Congregant
By Shawndra Miller
Up from the Grave He Arose, cued the worship
leader, and the congregation breathed in as one, readied its four-part harmony
for the Easter standard’s lugubrious opening line. Low in the grave He lay… My father stood on my left, deepening his
baritone to hit the low-slung notes. My mother’s alto trilled into my right
ear. Nine years old, I sang soprano, following the top notes in the hymnal,
trying not to crack on the final long ohhhh
and iiiii vowels of He arose, he arose! Alleluia… Christ arose.
I wore a bright yellow flowered dress. Sunbonnet
ribbon against my white-lobed throat. The
Mennonite Hymnal’s clothbound bulk steady in my hand, solid as another
family member. Vainly they seal the dead…
We filed out of church on that Easter
Sunday—after the pancake breakfast, after Sunday school where my handsewn dress
and Laura Ingalls bonnet turned ugly next to my friends’ sleek store-bought
frocks—and into a cutting breeze and long dull afternoon. Not yet warm enough
to play outside without an un-Eastery “wrap,” as my mother called my coat. And
I was not yet old enough to skip the enforced nap.
In my room I hustled silence into the corners, kept the closet door ajar lest something pop out to claw
at me when I turned the knob. I lay on top of my brown bedspread and maybe I fell
asleep, maybe I didn’t—but what I remember is getting up from lying down and
seeing rain smear the window, and bursting into tears for no good reason.
Now, decades removed from that day in time,
distance, and spiritual bent, I name the feeling loneliness and bring it with
me to this small house in a Washington forest where I stay alone for two long
weeks. Alone but for the ghost of Elspeth, who claimed this space as her studio
in years past, who dreamt of hosting women writers for solitary retreats.
Christ couldn’t dispel my mournfulness. Nor can
Elspeth’s wispy spirit.
Elspeth, who tickles my neck while I stand at my
efficiency stove cooking for one, who whispers, Come outside. Come now. I turn off the burner.
I’ve long since left the church, but compliance
is a reflex, and I know a cue when I hear one.
Come
walk the labyrinth, I think I hear her
command, so I go there. Night has yet to fall, and I walk down the lane less
spooked than I would after sundown, when immense darkness crowds the forest. When
I round the bend, three deer lift their heads and go still. A family unit: doe,
two fawns.
Six limpid eyes stare from the far edge of the
clearing where Elspeth’s friends crafted a labyrinth by strewing bark mulch in
a whimsied path between crooked plum and pear trees. The doe flicks her large
soft ears, blinks, and takes my measure while I stand and gawp. Her black tail
aswish.
The young ones, freckle-backed and leggy, mimic
the doe when she lowers her head to browse.
At a mosquito’s whine I wave my arms, startling them all, but they don’t leap
into the woods. We all go still. Until the mother turns toward me and takes a
deliberate step. And another. Each tread a high art, with bent leg raised and hoof placed, she walks straight to the center of the labyrinth. There she stops to look into my face, lowers her head once,
twice. I bob my head twice, measuredly, in response. A Narnian moment. What oath
have I sworn? The twisty little trees my only witness.
Much later, or maybe a few seconds later, they
flow woodsward past the perimeter of blackberry brambles, where I don’t follow
and sight can’t penetrate.
My dinner-for-one gone cold on the electric
coil, I step through the labyrinth, obedient. A congregation of beings sings alive
in the falling light, surrounding me: Arose!
The notes of a hymn felt by my feet. Its crescendo rising in my chest. Alleluia.