What Roberta Said
I waited for her to laugh. People say a hard thing and then they laugh, and it turns out to be a joke you walked into the middle of. Roberta did not laugh.
“The hayride is for the families who did the fall workday,” she said. “That was the rule this year. We put it in the bulletin. You and Dale were not there, so your two are not on the ride.”
I felt my face go hot. There were women within earshot, pretending to fold tablecloths, not folding them.
“Roberta,” I said. “We had a reason we missed the workday. You know we did.”
“Everybody has a reason,” she said. She said it the way you would say everybody has a nose. “That is why there has to be a rule. If I bend it for you I have to bend it for the Hendricksons and the Vogts and we would have forty kids and one wagon.”
Get a new story in your inbox every morning.
Facebook doesn’t show you every story we post. Our free newsletter does. Join 2,500+ readers.
“It is two seats,” I said. “They are nine and six. They have gone every year since they could walk.”
She picked her pen back up. That was her way of ending a thing, picking the pen back up.
“The ride is at capacity,” she said. “I am sorry, Carla. Maybe next year you will be able to make the workday.”
I stood there holding the list I had taken off her fridge, and I did not have one word in my mouth. That is the thing about a quiet cruelty. It does not give you anything to push against. It is like pushing on a closed door that has no handle.
I set the list down on the table, gentle, because I am a grown woman and I was not going to throw a piece of paper in the house of the Lord. Then I went and found my kids.
Sam was under a table with two other six-year-olds making a fort out of the floor-length cloth. Ella was standing by the window with her coat still on, watching the parking lot, which is what Ella does when she is trying not to cry in front of people.
“Come on,” I said. “We are going home.”
“Is it true,” Ella said. “Aunt Roberta said we can’t go on the hayride.”
I am not a woman who lies to her children, and I was not going to start in the church entryway.
“It is true for Aunt Roberta’s hayride,” I said. “Get your brother.”