Rebekah's Quilt (10 page)

Despite everything, the result was little more than a sad excuse for a quilt-in-progress. Rebekah yawned in the thick, damp air and leaning, placed her project on her bedside dresser.

“Help, please,” a breathy voice managed from the hallway.

“Ma?”

Rebekah slid her legs over the side of her bed, easing them down until her feet met the hardwood floor. Her father had laid this floor expertly in just a few days’ time, or so she’d heard tale.

Shards of pain sparked up her leg from her bad foot, making her stomach turn over. She choked on the yell that strangled in her throat as the rest of her body joined her feet on the floor. Tears blurred her wobbly vision.

A strained groan came from the direction of her parent’s room.

Rebekah shook the foggy stars from her head.

“Standing up isn’t really an option,” she reasoned as she sat on the chilled floor that had moments before been her ally. She flexed her multi-hued ankle. “Nope, certainly not an option.”

A series of pants echoed in the dark hallway.

“I’m coming, Ma.”

Ignoring the seeping dankness, she stretched out on the floor in her thin nightgown, Rebekah pulling herself along the smooth boards with her hands. She slithered to the doorway like a snake through the grass.

Rebekah managed to navigate around the doorframe only to knock her head on something stationary that shouldn’t be there. “Ow!”

Her mother’s labored breathing drew Rebekah’s attention from her own sudden pain.

“Rebekah,” she rasped. She seemed completely oblivious to the fact that Rebekah’s head just met her nose. Hard.

“Ma, are you okay?” The absurdity of that question filled the air. Of course her pregnant mother, lying here alone in the early morning darkness, was not okay.

“The baby,” she started.

Rebekah didn’t wait for her to finish. She scurried to her mother’s feet and paled at what she saw.

By muted moonlight, it was obvious that the dark pool beneath her mother was blood.

“Mrs. Yoder said the baby wouldn’t be coming for a while,” Rebekah stammered. She chewed the inside of her lip as the sea of churning thoughts attempted to push a coherent solution to this predicament into the forefront of her mind. It wasn’t working.

Clear fluid puddled around her mother in stark contrast to the crimson stains. “Ahh,” Elnora gasped.

“Something’s wrong,” Elnora said, the tension causing her words to break in unnatural places. “With the baby, something’s wrong.”

The tears sprang up in Rebekah’s eyes without warning. “What Ma, tell me what’s wrong.” Rebekah swiped at her face with the back of her hand. “Tell me what’s wrong and I’ll fix it!”

A grunt from Elnora gave her pause. “I have to push!”

Fumbling with her mother’s nightgown, she sucked in a hard breath. “Ma, I see feet.”

Elnora stopped panting. “Feet?” She began to shake her head in tiny little shakes. “Oh Rebekah, no. No!”

“What do I do?” The hysteria was rising in her throat, pinging the ends of her words.

“Turn him. Turn the baby.”

The sea of thoughts began to churn again in Rebekah’s mind, this time vicious and wild.

“Ma,” she began. The icy fingers of fear clenched tight her throat. A very real pain seared there, just beneath her chin. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Dear Father,” Elnora prayed, oblivious to Rebekah’s plight, “Please turn the baby or he’ll die.”

Rebekah placed her hands alongside the tense bulge on Elnora’s stomach. “Please Father; help me save my little brother or sister.”

Feeling the outline of the baby, Rebekah closed her eyes and tried to visualize how he or she was laying. Eyes closed, she began to sing.

“
Dein heilig statt hond sie zerstört.”
She crooned the ancient song, penned by early Anabaptist martyr Leonhard Schiemer, in Pennsylvania Dutch. She drew out each word of the ancient hymn as long as the note would allow, giving her song a peaceful, chanting feel. Rebekah lowered her face nearer to her mother’s belly. Singing in a steady and even tone, she continued. “
Dein Altar umgegraben
.”

Pushing the bulge with a firm hand, she could feel the fluttering movements of her tiny sibling.

“Oh,” Elnora cried. “He’s moving!” Her sobs overtook her words. Rebekah noticed a trembling had begun in her mother’s knees.

Sure enough, under the pressure of her hand, the baby was turning.

Elnora was whimpering, her own hand shoved into her mouth. Rebekah noticed a trickle of blood dripping down her mother’s wrist. Elnora, tears soaking her cheeks, was
biting
her own hand to keep from screaming.

Rebekah felt as fullness settled into her mother’s lower abdomen.

“Thank you, Father,” she prayed to herself. Streams of sweat stung her eyes, keeping her hair glued to her forehead. The solemn hymn still crept from her lips.
“Dazu auch deine Knecht ermördt”

Beneath her hands, her mother’s belly tightened and she began to push.

Elnora screeched.

“The head!” Rebekah announced. “It’s a head!”

Her mother’s mind was elsewhere, far removed from Rebekah, as she worked hard at bringing her baby into the world. She was silent after the scream, her eyes shut tight.

The slamming of the front door was followed by the pounding of booted footsteps across the bottom floor, then up the stairs. Rebekah held her sibling’s fuzzy, black-topped head as the baby began to rotate again. Then it stopped.

Joseph’s head appeared above the staircase.

“What do you want me to do?” His voice sounded as frenzied as she felt.

“It’s stuck!”

Rebekah leaned in to investigate. “Joseph! I need the shears!”

Stumbling up the remainder of the stairs, Joseph tripped and slid into Rebekah’s bedroom. A moment later, he scuttled out, shears in hand.

Snatching them up, Rebekah snipped the cord that had become entangled around the baby’s neck. The rest of his robust body slid out easily.

“I need something to wrap him in.”

Running back into her room, Joseph returned with her partially-completed quilt. Without a second thought, Rebekah swaddled the baby, rubbing his back with her palm.

“Go tell Pa we’ve got a little Benjamin,” Rebekah ordered, not thinking to be polite.

“Benjamin, right,” Joseph repeated, hurrying toward the stairs. “I got back just in time!”

As he disappeared into the inky darkness of the staircase, baby Benjamin loosed a piercing cry.

“Thank you again, God. You were with all of us from start to finish,” she whispered. “Ma, he’s a fine boy. Baby Benjamin. We’ll call him Beanie,” Rebekah whispered.

Silence.

“Ma?”

Samuel and Joseph emerged from the black just as Rebekah was looking for a place to set the baby. “Ma won’t answer me!” Her voice wavered, helpless, in the darkness.

Samuel was at Elnora’s head in an instant, cooing and rubbing her forehead.

Joseph stood on the top stair and, for the first time Rebekah could remember, he looked awkward and out of place. He wrung his hands at his middle and, with his eyes darting about, looked nowhere.

In the sudden silence, Rebekah noticed that all the happy sounds that had moments before filled her home, ceased. All that remained were tiny, sweet sucking noises as Beanie ate his fist, and the muffled pleadings of her father, begging her mother to live.

Beanie screeched again, his cry shattering the grave moment.

Samuel’s head snapped up, his long black beard sweeping over the end of Elnora’s nose.

“My new baby son,” he managed with a broken voice.

Rebekah could only point as her mother brushed her nose with one weak hand.

Elnora groaned and shifted a bit on the unforgiving floor.

Tears glistened on Samuel’s cheeks and hung from his inky beard like early morning dewdrops in a cobweb. “Thank you, Father.” The words formed quietly on his lips as he laid one hand on the curve of Elnora’s face.

Beanie screeched again.

“Here, Mama,” Samuel began. He scooped his wife easily into his muscled, dusty arms. “Let me get you into the bed.”

“What’s goin’ on,” little Isaac asked in a sleepy voice.

“Out here?” Abram, his twin, finished. The pair yawned at the same time.

Rebekah snapped into big sister mode.

“Nothing for eight-year-old eyes to see,” she chirped.

“Then what’s that on the floor?”

“Yeah Rebekah, what’s that on the floor?”

As the sleep faded from their eyes, the unending stream of questions began.

“And what’cha holding?”

“An’ what was that noise earlier. Sounded like a bawlin’ calf.”

Joseph placed a hand on both boys’ shoulders. His singsong voice was lullaby low as he led them back to their beds.

“Go on back to sleep and dream of all the surprises tomorrow has in store for you.”

Rebekah winced at the word
surprise
, which was not the optimal way to lure little, eight-year-old brothers back to bed.

Abram and Isaac rubbed their eyes. “Surprises?” they asked.

Joseph didn’t falter over his poor choice of words. “Each day is a gift from the Lord. So it stands to reason that within each gift, there is a surprise.”

The boys looked first at each other, then at Joseph.

“Really?”

The trio disappeared into the bedroom as Rebekah shook her head. Beanie squirmed in her arms and coughed. She bounced the boy up and down.

“I don’t believe I’ll try and stand up just yet,” she whispered, moving her ankle in little circles.

Beanie, obviously hungry, began to sputter and fuss.

Joseph emerged a few moments later. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said surprise,” he said, wiping make-believe sweat from his brow.

“How’d you get them to go sleep?” She held the bundle of boy toward Joseph. He took him expertly in one arm while extending the other to her.

Rebekah took it, pulling herself to her feet. She tested the weight on her bad foot, leaning on Joseph for support. Pins pricked up her leg. She grunted.

“Well,” he started, “I simply explained that in each day, or each gift from the Lord, is a surprise. It’s up to us to find our own special surprise from Him each day.”

His eyes shone like onyx as he stared, smiling, into her face. In his haste to be of assistance, he’d lost his hat. Locks of ebony hair stuck out in all directions, a few were even plastered to his forehead. Rebekah’s stomach lightened with the beats of butterfly wings. Silvery moon rays, streaming through the hall window, illuminated their linked arms.

For one moment, one brief, illogical moment, Rebekah allowed herself to pretend that Joseph was telling her how he’d gotten their own sons to sleep, not her little brothers. Deep, inner warmth pulsed through her body with each quickening heartbeat.

“What a sweet little man. Beanie you said?” He stroked the infant’s fuzzy cheek. Beanie turned and began to root towards Joseph’s finger. He smiled and clucked softly.

“Short for Benjamin,” she affirmed. “Guess I’ll have to wash my quilt swatch now before I can finish it. Too bad.”

She and Joseph shared a soft giggle.

“He looks to be a pretty big boy. How long is he?”

Rebekah looked at the infant, still safe and snug within Joseph’s arm. “I figure about 22 or 23 inches. Pa will measure him tomorrow against the rope, just as he has done all the others. Then, he will mark it in the kitchen.”

Joseph hefted him in his arm. “He certainly isn’t a light baby.”

A voice from the darkness interrupted their musings. “Here, let me hold my son.” Samuel’s gentle voice was misty and melodic.

“Oh
ja
,” Samuel said as he took the child from Joseph. “You weigh more than a 10-pound sack of taters!” His face glowed in the way only a father’s can. “I will weigh you in the morning. But you are probably hungry now,” he said, nuzzling the baby, who promptly screeched.

“Thank you, Rebekah,” he said, turning toward his bedroom. “Your Ma is alright, and the baby is alright. All because of you.”

Rebekah flushed at her father’s direct compliment.

“You were an instrument of God’s healing tonight, Daughter.”

Joseph’s soft voice deepened her blush. “A true angel.”

“Tell Ma I love her,” Rebekah whispered. “And I love you, Pa.”

Samuel sniffed. “I am a blessed man. Goodnight, daughter. Goodnight, Joseph.”

When he reached the doorway, he turned again.

“Joseph, do tell the others I won’t be back down tonight, but I appreciate their help and I thank God for them. I trust you’ll be going down to join them soon.” Samuel smiled.

Joseph ducked his head. “Yes sir.”

After Samuel had retreated to his bedroom, Joseph helped Rebekah back to bed.

“You did a pretty special thing tonight,” he whispered, tucking the cornflower blue quilt in around her.

“Beanie is a pretty special baby,” she whispered back. Sleep had already begun to pull mercilessly at her eyelids, despite Joseph’s enchanting presence. The cool breeze that fluttered her curtains blew away the tense emotions and excitement, allowing relaxation to consume her.

“He sure was red,” Joseph remembered. “But he wasn’t no baby.”

Rebekah struggled to make sense of his sleep-garbled words. “Huh?”

“At that size, he was a hookin’ bull!”

A smile formed on her lips as she gave over to the temptation of sleep. “Beanie Bull,” she whispered as her mind danced with the idea of Joseph singing their children to sleep someday.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Beanie Bull’s shrill squall met Rebekah’s sleepy ears. When she was finally able to force her eyelids open, her room was fuzzy and bright. Pushing herself up in the bed, her heart pounded in time with Beanie’s urgent cries. As quickly as he began, he quieted.

As the surge of adrenaline ebbed within her, slowing her heartbeat in the sudden quiet, her muscles relaxed.

Rebekah rubbed her eyes. “Ma must be feeding Beanie.”

A smell wafting upstairs, though not entirely pleasant, made her lick her lips. Her stomach rumbled.