The Visionist: A Novel (10 page)

“You had the Visions then, too?” I asked. I wanted her to come back to me. “Mother found you even then?”

She stopped walking. “No one found me then,” she said. “I was alone.”

I knew in that moment that she was true, for she had humility in the face of such closeness to the Divine. Others, when they have been moved to dance and labor well in Meeting, are ecstatic afterwards—I might even say prideful. They crow the news of their enlightenment. But Sister Polly was modest in all things, even the acceptance of friendship. By Heaven, she was grateful for it! Was she to become my redeemer? I felt sure the answer was yes. Why else would Mother have sent her to me? In the blaze of her visions, my markings would fade, of that I felt sure.

I pulled at her sleeve and looked down in order that I might better follow the paved way leading us back to the warmth of the dwelling house. Safe in the embrace of all who could see her for who she was, she would find herself. And I? I would love her, my close companion, my Faith Incarnate.

Polly

“YOU WILL TELL
me, please,” Elder Sister Agnes said, “what happened earlier.”

It was evening on the Sabbath Day of Polly’s first meeting, and while sitting in the dining hall and eating her supper, she had been summoned by Sister Columbine to the eldress’s quarters. Before her, Elder Sister Agnes now stood in front of the window, clasping her hands and rubbing one over the other. Polly heard them chafing—a dry whisper. Nose a-twitch, eyes wide, ears assaulted by the most commonplace of sounds, she felt like a cornered animal in the small room; its upright ladder-back chairs and writing desk, its orderly oval boxes and baskets full of tasks yet to be completed—they all appeared steeped in moral rectitude. Somewhere, a clock ticked down the minutes, seeming to push time forward as purposefully as it did its pointed hands. A log crackled inside the small stove, and Polly jumped, looking up at Elder Sister Agnes and her stern, watchful stare.

“I am not wholly certain, Elder Sister,” Polly answered. “I hardly remember it, though it was just hours ago. I think back and…”

Polly paused, her mind flooded by the memory of the believers advancing and retreating like soldiers, their turning in ever smaller interlocking circles, whirlpools of skirts, a dirge of song, the cloth-clad feet beating fast—their commotion and noise mixed with the sounds of her mother crying, the
creak-creak
of the stairs leading up to her bed, his hideous grunting, the suffocating darkness. Before she could stop, she’d heard herself moaning, felt herself rocking and gazing upwards into the shaft of light that seemed to fall just where she stood, as though a chute in the Heavens had opened and from it poured all manner of terror. This was not salvation. It was him again. In the rhythms of the believers’ worship, she heard his hoe hit the earth, his kick that sent the hens fluttering, his angry roar. Over and over, back and forth, he came at her, left her weak, made her sick with nausea: the knowledge that, inevitably, he would touch her.

“You think back and…?” Elder Sister Agnes prompted.

Polly kept her face purposefully blank. How could she tell this woman that she had not seen anyone’s devil but her own? She had envisioned something nobody in this peaceful place could understand.

“I hear only noise, smell only smells, and heat…that’s all I feel until…,” she continued.

“Yes,” said Elder Sister Agnes. “Until?”

“Until my angels come,” Polly answered. “Then my soul is taken away from that which frightens me and I…escape.”

Elder Sister Agnes held her chin high, her lined skin stretched taut over her face. With her neat gray hair, high cheekbones, and straight nose, she might have been pretty once, if there had ever been a time when she allowed her expression to soften. Polly gazed into her hard, pale eyes and tried to imagine what the eldress saw in her—a gaunt figure dressed in a stranger’s ill-fitting clothes, her face drawn and sickly. The older woman’s regard was not unkind, but she hid her emotions well. She was to Polly as solid and impassive as a rock.

The eldress looked into her lap, holding the silence between them for a long time. “Why did you come here, child?” she finally asked.

“I came because this is where my mother brought me,” Polly answered. “You know that I did not choose it. You were there. You know that I did not seek the attention of your believers.”

“It is not something one ‘seeks,’” Elder Sister Agnes said crisply. “Or it shouldn’t be. They think you are a
Visionist
—that is the term we use. It is an honor, bestowed without warning. Do you understand the consequences of your behavior today? The believers—many of them—think that you have been chosen to speak for Mother Ann. Their faith is a weighty responsibility. If you’ve anything to confess, child, now is the time. A single outburst can be easily explained. But if this continues, their belief in you will become impossible to contain.”

The eldress fell silent, then added in a kinder tone: “Tell me your secret, Sister Polly, for I sense that you—like so many who seek peace here—come to us bearing a heavy burden. I once took shelter here myself, you know. I realize that the World holds many a reason to make a girl run.”

Polly gazed down at her feet. How she yearned to talk and never stop. To tell Elder Sister Agnes everything she had never been able to say to anyone else. But what did she know of this woman? Only that she scrutinized her with little but suspicion. Hadn’t Mama made it plain that Polly was never to say anything about Silas, about the fire? She would be foolish to even consider trusting this stranger.

“I cannot explain what happened in Meeting,” Polly said. “And as to any secrets I might confess, they are commonplace enough to be of little concern to anyone but myself.” She met Elder Sister Agnes’s gaze.

The eldress paused before speaking again: “You stared at me as you departed the meetinghouse. What did you seek?”

“I suppose I looked for what I could not find in the faces of the others. Wisdom. Something that might explain to me what I had done to cause such a commotion.”

The faintest of smiles played across Elder Sister Agnes’s lips. “Well, ’tis true that your episode caused a mighty stir. But surely, this cannot be the first time that you have been possessed by such wild emotion?”

How to answer this? No, not the first. But it was not the same here, for Polly was no longer alone. She spoke her fear. Her angels had flitted about her head, urging her on. Falling into consciousness as the tumult quieted, Polly found herself surrounded by beatific faces flushed with ecstasy, eyes so moved by the Spirits that they glinted. To be sure, it had been a strange enveloping, and she was grateful when Sister Charity took her by the arm and led her away from their fervor. In the midst of such an intense display, she had been frightened and confused, but she had not felt alone.

“It was,” she said, “different before.”

“How?” demanded the eldress.

“Here, I was not…in danger,” Polly answered. “Demons descended upon me despite the presence of the believers, but my angels did as well.” She sighed. “Even so, I would be lying if I did not tell you that every ounce of my being wanted to flee.”

“And what is it you were fleeing?” Elder Sister Agnes asked.

Be careful,
Polly told herself.

“I believe that I was fleeing the past, Elder Sister Agnes,” she said clearly and, she hoped, without a trace of nervousness. “Is that not what everyone runs away from?”

“I cannot argue with you there, Sister Polly,” the eldress answered, “but I am warning you that my responsibility is to protect the believers from harm. And as I know as little of you now as I did before you stepped into my chambers, I shall be watching you closely henceforth. Perhaps you are precisely what the believers think you are—a Visionist. Perhaps not. I suppose only time will tell. Now go. Take your rest and may morning bring you clear-sightedness and peace. You will, you realize, be made to confess everything to me if you are to stay with us. Not even a Visionist can escape that.”

Elder Sister Agnes took up her sewing basket and commenced her work. Her stitches were tiny and perfectly spaced. Polly had never seen a woman so deft and sure.
What can the eldress,
she wondered,
have possibly needed to run from? When will I be made to confess? And to what? That I failed to protect my brother from harm? That I have had “carnal
relations” forced upon me since I was ten years old? That I set my home on fire? That I may have killed my own father?

Revelation seemed impossible, but she had to stay in The City of Hope, for its isolation from “the World” made it possible for her to vanish. Wasn’t that what Mama had wanted for her children? At least until she had tended to whatever it was that needed tending? Polly was still confused about the change she had seen in her mother once they’d left the farm. She wasn’t sure that she trusted her to remain strong.

Lying in bed later that evening, she thought about the eldress’s warning. One thing was certain: Her past would have to remain secret. Her safety depended on it and now so did her reputation—as
a Visionist.
No matter where she turned, life held its threats. The goodness of the believers aside, it was no different in The City of Hope, and the unceasing menace exhausted her.

Too soon, she heard the tolling of the first morning bell. Ben must be waking to its dull, rhythmic chime as well. Who was with him? Had Brother Andrew discovered that he was different—that his words came out more slowly than did those spoken by other boys his age, that he needed time to understand what was being asked of him, that he had demonstrated but two emotions in his short life: sweetness and fear? After Silas plunged his tiny, swaddled body into a bucket full of water and held him under, the light in his eyes had changed forever. He grew, same as any child, but he appeared to view the world around him through a haze.

He was good at helping round the farmyard. He could calm any animal, weave nets from wild vines for catching fish in the pond, coax fruit and vegetables from the most blighted trees and seeds. His fingers were dexterous and strong, his eyes and ears sharp as a hawk’s. But with horizons known only to him, Ben’s mind remained a mystery, and Polly prayed that he would not be punished for its peculiar constraints.

She closed her eyes, mourning the loss of him. She had failed him as a baby—Silas had moved silent and quick as a catamount to steal him away when her back was turned. Now that she’d let Ben be taken from her again, she felt the full extent of her culpability.

The bell rang and rang. Polly covered her ears. She would take her brother back. She had to. She owed him that much.

“Up we get!” piped a cheerful voice from the bed across the room. “We’ve so much to do!” Sister Charity’s tone could not have been more different from the one she had used the morning before, when she had sounded like a short-tempered old maid. Polly stared at her—she looked so happy. Radiant, even, beneath the magical markings. Stranger still, the transformation was catching. No one had ever before gazed upon Polly with such unguarded devotion. Under the warmth of Charity’s hopeful regard, Polly’s doubts melted away.

Something was changing.

What was it? Lifting her covers, she peered down towards her toes. Even in the thin gray light of dawn, she could see that nothing about her long, sharp-boned body was different. And yet, heat flooded her. Each muscle—strung so tight just a few hours earlier—went soft as she lay in the gradually brightening gloom. She sat up, swung her feet to the floor, and turned to face her new friend, half smiling.

Hope. In spite of all her pain, it brightened inside of her just as the sun began to fill the small chamber with its weak morning rays. Basking in the dawn of a new day, Polly pushed Elder Sister Agnes’s words from her mind and allowed herself to wonder if she might actually possess something like the powers ascribed to her by the believers. Might she have been a Visionist all this time and never known it? After all, her waking dreams were not false. She saw and felt—had always seen, had always felt, however wordlessly—the power they had to transform. Perhaps when she was alone, the spirits spoke only to her, lifted only her soul from inside her body and stole it away until all danger had passed. In this new place, she could find her voice because she was no longer alone. Even if she did not understand their reaction to it, the believers acknowledged her suffering—not even Mama had done that. Surrounded by brethren and sisters who hoped to see beyond the bleakness of their own earthly lives, might she truly be able to show them into a world—her world—full of angels and the miracle of what it felt like to be saved?

Clearly Sister Charity was convinced of her destiny, for later that morning, when they had finished washing the dishes from breakfast, she looked at Polly and reached out to touch her arm. “We are going to the sewing room,” she said. Her smile was so open and kind that Polly, once again, found her gladness to be contagious. The sister’s tone was teasing as she continued to speak. “After all, it will not do to clothe a Visionist in the vestments of a backslider! Come! Shall I tell you of the bounty that awaits you?”

They left the dwelling house and walked where the sun shone brightly and there was no risk that they might be overheard by another believer. Sister Charity pulled Polly along the pathway, humming softly beneath her breath in a manner that was not somber or prayerful but girlish.

“Gowns, gowns!” she trilled. “One worsted, three winter! One white, three summer! Two light-colored, three cotton! Oh, and cloaks and petticoats and palm-leaf bonnets! Aprons upon aprons! Shoes, socks, and stockings! Oh, yes! And caps and collars and neckerchiefs and all that goes beneath…”

Then, as suddenly as she had begun, she stopped, dropping Polly’s hand as though scalded by it. “I forget myself,” she whispered, staring at her own marked hand. “And who it is I am with. Please, will you forgive my foolishness? I meant no…”

Polly smiled. “Whom do you take me for?” she asked. Seizing Sister Charity’s hand, she could say nothing more. And why? Because the expression of all that she felt would pour forth and the sheer force of it would bring her to tears.