Dear America: Like the Willow Tree

by Lois Lowry

  It is because she brought them back again just last month. Once again she had not been able to take care of them properly. “Poor little things,” the sister said. “They were so dirty and ragged.”

  (I wonder what they thought of me when I arrived!)

  “And sick,” another sister remembered.

  They all nodded. The little one, especially. So very sick. “I thought sure she’d be entering the spirit life.”

  That is what they call dying. I like it, in a way. I like thinking of my parents and little Lucy being in the spirit life. It doesn’t scare me, as dying does.

  I kept listening as I pressed my iron on handkerchief after handkerchief, folding each one carefully. (They were right, that after a while it becomes easier.) I wanted to hear more about Pearl and Lillian, how they had gotten clean and well and happy in such a short time. How is it they are able to eat their dinner? How do they sit in the front room at the girls’ shop and listen to stories, working on their fancywork, smiling at The Five Little Peppers, and all the time knowing that their mother doesn’t want them anymore?

  But the sisters began talking of someone else, someone named Ruth. “Been here since she was nine,” I heard a sister say.

  “Not one word of thanks,” another added. “Just up and left. After fourteen years.”

  They all made small disapproving sounds. The sisters do not speak badly of anyone. Never once have I heard them do so. But I could tell that they were troubled. Partly by Ruth’s leaving, but also by the fact that she never thanked them for the fourteen years of her growing up: for their food, for their teaching, for their clothes. For their prayers.

  I added it up in my mind. Whoever she was — Ruth — she had been 23 years old. I wondered where she went.

  Then someone spoke of Emma Freeman, who had left in early July, wanting to be part of the world. But a month later she was back. I know who Emma is. She helps serve the food at dinner. It seemed amazing to me that she had gone away, been disappointed, returned, and now does her job with the kind of attention and diligence that all the sisters have. They all look as if they have never undergone a single change in their lives. But I see it isn’t true. Each one has her own story.

  “So you can leave!” I startled myself by saying the thought aloud.

  The chubby one, Sister Lavinia, was changing her iron. She looked at me and chuckled. “Did you think we are all captives, child?” she asked me.

  I felt myself blushing. “No,” I said. “I just don’t quite understand how it works.”

  It was late afternoon by then, almost time to finish the ironing, put the things away, tidy up, and ready ourselves for dinner. While I made my way through the rest of my small pile of hankies, Rebecca working silently near me, the sisters talked about their own lives. How they had chosen this life, the Shaker life, and signed what they call the covenant. Some of them, the younger ones, still teenagers, had not reached the time of choosing yet.

  I listened as they talked of their happiness as Shakers.

  I still hate ironing. But I am coming to like the sisters.

  Friday, November 1, 1918

  Sister Jennie came to me this evening after supper, when I was working on my horrible knitting. I can’t do a single row without a mistake. She has me making a washcloth — the absolutely simplest knitting project there is. Just a square, that’s all. Even little Lillian, the smallest child in the girls’ shop, makes washcloths perfectly. But again and again I drop stitches, or twist them. Once I had my square almost finished, I thought, and I showed it to Sister Jennie. But she pointed out a place where I had knitted two stitches together by mistake, way back in the first rows. “Rip it out back to there, and start in again,” she told me.

  “But it doesn’t matter! It’s just a silly washcloth!” I argued. “You can still scrub your face with it, even with that tiny mistake!”

  Sister Jennie smiled. She has told me this so often. “We Shakers strive for perfection,” she reminded me, “even in a silly washcloth. It’s how —”

  “I know.” I sighed. “It’s how we create heaven on earth.” Secretly I thought that I would enjoy a heaven with lumpy washcloths.

  This evening, though, she didn’t even ask to see my knitting. She told me that she had arranged a meeting with my brother on Sunday.

  “The brethren feel it may be a help to him, to visit with you,” she told me. “Daniel is a little …”

  I could tell that she couldn’t think of what word to use. Father — or Uncle Henry — would have had a string of words for him: lazy, ungrateful, disrespectful. Mother would have been more soothing. He’s young, she would say. He needs time to grow. He’s a good boy, down deep.

  “He’s a little confused,” I told Sister Jennie, “and he hates school.”

  She chuckled. She knows that. Sister Jennie helps Sister Cora often at the school, and sees Daniel, how he stares out the window when he should be working on his papers.

  “But when I needed him,” I told her, “he was there. He was the one who called Uncle Henry. He put his arms around me when we realized …”

  I couldn’t go on, but she knew what I meant. When our family was gone.

  “He just needs time,” I suggested.

  “Yea. Some do. Especially boys. You talk to him Sunday, Lydia, and see if you can cheer him a bit.”

  I told her I would try. And I felt inside the pocket of my dress, where I carry my little family of stones with me. The ragged-edge one that I called my brother was there, big and out of place beside the others. I smoothed its edge with my finger, but it was jagged and rough still, no matter how I tried to make it fit comfortably with the rest.

  There is one other little stone in the group now, too. A smallish one that Grace and I picked up in the road just beyond the schoolhouse. She was wearing a purple dress, and suddenly she leaned down and picked up a stone the exact same shade. “Look!” she said. “A little stone wearing my dress!”

  Till then I hadn’t told a single soul about my stone family. It was my private, secret thing. But something made me tell Grace that morning, during the school recess. I showed her how I kept them in my pocket, and at night under my pillow. I told her how they made me feel less lonely. I knew Grace had lost her own mother. That’s why she was here with the Shakers.

  “You could make a stone family, too,” I told her.

  I could see her thinking about that. Then, to my surprise, she handed me the purple stone. “Could I be in yours?” she asked.

  Part of me wanted to say no, that it was just us, Walter and Caroline Pierce and their three children. But I looked at Grace, usually so lively and laughing, and now, suddenly, she was quite solemn. I didn’t know anything about her family, beyond the mother who had died last March. But I could see that her memories were making her sad. So I said yes, and took the purple stone and added it to my little group. The school bell rang then. Running back to the schoolhouse door, I felt the stones shift and settle in my pocket. Grace glanced at me and smiled.

  Saturday, November 2, 1918

  I like Saturdays here. They remind me of home.

  In the morning, we clean. Our retiring room, the room I share with Grace, Rebecca, and Polly, is swept and tidied and we put clean linens on our beds. Each girl straightens the drawers in which she keeps her things. At home, I had my own room. Here I share with the other girls, so there is no privacy. But on Saturday mornings we work together. After we finish our own room, we help the smaller girls, whose rooms are across the hall. There is always a lot of laughter.

  Sister Jennie has a separate room on the second floor, and she cleans hers as well. No maids, no hired girls, among the Shakers! “Sweeping the devil out!” she says, as she pushes the broom to the doorway.

  On the third floor, the older girls busy themselves as well. Once I thought the mysterious Eliza, whose bed I now sleep in, had run away or died. Not so! Eliza is on the third floor now. She and the girls there are twelve and thirteen. When they leave the girls’ shop
, as they begin to be women, they move across to the large dwelling, where Second Eldress Prudence Stickney is in charge of the younger sisters and the teen-aged girls. But for now they are still girls, and from the third floor come giggles as they tidy their rooms.

  And after the cleaning, we all gather downstairs in the large room where each evening we do our handwork. But on Saturday mornings it is mending. Mostly darning stockings! I once watched my mother do that. Now I have to learn to do it myself, and it is tiresome. This morning I found myself scolding little Lillian for being so rough on her clothing, and especially her stockings, as she plays outdoors. She had torn a hole in one knee by climbing the trees behind the girls’ shop! And I was the one who had to mend it. Her fingers are still too young and awkward.

  “Soon enough there won’t be much playing outdoors,” Sister Jennie reminded us. She was at her sewing machine at the far end of the big room. This morning she was stitching some underthings. “It’ll snow before long.”

  We all looked through the windows at the sky. In October it had been so blue, and the trees golden. But now the leaves are falling faster and faster. The ash trees are already bare. And the sky is gray.

  “Sometimes the snow is so deep that we can’t leave the house,” one of the older girls said. “Last winter we were here for two whole days until the boys shoveled us out! They brought our food to us so we didn’t starve. But they had to get the way to the barn cleared first, so they could tend the animals.”

  “Yea, but after it was all shoveled,” Eliza added, “Elder William took us on a sleigh ride!”

  A sleigh ride! I have never been on one. Now I am hoping for snow soon.

  After cleaning and mending and dinner, we can play for all of Saturday afternoon. In bad weather, we will be able to use the games and books in the big room here. But we like outdoors best. This afternoon the other girls and I climbed up to the tippy-top of the hill behind the meetinghouse and school, and rolled down! We got burrs stuck in our sweaters and stockings, and dried grass in our hair. But it was such fun.

  From the top of the hill we could look down on the Shaker village, the buildings gleaming white in the November light, and the large pink brick one in their midst. It was like a toy town. The lake beyond was dark gray, and the pines around it deep green. In the fields behind the barn we could see the cattle, like miniature figures, and the men and boys at work. No play for them on Saturdays!

  For a moment I stood there on the hilltop with my arms spread wide, my hair blown every which way by the wind. I thought of my mother and knew somehow that she would smile to see me here. I watched as the other girls, giggling, threw themselves all atumble one by one down the hill. Some geese flew overhead, heading south. Suddenly I remembered the words in one of the Shaker hymns we had been learning in the evenings:

  Oh, the blessings rich and many,

  Which are mine to share today!

  Then I followed the other girls and flung myself onto the high, brown grass and tumbled, rolling and laughing, down toward Sabbathday Lake.

  Sunday, November 3, 1918

  Sundays are very different from Saturdays. We can sleep a little later, and we dress in our best clothes. Of course for me that means something else out of the big closet. But there are lots of dresses to choose from. Today I wore a dark blue dress with a lace collar. It fit nicely and made me feel pretty, but I remembered the clothes I once had, especially a pink dress with smocking and embroidery. All of those things were left behind in Portland, and I suppose they have been given away. Some other girl may be wearing my pink dress now. Or perhaps they have been destroyed because they were in a house contaminated by the sickness. I think I would rather have my pink dress burned than given to another girl. It is a selfish thought, I know.

  The influenza is still raging in Maine. But we have not been afflicted here at Sabbathday Lake, at least not by the epidemic. Many children were sick before I arrived, but the doctor said it was not the flu. And they all got well. Dr. Sturgis comes from time to time to tend Sister Gertrude and Eldress Lizzie for their heart trouble. But most small ailments are treated by the herbs grown here in summer. The sisters package the dried herbs and sell them to the world, and they are much in demand. It will be one of my jobs, I suppose, to help with the packaging of herbs, and I will like it much better than ironing!

  Dressed in our Sunday dresses, we march in line into the chapel in the dwelling house. The sisters are already in place, and we girls sit on benches in the back. We are all completely quiet. After a bit, the Eldresses enter through the sisters’ entrance and then, after a moment, just as the clock strikes ten, the door of the brothers’ entrance opens and Elder William enters, followed by the brethren and the boys, including Daniel.

  Sister Mamie Curtis plays the organ and there is a lot of singing, with Bible reading in between the songs. The Shakers have many, many songs. We sometimes sing in the evenings, and gradually we will learn the songs. Though there are hymnbooks in the chapel, most of the sisters never need to look.

  I like the singing part. All the girls do. But the Bible reading goes on for a very long time, and then Elder William gives a talk that seems to take forever. We must sit very straight, hands folded in our laps, and not wiggle or fidget. Lillian has trouble — she is so young — so Sister Jennie sits beside her and reminds her firmly, with a touch, to be still.

  There are times of silence, too, for us to think about the readings and the Elder’s words. Then the meeting is “open to the spirit” and sisters rise and speak. We girls do not do this, but Sister Jennie has told us that next week we are to recite some scripture at the Sabbath meeting. I am already a little nervous about that.

  There is one other thing that makes me — well, not nervous exactly. But startled. I was accustomed to prayers at my church back home. “Our Father, who art in heaven” — I’ve said that as long as I can remember.

  But the Shakers pray not to Our Father, but to Father-Mother God. It is always that — Father-Mother — never Father alone. They believe in a God that is male and female both! Isn’t that odd?

  After what seems a very long time, we march out silently, the children last. I tried this morning to catch Daniel’s eye, to smile at him, but he did not look my way. It is the same at meals, and in school. Of course the girls do not converse with the boys in school or any other place. But still, I keep hoping that Daniel will glance at me, or even grin the way he used to, with his mischievous smile. He was once, despite his often imperfect behavior — his willfulness, as my mother called it — a cheerful boy. Now his face seems a mask, with no expression, and I wondered, during meeting, what we would say to each other at our visit this afternoon.

  Sunday School is held in the good room on the first floor, the room with the piano, after dinner on Sunday. We have changed out of our best dresses by then, and sit on the scratchy horsehair sofa and chairs in that room while Sister Jennie instructs us about the Bible and the teachings of Mother Ann Lee, who was the founder of the Shakers. I used to wonder who they meant when they referred to “Mother.” “Mother teaches us to clean our room well because there is no dirt in heaven.” “Mother says to take good care of what you have and provide places for your things.” Those are the kinds of things that Sister Jennie tells us, and I had found myself thinking: Whose mother? Jennie’s mother? My mother? How would Sister Jennie know what my mother had said?

  But it is Mother Ann Lee she means, and whose teachings we must learn and follow.

  Today Sister Jennie talked about pacifism. Shakers will not go to war. The brothers here at Sabbathday Lake were required to register for the draft, but if they were called to duty they would not bear arms. During the War between the States, Elder Frederick Evans went to President Lincoln and talked to him, and finally the president agreed that they would not have to fight, though it pained him.

  Listening to her turned my thoughts again to Daniel. One time Daniel had told me that he would lie about his age and join the army. Soon, though, there
will be no war for him to go to. I heard the sisters in the laundry say that the war will soon be over and the killing will end.

  Oh, my dear brother!

  I am writing this after Sunday School. On Sunday afternoons we may do what we like, but no work and no play. What else is left? I read, or take a walk, or write in my journal. But today, very soon, I am to have a visit with my brother.

  Later

  Sister Jennie came to get me to take me to my visit with Daniel. Another girl, Elvira, had a visit with her grandparents, and came with us to the big dwelling. Elvira went to one of the sitting rooms, and we could see her there with an elderly couple who hugged her. One of the older sisters went into that room and sat with them while they visited. Sister Jennie stayed with me and we waited in a front room for Daniel.

  It seemed so strange. Not long ago, Daniel and I lived in the same house. We sat at the same table for meals, and laughed and argued. We walked together, sometimes, to school. We quarreled a lot, that is true, in earlier days. But during those last days when we tended our parents and sister, we worked almost as one person. There was no time to argue, no need for it. We were desperate to make things right, if we could. And when we failed, we wept together.

  Now we must behave as if we are strangers. I may not speak to him at meals, or during school. He lives in the building behind the brick dwelling, above the boys’ shop, where they learn woodworking, tinware, shoemaking, and other things.

  “Did you have any brothers, Sister Jennie?” I asked suddenly, as we waited there. “I don’t mean the brethren. I mean — well, you know: a real brother.”

  She shook her head. “Nay.”

  “A husband?” I asked, amazing myself because I knew it was a rude question.