Still Life in Shadows (34 page)

“He’s not well. Please.” When he didn’t respond, she fervently said, “Please. I’m begging.”

Mari was at Gideon’s side, standing between him and his sister. “Gideon,” she said softly. “What if we stopped in for just a few minutes?”

He would have declined even her suggestion, but she put her hand on his arm, just below where his biceps ached from the physical strain of shoveling. From her fingers, warmth spread over him, like a blanket, like a memory. This was not about him. He looked up at the weeping willow and could almost see a young boy on one of the lower limbs. A boy calling out, “Gideon, take it easy, bro. A stop in his house isn’t going to kill you.” Lowell reached over and took the shovel from him again.

“Hey,” Kiki said, her hands clutching the bouquet for the grave. She pulled out a daisy and handed it to Mari, a rose to Gideon, and a stalk of baby’s breath to Esther. The adults took the flowers, holding onto their thin stems. “Let’s lay them on top of the grave one by one,” Kiki instructed. “One by one by one by one by—”

“Okay, Kiki,” reprimanded her sister. “That’s enough.”

“I just wanted to make sure that everyone got the rules right.”

For a moment the group stood speechless, looking at one another as Lowell continued to shovel dirt into the hole. It was almost full; the dirt was beginning to form a mound now.

At last, Kiki said, “Who is going first?” When no one said anything, she looked at Gideon. “Gideon, you go first.”

Gideon gently tossed the red rose onto the dirt Lowell had begun to smooth over the top of the grave. Mari followed suit, and in a whisper said, “Moriah, you were fun to be around.”

“Amen to that,” Kiki said. With a finger pointed at Esther, she said, “You are next.”

Esther stepped closer to the grave and threw her sprig of baby’s breath next to Gideon’s rose. When Gideon saw her face, this time, two tears curved down her cheeks.

Kiki plucked another daisy from the arrangement and waved it in front of Lowell’s face. “Your turn,” she said.

He paused from his task, reached for the flower, and seeing the other flowers, laid his beside the baby’s breath. “Rest in peace, Moriah,” he said.

Jeremiah, blubbering, refused the daisy Kiki handed him. With his back to the group, he tried to compose himself.

Allowing him space, Kiki lifted the rest of the bouquet over her head. As she closed her eyes, she said, “These are for you, Moriah. You’re in God’s heavenly garden now and don’t care about measly flowers from earth, but hey, we got you some anyway.” With a light flick of her wrist, the rest of the flowers landed on the center of the grave like an offering.

Gideon wondered how in the world Kiki was always able to make him smile even at the most sentimental times. Sometimes people looked at her and muttered that she wasn’t
right.
But they were incorrect because most of the time, Kiki was the only one who
was
right. Her honesty, her openness, her ability to forgive, and her freedom to be Kiki and no one else was what she offered to all she met. And to Gideon, that seemed like the right way to live.

A
s rain splashed against the farms of Carlisle, inside the Miller home, a fire crackled in the stone fireplace. Father, who’d removed his cloak and hat, sat in a chair to the left of the hearth, adding logs to it from a stack of hardwood. Up close, his beard seem sparse, no longer the thick mass of whiskers that had prickled Gideon’s face when, as a boy, he’d tried to hug him. He even moved slowly; the agile body of yesteryear was no longer his companion.

Straight-back wooden chairs were pulled across the bare floor, creating a circle. As the fire spurted with flames of red and violet, Mother and Gideon’s sisters laid food out on the dining room table. Mother claimed that once word had gotten around, neighbors had begun bringing over dishes this morning. There was an assortment of tasty looking platters and bowls with potato salad, red cabbage salad, beef soup with dumplings, schnitzel, apple butter and molasses bread, chess pie, apple pie, and even blackberry pie.

Kiki and Mari sat like statues on sack-back chairs, the very chairs Gideon had built to go around the dining room table. He’d used an English neighbor’s workshop because the neighbor had a high-powered lathe, and Gideon wanted the legs of each of the Windsor chairs to be carved like he’d seen on the flier at the furniture store. He knew at the time that Father would disapprove of him using an electric tool and especially one borrowed from someone who was not Amish, but he didn’t care. His mother’s excitement over the set was matched by his sisters’, making Gideon’s chest swell with pride. His father had merely refused any comment.

Kiki took in the sparsely decorated living room; Gideon knew by the way her eyes went from wall to ceiling to floor and back again that she was finding the room unusual.

Esther joined them and the minute she sat, Kiki spouted, “Hey, why don’t you have any pictures of Moriah on the walls? I want to see what he looked like as a baby.”

Father, Mother, Esther, Yolanda, and Irene all turned to look at Kiki as though she’d just uttered a string of obscenities. Mari muttered, “Kiki, behave.”

Upon hearing her sister’s reprimand, Kiki said, “What’s wrong? Gideon said Moriah was a cute kid, and I want to know if it’s true. Just show me a picture.”

Gideon moved from the dining table to Kiki. Standing behind her chair, he said, “Kiki, Amish don’t believe that photographs should be taken. You know how some people don’t believe it’s right to … to …” All eyes were on him, and Gideon felt discomfort surrounding him. “Um … Well, what I mean is …”

“I know!” Kiki piped up. With sudden revelation, she said, “You didn’t have money for a camera! Sheesh! I know money doesn’t grow on trees.”

And with that explanation, the others gave small smiles, nodded, and let that be that.

Quickly, Yolanda asked Mari some questions about where she was
born, and what she did in North Carolina. Mari answered with short, polite sentences. Gideon noted she was uncomfortable, and Esther must have picked up on this too, for she then encouraged everyone to eat. Irene handed both Mari and Kiki plates.

Kiki stood, excited to partake in the feast she’d been eyeing. With her plate against her chest, she rounded the table and said, “This looks wonderful. Mari, you should see this.” To Gideon, Kiki said under her breath, “No fried potatoes like Mari always makes. Not one fried anything. Yum!”

With the focus on the women and the food, Mother rose from her chair by the fireplace. She cast a glance at her husband who was looking off into the distance, unaware of the conversation around him. Gideon wondered if what Esther had said was true—that Father was not well.

Mother made her way toward the kitchen and motioned for Gideon to come with her. Gideon followed her into the kitchen and watched as she opened the heavy cellar door. He followed her down a set of concrete steps. As he remembered, the cool cellar was crammed with shelves of canned goods. Mother’s forte was pickling vegetables and canning jellies and fruit concoctions. The racks of shelves reached from floor to ceiling. As a child, Gideon had helped her with the summer squash when it was time to cook and can them. His job had also been to carefully bring the jars down the cellar stairs and place them gently on the shelves. He’d always been fearful that he’d trip coming down and that the broken jars would give his father a reason to beat him.

“You’ve been busy,” Gideon observed as nostalgia filled him. It seemed only yesterday he had been down here, dreaming about his future, a future he hoped was far away from this confined place.

She removed her black bonnet from her head, exposing a headful of hair secured in a tight bun. “When I heard the news from Mr. Swartz about Moriah, I came down here. There was nothing to can, so I went to the store and bought tomatoes and pumpkin and squash. After cooking them in the kitchen, I filled the jars. I ran out of jars.”

Gideon recognized much of the food she’d canned. When he saw three jars of apple butter, involuntarily his eyes closed as though he couldn’t bear to see or feel any more.

“I can cry down here,” his mother said.

He opened his eyes and looked into hers. How she’d aged over the long years since he’d last seen her. For some reason, he’d still pictured her as a woman of forty, the age she’d been when he left home. “Why can’t you cry upstairs?”

At first she wasn’t going to reply. He could tell by the way she touched a quart jar of canned butterbeans and changed the subject. “We had a good crop last year.”

Persistently, he asked again, “Why can’t you cry upstairs?” He knew he was being dogged about it, but he wanted to hear her reply.

Reluctantly, she responded, “You know he doesn’t like to see me cry.”

Her words evoked a lump in his throat. The old Gideon would have let it go, but the new Gideon, the one who’d left the old lifestyle, was more determined to show that the Amish way was not the only way to live a life of wholesomeness and faith. “Sometimes tears are okay, Mother. They show that we have heart.”

She wouldn’t look at him. She only lifted a hand to her forehead and pretended to be studying the shiny bottles of pickled beets.

“Were Esther, Yolanda, and Irene’s husbands and children not invited to be here?” Gideon had to know the answer.

“He thought it was best—”

“Is it really best that the entire family not be here for a son’s funeral?” Gideon felt the saliva thick and hot in his mouth.

Quietly, she said, “He has his rules, his ways.”

“Yeah, Ordnung mixed with his own pride.” Gideon rammed a clenched fist against the wall. The jars rattled on the shelves. “There have been more compassionate Nazi guards than him.” He’d actually written that line for his creative writing class and felt that now, it was time to let those words skip off the page and be heard.

A shadow hovered at the top of the stairs and immediately after seeing it, Gideon heard a gruff, “Are you coming back upstairs? We do have guests here, you know.”

Gideon wanted to shout up at his father, “Stop trying to control everything!” But he would not give in to that retort. Not now when his mother had already suffered enough.

She was bent over a small pine table, one where she often sat to view her shelves full of harvested goods and make inventory in a little notebook she kept. There were sections for each variety of canned good. The cellar was clearly her place, her sanctuary, her respite. Now her face was covered by her narrow hands.

He drew her to his chest, feeling her sobs against his heart. “It’s okay,” he repeated, for he knew nothing else to say, no words of comfort that were fitting for her at a time like this. “It’s all going to be okay.”

As Father started down the stairs, his shoes clicking against the concrete, she sniffed, pulled from Gideon and called out, “We are on our way up.”

Father hesitated on the third step as Gideon waited for his angry words. But none were spoken. Turning, Father started his climb up the stairs, his shadow not large and impressive, but thin and wary.

After rubbing her nose with the back of her hand, Mother said, “You cannot change others, Gideon. You can change yourself.” With that, she followed her husband.

Gideon guessed he’d better head upstairs as well and resume the chitchat with the others. At the first step he halted—the respite of the cellar was inviting. No wonder this dark and hidden storage space was his favorite part of the house, as well as his mother’s. This underground place almost seemed free from the restraints of Ordnung.

Back in the living room, Kiki and his sisters were eating. Mari held only a glass of water without ice. Gideon guessed she’d either already eaten or was not going to. As she gave him a weak smile, he felt she had not eaten. She’d once said that funerals and food made her uncomfortable, and when her grandfather died, she had dished out the prepared-by-friends-and-neighbors-meals,
but had not touched a bite.

Gideon acknowledged her smile and watched her until she turned from him to Esther who was asking her yet another question.

“Do you like working in the tearoom?” Esther’s voice had a monosyllabic quality to it, and Gideon remembered how he had once spoken in the traditional faltering Amish tone.

“We have all missed you, Gideon,” Mother said, her voice low, as she pulled out a box of matches. Gideon followed her as she lit various kerosene lanterns to offer light to the living and dining rooms.

“I see you still have some of the furniture I made.”

The oak table by the dining room entrance was one he’d built the winter he turned thirteen. He’d hit his fingernail with a hammer and it’d turned purple and eventually came off. To the left was the hutch that held a shelf where his mother’s royal teacups sat. Each one was like a soldier holding a trophy over the lone battle she’d won with her spouse. The teacups were not too fancy for a proper Old Order Amish house. They were permanent, part of the landscape, like her bonnets and unadorned clothing.

“I’m glad to see the furniture,” he added. For some reason, he had envisioned that they’d thrown out everything that he’d touched the minute he left them.