Davey's Daughter (8 page)

Mam flicked the reins across Fred’s back, urging him on. They’d be late for the quilting, and Mamie made the best filled doughnuts in Lancaster County.

Ez
sei
Mamie had pieced the plum-colored quilt by herself, a new design, she thought, until the contrary Emma Blank informed her that the Courthouse Steps pattern was as old as her grandmother’s grandmother.

“Well, it’s new to me.”

So began the day at an Amish quilting. The colors of the quilt in question were called plum and sage, whereas years ago, they would have been called green and purple. They still were by the older generation.

The fact that Mamie made the best filled doughnuts was widely discussed and finally accepted, after weighing the pros and cons of using doughnut mix or stirring up batter from scratch.

“You can’t beat the ones made from fresh ingredients. And you have to have real mashed potatoes in the dough, not potato flakes,” Mamie said, her cheeks like ripe apples, her eyes popping. The overwhelming pressure of having all those talented women in her house automatically cranked up the volume that was loud to begin with.

“I don’t believe it,” countered Emma Blank.

“Me either! We make thousands and thousands of them for bake sales and auctions. Every single one of our doughnuts comes from a mix. We buy it in fifty-pound bags,” another voice chimed in, “And they are amazing.”

Mamie’s eyes snapped, but she smiled and, with a grand gesture, set a beautiful glass tray of perfect filled doughnuts in the middle of the table, surrounded by carafes of coffee and
vissa tae
(meadow tea).

Much oohing and aahing followed. Eyes rolled, and exclamations of “
Siss net chide
(it isn’t right)” and other approving statements mingled with giggles and outright laughs of appreciation. Hands repeatedly reached for more doughnuts, everyone knowing full well that they were unbeatable.

Miriam whispered to Malinda that she guessed she’d have to stick a bag of pretzels in her pocket to keep that cloying sweetness from staying on her tongue till lunchtime. Then she admitted she’d eaten three doughnuts.

“Not three!”

“Three.”

The women set to work. Their needles were plied expertly, up and down, in and out, the sturdy off-white thread pulled between the layers of fabric and batting.

Thimbles flashed, silver or gold. Occasionally
naits
(thread) was called for across the frame as the spools lay in the middle of the large quilt out of everyone’s reach.

Someone would quickly press down on the quilt, allowing a spool to roll toward a hand where it was snatched up and thrown to the person asking for it.

Inevitably, the conversation turned to the barn fires and the latest victim who had been unable to face her life anymore. It was spoken of quietly, reverently, and without malice. Mam knew the most. She knew the truth as the well-informed minister’s wife. Yet she spoke only what was necessary and then passed out post-it notes with Lydia’s address written on them.

Women blinked back tears of sympathy, blew their noses surreptitiously, and avoided eye contact, each one bearing the news stoically. The poor, poor woman. Oh, it hurts to hear it, they said.

Mam assured them all that healing was well underway, and her counselors were well pleased with her progress.

“You know she always was quiet. I suppose we just accepted her as that. She hid so much.”

“What do you think became of Aaron?” Emma Blank asked, her words falling like rocks on macadam.

No one answered.

Mam finally spoke in a quiet voice, reminding Emma of his long and painful battle with lung cancer, the suffering that provided opportunity for him to repent.

Miriam said nothing but thought her sister had such a nice way about her, always soothing ruffled feathers, looking for the good in people, no matter what the circumstances.

That’s why she was more than a bit surprised by her dislike of Matthew. Well, time would tell.

The men of Leacock Township held another meeting about the fires, this time speaking at length about the need to either get large dogs or sleep in their barns. It had to be one or the other. Mastiff. German Shepherd. Doberman. Whatever it would take.

Some farmers installed alarms with wires encased in durable rubber stretched across their driveways, but they needed electricity, so only a few actually used them.

Dogs were acquired, or sleeping bags and air mattresses. But sleeping in the barn lasted for only a few weeks for many as the meticulous housewives turned up their noses every time the well meaning boys of the household came in the house after spending a night in the barn.

Men tilled the fields as the sun shone and birds wheeled their ecstatic patterns in the sky. Tulips pushed the soil aside and grew tall and stately, tossed about like hula dancers in the spring breezes.

Women bent their backs in their gardens, purple, blue, green, and red skirts tossing about them as they planted fresh, new onion bulbs and wrinkled, grayish peas, tiny radish seeds, and lettuce seeds so fine they threw them in slight indentations in the soil and figured at least half of them would grow.

Children skipped through the fields, holes in their school sneakers, longing to go barefoot, but their mothers remained adamant. The earth was too cold. They must wait for the first bumblebee.

The children searched the fence rows for new dandelion growth and picked the greens joyfully. They carried them to their mothers, who washed and steamed them. Then they fried a good bit of fat bacon, stirred flour into the cooked and crumpled bacon, added chopped hard-boiled eggs and the steamed greens, and had a fine supper.

The Widow Lydia walked carefully among her new shrubbery, unable to take it all in. She marveled at the bulbs that had produced wonderful red tulips, a gift from Royer’s Greenhouses.

And then because they were so red, and the leaves so green, and the fresh mushroom soil around them so brown
—
everything a rainbow of vibrant color
—
she folded her arms on the new PVC fence surrounding her house and cried.

She cried because she was grateful that she could. She could let great, wet tears flow down her thin, pale cheeks and never once feel any guilt. It was alright to cry. In fact, she was supposed to cry. They said it was healing.

The barn stood at the bottom of the small incline below the house, new and shining, as if it grew from the earth itself, sprouting from a bulb like the red tulips. In a sense, it had. A bulb was a small thing, but with God’s power, it grew to a much larger thing of indescribable beauty. The men had been tools in His hands, bearing the ability to wield a hammer, operate a saw, read blueprints, all the while their hearts holding goodwill toward their neighbor.

So the earth bore its new life, and the barn stood solid and charming, one complimenting the other to form a picture of beauty, as hearts that are hidden from sight grow by the Master’s Hand, in love, in forbearance, and tender pity.

S
arah kicked her bare foot against the moist, new grass below the swing by the grape arbor and thought about the words Matthew was saying. She rolled them over in her mind, trying to decipher their meaning, but none of it made any sense at all. He wanted to go away. He wanted to travel, see the world. He needed to get away on a spiritual quest.

Sarah felt herself becoming hysterical, imagining his perfect profile with the dark hair and brown eyes climbing a tall mountain with no trees, just grass and a small, wizened little man sitting on top.

A spiritual quest? He hadn’t committed himself to the Amish church yet, as she had done the previous year. But how could he want to seek anything other than the faith of his fathers? She simply could not grasp what he was saying.

He’d be gone for a few months. Months? Not weeks. Or days. Months. The time was too long, the distance too great.

Feebly, she tried to explain that she couldn’t allow this. They’d never make it apart, but she floundered, wallowing in the misery of her useless explanations and refusing to accept his words, hoping her refusal would keep him from leaving her.

He took her willing body into his arms. He kissed her with the usual enthusiasm and promised her he’d be back if she’d be patient with him. She traced his face with her fingertips and tried to memorize the exact dimensions. Her heart was already aching with the pain of missing him.

He was going with a single man from the Charity group, one of the other Amish youth groups, he said just before he left. Lester Amstutz. She nodded dumbly and stood up woodenly. She was surprised her limbs didn’t creak and clank, as if made from tin, when she turned to go inside.

She stood with her hand on the doorknob for a long time, unable to face the suffocation her bedroom would subject her to. Turning, she reached out a hand and whispered, “Matthew?” It was a question, as if she was unsure about what he had told her. She wanted to run after him, hold him, keep him from going anywhere without her, but she could only stand on the front porch and whisper his name again.

What was that about loving something and setting it free? If you loved something and set it free, it would return? Or “he” would return. Not “it.”

Reality finally reached her senses, and Sarah turned the knob, made her way up the stairs, and lay on her bed, fully clothed. Sleep eluded her and the night stretched out long and black and filled with sorrow.

Somewhere inside, she knew Matthew was trying to be gentle. He did not want to be Amish. He didn’t appreciate the heritage of his family, the old linage of conservatism, the traditions, the way of life.

Well, when he returned and had made a decision to leave his family and join a worldly church
—
was there such a thing?
—
she’d go with him.

Dat and Mam would get over it, eventually.

Wasn’t that the most beautiful verse in the Bible? That part about Ruth going with her mother-in-law? “Thy God shall be my God.” But she already had a God.

The old rooster in the henhouse crowed, and through the heavy blackness, Sarah squinted at the alarm clock and rolled out of bed. She surprised Dat by being the first one in the barn at four thirty. She wasn’t tired, she said.

That spring, Sarah’s world became tumultuous, her mind and spirit tossed about, surging forward, drawing back. The only description fitting of her inner turmoil was the stormy waves of the sea.

It was funny, the way doubt changed her perspective. The kindly people in church, sitting on their hard benches with their attention levels varying to some degree, all made her wonder if it really was the way Matthew had said
—
unspiritual.

There was Henry Zook, sound asleep, his head rolling to one side, his mouth sagging open slightly. If that wasn’t unspiritual, she didn’t know what was.

In the kitchen, a group of young women was gossiping, covering their mouths as they glanced around, their eyes stealthy like cats. Catty, that’s exactly what they were. Well, perhaps Matthew was right.

She saw the yellowed covering set haphazardly on the head of the aged deacon’s wife, a fine dusting of dandruff across her black cape. She thought of the snowy line veils the women in the Charity group wore instead with their hair combed up over their heads in a loose, attractive fashion. They wore pure pinks and yellows and blues. And Sarah suddenly didn’t like the sloppy old Amish
ordnung.

Then she became thoroughly miserable, remembering the day of Matthew’s departure, the eagerness in his eyes, the new light of expectation. She would have done anything to keep him.

Lester Amstutz had waited in his sports car, keeping an eye on every move they made when Matthew stopped to say his final good-bye. Lester’s head remained turned in their direction, watching shrewdly like a lion inspecting its prey, unsure what the outcome of its stealth would be.

Matthew had not held her hand that day. He only held her eyes with his own, his voice quiet, smooth, like water gliding quietly over oiled rocks, without turbulence. His voice was even, flat, whispery in its reverence. Had he already made a decision?

Fear had clawed at her heart, raking its fiery talons through her, producing a pain so great she had reached out with both hands, her palms upturned, and stepped toward him, a great sob catching in her throat as the words poured from her pain.

“Matthew, you can’t! You can’t do this to me. Does my love mean nothing to you? Does our God, our way of life, our heritage mean nothing? Don’t go. Please, don’t go. You’ll be enticed into a new belief, to a place I cannot follow.”

Matthew drew himself up, his voice quiet, reserved, as smooth as silk.

“I must go, Sarah. I have prayed. I want to become born again. Whosoever cannot leave his father or mother or sister or brother is not worthy.”

“Don’t, Matthew.” Anger consumed her now. “You know better than to spout that verse at me. If you do that, you are clearly calling me an unbeliever. I am not. Neither is your father, or your mother, or…or Chris!” she spat out.

“By your anger, I know you are not born again.”

She wanted to draw her arm back and smack him across his face, beat his chest with her fists, rail and cry and break down this new barrier between them. What she did do was draw a deep and steady breath and say, “It certainly has not taken you long to descend into self-righteousness.”

A small, sad, smile played around Matthew’s lips. His eyes became heavy-lidded, almost sensual. “I found Jesus last night at the revival meeting. I have not, as you say, descended into self-righteousness, but I’ve been clothed by the righteousness of Jesus.”

“So you’re not coming back?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. I’m on a search for the true call of Jesus Christ.”

There was nothing to say to such piety.

“I am a new creature, alive in Jesus.”

That was the sentence that threw her off balance, hurling her into a vortex of uncertainty, wavering unsteadily on the brink of a precipice as he turned, still wearing the small, sad, conquering smile, and walked placidly away from her.

Would she always have every single angle of his body imbedded in her mind? His dark hair, cut just right, his wide shoulders, the way he swung his arms, his loose gait, even the way he placed his feet, so athletic, so Matthew. Her Matthew. No one else’s. Not the world’s, not a church’s, not a new belief’s.

Oh, come back to me, Matthew. Just come back.

And so her spring had turned gray. She no longer enjoyed the beauty of the azure sky, the birds’ songs, the smell of fresh soil and newly mown hay, the wonder of a newborn calf. Her life was too full of indecision, longing, fear, and, above all, the strange new way she now viewed the Amish through lenses of doubt.

Was Matthew right? Was not one member of the Amish church born again? Did they all live in ignorance and suppression? She thought she might eventually go mad as the darts of confusion slowly entered her heart, draining the life from her.

Desperately, she hid her turmoil from her parents. They knew Matthew had gone on a trip to see the western part of the United States. That was all. That was all Hannah knew, or Elam. They went about their busy lives, working from sunup to sundown, happy and talkative, their ignorance about their son’s travels a blessing, Sarah supposed.

Was it pride that kept her secret intact? Sarah didn’t know. All she wanted was for Matthew
—
the old, happy, genuine Matthew
—
to walk back up on the porch, take her in his strong arms, say there was nothing out there for him, that he was staying Amish.

She prayed frequently and fervently, with tears squeezing between her stinging eyelids, which were red and swollen from lack of sleep.

Mam watched her daughter, bought allergy medication at her request, and said nothing.

One fine spring evening, when the air was mellow with summer’s warmth, Sarah could no longer hide the fact that her life had turned completely upside down. Mam sat on an old lawn chair on the porch, sewing buttons on a new pair of denims. The thimble on her third finger flashed in the pink glow from the setting sun. Her face was serene, the dark wings of her sleek hair now showing an extraordinary amount of gray, her homemade covering large and snowy white, the wide strings pinned behind her back with a small safety pin.

Mam’s hands were calloused and work roughened but somewhat softened each day by the same lotion, the large yellow bottle of Vaseline Intensive Care, which she applied liberally at bedtime. She was humming softly, contentedly. Then she stopped, laughed, and said she didn’t even know that song. It just stuck in her head, the way Priscilla kept singing it around the house.

Sarah smiled. Knowing she would burst into tears and thereby lay bare her secret, she got up and said she was walking down to Lydia’s to see how she was doing.

Mam nodded assent and then shook her head at Priscilla, when she rose to accompany her sister.

“Better not, Priscilla.”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid you’re spending too much time with Omar. You’re only fifteen.”

Priscilla blushed furiously. The color in her face did not escape Levi, who watched her with a calculating expression, pursed his lips, and asked Priscilla if she hadn’t heard that the younger daughter should not marry before the elder.

“Oh hush, Levi!”

“No. You shouldn’t be going to the widow’s house.”

Mam smiled but said nothing.

“The barn fires made a mess of many people’s lives,” he said, shaking his great head sorrowfully.

“What makes you say that?” Mam asked.

“That poor widow. My, oh.”

Mam said, yes, he was right, but there was also much good that had come of it. Every trial, every adversity in life serves the purpose of making people better, whether they are aware of it or not.

She clipped the strong black thread with her small quilting scissors and looked at Sarah, whose eyes became liquid with her own hidden feelings, guarded for so long. She propelled herself off the porch and away from the love in her mother’s eyes, the one thing that would bring down the wall of reserve around her.

Sarah found Lydia relaxing on her own porch, the children around her. Omar was in the new horse barn building stalls for the large draft animals.

She waved, and he answered with a hand thrown high over his head.

Sarah grinned and greeted Lydia gladly.

“Such a pretty evening!” she responded.

“Sure is. Hi, Anna Mae. How is everyone?”

“We’re doing well, Sarah,” Lydia said. “Too good, I’m afraid. It doesn’t seem right that we just take and take. It’s overwhelming.”

“Don’t you worry, please, Lydia. I’m sure many families have been blessed by their charity.”

“But it isn’t really right, is it? I mean, I could take the cost of this.”

She spread her arms to indicate the yard including the new white fence and the shrubs bordering it. She could live on the price of that fence for quite some time.

“
Ach
now, Lydia. You must stop that.”

Lydia asked the children to see if Omar needed help, and Anna Mae left with them obediently.

Lydia turned her head and looked squarely at her new found friend. She began to talk, hesitantly at first, then with more conviction.

“It’s hard for me, Sarah. Too hard. I talk to my counselors but….”

Lydia stopped and looked away, unseeing, across the yard. Her gaze went down to the hollow where the new red barn stood resplendent in the evening’s glow.

Sarah remained quiet, biding her time, allowing the widow the space she needed to gather her courage.

A small vehicle drove by slowly. The occupants turned their heads to peer at the new barns. From the wide door of the smaller building, Omar straightened his back, throwing a friendly wave at the car’s occupants.

For a second, Sarah thought it was Ashley, from market, in the passenger seat. Her eyes were wide, her face thin and white.

Must be her imagination.

But when the car returned and slowly made its way past in the opposite direction, she had a full view of Ashley through the front window. Hastily Sarah stood up, waving a hand eagerly, wanting to catch the girl’s attention, but her gaze was focused on the barns.