The door opened and Sister Janie and Sister Drayma came into the room with dresses draped over their arms to get them started on their new lives. Rachel didn’t cry as Sister Janie led her away, but her face was sad as she looked over her shoulder at Lacey, who managed to keep a smile on her face until the child was out the door. Then it slid away from her lips like one of Rachel’s worms crawling back into the dirt.
That left her alone with Sister Drayma who didn’t appear to favor smiling overmuch anyway. The Shaker woman reminded Lacey of some of the churchwomen back at Ebenezer. Those who looked worried that if they smiled at church, they might look to not be taking the business of the Lord serious enough. It was more than obvious that Sister Drayma was taking the business of being a Shaker plenty serious enough, and making Lacey into a Shaker sister was her part of that business on this day.
Gray hair peeked out around the edges of Sister Drayma’s cap and her faded blue eyes were squinted as if she had to narrow her eyes down on something to see it clear. When Lacey gave in to her curiosity and asked her how old she was, the Shaker woman claimed not to remember the exact number of years. She said a Believer didn’t think on her worldly birthday that much. The important day to celebrate was the day one signed the Covenant of Belief and for her that was thirty-two years ago in March.
“What’s the Covenant of Belief?” Lacey was feeling as full of questions as Rachel on a walk through the woods.
“That’s your promise to live the perfect life in union with your brothers and sisters.”
“Oh.” Lacey eyed Sister Drayma and decided she couldn’t have been all that young even then. “But what about before then? You must have been older than me when you came here.”
The woman frowned at Lacey. “My worldly life ended and my new life began on the day I came into the village. Just as it will for you.”
Lacey slipped the Shaker dress over her head and shoved her hands out through the sleeves. She pulled her hair free of the dress neckline and picked up the broad white scarf. “But were you married? Did you have children?” Lacey asked as she draped the scarf around her neck.
“You ask questions of the world. Things that do not matter.” Sister Drayma narrowed her eyes even more on Lacey before reaching over to yank the edges of the scarf straight and even on Lacey’s shoulders. “Now pull the corners down in front. Your apron will hold them in place.”
Lacey wrapped the apron around her waist and reached behind her to tie it. She knew how to put that on without help. “But how can being married not matter? The preacher that spoke the vows for me and Preacher Palmer said something about what God has joined together, let no man put asunder. Till death do the two part.”
“Nay, those are the words of a preacher with worldly beliefs. The Lord revealed a better way to our Mother Ann. One of purity and peace. The man and wife relations of the world bring naught but worry and upheaval into our lives.”
“But what of children? They are a gift from God.”
“Yea. We treasure our children. In union with all. Young Sister Rachel will be much loved by all the sisters and brothers. Such love as she could never know in the world.”
“Nobody could love her more than I do.” Lacey straightened up and stared at Sister Drayma.
Sister Drayma met her stare and spoke with the confidence of one expecting to be obeyed without question. “So you may think, but now you will be sharing that love in union with all who are like-minded in our village. In time you will come to see how your love can change from a selfish, narrow feeling to something that can encompass all your brothers and sisters. ’Tis a gift to know such love.”
She reached her hands up in the air and gazed toward the ceiling. Lacey might have thought she was praying if she’d closed her eyes, but instead she kept her eyes wide open like she was searching for words written up there above her head. She reminded Lacey of an old tree with only a few branches left coming out of its thick trunk but rooted solid where she stood. She wasn’t exactly fat. Just thick through the middle the way a lot of older women got when the years piled on. Miss Mona hadn’t, but then she’d been afflicted with those weak spells that took her appetite.
When Sister Drayma started shaking her hands back and forth, Lacey spoke up to try to bring her away from whatever she was seeing up on the ceiling. Lacey wasn’t sure she was ready to witness one of the shaking dances just yet.
“Love is good.” She pushed the words out tentatively, but they worked.
The woman dropped her hands and was back to stern Sister Drayma. “Proper love,” the sister said. “Love you will gladly embrace when you learn more.”
“Love’s embrace,” Lacey whispered.
But the old sister had turned away to gather up Lacey’s discarded clothes and didn’t show any sign of hearing her. It was just as well. Lacey’s thoughts weren’t on brotherly love. Instead she was thinking she might never know a true embrace of love. One that made her heart quicken and stole her breath. The kind the young brother she’d met the day before had surely known with his treasured wife who had died too soon. Brother Isaac. He’d had such nice eyes. Just the thought of them made Lacey feel a little trembly inside as she took the cap Sister Drayma handed her. She could imagine loving a man like that. Just not the preacher.
She sighed softly as she twisted her hair and shoved it up under the cap. Her hands shook as she straightened the cap. She told herself that had nothing to do with the young brother’s face sticking in her head or her thoughts of love that would never be. It had more to do with the truth that she hadn’t eaten since her bowl of oatmeal the morning before. That was what brought the trembles on. Only that.
As the days passed, Lacey didn’t mind the work they expected her to do. A body needed to be busy. Even the practicing of the dancing they did in the evenings wasn’t bad. The up and back steps were curious but entertaining enough. Often as not, Lacey’s foot tapped to the beat of the songs while she sat and watched. Sister Drayma said it was best to watch for the first week or two so she wouldn’t mess up the lines.
No, it was the plethora of Shaker rules that piled on Lacey like thick woolen blankets until she could barely breathe. That was what she wanted to throw off. She’d been prepared for some of the rules. The “no men except as brothers” one. Everybody knew the Shakers had that rule. She didn’t know as how she believed on that with the way the Bible read, but she was more than ready to go along with it. Thinking on the preacher as a brother was better than thinking on him as a husband. She wasn’t so willing to go along with how they spirited Rachel away from her and then refused to let her so much as see the child. Sister Drayma claimed such a visit would be a hindrance to Rachel being able to settle in to the Shaker way of living.
Lacey argued against that, but Sister Drayma turned a deaf ear, simply saying, “When you chose to come into our community, you chose to abide by the rules that have served us well for many years.”
Lacey wanted to tell the Shaker woman she didn’t choose any of it, but then there she was. Right in the middle of the Shakers. So that meant a choice had been made. To keep from thinking on the sorrow of that choice, she said, “How many years?”
They were walking back to the Gathering Family House after a day of working in the washhouse. Lacey had done most of the work, with Sister Drayma directing her every move. As if she didn’t know already how to scrub clothes. That was something she’d been doing since she was big enough to reach into a tub of water. Of course, back then or at the preacher’s house either, she didn’t have the washing machines the Shakers had invented nor the water piped into the house. That should have made it all easier, but here hundreds of Shaker people were dirtying up clothes. A scrub board with only one pair of britches and a shirt and dress or two to scrub down sounded easier than all those Shaker clothes, no matter if water did pour out of a pipe instead of being packed into the house in a bucket. Lacey was wishing for the bucket and her rain barrel back home.
“It is good to know our his
tory.” Sister Drayma gave Lacey an approving look as though just asking the question meant she was starting to believe in their ways. “Mother Ann came to America before the Revolution and began sharing the truth of the Believers’ way.”
“Here? She was here in Harmony Hill?”
“Nay. She has only been here in spirit to deliver us messages of love. Our beloved mother was never in the frontier states. It was not until some years after her death that the Ministry sent the first Shaker brothers here to the west. The eastern communities heard of the great revival workings at Cane Ridge and felt Mother Ann leading them to come plow the fertile spiritual fields here. The village was established here in 1805.”
“Forty years ago.”
“Yea, we have prospered much in those forty years. So many converts. So much building. When we do as Mother Ann directs and give our hands to work and our hearts to God, good things happen. Every day.” Sister Drayma’s face took on that strange shine Lacey had come to expect when she talked about their worship. “Many marvelous things are happening now during this time of Mother’s work.”
“What things?”
“Signs and wonders that come to us from the spirit world.”
“What sort of signs and wonders?” Lacey eyed Sister Drayma a little uneasily. She wouldn’t have been a bit surprised to see the woman go into a shaking frenzy, even though she hadn’t seen so much as a tremble from any of the Shakers so far.
In spite of what Lacey had heard about their shaking dances, everything in the village seemed strictly ordered as the Shaker people went about their business with solemn intent. Even the business of eating was solemn with a rule of silence reigning over the tables and the only noise the clanking of forks on plates. Prayers were silent too. Numerous and far from spontaneous, as each Believer knelt upon rising in the morning and prior to retiring at night as well as before and after every meal. A lot of praying opportunities, and Lacey had plenty to talk to the Lord about, but often as not her mind couldn’t settle down to pray before everybody was standing up and going about the next ordered thing.
Now Sister Drayma’s voice sounded oddly high-pitched as she answered Lacey. “Songs and dances. Wondrous drawings. Spirit dreams and directives. Angels coming to dance among us.” The woman looked toward the sky and threw her hands up as though indicating angels gathering around them that very instant. Then as suddenly as the glow had come upon her, it was gone as she narrowed her eyes on Lacey once again. “If you choose to surrender your spirit to the truth and stop holding back your belief, perhaps you will witness these wonders. But it is plain to see that you resist our way.”
“It seems too much to understand and believe in such a short time,” Lacey answered honestly.
“Nay, not for someone with a contrite spirit. Something you appear to lack. A person who seeks to understand would confess the sin in her life and vow to do better on the morrow. You must admit the wrongs you harbor in your heart.” Sister Drayma turned her sternest look on Lacey. “As Brother Elwood has done.”
“Has he?” Lacey had seen the preacher at the practice sessions and on the men’s side of the dining room. She had wondered if he was chafing against the rules being set for him instead of being the one to explain the rules to his church people. But it appeared that was not the case.
“We are told he is progressing in his understanding. He is learning the simple way to true peace. A way you should consider, for it is a gift to be simple.”
“Simple. How do you make things simple when nothing seems that way?”
“But it is simple, my sister. As simple as shrugging off the ways of the world and embracing the rules that keep life simple.”
“You mean like which foot to step up on the stairs first?”
“Yea. Always step with the right foot first. Such disciplined obedience keeps you in union with your brothers and sisters.”
And makes you a sheep, Lacey wanted to say, but she bit back the words. Not that being a sheep was wrong. The Lord spoke of his sheep knowing his voice. Perhaps Sister Drayma was right. Perhaps she was resistant to the spirit. There was no doubt she was nursing a contrary spirit here in this Shaker village, the same as she had clung to a contrary spirit as the preacher’s lawful wife. She could fess up to her contrariness when next Sister Drayma asked her to number her sins. But confessing sin didn’t necessarily mean she had turned from it. She could imagine nothing but contrary feelings as long as they kept Rachel from her.
That didn’t mean she had to be contrary in every small thing. So when she came to the steps into the Gathering Family House, she lifted the proper foot up on the first stone step. She could at least set her mind to abide by the common rules, even if some of them didn’t seem to matter the first bit. What in the world difference could it make to the good Lord above which knee hit the floor first when she knelt down to pray or whether or not she was holding a handkerchief in her hand when she dropped to her knees? But she could do those things as Sister Drayma instructed. And save her contrariness for the big things.
She could listen with a meek spirit to Sister Drayma harping on obedience and contrite spirits and the telling of how to do every little thing, even if it did make Lacey’s head spin with rules and regulations. But she would never be able to keep her heart from aching for some sight of Rachel.
On the first Saturday after they came to the village, Lacey was in the garden planting beans when she heard the children’s voices. Sister Drayma wasn’t beside her. She was too old for garden work, she said before she left Lacey at the garden to work through the day. The six sisters worked in teams as one dropped the seeds a hand’s width apart and the other covered the seed with dirt and tamped it down with her hoe.
It was good to be in the sunshine and away from the suds and dirty clothes and a relief to not have Sister Drayma’s preaching words in her ears for a few hours. The sisters in the garden plot talked only of the work and how hot the sun was on their bonnets and what might be on the table at evening time. Lacey kept her silence, for Sister Drayma had warned her idle chatter was not allowed and that, although she wasn’t with Lacey, other eyes would be watching.
And then Lacey heard the children passing by the garden. She stopped dropping the bean seeds in the row and stood up to peer across the way at the little girls following after a sister like ducklings trailing their mother duck. She spotted Rachel almost immediately walking in the line with her head bent and her shoulders rounded. A picture of sadness. Lacey took a step toward the edge of the garden, but a hand on her arm stopped her.
“You can’t go to her, Sister Lacey.” The sister’s voice was barely loud enough for Lacey to hear.
“Why?” Lacey looked around at the sister. It wasn’t Sister Nina, who had been following her with the hoe and covering the seeds. This sister had stepped over from another row. Sister Aurelia. A woman about the same age as Lacey with wisps of black hair escaping her cap and eyes as blue as Rachel’s.
“It is not allowed.” She spoke the words as if they explained everything. And perhaps they did. Follow the rules. Do this. Don’t do that. Stop living life and become a sheep.
“But she needs me.” Lacey looked back at the line of children who were disappearing from sight. It was all she could do to stand still and not run after them. How in the world had she ended up in such a place?
“She has others now.”
Sister Aurelia reached for the hoe Sister Nina held. The sister gave it over without a word and stepped across to the next row to begin dropping the beans in Sister Aurelia’s place. The other sisters began their planting dance again. Lacey wanted to throw her cloth bag of beans down on the ground and let the seeds fall where they may, but instead she leaned over and placed a seed in the row and then another.
Sister Aurelia covered it over and tamped down the dirt with her shoe. When she spoke, her voice was so quiet that Lacey had to strain to hear the words. “They tell me you have the sin of marriage to Elwood Palmer to overcome.”
Lacey looked up at her, but the sister kept her eyes on her hoe as she covered the next bean. “Who tells you?” Lacey asked.
“Such things are common knowledge.” Without raising her head, she glanced to the side. The other pairs of sisters had moved ahead and were not close. Even so, she didn’t look directly at Lacey as she said, “Keep dropping the bean seeds so that Sister Ruth won’t have cause to separate us.”
Lacey did as she said, dropping a handful of beans one by one in the row before she said, “I do have that sin to overcome.” Lacey thought she might not have spoken truer words for weeks.
Sister Aurelia said, “When did his wife die?”
“Last November.”
“He didn’t grieve long.”
Lacey looked up at Sister Aurelia, but the woman’s face was void of expression. “No.”
“Nay. It is good to learn to say our yea and nay. It demonstrates unity of spirit,” Sister Aurelia said. She covered several seeds and tamped them down before she spoke again. “And yet he seemed devoted to her.”
Lacey stared at the Shaker woman. She couldn’t remember ever seeing her before, but then she could have known Miss Mona before Lacey came to Ebenezer. And the preacher led meetings at different churches in the area. “So you knew Miss Mona and the preacher?”
“Yea, I knew the preacher.”
Lacey dropped more seeds in the row. Sister Aurelia covered them over as they planted the rest of the row without more words. But Lacey felt no comfort in the silence.
Finally as they started up a new row, Lacey said, “I shouldn’t have married him.”
“Yea, some sins are harder to overcome than others.”
17
Isaac watched for the new sister. He didn’t know why exactly. Maybe because of how she’d run her fingers over the books around her when he’d told her that she wouldn’t be able to keep them once at the Shaker Village. Like they were old friends she was about to lose.
The Blessed Page 17