The Blessed (2 page)

“Your sorrow is no deeper than mine. She was my wife.” The hard knot of pain inside Isaac’s chest made it hard for him to breathe.

“A wife can be replaced. A daughter cannot.” With his mouth tightened into a grim line and his hat pulled down low on his forehead to hide eyes awash with tears, the judge turned and stalked away from Isaac toward his waiting carriage.

Silently Isaac watched him go. He had nothing left to say. He was empty of words. Empty of feelings. He’d dropped it all in the grave with Ella along with the flower. His spirit was crushed by her death. As crushed as the autumn leaves underfoot on the pathway. The man who had wanted adventure and love, the man Ella had fallen in love with, that man was gone.

The carriages left the graveyard in a slow, somber black line. Even after they had disappeared from sight, Isaac imagined he could hear Ella’s mother’s anguished keening.

He didn’t turn back to look at the grave. He could hear the gravediggers putting the dirt in on top of Ella, but he couldn’t bear to look at them. Instead, he began walking back toward town. The old preacher offered him a ride with a goodly amount of kindness in his voice, but Isaac claimed he’d rather walk. He told him he needed to be alone. He couldn’t have borne the old man praying over him all the way back to the city.

He didn’t deserve prayer. He didn’t deserve to still be breathing in and out. But he was. His beautiful, fragile Ella was not. Because of him.

2

Spring 1844

Lacey Bishop swept the kitchen floor as though the little bits of dirt she’d tracked in from the back garden were going to sprout legs and crawl up her skirt like field mice gone mad. If skunks could go mad with foaming mouths, why not mice?

Her pa’s words warning her about rabid skunks echoed in her head all these years later.
Be careful out in the woods, Lacey girl. You never know what you might run up on. Could be something rabid. Something mean.

She’d take her chances out in the woods. It was in kitchens and sitting rooms that folks came to grief. She might only be nineteen, but she’d lived plenty long enough to know that.

She swept the dirt up in a pile and then gave it a push with her broom toward the door, open to the early spring air. It was a good broom. A Shaker broom brought in by Preacher Palmer a couple of weeks before Miss Mona took a turn for the worse last fall.

He’d brought it into the kitchen and handed it to Miss Mona before he went off to do his preacher visiting. Miss Mona acted like she’d gotten some kind of prize as she ran her fingers over the broom straws with something akin to admiration.

“Those Shakers,” she’d said in her high, fine voice. “They might have some odd ideas on worshiping, but they do have a way of making the least things better. Things nobody else would bother with improving. Just look at this broom. It’s made for sweeping a wide swath. Ten times better than those old round brooms that weren’t good for much but sweeping ashes back into a fireplace. I’ve heard tell that they war against dirt over there in their Harmony Hill village. That they’re always sweeping and cleaning something.” She looked up at Lacey and then back down at the broom. “One thing sure, a body has to admire their brooms.”

Miss Mona had a way of admiring everything, even Lacey. Maybe especially Lacey.

Lacey had lifted the broom away from Miss Mona and took a spin with it around the room. “Is it true those Shakers dance to the Lord the way they say?”

“I’ve heard it is, but I can’t say from seeing it myself. Elwood never thought it would be proper for us to go curious seeking to any of their services, what with him being a sanctified Baptist minister and all. Sadie Rose told me she went once though. Years ago with her father. They took a picnic and ate it out on the Shaker grounds with those strange worship songs of the Shaker people filling the air around them.”

“Did she see them dancing?” Lacey stopped her twirling and looked at Miss Mona.

“That she did. She and her sister went and peeked in the door at them. She claimed it was a sight to behold. All those Shaker men and women as alike as peas in a pod, dancing up and back in some kind of strange dos-à-dos. And then all of a sudden she said they started stomping the floor as to how they were killing snakes. Started the whole building to shaking. From the way she tells it, I think it like to scared Sadie Rose to death.”

“I didn’t think anything could scare Miss Sadie Rose.” Sadie Rose was the head deacon’s wife at Ebenezer Church, and she had a way of getting things done.

“She’s not one to get the trembles over easy,” Miss Mona agreed with a laugh. “But Sadie Rose was some younger than even you at the time. And stomping in a church house wasn’t exactly something she had ever seen before.”

“I can’t imagine anybody stomping and dancing in church.”

“It is hard to think on and I don’t know if they do such anymore. I don’t suppose anyone outside their village can know that now, since they’ve closed down their meetings to outsiders, or so Elwood heard. Somebody told him they were claiming some kind of spiritual revival sent down from their Mother Ann, the one they think was the daughter of God or something akin to that. It all sounds too strange for the likes of me.” Miss Mona shook her head at the thought of such an outlandish way to believe. “But you can ask Sadie Rose about that meeting she saw. She’ll tell you it made her eyes go wide.”

Sadie Rose was Miss Mona’s best friend in all the world. Or at least that’s what Miss Mona had thought. Lacey took another swipe at the floor, even though there wasn’t a speck of dirt left to sweep anywhere. It was Sadie Rose’s words she was wanting to sweep out the door and scatter to the wind. The woman had just left. Sadie Rose claimed the church ladies were only trying to help, but it sounded like gossip words to Lacey. The very idea that they could think anything indecent might be going on in the preacher’s house!

Lacey had the urge to throw a plate down on the floor to break into a hundred pieces just so she’d have something to sweep again. But that might wake up little Rachel. Plus Preacher Palmer would notice if they were a plate short. For a minute Lacey thought about going ahead and breaking two of the plates, but then she sighed. It didn’t do any good to take out her spite on the dishes.

She propped the broom up in the corner by the back door. She’d take it out later and sweep off the porch to keep things neat the way Miss Mona had taught her. Miss Mona was like the Shakers in that way. She couldn’t abide dirt. And now the poor woman was covered over with it. Lacey mashed her mouth together in a tight line to keep the tears from springing up in her eyes. A body couldn’t cry forever, but she did miss Miss Mona. Maybe after Rachel woke up from her nap, they could think on what flowers to plant on the grave once the worry of frost was past.

Dear little Rachel. A ray of sunshine in a dark house. Lacey went to the doorway between the kitchen and the sitting room and leaned against the door casing to watch Rachel’s chest rise and fall. The child liked to climb up on the daybed and sleep where Miss Mona had spent most of her days the last three years before the Lord had called her home. Sudden like, or so it seemed to Lacey, even though Miss Mona had been afflicted for years with a kind of wasting sickness that made her prone to trembles and weakness.

Miss Mona said they’d tried to find a way to rid her of the weakness when it first came on her, but nothing any of the doctors did ever helped. Finally Preacher Palmer said it must be the Lord testing them to see if they were faithful and they’d have to try to pray down a cure.

Even though Miss Mona was a mighty praying woman, no cure ever came down. She claimed not to be put off by that. She said the Lord answered prayers in lots of different ways, and maybe Lacey coming to be with her was the Lord’s way of blessing her instead of removing the affliction. When Lacey didn’t understand how Miss Mona could not be perturbed by the Lord’s indifference to her suffering, Miss Mona opened up her Bible. She helped Lacey find the Scripture where Paul wrote about his own affliction, and how, although the Lord didn’t remove it from him the way Paul asked, he did give him the strength to bear up under it.

“The Lord sent me you, Lacey dear. Without the trembles I’m afflicted with, there’d have been no reason for Elwood to fetch you home to help me. The Lord blesses us in many wondrous ways,” Miss Mona had said.

Lacey looked up straight at Miss Mona that day. “So you’re saying your trembles is a blessing.” She didn’t bother to hide the doubt in her voice even with her finger still on the Bible page Miss Mona had asked her to read.

“In a way. You’re a gift for sure.” Miss Mona smiled at her. “So though I might be hard-pressed to look favorably on my weak spells, I do look very favorably on you.”

“Following that trail of thinking, I’d have to think my pa marrying up with the Widow Jackson and bringing her home after my ma died was a blessing, seeing as how it led to me being here.” Lacey stared at Miss Mona without smiling back.

“It did lead to you coming here.”

“The Widow Jackson wasn’t never any kind of blessing.” Lacey shut the Bible with a firm snap as if she needed to be sure Paul’s affliction stayed inside and didn’t leak out on them. They didn’t have need of more of those kinds of blessing gifts.

“Reverence the Lord’s Word,” Miss Mona said mildly. That was one of the many good things about Miss Mona. She never got too bothered by anything Lacey said or did.

“Sorry.” Lacey stroked the Bible’s black cover as though to make amends. “But I’ve told you how the widow treated me and Junie. She nigh on killed Junie that day she hit her with a skillet. Poor Junie had a knot on her head big as a hen’s egg, and two black eyes. That woman was no blessing.”

“But the Lord made good come of it.” Miss Mona raised her eyes up to the ceiling and spoke in her prayer voice. Without even taking the first peek at the Bible page, Miss Mona could quote Scripture and not get one word out of place. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God.”

She brought her eyes back down to Lacey as she went on. “That goose egg opened your father’s eyes and made him take note of what was happening. That’s why he took Junie back to Virginia to live with your mother’s sister, and you know how good your little sister’s been doing there from the letters you get from time to time.”

“But he didn’t take me.” Lacey hated the way her voice got all whiny when she said that. She hadn’t even wanted to go to Virginia. Not really. And her father had done what he could to protect her from the widow after that. Something Miss Mona gently prodded her to remember.

“Now you know it took some soul searching for your father to give you both up. And you’ve told me how you were better at keeping out of the way of your stepmother.”

Miss Mona always referred to the Widow Jackson as Lacey’s stepmother, but Lacey never put any word about “mother” toward her. She supposed the woman had stopped being a widow or a Jackson the day Lacey’s pa married her and she was a mother now too. She’d been in the family way when she talked Lacey’s pa into farming Lacey out with the preacher. The last Lacey heard, they’d had three boys. Her brothers, but she’d never laid eyes on them. Her pa and the widow had moved to the western part of the state before the last boy was born.

When they decided on moving, her pa came to the preacher’s house to tell Lacey goodbye, but he hadn’t brought even the oldest boy along. Too young for church or visiting, he said. He’d have taken Lacey home with him then. Claimed the widow had had a change of heart. Lacey saw through that easy enough. The only change in the widow’s thinking was in how much work there was to do. She needed somebody to chase after those boys.

Even if she’d wanted to give the widow another chance, she wouldn’t have left Miss Mona—she’d been with her for nigh on two years by then. Miss Mona treated her like a treasured daughter, teaching her to read and to sew and to sing. Lacey had chores to do, right enough. She had to make sure there was food on the table for the preacher, but Preacher Palmer wasn’t particular about what he ate. More than particular about a lot of things, but food never seemed to interest him much. Miss Mona said he was too involved thinking on spiritual matters to worry with how the potatoes were cooked. Lacey thought it wasn’t just holiness he was thinking on then, and she was knowing it now that Miss Mona wasn’t there to be between his eyes and Lacey. Something that busybody Sadie Rose had surely noticed too.

The woman claimed to have nothing but Lacey’s best interests at heart. And the church’s too, of course. A deacon’s wife had to think about what was best for the church.

Sadie Rose had sat at the kitchen table with Lacey and fingered the handle of her teacup while they talked about Rachel and the rag doll Sadie Rose had made her. The doll was a cute thing with eyes and mouth in neat dark blue stitches on the cloth face and hair of black yarn.

“Like yours,” Sadie Rose told the child as she brushed back Rachel’s dark curls that were hanging down so low on the little girl’s forehead that they were nearly in her eyes.

Lacey even noted disapproval in that gesture. That she hadn’t trimmed the child’s bangs the way she should have. But while Rachel had always sat still as a tree stump for Miss Mona to cut her hair, she took the wiggles every time Lacey came at her with the scissors. Lacey wasn’t wanting to poke out one of the child’s eyes, and she had no desire to ask Preacher Palmer to hold the little girl steady. She had no desire to ask Preacher Palmer anything. Which made what Sadie Rose came to say even more ridiculous.

It took the woman a while to come to the point. First she had to catch Lacey up on all the sick in the church and then ask a dozen things about how Rachel was doing. Miss Sadie Rose talked over the top of Rachel’s head like she didn’t think the words would sink down to the child’s ears. Lacey knew better than that. It hadn’t been that many years since she was a little child herself with people talking over the top of her head after her own mother died.

Of course Miss Mona wasn’t actually Rachel’s mother. Sadie Rose knew that. Could be that was why she took it upon herself to be sure the little girl was properly seen to. The truth was nobody knew who Rachel’s mother was. At least not her natural-born mother. But Lacey knew who mothered her. The child had called Miss Mona mama, but Lacey did the mama things. Kept her fed and clean and held her when she cried. And loved her so powerful it hurt sometimes. Rachel couldn’t have the first memory of the mother who’d left her on the preacher’s backdoor steps when the poor little child wasn’t more than a few days old. Tiny and helpless and precious.