Free The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton

but all I could see was Laverna’s baby girl smelling like the mess she had in her pants and howling at the frankincense they stuck near her nose. Then, in an instant, they were talking about Jesus as if he’s a full-grown man. They didn’t spend time on the pranks he pulled as a youngster or the names of his teachers. A few Sundays later, that baby, who as far as I could see wasn’t even born yet, is riding a mule through the streets healing the sick people and everyone’s waving branches at him. All the Jewish people want him to wash their feet and cut their toenails down to the bone. His favorite place is leper colonies. Then, the next thing I knew, they’re killing him and sticking him up on a cross like the one we have in church. I wanted to get an old dish towel and strangle it when I heard they killed him. And if that isn’t enough they throw him in a cave, push a boulder across, and then he isn’t in there when they look. He’s in heaven. The whole thing sounded very dumb to me, but mostly I felt sad, because I was sure there was going to be a child who would come to me and make the world light. I was sure I would wake up to find jars of honey out on the doorstep.
    I wrote Aunt Sid and told her that she was right after all, and that I was going to learn the word
symbol
so I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Aunt Sid said that Jesus was an example to people and we should try to behave like him, but in her opinion he wasn’t divine. I asked Miss Pin what this divine business was about and she said the word meant heavenly. I still didn’t understand one bit of it, or why it had been invented in the first place. They said something at church about Jesus coming back in the near future, but I wasn’t going to believe it. May herself said a person shouldn’t put all the eggs in one basket. It’s possible that May was in her usual bad mood all the time, just as I was for months after Christmas, because Willard Jenson had been her savior, and she was banking on his saving powers lasting at least until the end of her life. Instead, he came down to her and made everything seem so dandy, and then poof, he’s gone. The world was instantly and permanently spoiled for her. She didn’t have one thing left except a couple of teacups that smash if you let go. She didn’t care if Hitler took over the world or the Japs invaded California. She wanted Willard back. Probably it was Willard’s death that taught May the lesson about having two baskets for the eggs. And it probably didn’t help her, living in Honey Creek forever, where everyone knows what you are. They won’t let you change even if you feel like it. People were always saying May’s first husband, the one she truly loved, got killed, and how sad it made her. There wasn’t a single person in the area who didn’t know her story. Maybe she couldn’t be happy even if she tried, because folks wouldn’t know her then. They might think she was haywire.

Five
    I T wasn’t until I got to eighth grade that I started seeing clearly how different we were from other people. It took Miss Finch to show me all the colors in the world, such as the people who live in jungles without clothes, hunting for berries and nuts.
    I had the job, for five years, of running Miss Finch’s tapes. She was the blind lady who lived in the stone farmhouse down the road. She had arthritis and was blind on top of it. She couldn’t string up a tape recorder so I’d go over there and thread the tapes and turn them on. They have books recorded on them. They were supposed to keep her company. The first time I went over she called me “my dear,” just like Aunt Sid, only she said, “My deeah.” For the longest time I couldn’t figure out what she was saying. I thought she was talking about an idea she had, but it never made sense in the sentence. She said, “My deeah, why don’t you stay and listen? This book is one of my favorites.”
    I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to