Angel & Ruth Altman

Angel and Ruth Altman’s bond offers Angel a rare experience of uncomplicated affection: Ruth seeks her out, sleeps beside her, and treats her as someone who belongs in the family. That intimacy gives Angel a glimpse of a maternal role she longs for, while making the possibility of separation from Ruth and the Altmans more painful.

An Unexpected Attachment

When Elizabeth is ill, Angel offers bread and cheese; Ruth reaches toward Angel’s long golden braid and asks whether she is her mother. Elizabeth gently answers that Angel is an angel of mercy. The moment joins care with a name Angel has heard used in other ways: here it signifies kindness rather than a commercial identity.

During a stormy night in the tent, Ruth moves her blanket beside Angel and insists on sleeping there. Later, when Angel lies awake with old memories stirred by rain and canvas, Ruth has snuggled against her in her sleep. Michael tells Angel that she has a friend, and Angel puts an arm around the child as Michael embraces them both. The scene makes their closeness physical and immediate: Ruth seeks warmth without knowing Angel’s history, and Angel is allowed to return that trust.

Affection and the Fear of Loss

As Angel contemplates leaving the Altmans, Ruth’s presence makes departure concrete. In a field of mustard flowers, Ruth plays among the blossoms and chases a white butterfly while Angel imagines losing her, Miriam, Elizabeth, and the rest of the family. Angel wants to hold and kiss the child, but believes Ruth would not understand why she must go. Their tenderness therefore carries a grief Angel cannot explain to Ruth.

The two share a playful moment when Ruth talks about eating a butterfly as a little girl. Angel laughs, lifts her onto her lap, and tickles her; Ruth soon asks whether Angel and Michael will come live with the family now that they each have cabins. Angel says they will not, because they have separate cabins. When Ruth returns to ask what is wrong, Angel touches her baby-soft hair and assures her she feels fine. The gentle exchange contrasts Ruth’s straightforward wish for closeness with Angel’s unspoken sorrow.

Maternal Longing and Significance

Ruth’s trust becomes especially charged because Angel believes she cannot have a child of her own. Holding Ruth close as she sleeps, Angel is drawn into the possibility Michael voices of having a child like her someday, even as the thought leaves her despairing. Ruth is not simply a symbol of motherhood: she is a particular child who seeks Angel’s company, shares her sleeping space, and asks to keep her near.

The relationship also reverses the pattern of Angel’s childhood, when she concluded that her existence burdened her mother and later faced abandonment. With Ruth, affection is freely offered rather than purchased or demanded. That does not erase Angel’s fear or make separation painless; it gives her a lived encounter with care that she can neither dismiss as a transaction nor fully believe she is entitled to keep.