The Gifted (24 page)

It hadn’t been Sister Sophrena’s choice for Jessamine to be shackled in constant supervision punishment with Sister Edna. The Ministry had so ruled. All had to abide by the rules. That had become clear at the end of the Era of Mother’s Work when so many of the young people had neglected their duties to run after angels and visions of all sorts.

When Jessamine first came among the Believers, it was not at all unusual for some of the young sisters to leap from their chairs in the schoolroom and whirl without restraint. Jessamine often leapt up to join them even though nothing in her spirit commanded her to do so as the other girls claimed. Jessamine simply had itchy feet while they had gifts of the spirit.

Jessamine had anticipated receiving like gifts. When the gifts didn’t fall from the heavens over her and she was merely beset with tears for the loss of her granny’s voice in her ear, she’d had to fight the ugly stain of envy in her heart for those who did receive the gifts like Sister Betty. A year younger than Jessamine, Sister Betty was so continually gifted with spiritual messages in her dreams that the older sisters often clustered about her bed with lamps and writing instruments to record whatever she might say in her sleep.

On those nights, Jessamine lay awake watching with great curiosity and that worm of envy. But it wasn’t only Sister Betty who was gifted with special manifestations. Sister Connie, who never seemed the least interested in anything spiritual and could not even form her letters with ease, had sometimes been impelled to take paper and pen and draw elaborate lines and circles.

So much had been happening then. Every week in meeting, Jessamine was treated to the wildest imaginings as she waited anxiously for her own gifts of the spirit. But she’d never felt the first twinge of a vision. No spirit commanded whirling. None compelled drawing. She heard no gifts of song or angels whispering to her even in her dreams.

She couldn’t understand it. It seemed to her that she, able to build castles in the air or dream up talking birds, should be the one chosen for visions. Yet the Shaker gifts of spirit were denied her and given to others who—when they weren’t being beset with visions—could not imagine the first turret on a castle.

Even so, it had not been a bad time for a child prone to letting her imagination take wing to come among the Believers. While the Shakers never credited any part of their visions to imagination, the continual presence of angels with their strange requests gave Jessamine a ready excuse for any lapse in obedience to the rules. One that Sister Sophrena sometimes doubted, but ever accepted while forgiving Jessamine’s shortcomings.

But then the messages from beyond became less and less joyful and more and more upsetting. Accusations of impropriety. Of inadequate love. When the instruments of the spirits began voicing upsetting revelations about the elders and eldresses and questioning the Ministry, the leaders began to doubt the revelations were truly from Mother Ann. After a time of unease and questioning, the New Lebanon ministry proclaimed the Era of Manifestations over.

The spirit drawings were hidden away. The holy mounts covered up and abandoned. All were advised to concentrate on being simple and walking with obedience. Without discipline, the Society could not survive. So Jessamine understood the reason for Sister Edna dogging her every step. She had broken the rules. What the Ministry ordained could not be changed. But that didn’t mean she had to like it or that it wasn’t spoiling her garden duty.

While Jessamine normally took pleasure in plunging her hands into the silky smoothness of the seeds in her planting bag and drawing them out to drop into the rows, this day it just seemed a chore that caused sweat to run into her eyes and her back to ache. It was almost as if instead of following two steps behind Jessamine, Sister Edna had crawled up on her back to weight her down.

She warred against the weariness. She thought of the bean vines that would grow. She thought of her granny and how she would pray over the garden before they planted the first seed and after every row was seeded and tamped down.

She missed her granny even if she had been gone so many years that her face was becoming fuzzy in Jessamine’s memory. She missed the angels even though she had never seen the first one. She missed the man from the world. Tristan Cooper. She longed to say the name aloud, to try it on her tongue, even if only in a whisper, but Sister Edna would hear. Her sharp eyes would probably see if Jessamine so much as silently mouthed the man’s name.

“Whatever is the matter with you, Sister Jessamine?” Sister Edna said crossly as she stopped covering over the seeds with her hoe and leaned down to pick a bean seed out of the row. “That is the second time in this row you have dropped three beans instead of two as is proper.”

“Forgive me, Sister Edna. I will try to be more careful.”

“Your mind is not on your tasks this day, Sister.” Sister Edna straightened and handed Jessamine the bean she’d retrieved from the dirt. “I daresay it is instead drifting to sinful thoughts of that man you brought among us. He proved himself to love the world and to be with no honor, did he not?”

“Perhaps his mind was confused as he said.” Jessamine studied the bean in her hand.

“Confused about his name? I think that unlikely.”

“He gave every appearance of truthfulness when he claimed not to remember the day Sister Annie and I came upon him in the woods.” Jessamine dropped the bean into the row and reached into her seed bag for another to add to it.

“I have doubts you are the best judge of truthfulness when it appears you have only a passing acquaintance with the truth yourself at times.” Sister Edna’s voice carried scorn. “You and Sister Abigail as well. Pretending a worm upon your collar.”

“That was not my pretense,” Jessamine said quietly as she continued to place the bean seeds in the row. She was careful to do it properly.

“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the two of you hatched the plan to cause me concern.”

“Nay, I would not want to cause you distress, Sister Edna.”

“Well, you’ve certainly caused poor Sister Sophrena enough problems.” Sister Edna tamped down the dirt with extra vigor. “Promising obedience and then running straight to make cow eyes at that liar. And don’t think I didn’t see you sneaking looks at him during meeting. Did you think the Ministry would not be watching? They always watch.”

“Yea.” Jessamine knew nothing but to agree with her. Everything the woman said held truth. She felt more and more pressed down until she wondered that her feet weren’t sinking to her ankles in the soft dirt. “Yea, you are right. I have much reason to repent.”

“It is good that you understand your need to change. You should count your blessings that the Ministry has given you this opportunity to mend your ways and step back from the miry pits of sin that trap so many of the world.”

Jessamine turned to look at Sister Edna as she efficiently pulled the dirt over the seeds and tamped it down. “Have you never wondered about the world, Sister Edna? What their way is like?” She knew she shouldn’t ask, but she could not seem to hold her words back.

“Nay.” The woman’s brows tightened in a frown. “I have breathed of the rotten air of the world and care not to do so ever again.”

“Were you brought here as a child like I was?”

Jessamine was suddenly curious about this sister who seemed more concerned with faultfinding than lifting up. One of Mother Ann’s precepts came to mind about how it was as much a duty to commend a person for doing well as to reprove that person for doing ill. That was certainly not something she was going to quote to Sister Edna nor was it something Sister Edna gave any indication of practicing. Kind words rarely tumbled from her mouth. Gladness didn’t appear to be one of Sister Edna’s gifts.

“Nay. I was not so blessed. I was already past the time of childhood. The same as Sister Sophrena when she came.”

“Yea,” Jessamine said as she turned to begin dropping the seeds in the row again. “She has told me that she had the sin of matrimony to overcome.”

“Many among us walked the sinful path of marriage in the world. It is expected of one there.”

“You?” Jessamine looked back at her. “You were once married? In love as the world loves?”

“The sinful state of marriage has little to do with love. Even the kind of love those of the world are ever chasing after. Those feelings bring more sorrow than joy even in the way of the world’s thinking.” Sister Edna leaned on the handle of her hoe as her eyes narrowed on Jessamine. “It seems odd to me that your mind is so filled with the romantic nonsense of the world when you have so long been surrounded by the pure love embraced here among our family of Believers. I fear you have been letting your ears be filled with the sinful talk of some of our novitiates more recently from the world.”

“Nay. My sinful curiosity rises from within,” Jessamine said quickly. She had no desire to bring disapproval down on Sister Abigail. Even if the sister’s whispered stories in the night had awakened Jessamine’s desire to see White Oak Springs, Jessamine’s own feet carried her on that willful trek through the woods. Her own hand had reached out to touch the cheek of the man of the world. She had stepped willingly into the shadows with him. Indeed had pulled him into the shadows herself and thus steepened her plummeting fall into sin. No fault for that could be laid upon Sister Abigail.

“You do seem beset with a sinful nature.” Sister Edna sounded almost pleased with her pronouncement.

“My head has always been full of wonderings and stories.” Jessamine pushed the pretense of sorrow into her voice.

“You should ponder on the stories of Mother Ann’s life or those in the Bible.” Sister Edna looked down. “Or while in the garden, think only on placing the seeds in the row.”

“Yea.” Jessamine carefully dropped several seeds into the row before she let her curiosity override her good sense. She looked up at Sister Edna and asked, “Did you come in with a husband of the world? Children who became your sisters or brethren?”

Each question darkened Sister Edna’s frown. “You ask too many things that have no bearing on our lives as Believers. I have left the stress of such worldly things behind and set my feet on the way to salvation. My children were blessed to be given the gift of a perfect life. It is not a fault that can be laid to me that two of them chose to reject that gift before they were of the age to join in our family of Believers.”

“They went back to the world?” Jessamine’s eyes softened on Sister Edna. “That must have been a sorrow for you.”

The woman’s face hardened even more. “I am sorrowed any time one of my sisters or brethren falls into sin. Here in our Society, we do not favor one sister or brother over any other. Sister Sophrena has surely impressed that truth upon you.”

“Yea.” Jessamine had often been told that was the Shaker way, but she had never seen how it would be possible to love every one of her sisters exactly the same. Nor had she believed many among them were able to manage such except the eldresses with their years of devoted practice in proper sisterly love. And perhaps Sister Sophrena. She didn’t believe it was true for Sister Edna. Jessamine was seeing her in a new light and not as simply one of the watchers always ready to catch someone straying from the assigned way.

With that new light shining down on the unsmiling sister, she wanted to see even more. “Was it hard to surrender your worldly love for your husband? For your children? I have seen some who come among us struggle mightily with turning from the world’s way.”

“Those struggle who are reluctant to pick up their cross and carry it. Only those. And you, Sister Jessamine, you ask questions that should not enter your thoughts, much less cross your tongue.” Sister Edna’s eyes were stern. “I should not like to have to report your troublesome thinking and lack of diligence in carrying out your duty for the day to the Ministry.”

Jessamine had some doubt of the sister’s reluctance in that regard. The very idea of reporting Jessamine’s contrariness brought a measure of cheer to Sister Edna’s eyes. She didn’t smile, but her frown vanished.

“I will aim for more diligence.” Jessamine didn’t want trouble with Sister Edna. She would tamp down her curiosity.

“And more silence,” Sister Edna said. “Remember, none preaches better than the ant, and it says nothing.”

“Yea, Sister Edna.”

Jessamine leaned over and dropped seeds into the row. She did not mind silence. She and her granny had shared much silence. Comfortable silence. Silence where thoughts could grow and entertain. Silence at times broken by her granny’s singing the words of a favorite hymn. At times the hymn’s words had seemed not to actually break the silence but to add to it. Silence among the Believers was sometimes the same. A time when holiness could fall down over them all. She wasn’t feeling that kind of silence now.

The cessation of talk between her and Sister Edna had no peace in it. Only the sound of uneasy truce. Jessamine could not keep from sneaking looks at Sister Edna and wondering which of the brothers might have once been joined with her. A devout brother. One who did not often let a smile slip onto his face. She could not imagine the sister married to a man who embraced happiness as a gift of peace. She had often had the same wondering thoughts about Sister Sophrena until the sister told her that her former husband had journeyed to a village in the east. But Sister Sophrena had no children to set on the Shaker road the way Sister Edna obviously had.

Jessamine had seen many mothers and children parted among the Shakers. She’d noted the tears, the struggles. Sister Edna might have once suffered such tears even if she denied it now. How could a mother not suffer some feeling of loss with the surrendering of her young? How could a father? But it happened. Fathers brought their children and left them. Mothers brought their children and left them.

Jessamine’s own father had taken her into the woods to Granny and left her. And never returned. The prince who loved her mother. An ache opened up inside her heart and she felt terribly alone even with Sister Edna close enough behind her to touch and more sisters spread out across the garden, planting beans with the same movements. A planting dance.