All That Lives

by Melissa Sanders-Self

  “What is the matter, Betsy Bell? Are you ill? Why was your family absent from lessons all this week?”

  I only shrugged and I could not form a proper aspect to reply to her queries regarding my welfare, and the Reverend’s talk of fooling people but not God made me feel guilty. I thought to tell her I was a young woman now, though the blood had nearly finished, but it was not the time.

  “You look ill!” Thenny was irritated with me, I know, for she shot an injured expression sharp as a whittled arrow at me before running off without a backward glance to join our friend Becky Porter, who was talking with Ephraim Polk and Mary Batts beside the church steps. She said something to them about me, for they all looked in my direction, but then Father returned to our buggy and our silent family climbed inside.

  Our Sunday supper began routinely. Father said the prayers and Mother said Amen, and Chloe served a hen, with ash-roasted potatoes. The smell of wild garlic followed her around the table as she bent to tend to our plates and I felt very hungry.

  “Miz Lucy, I done most of the washing up and I done set the beans to soak for tomorrow, and I was wondering if I might leave a little early so I can get home to my girls. They like it when I’m there before the dark.” Chloe spoke softly to my mother, but we all heard her request to be dispatched to her cabin.

  “This chicken is so tender I believe you must’ve wrung its neck with kindness, Chloe. Certainly, you may depart.” Mother waved her out the door and I chewed and swallowed my first delicious mouthful, thinking it was often lately Chloe did beg to be excused. Abruptly Father pushed his chair away from the table.

  “I cannot eat.” His voice was hoarse and he held his throat in his hand, assuming an expression of great discomfort.

  “Jack, you look so pale. What is the matter?” Mother set her fork down and turned to him, concerned. Father shook his head, apparently unable to speak. He stood, one hand at his throat, using the table edge for support. Mother also rose and, putting his arm around her shoulder, she helped him to the parlor. John Jr. and I stopped eating and followed them, to see what was the matter.

  “Something, a twig, is in my throat,” he gasped.

  “Good Lord, pray it is not a bone. Open your mouth wide, Jack.” Mother held a lamp above him, peering down into his throat. “I see nothing there. Most likely you have swallowed a bit of salt bread the wrong way.”

  “Water,” Father breathed, and John Jr. went to fetch it.

  “Betsy, return to the table. Your father will be fine.” Mother did not want me there and I did as she said, but it was difficult to believe Father would be fine, especially when I heard him choking out his words.

  “Lucy, there is something … sideways in my throat…. I cannot swallow.”

  “Drink this, Jack. Here, John Jr., help me get him to the bed.” At the table, Drewry, Richard and Joel looked at me, concern evident in their eyes.

  “Is Father ill, sister?” Joel asked.

  “So it would appear, but Mother says it’s nothing, we must not worry. We must finish our supper without them.” This was most unusual, as we always ate together, except during the harvest or market days when Father and John Jr. might be absent. We very rarely sat at supper without Mother. We chewed carefully, and did not talk. When we had finished, we had to clear away the plates and do our own washing up out back of the kitchen in the washing tub Chloe had thoughtfully filled with warm water. The light was fading slowly and the sky was a pure turquoise color, its shades of blue defined by the black silhouettes of the trees. I felt uncomfortable in the growing dark and I hurried through the task, running back inside with the boys. We slid the wooden bolt across the door.

  Mother had dosed Father with valerian and slippery elm and he had fallen fast asleep. She and John Jr. had moved him to his bed and she had readied two lamps for the boys and me to carry upstairs.

  “Will you tuck me in, Mother? Please?” I allowed my fear to be present in my plea, and she nodded and followed me up to my room.

  “Is Father ill?” I asked as I climbed under my quilts, hoping she would stay with me until I was asleep.

  “He is simply tired, Miss Betsy, and much in need of rest.”

  “What will happen in the night?” I feared he would be too tired to awake and help us pray and defend against the coming unknown.

  “Perhaps the Lord has heard our prayers and tonight our sleep will be undisturbed.”

  “Do you really think so?” It seemed unlikely to me, as I had grown quickly accustomed to expecting the worst.

  “Would I say so, if I did not?” Mother bent and kissed my cheek and I could tell she planned to depart.

  “I will say another prayer for Father before I go to sleep.”

  “Yes, Betsy, think of others always first, and the Lord will think of you.” She paused briefly at my door to smile good night, before hurrying downstairs. It was difficult to sleep, as I expected any moment an obscene assault of noise and abuse, but remarkably I did soon doze, and did not awake until the day had come. I was amazed to discover the night had passed as Mother had predicted, unfettered with harassment.

  the word is spread

  At the breakfast table Father appeared completely recovered from what had ailed him the night before, as he was eating a hearty portion of porridge with molasses, and a plate of bacon, ham, red gravy and biscuits sat before him.

  “Praise the Lord, children, for all His blessings.” Mother nodded discreetly in Father’s direction, but I was more impressed with our undisturbed evening of sleep than I was with his swift healing. “Your slates have been gathering dust.” She smiled her pleasure over our quiet night behind the thin lip of her teacup as though she felt our trials were over. “Chloe has packed your dinners into your satchels and it’s past time you set off for lessons.”

  “Yea, get your learning,” Father said, ripping his meat into two pieces with his fingers. “But, Drewry Bell, I should like to feed my owl today, so you must do your duty there before you go running off.” Father kept an owl as a pet in his tobacco barn, having found the creature when it was just an owlet while he was clearing a field in the autumn. Injured and left to die by its mother, Father had cared for it and easily nursed it back to health, as its problem was a simple sprain of the wing. The owl had grown into a magnificent tawny bird with a great ruffle of white around its neck, like the extravagant collars of French kings in our schoolbooks. Father had braided a long leather leash for it and kept his owl tethered to a post in the barn. On occasion he took him out to fly, but always trussed to the leash, so he could go no farther than halfway up the tall elms by the fields.

  My brothers were required to catch sparrows and mice to feed the owl and they each had their own methods for doing so and they each said their method was the best, as boys do, but Drewry’s seemed most sensible to me. He laid scratch and chicken feed in the dusty path as bait for his trap, then with a river rock he propped up a great wooden bowl, into the side of which he had driven a nail and affixed a length of twine. This string he carried in his hand while he hid behind the barn. When the sparrows came to peck the scratch, Drewry yanked the twine and brought the bowl down, trapping them inside. He used an old piece of tin to slide under the bowl, and when it was turned right side up the catch was handily delivered to Father, who liked to feed his owl privately. None of us ever asked to accompany him for we all knew when Father went to feed his owl it was his time alone.

  “But, Father,” Drewry answered his charge, “it will take some time for me to catch your sparrows, and Mother has just requested our lessons be attended to.” Drewry poured innocence thicker than Chloe’s molasses into his tone and I supposed he was not in a bird-catching mood.

  “You then, John Jr., will you do my bidding?” Father exchanged a quick glance with Mother when Drewry bowed his head as though Drew had disappointed him, but John Jr. proved he was the son Father could rely on.

  “I will gladly do the duty while my brother receives an education,” John Jr. said, wipin
g his mouth tidily with his napkin. I wondered what method he would use. He was skilled with his rifle and had just the week before succeeded in barking up a squirrel. The poor animal had been secure at the top of an elm in the woods when the ball shot from John Jr.’s gun hit the trunk of the tree beneath its belly, driving off a piece of bark as large as my hand, and with it the squirrel, without a wound or a ruffled hair, killed by the long fall to the ground. I wondered if he could do the same to sparrows but I did not care enough to stay at home and see it. I was excited to go to the schoolhouse.

  “The rest of you be off, then,” Mother said, walking us to the door where she had arranged our satchels for distribution to our shoulders. “Remember, tell no one, Miss Betsy,” she whispered in my ear, adjusting the leather strap of my bag.

  “I know, Mother.” I kissed her cheek, anxious to catch up with my brothers, for they were already running down the hill, past the well. I reached them where our path met the Adams―Cedar Hill high road and together we continued running and skipping, enjoying the glorious spring morning, smelling the delicious red earth, lush and steaming in the early sun. I wished to stop and stare at the brilliant stand of red sassafras and wild iris blooming by the roadside, but as a group we were anxious to reach the schoolhouse. We ran until we turned right off the road, onto our special trail through the hazel thicket, and there we were forced to walk single file through a tunnel of brambles. John Jr. had recently whacked through it with a machete, so no stray twigs caught at our clothing, but it did slow us down some. I was glad when we reached the place where the path let out and met the road at the wooden bridge where we could cross the Red River.

  Steam rose off the planks as they warmed to the morning sun and, beyond the bridge, shining on its own green knoll, stood our pleasant white clapboard schoolhouse. Without warning, I was overcome with emotion and I had to stop a minute to collect myself. I felt as if I’d been released from a nightmare and was awakening to a routine I had previously taken entirely too much for granted.

  “Hurry up, sister!” The boys and Drewry passed in front of me while I took a moment to fill my lungs with the spring air, adjusting the strap of my satchel across my breast. Perhaps I would have a chance to tell Thenny about becoming a woman. I looked down and saw a fish jump for its breakfast in the fast muddy water and I hurried after my brothers, marching up the hill in a triumphant parade.

  “Good day, good day, pupils, lovely Miss Elizabeth.” Professor Powell gave us a warm welcome, and I smiled and curtsied and took the closest seat, vowing I would appear more myself than I had the day before at church.

  “Bet-see had best-be recovered!” Thenny cried, singsong, during our game of tag at the dinner recess. She caught my skirt and I gave chase to her all about the lawn, thankful for her good nature, as it felt wonderful to have a laugh and to play. It was not until I was amongst the other children that I fully realized how unsettling the sleepless evenings at our house had truly been. How to be myself without speaking of how I was altered? Who was I before I was scared out of my wits? I did not wish to think on my future at all. I marked my brothers’ whereabouts from the corners of my eyes, but a tension I had not known I possessed began to slip off my body as my feet slipped over the slicker places in the new grass while playing tag.

  “Watch out, Betsy Bell!” Joshua Gardner, who was several years older than me and known by all the pupils for his keen intellect, played the game with us and it gave me a sudden pleasure to hear my name on his tongue. Professor Powell rang the bell at the doorway far too soon, but during the geography lesson I stole glances at handsome Josh from under my bonnet ties, hoping he did not see me looking. He was Professor Powell’s most exalted student and I had heard much was expected from his future. The Professor’s sonorous reading allowed my mind to soak up new thoughts, about the woolly mammoths in China, grammar and geography. The hours of the afternoon passed swiftly by. At the end of the day Professor Powell loaded our satchels with new Dilworth primers, then dismissed us, and my brothers and I emerged from the schoolhouse into a pink spring sunset.

  “So, Betsy, will you come again for lessons?” Thenny asked. She had to rush away, as her father expected her to lend a hand selling hard penny candy at the store after school. I looked and saw him smoking as usual on his porch. He waved his pipe, gesturing Thenny ought to hurry, as groups of the smaller children, freed from their lessons, were racing down the road. I regretted there had been no opportunity to talk privately with her.

  “Tomorrow, Thenny.” I waved goodbye and felt my throat grow tight as I knew I could not rely on tomorrow. I knew not what lay ahead of me in the dark evening. The days were lasting longer but already it was dusk. My brothers and I walked quickly over the bridge and through the hazel thicket, all absorbed in our own thoughts.

  “Let’s take the shortcut through the meadow,” Drewry said, leaving the road and looking over his shoulder to be certain we followed him down along the riverbank. I let the little boys go in the middle between us, and we moved single file. All at once, I felt a cold spot like the one by the stream when I was nine, and I looked about, feeling a bristle in the air. There was a tingling bright as pins around me and I had to stop. I called ahead to Drewry.

  “Look!”

  Across the field near the woods I saw flickering lights skimming over the tops of the grasses, flowing toward the river.

  “What’s that?” Joel backed up instinctively and took my hand in his.

  “Let’s see!” Drewry set off running, but swift as he was, the lights had gone before he neared them. The boys and I ran after him.

  “How fast those lights did shift!” Richard was intrigued.

  “Where did they go?” I disliked the prickling tension in the air.

  “There!” Richard spotted them again, drifting along the ground, moving in the distant direction of our house.

  “Could they be lightning bugs, clustered for some unknown reason?” Drewry squinted, looking across the meadow, and I thought he had a most pragmatic soul. The brilliant glossy shimmer sparking from the ground and rolling up the hill was clearly no mass of insects. It was not a pleasant feeling to see it moving toward our house with the day growing darker by the minute.

  “We must turn back and take the road,” I suggested, afraid to go forward.

  “No, Betsy, we must high our tails to home.” Drewry took off across the meadow without further discussion, and Richard and Joel and I ran after him, not knowing what else to do. The tall grass whipped my hands and face so I felt it was tiny needles dlespuncturing my skin and I clutched the strap of my satchel as it bumped against my hip. Please, God, keep us safe, I prayed, and with my eyes half closed I ran, trusting the Lord and Joel’s hand pulling me, and soon we reached our own hill and I summoned the energy to bolt the final stretch behind my brothers. We clattered across the porch with the last light and threw open the great cedar door.

  “Mother, Father, come quickly! There are lights in the fields and meadow!”

  “Strange lights, with tingling!” We shouted our information, crowding around Mother, who came at once into the hall, frowning at the commotion we caused.

  “What say you, children? Be calm!”

  Frightened, we struggled to catch our breath, talking all at once.

  “The lights were crawling to this house!” Joel tugged with two hands on Mother’s skirt, his nose wrinkling, as if he were about to cry.

  “ ’Twas heat lightning,” Father said. He shut his desk with a bang and strode toward us raising his voice. “I have seen it myself.” He maintained his tone of annoyance as the tears welled over Joel’s lids, and Mother pulled him to her side, leading him into the parlor to sit on her lap in the hickory rocker placed beside the fire. The rest of us hung up our coats and put our satchels away in silence under Father’s watchful gaze. Through the parlor window I glimpsed the lights flashing. They were not in the sky, but rather ran across the ground, sparking up in bursts, and they did not look like heat lightning or any
thing at all natural to me.

  When we retired that evening, our troubles resumed. It began with the gulping sound beside my ear in bed, but before I could call out, the covers were ripped from my body and my hair was twisted at the nape of my neck and nearly pulled off my head. Father tested the affliction and experimented with not lighting the lamps until we could no longer stand it. Once the flame illuminated my room, all was revealed to be as it had been the evening before last, unaltered and silent as the dead night beating down around the house. We dozed unhappily in my well-lit chamber.

  There was no question of school the next day, nor for the rest of the week, as each night the torment increased. In the day, we rested alone, or in silence together, and the feeling within our house was similar to illness, for discomfort accompanied our every breath. We attended only to the most necessary tasks, like visiting the outhouse and eating, to sustain our slight energies. We crept through the rooms as though the ground beneath us were a robin’s shell and we were challenged not to crack it. Our souls focused on the too quick passing of the minutes as the sun moved overhead. We prayed and pretended to ourselves there were ways and means to stave off the dreaded setting and, thus, another night of torture. Meanwhile, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday passed each alike. The days were silent, and each night the torment increased.

  Near the Friday supper hour, I was sitting in the chair before the front parlor window, for I had just finished mending a white cotton slip for Mother, when looking up, I noticed Reverend Johnston on his chestnut horse turning off the high road to our path.

  “Reverend Johnston’s come to call!” I shouted for Mother to come from the kitchen, for I had hoped some good person from our community would notice our days of silent absence from school and Thorn’s store, and call, inquiring after us. Mother did hurry, and looked only briefly outside to confirm I spoke the truth, before turning with some desperation to Father, who was at his desk, writing in his book of accounts.