Plain Proposal (4 page)

Shelby nodded, then stood up and walked toward the window. She leaned her nose close to the screen and peered outside for a moment, then spun around. “Would we go in a buggy? Do you drive one of those?” Her eyes lit up, and Miriam silently thanked God at the glimmer of happiness in her voice.

“
Ya
. I drive the buggy. I’ve been driving by myself since I was twelve, but mostly on the back roads. I was sixteen before I started taking my little brothers and going to town.” She paused as she walked to where Shelby was standing by the window. “Have you ever been in a buggy?”

Shelby turned to face her. “No. I’ve never even been in an Amish town or been around an—an Amish person.” She bit her lip again as her eyes grew round.

Miriam recalled her mother’s earlier comments but assumed Shelby must not remember her visit here as a young child. She leaned closer to Shelby and whispered, “I promise we don’t bite.”

Finally, a full smile. “Good to know.”

Shelby sat next to Miriam at the large wooden table in the kitchen. It felt like eating at a luxurious picnic table with a long backless bench on either side, and the breeze blowing through three different open windows in the kitchen only added to the picnic effect. At each end of the table was an armchair. Aaron was already seated in one, and Rebecca was standing at the counter pouring glasses of iced tea. The boys waited patiently on the bench across from Shelby and Miriam. Shelby surveyed the offerings already on the table as her stomach growled. Aside from the meat loaf and potatoes, the rest was unfamiliar.

Rebecca placed the last two glasses of tea in front of Ben and John, then took a seat at the opposite end of the table from her husband.

“Shelby, we pray silently before and after a meal.” Rebecca smiled before she bowed her head along with the rest of the family. Shelby followed suit, but she didn’t have anything to say to God. She lifted her head when she heard movement around her.

Miriam passed her a bowl first. “This is creamed celery.”

Shelby spooned a generous helping onto her plate, trying to remember the last time she’d sat down for a family meal like this. She tried to recall when the problems had started between her parents. When had the two most important people in her life stopped loving each other and started screaming at each other?

“Do you like to cook, Shelby?” Rebecca passed a tray with bread toward Shelby, and Shelby nodded. She could remember spending hours in the kitchen with her mother when she was young. Mom would set her up on the counter, and together they would bake a variety of cookies. Shelby’s job was to lick the beaters clean and be the tester for each warm batch that came from the oven.

She sat quietly, listening to the family talk about their day. The oldest boy, Ben, told a story about running into someone named Big Jake in a place called Bird-In-Hand. “He ain’t ever gonna sell that cow now that everyone knows it birthed a calf with two heads.” Ben laughed, then squinted as he leaned forward a bit. “I heard he even took the animal to Ida King, and—”

“Ben!” Rebecca sat taller in her chair and scowled at her oldest son. “We will not speak of such things at supper—or any time.” She turned to Shelby and spoke in a whisper. “Ida King practices powwowing.”

Shelby laid a fork full of creamed celery on her plate. “What’s that?”

Rebecca shook her head. “Her practices are not something the Lord would approve of.”

“She’s like a witch doctor,” Miriam whispered to Shelby.

“Enough.” Aaron didn’t look up as he spoke, but everyone adhered to his wishes and ate silently for a moment, then Elam commented that he saw a raccoon trying to climb the fence to his mother’s garden. Shelby had noticed the large garden on the side of the house when the van first pulled into the driveway.

“I put a bowl of freshly cut vegetables right outside the fence for that fellow, hoping he wouldn’t get greedy,” Rebecca said with a laugh.

The youngest boy—John—chuckled as he told a tale about chasing their rooster around the barn. Shelby saw the boy’s father grimace, but he didn’t say anything.

“And what about you, Miriam?” Rebecca pinched a piece of bread and held it in her hand as she waited for her daughter to answer. “How was your time at the creek?”

Shelby wondered what they did for fun here. She used to love to swim. She turned slightly toward her cousin and waited.

“It was fine,” Miriam said.

“She only goes there to see Saul Fisher.” Ben reached across his brother and pulled back a slice of bread. Shelby was sure this was the best bread she’d had in her life, warm and dripping with butter. She took another bite of her own slice as Ben went on. “But you’re wasting your time. I’ve heard it told that he ain’t gonna be baptized.”

“You don’t know that, Ben.” Miriam’s tone was sharp as she frowned at her brother.

Ben’s glare challenged her as he leaned forward in his chair. “That’s what folks are saying.”

“No talk of rumors, Ben.” Once again Aaron didn’t look up from his plate, but the conversation ceased immediately, and Rebecca started to talk about a new schoolteacher named Sarah who would be taking over when school started up again in September. When she was done, she spoke directly to Shelby.

“Will you be attending college next year, Shelby?”

Shelby took a deep breath as she shifted her weight. That had certainly been the plan, until she learned that her parents used up her college fund fighting each other in their divorce. “No, ma’am. I’ll be getting a job when I go home.”

Aaron lifted his head for the first time and looked directly at her. “Hard work is good for the soul. Too much schooling can turn a person from what is important—the love of the land and a hard day’s work.”

“Aaron, now you know that the
Englisch
often send their children to college, and it’s not our place to judge.” Rebecca smiled at Shelby. “I’m sure you will find a
gut
job suited to you when you return, Shelby.”

She doubted it.
What kind of job can I get without a college degree?
But she didn’t much care what kind of job she found. She was having trouble caring about much of anything. Over the past few months, she’d made sure that she wouldn’t feel much, and she was never going to forgive herself for the things she’d done. Things she knew God wouldn’t approve of. She used to care what God thought, but she’d stopped when she realized. . . God had given up on her.

These strangers, with their odd clothes and strange lifestyle, seemed nice enough, but her parents were only further punishing her by sending her to this foreign place.
Haven’t they hurt me enough?

Miriam walked into her bedroom with her hair in a towel and dressed in her long white nightgown. Shelby was already tucked into bed with her head buried in a book.

“What are you reading?” Miriam pulled the towel from her wet hair, then reached for a brush inside the top drawer of her nightstand. She sat on the edge of her bed and fought the tangles.

“Your hair is so pretty.” Shelby looked up from her book, but Miriam noticed that she also had a pen in her hand, which she began to tap against the book. “Why do you keep it up underneath those caps?”

Miriam continued to pull the brush through her hair as she spoke. “We believe a woman’s head should be covered, and we try not to show the length of our hair to a man until after we’re married.” She stopped brushing for a moment as she recalled past trips to the beach when most Amish girls shed their caps and pulled their hair into ponytails. “Some boys have seen our hair at the beach, though.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Shelby stopped tapping her pen and sat taller in the bed, then propped the pillow up behind her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that to sound—”

“No, that’s okay. I’m sure our ways must seem strange to you.”

Shelby closed the pink book in her lap and put the pen on the nightstand. “I’m sure everyone else seems strange to you too. Us ‘
Englisch
’ as I heard your mom say.”

Miriam pushed her hair behind her ears and put the brush back in the top drawer, glad that a conversation was ensuing. “No. We have many
Englisch
friends, so we know how different things are outside of our community.”

“How much school do you have left, or did you already graduate?”

“I’m done with school. We only attend school through the eighth grade.” Miriam was surprised that Shelby didn’t seem to know anything about them. Miriam thought Shelby might have done a little research before she got here, but she didn’t fault her for that.

Shelby leaned farther back against the pillow. She was wearing a long blue nightgown, and again Miriam thought about how that would please her mother. Maybe someone had told Shelby that it would be appreciated if she dressed conservatively.

Her cousin began to kick her feet together beneath the covers. Miriam had noticed that Shelby was always fidgeting and couldn’t seem to be still. Even during supper, Shelby kept moving in her seat, pushing her food around, and she wiped her mouth a lot with her napkin.
She must be nervous
.

“Will you leave here, since you’re eighteen? Or do you plan to stay here forever?” Something about the way Shelby said
forever
made it sound like a bad thing.

“I would never leave here.” Miriam settled into her own bed and also kicked the covers to the bottom. “I plan to be baptized in the fall, and. . .”
And marry Saul someday
. She smiled as she thought about her future. “And someday I’ll get married and start a family of my own.”

“Aren’t you curious, you know. . . about everything outside of here?”

“No. I’m in my
rumschpringe
. That means that at sixteen, we get to experience the outside world, then choose if we want to stay here and be baptized as a member of the community, or leave.” Miriam fluffed her pillow as she spoke. “So I think I’ve seen enough of the
Englisch
world the past couple of years. It’s not for me.”

Shelby twisted to face Miriam, then tapped a finger to her chin. “How many leave here?”

“Hardly any. I mean, a few do. But most of us stay.” Miriam smiled slightly. “It’s all we know, but what we know is
gut
, and I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

“Who is Saul?”

Miriam sighed as she recalled the gentle way Saul brushed back a strand of her hair earlier that day, the feel of his touch. “A friend.” “You like him. I can tell.” Shelby smiled a bit.

“
Ya
, I guess I do.” She reached over and turned the flame on the gas lantern up since nightfall was upon them, then she eased down in the bed and propped herself up on one elbow. “What about you? Do you have a boyfriend in Texas?”

They both jumped when a gust of wind blew in through the screen and caused the green blind to bounce against the open window.

“I
did
. His name is Tommy.” She shuffled in her bed. “He broke up with me when my parents were—were going through their divorce. I had thought. . . well, I thought we might get married someday.”

“I’m sorry.” Miriam had never had a real boyfriend. She’d been carted home by plenty of boys following Sunday singings since she’d turned sixteen, but her heart belonged to Saul. She knew she would wait for him.

“It’s okay. I really don’t care.”

Somehow Miriam didn’t think that to be true. “Was he your boyfriend for a long time?” Miriam wanted to ask if they had kissed, but she didn’t even know Shelby. That was something she might ask Leah or Hannah.

“About six months. Until things got bad with my family.” She paused, then also propped herself up on one elbow and faced Miriam. They each strained to see each other over the nightstand in between them, so Miriam shifted upward a bit. Shelby did too. “Then he said I was sad all the time.”

They were quiet for a while. “Are you still sad?” Miriam knew it was a dumb question. Of course she was sad. Her parents had recently divorced. “I mean, are you sad about
him
? Do you miss him?”

“No.”

Again Miriam suspected otherwise.

“Did anyone tell you that breakfast is at four thirty?”

Shelby bolted upward, and Miriam could tell she was straining to see past the lantern in between them. “You’re kidding, right?”