A Keeper at Last

Nyra returned to the room when the light was low and found the tally already finished. The girl had weighed the last basket of beans and written the figure down while the doorway stood bare behind her. Nyra bent over the page and read the fresh line without laying a hand on it.

The girl watched her read and then asked the thing she had held all day. She wanted to know why Nyra had gone out and left her alone with the beans and the book.

Nyra straightened and answered her plainly. “A keeper who must be watched is not yet a keeper,” she said. “I left because your hand no longer needs mine at its shoulder.”

The girl said nothing, so Nyra went on. “You kept writing to an empty frame,” she said. “You weighed and you set the figure down for the record and for no one else. That is the whole of it. That is what a keeper does.”

The girl looked at the vacant doorway and then at her own steady line on the page. She understood that the book was hers to keep now, not because Nyra had said so, but because she had already been keeping it. She dipped the pen and began the next row while Nyra sat down at last to rest.