The Blessed (15 page)

Miss Mona used to tell her the Bible said each day had its worries and that was enough to keep a person busy without borrowing from yesterday or tomorrow. That was sure enough true on this day with leaving this place she’d called home these many years and going to somewhere she didn’t know the first thing about except they danced in church. What a thing to know! That sort of rumbled around in her head and made her feel almost dizzy.

She pulled in a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. Whatever it was, she could handle it. “Blessed are the meek” popped up in her head again, but she didn’t let the words linger there. Meek wasn’t going to work. She was going to have to stiffen her spine and face whatever was coming head on. She’d done that plenty. And it appeared she was going to have to do it plenty more.

“Lacey.” Rachel pulled on her apron.

Lacey looked down at her. That was going to be the hard part. Not being able to keep some of those hard times from Rachel. She’d thought she could by agreeing to marry the preacher, and look where that had got them. Stuck down in a deep hollow of unhappiness. It had been her intention to keep sunshine pouring in on Rachel, but there wasn’t anything but worriment on the little girl’s face as she looked up at Lacey.

Lacey asked, “What’s the matter, sweetie?”

“Did Reuben know the mama I had before you found me on the porch?”

“He said he saw her, but he didn’t really know her.”

“Did Papa? Did you?” Her eyes were trusting. She didn’t seem worried about what Lacey might answer. More like she was just asking what happened next in one of Lacey’s stories.

“No, I didn’t. But she must have been very pretty because you are.” Lacey leaned down and hugged the little girl. “How about a Maddie story while they finish loading the wagons?”

Rachel’s face brightened. Stories were always an easy way to distract her from things not going right. Lacey too. What would she have done all these years without her stories?

“Not a Maddie story. Tell me about the angel Mama saw. The one that came and peeked in the windows to make sure you and her could take care of me.”

“That’s not my story. That was Miss Mona’s story.”

Rachel yanked on Lacey’s apron. “But you can tell it. You know it. I like the part where the angel dances on the roof to get you to go outside and see me before I got too cold.”

“That’s not real, Rachel. Your mama just made up the angels to make you smile.”

“Please, Lacey. Please.” She stared up at Lacey with pleading eyes. “There could be angels, couldn’t there?”

Lacey relented. “There could be. An angel told the shepherds about baby Jesus for sure.” She looked toward the wagons. They weren’t completely loaded, so she just sat down in the grass next to the garden and pulled Rachel down beside her. The sun warmed their shoulders as she told the story about the angels that Miss Mona liked to tell Rachel. Miss Mona liked talking about angels. She said they were everywhere all around them. Ready to lift them up and keep them from dashing their feet on a stone in the path. She said that if a person paid proper attention and had her spirit open to the Lord, that sometimes, just sometimes, that person might feel the flutter of wings. That was the way she always ended the story and that was the way Lacey ended it too.

And then she held Rachel’s hands in hers and wished hard that Miss Mona’s angels would follow them to the Shaker town.

15

It was good Lacey fed Rachel some bread and cheese back home at the preacher’s house before they climbed into the buggy with Preacher Palmer to follow the wagons to the Shaker town. Lacey had thought about cooking the eggs that wouldn’t be needed for breakfast, but the fire was out in the stove and there wouldn’t have been time to wash the dishes. She wasn’t about to leave dirty dishes for the churchwomen to find.

It was a long ride and past dusk before they came to the village. A silent ride as the preacher spoke not a word. His grim silence stilled Lacey’s tongue and that of Rachel’s as the child held tight to her Maddie doll and leaned against Lacey’s side. More than once Lacey wished they could be riding on the back of one of the wagons where the two of them could have marveled out loud over the sights along the road. Houses with flowers blooming in the yards. Mares with new foals running beside them out in the pastures. The scent of lilacs on the breeze. A stand of trees with dogwood blooms lingering among them.

Of course there were dogwood trees in the Ebenezer woods. And lilacs in the people’s yards and horses in the fields, but somehow everything looked different along the road. New and strange and, from the way Rachel scrunched up against Lacey, a little scary.

Lacey could understand that. She’d traveled this same road when her father delivered her to the preacher’s house. She’d been frightened then, just the way Rachel was now, not knowing what lay ahead. But Miss Mona had been at the end of her journey. Lacey took hold of Rachel’s hand and sent up prayers that somebody just as kind might be at the end of this journey. The Lord could make good come of everything. Even tangled messes like the one she and Rachel were in.

She did her best to hang onto that hope as they rode into the village. The buildings loomed up in the near darkness, larger than anything Lacey had ever seen. The wagons turned to the side and stopped in front of a brick building that could have held the preacher’s house and the church twice over with room to spare. And that was only one of the buildings. Brother Forrest helped them down from the buggy and led them along a road between two white buildings. One was built out of white stone that seemed to have gathered the sun’s light and was continuing to radiate it now even though night was falling. On the other side of the road was a white frame building not as big but one that Lacey would have thought large if she hadn’t just seen the other two buildings.

“Our meetinghouse.” Brother Forrest nodded his head toward the smaller building.

“Where you dance.” Lacey was sorry for the words as soon as she spoke them. They seemed to hang in the air and echo disrespect for their ways. Ways she was going to have to learn.

“Hush up, Lacey.” Preacher Palmer’s voice was harsh.

“Worry not, Brother Elwood. The young sister is right. That is where we go forth in exercises of worship. It is a gift to worship so.”

After that, Lacey made sure she didn’t open her mouth again even when Brother Forrest directed her and Rachel to go up separate steps and through a different door into yet another large brick building while he and the preacher went in the opposite door. For a few seconds Lacey had the crazy idea to grab Rachel and run. But where would they run? So instead she took Rachel’s hand and climbed the stone steps into the building where three Shaker sisters and the elder who’d been at the preacher’s house on Monday were waiting. Waiting to take Rachel away from her.

Miss Sadie Rose had warned her. She’d told her straight out the Shakers didn’t believe in families in the usual sense, but somehow Lacey hadn’t eyeballed the truth of that. After all, in the telling, stories oft as not got skewed a bit. Instead she had gone on thinking that she and Rachel could keep being the way they were back at the preacher’s house. Together.

That might have happened for a few more days, even weeks, if not for Preacher Palmer. The minute one of those strange-looking Shaker women named Sister Janie took hold of Rachel’s hand to lead her away, the little girl started wailing every bit as pitiful as she had the morning Miss Mona had passed on. The sound like to have broke Lacey’s heart. She grabbed Rachel close and stared down the Shaker woman until she dropped the child’s hand and stepped back. Sister Janie looked at the other Shaker women, and Lacey could almost see them thinking on maybe changing their minds about taking Rachel from her. Not that she was going to let any of them peel her arms away from Rachel anyway.

“Perhaps we need to give them a little while to adjust to the Shaker way,” Sister Janie murmured.

Lacey felt her breath coming a little easier with the words. They weren’t heartless.

But Preacher Palmer was. He turned cold eyes on Lacey. “Let the child go, Lacey. Right now. We’ve come into this community to leave things of the world behind and do as they say.”

Lacey held Rachel against her even tighter. “But she needs me.” She spoke barely above a whisper.

“She needs discipline. And so do you.”

Lacey stared down at Rachel’s head and wanted to lean down to kiss the sweet part dividing her dark hair. With her face pressed tight against Lacey, the child stopped crying but stood stiff, taking tiny breaths like as how she might escape the notice of the people around her if she could only be quiet enough. Lacey felt the same stiffness inside, along with a swelling of pain in her chest. They wouldn’t listen to her over the preacher.

Why hadn’t she paid more mind to what Sadie Rose had said about them separating mothers and children? It just hadn’t seemed like something they’d really do. Not to a child as young as Rachel. She wasn’t much more than a baby and she’d already lost two mothers. It wasn’t right to force her to lose another one.

Lacey should have stayed back at the preacher’s house. She and Rachel could have sat there on the kitchen floor in front of the shelves full of Miss Mona’s things that had no place in the Shaker village and waited for the churchwomen to come divvy up what had been left behind. The churchwomen would have took pity on them. More pity than the preacher, who was glaring at Lacey with eyes hard and full of fire, like some Old Testament prophet calling down doom on the Israelites for forgetting the Lord.

Even the Shakers standing around her and Rachel looked on them with kinder eyes than the preacher. Especially Brother Forrest. He and the bearded old man they’d called Elder Homer stood to the side of Preacher Palmer. Then there were the three women in like dresses with wide white collar scarves lapped across the front and tucked under the waistbands of the aprons that still covered their blue and gray skirts, though it was well past supper-cooking time.

After a long moment of strained silence, Brother Forrest came to her rescue once more. He looked at the older woman dressed in gray. The one they had called an eldress.

“Eldress Frieda, the two young sisters have had a long day of work and are surely tired from their journey here. Perhaps it would be well to allow them to sleep at the Trustees’ House tonight and let them begin their new life with us in the morning sun.”

“There’s not the least need in that,” Preacher Palmer said. “They will do as I say.”

Lacey kept her eyes away from his face, not anxious to see the anger that would be there. Anger that surely grew fiercer when the eldress spoke. “This is not a decision for you to make, Brother Elwood. Nay, we will do as Brother Forrest suggests, but there are beds here we can use on this night so as not to bother those at the Trustees’ House with this minor predicament.”

Lacey peeked up at the woman. It was obvious she expected no argument from anyone in the room. Not even the preacher when she turned her steady eyes on him. With the way the color flooded the preacher’s cheeks, Lacey wondered if he might be rethinking his decision to follow the Shaker path. Most of his adult years had been spent telling others what they should do, with the full power of the pulpit behind his orders. Now a woman was telling him that he would have to humble his will and do as she said.

He clamped his mouth together and stayed silent, but Lacey could see the effort it took. She bit the inside of her lip to keep a smile from creeping out on her face. It wasn’t a time for smiling. Because the truth was that even though they had won this night together, come morning the eldress would be just as firm in separating her from Rachel, and there wouldn’t be a single thing she could do about it.

Brother Forrest led the preacher up the stairs to the right. Doors opened and closed. Voices were quiet but firm. Still in the entrance hallway, the Shaker women eyed Lacey. One of the sisters, the one named Drayma, stepped between Lacey and the door.

“I will do as you say,” Lacey said quietly.

“Yea, so you say, my sister.” Eldress Frieda pinned her with stern eyes. “But you have already refused that, have you not?”

“I suppose so.” Lacey looked down.
Blessed are the meek
, she reminded herself.

“It is best to not suppose, but to know. Only then can we deal with our wrong thinking.”

“Your ways seem strange to me and contrary to what I have always known.”

“Yea, that is true for many who come from the world. You will not be expected to understand everything at once. We will explain it to you, and then you will see that it is a better way. A way written of in the Bible.”

Lacey looked up. “Where?” She and Miss Mona had read clear through the Scriptures more than once, but Lacey couldn’t remember one verse that said a mother shouldn’t take care of her child. In fact, babies seemed to be a major way the Lord blessed folks in the Bible.

“The Christ speaks of it in the gospel of Mark. He promises no man—and our Mother Ann completed the message to make us understand the words mean no woman as well—shall leave house or brethren or sisters or father or mother or wife or children for the way of truth and not be richly rewarded. As those among us have been.” Eldress Frieda’s voice softened. “But it is plain to see that you and the little sister are near exhaustion as Brother Forrest pointed out. Bible truths are better understood by a rested mind. Sister Drayma will find you nightclothes and show you where you can pass the night until the morning bell rings.”

“And then what?” Lacey asked.

“Then if you stay among us you will have to abide by the rules that stand us in good stead here and eliminate the stress that bedevils the lives of those who choose to live in the worldly way.” Her face was stern.

“What if I can’t?”

“‘Can’t’ is not a word that we should dwell upon, my sister. We can do what the Eternal Father wants, if we are willing to turn our will over to him.”

“Blessed are the meek,” Lacey whispered.

“Indeed. You will do well to think on meekness.” The eldress smiled, and she suddenly looked years younger and not so forbidding.

“And if I can’t?” Lacey asked.

“Again you speak that word ‘can’t’ when surely what is more often true is ‘won’t.’ But Sister Lacey, don’t give up before you have even started,” the eldress said. “However, if that does hold to be the truth and you are not able to surrender your will for the union of the community, then we do not keep those unwilling captive. All are free to come and go as they wish. Our village is not a prison.”

“And Rachel?” Lacey asked softly as she rubbed her hand up and down the little girl’s back.

“As I understand it, the child’s mother died some months ago and then you married her father. So you can claim to be her stepmother.”

The woman’s voice wasn’t exactly condemning Lacey, but it did wipe away any hope Lacey had been clinging to that she could get them to see a better way. Lacey’s way. “I’ve been with her since she was a tiny babe in arms.”

Eldress Frieda took a minute to consider Lacey’s remark before she said, “The child’s path will be determined by her father. That is the accepted way of the world and one we recognize here in our village.”

But her father doesn’t love her the way I do.
Lacey held back her words. It would change nothing to say them aloud, only bring Rachel sorrow. There was enough of that lying in wait for them along this Shaker path without adding more. So Lacey bent her head and thought on the meekness Beatitude. What in the world could the Lord have meant about the meek inheriting the earth? The meeker she tried to be, the more things were pried out of her hands, until it didn’t seem she had hold of anything but air.

Think on the promises of the Lord.
Miss Mona’s words whispered through her head after the Shaker sister called Drayma got Lacey and Rachel bedded down. She’d given them plain, soft nightgowns. Rachel’s swallowed her, but that was because they didn’t have children’s clothes in this house, according to the sister. There was a special children’s house where all the youngsters lived together with some sisters and brothers overseeing their upbringing and welfare. It was on the tip of Lacey’s tongue to ask to be one of those tending sisters, but she knew that wouldn’t be a job they’d let her do. Not unless she was able to swallow the Shaker way, and the more she was hearing about that way, the bigger the wad was getting in her throat until it was nigh on choking her.