All That Lives

by Melissa Sanders-Self

  “Do not be afraid, dear Betsy,” Mother said, patting my leg with her hand under the quilts. “Your father will soon discover the cause of this disturbance.” He had left the doorway and I heard his footsteps descending the stairs.

  “I pray that will be so.” I was calmed by her warmth and confidence and I allowed my lids to shut over my stinging eyes. Though we were troubled by no more noises that evening, I slept only fitfully in the well-lit room.

  I woke early to the sound of furniture being moved about in the hall. I looked outside and saw the day was not a sunny spring one, but instead, the sky was overcast with a gray pallor that reminded me of the winter months. It looked not at all warm. I left Drew’s bed and discovered Father, Dean, John Jr. and Drewry were in my bedroom, having moved my heavy wardrobe and my washstand out into the hall. They had up-ended my bed so it stood against one wall, and my whole floor was in plain view. Father held a crowbar in his hands and was set to pry up the boards.

  “Some vermin could be hiding in between the ceiling and the floor,” he explained, ripping the first board out. The creak it gave squawked like the wood splitting we had heard the night before. I shivered in my nightdress, unhappy to be reminded of it.

  “What hides there, Father?” I wondered what he might find. On his hands and knees he leaned forward, peering into the empty space between the boards.

  “I see no nests or evidence of animals, but I will look some more,” he said. I realized he intended to rip apart the whole house if need be, to discover what visited such fear on us. A hopeless panic came over me that he would find no vermin. My stomach felt queasy and I put my hand across it as I wondered, if not vermin, what would he find? What could make the sound of birds and of gnawing and gnashing wood, and yet be invisible to the eye? My intuition screamed it was something unlike anything I had known before, something uncommon on this earth, and I wondered, why had it come to us?

  I turned back into the hall, removing from my wardrobe cotton stockings and a plain cloth dress the color of the hickory nuts used to dye it. I walked to the boys’ room to change and it felt odd to dress there, but odder still was the cause of it. I did it quickly, disliking the sound of ripping wood issuing from down the hall. I felt again the nausea in my stomach and I hurried down the stairs and into the kitchen where Mother was stirring a pot of beans and bacon at the stove. There were two brown vine baskets of laundry and ironing for Chloe and another of mending for me by the door and it made me tired to see them.

  “Good morning, Betsy. How are you this day?”

  “I am well, Mother.” I know not why I lied to her, but I knew my true feelings would make her sad and I did not wish to add my fears to Mother’s pile of burdens, like another basket at the door. Unfortunately, the smell of cooking beans was abruptly repugnant to me and I stood and ran out the back where I vomited into her blue flowering rosemary bush.

  “Dear Betsy, I should say you are not well at all!” Mother followed me, and stroked my back. She scooped a bucket of cold water from the barrel where the rainwater was collected by the back door and washed my sick into the ground, before leading me back to the kitchen. “Sit, child.” I sank into the chair by the woodstove and she brought me a wet muslin cloth smelling of comfrey. I closed my eyes while she gently wiped my face. “You have no fever …” She felt my forehead with the back of her hand, then stroked my cheek. “Sometimes with the bleeding, the stomach is upset.” She ran her fingers over my eyelids, meaning I should open them, and when I did, she took up my chin, and tilted my face, so she could look me in the eye. “Are you frightened, dear girl?”

  “Yes, Mother, truly I am!” I threw my arms around her waist and began to cry, while she combed my hair with her fingers. The touch of her hand pulled the truth from me. “I am afraid it is some evil thing that visits us and I know not what I might do to keep it from me!”

  “Elizabeth! What nonsense. There is no evil in this house.” Mother took a step away from me and frowned. “You know not the many possibilities of nature. We are greatly concerned with the noises we have heard, why else would your father at this moment devote his day to taking the house apart from the inside out?” I saw Mother was most distressed and upset herself, which frightened me the more. She turned to stir again the bubbling pot, lest it begin to burn, and I watched her shoulder blade rise up, spooning round the thickening beans. She sighed and turned to look at me. “Your father and I will solve this mystery, Betsy,” she promised. “With the good Lord’s help. And yours.” She laid her wooden spoon across the top of the pot and placed her hands on my shoulders. I could see from the many lines about her eyes, she too was tired. She held my gaze with hers. “Of utmost importance is your health and constitution. Go lie in my bed and I will make you a peppermint tea.”

  “No, Mother, I will take the mending and sit in the parlor.” I wanted to prove I too could be strong and brave in the face of our afflictions. I sewed all that day, finishing more than half the basket of mending, listening to Father move from room to room upstairs, prying up boards and replacing them, looking for he knew not what. I was not surprised when he found nothing at all, apart from dust and some old mouse droppings which were clearly unrelated to the noises we had heard. Supper was again solemn and silent, as a great heaviness weighted our necks when we bent them in prayer.

  “Dear God, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name …” Father’s voice held a somber intonation, “… for Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory. Amen.”

  “We will have a special Bible reading this evening, won’t we, Father?” Mother’s good cheer was out of place and though I did appreciate her effort, we remained a sullen group. Only Joel and Richard turned their heads, inclined to abandon their glumness.

  “What story will you read, Father?”

  “Whatever your mother likes.” Father wiped his mouth with his napkin and smiled at Mother acknowledging her courage, but I noticed he was merely picking at his food.

  “I should like to hear a story of God’s love, perhaps John fourteen, on the coming of the Spirit, how He will be in you,” Mother said, her eyes lit with good humor. She knew the connotations such a reading would bring. All around the table our mouths began to curl slightly upward, as each of us pictured Old Kate at the pulpit in her Sunday finery, imbued with the glory of the good Lord. Mrs. Kate Batts was called Old Kate by everyone, though she was about the same age as our mother. I was happy they shared few other traits, for Old Kate was quite unusual in her affect and appearance. Unpredictably outspoken, she weighed over two hundred pounds and dressed without regard to style or fashion. Our entire community took some delight in mocking her, and her strange ways were the focus of conversation as frequently as the topic of the weather. She did cut a distinct figure, traveling the district up and down the high road, peddling mostly stockings, woven from cast-off scraps of wool begged on previous visits from farm to farm, all to create an income. Her poverty was so severe, it was said she spun her cat hair into yarn. Mother both donated to her and bought from her. I’d heard Mother say that those who did not gave the excuse Old Kate worked her slave woman long into the night by the thin light of a single candle, but the more likely reason was they did not have charitable hearts. Old Kate’s husband, Ignatius, was a crippled invalid, and we never saw him out-of-doors, not even in church. He sat hunched at the front window of their house, on the Adams―Cedar Hill high road, every day of his life. They owned a fair piece of property that bordered ours in places, but because of her husband’s illness, Kate ran their farm, and it wasn’t much to speak of.

  Her best known eccentricity was her habit of filling with Spirit at our Sunday sermons. We recalled together how tolerant was the resignation on the Reverend Johnston’s sturdy face when Old Kate shook the church, falling to her voluminous knees, wailing, “He is in me! Jesus, the Spirit of the Lord is in me!” Isolated titters of laughter from members of our congregation were usually hidden by the thunder of her declaration and by those who supported her
religious impulses and called encouragement to her, “Praise the Lord, Kate! O praise the Lord!” The most humorous part came after the Spirit in her waned, and the sermon was accomplished and we were released outside. All across the church lawn groups of children gathered, laughing, pretending to be Kate Batts filling up with Spirit. Boys rolled on the ground and wailed and though their mothers called “Stop being silly!” from behind their gloves, no one was overly concerned, as it was all in fun. It was a happy memory Mother had conjured for us.

  We adjourned to the parlor, and Father sat at his desk and drank from his flask for somewhat longer than usual, while John Jr. stoked the fire too much, his nervousness as apparent as the bright sparks shooting up the chimney. Richard and Joel sat either side of Drewry on the bench, and Mother had me sit before her on the rug, so my hair could be brushed and braided anew. Father settled himself in his chair and read slowly.

  “If ye love me, keep my commandments. I be in my Father and ye in me, and I in you.”

  Richard and Joel giggled and made faces, as though they would fill with Spirit, and Mother smiled, indulging them, using her fingers to pick out a knot at the base of my neck.

  “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father.” I listened, heartened by Father’s reading.

  “God loves me, doesn’t he?” I asked Mother later, when she came to see me settled in my bed.

  “God loves us all,” she answered with certainty and waited at my bedside until I breathed regularly with sleep.

  I awoke in the dark to the distinct sounds of lips, smacking near my ear, and from the foot of my bed came a gulping sound, as if some human being were gasping for air. I was terrified and paralyzed with fear, and abruptly my quilt was ripped off my body and my braid twisted from behind and pulled so hard my head was raised with a painful jerk off the bed. I feared it would be pulled off my shoulders, so violent was the force. I screamed, and heard both Richard and Joel in their bedroom screaming too. The gulping grew louder, a sound like someone taking too much liquid in their mouth, being forced to swallow. It sounded oddly familiar, and I knew I had heard it before but I knew not where or when. John Jr. came running, with his candle lit, and Drewry too came running, but only to light his candle and return to the little boys. With light, all our screaming ceased, for we saw nothing apart from our selves and our things in our rooms.

  “Brother, it touched me! It hurt me!” I gasped, reaching out for John Jr’s. hand. I pulled him to sit close beside me on the bed.

  “What touched you? What was it? Why were you gulping like that?” John Jr. drew his eyebrows together in inquiry, inspecting my face.

  “I was not!”

  “I heard the same in our room.” Drewry and the boys arrived, with Drew talking. “It was as if a person was swallowing too great an amount, and choking with the effort.” His description agreed with mine. Behind him in the darkened hall the gulping came again. It was evil and it was at my door.

  “Keep lit the candle! Get the lamps!” I cried, as Richard and Joel took my quilt up off the floor. I held my hand to the back of my head and felt where my hair had been pulled. The pain was gone, but I was certain it had happened. “It is something unnatural here with us.” I spoke aloud my fear.

  “How say you, darling daughter?” Father asked, arriving at my door with Mother behind him, both in their nightclothes, each carrying an unlit lamp in one hand and a candle in the other.

  “It ripped the quilt from off my bed and pulled my hair so hard I screamed in pain, not only fear.” I was upset.

  Mother sat beside me, put her arm around my shoulders, and pulled me close. The gulping sound continued, accompanied by a raspy chorus of choking, and we all froze, listening to the grotesque smacking of lips, considering our situation.

  “Jack, we must light every lamp and you must lead us all in prayer,” Mother whispered, not frightened so much as greatly concerned.

  “Let us move downstairs and see if we are still disturbed.” Father turned and led the way. The gulping noise faded in and out in time to the flickering light of our candles in the hall. John Jr. displayed great courage walking toward it, with us as witnesses, and when his candle reached the boys’ room, the noise did cease. We went quickly down the stairs, bumping against one another as we struggled to stay near.

  The lamps were lit and set on the desk and on the side table in the parlor, then Father built the fire up into flames. We joined hands in a circle, standing on the parlor rug and Father began our prayer.

  “Dear God, who art in Heaven …”

  From upstairs came a frightening crash and thud, as though our wardrobes and chests were thrown to the floor. John Jr. dropped my hand, thinking he would investigate the noise.

  “Stay here,” Father ordered, and he continued to pray, “O Lord, deliver us from evil, for we are among the righteous.” The sound of our beds being ripped apart was joined by the noise of a metal chain dragging what I thought might be a large stone or some other unfathomably heavy object across the floor above our heads. I was deeply afraid and I was not the only one. Drewry and John Jr. had their faces set in stoic imitation of our Father, but Richard and Joel had quivering chins, and even Mother bore an expression of dismay.

  “Jack,” she looked to him across the circle, “we must repent our sins.”

  “Who here has sinned?” Father glared at us and I felt unable to speak, so tight was my chest with fear, but Joel squeezed my hand.

  “I have sinned,” he cried through tears. “I stole a carrot from Mother’s garden and fed it to the horse!”

  “The Lord forgives you,” thundered Father and I did wonder how he knew, but the sin was trivial enough, it could not warrant such persecution of us all.

  “I have sinned.” Mother did not raise her voice, and I strained to hear her over the pounding destruction taking place above our heads. “I have sinned, for I have not trusted you and your wisdom in every moment, dear God. You must know what forces you have sent among us. I renew my covenant of trust in you, Father, though these horrid and unnatural events wreak havoc with my faith.” We heard a clattering of stones cascading down our steps, so many and of such various sizes it was as if the Red River bottom accosted us.

  “Look!” Drewry ran and grabbed a stone and brought it back to Father. “It is a rock, exactly as it sounded.” Drewry’s simple observation was accurate and terrifying, for if the rocks were actual and they obviously were, what would remain of our splintered upstairs?

  “I have also sinned.” Father took the rock into his hand and cast it down hard, in anger, against the floor. “Yea, I have sinned no more than most men! Why, God, do you inflict this trial on our good family?” To our surprise, the disturbance precipitously ceased. We sat a moment in silent shock, then I began to cry with relief, and I had to strain to listen while Mother continued her prayers.

  “Father, forgive us and hear our promise unto you; we will forsake you not, and our faith shall be firm in adherence.”

  No one wished to return upstairs and Mother and Father did not request that we do so. They retired to their bed and squeezed Joel and Richard in with them, while Drewry, John Jr. and I made do with quilts on chairs before the hearth. The lamps burned without wavering, and the hissing of the fire was the only sound for the rest of the night.

  The next day was a Sunday and at dawn, though the whole family was weak and fragile with no sleep, Father woke us.

  “Get dressed, for we are going to church. I have been to your rooms and all is intact.”

  We made a path in the rocks piled on the stairs and went to dress. My room was not the heap of wreckage I expected, instead all was normal, except my bed was unmade and missing the quilts I’d left downstairs. From my window I saw the new day, and though the sun glinted under the clouds, there was the promise of it in the sky. I changed from my night-clothes into a cotton petticoat and my pokeberry-dyed church dress. The light of day made the dark
experience of the night before more difficult to understand. How could it be that we should suffer so, and yet arise with our environment undisturbed and as it always had been?

  I heard the sound of many steps in the downstairs hallway and I peeked out to see Father instructing Dean and Chloe in removing the rocks from the steps. A tight feeling of fear grew in my stomach, and I hoped Dean and Chloe could finish the task before we returned from church, as I could not stand the sight of those rocks. They were a too vivid reminder we were experiencing something very much out of the ordinary in our house. I hoped Father would tell the Reverend Johnston of our troubles, and I thought it would be a great relief for me to inform Thenny of my suffering, but at breakfast Father squashed that plan, reminding all of us we must keep a vow of silence regarding the dreadful disturbances.

  “Tell no one,” Father ordered, giving each of us his strictest gaze, insuring we would be circumspect.

  We rode in our black buggy down the Adams―Cedar Hill high road, past Kate Batts’s house to Jesse and Martha’s homestead. We picked them up on Sundays, for Mother enjoyed the opportunity to converse with the newlyweds. Without permission to speak of the one thing on my mind, I found I could not speak of anything at all, and I paid no attention to the idle chitchat that passed between Martha and Mother, though I did notice Martha did most of the talking, describing in detail a problem she was having germinating peas.

  At church, I found the sermon not particularly inspiring or relevant to our troubles. The Reverend read of Jacob and Esau, emphasizing how Jacob fooled his father, but not God. I prayed silently while he spoke, hoping in His own house I might have better success with my prayers and pleas for the Lord to pity us and put an end to our misfortune. When the sermon was over and we were released out-of-doors, Thenny tried to speak to me.