We are all bowing our heads now for prayer. Then Brother Luke stands before us for the long sermon before the vows.
“What I am going to preach to you today may seem a strange topic for a wedding,” he began, “but Brother Ryan and Sister Miriam want to make a public affirmation to Scripture before they make their vows.”
He glances sideways at Papa, who has straightened his slump up on his bench.
“At Armstead we are making our way through the Bible,” he said, sweeping one hand in front of him, “straight through, since last year. And since this couple want to stay in step with their brothers and sisters of their new home, their new community, they asked me to preach the sermons for the next passages we are studying.”
I can’t help looking at Papa’s darkening face, and many of the men are too.
“Of course this is something quite biblical,” Brother Luke says, in a voice that pours warm oil out over the group. “That’s what Jesus did, when He was asked to preach in His hometown of Nazareth—someone handed Him a scroll, and he opened it where they had been studying, and taught. So that tells us they must have studied some of the writings from start to finish.”
Papa leans his head back, just an inch, as if to say he will tolerate such here in his church. Because it is his wife’s daughter that is getting married. And then there’s Jesus, of course.
I am trying to listen, but the sound of Brother Luke’s voice makes me fall back into the rhythm of Matthaus said Matthaus said Matthaus said. . .
Then I jerk to attention. I know that something is about to happen, like when the wind and the birds in the maples become completely silent and look to the west and you know there is going to be a tornado, even though the sirens haven’t sounded, off in the distance in town.
I think other people know it too, because necks are stretched in the wordless space of sun-slits and dancing dust motes, and nostrils flare.
Brother Luke announces First Samuel and I think to relax because of Hannah telling off old Eli that she’s not drunk but praying, and ruddy young David and his slingshot and his harp and his friend Jonathan and his bow and arrows; but Brother Luke begins reading at the very end of the book, about Saul and the witch of Endor. It is as if the siren is now sounding in my head, the winds making the sound of a freight train.
I feel as if I have been ambushed, because I am not ready, I do not know if I can bear this story, not now, not today. But Brother Luke is telling about the disgrace of King Saul, who went from hiding behind piles of luggage to king of Israel to arrogant and shamed wanderer. I close my eyes and fold my hands like I am deep in thought, praying, involved.
And without me even trying, I see the whole thing dramatized in front of me.
Saul walks stooped as though apologizing for his height, or like his head can hardly bear the weight of a cloak drawn up over it, the head and shoulders above the others that caught the fancy of a nation and gained him a crown he no longer deserves, and I think he knows that his stature never earned kingship anyway. So he wraps his soul’s bankruptcy in a cloak and shaves his beard so he will look like a foreigner and he and two friends lie to the woman in front of him, a woman who says she can bring the dead back to talk.
It is because God has gone mute, Saul says to himself. If He won’t talk, somebody will. And his friends nod.
And when the mists over a ravine slit open and a man with grizzled beard shouts at Saul that his life is only tonight and tomorrow and the woman is crying she has been betrayed, the friends in starkness of terror run for their lives.
Then I know the truth of all this. In the midst of Brother Luke’s words and the nodding of people waiting for a wedding and the smell of caramel frosting just warmed by the sun, I know.
It is the message of Abel’s blood, of Moses and Elijah, of the unavenged souls under the altar, and now the message of old Samuel roused from rest.
The dead only come back to talk about death. It is the only script of those with no breath left in their voices.
And it must be my mother’s message, then.
“Ah,” I say aloud.
And then people are looking at me. Brother Luke pauses only one moment then speaks faster and louder as if to cover up my interruption. Before long he has finished with a promise to finish up the story of the sad life of King Saul on Sunday. He slaps his hands together with an “all done” motion.
Papa stands before the congregation and calls Miriam and Luke forward. I am relieved because nobody will be thinking about me.
I don’t think about them much myself because I am thinking about Mama. I am supposed to remember something.
Papa’s words in taking the young couple’s vows were so unremarkable that I can’t recall a syllable. Miriam stands nearly on her tiptoes looking at Ryan the whole time and whispers all her responses. Her two attendants look nervous, as if she might topple over, and they jerk every time she leans a bit more. Ryan looks scrubbed and earnest in his black suit and string tie. His hat sits so squarely on his head, so far down, that it looks like someone slammed it down as a joke. Out of curiosity I look at his attendants, the husbands of his sisters, and their little smiles and glances at his hat say that is exactly what happened.
Papa is booming out a blessing about coming in and out of gates and health to their navels and marrow to their bones now and forevermore throughout the ages and one of the little boys seems to choke. But then there’s a prayer and Ryan and Miriam are man and wife.
Except for Ryan and Miriam, who stand staring into each other’s eyes without blinking, it is as if every person in the enormous room has been tethered to a bungee cord that is released with the final amen. The women disappear into the houses to get the meat and other main dishes while some of the men heft benches onto their shoulders and start up the little hill to our house. There they put them in rows for all the unmarried people, girls on the right, boys on the left. Other men begin arranging the remaining benches within the tent toward the middle for seating and to use as low tables, and on the perimeters to hold food.
And the food comes down from the houses in armful parades: a flock of roasted chickens, mashed potatoes and ten kinds of gravy, creamed celery, creamed peas, creamed corn, salads congealed, salads tossed, salads layered. Bologna and cheese and sweetened peanut butter and jam and butter and meat spreads and every shape and color of bread ever conceived in an Amish mind. The cakes and pies and puddings and pickles and pretzels that were already on the serving tables are shoved, angled, tiered to make room.
I walk up toward our house after the wedding party, though I know I am not part. I’m the crazy stepsister. But the close relatives of both the bride and groom will eat in our kitchen where three tables have been shoehorned in to fit.
Miriam and Ryan sit at a table called the eck, in the corner of our living room, and she sits at his left as she will sit in his buggy. But for me—and I suspect, for every young girl who will enter that room—the eck is a crossroads of yearning, where a newly-married couple sits, murmuring to one another, eating as married but with ravenous eyes; the untouched just touching.
Reaching at right angles from the eck, the other tables stretch out like longing arms, with single friends of the bridegroom on one side and Miriam’s friends on the other. The young men and women who will join them at other tables in the living room bring heaping platefuls to Miriam and Ryan and I peek out and see the couple pretend to taste things. From that room, laughter rolls out like ripples on a windy pond.
Someone brings food to us in the kitchen and as soon as people sit down and begin to eat there is an awkward silence; for everyone knows not to talk to me, and Sarah is looking as if there was a plug somewhere on her body that had come loose and most of her drained out and she, too, can’t put two words together, even though I can see that she is trying. So after a fork clatters against her teeth over and over again, she dips a pretzel into peanut butter absentmindedly and chews on it without closing her lips all the way. I’m not hungry but I drink my
glass of lemonade and a glass of water from the sink. Ryan’s mother talks to her two daughters about their dresses.
But Papa roughs up Ryan’s new father-in-law and brothers-in-law with questions about their farm equipment and acreage. I know that he’s wanting them to admit that we are so much more prosperous, that it would be a service to their sister to let her stay here. They are polite, and talk about the gravy and the weather and how they’ll just go back down to the tent to pick out their own desserts, thanks anyhow. They don’t come back, and after a while Ryan’s mother and her daughters excuse themselves to go down to sit with their husbands because the games will be beginning soon.
We sit in our kitchen in silence, a downsized modern family of three now.
I lean toward Sarah and touch her arm. “We just have to get through today, the dinner tonight, and then it will all be over,” I say to her.
Papa rises stiffly and without a word walks out the kitchen door.
Sarah turns to me, her eyes staring ahead as her head revolves like a searchlight. When she looks at me, her eyes seem to focus. Then she puts her head down on the table.
At first I believe she has gone to sleep, but then her shoulders begin to shudder and I think she is crying again and this may be her only opportunity to do it when people would understand, a mother losing a daughter.
Almost all the plates at the vacated tables are mostly full of food. I get up and begin scraping the scraps into a bucket for chickens. It bothers me to feed them some of their companions, so I separate out the meat for the dogs.
I wash all those dishes and look around and see that Sarah has gone, to her bedroom, I suspect. I wonder how she was able to walk past the tables in the living room without comment. Then I realize I need to go to the bathroom and I will have the same problem.
Men bring trays of dirty dishes up to the house to be washed and the tables here in the kitchen are filling up again. They’ve scraped the scraps already, though, and I’m pretty sure nobody sorted out the meat, which grieves me. Poor cannibal chickens.
Even though many of the guests brought their own china to help out, much of it was used for serving plates and we’re eating in shifts. But over in some of the neighbor houses, people have set up tables for card games for the adults.
I look out the window. Outside the tent, some of the children are playing “Mother May I?” trying not to get their best clothes dirty and waiting for their turn to eat, though some of them are holding pretzels in each hand. To my surprise, I see Sarah coming around the corner of the tent, carrying a tray of food. She is walking like her feet are full of Novocain.
I try to distract myself with what I see out the window, but I can’t stand it any longer. I have to go through the living room to one of the bathrooms. But there’s so much laughter and someone has started a game of Pit and people are yelling, “Corn! Corn! Wheat! Rye!” at the top of their lungs so I hope I won’t be noticed.
But as I walk, one of the young men—a young man from Armstead named Larry, I see—is saying something else. And as his voice repeats the word the other sounds in the room start to fade. At first people seem to be confused, but then they listen and watch me. Some giggle nervously. Some join Larry. They say the word, too.
“Witch.”
At first I wonder if it’s a new commodity in the game—I’ve heard that new versions trade gas and coffee and platinum. Maybe this is a word I don’t know.
But I do know the word.
And the room is silent.
“Me?” I ask, stupidly.
Larry pulls his mouth to one side as if he is confiding to someone.
“Well, Leah, that’s what you call somebody who calls up the dead, right?”
I find myself stopping to consider this new thought.
I pull myself up as straight as I can.
“That is not true,” I say, and straighten my prayer cape. “I don’t know who instigated that gangrenous lie.”
The moment I say this, my cheeks flush and the silence in the room is filled with scoffing and laughter. They are laughing louder and longer at me than they were at the games or the jokes of a few moments earlier.
I look at Miriam, who has risen to her feet, a look of dismay on her face. She reaches out to me but Ryan catches her arm and pulls her down to her seat again.
“It’s true,” says Caleb-the-brat, who is too young to be in this room that’s just for the bride and groom and their attendants and unmarried friends. But he has a ticket that will justify his being here.
“It’s true,” he repeats. “I’ve heard her, lots of times, looking up to the sky and chanting all kinds of jibberjabber, like a spell.” He looks at me with a look too old for his eyes.
“And she writes some of those things, scribblings and symbols on rocks.”
I look again to Miriam, who can explain, who can help me.
But she won’t look up at me. She is scratching at the white tablecloth like she is doing sums with an invisible pencil.
“Miriam, tell about how Leah has special names for God, so she can know Him more personal-like,” Ryan says, and these words coming from his mouth are complicity, are betrayal. And they make me doubt my own motives. “And about always talking about dead people,” he coaxes, “and blood and all.”
Miriam looks up for a moment, but at a spot over my shoulder, not into my eyes. Ryan’s arm around her squeezes her shoulders forward and together.
“That’s right,” she says, dipping her head toward him. “Always the strangeness.”
But I am already walking toward the bathroom which lies beyond my bedroom. I sit shaking on the toilet, and my urine seems to scald me as it comes out, I am so cold.
I keep my eyes low as I duck into my room. I pull the blinds and put myself to bed without a glimmer of guilt for not helping any more with the wedding, because I know that any amount of work I do would be offset by how uncomfortable I would make the wedding guests.
I lie in bed and try to forget what just happened, and remember what I am supposed to remember. My thoughts turn to clumps of butter churned too long.
I pray and pray for Jesus to hear, to intercede, to help.
Just before I drop off to sleep I hear my mother’s voice and I am afraid I cry out to hear it. But of course no one comes to the room of the crazy girl.
And here is what my Mama says to me in a voice without breath:
In your father’s house
are many secrets.
If it were not so,
I would have told you
Spring
Chapter 20
That night, the universe went from winter to spring at eight o’clock p.m. in The Anchor community, state of Missouri, United States of America, planet Earth, God’s own special blood-redeemed solar system; and I bet nobody even noticed or remarked on it. My stepsister Miriam went from girl to woman in the honeymoon cottage, and Sarah became childless.
I stay in bed the next morning, listening to the sounds of Miriam and Papa and Ryan and Sarah in our kitchen, doing the duties of all newlyweds and the bride’s parents the morning after a wedding.
By the time I rise and dress, it is bright midmorning and Miriam and Ryan have not even left echoes here. Though I heard someone say they went home with some of Ryan’s cousins to visit other relatives for the next several weekends, I know the truth.
She will never come back.
Now is the great collusion of my thinking:
I sum what I have lost, I subtract myself.
I live with someone who would smother herself with a pillow.
I live with a man who is a diseased tree, still holding up branches. No pith, no pity, no mirth.
What does it mean to seek no breath, to bear no fruit?
I put on my threadbare white nightgown. It used to be Miriam’s.
I give myself permission to fade.
Chapter 21
It was night, empty, echoing night.
And then it was day without any sound that could pene
trate my mind.
And now it’s night again.
I no longer fear the dark. Here’s the joke on me: It is no worse than the light.
Like John the revelator, I see beasts and angels dancing in the rocks. Some hold the curtains between the worlds and tear them to shreds. Others wrap themselves in them. And then they sizzle into mists.
Two people come and go. I don’t want to see their faces.
Their words are syllables that hang in the air for moments and then vanish. I can’t catch them fast enough.
I don’t want to.
Chapter 22
The moon through my window is so bright. Somebody opened my black curtains. My room is suspended in silver pools between day and night.
My mama has come to me again. Every dark-eyed creature that sits sullen in the shadows turns away from her, as if she is painful to look at.
I know that I’m the guilty one, because I know I am supposed to know something. And I don’t know what it is.
I look at her with my eyes flat. I don’t dare to care.
Chapter 23
Sunday.
I get up because of what Mama said: “Go and listen.”
The house is cold and ever-empty.
And I get up because what is outside could be called a tent of meeting, and because I remember holding on to the feet of Jesus at an altar, and so I go to listen.
Papa does not see me—he is looking through his eyebrows at Brother Luke.
Sarah does not see me. I sit behind her, leaned forward, so Brother Luke can’t see me.
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