Year Of Wonders by Brooks Geraldine

Author:Brooks, Geraldine [Brooks, Geraldine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adult
ISBN: 9781439507728
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2001-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

For in the Mount of Calvary there thou was first found.

Thou healedest our savior and stanched his bleeding wound.

In name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,

I take thee from the ground.”

We gathered all the bunches we could carry into a burlap to carry to the rectory kitchen. I was about to extinguish the fire in the grate when Elinor reached out and stayed my hand. “What about these, Anna? What shall we do with them?” She held out the poppies. “It is for you to decide.”

I felt the panic rise in me. “But, surely, we need these for the succor of the many afflicted here,” I said, although my thoughts had sped immediately to my own needs rather than those of the dying.

“The Gowdies were sensible of the risk posed by this thing, Anna. They have only enough here to relieve a handful of grave cases. How should we choose who should suffer and who should be soothed?”

Without speaking, I reached for the bunch. I made to throw it on the fire, but found I did not have the will to open my hand. I ran a thumbnail across a still-green pod and watched the white sap ooze slowly from the incision. I wanted to lay my tongue on it, to lap the bitterness and feel its sweet sequel. Elinor stood silently, waiting. I tried to read her eyes, but she turned away from me.

How was I to face the days and nights to come? There would be no other relief for me; in my two hands I held my only chance of exit from. our village and its agonies. But then I realized that this was not quite true. There was our work. I had seen that afternoon how it was possible to lose myself in it. And yet this loss of self was not selfish oblivion. From this study and its applications might come much good. But surely I could not attempt it without clarity of mind. I grasped the bunch then and flung it on the fire. The sap hissed for a moment, and then the pods burst, their showers of tiny seeds falling invisible among the ashes.

By the time we closed the stubborn door behind us, the wind had died and the air seemed milder. I would try to be the woman that Elinor wished me to be. And if I failed, I had learned enough from our work that day to know where to look for the pale green shoots of poppy, pushing through the soil of the Gowdies’ garden, come the spring.

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