The Blessed

by Ann H. Gabhart

  Spirit of unity. All at once Lacey felt queasy. She and Rachel were the ones with a spirit of unity. It had been thus since she’d lifted her as a tiny baby out of the box on the back porch of the preacher’s house. It would be thus forever. She was her mother. Rachel was her child. The Shakers could not change that. She would not let them change that.

  24

  “Rachel?” Lacey’s voice sounded hesitant and unsure even to her ears. She cleared her throat and repeated. “Rachel. Aren’t you going to say hello?”

  At last the child raised her head, but she didn’t look at Lacey. Instead, she stared at the wall over Lacey’s shoulder. “Good evening, Sister Lacey.” She spoke politely as though to someone she barely knew. The kind of polite greeting Lacey herself had taught her to say to the churchwomen back home when she wasn’t feeling friendly.

  Lacey pushed a smile out on her face. Not the kind of smile she had worn all through the day when she thought of seeing Rachel. That smile was curling up inside her and dying like one of Rachel’s pet worms on a hot rock. “It is a good evening,” she said. Then she turned to Eldress Frieda. “Can we have a few moments alone?”

  “Nay, that is not possible,” the eldress said. “I must attend to some other duties, but Sister Janie will stay here with you until she deems the visit is over. We have granted you this privilege. In return I expect you back to your room long before the retiring bell rings. Remember there are those who watch the pathways.”

  “Yea. So I have been told.” Lacey didn’t care about the watchers. She only cared about the small girl sitting across the room from her who seemed only a shell of the child she had surrendered to Sister Janie just days ago.

  “Very well.”

  After Eldress Frieda left in a rustle of skirts, silence fell over the room. Two weeks ago Lacey would have never believed that Rachel could sit so still and quiet. Or have such veiled eyes.

  Sister Janie smiled slightly as she broke the silence. “Sister Rachel has adjusted well. She was somewhat distraught at first, but I have discovered that children are very resilient. Even the youngest ones. And they understand the truth when it is spoken to them. Sister Rachel has been very attentive to the stories of Mother Ann. Haven’t you, Sister Rachel?” Sister Janie’s smile warmed as she turned toward Rachel.

  “Mother Ann loves me.” At last Rachel showed a spark of life. She looked straight at Lacey and added fiercely, “She will always be my mother.”

  Forcing her lips to keep smiling, Lacey went over to sit on the bench beside Rachel. She was beginning to understand. So it didn’t bother her when Rachel yanked her skirts away to keep Lacey from touching them. She placed her hand on the bench between them, palm up inviting Rachel to reach for it.

  “I will always be your mother too.” She kept her voice barely above a whisper with the hope that Sister Janie might not hear her words across the room. “Nothing can ever change that.”

  “Nay. You would not have brought me here if that was true.” Rachel folded her arms across her chest and turned her eyes toward the wall. “Sister Rella says you didn’t want me anymore. That you were tired of taking care of me.”

  “I don’t know who Sister Rella is, but she’s wrong. Very wrong.” Lacey put force in the words, but Rachel mashed her lips together in a stubborn line and wouldn’t look at Lacey. “Who is this Sister Rella?” Lacey looked up at Sister Janie, who had moved closer to better hear their words.

  “I don’t know.” Sister Janie appeared to be truly puzzled. “None of the sisters who stay with the children have a like name to that. Unless she speaks of Sister Loretta, who sometimes works in our kitchen.” Sister Janie shifted her look from Lacey to Rachel. “Is that who you mean, Sister Rachel? Sister Loretta?”

  Rachel shook her head. “Not Sister Loretta. Sister Rella. She comes to me at night and tells me things.”

  “In your dreams?” Lacey asked.

  “She wakes me up. The first time I got scared, but I’m not scared now. I like it when she comes. She tells me about angels.”

  Was the child falling into the Shakers’ spell so much that she was entertaining angels like Aurelia? “What does she tell you about them?”

  “It’s a secret. Between me and Sister Rella. She says we have a lot of secrets.”

  “Secrets are not the Shaker way.” Sister Janie’s voice was stern. “We share all things with our brothers and sisters and don’t deny them the joy of gifts presented us by the angels.”

  Rachel’s lip trembled a little, but she kept her arms tightly crossed and didn’t look at Sister Janie. Lacey welcomed the evidence that the Shakers hadn’t completely conquered Rachel’s stubborn streak any more than they had overcome Lacey’s own contrariness. Her Rachel was still there under the pouting lips and angry arms. But who was this Sister Rella?

  “We used to have a few secrets.” Lacey couldn’t stop herself any longer. She reached over and stroked Rachel’s arm. The little girl didn’t act as if she noticed, but at least she didn’t jerk away from Lacey’s hand.

  “Sister Rella says those secrets were all made up. That you made up things like you made up stories.”

  “How did she know I made up stories?”

  “Sister Rella knows everything. The angels tell her.”

  “Oh.” Lacey let her hand rest on Rachel’s shoulder. She wanted more than anything to gather her close and hold her until she turned back into the little girl who had clung to her and called her mama on their first night in this village. But Rachel needed to come to Lacey’s lap of her own will. “Is your Sister Rella pretty?”

  Rachel’s voice changed, sounded more like Lacey’s Rachel. “She is pretty. She tells me I’m pretty too.”

  “Our outward looks are not important, Sisters. It’s the inner heart and soul that matters,” Sister Janie said.

  Lacey ignored the woman’s preachy words and kept her eyes on Rachel. “What does she look like?”

  “She has black hair and eyes that can see in the dark. Her fingers are long like mine and never cold.” Rachel held up her hands and wiggled her fingers back and forth. “She sings to me the way you used to when I couldn’t go to sleep back before . . . ” She stopped and suddenly looked sad.

  “Before?” Lacey asked. “Before what?”

  “Before you quit loving me and brought me here.” Rachel’s eyes filled with tears.

  “I will never quit loving you, Rachel. Ever. I promised you that on our first night here. It was a promise that could never be broken. Will never be broken.”

  “You said you’d come tell me Maddie stories.” Rachel slowly turned toward Lacey. She still had her arms clenched across her chest. “You promised, but you didn’t come.”

  “I wanted to,” Lacey said, but her words didn’t seem to be getting through to Rachel.

  Tears began spilling out of the child’s eyes. “They took Maddie away from me. Sister Rella said because of you. All because of you.” Rachel opened her mouth and began sobbing. The sound mixed strangely with the muffled singing drifting down from the room two floors above them.

  “Here, here, Sisters.” Sister Janie waved her hands back and forth as she scurried the rest of the way across the room toward them. “Nay, nay. This will never do.”

  Lacey slipped to her knees in front of Rachel and put her hands on the little girl’s wet cheeks and made her look at her. “That’s not true, Rachel.”

  “Sister Rella says it is.” Her words were a wail of sorrow.

  “But she’s mixed up on that. I’d never do anything to hurt you. Never.”

  “Leave the child be, Sister Lacey. You’re upsetting her and undoing all the good we’ve done.” Sister Janie tried to pull Lacey away from Rachel, but Lacey refused to budge as she kept staring into the little girl’s eyes.

  Rachel looked almost ready to drop her head down on Lacey’s shoulder. Another minute and she would have had her in her arms, comforting her. But Sister Janie reached around Lacey to jerk Rachel off the bench and yank her toward
the door.

  When Rachel started crying even louder, Sister Janie gave the child’s arm a firm shake as she said, “Hush your crying right now, Sister Rachel. Such out-of-control behavior will not be tolerated.”

  Rachel shut her mouth and wiped her arm across her nose and eyes as she tried to swallow her sobs.

  With her heart about to break, Lacey spun around on her knees to grab for Rachel, but Sister Janie hustled her out of reach. But she couldn’t stop Lacey’s words from getting to Rachel’s ears. “I love you, Rachel. More than all the stars in the sky.”

  “Sister Lacey, I told you to leave the child be.” Sister Janie looked ready to explode as Rachel pulled against her hold to look back toward Lacey.

  Lacey paid no attention to the older sister’s warning but kept her eyes on Rachel. “And more than all the worms under the ground.”

  For a moment Lacey had hope the little girl was going to accept her words, but then Rachel stuck her lip out and raised her chin up a little. Lacey had seen her do the same thing dozens of times when she was determined to have her way even in the face of punishment. Her voice was shaky from the tears as she said, “Sister Rella loves me more.”

  The words slammed into Lacey like a fist ramming into her stomach. She could barely force her voice out above a whisper as Sister Janie herded Rachel on out the door into the hallway. “No, no, it’s Jesus who loves you more.” Lacey lowered her head and spoke more to her hands than to Rachel. “Only Jesus could love you more.”

  Sister Janie hesitated at the door to frown back at Lacey. “Take control of yourself, Sister Lacey, and remember your duty to do as Eldress Frieda instructed you. You can be sure she will hear of this.”

  “Yea.” Lacey slowly got to her feet.

  That seemed to satisfy Sister Janie, who turned to whisk Rachel out of sight toward the stairs. With the sound of their footsteps going away from her pounding into her ears, Lacey stood in the middle of the floor and stared at the empty doorway. She felt unsteady in mind and body.

  The children’s voices kept coming down from the upper floor as they sang the Shaker songs, and then all at once the thunder of stomping feet overpowered the voices. They had to be stomping out evil, chasing away the devil. That would be what they were teaching Rachel, only she, Lacey, would be the evil they would want to keep away from the child now. Sister Lacey who wasn’t following the Shaker way. Sister Lacey who got visitations from angels that, instead of singling her out for service as Eldress Frieda had thought, could be pointing her out for the disharmony she was bringing into their midst. All the fingers would be pointing at her now instead of the one they should be pointing toward. This Sister Rella who was poisoning Rachel’s mind against Lacey. She was the real evil.

  Lacey forced her feet to walk through the empty door and out into the hallway with its two stairways reaching away from her up to wherever Sister Janie had taken Rachel. Away from her. The stairs were empty. No one at all anywhere in sight while the stomping dance went on over her head. She wanted to climb the steps, open all the doors, search out Rachel, and force her to listen. Force her to understand. Make her realize this Sister Rella was lying to her. But Rachel was only four years old. How could Lacey expect a child so young to understand what she herself couldn’t understand? Angel visitations. Devil stomping dances. The preacher shaking like a willow in the wind. Family love forbidden. Lies whispered in the night to a child.

  Lacey blew out a soft breath of air and squared her shoulders. She had to pull herself together the way Sister Janie had said she must. Not to turn into the compliant Shaker sister who did only as she was told. No, she had to pull herself together so that she could find a way to leave this place. With Rachel.

  Without thinking about this door or that, she went out the one nearest her and down the steps. It was only when she was stepping off the bottom step onto the pathway that she realized she had gone out the wrong door, the one reserved for the brethren. She looked around to see if any devout Shaker was going to descend on her and point out her error, but the pathways were as empty as the hall and stairs had been inside the Children’s House.

  What difference did it make which door she went through? Her skirts hadn’t been scorched as she went through the doorway. No angel with a sword guarded the door, waiting to slay her the way the angels had lain in wait for Baalam if his donkey hadn’t seen with more holy eyes than his. It was just a door the same as any other door.

  Man had put the rules in place in this village. Not the Lord. It was the Lord’s rules she needed to remember. Pray and seek his face. He cared for her. Isn’t that what Miss Mona had told her time and time again? A constant help in time of trouble. It was a sure thing Lacey had trouble. Once a body started down the wrong path, it seemed like she could just keep getting pulled along and find more and more trouble.

  But that didn’t mean she had to give up. That didn’t mean the Lord wouldn’t help her. The Lord could forgive just about anything if a person asked with a contrite heart. Lacey’s heart couldn’t be much more contrite if that meant sad and sorry. She was sorry for the wrong steps she’d taken with the preacher. She was sorry for the wrong thinking that had landed her in this mess. She was sorry that she didn’t know who this Sister Rella was so she could go set her straight.

  “Can you help me with that, Lord? Show me who this Sister Rella is,” she whispered and then felt ashamed she couldn’t pray a better prayer. Like the kind Miss Mona used to pray that brought the Spirit down. Lacey’s prayer in comparison felt like nothing but empty words that just bounced right back at her and didn’t find the Lord’s ear. Maybe that was because the Lord was telling her that some things she had to do herself. Like finding out who this Sister Rella was.

  If there was a Sister Rella. It could be she only existed in Rachel’s mind. After all, Sister Janie hadn’t known anyone with that name. And they kept the doors locked at night. Lacey knew that, because on one of the first nights she’d been in the village, she had slipped out late one evening on the pretense of going to the privy but had gone to the Children’s House. The doors had been locked. Even the back door that led to the kitchen. Sister Rella would have to live in the house with the children to visit Rachel at night, but if that was so, then Sister Janie would know who Rachel meant.

  Somehow the thought that this Rella might only be a figment of Rachel’s imagination made Lacey even more sorrowful. It was all because of her, as Rachel said the mystery sister had told her. Lacey had brought the sorrow down on them heavy and thick. She should have never agreed to come here with the preacher. It didn’t matter if she was married to him. Words spoken with no feeling. As Eldress Frieda said, there was no connection between them. None but the one they’d tried to concoct out of feelings that had as much chance of holding them together as reins of thread had of holding a horse to a hitching post.

  Real or imagined, Lacey would still have to find a way to battle this Sister Rella. Lacey looked around to get her bearings. She’d been walking without paying the first bit of attention to where she was going. She had turned the wrong way out of the Children’s House and was in front of the Farm Deacon’s shop. Again no one was about, with the work of the day over and done. She stared down the road. She could keep walking. Just surrender Rachel for the time being. She could come back later for her after she was free herself. But could she ever be free of tears if she gave Rachel up so easily? Rachel was her child. It mattered not that she hadn’t been born of her body. She was her child. The desperate mother who had left her on the preacher’s back step had given her to Lacey. Miss Mona had given her to Lacey. The Lord had given her to Lacey.

  “Dear Father in heaven, help me,” she whispered as she turned back the other way to walk to the Gathering Family House. She shut her eyes tightly and imagined her prayer spiraling away from her up toward the heavens. She stood still on the pathway a moment to see if an answer would fall back down to her. She wanted an answer, but all that came to her mind was that Beatitude verse. Blessed a
re the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. She didn’t want to inherit the earth. Just have Rachel’s arms sliding back around her waist.

  Maybe it was the meek part she needed to be dwelling on. At least the appearance of meekness while she was facing up to Eldress Frieda and confessing her wrongs. All the while plotting more wrongs in the eyes of the Shakers.

  25

  The day after Lacey had smiled so joyfully at the morning meal, Isaac sneaked a look back over to the sisters’ side of the eating room to seek her out again, but her back was to him. The stern sister sat across from her. The one whose face was creased by frown lines. Drayma. That was her name. When she caught Isaac looking where he shouldn’t, her scowl grew even fiercer.

  Isaac quickly turned his eyes back down to the food on his plate. That was where the leadership expected him to keep his attention. On the tasks at hand. Forks scraped against plates and spoons clanked in bowls. Next to him, Brother Jonas smacked his lips as he noisily enjoyed his biscuit smeared with fresh strawberry jam. At the end of the table, one of the brothers belched loudly and then couldn’t ask for pardon since no talking was allowed in the eating room. A tiresome rule to Isaac’s mind. Only one of many.

  It wasn’t until they were lining up to leave the room that he chanced another look toward the new sister. She stood stiff and straight in the sisters’ line, staring forward at the door as was the rule. No trace of the joyful smile from the day before remained on her face. Where then she’d looked ready to bounce with joy, now she appeared to be cloaked in darksome thoughts.

  He kept sneaking peeks at her as they walked out their proper doors to begin their assigned work. In the normal world, he could have simply gone up to her to ask what had so changed her demeanor in such a short time. In the normal world. But not in the Shaker world. Nothing was normal in the Shaker world except work.

  Outside the house, the lines broke apart as the men and women headed to their workplaces. Sister Aurelia stepped up beside Lacey, and the two sisters moved away from him. Probably to pick strawberries or make jam. A simple chore, surely as normal here as outside the village. But then again even work was different here. While the tasks of feeding the horses or planting corn or dovetailing the joints of a bureau drawer might seem the same, the Shakers didn’t just work to get the horses fed, put corn in their cribs, or make a place to store their undergarments. Each task however mundane was considered worship. Hands to work. Hearts to God. He’d heard that at least once a day since coming to the village.