Excerpt from Lila by Marilynne Robinson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Doll touched the soap and tears off the child's face with the hem of her apron. "Never had the heart to scold her. Them's about the only words I ever heard her say." They made her a couple of dresses out of flour sacks with holes cut in them for her head and arms. They were stiff at first and smelled of being saved in a chest or a cupboard, and they had little flowers all over them, like Doll's apron.

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It seemed like one long night, but it must have been a week, two weeks, rocking on Doll's lap while the old woman fussed around them.

"You don't have enough trouble, I guess. Carrying off a child that's just going to die on you anyway."

"Ain't going to let her die."

"Oh? When's the last time you got to decide about something?"

"If I left her be where she was, she'da died for sure."

"Well, maybe her folks won't see it that way. They know you took her? What you going to say when they come looking for her? She's buried in the woods somewhere? Out by the potato patch? I don't have troubles enough of my own?"

Doll said, "Nobody going to come looking."

"You probly right about that. That's the spindliest damn child I ever saw."

But the whole time she talked she'd be stirring a pot of grits and blackstrap molasses. Doll would give the child a spoonful or two, then rock her a little while, then give her another spoonful. She rocked her and fed her all night long, and dozed off with her cheek against the child's hot forehead.

The old woman got up now and then to put more wood in the stove. "She keeping it down?"

"Mostly."

"She taking any water?"

"Some."

When the old woman went away again Doll would whisper to her, "Now, don't you go dying on me. Put me to all this bother for nothing. Don't you go dying." And then, so the child could barely hear, "You going to die if you have to. I know. But I got you out of the rain, didn't I? We're warm here, ain't we?"

After a while the old woman again. "Put her in my bed if you want. I guess I won't be sleeping tonight, either."

"I got to make sure she can breathe all right."

"Let me set with her then."

"She's clinging on to me."

"Well." The old woman brought the quilt from her bed and spread it over them.

The child could hear Doll's heart beating and she could feel the rise and fall of her breath. It was too warm and she felt herself struggling against the quilt and against Doll's arms and clinging to her at the same time with her arms around her neck.

Copyright © 2014 by Marilynne Robinson