by Lois Lowry
But she laughed. “Oh, my,” she said. “Nay. I came here as a child. And you know Shakers don’t marry! It’s part of Mother’s teaching.”
“But didn’t you want to? Don’t the others want to?”
She shook her head. “It would take from the community, to have special attachments like that.”
I know that is why we mustn’t talk to the boys, why the sisters and brethren avoid each other, even using separate staircases. There is to be no special affection developing. I remembered from my school days, from my time in the world, as I was now thinking of my life with my first family, how girls and boys teased each other, sometimes smiled at ones who were a little special. There was a boy in my class at school. His name was Edward. I thought him quite handsome. Once I gave him some cookies I’d brought from home. It wasn’t courting, not really. We were too young. But it was maybe the beginning of —
My thoughts were interrupted when Daniel appeared at the door. One of the brethren had brought him. He gestured to my brother to go into the room; then he turned and left.
“Hello, Daniel,” Sister Jennie said. “I’ve brought Lydia to have a little visit with you.”
He sat awkwardly on the settee. Usually when I saw him at meals he was wearing his work clothes, overalls and heavy shoes. But today, Sunday, he wore his Sunday trousers and ironed shirt, the same clothes he had worn at this morning’s meeting. Perhaps in his pocket he had a handkerchief ironed by me.
“I can’t stay long,” he said. “I have to help with milking soon.”
Of course some farm chores couldn’t have a day of rest.
“Do you like the animals?” I asked him. “I went with Sister Caroline once to help feed the chickens and gather eggs, but it was so noisy, and they pecked at me.”
I could see him start to smile. He was probably picturing me shrieking when the chickens ran at me and pecked. He knows what a coward I sometimes am.
“I like the cows,” he said. “There’s one heifer, though, that’s bad tempered.”
“Her name should be Frances Dudley,” I suggested, and Daniel grinned. Mrs. Dudley had been our neighbor, who complained loudly about everything and criticized her husband all the time.
Sister Jennie was sitting very quietly, working on a little piece of embroidery. Hands to work and heart to God. The Shaker sisters call embroidery “marking,” and I will have to learn soon, to mark. If I ever finish my knitted washcloth!
“Brother Delmer wants me to help him with the apple packing after school tomorrow,” Daniel said.
“They say it was a good crop this year,” I replied. Daniel nodded. The orchards are across the road. I had heard the sisters say there are 800 bushels of apples stored in the cellar, now, already this fall.
“Remember what Uncle Henry said about the Shaker apples, before we ever knew what the Shakers were?”
But Daniel didn’t reply. I suppose he didn’t want to be reminded of Uncle Henry.
Uncle Henry had said that you could always be certain, with a crate of Shaker apples, that the ones on the bottom would be as good as the ones on the top. No hiding of bruised ones.
It is because of Brother Delmer and his study of orchards that we have such fine apples, not only to sell, but also for the pies and applesauce that we eat here at Sabbathday Lake. One evening not long ago, many of us worked together on the cutting and drying of apple pieces, and they are stored away now for the months to come.
Daniel and I sat there for a few minutes, talking aimlessly of the McIntoshes and Cortlands, of the animals, the weather, and the price of eggs. (Last winter Shaker eggs brought 68 cents a dozen, but by spring it was down to 38 cents. It is a worry to the community.) Sister Jennie’s fingers moved meticulously on the small piece of cloth she was marking with blue thread.
Then the brother appeared again in the doorway and motioned to Daniel that it was time for the visit to end. I could hear Elvira saying good-bye to her grandparents across the hall. Sister Jennie folded her embroidery and rose.
Suddenly Daniel came across the room toward my chair and I was terrified that he was going to touch me, maybe give me a hug, something so strictly forbidden. But he didn’t. Instead he set a small wooden box on the table beside my chair.
“I made this,” he said awkwardly.
I looked at Sister Jennie, and she nodded that I might have it.
“Thank you,” I said to my brother, and then he was gone. We could hear the door of the dwelling close behind him and the brother who accompanied him.
“All the boys learn to work with wood,” Sister Jennie explained.
I carried the box back to the girls’ shop, half listening as Elvira chattered about her grandparents, how her grandmother suffered so with sciatica but was getting some relief from a new pill.
“And look!” Elvira said happily. “They brought us this!” She held up a small bag and handed it to Sister Jennie. “Candies! Enough for each of us!”
Sister Jennie smiled. “We’ll have them after supper. It was good of them, Elvira.”
“Last time,” Elvira explained to me, knowing I was new, “they brought me a doll. But I couldn’t keep it because the other girls didn’t have them. We can only have things that are for us all.”
I nodded. She didn’t need to explain that. My book had been taken from me for the same reason. But at least we are all enjoying hearing The Secret Garden read aloud, now that we have finished The Five Little Peppers, though I always feel a little moment of resentment when Sister Jennie picks it up in the evening and turns to the page where she left off last. It’s mine, I think. But it is a bad way of thinking. A worldly way. I will confess it when the time comes again to open my mind.
But she had let me keep my journal. And now, too, the little box that Daniel made. I thought that I would put my little family of stones into it. It was only when I began to do that, sitting on my bed after supper, before going downstairs for our evening singing and prayers (and a chapter of The Secret Garden), that I lifted its lid and realized there was a folded piece of paper inside. Daniel had written me a note.
“I AM LEAVING SOON,” it said. “DO NOT WORRY ABOUT ME.”
Sunday, November 10, 1918
This morning, at the Sabbath meeting, was the morning that we girls were to say our verses of scripture. I had selected one and memorized it and practiced it all week. But last evening I changed my mind and chose another. This morning I stood and said it aloud with no mistakes.
A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. Proverbs 17:17.
I think I saw some of the brethren smile a little at its words. But it did not make me smile. It made me think about Daniel. It made me sad.
Monday, November 11, 1918
It has been hard to write anything. I have worried so about Daniel, about whether I should tell someone about his note. Keeping secrets is not the Shaker way. But what would happen to my brother if I told? So I did nothing. Just worried.
Each day last week Daniel was there in school, staring through the window as he always does. I could see him out in the schoolyard at boys’ recess, near the wall around the Shaker cemetery, talking to the farm boy from the world. They were laughing together at something.
He was at meeting yesterday, same as always, sitting with the other boys. I watched him when I said my piece of scripture — I don’t think he was listening — and while we sang the Shaker songs. Here is one:
Hop up and jump up and whirl ’round,
whirl ’round,
Gather love, here it is, all ’round, all ’round.
Here is love flowing ’round,
Catch it as you whirl ’round.
Reach up and reach down,
Here it is all ’round.
The songs are so different from what we sang at Woodfords Congregational Church: “Fairest Lord Jesus” and the like. And hopping and jumping and whirling? Well! That is because in the past, the Shakers actually did that as part of their worship. Quivering and tre
mbling in their religious excitement: that is how they became known as Shakers! They say that people came from many miles to watch a Shaker service and the dancing, in the old days. But that is no longer true. No dancing anymore, no shaking or whirling.
This morning in the laundry (it is Monday, wash day, once again), when I was scrubbing handkerchiefs at the washboard (scraping my knuckles!), Sister Helen was reaching up and down into the huge tub where she rinsed the wet linens in clear water after they had come from the washing machine. It made me think of the song. “Reach up and reach down,” I found myself singing aloud, and Sister Helen heard me and began to laugh. She was the one who explained about the dancing.
“All of them in line, brethren and sisters,” she said. “It must have been something to see.”
“Why did you stop dancing?” I asked her.
Sister Helen knotted her brow. “The older Shakers began to be infirm,” she explained. “Have you noticed how, at prayers before meals, the older Shakers stand instead of kneeling?”
I nodded. There are many older Shakers. I knew that Dr. Sturgis had recently come to see Sister Gertrude and Eldress Lizzie for their hearts. Some of the others seem a little stooped, and frail.
“Earthly bodies wear out,” she said in a kindly voice. “It’s hard for some of them to kneel now.”
She maneuvered a large, rinsed sheet through the wringer attached to the tub and then went to hang it with clothes pegs on the indoor line where laundry dries in bad weather. “More and more, it was only the younger ones who could do the dancing. And it is our way, you know, that everything be shared. So as time passed, the younger Shakers stopped feeling the spirit and the gift for dancing, too. Now we are all able to worship together in the same way.”
“I wish I could have seen it,” I told her.
Sister Helen called to some of the other sisters who were folding clothing at the big table. “Lydia wonders what the Shaker dancing looked like!” she called.
“Reach up and reach down,” Sister Edith sang aloud, gesturing to the sheet on the line, and the one waiting below in a basket.
“Hop up and jump up,” sang Sister Hannah from the washtub, and did a tiny hop.
And suddenly, without any discussion, the three laundry workers, in their Shaker dresses and aprons and caps, formed a line and performed the song and the dance, making the gestures and postures, the small hops and jumps that went with the words.
They invited me to join in and we all did it a second time.
“Gather love, here it is, all ’round, all ’round,” we sang loudly, making the gathering motions with our arms.
It made me forget my bleeding knuckles and the endless stack of hankies waiting to be scrubbed. When I went back to the washboard, I felt renewed and full of energy. And loved. I felt loved.
At mealtime we received the news that the war was over. We said special prayers of thanksgiving that the cruel battles had ended and the young men would come home now to their families. I found myself thinking again of Daniel. At least he cannot join up and go to war. So perhaps he will change his mind about leaving.
Tuesday, November 12, 1918
I was mistaken in my hopes. Daniel is gone. He crept away during the night and was not there in the boys’ shop this morning when the waking bell rang. At dinner, Elder William spoke of it in his prayer, and asked the Lord to protect a willful boy and keep him safe from harm and from the world’s dangers. I closed my eyes very tight and echoed the prayer in my mind.
Monday, December 2, 1918
It is three weeks since Daniel disappeared in the night. No one speaks of him. Nothing has changed, but his chair is still there, empty at meals and meeting. The days continue much the same as always, with school and work and meals and prayer.
I have not written in my journal in all this time.
I am no longer in the laundry but in the kitchen, helping Sister Sirena. Some of the older girls help here, too, the teenagers who live in the big dwelling and wear the Shaker dress but are not yet true Shakers. One of them, Ida, has eyes for a boy who comes with a delivery wagon. The sisters are worried about it. They speak firmly to her and bid her stay inside when the delivery boy comes with his goods. I have heard that it has happened before, a girl running off with a boy, though no one will tell me the details. I think she married him. And perhaps Ida, too, wants to marry a boy of the world and have a family.
It makes me remember my parents. My mother had told me of how she met my father at a church gathering, and he came to court her, and took her to a concert, once. Her parents said she must finish high school, so she worked very hard to graduate early, and completely gave up her plans of going on to teachers’ college because she wanted to marry Walter Pierce, who had deep blue eyes and a promising future. She was only eighteen when they were married at Woodfords Congregational Church. She wore my grandmother’s wedding dress and carried white lilacs. She pressed some blossoms in her Bible, and showed them to me once, all brown and fragile, the lilac smell gone. There was a reception in the church parlor, with lemon cakes.
My mother was 34 when she died, but I think she had a happy life and many hopes. I vow to make her proud of me.
I wonder if she would want me to marry and have children, as she did. Or would she admire the Shaker sisters, who give their love to Mother Ann and to the orphans they tend and teach?
I do not think the delivery boy much of a catch. He has unkempt hair and blemished skin, and his nails are dirty. I hope Ida does not go off with him. She is a good student and could go on, they say, to college and perhaps become the teacher here at Sabbathday Lake when Sister Cora grows too old. Even if she signs the covenant and becomes a true Shaker, Ida could do that. The Shaker teachers go to the Normal School during summer to keep their credentials.
But if she were to go off with the delivery boy, I fear she would live in poverty and never have a real chance at a happy and contented life. I watch her rolling our pie crust and wonder what she is thinking about. Sometimes she grins at me as if we share a joke.
I have an idea. Maybe the delivery boy knows where Daniel has gone. If I could only find a way to ask him!
Or the farm boy who attends our school? Perhaps he knows. He and Daniel talked and laughed at recess time.
I can see the pastures from the kitchen windows. One of those cows is the bad-tempered heifer that Daniel liked best. I’m sure she knows where he is. He must have leaned his head into her side on chilly mornings and told her his secrets.
Sunday, December 8, 1918
O pray for the fathers, the sisters, and brothers,
O pray for the whole household,
O pray for the mothers, remember all others;
O pray for the whole, whole world.
This was a song we sang today at worship. I have decided that perhaps if I write down the words of the songs, I will learn and remember them more quickly. The sisters and brethren seem to know every song — and there are hundreds — but I stumble along and forget. Today’s was easy, though, and meaningful for me. I prayed for my parents, and my little sister, that they are content in the spirit world, and for Daniel, who is just as lost to me as they are. As for the “whole, whole world”? Well, it will have to get along without my prayers, for I have so many others to concentrate on. The household? That would be this little village, I think, this little village of Shakers. And yes, I will pray for them, though I expect they do not need my prayers, for they are nothing but good.
Except, perhaps, for Ida. The other sisters in the kitchen are very put out with Ida. They try to be charitable but I can hear them murmuring about how she spends entirely too much time smoothing her hair and pinching her cheeks to make them pink, always when the delivery boy is expected. I wonder if she talks about the delivery boy in confession.
Monday, December 9, 1918
I almost forgot to say that finally I have nearly finished knitting my washcloth! Day after day I have tortured the yarn into knots and snarls, and then Sister Jenni
e directs me to take it all apart and begin again and again. But now, suddenly, I realize it is beginning to form a perfect square, and with no mistakes! And I can see for the first time what she meant when she said we must always work toward perfection. Toward a heaven here on earth.
I expect one doesn’t need a washcloth in heaven! But it does feel heavenly to look at that little square with each stitch the right size, all in order, all in line.
Wednesday, December 11, 1918
The first snow! Later this year than usual, and just a few inches, not enough to close school. But the roads are treacherous, and so Brother Delmer has had to cancel a trip to Portland. He was going to take Eldress Lizzie to the special doctor she sees for her ears. They go in the automobile! The electric, they call it, though it is officially a Selden. It has already driven 32,000 miles. Brother Delmer is the only one to drive it, and once, last spring, the mule team had to go and pull him out when he was stuck in some mud.
But today the electric stays in the lower garage (which Brother Delmer built especially to house it) and Eldress Lizzie’s ears will have to wait. The brethren and boys are all out shoveling. When I went to the kitchen after school, there were extra pots to wash, because there were two kinds of hot soup at dinner, and cocoa as well. Everyone’s cheeks are pink with the cold, and we girls are wrapped in thick knitted scarves to keep our ears and necks warm.
(I wonder if someday I will be able to knit a scarf! I can’t even seem to complete a foolish little square washcloth! Last evening, when I thought it was almost finished, and I was feeling so accomplished, I had to rip out two rows. Again!)
Snow makes me think about Christmas. At home, before the epidemic that changed everything, we would be busy making gifts and cookies for the holidays.