The Innocent (15 page)

In time, the odd Shaker songs of worship wouldn’t sound so jarring to her ears and she might even enjoy the marching dances, strange though it seemed to dance in church. It was a simple matter to step up with the proper foot when
climbing stairs and remember to kneel on her right knee and not her left. She could learn their ways without changing her beliefs.

Until she demonstrated the proper behavior, Sister Edna would watch and guide her. Carlyn tried to remember Sister Muriel’s assurances that Sister Edna was a good teacher in spite of her prickly ways, but Carlyn seemed unable to please the woman. She couldn’t even confess her sins properly.

“Do you think you’re perfect, Sister Carlyn?” Sister Edna asked when Carlyn struggled to think of sins to confess during her second week at the Shaker village.

“Nay, I am far from perfect.” Carlyn tried to look sorrowful. That wasn’t difficult.

“Then you must have need to confess.” Sister Edna glared at Carlyn across the table in the small room where she heard the confessions of the novitiates she was guiding into the Shaker way.

In the chair beside Carlyn, Sister Berdine, who had come to live with the Shakers two weeks before Carlyn, stared down at her hands. They had been paired to work under Sister Edna’s watchful eye and thus shared confession time. Sister Berdine always quickly numbered her lapses to satisfy Sister Edna’s need to hear wrongs. This day she confessed sweeping dirt under the table instead of in the dust pan. She hid a biscuit in her apron pocket because she had taken too much on her plate and was unable to eat it all as she should to Shaker her plate. She had grumbled about the duty of picking beans. She entertained an uncharitable thought.

Carlyn couldn’t imagine the Lord being upset over such small wrongs, but she tried to follow Sister Berdine’s example just to get the confession time over. “I lost my patience with
one of my sisters,” she said when Sister Edna continued to stare at her.

“Did you go to that sister and ask forgiveness?”

Carlyn moistened her lips. She couldn’t very well admit the sister she had lost patience with was Sister Edna. Sister Berdine came to her rescue.

“Yea, Sister Edna. Sister Carlyn asked my forgiveness and I gave it without hesitation. I know I can be slow at times when I am working in the garden and Sister Carlyn is very quick with her hands.” Sister Berdine looked over at Carlyn with a slight smile, but her face was solemn when she turned back to Sister Edna.

“Very well, Sisters. It is good to speak honestly about our faults so that we can be forgiven.”

“Yea.” Carlyn and Sister Berdine answered in unison.

“It is also good to be in agreement.” Sister Edna’s eyes narrowed on them. “Sister Berdine, you may return to your duties in the garden, but I have more to say to Sister Carlyn.”

Carlyn managed to hold in her sigh as Sister Berdine stood to leave. With her back to Sister Edna, Sister Berdine let her hand brush Carlyn’s arm as if by accident. But there was nothing accidental about the way she rolled her eyes at Carlyn. Sister Berdine was into her thirties, but seemed younger. She’d never been married and told Carlyn she came to the Shakers because she was tired of shifting between her siblings’ houses as the poor maiden aunt.

“Better to be stuck here with a bunch of maiden sisters. At least maiden after they came to the Shakers,” she said.

She loved to talk and grabbed every chance to do so. Working to harvest the butterbean seeds gave them many opportunities, as Sister Edna was too advanced in years to bend and pick
the seeds. Instead, she sat at the end of the garden and hulled the beans while keeping a watchful eye on her charges. With their heads down and their hands busy, Sister Edna couldn’t tell they were talking. Other sisters working in the garden did the same. Carlyn heard softly voiced snippets of conversations whenever she stood for a moment to stretch her back.

Now, Carlyn wished she could return to the gardens and work in the sunshine instead of being stuck in the small room with the impossible-to-satisfy Sister Edna. Indian summer weather was lingering outdoors. Carlyn looked past Sister Edna toward the open window behind her. Oh, to be walking with Asher in that sunshine to search out walnuts or hickory nuts.

She missed Asher. She missed having the freedom to spend each new day as she pleased. Here she was told what to do. And now Sister Edna would once more tell her what to believe. Carlyn was surely in for another sermon. While she found it easy to listen to the Shaker beliefs, she was not able to voice acceptance of them as Sister Edna wanted.

Carlyn would never accept the Shaker way. She did not believe marriage was wrong, and if she had been blessed with a child, she would have never wanted her child to live in one house while she lived among sisters in another house. Just thinking about having a child awakened a yearning inside her for what now seemed an impossible dream. Even if she did accept that Ambrose wasn’t coming home, she was still bound to him with no proof of his passing.

She felt a flash of guilt, yet could not block out the thought that it would be better to know she was a widow. That way she could move on with her life. Perhaps marry again should a man show interest in her.

Unbidden, Sheriff Brodie’s face popped into her thoughts, and a flush warmed her cheeks. He’d taken in her dog, but that didn’t mean he would consider taking her in as well. It was best to wipe such thoughts out of her mind. Until she knew for sure what had happened to Ambrose, she was his wife. And even if proof did come her way as to Ambrose’s fate, it would do her little good now. Not captured in this Shaker net of sisterhood.

Sister Edna kept her gaze steadily on Carlyn after Sister Berdine left the room, waiting for Carlyn to break the silence between them. Carlyn had no intention of doing that. If she had learned nothing else from the Shakers, she had learned the value of holding her tongue.

Finally Sister Edna spoke. “I worry about you, Sister Carlyn.”

Carlyn lowered her eyes to her hands folded in her lap. She didn’t know what Sister Edna wanted her to say, so once again she chose silence.

“Did you not hear me, Sister Carlyn? I said you worry me.”

“I did hear you, Sister Edna, but it is not my aim to make you worry. I am trying hard to follow the rules here and ably do my duties.” Carlyn held up her hands. “To work with my hands.”

“But have you given your heart to God? Hands to work, heart to God.”

“Yea.” That was easy to answer. It mattered not how empty her prayers felt at times. She had no doubt she was a child of God. In time, she hoped to recapture the joy of that truth. But now she was in a valley with only shadows of sorrow.

“If that is true, then you need to examine your thoughts and motives. Clean away every wayward thought that has
found harbor in your heart. For right thoughts, clean thoughts cannot exist alongside sinful thoughts. Praying and sinning will not work together. If you keep on sinning, you will quit praying. Mother Ann taught us so.”

Carlyn folded the edge of her apron over and over. What sin did Sister Edna want her to confess? The sister couldn’t be aware of Carlyn’s wayward thoughts about the sheriff just now. But while Sister Edna might condemn her sinful thinking, Carlyn believed the Lord understood the need to be loved.

Carlyn unfolded the creases in her apron and smoothed them out. The rough skin on her fingers, dried out by the work in the garden, caught on the fabric.

“Have you nothing to say for yourself?” Sister Edna asked.

“Tell me what sin I am committing and I will strive to leave it behind.”

“A person needs to recognize one’s own faults. The sin of pride blinds a person.” Sister Edna leaned across the small table between them.

Carlyn fought the urge to scoot her chair back. “I have no reason to be proud.”

“Yea, you speak the truth. None of us do. Except in the gifts showered down on us by our Mother Ann.”

“I will try harder to walk a righteous path,” Carlyn said.

“Such paths are narrow with many obstacles.”

“Surely not as many obstacles here in your Shaker village.” Carlyn kept her eyes on her hands flat against her apron. “Here, where you endeavor to have no sin.”

“We do block the sinful ways of the world from our borders. But sin is like a pesky housefly. It finds a way to sneak in. Worldly sins that tempt our brethren.” Sister Edna’s eyes
narrowed on Carlyn. “You are a temptation to our brethren with your pretty face.”

So that was it again. Sister Edna was forever harping on how Carlyn was too pretty. Carlyn didn’t care how she looked. She would as soon be plain like Sister Berdine, whose upper teeth protruded a bit and robbed her of the chance for beauty. But then she had to admit that wasn’t completely true. She had liked Ambrose thinking she was pretty, nor had she minded that the sheriff had seemed moved by her looks to give Asher a home.

But now in the Shaker cap and the shapeless dress, her appearance didn’t seem to matter. Beauty of spirit was what was important here and what had ever been important. A fair face was a gift of nature, but the more important gift was a pure and innocent heart.

“It is not my desire to be a temptation to any, but I cannot hide my face.” Carlyn looked straight at Sister Edna. “If there are those who look at me in the wrong way, then perhaps it is their sin and not mine.” Just as Curt Whitlow’s attack had not been her sin. She had not acted wantonly.

Sister Edna’s mouth screwed up as though she’d bitten into a green persimmon. “Do you deny you entertain worldly thoughts when you feel the eyes of one of the brothers on you?”

“I have not noticed anything like that.” Carlyn had barely looked at any of the men in the village outside of Brother Thomas and Elder Derron. Neither of them had given any indication of being affected by her looks.

“I notice. It is my duty to notice and to report wrong actions to the elders and eldresses.”

“Have you noted wrong actions that I have done?”

Sister Edna looked down at the paper in front of her as though checking for wrongs that might be written there, but Carlyn could see that it was blank. That’s how she felt. Blank. As though all that went before had been wiped away and now she was just a shell with nothing inside as she went through her days. That was why she couldn’t find words in her mind to pray. She was too empty.

Pray anyway
. Her mother’s voice whispered through her mind. At least she hadn’t lost that.

“Nay,” Sister Edna said finally. “But I fear you are clinging to worldly thoughts instead of embracing the way of a Believer.”

“I am listening. This way is much different than what I knew before. It takes time to change the habits of a lifetime.” That was true, but not completely true. She had no intention of changing anything except how she said yes and no. But she would do her best to mollify Sister Edna. “Did you understand the Shaker way when you first joined?”

“That was long ago. Too long to remember.”

“So did you grow up here among the Shakers?” Carlyn studied Sister Edna’s face. Her wrinkles indicated she had to be well along in years, but she moved with ease other than claiming the inability to lean over to pick beans. Sister Berdine and Carlyn had tried to guess her age, but neither had been brave enough to ask.

“Nay. I was older than you when I came into the Society many years ago.”

“So you had another life before this one.”

“I died to that life when I put my feet on a better road.”

“Were you married?” Carlyn couldn’t quite keep the surprise from her voice.

“I told you I died to that life.” Sister Edna frowned. “I put the sin of matrimony behind me long ago when I began walking the Shaker way. You have need to do the same.”

“Yea.” Carlyn let her eyes glide over Sister Edna’s face. It was hard to imagine her married. Had her husband come into the village with her? Was it possible that she had children she’d surrendered to the Shaker way? The questions pushed against Carlyn’s lips but she did not let them out. “I am trying to learn your way.”

“I have to wonder if you merely speak those words you think will tickle my ears, Sister Carlyn. At times, I sense a lack of sincerity.”

“Nay, I know it is a sin to be insincere in my words.”

“Or prayers.” Sister Edna’s eyes bored into Carlyn as though she could read her thoughts.

“Yea.” Carlyn met Sister Edna’s stare. “The Lord recognizes the intent of our hearts over the sound of words. If you have noted wrongs that I am doing, please let me know what they are so I can correct my behavior.”

That shouldn’t be hard. Hadn’t she done that all the time she was living with her father? Tried to please his idea of righteousness. It was only after she married Ambrose that she’d understood about grace. And now she had come back into a life where rules seemed to matter more than love.

Sister Edna lifted one of her fingers. “You are resistant to my instructions.”

“I will try to listen with more openness.” Carlyn felt a twinge of guilt knowing that she was lacking the sincerity Sister Edna had mentioned, but she didn’t look away from the other woman’s face. She did very sincerely want to be through with their meeting.

“You sway your hips when you walk.” Sister Edna held up another finger.

For a moment, Carlyn was at a loss for words, sincere or otherwise. “I walk as I have always walked. Are there rules about walking as there are about kneeling and climbing stairs?”

Instead of answering, Sister Edna held up another finger. “You ask questions when you should be listening.”

Carlyn spoke before she thought. “The Bible tells us to ask. That if we lack wisdom, we should ask and the Lord will liberally give answers.” Her mother had always assured her of that, but Carlyn should have remembered how her father had resisted questions and kept quiet. It did little good to continually upset Sister Edna. When would she ever learn to say yea and bend her head in a posture of submission to whatever the woman said?

Sister Edna made an odd squawking noise. She planted her hands on the table and rose to her feet, glaring at Carlyn. “Young sister, you need to remember your place. It is not your duty to attempt to inform me of things I know much better than you. It is my duty to lead you to proper behavior. It is your duty to listen without question and without the sin of arrogance. Do you understand?”