Why I Left the Amish

by Saloma Miller Furlong

  “To me or to someone else?”

  “Let's start with you.”

  “In terms of cruel, it was the beatings he used to give me. Then, when I was lying on the ground in a painful, crumpled heap, he would kick my butt so hard, I felt it all the way up my spine, into my head. And then there was the incest. That is never an easy thing to recover from. And of course the secretive, closed Amish system makes it even harder.”

  David asked, “And what is the worst thing you know of that he did to someone else?”

  “To animals, it was starving the rabbits. To a person, I would have to say molesting Katherine. He molested all of us, but Katherine was the most vulnerable. And she is the only one who got pregnant. And I still think it was he who got her pregnant. Katherine claimed several years later that is who did it, even though she told us at the time it was Joe Basco, the Yankee guy who used to come visit our family on a regular basis. Joe told her to name him when she was asked.”

  “Didn't someone tell you that Joe admitted it to the bishop once?” David asked.

  “Yes, but I have never been able to confirm that. If that is true, I wonder what the bishop had over Joe? He would not reveal what I think are his deepest, darkest secrets unless there was something worse hanging over his head.”

  “Yes, but with the Amish definition of forgiveness, it doesn't matter how bad the offense is, he would still get the same blank slate as someone who is being forgiven for getting drunk or something, right?”

  “Yes, and therein lies the problem of accountability. If Joe is still not being held accountable for his actions, can he be trusted to do the right thing, when the crooked or dishonest thing will suit him better? I don't know that he has changed to that degree.”

  David didn't respond, and I was quiet for a moment. Then I continued. “And that is the other thing about forgiveness—I can forgive Joe for the wrongs he did me, but I am in no position to do that on Katherine's behalf, especially since he has never even come clean with an acknowledgment that he did take advantage of Katherine when she was a mere sixteen-year-old. With her mentality, it was more like having sex with his ten-year-old sister. I don't actually know how I could forgive him for that––it seems to me it would require acknowledgment, atonement, and restitution—and not just for Katherine, but for her son, too. Paul Henry is no more able to take care of himself than Katherine is. It sounds like the Amish couple that adopted him did not know how to handle him. The Mennonites are certainly charitable in caring for him, but I wonder what would happen to him if that changed?”

  “Remember the look on Joe's face when the Mennonites showed up with Paul Henry last summer?”

  “I sure do! I have never seen Joe so embarrassed and humbled in my life! I bet Joe would have said no to the leader of the group, when he asked if the young people could sing for them, had he known that Paul Henry was among them.”

  “I bet so too.”

  “As it was, Joe pushed that decision off on Mem. He thought Mem would resist making the decision, but she said, ‘If it's up to me, then I want them to sing.’ When Paul Henry walked up, the last in the group of young people, and Mom said, ‘Here is my grandson,’ it took me a moment before I even understood who he was. I think it was Joe's expression that made me realize this was Katherine's (and probably his) son. I have never seen Joe's eyes try to bore a hole in the ground, so he could crawl in and hide, like they did that afternoon.”

  “Was Paul Henry at your dad's funeral?”

  “No, but he came to the wake. I could tell Joe was very uneasy when he was in the living room. He found a reason to leave.”

  “But wasn't there the time that Katherine actually did tell on Joe for molesting her?”

  “Yes, that was after she'd been pregnant, which makes what Joe did even worse. She was going down to his and Emma's place to help out with the farm chores, and he was taking advantage of her. He was already the father of three or four children at the time. And the only reason she told on him is because he stole seventy dollars from her purse, which she had spent untold hours to earn. So, from this experience, we know that he did molest her, whether or not he fathered Paul Henry.”

  “The problems in your family are so complex,” David said.

  “Yes, aren't you so glad you married me? Look at what you would have missed if you hadn't.”

  “Oh, yes, I am so lucky.” David looked at me sideways, with a grin on his face. I laughed with him. Then he said, “You are waiting for me to say it is all worth it, aren't you?”

  “Not if you don't mean it,” I laughed.

  “Hey, I pursued you when you went back to the Amish, didn't I?”

  “Yes, when you were in your twenties; but that doesn't say whether you are glad or sorry for doing it now.”

  “Hey, I knew what I was doing.”

  “I think that is the closest you are going to come to saying you are not sorry. I should probably stop there.”

  “Yeah, don't push your luck.” David opened his window as he approached the tollbooth near Buffalo. I yawned. “I am so sleepy. Do you mind if I take a nap?”

  As I closed my eyes, I thought about how the distance, represented by the miles of highway, is the only physical aspect that separates me from the community where I grew up. I was glad for the trip to make the psychological shift between the horse-and-buggy world I had left twenty-four years ago, and my present world of Smith College. My mind drifted back to the days when Joe was a teenager and had established complete dominance over my sisters and me.

  In the Shadows of the Buggies

  When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

  RALPH WALDO EMERSON

  One Monday morning, when Joe was about eighteen years old, he didn't get up when his ride came to take him to work, so the carpenter's crew left without him. Joe had been out partying the night before. I dreaded the day, because I knew he would be in a foul mood. I decided to lay low and not get in his way. He was sleeping on the couch when Mem let him know mittag was ready. He groaned and did not get up. So the rest of us ate, then we bickered about who had to do the dishes and who had to sweep the basement floor. There were few tasks I hated more than dishes, but sweeping the basement floor was one of them. In the end, I had to sweep the floor. The dirt stuck to the rough cement, so it was hard to sweep. Mem often told the story of how she was nearly nine months pregnant with Joe when she laid the cement. She stood on a board and used a trowel to smooth it out. I wondered why she had used cement with such big stones in it, rather than fine sand. Most likely it had been cheaper, and it was all she could afford.

  I had started by the canning shelves, and had made my way over near the steps when I heard footsteps going from the living room into the kitchen upstairs. They stopped right above me, then Joe said, “What's for mittag?” The desire to lay low and stay out of his way melted as I felt my anger rise. The thought of Mem telling me to make mittag for Joe was too much. Before I could check my anger, words came tumbling out of my mouth: “Maybe if you weren't such a lazy sleepyhead you would know that!”

  Joe's heavy, deliberate footsteps came tromping towards the kitchen door. I could hear his brutality in every footfall as he stomped down the stairs. Not fast, but slow, like he wanted me to feel the anticipation of getting hit as long as he could. I thought about running out the basement door, but he was faster than I was. Running for the outhouse had stopped working ages ago. I had only one option left. I called for Mem.

  She didn't respond.

  Joe marched up to me, stood there, raised his hand, and hit me across the face. My glasses fell to the floor. Then, with his other hand, he hit me on the other side of the face, just as hard. I screamed.

  Joe turned and started walking up the stairs.

  I picked up my glasses and found they were broken. I hated Joe more than ever. “You broke my glasses!” I bellowed. “Now you can pay for them!”

  Joe stopped on the stairs, turned around, came back down, and slapped my face so hard I felt a j
olt in my neck and heard it crack. I wanted so much to slap him back, slam the broomstick across his head, punch him, kick him, do whatever I could to hurt him. But he was the Almighty Joe. I screamed out my rage. I knew it could be a long time before I would have those glasses fixed or get new ones. It had taken Mem and Datt six years to get me glasses after the teachers in public school advised that I should have my eyes checked. Now I would have to do without glasses again, because I had let Joe get me upset enough that I could not stay quiet, when I knew that the result of my outburst would be a beating. And Mem's response, if I complained, would be, “Well, Lomie, you always do need to learn the hard way!” She, of course, meant that I should learn how to control my anger and not say anything to Joe that would trigger his brutality. But, I wondered, how could I rein in my rebellion when there was no justice in my life—when I did not have even one person I could count on to stand by me when I needed it the most?

  IF I THOUGHT JOE HAD dominated me when he first began his rum springa years, I would find him increasing that a notch when I myself joined the young people. Rum springa (running around) in my home community was not a time for young people to go out and try new things and then decide whether they would stay in the community, but rather it was a time of courting within the community, in which some parents looked the other way when their young people were playing music, dancing, visiting bars, and drinking. And like their parents before them, they looked the other way when their daughters brought young men home and went to bed with them. Bed courtship has been used since before the Amish ancestors emigrated from Europe. In those days, it was called “bundling,” with a board placed between the man and the woman. It is believed that this method of courting began during the time our ancestors were being persecuted. This allowed young people to hide from the authorities in upstairs bedrooms, which were often cold, so it allowed both people to stay warm under the bedcovers while “visiting.” Many generations ago, the board disappeared, leaving the bed courtship rituals. Even the Amish are embarrassed to talk about this practice, because it is hard to explain to outsiders that they are not encouraging their young people to have sex, even though they allow them to go to bed together. The obvious question is, of course, how does one know whether they do or not? It seems every young woman has to decide for herself where her boundaries are. This is tricky business—there is little room between gaining a reputation for being “easy” and gaining the reputation for being “frigid.” Most young women wait until they are married to become pregnant, but by no means all.

  When a young woman does get pregnant before she is married, the couple is expected to marry. But before they can do that, they need to be members of the church. This means that if they haven't already “joined church,” they now need to make haste to do so. Most of the time, it takes a whole summer for young people to receive instructions for baptism, partly because each district holds services every two weeks. The baptismal service is then held once a year, in the fall. Young people preparing for their “shotgun” wedding now have to receive instruction from their own district as well as a neighboring one (thus attending church every Sunday during their instruction period), and then a special baptismal service is held to baptize the young person or persons, so that the woman getting married can do so before her pregnancy becomes obvious to others.

  Outsiders often ask: why tempt the young people in this way? Even some Amish people feel this way, and their beliefs generate start-up communities; it is impossible to change the ways in an established community in which this courtship ritual has been practiced for generations. One such community is in Mio, Michigan. Many of these church members moved out of our church district when that community was established, back in the 1970s.

  All during the rum springa years, the parents keep a close eye on their young people for signs that they are unzufriede (discontent) with the Amish ways. So, dating someone outside the Amish, taking a course at a college, taking trips alone far away from home, or deciding to go out for dinner on dates instead of practicing bed courtship would be more threatening to most parents than getting drunk on a regular basis, driving buggies while drunk, or becoming pregnant, even though pregnancy before marriage is a big embarrassment.

  The venue for dating is at the gatherings for the young people. There are two basic kinds—“parties” on Saturday nights, and “singings” on Sunday nights. The “singings” are acceptable to all parents, while some parents will not allow their young people to attend the parties. The only difference between the two, besides being held on different nights of the week, is that at the singings, the young people sit in rows in the kitchen of the houses where the singings are held (usually this family has held church in their home that day) and sing songs before the music, dancing, and drinking begin out in the barn. At the parties, the singing part is skipped. It is around the dancing in the barn that young Amish women are taken aside and asked for dates—not directly from the young man, but rather from whomever he chooses to send as his emissary.

  So when I started my rum springa, I became dependent on Joe to take me places, because he had a horse and buggy and I didn't. Most young men are expected to take their sisters along to the singings, but Joe had managed to escape the “embarrassment” of taking Lizzie when she reached the normal age for dating, except for a very few times when Mem had insisted. The few times he did take her, he stranded her at the singings by having a date. Lizzie had made a friend during these few outings, and so she would go and spend the night at Amanda's house when Joe abandoned her. To my knowledge, Lizzie never had a date within the Amish.

  Joe was going steady with Emma by the time I joined the young folks, so I often got a ride to her house with him on Sunday afternoons as I became friends with Emma's two sisters, Ada and Ella. We would find a way to the singing from their house together. They lived in a more central place in the community, which meant that we could often walk to the singings or catch a ride with the young men in their neighborhood. I didn't plan on joining the young people when I did. I backed into it, so that I could hardly point to the time I began my rum springa. One Saturday night, when I was seventeen, one of my second cousins invited me for an overnight stay. They lived down on Donley Road, close to my grandparents. Whenever we visited them (Momme and Dodde), we would visit the Andy Millers'. We had known this family ever since we were little children. They once lived on Route 608, several miles from us, and our families would walk crosslots through the woods to visit one another. Andy Em and Mem are first cousins, so my friend Mary and her siblings are fifteen of several hundred of my second cousins on Mem's side of the family.

  Mem said I could go to Mary's house for overnight. I had a problem. I didn't have an appropriate nightdress. Mem hadn't let me make one yet. Nightdresses were made in the same pattern as our day dresses, except they had buttons down the front instead of pins. Mem insisted I take one of her nightgowns, which I could have fit into twice. When I shamefully showed it to Mary, she found one of her sisters' nightdresses and let me borrow that.

  Mary and her sisters had invited several of their other friends, including Lizzie and Lucy, who were sisters.

  I was invited to more gatherings after that first night. Mary and her friends taught me how to do the square dance that was customary at the singings. It was basically made up of walking up and back, arm-in-arm with one's partner, then splitting off, going around the person next to one's left, and swinging with one's partner. It was a boring dance, but given it was the only dance the Amish used, I got into the swing of it. Girls always started out the dance at the singings, and sometimes boys would cut in to dance with the girl of their choice.

  Lucy was one of my favorite partners, because she and I did the swinging well together. There were boys that came to the group get-togethers too, but I told myself they were there because of Lizzie, Lucy, and Mary. A homely boy named Freeman often cut me out in dancing, so he could dance with Lucy. I'd look at the two of them together and wonder what she saw that she liked in him,
because she had all the beauty he lacked. Her skin looked clear in the light of the lantern, and her blue eyes became the color of the clear sky when he danced with her.

  Soon after I started hanging out with this group of young people, I started going to the singings. That night, Mary's sister Ada took me aside and asked me, “Is it all right for Gid tonight?” I waited, thinking she would finish her question. She was looking at me in the darkness of the yard, next to shrubs. I said, “What?”

  “Gid is asking you for a date,” Ada whispered. My stomach did a flip inside me as I realized what she was saying. Then a nervous fluttering feeling started from my overturned stomach. Gid was one of the boys who came to the group get-togethers. I was surprised that anyone would ask me for a date, because I saw myself as fat and ugly. I am one of Sim's girls and I might not have very many chances for dates, I told myself as I said, “Yes.” Then as soon as Ada left, I wished I had had more time to think about it. I was not the least bit attracted to Gid. In fact, I found him downright homely. I thought about finding Ada and telling her I didn't want to have the date with Gid after all. Then I realized how awkward that would be at the get-togethers after that, and left it alone.

  In the Amish tradition, Gid did not need to ask me for a date directly. By having someone else ask for him, he could avoid a potential rejection. I had known this, but when Ada had asked me in that way, she still had to explain to me what she was doing. It had never dawned on me before, but this system of sending an emissary to ask for him was cowardly. But then again, I told myself, it could have also protected me from saying no to him directly. Somehow it seemed more of a protection for him than me, though.

  At ten-thirty Ada told me Gid was ready to go. She walked me to his buggy and disappeared into the darkness. I climbed onto the buggy, Gid clicked to his horse, and we drove into the night. The nervous fluttering feeling in my stomach got worse as Gid and I made small talk. I sat tensely on the seat of his buggy as we drove past the dark homes on Clay Street. Most of them were Amish, but there were a few English homes, too. I didn't know what to expect once we got to our house. I knew the Amish used bed courtship, but I didn't know the details. Most girls probably learned this from their older sisters, but because Lizzie had never had a date, she couldn't fill in these details for me. Does he leave his clothes on? I wondered. Am I supposed to leave the light on or blow it out? I wondered how I was supposed to know these things, and whether other mothers told their daughters more about this. Or did they learn it from other girls, or the dates themselves? So far, Gid had not said a word about it.