A Parchment of Leaves

by Silas House

  Oh glory glory glory, glory to the lamb.

  Hallelujah I am saved and so glad I am.

  Oh glory glory glory, glory to the lamb.

  Hallelujah I am saved and bound for the promised land.

  On Monday I am happy, on Tuesday I am full of joy,

  On Wednesday I have peace within that the devil cannot destroy.

  On Thursday and Friday I am walking in the light,

  And Saturday is a heavy gloom but Sunday’s always bright.

  Now a lanky man stood beside the women and strummed along on his guitar, and a woman took a tambourine from the front pew. The song got much faster. The women patted their feet or slapped a hand against their thighs. Many of them started to clap along to the beat, and their arms moved out quick, their elbows bowing out in great big motions. They leaned their heads back and closed their eyes and sung louder.

  Birdie stood beside Esme, clapping. She sung along. Esme held on to the back of the pew in front of her tightly. She nodded her head to the music and feebly patted one foot. I looked at her hands. Her skin was chalky and thin. Her veins were cloudy blue. I started to stand with Esme, just as a sign of respect, but I knowed how the Pentecostals would react. A person who had not been baptized and stood in the church was seen as giving a sign that they wanted to repent. I didn’t want a crew of them pulling me toward the altar.

  The music was stirring, though, and I longed to clap along. Saul sat stiffly beside me. I wondered how many times he had sat in these pews as a child. Is that why he hadn’t gone to church more, once he had grown up—because he had been forced to go so much as a child? As if he knowed I was thinking of him, he reached over and took hold of my hand.

  The choir changed songs, and the piano player slipped right into the next. They sang even faster. The music seemed to be taking possession of everybody in the church. Everyone except me and Saul was standing now. Clapping and hollering, raising their hands in praise.

  On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand

  And cast a wishful eye

  To Canaan’s fair and happy land

  Where my possessions lie.

  I’m bound for the promised land!

  I’m bound for the promised land!

  O, who will come and go with me?

  I’m bound for the promised land!

  One of the women started running the aisles. I knowed that this was called “shouting,” but the woman wasn’t saying a word. She trotted up and down the aisles, slinging her arms from the sides of her body. I could see a shiver working its way up her back. She danced in place, taken by the Spirit. She danced so hard that the bobby pins loosened in her hair. Her hat fell to the floor. Other women joined her. Men stepped out into the aisle, too. They shook their arms over their heads like they were pushing at the air, and spoke in tongues. The words were beautiful. I couldn’t help but wonder if they were putting on, though. I couldn’t understand how a person could be overtook like this, hypnotized in such a way that they started speaking words that were not their own. Great streaks of sweat run down the men’s shirts. The women were all shouting, and one of them fell to the floor, where she started shaking like somebody taking a fit. The pastor grabbed a towel from a stack on the front pew and handed it to one of the women, and she spread it out over the trembling woman’s legs so her dress wouldn’t ride up to shame her.

  Now Esme’s head seemed to roll about on her neck. One hand jabbed at the air, her fingers held very straight. She started to speak in tongues, and then I knowed this was genuine, for it made chills run up the backs of my arms. The words rolled from her mouth like strange wisdom. I had heard that the Pentecostals sometimes broke out in Hebrew. I didn’t know if this was what Esme was speaking, but it was sure enough a foreign language. Birdie kept her eyes on the singers. How did she know the words to this song, too? Maybe Esme had taught them to her.

  Energy pumped through the church like something unleashed. I could feel it traveling through the air, running from the pulpit to the back pew. I felt it wash through me and near about knock the breath out of me. Surely the Spirit was here. I had never knowed such a feeling in my life. I held on tight to Saul’s hand and he looked over and smiled. He was used to all of this. He had told me that I might be scared by the people shouting and speaking in tongues, but I wasn’t. Not one bit. I envied them their joy, even if I didn’t understand it.

  Then there was a woman leaning over the pew in front of me. Tears run down her face, but she didn’t wipe them away. Her brow was fretted together as if she was bewildered. She bent over the back of the pew, and her breath was hot in my ear. “The Lord is dealing with you,” she said, her words quick and breathless. “Come pray with me.”

  I couldn’t just come right out and say no.

  “This world is a short-timer, honey,” the woman said, her face so close to mine that I thought I could smell the salt on her cheeks. “But eternity lasts forever. Come give your heart over, let the Lord take away your problems.”

  “I’m not ready,” I managed to say, and I realized that my lip was trembling.

  The woman put a hand on my shoulder and bent on her knees in the pew in front of us. She had a kind face and the prettiest red hair, which was pulled into a tight knot atop her head. “You just think about it,” she said, but the music was so loud that I had to read her lips. I nodded. The preacher stood on the altar before a line of people who seemed to sway before him. He had a bottle of oil in one hand. He turned the bottle up to let a drop fall onto his thumb, then pressed his thumb onto the foreheads of all the people in line. One woman fell back as if pushed, but two men caught her by the arms. Esme had slipped out of the other end of the pew and was making her way to the prayer line. Birdie walked beside her, holding on to her hand. Seeing this, I finally did cry. I hoped that no one could see me.

  Pastor put his whole palm flat against Esme’s head, leaning his head back to pray, and people gathered around her, touching her back and praying together. I thought, These are good people.

  The crowd parted, and Birdie led Esme back to the pew.

  And then Esme was falling. Her body seemed to fold up and she fell right on top of Birdie. No one seemed to notice for a moment, and the music went on. Birdie laid there with her legs under Esme, shaking her. Saul sprung to his feet and gathered Esme up in his arms.

  She was limp as a rag doll. He held her for a long moment, the way he might have held Birdie. Slowly the people began to notice what had happened, and the music faded—first the singers, and then the piano, and then the guitar. Some people were so caught up in the Spirit that they continued to speak in tongues, and their voices seemed to echo on the gathering silence.

  The pastor rushed over. He anointed her forehead with oil again and prayed aloud. The congregation joined in, their voices gathered in one single prayer of a hundred different words. I felt like I could hear each prayer on its own, all at the same time.

  “O God, touch our sister, right now, and make her whole. Take this affliction from her body so that she may stay with us awhile longer—”

  “Touch her, Jesus. Heal her body. You have the power if it be your will, sweet God—”

  “We know that all things are possible by your grace, O God, and we have the faith to sustain thy will, O God. Dear Lord, be with our dear sister and restoreth her soul for thine kingdom, O God—”

  Saul had closed his eyes. He pulled her up closer to his face like he was breathing in her smell. I noticed her small feet, dangling alongside Saul’s leg. Her hands, palm up. I have killed her, I thought. With grief.

  After a long time of thundering prayer, they all seemed to know when to stop at the same time and moved back a bit to give her air. America Spurlock pushed through and broke a smelling salt beneath Esme’s nose, and Esme come to with a jerk. She looked up at Saul like she was waking up from a dream. She put one hand to his face but then let it fall to her side again. It seemed she could not bear the weight of it.

  I pulled Birdie up onto my hip and w
e walked out of the church. Everyone looked after us without a word, not knowing what to say. Pastor followed, saying things that I paid no attention to. Saul said, “She just needs to rest a bit. Go on with your meeting,” in a polite manner, and Pastor stood in the door as we walked away.

  Saul carried her up the road, and Birdie cried into the nape of my neck. All around us, birds were singing, as if they knowed it was Easter and their praise needed to be heard.

  Twenty-five

  I tended to Esme the best I could. The doctor had come from town that first day and said there was nothing to be done. “Her body’s just wore slick out,” he had said. But I couldn’t accept that and stayed by her side, determined that she would come out of this. She couldn’t raise her head up or do a thing for herself, though. She laid there three days and I never left her. I fed her, changed her sheets, helped her to the slop jar when she needed that. I brushed out her hair and hummed songs to her. Sometimes she awoke from her short naps and looked about the room as if lost. She put her hands to my face, like she was trying to figure out who I was, and then whispered, “Vine.”

  Aidia stayed down there, too. I have to say that much for her. She cleaned the house and kept soup on the stove. Serena hovered about, shaking her head. I dreaded seeing Serena coming with her doctor bag, as I knowed it was full of bad news. She come out of the house one evening after I had fled to the porch, and said, “Prepare yourself, now. She’ll not see another Sunday.” Even though the doctor had said the same thing, I hated to hear Serena agree. I was so mad at her honesty that I had to keep myself from asking her, What do you know? She was nothing but a midwife, anyway. Why should she go around acting as if she was a doctor?

  Esme had the worst time at night. She couldn’t seem to sleep and talked much nonsense. She spoke to Willem, and her babies who had died. And Aaron. She spoke his name over and over until I thought it was a punishment meant especially for me. “Play the banjo for me, Aaron,” she said to the air. “Play ‘Shady Grove.’”

  Her last night, I was asleep in a chair by her bed. I had fallen over until my head rested on the mattress right beside her, and I awoke to feel her hand on my head. She was mumbling and trying to open her eyes.

  “What is it, Esme?” I said, taking her hands in my own. I tried to rub warmth into them. She smelled of death, like musk and closeness.

  “Vine, I don’t want to be buried by him. Bury me on the other side of my girl. Not by him.”

  “All right,” I said. It was hard to bear hearing her announce her death like that. She felt it. She knowed that death was spreading itself out over her like a quilt, covering her.

  “Don’t bury me by Willem. Don’t let them.”

  “I won’t,” I said. “Don’t fret.” I put my face to our clasped hands and kissed hers.

  “And get my clock,” she whispered. “Don’t let it get destroyed.”

  I leaned close. “I’ll take good care of it, Esme. I’ll treasure it.”

  She held my hands so tightly, and tears fell from her eyes without any effort at all. “They’s some money hid under my mattress. I’ve put it back over the years. To get me buried proper. And enough left over for you and Saul. Give Aidia a little bit of it.” She did not mention Aaron. She knowed that he was gone, too. “I want you to use some of it to go see your people, too. Promise you’ll do that.”

  “I promise it,” I said, gratitude filling the back of my throat.

  I sent Aidia down to get Saul. When Esme breathed her last, he run outside and climbed the path up the mountain. He couldn’t stand to let me see him cry. Aidia stood stiffly in the corner for a little while, eyeing the deathbed as if it was something suspicious. I closed Esme’s eyes and slowly stood up.

  “She’s gone, ain’t she?” Aidia said.

  I nodded. Aidia went to flying about the room, opening the doors of the chifforobe. She pulled out pillowcases and towels, then draped each of them carefully over the mirrors and windows. I did not believe in such foolishness as a soul escaping through glass, but I let her go about her business. She stopped the pendulum on the clock, and the house seemed unbearably quiet. I found a nub of pencil and wrote down her death time, then set the pendulum to swinging again. It did not sound like her house without that clock ticking away every minute of our lives.

  “Aidia, come here and help me,” I said, but she wouldn’t come near the bed.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “Well, go get me some water and heat it up a little. I want to clean her up good before anybody gets here.”

  Aidia felt her way out by hanging on to the wall. “No, you’ll have to get it,” she said. “I have to go tell the bees.”

  “Aidia, I need you to help me.”

  “I have to tell the bees,” she said again, and slipped out the door.

  I drawed water from the well and stood in the yard for a minute, getting a good breath of air. Aidia was leaned close to the hives, talking to the bees that Esme had always kept. My family never had gone by such beliefs, but I knowed that many people did. If you didn’t tell the bees when someone had died, the bees would leave and there would be no more honey. It seemed a selfish thing to me—to be thinking of honey at such a time. Some people spread towels out over the clover, thinking the bees would want to fast during the wake. But I wanted to smack Aidia’s face.

  I went back into the house and heated the water. I washed Esme gently, lifting her arms and wiping her feet and down her legs. I lifted her and soaped her back, her skin as white and soft as a Bible page. I used a new rag on her face and put the tortoise combs in her hair. I put her glasses back on and found her new dress, which she had sewn for the Easter service. I hustled it up on her and went about latching all the buttons. All the while, I remembered everything I knowed about Esme. Replayed every time we had together in my mind. I had spent many a day with her, and my soul ached. She was like a mommy to me. She had taught me many a thing without me even realizing that I was learning. She showed me what sacrifice was—the way she had laid down her pride to raise a child that wasn’t hers, the way she had loved Aaron in spite of the way he had come into being. I would have loved her for this alone, even without all the other things she had done for me.

  I sat back down in the chair by the bed and looked at her for a long time. I felt hollow, as if grief had cleaned me out. I couldn’t believe I wouldn’t have her company anymore. Every time I thought of this, I became more empty. I could not cry, for there was nothing inside of me to let out. I stared for a long time without blinking, without moving.

  When Saul come off the mountain, I told him to go into town to get a coffin made. How would I tell him that she didn’t want to be buried by his daddy? I sent Aidia after Serena. When they come back together, I asked Aidia to tend to Luke and Birdie. I wanted her out of my sight.

  Serena patted Esme’s hand and smiled. “She was a sight, old Esme was. Nobody ever doubted what she thought of them, that’s for certain. I like that in a person.”

  “She grieved herself to death, over Aaron.”

  Serena turned quickly. “Now, Vine, she was an old woman. Worked many a hard day. She was just wore out.”

  “Not till he was gone, though. That’s what killed her, sure enough.”

  Serena didn’t say anything else. She knowed what I was thinking and knowed there was no use arguing with me. She pushed my hair out of my eyes, looping it behind my ear. By the look in her eye, I knowed she was saying, It’s not your fault, but it didn’t matter. Because it was my fault. This was the place where I couldn’t take any more. I had to make it through her funeral, and then I didn’t know what I would do. I didn’t know how much more guilt I could pack on my shoulders. It could have been Saul or Birdie or any one of them, but God took Esme as my wage for taking Aaron’s life. When you do wrong, you are always paid back. This is one thing I have learned for certain. I didn’t have no other choice but to kill him—I was sure of that—but I shouldn’t have left him up there on that mountain without so m
uch as a headstone to mark his place in this world. And I should have told Esme and Saul. I didn’t see how I could ever be forgiven now.

  Serena went into the kitchen to make coffee, and I followed her. “She don’t want to be buried by her man,” I whispered. I thought about telling Serena the whole story about Willem and Aaron, but I didn’t. This was my and Esme’s secret together, and I would never tell a soul.

  “Was he mean to her?” Serena asked, setting the pot on the stove.

  “They had troubles, more so than most, I guess.”

  “That’ll hurt Saul,” Serena said, “her not wanting to be by his daddy.”

  “It don’t matter. She asked me, and Saul will have to agree to it. I owe her that much.” I set down at the table, and it seemed wrong to be setting, somehow. I felt like I should be up and milling about, but I couldn’t. My legs shook so bad I couldn’t stand anymore. “People will talk, though.”

  “Let the sumbitches talk. It’ll give them a rest from talking about me for a while.” Serena poured us coffee. The coffee smelled so good, like something completely new in the world. I closed my eyes as I drunk it. The heat of it seemed to pulse right into my veins and spread up the back of my head.

  THAT EVENING EVERYBODY we knowed come up to the house. They all bragged on how good Esme looked. They come packing food and it was stacked up everywhere all through the kitchen. Her wake was a mix of every kind of emotion. One woman would bellow out crying, and another would laugh at a big tale someone was telling. It seemed like Esme’s whole life was being played out by the people crowding into the house and spilling out onto the porch and yard. I thought that was a good legacy to leave—to stir up so many emotions in people.

  Women moved around the kitchen elbow-to-elbow, slicing big pieces of pie, letting buttermilk gurgle from the crock into glasses, fixing plates that they filled with fried chicken and potatoes and dressing. I thought how Esme wouldn’t have liked that at all, for all them people to be in her kitchen, fooling with her things—opening cabinets and stirring the fire in the stove as if they lived there themselves.