Stranger Here Below

by Joyce Hinnefeld

  “Tell us what has brought you here, child,” Sister Mary said when Brother Benjamin returned from carrying away the tray of food. And so Georginea began to speak about her life, and Sister Mary and Brother Benjamin listened closely, and she talked until the shadows of night crept into the room and Brother Benjamin signaled to her to pause for just a moment while he rose slowly and stiffly to close the curtains at the window.

  No one had ever asked her about her life before. Now that someone had asked at last, it seemed there was so much to say that she could not stop. Perhaps it was the tea, she thought again, not entirely trusting this impulse to talk without ceasing, this fear that if she stopped, if she slept and woke a third time, these mysterious specters would be gone and she would be faced with what she had done. Or failed to do.

  “I believe the thing that brought me here, that brought me to this point at last”—and here she raised her bandaged wrists—”was what happened just two days ago at Beau Rive.”

  “And where is Beau Rive?” Sister Mary asked politely, and Georginea realized, with shock and then delight, that these two old residents of the East Family Dwelling House, now the Shaker Inn—the last remaining Shakers on this formerly crowded spiritual site—had no knowledge of the world a mere five miles away.

  “Beau Rive is a school for young women,” she explained then, and because at last she could say so, she added, “Because the students there are the daughters of former slaveholders, men who have made their money from the brutalization of another race, the founders and everyone connected with the college fancy themselves a kind of social elite.”

  She looked up at Sister Mary and Brother Benjamin, who only looked back at her, listening intently, awaiting whatever she would say next. Indicating no particular feeling about, or judgment of, what she was saying. She had not felt this free to speak her mind since her days at Oberlin and her early years at Berea.

  Emboldened by the realization, she went further: “They are utterly deluded. They will have nothing of the word of God, for instance, that speaks against the sloth and waste of their lives.” And here, she realized, Sister Mary and Brother Benjamin were nodding.

  But it seemed that all this speaking had tired her. Two old people agreed with her; what difference, really, could that make?

  She sighed and shifted her position in the bed, sinking lower into the feathery down of the pillows behind her head. “It doesn’t matter now, at any rate. I know they have sent me away for this weekend in order to prepare my things and ask me to leave. I will be dismissed from this position as well.”

  Brother Benjamin cleared his throat and said, “Then, child, you may wish to join us here for a spell. To take a rest from a world that has led you so far away from God’s goodness and grace.”

  And this time, Brother Benjamin and Sister Mary sang to her together. Their mouths opened like the small, red mouths of cherubs, Georginea thought, though both their faces were deeply lined, and Brother Benjamin’s long, unkempt beard was dotted here and there with breadcrumbs from his evening meal. Their lives had not been easy, and their faded and worn, though perfectly clean and pressed, clothing spoke to their very limited means. But the sweetness and purity of their two frail old voices made Georginea cry.

  Strange, but it seemed as simple as turning her head, only slightly. And with just that minute adjustment, she began to see again, not only to see her surroundings in the present, but to remember. Everything, every place she had been—and for once, perhaps for the first time, what she saw was the beauty.

  And she didn’t only see it, she heard it. Tasted it. Smelled it. How, living among the ghosts of Hortency Hooser’s “near on to a thousand,” those lovers of peaches and quince preserves and malt, of the rough solidity of handspun wool and linsey-woolsey cloth, of curving stone fences and sunlight through unadorned, perfectly proportioned windows, of carefully tended gardens filled with fragrant herbs, could she do otherwise?

  It was the scent of herbs that started it all, that morning when she finally left her bed on the second story of the Shaker Inn. The scent came from the bedpost, she realized; there, tied next to her head, was a little muslin bag rich with the pungent aroma—not exactly unpleasant, though hardly sweet—of tansy, yarrow, wormwood: the ingredients, she would come to know, of the Shakers’ foolproof insect repellents.

  She stepped gingerly from her bed, dressing slowly and carefully, shuddering as she pulled a sleeve over her tender wrist.

  In the kitchen on the first floor, she found a bowl of wild strawberries awaiting her, and she popped half a dozen into her mouth in rapid succession, astonished by their sweetness. And at that moment she felt it; it was, in fact, a strange, physical sensation, almost a kind of snapping, not painful but certainly abrupt, in her neck. She had turned her head at a slight angle, just so, and the sudden rush of sensations—sweet juice of berries, scent of healing herbs on the breeze, sun-dappled haze of early morning—nearly made her swoon.

  And then Sister Mary was there. There with fresh milk, there to oh-so-gently take her elbow and seat her at the table, to feed her the most remarkable breakfast she had ever tasted in her life—berries, biscuits, fresh milk with the buttery cream still there atop it.

  “Eat now, child,” Sister Mary said, patting Georginea’s hand when she paused, suddenly embarrassed by her ravenousness. “Eat for all the years of emptiness and hunger. Gather your strength for the Lord’s work.”

  She did eat then, and on the days that followed, and she grew stronger. Unlike the lost Georginea Ward of those last weeks at Beau Rive—where she had moved listlessly through the indistinguishable days as if under water—as a Shaker novice, she sped through her tasks with the energy of a woman half her age. Even after her restless, haunted nights, which persisted, even here.

  At night, after Sister Mary and Brother Benjamin went to bed, she read, with equal energy and a kind of desperate need. Now it was not the English poets she read, nor the works of Mrs. Stowe. Instead she read a peculiar series of journals, called the Spiritual Journals, recorded during the middle of the previous century, when the Pleasant Hill Shakers, like their counterparts elsewhere in the West and the East, were immersed in Mother Ann’s work. Seeing visions, receiving gifts of soothing oils and bushes that, when shaken, dropped pure white doves that turned to angels bearing still more gifts—oils and balms of virtue, wisdom, peace. And, at the height of that ecstatic period in the 1840s, welcoming certain Shaker values in human form—the lovely Sister Virtue, the dark and imperious Mother Wisdom—to their worship. Even, on certain occasions, according to the Journals, being joined by the likes of William Penn and the Indian chief Tecumseh.

  It was from the Spiritual Journals that Georginea learned of the secret place called Holy Sinai’s Plain, where Pleasant Hill’s early Shakers had welcomed their spiritual guests. She came upon it on a rambling, aimless walk one blustery day in October. There could be no denying that this was the place, though Sister Mary and Brother Benjamin only shrugged when she asked them. “Those were different times; our brothers and sisters have heard the voice of Mother Ann in a variety of ways—that generation’s ways are not ours,” was all Sister Mary would say.

  But it had to be Holy Sinai’s Plain, Georginea knew. Two tall fir trees swayed above her head, and the sun’s gray-white light, filtered through a cloudy autumn sky, shone on a haphazard circle of rocks as she crested a hill to the south and east of the old meetinghouse.

  It was this light on the rocks that struck her first; they seemed almost to vibrate in that odd afternoon haze, and she realized that although the wind blew mightily against her face and bonneted head, she was suddenly terribly warm. Sweating, in fact, as if it were a humid summer day, and the air around her felt weighted and dense; it seemed, suddenly, to hum.

  August 1845. 14th Thursday, 8 o’clock P.M. Having marched a few songs, Father William came in from Holy Sinai’s Plain accompanied with a bright band of gold Angels and happified Spirits. Said they, we have come to rejoice wi
th the faithful, and to bless their zealous and sincere devotions; for the clouds are fast blowing away. Sister Daphna was then taken with the spirit of Mother Ann, and her ebony skin gleamed in God’s light as she shook out all the evil surrounding her, banishing all the foes. Beware the evils of the flesh, the laughter of the black crow, she said in the voice of Mother Ann, and then she was joined by a host of holy spirits bearing gifts of pointed rods with bright balls at the end. And when they shook the balls toward the company gathered there, all were blessed with gifts of sweet oils of virtue and goodness and Mother Ann’s pure light.

  Georginea stood still there, on Holy Sinai’s Plain in that peculiar light, hot and flushed and short of breath, remembering. Something—the wing of a dove?—fluttered by her head. But when she turned to look, there was only the fir tree to her right, its bark glistening as if with rain, though the air was cold and dry.

  Mother said “be hearty.” The heavenly Father gave each one a gold basin to drink out of, and to sprinkle each other out of. Bushes of purity were also given to each, to shake over one another. Vines of holiness were given by the holy Savior to be planted round the Pool, which was done by the assembly at large. Heavenly shouts were now uttered—Heavenly treasures in the form of balls were also received; trumpets sounded.

  She stood in the sacred spot until her heart slowed at last. The light around her changed; the chill of the wind began to reach her bones. When she sat down to supper with Sister Mary and Brother Benjamin that evening, she said nothing about what she had found. The next morning, after milking, gathering eggs, and baking bread, she returned.

  Each day she came there. She knew Sister Mary and Brother Benjamin knew where she went, and why. But they said nothing. One week after she discovered Holy Sinai’s Plain, Georginea saw her. Actually, she heard her first. Her breathing filled the air as Georginea climbed the slow rise to the hill’s crest, reaching over to touch the bark of the waiting fir tree as she always did—to tell herself that, yes, this place, this land, was real. Her breathing and another sound, like pounding hooves—feet in laced boots stamping against the packed dirt, though there was no longer packed dirt, only brown grass and pine needles, oak leaves scattered here and there.

  It was Sister Daphna, she knew immediately. Sister Daphna, black as coal—skin gleaming in the silver light—dancing, spinning, worshipping, filled to overflowing with the spirit of Mother Ann. Her eyes were tightly closed, her arms clasped round her breast. As Georginea drew closer, she seemed to move faster, and a flock of angry crows flew away from the top of the second fir tree, cawing noisily, as if frightened by the relentless stamping of Sister Daphna’s feet.

  When Sister Daphna stopped to catch her breath, she opened her eyes and stared directly at Georginea. She held out her hand. But Georginea felt paralyzed, glued to the spot where she had stood watching—for how long? Minutes? Hours? Where was the sun? It was impossible to gauge the time. Gradually, Sister Daphna pulled back her hand. She seemed disappointed at first, then peaceful, as she closed her eyes and clasped her hands together, walking slowly and purposefully away from Georginea, over the hill and back toward the village.

  For the next week, Georginea did not return to Holy Sinai’s Plain. Again she slept fitfully, dreaming of crows and wasted fields of dying corn. When she did walk in the afternoon, it was in the direction opposite Holy Sinai’s Plain, toward Shawnee Run Creek and the old Shaker cemetery. There, moving in and out among the rows of unmarked stones, she felt disturbed by her own weakness and fear. What did it mean that she had declined that woman’s hand?

  Set apart from the tidy Shaker graves were a few others, including those of several soldiers who had been nursed by the sisters during the war, when the Shakers of Pleasant Hill had been forced to clothe, feed, and care for thousands of the Confederate soldiers whose cause, in principle, they had opposed. Etched in one of these stones were the words “He said as he died, ‘Tell them I am a lost child from the state of Georgia.’”

  Rubbing her fingers over the cold stone, Georginea jumped at the sound of Sister Mary’s voice directly behind her.

  “What troubles you so, child? Why have you abandoned Holy Sinai’s Plain?” And when Georginea tried to explain her fear, the apparition she had witnessed, Sister Mary showed no surprise.

  “You are a visionist, then,” she said. “Mother Ann has called to you in the form of this sister who has appeared to you at Holy Sinai’s Plain.”

  “But why could I not take her hand?” Georginea asked, her voice a hoarse whisper.

  “Because you have yet to confess the sin that has brought you here, child,” Sister Mary said as she put her arm around Georginea’s shoulders and led her out of the cemetery and back to the village, to the old meetinghouse. There Sister Mary lit a dusty lantern, seated herself on one of the rough-hewn benches, closed her eyes, and waited.

  And as Georginea stood there in the doorway, breathing in the smell of mold and rotting wood, the encroaching decay of this once sacred building, again she heard the sound of Sister Daphna’s breathing, then the pounding of her feet against the worn wooden planks of the floor. Though she could not see her, Georginea knew she was there, again reaching to her, pulling her to the floor at Sister Mary’s feet. This time Georginea did not hold back; she let herself be led, and she buried her face in Sister Mary’s lap and wept.

  When at last she stopped crying, moonlight streamed through the meetinghouse windows with a pillowy light, and she pulled herself up to sit next to Sister Mary on the bench. Then she began her confession. Before the night was over, the two women would awaken Brother Benjamin from a deep, sonorous sleep to bring out the Shaker Covenant. And Georginea Fenley Ward would commit herself, body and soul and all her worldly goods, to the Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing.

  What sins had she confessed? Not the pride that had led to her dismissal from Berea, not her contempt for Mr. Parks and the other slave-owner descendants at Beau Rive. Not even the rift between her and her father, which she felt—and Sister Mary agreed—had been a natural response to her disappointment in him and others in his position, in the flagging of their courage and conviction, their inability to live by the principles they claimed to hold dear.

  None of these feelings and actions from her past would be deemed sins by Sister Mary and Brother Benjamin, or by her, as a newly signed and committed Shaker. Her sin was simpler yet far deeper than any of these. It was the sin that had plagued humanity since the Fall, the sin that Mother Ann and her followers had gone to their graves battling—that of sexual passion, of lust.

  The fault was not in the color of Tobias Jewell’s skin; it was, simply and clearly, in the unmistakable animal lust she had felt. The animal lust that had plagued her for nearly twenty years now, disrupting her sleep, causing her racking physical pain. The realization nearly took her breath away, and she heard the drumming of Sister Daphna’s feet, louder than ever, and felt herself growing hot and flushed, and sweating once again, even on that cold, moonlit night in the unheated meetinghouse, where she could see her breath pouring out in fitful bursts. It was in her own deeply human craving, the longing she had given in to on more than one occasion as a student, and that had hounded her since she had first known Tobias. She had been brought to Sister Mary and Brother Benjamin—surely by God, or by Mother Ann—in time to learn this. She had many years still to live, to make up for all the time she had lost, for all the years of confusion and suffering.

  The name she signed on the Covenant was her new Shaker name, chosen, she said, to remind her, always, of her place there at Pleasant Hill. It was the name of a renegade state and the home of an unnamed soldier, a child lost in the senseless battles of men, resting forever on the ground of these peaceful, God-fearing people. She would honor him and, at the same time, always remember her wayfaring status. Like him, she was a lost child, now home: Sister Georgia.

  Pilgrim and Stranger

  1962

  The pain between Mary Elizabeth’s shou
lders persisted that summer after she left Pleasant Hill, and her hands tingled and then grew numb when she tried to play the piano. By the Fourth of July she’d told her daddy she could no longer play at church. After that she stopped playing altogether.

  She slept, though, thanks to the big packet of valerian tea she’d brought back with her. Some days she made a pot at noon for her and her mama to share. They’d both sleep through the day then, yawning and smiling shyly at each other in the kitchen when they got up to fix supper together. Mary Elizabeth tried not to think about what it meant to love to sleep as much as her mama seemed to.

  By the fall she hadn’t come up with a better plan, and she had no energy for a fight with her daddy, so she went back to Berea. She would live with Maze again, back in Ladies Hall. There was a new dormitory, a small one for upper-class women—white ones, it was understood if not said—where Maze might have lived. Mary Elizabeth, too, perhaps, she sometimes thought, if she’d played the concert. If she’d followed through on her early promise.

  “I don’t give a hoot where we’re livin’,” Maze said. “I just wish I didn’t have to be back at the damn place at all.” Once she’d started spending so much time with Harris Whitman the spring before, people at the Weaving Cabin had caught on quickly. Maze was finishing her quota of pieces in four or five hours of work a week instead of the required ten, which didn’t sit well with some of those people, so for her second year at Berea, she had a different work assignment, in the library. But hours of quiet work indoors—no pushing the pedals in time to a song in her head, no counting out rows and sliding the shuttle in and out—did not sit well with Maze.

  “Why not the grounds crew, even?” she said as they unpacked and set up their room the Sunday night before classes began. “At least then I could get some air.”