Authors: Suzanne Weyn
T
hat night, Mother commanded us to assemble our few belongings and pack them. While Mimi and I stuffed rag dolls and nightgowns into our carpetbags, I could hear my mother and grandmother downstairs engaging in a conversation that quickly escalated to a full-scale shouting match.
"If you engage in this lunacy, you will disgrace the Taylor name!" Grandmother Taylor shouted, her voice barbed with indignation.
"This is my life, and I shall live it as I see fit!" Mother shot back at her.
With Grandmother Taylor irately barraging Mother with phrases that contained words such as
unstable, unfit, disinherit,
and
disown,
we scrambled down her front steps, our carpetbags thumping behind.
At Grand Central Depot we boarded a train for Albany and then changed at that city for a different train. I recall eating sandwiches and sleeping slumped against Mimi as we rumbled at great speed through the night. I remember being alert with excitement coupled with anxious worry
over what lay ahead but also suffused with relief to be away from Grandmother Taylor's disapproving eyes.
My giddy, thrilled state slowly gave way to a deep exhaustion. What a day it had been! Yawning widely, I slumped in my seat next to Mimi and let the train lull me.
Mother sat rocking the twins in their perambulator with one hand, engrossed in a slim novel she'd bought at the newsstand at Grand Central Depot in New York City.
"What's the story about?" Mimi asked as I stirred drowsily beside her. "Tell us."
Mother put down her book. "It's an adventure tale titled
Futility,
by a man named Morgan Robertson," she said. "It's about a very, very large ship called the
Titan
that hits an iceberg and sinks on its very first voyage. It seems that most of its passengers are about to drown."
"I don't like that story," Mimi said. "Is it true?"
"No, it's not true. It's just fiction that the writer made up from his imagination," she answered.
"It's too sad," Mimi declared.
"You're right. I don't much like it, either." Mother closed the book and set it aside on her seat. "It's putting me in a melancholy frame of mind and I hadn't even realized it. That's not what I need right now. I must entertain only the most positive of thoughts if I am to move forward effectively."
Finally we reached the bustling city of Buffalo, New York. We spent a night in a rather shabby hotel there. It was newly morning, still almost dark, when Mother roused us and we hurried down to the street without even telling anyone we were leaving. There she hired a horse-drawn cab to carry us as close to Spirit Vale as the last of her money would allow.
That wasn't far enough, apparently, because I recall us walking for quite a long time along a dirt road -- I pushed the twins, while Mother and Mimi dragged our bags.
In memory I see us passing under a tall wooden arch, atop of which was a sign with the words spirit vale welcomes the living and those gone beyond all written in birch branches. The words had a pinkish tone in the early morning's new light. We made our way down a wide dirt road lined with wooden buildings, each one sporting an open front porch decorated with intricate gingerbread latticework.
The hour was so early that no one was around. Mother paused at a four-way intersection and gazed in each direction, looking unsure of where to go next. On one corner was a two-story, red wooden hotel with a porch wrapping around both levels. The sign over the entrance to the front porch read the spirit hotel.
Mother lifted the twins, cradling one in each arm and, with a nod of her head, beckoned us to follow her up the hotel's steps. Pulling at the front door, she found it to be
locked. "Someone's got to come along eventually," she said with a sigh, then directed us to rest on some wicker chairs set around a table on the porch. We were all instantly asleep -- Mother, too, with the twins nestled on either side of her.
The sun was fully up when, through sleepy, slatted eyes, I saw a petite woman of middle age pop her head out the front door and eye us owlishly through thick, rimless glasses. She cleared her throat loudly to rouse us from our slumber.
"Hello there," Mother said, instantly bright. "Are you the proprietor of this establishment?"
"That I be," the woman replied in a way that was not especially friendly.
"I see from your nameplate that you are Aunty Lily," Mother observed.
"Correct. You need a room?" Aunty Lily asked, inspecting us with a suspicion that I am sure was understandable given our bedraggled condition.
"Yes, please," Mother answered. Presumably she had some magic way to pay for this, since I knew from our long walk there that she had run out of money.
"Well, that's unfortunate, since we're booked up. August is our biggest month. Plus, we don't take children. Too noisy. They disturb the mediums. Mediums require tranquility to contact the beyond," Aunty Lily told us without a hint of apology.
"Perhaps your husband there might know of a place where we could stay," Mother suggested, looking over the woman's right shoulder.
Aunty Lily's eyes narrowed, and her lined lips drew together angrily. "What did you say?"
A shard of vivid morning light cutting across the porch required me to squint up at Aunty Lily. Actually, I was trying to see over her shoulder for any sign of a man who might be standing behind her. I saw no one.
Mother's hand went to her mouth in an apologetic gesture. "Oh, I am so sorry. He looked so real that I naturally assumed ... Can you forgive me?"
"You say he's right next to me? And you saw him?"
"I see him still, clear as day," Mother confirmed. "He's recently passed, hasn't he? I feel it was somewhere between last April and now."
Aunty Lily continued to hold Mother in a skeptical gaze, but her hard face softened a touch as she nodded. "It was just this past June."
"And he was very far away when he died, wasn't he?" Mother sighed sadly. "You told him he was too old to go fight in Cuba but the dear, stubborn fool insisted. Did his name start with an H? I'm sensing an H."
"Yes! Yes, it did!" Aunty Lily took a lace-trimmed hanky from her pocket and dabbed her wet eyes. "It weren't even the fighting that got him. It were the malaria."
I noticed that Mimi was twirling one of her curls, a sure sign that she was finding something amiss here.
Mother put her arm around the stricken woman as she leaned close, speaking confidingly. "He says to tell you it was the grandest adventure of his life, and he wouldn't have missed it. He thanks you for understanding why he had to go, and he misses your warm touch, but he is always by your side in spirit."
Aunty Lily stepped away from Mother's grasp. "Hiram, can you hear me? Did you leave any cash stashed anywhere? You left me here sort of strapped for money." Aunty Lily turned to Mother. "Well, ask him!" she said. "Hiram, tell the lady-- did you leave any money?"
Mother held up her hand to quiet Aunty Lily. "It's no use. He's gone off to rest. The malaria left him weak, and crossing over drains him. He'll be back, though. He's sworn to never leave your side again."
Aunty Lily became teary-eyed once more. "That's a comfort. A real comfort. I can see that you got the gift."
"The gift?" Mother questioned.
"The ability to see those that have crossed over, to predict, to channel spirits. It's Spirit Vale's main industry."
"Oh, yes, that gift," Mother said. "Yes, I have studied mediumship with the Fox sisters of Hydesville. It was my hometown."
That impressed Aunty Lily greatly. "The Fox sisters,
you say! Well, mercy me. Have you come here to set up shop?"
"If that were possible, it would be a dream fulfilled," Mother told Aunty Lily, her voice a silken river of sincerity. "But since you have no room, we will go look for other --"
"No! No!" Aunty Lily quickly stopped her. "There's not a proper guest room available, but I've been looking for a helper and I've set aside a little back cottage for such. Would you mind doing some housekeeping and working the front desk when I can't? It won't pay much, but the cottage would be part of the deal."
"When would I do my medium work?"
"We could work around that," Aunty Lily offered. "None of the other mediums in this town have been able to contact Hiram -- and him right beside me all the while! For some reason, he trusts you, and my Hiram was
not
a trusting man. I wouldn't want to see him go away again."
"It's wise to be cautious," Mother murmured.
"Mayhaps it's 'cause you're with child," Aunty Lily conjectured. "Hiram always liked babies, perhaps 'cause we never had none of our own. If Hiram trusts you, then so do I." Aunty Lily's lower jaw began to quiver with the effort of controlling her emotions. "Things have been so hard, but you've made me feel better just knowing my Hiram is here."
"I know how it is. I, too, am recently a widow," Mother confided.
Aunty Lily linked arms with Mother and guided her toward the door. Pausing at the threshold, Mother instructed Mimi to wake the twins and bring them in. Eager to be helpful, I aided her in rousing Amelie and Emma, who were slow to waken.
"Bring in that mail, would you, children?" Aunty Lily pointed toward a roll of letters bundled together on the wicker table.
I held on to Emma while Mimi took the mail in one hand and Amelie in the other. We entered a large, open lobby. On the right-hand side, a long, wooden counter was positioned against the wall. Aunty Lily led us behind the front counter, through her office, and out the back door. We instantly saw a wooden cottage with the same gingerbread scrollwork on its small porch that I had observed on the other buildings.
"It's small," Aunty Lily allowed, "but it's got a wood-burning stove for warmth in the winter, and the outhouse isn't too far a walk into the woods in the back. Or you can come to the hotel to use the indoor facilities, if you're particular."
"It's perfect," Mother declared. "I feel excellent vibrations here."
"I don't feel
no
vibrations," Aunty Lily said, looking confused. "This cottage isn't vibrating."
"Aunty Lily," Mother said in a confiding tone,
"everything
vibrates."
***
T
here was only one double bed with a wooden headboard in the bigger of the two bedrooms. Though we would all eventually get our own beds, that night Mimi, Amelie, Emma, and I all snuggled together. Emma snored and Amelie slumbered silently between us. We'd put them in the middle for fear that they would fall off the sides during the night.
Silver light from a bright full moon streamed in the curtainless window. That in combination with the loud chirping of crickets kept Mimi and me awake. Or perhaps it was simply that we were so excited about everything that had happened.
We had spent the day trailing Mother as Aunty Lily introduced us to so many people that they became a blur of faces. We went into storefronts and private parlors, each the scene of some séance, mystical reading, or strange bridge between the living and the dead. It was impressed upon us that we were not to call them
the dead.
No one was truly dead, at least not in Spirit Vale; they had passed
on, gone over, were living elsewhere -- and were still eminently reachable.
Despite my high-strung state, slowly I began to drift. Glancing at Mimi, I saw that she was still wide-awake, twirling and untwirling one long curl with so much energy I was reminded of a woman knitting.
As I replayed the remarkable events of the previous two days, I thought of Tesla. Strangely enough, I felt that I missed him.
"Do you think Tesla misses us right now?" I asked Mimi.
"He doesn't even know us," she said to me. "He knows us," I disagreed. "I miss Father," she said softly.
"Me, too," I said, resting my head on her shoulder. The truth, though, which I didn't dare tell her, was that I was already beginning to forget what Father had looked like. I recalled his outline: tall with broad shoulders and dark hair. And I remembered kind eyes. But the rest of him was starting to fade away.
It was easier to picture Tesla. In fact, the image I held of him was extremely vivid, and it somehow merged with the recollection I had of Father. This refreshed image comforted me, for it meant somehow that I wasn't forgetting Father, after all. I know it might sound odd, but I don't believe such peculiar thinking is really unusual in small children.
"Tesla misses us," I said earnestly. Then I yawned. "I like this place," I added sleepily. "Do you?"
"It will do, I suppose," Mimi replied with a reserved air.
"It was lucky Mother saw Hiram's ghost," I said.
"I could have seen Hiram's ghost, too," Mimi said.
I was suddenly up on my elbow. "Did you see him? I tried to, but I couldn't."
"No, but I could have pretended to see him, just like Mother did."
"What?"
Mimi turned on her side so that we faced each other. Bending her head, she dropped her voice. "The top letter in that bundle on the table was addressed to Mrs. Hiram Miller, widow. It was from the U.S. government, veteran affairs, but it was postmarked from Cuba. On the bottom of the envelope was a typed line about widow's benefit forms being enclosed."
"I don't understand," I said.
"Mother knew Aunty Lily's husband was dead because it said she was a widow right on the envelope."
"How did she know where he was when he died?" I challenged.
"That's where the war that's on now is taking place. Grandmother Taylor told me about it. It started last spring and is almost over now. That's how Mother guessed where Hiram was and when he died."
"She lied to Aunty Lily?" Mimi nodded sullenly.
Mimi had been reading since she was four and was already starting to teach me, so I trusted that she had really seen what she said she did. But I was not as accepting of the conclusion she'd drawn.
"She didn't see the letter," I protested. Mother wouldn't do such a thing.
"She saw it," Mimi insisted.
"No, she didn't," I stated firmly.
"You're just a little girl," Mimi said offhandedly, as though my opinion was of no importance to her. She had made up
her
mind.
I flipped over onto my other side, facing away from her. Mimi had annoyed me. I wasn't ready to give up my unqualified faith in Mother. Not just then, at any rate.
***
SPIRIT VALE, NEW YORK, 1898-1911
W
ithin a day of arriving in Spirit Vale, Mother let it be known she had been taught by the famous Maggie Fox, and -- coupled with Aunty Lily's often teary-eyed endorsement -- it made her an instant celebrity, revered among the other mediums and sought after by many clients seeking contact with lost loved ones.
Mother's approach was what she called "scientific and mystical" -- modern yet rooted in traditional spiritualism.
Everything vibrates.
It became Mother's motto. The phrase was mysteriously enigmatic, yet sounded so knowing and wise she was almost never questioned further. It seemed to explain so much even when no one really knew what she meant.
Her delivery was artful. Eyes narrowed with a distant gaze, she would nod a little as she conveyed her message in a voice thick with portentous meaning:
"Everything
vibrates." Then she would incline her head forward in a gesture that asked, "Now do you understand?" She didn't wait for a
reply because it was to be tacitly understood that one
did
understand.
***
My sister Blythe was born at the end of 1898, right there in Spirit Vale. Mother was aided by a medicine woman midwife from the Oneida tribe, Princess Running Deer, who doubled as a baby channel, a medium specializing in contacting children who had passed on as babies. "I think I'll name her Blythe Oneida Taylor," Mother considered one day while rocking on the porch with baby Blythe in her arms.
"Tesla is also a nice name," I suggested. "Blythe Tesla Taylor."
"Tesla? The scientist we met?" I nodded.
"What has he to do with us?"
"You say his words --
everything vibrates."
She nodded, seeming to consider the idea for a moment, and then shook it off. "Oneida is more fitting. I think all our middle names shall be Oneida from now on. It will befit our new life here."
And so my mother put a wooden sign on the porch of our white cottage, like so many other plaques around town, advertising maude oneida taylor -- medium, channeler.
Mimi, Emma, Amelie, little Blythe, and I became known as the Oneida Taylor sisters. Mimi said she didn't like it. And if Mimi didn't like the new name, then neither did I. Blythe was too young to care. And Emma claimed it was all right by her.
Amelie said nothing.
She never did.
From the day of the séance at the Tredwell home, I never heard Amelie speak another word. She made sounds -- laughed, cried, even hummed. But never a word would she speak.
As soon as we were settled in Spirit Vale, Mother took Amelie to a specialist in Ontario, Canada. As far as he could tell, Amelie
could
talk. She understood what words were and what they meant. She just chose not to say anything.
After that, the five of us went to Syracuse so Mother could talk to a psychologist about Amelie. He suggested that a severe trauma might be at the root of her refusal to speak. It had been known to happen. Could we think of any such trauma?
"I can," I volunteered, and told all about the séance and how baby Amelie seemed to be seeing something that none of us could and from that day on never spoke again.
"You are telling me that your sister was frightened by a ghost?" the psychologist inquired skeptically.
"No, that's not when it happened," Mother said. "It was the earthquake. The vibrations must have shaken her vocal cords loose."
"You were in an earthquake? In New York City?" Again, the psychologist seemed very doubtful, as I would have been myself, had I not been there.
"Yes, indeed. You are correct. It was highly unusual," Mother said, disarming him with her most charming smile.
"I don't believe her vocal cords were shaken," the psychologist ventured. "More likely, she was traumatized by the tremendous fear she felt during the quake."
So that became our official story on Amelie. She had been rendered mute by the ordeal of the quake. Mother preferred that story, I think, because it absolved her of all blame. If she had conjured something from the spirit world that had so affected her baby, her guilt would have been too enormous to bear.
***
As I grew older, I took to watching Mother carefully, trying with all my powers of observation to discern if she could really contact the spirit world or if she had simply hit upon a way to use her innate powers of showmanship to make money. She would sometimes do something that many of the mediums in town did, called
automatic writing.
In an apparent trance state, she would hold up a blank slate, and the spirit being contacted was supposed to imprint a message on the slate.
It had become my habit to sneak under her table once the lights were out. More than once I caught sight of her writing feverishly on a second blackboard on her lap and then producing that board as though the spirit had written the message on it.
One time, as a joke, I scribbled,
Hello Mother,
in the corner of the board when it was resting at her feet, waiting to be produced. Luckily her client took it as a message from a child who had died as a toddler and was delighted to see that her son had learned to write in the afterlife. Nonetheless Mother was not amused and made sure to kick around under the table before every séance to be sure I wasn't lurking there, waiting to cause mischief.
Still, among the townspeople there were those mediums thought to be mostly fraudulent and others who were revered for their ability, and my mother was among the most respected. Due to her Everything Vibrates motto, she was even considered something of a scientist. "Maude Oneida Taylor has studied with the great minds of our times" was an oft-voiced rumor around town. "She believes there are layers of reality, much like the skin of an onion. The afterlife is one of those layers, and Maude is able to
vibrate at the same speed as the afterlife and shake those layers loose."
Mother had made the most of her brief meeting with Tesla and did nothing to dissuade anyone that she was, indeed, a deep student of science and that her mystical methods incorporated the latest theories.
"There is an intersection of science and spiritualism," she claimed to her clients. "The journey of the spirit can be thought of as a science we do not yet understand, in just the same way as Nikola Tesla is forging new frontiers in the field of electricity. He pulls electric power from waterfalls and the sky. I pull spiritual power from the Beyond."
It was a persuasive speech, and she seemed sincere when she told it to every one of her clients. But when I showed her the articles I was pulling out of the papers about Tesla, she was fairly uninterested. "That's nice, Jane. Interesting, I suppose, though I don't quite understand it," she would say, and then go about her business without further comment.
When I was eight, I found an article in which Tesla claimed he had invented a wireless telephone. Though we had no telephones yet in Spirit Vale, the landscape of the outside world was more and more strung with ugly telephone wire, festooned from pole to pole along the main roads. When I told Mother, she was attentive and took the article from me.
By the next day she had acquired a telephone receiver. "I'm incorporating it into my ..." I was sure she was about to say
into my act.
"... into my spirit work. It will be a fine tool for contacting the Beyond."
Through the years, just when I decided that Mother was a complete fake, she would do something so uncanny that I was sure she had
the gift.
When a letter came from Gertrude Tredwell telling Mother that her sister Julia Tredwell had passed on, as Mother had predicted, Mother sighed. "The gift feels more like a curse sometimes," she commented.
One time I listened at the door and heard a séance in which a woman and her husband sought to speak to a wealthy aunt who had passed on. There was trouble over her will that they wanted cleared up. The aunt failed to show herself, but the woman's deceased first husband came by to reveal that the woman had once been a snake charmer in a carnival act.
My hand flew to my mouth to stifle the rising giggle this delicious and unexpected revelation inspired. There was a drawn-out pause, and I could easily imagine the poor husband gaping at his wife in stunned horror. "But, Maybelle, you told me you'd been living in a convent up until we met!" he cried at last.
I sputtered hard into my hand, clutching my mouth to stifle my laughter, desperate not to reveal that I was there eavesdropping.
Then Maybelle, the wife, broke down and admitted the truth when the spirit -- speaking through Mother -- began to recall details of their carnival life together. I jumped away from the door as Maybelle abruptly hurried her living husband out before her chatty spirit ex could reveal too much more.
"How did you know all that?" I asked Mother after they had left.
Mother simply stared at me, perplexed by the question. "I didn't know it. The spirit of her late husband told me."
Despite my confusion about the validity of its main industry, in those days Spirit Vale was a child's dream. For one thing, folks swarmed to the town -- often as a stop on their trips to see Niagara Falls, only an hour away -- seeking consultations with their loved ones who had passed on and advice from spirit guides.
One time, when I was ten, I sat on the porch beside Mother as she rocked in a rocker. "Can you contact our father?" I asked.
She shook her head. "No. I've tried. I believe it means he's moved on. It's what a spirit should do. Only restless spirits with unfinished business stay behind."
"Didn't he want to stay with us?" I wanted to know. This was more a matter of curiosity than heartfelt longing on my part.
Mother looked down at me and smiled a little sadly.
"Your father could move to the Beyond because he knew we'd be fine. You're fine, aren't you, Jane?"
"I suppose so," I replied after a moment's thought.
"You don't sound certain," she noted.
I shrugged. "It might be nice to live in a place where the dead stay dead and don't speak."
"Don't call them
dead,"
she corrected me.
"Sorry. I meant those who have passed over."
"Better."
"I'd like to go to school, I think," I mentioned.
"You'd be bored in school. I've taught the five of you to read, write, and do figures better than you'd have learned in school." But it wasn't the learning that appealed to me. It was the sheer ordinariness of the situation. I was slowly developing a burning desire to be
normal.
"Don't you want to get married again?" I inquired slyly, with a sidelong glance to gauge Mother's reaction to this question.
"No, Jane, I don't," she said. "I'm happy with no husband to give me orders. It's bad enough that as a woman I can't vote. At least not being married gives me some autonomy. I am my own woman, at last."
***
From June to late August every year, the town boomed with visitors and there were not enough rooms
to accommodate them. Even the huge Spirit Hotel was filled to capacity. Residents of Spirit Vale pitched tents for their children in order to rent their rooms out to the tourists.
Imagine, if you can, children running freely through the summer woods in night shirts, catching fireflies in jars, not chaperoned by any adult at all, while the streets were illuminated in a carnival atmosphere of people walking from home to home, shop to shop, sampling the various mystical services offered.
Tarot and palm readings were given on the porches. In some shops, spirit photos could be purchased whereby a person had his or her picture taken with a "special" camera. More times than not -- in fact, almost always -- a hazy, white blur of a spirit figure would be captured by the lens as it hovered around the photographic subject.
Princess Running Deer's husband, Wild Elk, owned one of these studios. Mimi and I ran errands for him one summer, which gave us access to the darkroom where he processed his photos. One day Mimi found his collection of spirit negatives, pictures of other people that could be superimposed on a photo to make it appear that spirits hovered in the air around the person being photographed. Some kind of wiping technique had been used to blur the distinctive features of the people in the spirit negatives so that they might be almost anyone.
In the square outside town hall, free readings would be
given by several mediums at once. We would hover at the fringes of the crowd, unabashed by being dressed only in nightclothes, hugging our blinking jars with care, watching the mediums work their trade. "I'm getting a
J.R.
-- either initials or a junior. I can't be sure. Does this make sense to anyone?
Junior
or
J.R.
It's a male."
Invariably someone would respond, something like, "My son was John Robert Junior!"
"He was young when he died!"
"Yes! Yes!"
On occasions when we watched scenes such as that, Mimi would roll her eyes -- something I was noticing her do with increasing frequency the older we grew -- and make a droll comment, such as, "No kidding. Anyone could have figured that out. Look how young the mother is."