Where the Wheat Bent Low I

A tiny WLW Novella in Jane’s Own Hand I. The Woman in the Field I had been alone so long that even my own name sounded strange to me when I said it aloud, and that morning, with the dew still silvering the wheat and the crows making their rude parliament on the split-rail fence, I said it only because the old mare had stepped on my boot and I snapped, “Jane, you fool, mind your feet,” as though there were another soul within ten miles who might have laughed and told me I had always been clumsy before breakfast. There was not, of course. There was only my little farm, my leaning barn, my stubborn fields, my red cow with her mournful eyes, the kitchen stove that smoked when the wind came from the east, and the narrow bed upstairs where I slept straight as a plank, leaving the other side untouched for no good reason except that loneliness, when it takes up residence, develops habits of its own. I was walking the southern field to see how much rain had lodged the wheat, lifting my skirts a little above the damp heads of grain, when I saw a place where the stalks had bent in a strange hollow, not wind-flattened, not deer-bedded, but pressed down in the shape of a body. At first I thought it was a sack. Then the sack breathed. I stopped so hard my basket swung against my knee. There, folded among the wheat as if the earth itself had hidden her, lay a woman, grown and tall though curled small with cold, her dress torn nearly to threads at the hem, her sleeves muddy, her dark hair tangled with straw and burrs, and her face, even bruised and dirt-streaked, so startlingly beautiful that I felt an odd anger rise in me, as if beauty had no right to appear in my field wounded and helpless before I had even finished my chores. “Miss?” I said, though my voice came out no louder than a cracked hinge. She did not stir. I knelt, and the wheat whispered around us. “Miss, can you hear me?” Her lashes trembled. When her eyes opened they were gray, or green, or some color between cloud and leaf, and they looked straight through me with such terror that I put both hands up as though approaching a frightened horse. “It’s all right,” I said. “You’re on my land. I won’t hurt you.” Her lips moved. I leaned closer. “What was that?” She swallowed, winced, and whispered, “Please.” That one word undid me more than any crying would have done. “You’re hurt,” I said. “Can you sit?” She stared at me, and I saw then the shallow cut along her temple, the blood dried beneath her ear, the bruising at her wrist in the shape of fingers, and something hard and sour turned in my stomach. “Who did this to you?” She pulled her arm back under her, hiding the wrist. “I don’t know.” “You don’t know who hurt you?” “I don’t know,” she said again, and her voice trembled with shame, as though ignorance were a sin she had committed. I took off my shawl and laid it over her shoulders, and though the morning was cool enough to bite, I hardly felt it. “What is your name?” At that, something changed. Her eyes sharpened. She clung to the word before she spoke it, like a child gripping a railing over deep water. “Elise,” she whispered. “My name is Elise.” “Elise,” I repeated, and because the name sat so gently in my mouth, I had to look away. “Well then, Elise, my name is Jane, and I am going to help you stand, and if you faint on me, I will forgive you provided you do it politely.” For half a breath she only looked at me, and then, to my astonishment, she gave the smallest possible laugh, thin and broken but real. “I will try,” she said. “Good. I admire manners in a crisis.” She was lighter than I expected when I got my arm beneath her, though not weak exactly; there was strength in her, buried under exhaustion and fear, and when she stumbled she caught my sleeve with one hand and apologized as if she had ruined my whole harvest. “I am sorry.” “You’ve done nothing but sleep in my wheat,” I said. “There are worse crimes.” “Is there?” “Yes. Burning biscuits, for one. Lying about rain. Letting a gate hang open. Marrying for money.” She looked at me quickly then, so quickly that I wondered what wound I had touched without knowing. “Come,” I said more softly. “The house is near.” She looked at the farmhouse across the field, its white paint peeling, its porch sagging, morning smoke beginning to rise from the chimney because I had banked the stove well enough for once. “Do you live there alone?” she asked. I nearly said yes, because that was the plain answer, but plain answers can be crueler than lies. “I live there,” I said. “And today, so do you.” II. My House Learns Her Name Getting Elise to the house took near half an hour, though it should have taken five minutes, for she could walk only a little before her knees forgot their duty, and I, who had carried sacks of meal, fence posts, newborn lambs, and once a drunken neighbor half a mile from the lane, found myself absurdly careful with every step she took, as though she were made of glass and music. When we reached the porch she looked at the threshold and stopped. “What is it?” I asked. “I don’t know whether I am allowed.” It was said so simply that I wanted, with a sudden violence that frightened me, to find whoever had taught her to ask permission of doorways. “You are allowed,” I said. She still did not move. So I opened the door wider and said, “Elise, I am inviting you into my home.” Her eyes filled, but no tears fell. “Thank you, Jane.” It was the first time she said my name, and the old house seemed to hear it. Inside, the kitchen was warm and smelled of ashes, rosemary, and yesterday’s bread. I sat her near the stove, fetched water from the pump, and cleaned the cut on her temple while she gripped the arms of the chair and tried not to flinch. “You may curse,” I told her. She blinked. “What?” “You may curse if it hurts. This is a farmhouse, not a chapel.” “I do not know any curses.” “That is the saddest thing I have heard all morning.” A corner of her mouth moved. “I know damn,” she said carefully. “A modest beginning, but promising.” “Damn,” she whispered when the cloth touched the cut. “There. Better already.” She breathed out, and for a while there was only the stove ticking and the rooster outside shouting lies about his importance. I washed her hands next. They were fine-boned hands, but not useless; there were small calluses beneath the mud, faint lines of work and weather, and as I cleaned them she watched me as if the act itself were impossible to understand. “Do you remember where you came from?” I asked. “No.” “Do you remember a town?” “No.” “A family?” She stared into the basin. “No.” “A husband?” Her whole body tightened. I set the cloth down. “Elise?” “I don’t know,” she said, but this time the words were different, not empty but locked. “You need not answer.” “I should know.” “Yes,” I said. “But should is a word people use when they want to beat themselves without lifting a hand.” She looked at me then, truly looked, and I felt my face grow hot under her attention. “Do you speak that way to everyone?” she asked. “There is no everyone here.” “No,” she said softly. “I suppose there is not.” I gave her broth in a chipped blue bowl, and she drank it with both hands wrapped around it, though I had a terrible suspicion from the grace in her posture, even half-starved and wrapped in my shawl, that she had once held porcelain cups in rooms where people used napkins properly and never wiped their hands on their skirts. When she had eaten half the broth she set the bowl down. “I am afraid to sleep.” “Because of dreams?” “Because I may wake somewhere else.” “You won’t.” “How do you know?” “Because I lock the doors at night, and because the dog barks at everything, and because I am a light sleeper, and because if any person tries to carry you out of this house without your consent, I will hit them with the iron poker.” She looked at the poker by the stove. “Would you?” “Yes.” “You do not know me.” “No,” I said, and this was the first dangerous truth between us. “But I know enough.” She lowered her head, and this time the tears did fall, silent and shining, down a face too tired to hide them. I found my spare nightdress, the one with the mended sleeve, and helped her to the little room off the kitchen where my mother had slept in her last winter. I turned away while Elise changed, and when she said, “Jane?” I looked only at the door. “Yes?” “I cannot untie the back.” That small confession entered me like a blade. I went to her and untied the ruined dress with steady fingers, though my heart had become an unruly thing, and I kept my eyes on the knots, the cloth, the work of helping, nothing else. “There,” I said. “Thank you.” “You’re safe here.” She did not answer at once. Then she said, “I almost believe you.” III. The Shape of Ordinary Days For three days Elise slept as if sleep had been chasing her for years and had finally caught her, and in the hours between, she ate what I put before her, answered what she could, and startled at every sound that came from the road. There were no visitors. There were rarely visitors. My nearest neighbor, Mr. Vale, had gone to live with his daughter after his hip gave out, and the road beyond my gate was used mostly by peddlers, weather, and gossip too tired to travel farther. On the fourth day Elise came to the kitchen while I was kneading bread, wearing my brown dress with the sleeves rolled up, her dark hair brushed and braided down her back, and I nearly ruined the dough with staring. “It is too large,” she said, pinching the skirt. “It was my sister’s.” “You have a sister?” “Had.” “Oh.” Her hands stilled. “I am sorry.” “So am I.” “Do you wish to speak of her?” I pressed my palms into the dough. “Not before breakfast.” She nodded solemnly. “After breakfast, then?” I looked at her, and she looked back with such careful seriousness that laughter broke from me before I could stop it. “You are a persistent creature.” “I have been called worse, I think.” The laughter left us both. “I did not mean—” “I know,” she said quickly. “I know.” I gave her the butter to churn because it was simple work, or so I thought, and within ten minutes she had splashed cream across the table, her borrowed dress, the floor, and the cat, who took the insult personally and fled beneath the settle. Elise stared after him in horror. “I have offended your cat.” “You have baptized him.” “I am very bad at this.” “At butter?” “At being useful.” I wiped cream from the table with my apron. “Usefulness is overrated. The rooster is useless and full of confidence.” She looked out the window at the rooster, who was indeed strutting before two hens with the air of a military commander. “He is handsome,” she said. “He is a tyrant.” “Perhaps tyrants are often handsome.” I went still. Elise’s hand tightened on the churn. “What did you remember?” I asked. She shook her head, but not in denial; in confusion. “A room,” she said. “Red curtains. A man laughing. Someone saying, ‘You must smile when he speaks to you.’” Her face had gone pale. I crossed the kitchen slowly, making my voice as plain as bread. “You are here, Elise.” She looked at me. “You are in my kitchen. You have insulted the cat. There is cream on your elbow. The rooster is plotting nothing of consequence. You are here.” She looked at her elbow, where cream did indeed cling like white paint, and her breath hitched into a laugh that was almost a sob. “Jane,” she said, “I think I was not happy.” “No.” “I think I was very not happy.” I took the churn from her hands. “You do not have to remember all at once.” “But what if I remember enough to know I must leave?” The question hung between us like weather. I should have said, Then you will leave. I should have said, This farm is not a cage. I should have said any number of noble, generous things. Instead I said nothing, and because I said nothing, she heard the truth I was too ashamed to offer. Her eyes softened. “Oh,” she whispered. I turned away and busied myself with the dough. “Bread won’t knead itself.” “No,” she said, after a moment. “May I learn?” So I taught her. I stood beside her at the table, showed her how to fold the dough, press with the heel of the hand, turn, fold, press again, and she listened as though bread were scripture. “Not so gentle,” I said. “It can take more than that.” “I do not like to hurt it.” “It is dough.” “I know.” “Dough has no feelings.” “That is convenient for us.” I laughed, and she smiled, a real smile this time, not a cracked thing but a lighted one, and I thought with a pang so sharp I had to grip the table that if this woman ever smiled at me across a lifetime of mornings, I might become foolish enough to thank God for all my losses because they had left the house empty enough for her to enter. IV. Rain on the Roof A week after I found her, rain came hard from the west, driving silver across the yard, turning the lane to black mud, and making the whole house creak like an old ship at sea. I liked rain, usually. Rain excused loneliness. It gave a person permission to stay inside, to mend, to read, to make soup enough for two meals and pretend the empty chair was empty by choice. But Elise did not like rain. At the first crack of thunder she dropped the cup she was drying, and it broke clean in two on the floor. “Damn,” she said automatically. Under different circumstances, I might have praised her progress. Instead I reached for her. “Elise?” She was staring at the window. “The road,” she said. “What road?” “The road was mud. The wheel stuck. He was shouting.” “Who?” “I don’t know. No, I do. No.” She pressed both hands to her head. “There was a carriage. There was rain. I ran.” I took one step nearer. She backed away so fast she struck the cupboard. “Do not touch me.” I froze. Her face changed the instant she saw mine. “Jane, I—” “It’s all right.” “No, I did not mean you.” “I know.” “I did not mean you.” “I know,” I said again, though my throat had tightened. “Sit down before you fall.” She slid down against the cupboard instead, gathering herself with shaking hands, and I sat on the floor at a careful distance because I had learned, in those days, that comfort forced too close becomes another kind of harm. For a long while she breathed and the rain beat the roof and the broken cup lay between us like evidence. “My name is Elise Harrow,” she said at last. The full name sounded strange and formal in my kitchen. “All right.” “My father died.” “I’m sorry.” “No, listen. My father died, and my uncle took the house, or said he had the right to it, and there were papers, and I was told I must marry a man named Victor Bell, because he had money enough to settle debts I had not made.” Her voice did not tremble now. That frightened me more. “Did you marry him?” “I don’t know.” She looked at me with terror returning. “I do not know if he is my husband.” The word husband seemed to darken the room. “What do you remember?” “His hand on my wrist. His mouth near my ear. He said I had a pretty face and no head for law, which was fortunate, because a clever woman is always a disappointment.” She swallowed. “I remember laughing at him.” Despite everything, I smiled. “Did you?” “I think so.” “Good.” “He struck me.” My smile died. “He struck me in front of my uncle, and my uncle said I must learn when a man was being generous.” Outside, thunder rolled over the fields. I kept my hands flat on my knees. “Elise,” I said, very carefully, “did you run from them?” “Yes. I think so. There was a carriage, and rain, and the driver stopped because the wheel sank, and Victor was drunk, and he said when we reached the house I would learn obedience if it took all winter, and I opened the door and ran.” My breathing had become loud in my own ears. “Through the fields?” “Yes. I fell. I hit my head. There were lights behind me.” She looked at the window. “Jane, if they come—” “They won’t take you.” “You cannot know that.” “No.” “I may belong to him.” “No,” I said, and it came out harsher than I intended, the word striking the kitchen air like an axe into wood. She stared at me. I made myself breathe. “No person belongs to another,” I said. “Not by paper, not by money, not by vow, not by force. Not in my house.” Something in her broke then, but not badly; it broke like ice under spring sun, with pain and release together, and she covered her face with both hands. “I am so tired,” she said. “I know.” “I am tired of being told what I am.” “What are you?” She lowered her hands. “I don’t know.” I had never wanted to touch someone so much in my life, and I had never been more afraid to do it. “You can decide slowly,” I said. She looked at the broken cup between us, and after a while she gave a small, watery laugh. “Can I decide that I hate drying dishes?” “Yes.” “Can I decide that your rooster is vain?” “That is not a decision. That is a fact.” “Can I decide that I want to stay in this kitchen until the rain stops?” “Yes.” “Can I decide…” She faltered, and the room seemed to lean toward her. “Can I decide that I feel safer when you are near me?” My heart hurt. “Yes,” I said. “You can decide that.” “Then I decide it.” I nodded once, because anything more might have undone me. We sat on the kitchen floor until the rain softened, and when the thunder moved east and the house grew quiet, Elise reached across the broken cup, slowly enough that I could have moved away, and laid her fingertips on the back of my hand. Her touch was no heavier than a moth. I did not move. Neither did she. V. The Barn at Dusk After the storm, Elise changed. Not all at once, and not into someone less wounded, but into someone who had found a corner of the map and could at least say, There, that is where the monster lives. She began waking before me, which I resented because dawn had always belonged to my loneliness and I did not know what to do with it once it became shared. I would come downstairs and find her lighting the stove, often badly, with soot on her cheek and triumph in her eyes. “I did not burn the house,” she announced the first time. “A modest standard.” “But achieved.” “Yes. I shall carve it on your grave.” “Here lies Elise Harrow,” she said, setting the kettle on. “She did not burn Jane’s house on Tuesday.” “It was Wednesday.” “Then I am even more accomplished than I thought.” She learned eggs, then laundry, then how to milk the cow, though the cow disliked her beauty and kicked the pail over twice. “She is jealous,” Elise said. “She is practical. Beauty does not fill a pail.” “No, but it may excuse a great deal.” “Has it excused you often?” The question slipped out before I could catch it. Elise looked at me across the cow’s back. “Not when I wished it would,” she said. “And too often when I wished to be seen for anything else.” I leaned my forehead briefly against the cow’s warm side and closed my eyes. “I’m sorry.” “You say that as if you are responsible for the world.” “Someone ought to be.” “Is that why you live alone on a farm and glare at the sky?” “I do not glare.” “You glare at weather, fences, bread dough, the rooster, and sometimes at me when I lift something you think is too heavy.” “That is not glaring. That is supervision.” “It is very tender supervision.” I looked up. She had gone pink, but she did not look away. That was the trouble with Elise as she healed. Her shyness did not vanish; it deepened into courage. By then she had been with me nearly three weeks, and the farm had changed its shape around her. Her shawl hung beside mine. Her cup sat beside mine. Her laughter startled birds from the lilacs. At night, when I climbed the stairs to my narrow bed, I would pass the room where she slept and feel the ache of her nearness like a lantern left burning behind a closed door. I told myself she was frightened. I told myself she was grateful. I told myself a woman cast out of her own life might cling to the nearest kindness and mistake it for desire. I told myself many sensible things, and every one of them grew weaker when she said my name. One evening, while the sun was going down behind the barn and turning the world the color of peaches and old copper, I found her in the loft, sitting where the hay door opened over the fields. “You should not sit so near the edge,” I said. She did not turn. “You supervise even from the ground?” “I supervise especially from the ground.” I climbed the ladder and sat beside her, leaving enough space for propriety, which was a ridiculous creature and had no business in my barn. For a while we watched the swallows stitch the air. “I remembered something today,” she said. My hands tightened in my lap. “What?” “There was a woman in my father’s house. A seamstress. Her name was Clara. She had red hair and clever hands, and when she pinned my sleeves she would hold the fabric in her mouth and scold me for fidgeting.” Elise smiled faintly. “I was in love with her.” I stared at the fields. “Oh.” “She married a blacksmith.” “Oh.” “I cried for three days and told everyone I had a fever.” “That was wise.” “I thought I had buried that part of myself.” Her voice softened. “Or that it had been buried for me.” I did not trust myself to speak. “Jane.” There it was again, my name in her mouth, undoing fences. “Yes?” “Have you ever loved a woman?” The honest answer rose before the safe one. “Yes.” “What happened?” “She married my brother.” Elise turned sharply. “Your brother?” “He was kind. She was kind. No one was cruel. That made it worse in some ways.” “Did she know?” “No.” “Why not?” I gave a short laugh. “Because I am a coward of excellent reputation.” “You are not a coward.” “You have known me three weeks.” “I knew that the first day.” “You were concussed the first day.” “I was still right.” The swallows dipped and vanished into the rafters. “Elise,” I said, “you must be careful with me.” She went very still. “I do not mean because I would hurt you,” I continued, though each word felt like pulling a thorn from my own skin. “I mean because I am lonely, and loneliness is greedy, and you are wounded, and gratitude can dress itself up as many things, and I will not take from you what you do not freely know you are giving.” She looked at me for a long time, her face unreadable in the copper light. Then she said, “Do you think I do not know when I want to touch someone?” My breath failed. “I think you have been hurt.” “Yes.” “I think you are afraid.” “Yes.” “I think you may still be bound, by law or by men who care for law only when it profits them.” “Yes.” “I think—” She put her hand over mine. “Jane,” she said, and there was a tremor in her voice, but also a smile, “must I listen to a complete inventory of my sorrows before I am allowed one wish?” I looked at our hands. “What do you wish?” She moved closer, slowly, stopping while there was still space between us. “I wish to kiss you,” she said. The barn, the swallows, the fields, the whole turning earth went silent. “You need not answer quickly,” she whispered. “I am trying to remember how words work.” She laughed, and the laugh shook loose something in me that had been locked for years. I lifted my free hand, giving her all the time in the world to refuse, and touched her cheek. She leaned into my palm. “Elise.” “Yes?” “I wish that too.” The kiss was gentle because we were both afraid, and then less gentle because we were both alive, and then gentle again because tenderness, once invited, kept returning. Her lips were warm. Her hand gripped mine. I had kissed before, though not often and not like this, never with the feeling that the world had not disappeared but had finally come near enough to touch. When we parted, her forehead rested against mine. “Jane,” she whispered. “I know.” “You cannot know. I have not said it.” “Say it then.” “I do not want to go back.” The answer in me was fierce and immediate. “Then don’t.” “They may come.” “Then we will face them.” “I may be poor.” “I am already poor. You will find me experienced.” “I may be ruined.” I drew back just enough to look at her. “Elise Harrow,” I said, “you were found in my wheat, wearing half a dress and all your courage. Anyone who thinks you ruined has no eye for miracles.” She began to cry then, but she was smiling too, and I kissed her wet cheek, and then the corner of her mouth, and then her mouth again as the last light left the barn and the first evening star appeared over the roof of the house. A Story by Germaine Corbeau - Click here for links to all Germaine Corbeau Stories! Quick 👏 Guide: 0 = I got lost! - 1-4 = Nice font... nice images. - 5-9=Read a bit. Nice try!, 10-14=Okay... Pretty good!, 15-19=I actually enjoyed this! - 20=Absolutely legendary!