The Hymn My Mother Still Knew

“I wasn’t upset. Sit down, honey, you’re fine.” I sat down across from her. “I just want to ask you one thing. That song you were humming. Where did you get it?”

She went red right up to her ponytail.

“I didn’t even know I was doing it,” she said. “I do it all the time. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I’m glad you did. Just tell me where it comes from.”

“My grandma.” She picked up a clothing protector and folded it in thirds. “I just about grew up in her kitchen. My mom worked nights at the hospital, so I was at Grandma’s every day after school. She hums it over the dishes. Always has. I don’t think she knows she’s doing it either.”

“Do you know the words?”

“Only some of the first verse. Grandma knows all of it. She gets mad at herself if she drops one.”

Something began to turn over in my chest, slow.

“Where did she learn it?”

“From her piano teacher, when she was little. Out at some country church.” Marcy smiled. “She tells that story every Christmas. The teacher made every single kid in the choir learn all four verses of everything, by heart, no books. Grandma still complains about it. She says she’s sixty-eight years old and she can’t remember where she left her purse, but she can give you all four verses of that hymn at three in the morning.”

My mouth had gone dry.

“Which church, Marcy?”

“I don’t know the name. It’s on a gravel road north of town. White, with a cemetery beside it. We drove by it once and she made my grandpa stop the car.”

I looked through the dining room doorway and down the hall. I could see my mother’s door from where I sat. Every door on that wing has a name card on it in big black letters, first name only, so the residents can find their own rooms. Hers has a little paper cardinal taped next to it that I put up myself.

“What was the teacher’s name?” I said.

Marcy opened her mouth to answer, and I watched her think about it.

“I don’t know her last name. Grandma only ever called her one thing.” She laughed a little. “Miss Dorothy. She says Miss Dorothy this and Miss Dorothy that. She says Miss Dorothy could hear you chewing gum from the back of the church.”

I did not say anything. I did not need to.

Marcy looked at me. Then she turned in her chair and looked where I was looking, down the hall, at the card on the door with the cardinal next to it.

Dorothy, it said, in letters two inches tall.

She put the folded cloth down very slowly.

“No,” she said.

“Forty years,” I said. “The children’s choir, and piano lessons. She started at nineteen.”

“Oh, my goodness.” She had both hands over her mouth. “Oh, Mrs. Larson. I’ve been getting her up in the morning for two weeks. I’ve been putting her socks on.”

“I know you have. You do it nicely.”

“Grandma’s going to…” She stopped. I watched her face change, and I watched her remember her training. “I can’t tell her. Can I? We’re not allowed to say anything about a resident outside the building. Not a name, not anything. They went over it and over it.”