The Lesson (28 page)

The first time that she could remember her mom getting released from jail, they moved from Old Deborah’s into a halfway house. Her mom gave Jenny a short haircut and took her to a thrift shop for some new old clothes and plunked Chris and Jenny in a public school. Her mother stayed clean
for a few months, but it didn’t last long. She had found some work cleaning houses for rich ladies and might have helped herself to their credit cards.

That time, her mother was sent to jail for a longer time. Something about having priors—whatever that meant. Chris and Jenny settled back comfortably at Old Deborah’s. They had made friends and quickly picked up the Pennsylvania Dutch language from Old Deborah and their friends. Three years later, when their mother was released, she yanked them away from Old Deborah and set up housekeeping in a grungy apartment with cockroaches. Chris and Jenny started yet another public school, but they hated it. They felt as if they were walking a tightrope between two worlds: Amish and English. Kids made fun of them for the way they talked or mocked them because they didn’t know television shows or video games. Just as they had finally made a friend or two and life was beginning to be tolerable, their mother started using drugs again. She bought some meth from an undercover police officer.

Back Chris and Jenny went to Old Deborah’s.

The third time Grace Mitchell was released from jail, Old Deborah convinced her to let the children stay at the farm and keep going to the Amish school. She offered to let Grace live with them too. Jenny’s mom complained the entire time that her children had been brainwashed, but Chris noted that she didn’t mind eating Old Deborah’s food or sleeping in a clean bed. She stayed off drugs longer that time—six whole months, but it didn’t last.

Jenny wanted her mom to get out of the rehab center, but she didn’t want another makeover. It took years to grow her hair out again. She liked being Amish and she doubted her mother would let her remain in the church. Chris said not
to worry too much about that because he didn’t expect their mother to ever stay clean.

Jenny looked around the big kitchen at Windmill Farm. She loved being here. Everything was calm and predictable. Three meals were planned for, each day. Like right now she could open the cupboard and there would be cereal, and on the counter were some apples and pears, and there was milk in the fridge. It was the nicest family Jenny had ever known, and they were all so kind to her and Chris.

There were moments, like now, when she felt an overwhelming sadness. Why couldn’t she have been born a Lapp? Why couldn’t she have had a mother like Fern and a father like Amos? Not fair. It just wasn’t fair.

The oven timer went off and Jenny peeked inside. She thought the pies needed just a little more time, so she set the buzzer for another five minutes. She noticed Fern’s coffee can by the buzzer, the one where Fern kept cash. She peeked out the window to make sure no one was coming and opened the can. So much money! There must be hundreds of dollars in that can. What would it be like to have so much money that you could keep extra stored in a coffee can? For she and Chris, it seemed money was barely in their pockets, and it was gone.
Whoosh.

Then she saw Fern’s buggy turn into the driveway. She put the lid on the coffee can and tucked it behind the timer. She hurried to the table and picked up the pencil. It was always so hard to know exactly what to say to her mom. Finally she added:

Here is a little more money. Sorry it can’t be more, but I have to be careful. Love you! Jenny

P.S. I’ve grown so tall you won’t believe it!

She smoothed out two five-dollar bills and put them in an envelope addressed to her mom. Everybody had someone to depend on—but Jenny’s mom only had Jenny. Even Chris didn’t want anything to do with their mother. Taking care of her was up to Jenny.

It was one of those days that made you feel happy to be alive. On a chilly Saturday morning in mid-November, M.K. decided it was high time to winterize the beehives. The weather this fall had been unseasonably warm. Maybe not warm, but not freezing. Still, she knew winter would arrive, fast and furious. She had spent the morning in the honey cabin, bottling the last of the season’s honey. Now she covered herself with netting and prepared the smoker. As she stapled fresh tarpaper on the outside of the hives, her mind wandered to the first time she had worked with her brother-in-law, Rome, to prepare the hives. It took months before he would let her come close to the hives—he said she had to learn how to be patient before she could be a beekeeper.

Had she learned to be patient?

In some areas. Wasn’t she patient with Eugene Miller’s fits-and-starts path to becoming a better reader? It was a slow, slow process, but just when she thought he would never make any progress, there was a breakthrough. Just this week, he had joined in recitations with the rest of his class. She hadn’t asked him to, but she had given him the reading assignment a few days ahead so he could prepare if he wanted to. She had been doing that for weeks now and he had always refused. But this time, he read out loud in a clear, steady voice. Nearly flawless. Her heart swelled with pride for him. As Eugene’s confidence grew, he was far less annoying to
the other children. She couldn’t wait to fill Erma Yutzy in on the changes in Eugene. She only hoped that he would have the skills he needed by late May, when he would graduate. Should graduate.

Such a thought amazed her. She was actually thinking about the end of the term. Wouldn’t Rome be pleased? She was definitely becoming a woman of patience.

She stapled the last roll of tarpaper and stood back to examine her work. It had to be perfect. The cold weather would slow the bees’ activity, but they could survive by keeping the hive at a comfortable temperature. These bees came from a strain of brown bees that Rome’s mother had bequeathed to him, and he had bequeathed a hive to M.K.

A jolt shot through her—no one knew how to care for her bees like she did. When she thought about traveling to see a Maori village in New Zealand, she hadn’t taken into consideration what would happen to her bees. How in the world could she ever leave her bees?

Jimmy Fisher finally located Hank Lapp in the weeds behind the barn. He had his hands held out in front of him, holding onto dowsing rods, gazing at the ground with intent concentration.

“Looking for water?” Jimmy asked.

Hank startled and dropped the rods. “I was,” he groused.

“How do you know when you get close?”

“When I find it, the rods will move by themselves and cross in my hands.”

“Let me save you some trouble,” Jimmy said. He went over to the spigot and lifted the hose. “I’m pretty sure the water comes out of the faucets.”

Hank scowled at him. “For your information, dowsing is a very lucrative skill.”

“How so?”

“Let’s say you’re going to invest in a piece of land. Don’t you want to know what’s under the surface?”

“I’d probably hire a well company.”

“But who’s going to tell the well company where to dig, eh?” Hank picked up the dowsing rods, holding them lightly in his hands. In spite of the fact that the faucet and the pipes were just a few yards away, over by the barn, the rods did not jump in his hands or twitch or cross. Hank frowned.

“I just came to tell you that Bishop Elmo is over at the buggy shop. Mad as hops that his buggy isn’t repaired yet.”

Hank threw down the dowsing rods and pinned Jimmy with a look with his one good eye. “BOY, DON’T YOU HAVE SOMEPLACE YOU NEED TO BE?”

“I do, actually. I came over to look for M.K., but Fern said she’s off visiting her scholars’ homes.” Jimmy mulled that over. “Why would she bother to waste a perfectly good Saturday afternoon on that?”

Hank wasn’t listening. His good eye was peeled on an approaching figure. Bishop Elmo had spotted him from across the yard and was heading his way.

15

I
n the schoolhouse, the countdown to Christmas had begun. A secret gift exchange was planned, and parents were coming for a special program. A light dusting of snow one afternoon caused the scholars’ pent-up enthusiasm to explode, like a shaken can of soda. The schoolhouse nearly vibrated with excitement.

M.K. handed out poems for some of the children who volunteered to recite. Anna Mae Glick chose the longest piece to recite. She was sure she had her part down pat. M.K. wasn’t as sure.

Each day, the children rehearsed Christmas carols. Day after day, the strains of a miniature heavenly host singing “Joy to the World” wafted out of the schoolhouse. M.K. scanned the ranks—the sun glinted off Danny Riehl’s spectacles. Barbara Jean’s grown-up front teeth were about halfway in now. She didn’t whistle and spit so much when she talked, but her little tongue kept sticking out. She’d grown accustomed to Jenny Yoder’s earnest, birdlike look. A well of fondness rose within M.K. for these children. Imagine that! Fondness.

And here was another unexpected surprise in the schoolhouse this Christmas season: Eugene Miller. The boy had
a beautiful tenor voice. M.K. started using him as a pitch pipe—to set everyone on the right note. He would roll his eyes whenever she asked him for a G or an E flat, but then he would sit up straight and open his mouth and the exact note would float out of his mouth, right on key. He tried hard not to look pleased, but M.K. could tell he was secretly delighted. The changes she had noticed in him lately were astonishing. There were good days and bad days, but Eugene Miller was becoming a different person.

She had known Eugene all his life, but for the first time she was catching glimpses of how vulnerable he really was. For all his outward swagger, he was a hurt little boy inside, hiding his pain behind pranks and laughter.

How had she not realized? Eugene Miller was starved for attention.

It was late in the day, and the day was late in the season. Winter was coming. The shadows were growing dusky. M.K. had just finished grading papers at the schoolhouse and had one more thing to do: she wanted to tape the scholars’ new artwork up on the window as a surprise to them in the morning. She had pushed a desk up against the window and stood on top of it when she heard the door open and spun around to find Chris Yoder standing at the threshold.

He looked at her. “What are you doing up there?”

“Hanging pictures.” Startled by his sudden appearance, she felt her face grow warm, so she reached over to smooth a piece of tape out against the window. “What are you doing here?”

“Jenny forgot a book she wanted to finish reading tonight. Which desk is hers?”

She pointed to the far desk in the back row.

Chris crossed the room, opened the desktop, and plucked a book out. “You shouldn’t be teetering on a rickety desktop when you’re alone in the schoolhouse. You could fall and hit your head and no one would know until morning.”

She started to climb down because she had reached as far as she could on that desktop. “That’s true. That’s actually how my mother died.”

Chris helped her down. “Then you should definitely know better.” He was so tall he didn’t need to stand on top of a desk. She handed him the pictures and he taped each one up, more precisely and evenly than she had been doing. He came to a picture of a snowy owl and stopped. “This should be hanging in a museum.”