Mamalie is talking to the candle. Really, it is not her fault.
“It is not your fault,” I say.
I am sure it is not her fault, whatever it is. Maybe she was afraid they would burn her for a witch (like they did at Salem, Massachusetts) if she told them that she could sing Indian songs, though she didn’t know any Indian languages, and that she and her Christian had found out the secret of Wunden Eiland which, the church had said, was a scandal and a blot.
Maybe it was all shadows and pictures in Mamalie’s mind, maybe there never was a parchment, maybe there never was such a meeting at Wunden Eiland, maybe there never was a Wunden Eiland.
“Maybe there never was a Wunden Eiland,” I say.
“What — what,” she says, “Lucy.”
Now, who is Lucy? Is that old Aunt Lucia that we used to take sugar cake to, at the Widows’ House?
“I told you it was all written, I told you the parchment was — was — Lucy, water,” says Mamalie and she seems to be choking. Now I am frightened. “Lucy,” she says, “someone must find the papers, someone must work out the music, now Christian is dead. Lucy,” she says, “who can do the work— who can follow the music? Music, Lucy,” she says. Now I am frightened. I put one foot out of bed. I get out of bed; I walk round the bed. I stand looking at Mamalie. I take the candle from her hand.
“Be still,” I say, “be still, it’s all right.” I do not call her Mamalie, I do not even call her Mimmie. “It’s all right,” I say, “it’s all right, Elizabeth.”
I think this is a good idea to call her Elizabeth, though it rather frightens me. If she thinks I am Lucy, then I am not Agnes any more, and if I am not Agnes, she is not Mimmie any more. I think it must be old Aunt Lucia she is talking to, at the Widows’ House, who died.
Ida used to put an apple pie or a sugar cake in a basket with a clean napkin over the top, and Gilbert would carry the basket and we would take the sugar cake or the apple pie to Aunt Lucia. Mamalie says “Lucy,” but I think this is old Aunt Lucia who wasn’t an aunt at all, but we have many aunts, and Mama has many aunts who were sisters in the church to Mamalie, so I suppose they were aunts to us, in the church.
It is all about the church. It is something the church thought was bad and Mamalie was part of it, though she wasn’t really, because it was a hundred years earlier, but she said, when she played the songs, it all came back. Songs bring things back like that, it seems. Did she sing the songs? I never heard her sing. I don’t think Mama ever heard her sing. She asks me to sing Abide with me and Mama plays the tune for it; Mamalie always asks me to sing; I think she is the only person who always asks me to sing.
She asks me to sing Fast falls the eventide. The darkness deepens. She is always afraid, it seems, in the dark, and she asks me to sing The darkness deepens. It’s not really dark in this room, but then I am not afraid of the dark. I am afraid more of a bright light that might be fire and a shooting star falling on the house and burning us all up.
It all started with the shooting star and my asking questions.
But I must do something, she might come back in a hurry and wonder where she is. But it might be better if she did come back because where she is, she is thirsty, and she talks about the parchment being burnt and herself being burnt and the promise and the penalty if they didn’t keep the promise, and about great wars and the curse on the land, if we did not keep the promise, and how Morning Star was the soul God gave the church and the church did not recognize Morning Star, even though the morning stars sang together. But they didn’t. The morning stars didn’t sing together, she said; she said, “Shooting Star, Shooting Star, forgive us,” and something about a curse and things like that. I really did not know what to do. I was glad she was talking quietly, almost whispering, for I would not have liked it if Mama had burst in or Aunt Jennie, laughing and joking and saying, “What — what — you two not in bed yet?”
I remember that Aunt Aggie did say that Mamalie was very sick, and while Mamalie had that bad fever, she was sent to stay with old Auntie Bloom for over a year, and Aunt Aggie called Auntie Bloom “Mimmie” too; Aunt Aggie thought Auntie Bloom was her own mother, for a long time, she said. I suppose this is it. Aunt Aggie is now living with Auntie Bloom, and she is a very tiny little girl and I am not Aggie any more, but I am Aunt Lucy or Aunt Lucia, and I suppose I am nursing Mamalie because the Moravian Sisters made medicines and had patches of old gardens with mint and sage and things they made into medicines.
I am the nurse of Mamalie who is very ill and had some sort of fever, maybe brain fever, they said; anyhow I think it is very sad that she was afraid (when she had her fever) that Shooting Star was angry with her.
She said she was thirsty; I wonder if it wouldn’t be a good idea to get her a glass of water from the washstand and pretend to be Lucy and try to get her to go to bed? I go to the washstand. The washstand jug is nearly full of water, and it is very heavy. It would be terrible if I dropped the pitcher: this is a jug or a pitcher, like the seidel that was the cup with the S, that was Sanctus Spiritus, that was the sign of the communion so that the old uncle turned it into an urn and put the S on a shield, Mamalie said, but Mamalie said he had the same words in French, l’amitié passe même le tombeau.
Now it seems, while I pour out water from the pitcher into the glass, that I am Hilda pouring out water from a wash-stand jug that has roses and a band of dark blue that looks like a painted ribbon round the top. The tooth-mug matches the pitcher. There is a soap dish with a little china plate, with holes in it, that is separate so that the water from the soap will drip through. The basin has the same roses.
The pitcher is heavy, but I do not spill the water.
The quilt has pulled off the bed where I got out.
The water seems cool enough. I put down the jug anyhow, and now I take the heavy glass up and feel the outside, and it is not so very cool, and I remember it is a hot night. Now I am not cold, and I remember it is a hot night. I could go to the pantry and get some cracked ice, but that will be a little trouble, and the others will be sure to burst in and say, “Why aren’t you in bed” and spoil everything.
I walk round the quilt that is partly spread on the floor, and I do not step on the patch that was Aunt Sabina’s moiré or old Cousin Elizabeth’s watered silk. I must remember that Mamalie is just Elizabeth, not old Cousin Elizabeth, and I get round the bed, and she is sitting there and the candle is there in the saucer and the curtain is hanging straight and there is no sort of wind. I remember there was a wind that rattled the curtain rings, but there is no wind, and if I listen, I can begin to hear footsteps and their dragging the chairs up the porch steps from the grass like they always do, in case it rains in the night. I had thought there might be a thunderstorm because Mama says on very hot nights, “It feels thunder-y.” It had been feeling thunder-y, though that is perhaps not what it was; I mean, it was what you mean when you say your hair stands on end, though it doesn’t really. But that was, maybe, the best part of it, like listening to a ghost story at a party in the dark.
It was like listening in the dark, though we had the candle, and maybe it was just a story in the dark with a candle, about something that didn’t happen at all, like the ghost story about the man who nailed his coat to a coffin and then screamed because he thought a skeleton hand had got him. Only this was something different, though I couldn’t tell just how, only that it made Mamalie shiver and then say that about Shooting Star forgiving them or something. I think maybe it was a sort of dream, maybe it did not happen. Maybe, even, I made it up alone there on the bed while Mamalie was sitting at the window; maybe, Mamalie didn’t even say anything at all; maybe it is like that time when I saw the old man on Church Street and he sent his sleigh and Mama said it never happened. Maybe it is like that thing that happened, that Mama said didn’t happen, when the young man, who at first I thought was the gardener, cut off or broke off a lily with a short stem that I held in my hand like a cup. Maybe. …