. But Wynona was born exactly nine months after they ran off to Burke County and got married.
My mama said the funniest thing she ever did see in her whole life was Miss Anne trying to count backwards without using her fingers! Of course, it certainly did add up to nine months, just barely, but Miss Anne and the aunts always snorted anyway, whenever anyone mentioned Mr. Sam to them.
So when it came Miss Emma’s time for having Wynona, they sent my mama in a wagon out to that little slat house on Mr. Bondurant’s place to take care of her.
And the whole time Miss Emma was having that baby, Mr. Sam sat in the other room and said not a word. Once in a while, Mama could hear him putting more wood in the stove, but aside from that, she never heard a sound out of him. One time, she asked him to go get more water and set it to boil, and she said he seemed to be so happy for someone to tell him what to do to help. Way back in his family there was a Bixley, you see, and for the most part, Bixleys don’t like feeling helpless or waiting for someone else to do what needs to be done.
Mama always said he put more store in Miss Emma than anybody gave him credit for. Oh, he may have been a hard man and poor, and he didn’t know how to do things folks would have called charming, but he sure loved Miss Emma in his own way. Maybe he never could quite believe that a real lady like her would care about somebody like him, and maybe, too, he was thinking about how he was the one who caused Miss Emma to hurt so bad like that. Because some men feel that way when they find out what all a woman has to go through to bring a child into this world.
Mama said it took a good, long time for Wynona to come, but finally she did, and she was just as strong and stout as a little oak tree. Crying and red-faced and hungry. But Miss Emma was all used up by the birthing, and when my mama finally got her to hold Wynona in her arms, Miss Emma let out a terrible sigh like maybe feeding and taking care of that baby was just one more chore she had to manage.
Like to have broke Mama’s heart, that sigh did, so when she drove the wagon back home, all she could do was cry for the little girl baby who had come into the hard, hard world that little shanty held onto. But even with crying like that for Wynona, Mama said she was praising Jesus all the way home, that her own baby—me—was going to be born into a good, strong house full of good, strong folks.
She just didn’t expect me to come that very same day. But come, I did.
It was six long years later, after Wynona and I were both born, that Miss Emma had another little girl, Lauralee. But after me, my mama never had another child.
You’re the last little fruit off this tired old tree, she used to say to me. And I always did like to think of that–being my mama’s fruit.
So when Lauralee was born, I was old enough that Mama took me with her out to Miss Emma’s, but she wouldn’t let me or Wynona go in the room where Miss Emma was. We just sat on the floor outside the closed door.
After a long time, we heard that little baby cry, and we were so surprised! Wynona and I hugged each other and smiled and hugged some more, and when Mama came out carrying Lauralee, she took the baby over to Mr. Sam and showed her to him, then came back and stooped down and put Lauralee right into Wynona’s arms.
Well, Wynona took that little baby just as easy as you please, like she’d been holding babies all her life, and from that very day, she loved Lauralee more than anything else in this whole world.
She’d always been a good one for taking care of creatures, Wynona had–baby squirrels and baby coons and, one time, even a little runt pig. But that was Mr. Bondurant’s pig, and after Wynona fed it with a bottle and raised it by hand, he butchered it right along with the rest of the pigs and never even had the kindness to offer her a bit of sausage or anything, though he would have lost that pig for sure, if she hadn’t fed it and taken care of it and kept it warm. But that’s the kind of thing can happen when a man works other folks’ land and raises other folks’ pigs. Because Mr. Sam was just a tenant farmer, the very thing Miss Anne held against him so hard.
But anyway, Wynona took to that little baby right away, just the way she’d taken to that poor little pig. So I guess her babying all those animals made her feel comfortable with any kind of baby.
Of course, I wished Mama had let me hold the baby, but she sure knew what she was doing, giving it right to Wynona like that. And Wynona did let me hold it for a few minutes while she went and got a pan of warm water for bathing it.
I’ll never forget what that was like, holding Lauralee. I guess I thought a baby would feel like an old rag doll or something, but she was lots heavier than a doll and warm and moved around and opened her eyes and looked right at me! I sat there looking at that red, round face and those pretty blue eyes like I could never get enough of seeing her, and then she tried to suck on her fist, but she kept waving it around so much, she couldn’t get a hold on it. That was right funny, I thought.
When Wynona came back with the pan of warm water, we took the baby into Wynona’s room and put it on the bed and unwrapped its covers, and I let it hold onto my finger while Wynona bathed it. And sang to it.
Mama said she knew Wynona would always take good care of Lauralee, and Lauralee sure did need taking care of, because even though Miss Emma was a good lady her whole life, she wasn’t one to sing to a baby or even hold it, except for when she had to feed it. And she didn’t seem to be a bit more interested in Lauralee than she had been in Wynona. I don’t know why that was. Maybe things had just been too hard on her. Or maybe her own mama had never done any singing or anything like that to her.
There was lots of work for them to do on Mr. Bondurant’s land in exchange for them living in that shack and getting to plant a vegetable garden, but no matter how hard she worked, Wynona always had time for Lauralee. I remember going out there to get some fresh-churned butter from Miss Emma and seeing Wynona chopping weeds from the garden with Lauralee tied up in a big shawl and slung over her back. And the way Wynona was bending and straightening, bending and straightening, she had rocked Lauralee right to sleep.
Whenever Wynona wasn’t working, she played with Lauralee just like she was a big old doll, dressing and undressing her and bathing her and singing her to sleep at night. Every time I went out there to get more butter, Wynona let me hold Lauralee, and I loved that more than anything else in this whole world. I used to beg Mama to put more butter in my grits, just so we’d use it up faster, and I could walk out to the Bondurant place for more . . . and get to hold Lauralee.
So that’s the way three or four years passed, and Lauralee was the most beautiful little girl anyone had ever seen. Sweet too.
Once a year, Miss Anne and the aunts drove out to see Miss Emma and the girls on a Sunday afternoon, but they wouldn’t even get out of the car, and when they came back, all they could do was talk about how hard everything was on Miss Emma and those little girls. And how it was all Mr. Sam’s fault.
Maybe that’s why Miss Anne got it in her mind that Wynona and Lauralee should come spend their summers with us in town, because she said if we didn’t do something, those girls would grow up to be just as ignorant as dirt. They wouldn’t ever be proper young ladies, not living out there in that shack, and they wouldn’t ever learn to crochet or have good table manners or be able to go into a library and find a book to read.
Oh, they did go to school, I guess. Because no matter how hard Mr. Sam was, he wouldn’t have let them grow up ignorant; but the school was just a little one way out in the country, and Miss Anne said that even if they did learn to read and write, they wouldn’t learn how to be proper young ladies.
I never did know how the idea got put up to Mr. Sam, but it did, and I waited and waited, praying so hard that he’d let Wynona and Lauralee come here and live in this house in the summertimes. I daydreamed all the time about what games we were gonna play and how much fun we were gonna have. I was so dreamy that finally Mama had to say something to me about it.
So I tried my best to stop daydreaming all the time, but I sure enough couldn’t get that smile off my face, no matter how hard I tried.
’Specially when I found out that all Miss Anne’s pestering had worked!
But it was only the beginning of what all we went through together. The kind of things that only get shared when you get to spend your whole lifetime with people you love so much and want to keep safe from anything or anybody that could hurt them.
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