The Hymnal I Brought Every Sunday

The eighth Sunday

The eighth of March was one of those cold, bright Nebraska mornings where the sun comes off the old snow so hard it hurts your eyes. The wind had laid down. I could see my breath, and the cottonwoods along the road out to Debra’s were full of crows.

I parked in her driveway at five minutes to nine. I sat for a minute with the engine running and the hymnal on the passenger seat. I’ll be honest. I almost didn’t get out. Eight weeks is a long time to knock on a door.

I got out at nine and knocked.

Nothing.

I knocked again, harder. I saw the curtain in the front window move, just at the edge, and I saw Debra’s face behind it. She didn’t open the door. She just stood there and watched me through the gap.

I went back to my car. I had the driver’s door open and one foot in, the hymnal against my chest, when I heard the side door.

It was the door down to the basement, around the side of the house where Debra’s husband, Gary, keeps his snow blower. I heard the storm door bang, and then I heard footsteps on the concrete steps, slow, one at a time, the way Mom takes stairs.

She came around the corner of the house in her navy church coat and her good hat, the gray felt one with the little pearl pin. She had her purse on her arm and her church gloves on.

She did not hurry. She did not look at the front window. She walked across that driveway straight toward me, with her chin up and her eyes on my face, like the driveway was the center aisle and I was the altar.

“Morning, Karen,” she said.

Just like that. Like any Sunday.

I couldn’t say anything. I walked around and opened the passenger door for her, and my hands were shaking so badly I fumbled the handle. Hers were not shaking at all. She lowered herself onto the seat, swung her legs in the way the doctor had taught her, and set her purse on her knees.

I handed her the hymnal. She took it in both hands and held it, the way she had held it every Sunday of my life, flat against her coat.

I got in on my side. I reached for the key. And Mom put her gloved hand on my arm.

“Before we go anywhere,” she said, “you need to hear what your sister told me every Sunday at nine.”