Dancing Dead

by Deborah Woodworth

  “Perhaps she is again serving as an instrument, and we just aren’t listening. The child is drawn to this apparition. Maybe it will speak only through her.”

  Wilhelm thrust out a stubborn chin but said nothing, which told Rose that she had earned some time. The period in Shaker history to which Wilhelm most wished to return was the Era of Manifestations, or the years of Mother Ann’s Work, beginning in the 1830s. Then, the gifts of the spirit—the dances and songs and drawings, the trances, the speaking in tongues—had first been sent through young girls. Rose was torn. She believed in the presence of spirits, but she couldn’t help feeling that they were inclined to communicate more quietly nowadays.

  But who knows, perhaps Mairin truly is an instrument.

  Maybe Holy Mother Wisdom, in her compassion, had chosen to speak through a troubled child. Anything was possible.

  “Mairin may indeed show herself to be an instrument,” Wilhelm said, turning back to the door, “and perhaps she will not. We cannot afford to wait much longer to find out. See that she reveals herself soon.”

  After Wilhelm’s warning, Rose gathered up Mairin and the two of them made straight for Agatha’s retiring room. When they heard the quiet command to enter, it was Mairin who pushed first through the door. Without waiting to be prompted, she dragged a small chair from the desk over to the rocker where Agatha sat. Mairin settled her small body against the wooden back slats and gazed at Agatha with intensity.

  “Are you sick?” she asked.

  “Nay, child, I am recovered from my chill. How kind of you to ask.”

  Mairin said nothing, just continued to stare as if assessing Agatha’s strength for herself. Rose quietly lifted a ladder-back chair from its pegs and sat some distance from the two.

  “Are you mad at me, like everybody else?” Mairin asked. Her voice was matter-of-fact, without hint of a childlike whine.

  Agatha leaned forward and touched Mairin’s arm. Her thin hand was pallid against the girl’s warm, fawn-brown skin.

  “I was frightened,” Agatha said, “like everyone else.”

  Mairin’s gaze darted over to Rose, then dropped to her lap. “Gennie said I was scaring people.” She raised her impassive face to Agatha. “I’m sorry,” she said. She did not promise never again to put everyone in such a state, and neither Rose nor Agatha demanded she do so.

  “My poor memory has grown old,” Agatha said. “Tell me again, Mairin, when is your birthday?”

  For once, Mairin looked startled. “I don’t know,” she said. “Nobody told me for sure, just that it was in the spring sometime.”

  “Rose? Have you any information?” Agatha asked.

  “Nay, I haven’t. We tried to hunt down Mairin’s birth certificate in Indianapolis, but we could find nothing.”

  “Well, then,” Agatha said, “what is to stop us from creating a birthday? Today is April 23, isn’t it? And it is Saturday. Tomorrow is the Sabbath. How about April 25 for your birthday, Mairin? We always celebrate each child’s birthday, you know. The Kitchen sisters can bake you a cake—I’m sure Sister Gertrude would be delighted to do it herself—and right after school Sister Charlotte will gather all the children together for a party. Would you like that, Mairin?”

  Mairin nodded with more vigor than usual. “Would you and Rose come, too?”

  Rose opened her mouth to remind Mairin of Agatha’s frailty, but the former eldress held up a shaky yet authoritative hand. “Rose will be there, of course, and I will come if I am able,” she said. “Now, you run along back to the Children’s Dwelling House. I know Sister Charlotte has special Saturday lessons planned, and you don’t want to fall behind. Besides, Rose and I have some things to discuss.”

  Mairin slid off her chair and stood awkwardly before Agatha’s rocker. “Thank you, Sister.” She reached out her hand and touched Agatha’s with the tips of her fingers, then pulled back quickly. Another child would have jumped up and down with glee, but Mairin’s body tightened, as if she wanted to keep her excitement from escaping. She closed her eyes and hugged herself. She stood that way for so long that Rose became alarmed.

  “Mairin, are you all right?” she asked.

  Mairin opened her eyes. “Yea. I was just telling Mother Ann that my birthday will be perfect if she’ll let my angel come, too.” In the time it took Rose and Agatha to digest her words, Mairin had scampered from the room.

  “Her angel?” Rose scooted her chair close to Agatha’s. “Could she mean this apparition she’s been following about?”

  Agatha frowned, her cloudy eyes focused inward. “We must watch the child carefully,” she said.

  “Do you believe she is in danger?”

  “I believe she has gifts,” Agatha said. “Extraordinary gifts. But she is too young and inexperienced to know how to follow them properly, to listen to them. I’m afraid she might misunderstand and put herself in danger.”

  “But if they are gifts of the spirit, how can they lead her astray?”

  “I’m not worried about the gifts that are part of her,” Agatha said. “I’m worried about the part of her that is human.” She closed her eyes and leaned her head against a thin blanket folded over the back of her rocker.

  “You’re exhausted,” Rose said. She worried constantly about Agatha’s health and felt guilty each time she asked her elderly friend to help her solve a dilemma. Agatha, Rose knew, would be content to move on to the next stop on her spiritual journey, but Rose had no desire to hasten the process. “I’ll keep a close watch over Mairin,” she said. “You needn’t worry.”

  Agatha’s blue-veined eyelids shot open. “Mairin came to us starving and unloved,” she said with renewed force. “We fed her and we’ve loved her, yet in some way she hungers still. That is why I fear for her.” Agatha released a long sigh and seemed to shrink in her chair. Rose leaned over her and lightly kissed the smooth skin of her forehead.

  “I think I understand,” Rose said. “Now you rest. I’ll keep you informed.” She closed the retiring room door behind her. She wasn’t certain she really did understand what Agatha had tried to tell her, but she knew enough to listen to the message. If she didn’t keep a close eye on Mairin, something even worse than an orphanage might be in the child’s future.

  Rose made a quick telephone call to Sister Charlotte, who assured her that Mairin had returned to the Children’s Dwelling House and that she and Nora would watch her carefully. She then visited Sister Gertrude in the kitchen to request a birthday cake for Monday and perhaps some homemade ice cream.

  “I know just what I’ll bake,” Gertrude said. “We have just enough of last fall’s crop to make a lovely dried apple cake. The young’uns love that one.” Gertrude’s large, bony hands splashed in a deep sink full of hot, soapy water as she washed up the dishes from the noon meal. Rose found a clean linen towel and began to dry. She’d been lax lately about helping the sisters with their work. Physical labor was important for her humility, and to be honest, she loved working alongside the sisters.

  “Oh, no need to do that, Rose,” Gertrude said, waving a dripping hand toward the clean dishes. “Unless you want to, of course. I mean, you’ve got your hands full with that hostel, don’t you?” Gertrude clearly hoped for a serving of gossip.

  “Andrew handles most of that,” Rose said. She gave a final wipe to a shiny copper-bottomed pan and hung it on a peg next to its comrades.

  “Oh, of course it’s Brother Andrew’s project, I know, but what with this latest excitement and all, I reckon you’re up to your ears keeping everyone calm over there.”

  “Calm?”

  “Well, a ghost, after all. Even if those folks are from the world, they can’t be used to sharing a house with a ghost.”

  Rose reached for another pan. “I wasn’t aware that this apparition had been seen in the hostel, let alone that it lived there,” she said.

  “Yea, it most certainly has been seen there.” In her excitement, Gertrude scrubbed a little too vigorously, and the pan she was holdin
g slipped out of her hands, sloshing foamy water on her apron as it hit the sink. Gertrude scooped up the pan and renewed her scrubbing. “Why, I had it straight from the housekeeper, Mrs. Berg. She’s a bit of a gossip, you know.”

  “Nay, I didn’t know.” Rose tried mightily not to smile. Amusement would surely hurt Gertrude’s feelings—and it might stem the flow of information.

  “Oh goodness, she does go on. But this time she saw it herself—the ghost, I mean—wandering the halls of the hostel.”

  “When was this?”

  “Well, it was just this morning I spoke with her—she came to talk over my new recipes. I reckon she felt like having a chat. I thought that dill potato soup was right tasty, didn’t you? Anyway, she said she’d been up and about the night before. Couldn’t sleep, she said. Thought she’d warm up a cup of milk. Goodness, I better remember to drop her by some extra milk tomorrow.

  “Anyway, she went down the back stairs to the kitchen, and she swore she saw a shade in a Dorothy cloak—she didn’t know it was a Dorothy cloak, of course, just thought it was an old-fashioned cloak, but I knew what she was describing when she said it was real long and had a short cape over the shoulders. Where was I?” Gertrude stopped scrubbing and stared at the dirty bubbles in front of her.

  “Mrs. Berg saw the ghost.”

  “Yea,” Gertrude said, nodding vigorously. “It was in the kitchen, she said, or at least it was just leaving. She said it glided through the door without opening it and disappeared.”

  Rose was beginning to suspect that Beatrice Berg had been imbibing something far stronger than warm milk. “Had she any idea what the apparition was doing in the kitchen?”

  “Nay, but she did say it was a mighty plump ghost, so maybe it was eating.” Gertrude cackled, then stopped suddenly. “Do ghosts eat real food?” she asked.

  “To be honest,” Rose said, “this is my first experience with ghosts, so I don’t know.”

  “My, there’s certainly been some odd doings in the village since that ghost appeared. Mrs. Berg complained that a new wooden spatula just up and disappeared from the hostel kitchen, and Sister Isabel said some of the best wool went missing from the Sisters’ Shop. Then Sister Gretchen said a big old basket disappeared from the Laundry—you know, the kind they use to take out the wash when they hang it on the lines? Why, it’s almost like that ghost is setting up housekeeping.” Two young girls arrived to help her prepare for the evening meal, and Gertrude quieted down. She obviously wanted more gossip fodder, but she knew better than to dig for rumors in the hearing of impressionable young ears.

  Rose hung the last clean pan and made her escape. She had an idea, and she wanted to follow up on it right away. Ignoring the path, she cut east through the medic garden behind the Infirmary and went straight for the Laundry. The story of a plump Shaker sister who danced alone at odd times, and for unknown reasons, was beginning to sound far too familiar.

  Despite unseasonable coolness, the Laundry had already reached midsummer temperature. When Rose opened the door, a cloud of heavy, hot air enveloped her. No one was on the ground floor, where the huge washing tubs, with their community-sized agitators, had finished their work for the day. Since no one had been hanging clothes outside to dry, Rose guessed the sisters would be upstairs ironing as much as they could before the outdoor heat made it impossible until autumn.

  Rose paused a moment to pray for guidance—and for patience. As eldress, Rose held primary responsibility for the sisters. They confessed to her regularly, and she endeavored to help them open themselves to deeper spiritual understanding. She guided them through the sometimes turbulent waters of community life. At times she doubted herself, yet she always did her best for the sisters, and they seemed to know that and to appreciate her assistance.

  All but one, that is. Since the day she’d arrived, Sister Elsa Pike had been a source of frustration and the cause of many of Rose’s pleas for patience. Elsa was a firm supporter of Wilhelm’s plans to thrust North Homage far into the past, and she felt protected by him. She openly defied Rose, resisted confession as long as possible, and made little effort to live in harmony with the rest of the Family. More than once, Rose had been prepared to tell her she must leave the village and go back to the world, where she’d lived most of her life. Yet each time the moment arrived, Elsa changed her tune. She would suddenly confess with great vigor and meekly do as she was told for as long as it took to show the community she was contrite. Rose suspected that Wilhelm coached her. Rose always let her stay, then soon enough came to regret her decision. The timing was just about right for Elsa to shed her contrition and return to her normal self. Fevered dancing worship, ecstatic enough to please Wilhelm, was one of Elsa’s specialties.

  It was no use waiting to calm down. This ghostly activity smacked of Elsa; Rose could see no other possibility—or at least no other possibility that felt convincing. She marched toward the stairway leading up to the ironing room. Before she reached it, a quiet pair of feet in soft cloth shoes slipped down the steps, and Sister Gretchen, Laundry Deaconess, appeared. Gretchen was normally a reserved, even-tempered young woman. Today she looked harried. Dark brown hair had escaped in clumps from her white indoor cap, and her eyes darted furtively back up the staircase.

  “Don’t tell me,” Rose said, “you’ve spent the day alone with Elsa.” She shouldn’t have said such a thing, of course, but experience had taught her that the other sisters tolerated Elsa far better when they knew their eldress sympathized.

  Gretchen flashed a quick smile and maintained a diplomatic silence. “Are you here to speak with me?”

  “Nay, with Elsa. Alone, if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind in the least. I have some clothes to collect off the lines. Elsa is upstairs.” She didn’t add and you’re welcome to her, but Rose was fairly certain she’d thought it. She was out the door with a speed born of relief. Rose, on the other hand, was dangerously ready for a confrontation.

  Elsa heard her footsteps and began talking before Rose reached the landing. “Don’t see no rhyme or reason to pressing these old work shirts,” she said. “The brothers just mess ’em up five minutes into wearin’ ’em. Those men don’t pay no never mind to how much work we womenfolk put into keeping them in nice, clean clothes.” She didn’t glance up from the brown shirt she was going through the motions of ironing.

  “The brothers work very hard, Elsa,” Rose said. “They have little time to worry about the wrinkles in their clothing.”

  Elsa’s head popped up in surprise. She was a sturdily built hill-country woman with a broad, flat-featured face that did not hide her emotions. At that moment, irritation pulled her thin lips straight and hardened her eyes.

  “Waren’t expecting thee,” she said. Elsa made a sporadic but determined attempt to use Wilhelm’s archaic form of speech, but when combined with her hill-country vernacular, the result often triggered fits of giggles among the unprepared. Rose allowed her to speak as she wished. Language was the least of her problems with Elsa.

  “You may leave the ironing for now, Sister. I have an important matter to discuss with you.”

  Elsa hesitated with her hand on the upended iron and her eyes on Rose. Apparently she decided that obedience would be a good idea, because she let go of the iron. She stayed behind the board, however, perhaps to keep an obstacle between herself and her eldress.

  “Come and sit with me,” Rose said. She indicated two ladder-back chairs with well-worn taped seats. “This shouldn’t keep you from your work for long. I know you want to get back to it.”

  Elsa sat without protest.

  “It has been some time since you cleansed your mind and your heart in confession, Elsa.”

  “Is that what this here’s about?” Elsa threw out her rough hands in a gesture of impatience. “I got a passel of work to do, and lessen you want to do it for me, I got no time for confessing.” Her “thees” and “thous” tended to slip away in the face of almost any emotion.

&nbs
p; “We all have very full days, Elsa. The other sisters put their hands to work every bit as hard as you do, but they make time to put their hearts to God.”

  “My heart’s with God all the time. I wake up prayin’ and go to sleep prayin’. I ain’t got a minute free of prayin’, so when would I do somethin’ needs confessing?”

  Rose took an especially deep breath and fixed Elsa with her sternest stare. “Perhaps you would feel more appreciated in the world,” she said, “where your spiritual fervor might serve as a beacon. Surely you are wasted here among us poor Shakers.”

  Elsa’s face tightened in a stubborn scowl. Rose had played this game with her many times, and both knew the rules. Elsa knew it would be difficult for Rose to send her away over Wilhelm’s objections. Difficult, but not impossible.

  “Ain’t got nothin’ to confess,” Elsa said, chastened but ever stubborn.

  “Well then, it won’t bother you to tell me how you’ve been spending your time these past few days.”

  A shadow passed across Elsa’s face. It was either doubt or confusion; Rose couldn’t tell which. “Ain’t done nothin’ worth the tellin’ of it,” Elsa said. “I work, eat, sleep—and worship, of course.”

  Noting Elsa’s ever-expanding waistline, Rose thought that eating probably came first. It was another in a long string of uncharitable thoughts about Elsa that Rose continually confessed to Agatha. At least she was able to hold her tongue this time. However, she dropped all attempts at delicate indirection and asked, “Have you been indulging in dancing worship alone at night?”

  “What? Why are . . .” Elsa’s mouth dropped open. Her astonishment quickly dissolved into red-faced fury. She stood up and planted herself in front of Rose, fists on her rotund hips. Rose stood as well, to avoid letting Elsa look down on her.

  “I ain’t that spook that’s been dancing around at night, if that’s what you bin thinkin’, and you got no call to go around accusin’ me. That there’s a real ghost. I seen it myself.”