What the Dead Want(45)

“The day of the fire?” Hope asked.

“Yes. When I got there half the congregation was missing. He’d told them to go home, that this was only for our ‘Negro brothers and sisters.’ He drove every white parishioner away. Valerie’s mother was looking at me confused and I shook my head—I didn’t know what was going on. Was so angry at him. I . . . How could he have done this?”

“What is it?” Hope asked. “What happened? Who is he?”

“I could see it then, before anything happened at all, the fear in people’s eyes. I’d seen that fear in my mother’s eyes before. They knew. When I was just angry, they knew what was going to happen. That we were trapped. What a fool I am. The privileges I’ve had blinded me.

“And then we heard the thundering of hooves outside. He said we were protected in the church. We would not let them take this celebration away from us. That these two girls were equal in the eyes of God. And he looked at me then with such a strange expression, a look of malice. ‘So you think Celia and Rebecca are no different?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘of course, they are as alike as any two girls could be.’ ‘And their mothers,’ he said, ‘you and Valerie are no different. They have the same blood in their veins.’ I looked at Valerie, and knew that he had found out we were cousins. The thing my mother had wanted to hide. I grabbed Valerie’s hand and we rushed forward to the altar to grab the girls, to save them. I could see what he was going to do. But it was too late, it was too late.”

Annie took a great gasp of air and put her hands over her face. She slumped her head forward onto the table, began sobbing. “Please,” she said when she could finally speak. “I need to rest.”

It was terrible work, telling the ugly remorseful stories of the dead. Gretchen and Hope looked at one another. The weight of history was heavy upon their shoulders: All those people dying for a change: girls and women, friends and allies whose lives had been cut short. Fidelia and Valerie, Celia and Rebecca, Mona Axton and Sarah Green. And now, Gretchen thought, us.

Annie walked them out to the porch and hugged them good-bye. Just before she headed down the stairs Gretchen took a quick breath.“One more question. Can you channel my mother?” she asked.

“I saw her reflected—or trapped. Trapped inside a mirror at the mansion. It’s an object we’ve seen ghosts gravitate to.”

Annie looked at her sadly. Then closed her eyes. Gretchen felt her heart beating, strong and steady with hope and yearning to hear from her mother. It looked like Annie’s eyes were moving back and forth behind her eyelids—sightlessly searching.

After some time she opened them. “She’s not there.”

“What do you mean?” Gretchen asked.

“I’m sorry,” Annie said. “I’m not hearing anything, it’s as if the sound is traveling from underwater. It’s slow and distorted. I can’t make it out.”

Gretchen turned away and looked out at the late afternoon sun on the trees. Hawk couldn’t see Mona, Annie couldn’t hear her. She was silent and invisible and impossible to reach. Could she have imagined the face in the mirror, imagined her mother’s hands trying to reach her, pressed against the glass?



1861

George has taken over the parish until they send another pastor from Albany. But with the war and resources what they are, it seems he will be there for a long time. At least until the war is over, he said. As a pastor he is under no obligation to fight. And he has no desire to follow his brother’s footsteps to the grave.

My parents let George come right into my room and shut the door. They no longer know what to do with me. I can barely eat, and I can hardly look at them.

He knelt beside my chair and held my hand. And though he has always looked like James, all I could see was their lack of resemblance. George’s eager unsure self, his pride always kept in check but wanting to burst forth. His simple way of seeing the world. He had a medicinal smell on him that I’d detected before. I felt great pity and sorrow for him. Sorrow for all of us and the cause.

He said, I know what you want, Fidelia. I know you want to leave here and I can help you. And it was the smallest ray of sunlight in the darkest moment, the only thing that had made me feel like I might be able to be human again.

How? I asked.

Marry me, he said. Then you can leave your parents’ house. And if you want to go to school I will pay for it. I will bring you there myself. I am not afraid to have an educated wife. I know I’m not the pastor you dreamed of spending your life with. But in these rough times I think I might be able to suffice.

I held his hand and wept. Weak with grief, and pity, and despair. I could only nod my assent.





TWENTY-THREE


“YOU DON’T EVER WANT TO TALK WITH YOUR MOTHER?” Gretchen asked as they drove back out along the country road, somber and tired, the car making noises as if it were about to expire.

“I talk to my mother all the time,” Hope said. “She just never answers back.”

“You know what I mean, ask one of the spiritualists to contact her.”

“I know my mother,” Hope said. “If she had any choice in the matter she would have moved on.”

“All those people,” Gretchen said. “Trapped.”

“I kinda like you better as Esther,” Hope said, grinning. “Let’s go over the facts. We know now it was Celia and Rebecca’s Communion. We know that for some reason the parishioners were deliberately shut in the church, the girls specifically, but why?”