All That Lives

by Melissa Sanders-Self

  Play “My Lady Fair”!

  The Spirit called the dance in perfect time to the musician’s notes. Thenny was my partner and we passed between Jesse and Martha on our left and Joel and Richard on our right. I watched Mother coax Father off the bench by sitting on his lap, covering his legs with her wide flouncy skirt. She held his face in her hands, then stood and pulled him up. I watched him smile reluctantly, lengthening his body. He stiffly turned her on his arm, and they joined the top of the square, dancing beside Jesse and Martha.

  “The Virginia Star”! Take the lady on your left …

  I was amazed the Being knew every reel and step, and could change its voice most unctuously, so I was uncertain if it were a stranger calling out the dance, or the Presence I knew so intimately. It hardly mattered, for we were a mixed-up mass of spinning folk. I noticed Mother’s hair fell down, hanging in brown curls around her face and in a long thick rolling wave all down her back, causing her to look like the young girl she must once have been. Her dress too was loosened, and when she leaned her head back, laughing, I saw the delicate white skin of her neck exposed to the top of her bosom. I looked away, feeling as I had earlier when I had seen Amanda Ellison, oddly embarrassed, as if I knew something I should not. Why had Josh Gardner not been present at the schoolhouse? Thenny and I took our turn casting off and I skipped down the line, my feet in perfect time with hers. We formed a bridge with our hands held high for our line to pass under and we laughed breathlessly, squeezing our fingers tight as the couples ducked through. I wondered if I would ever be so lucky as to share a dance with Josh. Thenny swung me round onto Jesse’s elbow and I flung my head back like Mother, looking up at the bright stars, the few remaining lightning bugs hovering at the line of trees. From the cabins I heard the mellow beat of a pigskin drum and deep Negro voices engaged in song, Zeke’s rising above the rest. The warmth of the firelight on Thenny’s flushed cheeks and her delighted giggles filled me with tremendous happiness as we spun through our moves. I felt no fear, for I was certain no violence would be enacted on me, and none was. I was allowed to swing and roll my body in time to the music, at one with the sap coursing through the veins of the trees and through my breast.

  Before long, all except the youngest children had exhausted themselves with dancing, and the musicians were forced to quit, complaining of sore fingers, and being in need of refreshment. All returned to the tables to share whiskey and cold water carried fresh from the well.

  “Drewry, take the young’uns to the house …” John Jr. slurred his words dreadfully, and sat with only one leg around the wooden bench between Jesse and Father, who laughed, realizing he had imbibed more strong drink than his young body was accustomed to.

  “How say you to retiring, young’un?” Together they helped him to his feet and I followed, with Mother, Thenny and the boys, all of us laughing so hard tears leaked from the corners of our eyes and made the torches blur.

  I will tell the rest of you a story, if you like …

  I heard the Spirit cajoling the folk who remained with the promise of a long evening, and I felt extremely grateful to the strangers as I held my skirt up climbing the hill. Though they might be unaware of it, they occupied the Being, involved as it was with their entertainment, and we were allowed a peaceful night of rest.

  A month of long hot days passed by while we endured the company of the strangers. They seemed intent on remaining on our farm until their supplies and ours were completely diminished. They urged the Spirit constantly to sing new songs, or to entertain their small minds with long tales, and I thought though they were fine to dance with, these outsiders had revealed themselves to be ignorant indeed. They did not understand even the simplest of concepts, and continually expressed great fascination regarding the Spirit’s ability to be in two places at one time, or to exist in both the past and the future. Their interest seemed to feed the Being tremendously, and it was most always present, night and day.

  I was sitting on the porch steps with Mother, engaged in stripping the leaves and twigs off dried slippery elm and the Spirit was with us, singing a sweet tune it had introduced as a French gardener’s song.

  When the day is warm and fine,

  I unfold these flowers of mine;

  Ah but you must look for rain

  When I shut them up again!

  Mother quietly hummed along, happily employed by her work, but I frowned, wishing she would in no way encourage the Being. I was also thinking they did not call it slippery elm for no reason. Each time I grasped hold of a twig, the branch twisted in my hand and poked my belly or caused another twig to break off and peck me on the cheek and I was having a difficult time. The Spirit’s song was like the drone of a menacing bee to my ears.

  “Ouch!” I sucked my pricked finger against my teeth, annoyed that I must learn such a laborious task in which I had no interest. The Spirit broke its song and laughed at me, but Mother was too patient with my frustration.

  “Look, Betsy dear, it’s simple, like this.” She took the branch from my hand and snapped each twig off, efficient as the saw blade at Polk’s mill. She held the final stick imprisoned between her knees and expertly sliced downward with her paring knife, separating the bark away. “ ’Tis for Father’s throat and we need much of it.” She laid the thin bark into a tightly woven vine basket by her side. I had suspected Father’s throat was troubling him, for he had been mostly silent for days. Though amongst the chaos engendered by the strangers on our land, his pain was barely noticeable.

  I was reaching for a new branch from the pile between Mother’s feet on the porch steps to make another attempt at my labor, when I felt a sudden vicious itching on my scalp.

  “Mother, there is something biting at my head.” I bent over for her inspection and I was not pleased to hear her moan.

  “I believe it is head lice.” She yanked a hair out and held it up to look more closely.

  The wooden cart of the Shakers rode up to the horse tie and I was surprised, for since they had camped on our land, the strangers had not often ventured out in their carts. The tall man in the black coat shouted up to us.

  “There is a plague of lice so severe amongst us, we are motivated to leave your farm.” He scratched his hat across his head. I was not sorry to hear they were going but I found a plague of head lice to be a disturbing thought. Mother and I laid our task aside and walked down to see them off. Behind the Shakers came the couples from Kentucky, who had already packed their carts and gathered their slaves from our cabins leaving flattened grass at the foot of our hill.

  “Farewell, Mrs. Bell, Betsy Bell. We will keep you in our prayers.” The woman who had waved to me that first morning waved again now from her seat in the wagon, then returned her hand to itching her neck. Her husband, the red-faced pudgy man, thanked Mother for her hospitality but then remarked, “I hope to cleanse my skin of every pest, invisible or not, when I away from here!” I understood a new attitude had risen amongst them. They had witnessed enough of our torture.

  Get gone, Shakers!

  The Being spoke from the blooming honeysuckle vines lining the road and the horses were shocked, bolting dangerously for a short spell, then stopping, as if they’d run smack into an invisible wall and could go no farther. The Spirit laughed when the Shakers’ wide brim hats blew off and it sicced the farm dogs on them.

  Caesar, Harry, Domino!

  The Being called the dogs by name up from the barn and we saw them run, barking at the Shakers’ cart as if it were a cornered rabbit they had hunted down, urged by the Spirit screaming.

  Go, hounds!

  The horses bolted, then halted, bolted, then halted, so it took nearly three hours for them to travel less than five hundred feet down our road. I watched the whole scene squirming as the red dry dust of the path disturbed by the horses rose and settled on my skin, contributing to the irritating itching of my head.

  We soon discovered everyone on our farm, including the slaves, had the nasty lice. It was easy for
the Negroes; they lined up like sheep in spring and Zeke shaved all their heads, but our family, having suffered profoundly so many afflictions of the Spirit, felt our pride in this instance and wished to show it through the keeping of our hair, infested or not. The boys’ locks fell only to their shoulders, and once trimmed, it took less than an hour to pick over their heads, but my braid was well past my bottom and it took over four hours from the day to oil, wash, comb and pick the nits off the million fine blond tresses down my back. I cried in pain as Mother pulled them out, hair by hair.

  Two weeks into the scourge she told me she could no longer devote so many hours to my grooming. The cucumber and okra pickling was behind schedule, not to mention the cheese making. She bade me braid my hair and tie a silk ribbon on the end, and she cut near a foot of it off. I tied up the other end and she put it away in her keepsake box, a small consolation to me.

  Every moment of our day not absorbed in picking nits, or oiling and combing our hair, we spent boiling pots of water for washing and disinfecting our living quarters, for they swarmed with the tiny live bugs, especially where the visitors’ pallets lay. Mother and I scrubbed on our hands and knees alongside Chloe with brushes and rags, until the wood shone with the vinegar and tea tree oil meant to repel the pests, but the following morning there they would be again, wagging their pincers at us, as we sopped them into the pails. Like infinitesimal scorpions, they dug into our scalps laying prodigious quantities of eggs, secured with a glue of life most certainly unequaled in all of nature.

  Mother frequently burst into tears, frustrated when her greatest efforts could not produce a cure. The final insult came the morning she discovered her leather kitchen book infested.

  “Chloe, look!” I heard her cry. “These parasites have feasted on the pages where my most prized recipes are recorded!”

  “Ah, Miz Lucy, the good Lord put the knowledge in your head and there it is still.” Chloe tried to comfort her as best she could, but it was awful to see Mother’s face, forced to burn what was left of her precious recipes, as the lice had eaten them to shreds. The Being did not speak, or give an explanation for the plague it visited on us, preferring to sing songs, quote passages of Scripture, and make meaningless disparaging remarks, through the long summer. I thought most of its energy must be used conjuring fresh bugs each day.

  It was endless. Pots and cauldrons steamed through the oppressive summer heat, as we boiled the clothes, mixed the oils, scrubbed and nit picked, day after day, week after week, until nearly the whole summer season had passed. We were prevented from going to school, or church or even to the store. Messages were carried and provisions dropped at our horse tie, and I began to wonder if we were the only people left alive on earth, could it feel any different?

  Twice I did the washing clad only in my petticoats, I was so certain no one would be about. I stood over the boiling iron cauldron of hissing cloth and the bare skin of my arms and legs tingled in the hot sun. I could feel the sun burning my skin to a darker color, but I did not care. I stirred the pot with the long wooden wash paddle and felt my near nakedness in our yard was in some way truly liberating after so many weeks under the critically watchful eyes of strangers. I found myself thinking of Josh as the linens boiled. It had been too long since I had seen his handsome face. Without a doubt he had heard of our lice and had been prevented from calling. As I stirred, my breasts lifted and fell and it seemed to me they had recently grown a bit larger. Sinful as it was, I amused myself imagining Josh Gardner hiding in the bushes watching me work, admiring my bare skin and round, lifted bosom.

  One afternoon, late in August when I had finished the washing and scouring, Mother took me out on the porch to oil and braid my hair. It hurt when she plucked the nits and then she pulled it extra tight behind my ears, making a worried clucking sound with her tongue.

  “Listen to the shoals, Betsy. I fear a thunderstorm is brewing.” I sniffed the air for rain, but all I could smell was tea tree and thyme oil in the soggy humidity, and underneath it the musty smell of blooming tobacco floating over from the fields.

  “Hunt down your brothers and fetch them from their fishing hole, for I would have them home.” She patted the tight braid lying down my back.

  “Yes, Mother.” I ducked away from her hand, pleased to be sent on an errand and released from further cleaning.

  The day was gray, but hot as the inside of the kettle when it would blow the lid off. I set out slowly, for it was difficult to move in the thick heat. No one, not even Zeke, was around, not by the stable or the dairy house, and every animal had retreated to what shade it could find and lay in it, unmoving. All the hogs slept in the shadow of their trough, or in the mud hole under their tree. The cows were asleep in the pasture, and in the stables even the flies were quiet. The only creature I witnessed with any energy was a young golden kitten batting at a cobweb on the corner of Father’s tobacco barn.

  “Here, kitty, kitty,” I called to her and she came quickly to my hand, allowing me to stroke her soft hot fur. She pulsed her head against my fingers a moment and her fine whiskers tickled my palm before she darted off, leaving tiny paw prints in the dust. I turned behind the barn and crossed the field to meet the path down to the stream. Passing under the green canopy of leaves, I drew a deep breath, and for the first time, I smelled the coming storm. Looking up, I saw the sky had turned a blackish blue, and I knew I ought to hurry.

  I jumped from stone to stone enjoying the cool smoothness of rock hidden in the shade all day. I listened for the boys in the woods, but heard nothing more than the rush of the water. I knew my brothers would most likely be on the beach where the stream met the larger river under the cavern. There the water fell over the rocks to make a near thirty-foot pool, perfect for fishing. It was some distance and I felt as I pushed through the green tangle of leaves the Spirit was with me, helping the branches to lift and part, but the air gave no bristle, and the Being did not speak. Time seemed melted by the heat of the day, and though I felt my limbs moving, my destination remained distant. The air did not circulate freely as it usually did above the rushing river. It hung heavy, viscous and menacing. I trudged on, and on, and then, just as I crested the hill where I might see the fishing hole spread out beneath, a breathless fear gripped at my throat and a great wind descended so harsh, the wide green leaves were whipped from the branches and flapped across my eyes. There was a rumble of thunder and the ground moved beneath my feet as if it were God’s plan to raise me up. I looked above, to the mouth of the cave, set some seventy-five feet deep into the rock outcrop-ping. Where were my brothers? The rock rose in a sheer cliff near two hundred feet above the bottom of the riverbed and I felt suddenly dizzy.

  “Drewry!” I called out when I saw him, down by the water’s edge, near the giant elm shading the fishing hole under the cavern.

  “Betsy!” He turned, but only briefly, and I saw he was struggling with something in the water.

  “Sister!” Joel jumped up and down behind Drew and I could not make out what excited him. Thunder cracked the air and I ran down the path, fighting a gale force that sent branches twirling from the trees.

  “Help me! He’s stuck and sinking!” Drewry held Richard’s arms, at the elbows, and the rest of him was disappeared in the red mud.

  Fools! There is not time for this!

  The Spirit arrived, along with drops of rain pelting from the sky.

  “Help us!” I cried, and Joel joined me begging, “You must help us! Please!”

  We had all heard tales of slaves and Indians sucked into whirlpools of quicksand by the Red River, but I had not believed them until now.

  “I’m losing him!” Drewry lost his slippery grip on our brother and Richard’s arms flailed wildly before he was sucked completely under the mud. I screamed and threw my body down, thrusting my arms into the mud to try and fish him out, as it seemed impossible he might die before our eyes. Drewry fell beside me, and Joel shrieked in hysterics on the bank.

  “Hold to me! Se
e if you can grasp him!” Drew anchored himself to the elm tree on the bank and fastened his fingers to my dress. I plunged my arms into the mud, but felt no reassuring limbs.

  Tell your brother next time, keep his toes from muddy whirlpools.

  Again I heard the roar of thunder and lightning flashed about us. To our profound amazement Richard’s body shot out of the quicksand like a lead ball from a gun. It was clear the Invisible had pulled him out, for there was no other explanation. He landed roughly at the foot of the elm tree, sputtering and choking with mud in his mouth.

  Quick, children, get away!

  “Richard, Richard, are you sound?” I scooped lumps of muddy sand from his eyes so he might open them, and his solemn face reminded me of when he was small. He nodded, clearly too exhausted to speak.

  Quick, go now!

  The Spirit slapped us with sharp fingers, and pricked our skin with pins, and the rain fell so hard I could not tell if it was needles or drops of water striking my cheeks.

  Move at once!

  “We must fetch him home to Mother.” Joel ran to the path and Drewry took up one of Richard’s arms, while I grasped the other. We carried him between us, stumbling through the hot rain and wind toward the path above the fishing hole.

  All at once, there was a CRACK, much louder than any thunder, and we turned to see a flash of white light and the giant elm struck by a bolt of lightning. It split the tree in two and a plume of black smoke rose into the rain as the trunk smashed down across the river, solidly covering the quicksand whirlpool forevermore.

  “Sister! The Being has saved our lives for certain.” Drewry’s posture froze, looking back at the scene of misadventure. I adjusted the thin body of Richard against my hip.