I can’t even think the word…
It is
Food
I dare not name these creatures with the names in the book, because giving them those names will give them power. And yet I know in the same way I cannot dismiss these things with words alone.
Part of what is inside me is stiffening up, becoming paralyzed. I see shadows every night in the fields.
I realize with a start that Miriam has, in a moment of compassion and selflessness, turned the conversation away from herself and back to the beasts of Revelation.
“So why do the creatures in Revelation scare you?” she is asking me.
My mind flails around for something to say.
“Well, not all of them, of course,” I say. “The ones that surround
God’s throne, even though they’re strange, they don’t scare me. Just amaze me.”
She reaches for the Bible on my bedside table and opens it.
“One like a lion, one like an ox, one with a face like a man, one like a flying eagle,” she lists. I feel that stiff part beginning to soften.
“Yes, and even though they have wings and they’re covered with eyes, that just seems to be a way of saying that they can see everywhere, don’t you think?” I ask her. I see her hesitate, because she’s not the Bible expert, I am; and of course because sometimes I try to trap her.
“Wings let them go anywhere, at a moment’s notice,” she says grandly with a sweep of her hand, and then looks sideways at me to see that I am nodding. Her shoulders come down from her ears.
I melt against her bony arm. I am not afraid at all right now.
“I can see how you—well, anybody—would be afraid of those locusts,” she says, turning the pages to the eighth chapter. “Now, all those teeth, and those tails that can sting like a scorpion,” she muses, running her finger down the page. Then she stops, poking at the page: a thin-faced locust killer.
“Those things can’t hurt you,” she says. “Jesus destroys them all in the end, you know.”
I am sagging, nearly asleep, against her. We stay that way a long time as the wind outside makes the pyracantha bush run its thorns back and forth on the screen, like a pianist playing glissandos, she tells me. I wonder where she has heard a piano. She moves her hands back and forth to show me.
Soft, rhythmic glissandos.
Back and forth.
She lays me down with my face on my pillow, takes off my shoes, wiggles the covers down beneath me and then up over me, and kisses me goodnight.
“Do you want the light on?” she asks.
I shake my head, sleepy, sleepy. The night is like plush velvet around me and I sleep in my clothes all night long with no dreams at all.
I awaken and the first light through my window is reddish, because the clouds are low and streaked and the sun can’t seem to rise above them. I curl myself into a small ball as I look out the window, thinking that today is the day that Outsiders call Valentine’s Day and the red sky seems to fit. Ryan sent Miriam a card with hearts on it that arrived yesterday and she didn’t even bother to try hiding it from Papa. I don’t think it would have registered with him if he’d seen it.
And then, she is there. My mother.
She stands beside my window and her blue dress seems as bright as the day she was buried in it. I guess I thought that it would look dusky as it did in the dark, in my dreams. Not even a wrinkle.
She looks at me and holds up her hands, turning them back and forth. I realize that she is showing me that she doesn’t have the ring.
When I gasp, understanding, she looks relieved. She looks toward the door behind me and when I look too and then look back, she is gone.
I pull myself into an even tighter ball. Somewhere in the back of my mind I wonder why I am still in bed this late after dawn, and I hear Miriam and Sarah in the kitchen, murmuring about letting me sleep, I must be tired.
But in the front of my mind is something else.
Now I know: What is there in the night, is there in the day.
Chapter 14
I know now that there is something wrong with me, and I don’t know what to do about it. And nobody else does either.
They say the dead don’t speak but they do: Abel still speaks from the covers of my Bible, anyone can see that. And if dirt cries out his lament and only I hear it, what should that be to anyone else?
I have made a decision not to talk to Damaris any more. It makes my heart clench and hurt when I see her. I know that she doesn’t understand that I am protecting her. So when she comes to the door with quilt fabric and her quick, searching eyes in the galaxies of freckles, I don’t engage her. I don’t even let her in the door.
The last few times she has come to the door her eyes are downcast, and she doesn’t say anything except, “Thank you, Sister Leah.”
My life is in my dreams, much of the time. I see my mama almost every night. She doesn’t try to talk to me anymore because I can’t hear and I think she knows it. She just looks at me with tender eyes. And then she turns and she is gone.
I hear whisperings and see movements in the fields every night.
I am sure that I saw Sarah last night in the cornfield. I am certain of it. At first I thought it was one of the black creatures and my heart froze within me as the shadow approached. But it was Sarah, and she was crying. But what I saw on her face was not grief but a kind of teeth-grinding rage. It frightened me more than any of the faces I saw in Matthaus’s book.
She came in the back door and closed the door noiselessly and took off her coat. Then she walked into the spare bedroom without turning on a single light as I watched her from the slit of the open door of my room. She opened a drawer and dropped something inside, something that rattled into a wooden container against as it fell. She turned back the covers and crawled in, then seemed to remember that she had not shut the door. She closed it.
This morning she is cooking sausage in a big iron skillet and Papa sits staring into space over his big pottery mug. Miriam is saying something to them about the wedding but they both are preoccupied. She doesn’t know—and I’m not about to tell her—that Papa and Sarah haven’t slept in the same room for several weeks now. Maybe months, now that I think about it. Since they both arise earlier than us girls, nobody would know unless you’re someone like me who stays on guard most of the night.
I suspect they’ve not been sleeping in the same bed for a long time, even though until recently they both went into their bedroom at night. I say that because of the big window seat that Sarah upholstered to match the bedspread on the king-sized bed. It has a depression in it the size of a woman’s body. And one morning when I walked by I saw all the extra quilts from the house piled in front of it. When I asked Sarah she ducked her head and then said that the light was good in that window and she was looking to see if any of the quilts needed mending. And from that moment on I never saw the quilts anywhere but on the quilt rack at the foot of the bed.
I may be crazy as some say, but I can figure things out.
But my soul is failing, I know it. That part of me inside that is the glue to my being, is becoming unsticky, as if it is willing to let me come apart. One good whirl of an unexpected event and I think I’ll spin out into space in jagged, weightless pieces.
What if a man wants to gain the world and lose his soul, I think?
What if a girl wants to hold onto her soul more than anything but simply cannot figure out how to do it?
I think of the verse in the Bible that talks about the skies becoming like iron above you, and my prayers seem to clamor into a flat, impenetrable metallic canopy that doesn’t allow me to pass.
All I hear is echoes.
I want to pray more than anything but I am like the calf that wandered out onto the pond two days ago and fell through the ice. The men went out on the pond, some on their bellies, and kept throwing ropes around her until she stopped fighting them and they could pull her to shore.
I am becoming tangled in my fe
ars and in all these things I see. I can’t stop struggling because I am afraid there is no one there at the end of the ropes to help me.
Chapter 15
I have put off, over and over again, my idea of the theaters in which I can see the verses of the Bible that might help me. To be truthful, I don’t know how much more of the supernatural I can bear.
I surprise myself when I use the word supernatural to refer to the Bible. But, I remind myself that Christianity is a religion that requires that you believe that your God came back from the dead. And I do believe that.
So perhaps this can take a little examination. Maybe I have sabotaged myself by thinking of this as a head-on collision. Maybe I can do this.
Maybe, later.
I made a list of every example I could think of in the Bible, where the dead did speak to someone. I wrote it very small, and rolled it up like a scroll small enough to eat like John did in the Revelation, and put this list in the space where the spine of my Bible doesn’t quite meet the leather binding.
I can’t afford to let anyone know I have this list.
They think my mind is slipping away and they may be right.
Nobody talks to me, ever, except to ask me questions about my chores, questions I can answer with a nod or a shake of my head. Nobody, including me, trusts me to talk much. “Have you finished all the churning yet? Yes? Well, then take some butter up Sister Eve.”
Or “Have you finished cutting the quilt pieces? No? I understand, go ahead and finish the other ones, they were here first. But when do you think you’ll be finished with mine? Tomorrow?”
Or “Have you seen Caleb? That child was supposed to be doing his homework but I can’t find him. Have you seen him?”
I think people believe that because I am not part of their conversations, that I will be more productive, be more observant of their runaway children, more a source of information than if I speak. Or am spoken to.
And of course they are right, on all three counts.
I wonder if any of them ever sit and think about the power of words. After all, they all have new names. Does that mean they grow into the names like an older sister’s clothing?
I hope not. True to my name’s origin, Leah, I’d be getting blinder. And I may be anyhow.
But I think about a God who speaks universes into existence. Words may have more substance than anything else in existence. But I better not say that to anyone around me. That would seal my crazy status for sure. Better to stay away from words altogether if I can.
I live the life of a willing servant, but I truly live in my mind.
With the help of a Bible dictionary and lots of lists from Leviticus I’ve come up with a pretty fair description of what an Old Testament High Priest looked like. I don’t know why that has seemed important to me but it has kept my mind away from other things. I have a picture in my mind of someone who carried all the mental weight and discouragement of a whole nation of people on his shoulders as a representative of them before God. Somehow, that idea of carrying guilt that you didn’t exactly personally earn seems satisfying to me. I don’t know why.
I would like to have seen a High Priest. I think about his beautiful white turban with the gold plate that said, “Holiness to the Lord,” the onyx stones on his shoulders, the tunic-like ephod with all the beautiful designs on it, the blue robe and long white garment under it, the sash and the breastplate with the twelve stones, one for each of the tribes of Israel. Just thinking about that calms me.
It was hard, but I’ve finally learned all of the Greek alphabet and with the help of the Interlinear have figured out some useful words like “and” and “apostle” and plenty of names because they’re pretty easy. I am confused about why a name will be spelled one way at the end in some sentences and have a different ending in other sentences. I’m thinking it may be like German, with cases and noun endings that change with how you use a word in a sentence.
I am suddenly struck with misgivings: Did I teach Miriam the name of Jesus that was in the wrong case?
Maybe I can find someone to explain that to me. No way am I going to ask Papa.
Or maybe I can use some of the money from the quilts that Sister Lydia sells. She says it’s only fair to pay me for cutting the pieces when she is able to sell the quilts at the auction tomorrow. Then I could maybe get Papa to buy me a teach-yourself-Greek book, if there is such a thing. Maybe.
If I can get his attention, that is. When he looks at me, he seems to be looking at something on a horizon far, far behind me; peering as if looking for something to come from a distance. And I can’t tell if he is welcoming or dreading it.
Miriam and Sarah are spending all their time on getting ready for Miriam’s wedding which is just two weeks away. Of course it has to take place before planting time. Last week Miriam and Ryan traveled all over several counties, taking their hand-written invitations to relatives on both sides. We have had storm after storm and while the ground stays too frozen to plow we are also trying to work around the fact that Easter comes so early this year, in March.
Papa and some of the men went into town last month and found out that the only time they could schedule the auction was this weekend. We depend on the auction to raise money for the school and also to sell some crafts and quilts the women make. So this is a busy time: getting ready for the auction, delivering invitations, and then there’ll be the wedding, and then Easter.
The result is that today I find myself all alone in our house because the men have taken all our wagons to carry our tables and benches to town to set up for the auction. All the women are baking, finishing the bindings on quilts and putting on the tags that say “genuine Amish made” (this of course over Papa’s objections but what else can we call ourselves that Outsiders would understand?), polishing up the wooden toys and furniture that men have made through the winter, and giving stern instructions to the children who will go to the auction: Be polite but don’t start conversations with Outsiders; only tell them about the quilts or rocking horses or paddleboards or whatever your Papa is selling. Don’t run off. No matter what.
I am surprised that today I am here at home unsupervised. There is just too much to do, to set up the auction, and Sarah and Miriam go along too for some last-minute shopping. I surely can’t be trusted in town, so they leave me here alone.
Perhaps Papa and Sarah no longer fear that I’ll go running out to the highway and strangle myself with my crossed Kapp strings while I scream scripture questions and shriek about ghosts to Outsiders as they whizz by in their cars.
Or maybe I will.
No, this is the time alone I have wanted.
I take the Bible into my hands and its bulk, its solidity, comforts me. I know that I can’t start my look at all the times in the Bible when the dead spoke to people with the scary examples, like Saul and the witch of Endor. Maybe later. Maybe.
So I begin with a safe one, one that won’t scare me too much.
It is the story of Jesus on a high mountain. I read the story over and over until I have memorized every detail. I sit back in my chair and let myself see it unfold, as if I am there, watching.
A Man walks in front of three other men, and they are climbing up a mountain. I see the pebbles rolling around their feet, and their sandals can’t seem to get a grip and sometimes they are holding onto scrub brush and bigger rocks to pull themselves along. But the Man in front pushes on until they have arrived at the top, and as they brush themselves off and look around, they are pleased with the panorama they see.
One of them, Peter, is pointing out the lake where he fishes, and his hometown. He doesn’t stop talking, not for a moment. He looks for rocks to sit on so they can rest, and brushes dirt off one and sweeps away some weeds with his feet for the others. He is telling stories about the time when his net almost broke because he had so many fish. The other two men look around, but they aren’t talking.
The leader, Jesus, has walked off to one side of the summit by Himself, behind them
.
There is like a hum in the air that tells you something is about to happen—or maybe it is that there is no sound at all, and that absence of sound is loud.
The men turn to Jesus and they see that He is beginning to look as if there is a light inside Him, brighter than even the shadeless sun that is blasting down on their heads. It grows more and more brilliant like the mantle of a kerosene lamp when you turn it up in the dark. Pretty soon it is so bright you can’t look at Him and so as you look away you see that there are two people standing near Him. And they are like flashes of lightning, too. They hurt my eyes.
And you know that those men are dead. But they’re talking. And they’re standing on a real mountain. A mountain on the earth. Made of rocks and dirt. And they are talking to Jesus. They are stroking His arm, like you would do to a girl who wants to learn to herd the cattle, that you are sending out alone into the pasture for the first time; or the little boy that wants to jump into the pond by himself but isn’t sure he has the courage to do it.
The two men stand in front of Him, bending their faces toward His, murmuring like Mama used to do when I was troubled; one talking about a new exodus, crossing a sea of fire and pain, the other talking about a death that will have no rescue, no chariots of fire. I hear sounds that don’t have words, some of them; and they hold on tight to His arms and stand close, close to Him. And I think I see Him sag toward them as He listens. Then I see Him nod and straighten, just a little bit.
I want to know what they’re saying and though I can’t hear words anymore I know they’re trying to help Him with what He’s going to face. Because He will soon be dead like them.
I open my eyes.
I look around at my living room, at my books, the wooden furniture, the serviceable curtains, a stiff couch with its incongruously soft pillows.
What Will Be Made Plain Page 13
