An Instrument in His Hands

Part 1 Chapter 13

Part 1

Chapter 13

Nevertheless, for Andrew’s sake I made a genuine effort to come to know and trust Aaron. It was not easy for me to do so. The memory of his eyes as he looked at me the day I protected Andrew from him and his brothers was hard to banish. There was a place inside me that still feared him, no matter how often I assured myself it was in his past.

But I came to greet him the next day with a large smile because Andrew was leaning in the doorway of our home to carefully watch us leave. I felt like an actor. Perhaps if I made a gallant effort, Andrew would too.

Aaron responded dramatically and put his hand over his heart. ‘What brings the sunshine to your suddenly radiant face? Surely it cannot be me?’

I really hadn’t smiled much at him. ‘Why not you?’ I answered, still smiling, this time genuinely, at his sense of humor.

‘You are smiling at me.’ He did not move forward. He stopped acting too.

‘Don’t be so in shock. Lots of girls smile at you. Don’t you notice them as we walk past? They simper, and whisper, and giggle together behind their hands.’

‘I only notice you when I walk with you.’

‘Right,’ I responded with sarcasm. I looked back at Andrew and winked. Then I took Aaron by the elbow and steered him towards the main street. He looked down at his elbow, still in shock. ‘Which way?’ I asked.

Aaron pointed. We walked past the government office, the local synagogue, and a row of shops that sold fine goods. My fingers remained in the crook of his elbow as he escorted me and I could feel how firm his muscles had grown over the past years, probably from his time spent with the army. Last time I had touched them his arms had been thin and wiry. Now, he was more muscular than Muloki or my brother, Andrew.

Thinking of Muloki reminded me of cooking. ‘I’m learning to cook beans now that I’ve mastered corn cakes,’ I told him.

‘When will you learn how to cook rabbit pelt?’ he teased, recovered from his shock.

‘Very, very funny.’

He squeezed my hand against his side. ‘Do you remember the rabbit’s foot that I gave you long ago?’

I remembered. I wore it looped around my belt for a few years, until…

‘Do you still have it?’ he asked looking down at me.

‘Absolutely not!’

‘What happened to it?’

I removed my fingers from his elbow and grimaced. ‘You don’t want to know,' I told him.

I had ceremonially burned it in effigy of him, best forgotten now.

‘Right,’ he said, and began to whistle under his breath.

That afternoon we sat with a wrinkled and bedridden woman while her daughter went out to the marketplace. They lived in a tiny home on a tiny street, stuffed with pots, baskets, and food hanging from the rafters. Aaron squeezed himself  in behind me as we sat by her palette on the hard dirt floor. His shins were pressed up tight against my back. I reached over and took the woman’s hand in mine.

It was apparent that her memory and speech were not impaired, for she immediately began to regale us with stories of her long ago past. We were a captive audience.

I felt a tug on my long braid. Aaron was untying the bottom of it! How dare he! But then, I suppose that it was already hanging right in his lap as close as we were seated.

He leaned forward and whispered into my ear, ‘Do you remember when we used to play with your hair during church meetings?’

I nodded.  I had loved having my hair played with, at least I did until his younger brother, Omner, tied it in knots one day and my mother had to cut off five inches.

Aaron whispered in my ear again, ‘We used to jostle each other to be able to sit behind you so we got to play with it. I usually won because I was bigger.’

I leaned back and whispered to him, ‘Most times you were nice enough to share my hair,’ and giggled silently at the memory. I really did have wonderful old memories of Aaron and his brothers - sadly, mostly forgotten. Perhaps that was why they had the power to hurt me so deeply later on.

The bedridden old sister continued her story, ‘My mother had an ornery old rooster that strutted around the yard like he owned it – and he did!  Breast all swelled out and feathers preened. Come near him and he’d peck you as good as he may…’

Suddenly I felt the ends of my hair splayed out on top of my head like a rooster’s crown.

I took the skin on the top of Aaron’s foot and pinched it.

He dropped my hair. ‘Ouch!’ he said. ‘See, you pecked me.’

‘Shhh!!!’

‘She’s deaf!’ he whispered.

‘Every morning ten minutes afore the sun came up that rooster would hop – fly atop of the fence in front of our yard and be the first to crow. He’d yell cock-a- doodle-doo, loud as he could. Woke up all the other roosters within hearing…’

I let Aaron continue to comb through my tresses as the sister told stories of harvesting eggs, hiding them, and not finding them until they smelled. She told about goats, harvest times, and village gatherings, while I continued to feel gentle tugs and small bumps against my back. Gradually my shoulders relaxed and I leaned them against Aaron’s knees. I felt like I was melting. Nobody had played with my hair for years.

When her daughter returned, the old woman held back my hand. ‘You can go out, young man,’ she said.

Aaron stretched himself around me and went out. I knelt beside the bed.

‘That young man loves you very much,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t hear well, but, by goners, I can see,’ she chuckled and clutched my hand tightly. ‘I saw the way he was looking at you when you couldn’t. He took your hair in his fingers and kissed it like it was something to worship.’

I gasped.

‘If you don’t believe me, feel it. I bet there are tears on it.’

She was right. My hair had a few patches of wet.

She pointed a crooked finger at me, ‘You be careful what you do with his heart, for you hold it in the palm of your hand.’

I nodded to her. What could I say?

‘What did she say to you?’ Aaron inquired.

I tied my hair up behind my neck and once again I said to him, ‘You don’t want to know.’

I was silent and serious as we walked through the streets of Zarahemla towards my home. How could I hold Aaron’s heart in my hand? And if so, what would I do with it? Crush it in revenge?