Angels Watching Over Me

by Lurlene McDaniel

  Leah ventured into the kitchen and stopped short. Ethan stood in front of a vending machine, contemplating the selections.

  “You have to put money in. You can’t just wish the stuff out,” Leah said, hoping to make him smile.

  Startled, he jumped back. “You surprised me.” His cheeks reddened, and he dropped his gaze. He didn’t offer her the hoped-for smile.

  “Sorry,” she said irritably. Why did he always look away from her? Did his religion forbid him to look her in the eye? “Do you want me to help?” she asked.

  “I—I have no money for the machine.”

  “I have quarters.” She reached into the pocket of her robe. “Here. Let me treat you. What would you like?”

  “I cannot take—”

  “Of course you can,” she interrupted. “Buying you a candy bar doesn’t make us engaged, does it?” She popped in two quarters. “What’s your favorite?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never had one before.”

  “Are you joking?”

  “Is this funny to you?”

  “Only strange,” she said, more hesitant now, her annoyance subsiding. “I’ll pick for you.” She punched a button, and a Milky Way bar dropped down the chute. She picked it up and handed it to him. “This is one of my favorites. Try it.”

  Hesitantly he took it from her, careful not to touch her hand. “Thank you.”

  She tried to make eye contact, but Ethan kept his gaze on the candy bar. Again her anger flared. She spun and stalked over to the counter and a platter holding a stack of wrapped sandwiches. She grabbed one, took a fruit drink, and dropped into a nearby chair, pointedly ignoring Ethan. The guy might be good-looking, but he was a jerk as far as she was concerned.

  From the corner of her eye she saw that Ethan hadn’t left the room. He just stood by the door, shifting from foot to foot. His shirt was white broadcloth. His pants were the same wide-legged style as his father’s. He wore heavy, dark boots. There was nothing fashionable about him. He was nothing like any of the boys she’d known back in Dallas. She tried hard not to look at him. Still he didn’t move.

  She couldn’t stand it anymore. “What!” she cried. “What do you want? Is the candy bar poison or something?”

  He shook his head, his gaze riveted to the floor.

  “Then what’s wrong, Ethan? Is there something wrong with me? Is there a particular reason why you won’t look at me or talk to me?”

  “No.” He came closer until he was standing over her, staring straight down into her eyes.

  His gaze was so intense that Leah felt as if it might burn her. She swallowed hard. Her hands trembled, and her heart began to race. “What is it? Do you dislike me?” Her voice quivered with false bravado.

  “Dislike you?” He looked as if she’d slapped him. “I do not dislike you, Leah Lewis-Hall. I think that you are the most beautiful girl I have ever set my eyes upon.”

  “You do?” Leah stared at him. “You actually think I’m pretty?”

  “It is impossible for me not to think so. You are beautiful.”

  She felt herself blush. No guy had ever been so forthright with her. In her experience, most guys liked to play head games with girls. They liked to come on strong, then back away if a girl showed any interest. She grew wary. Maybe Ethan was the same way. “I’ll bet you’ve told lots of girls they’re pretty,” she said tentatively.

  He shook his head. “I have only taken Martha Dewberry home but once in my buggy.”

  “You’ve lost me, Ethan. What’s a buggy ride got to do with feeding girls a line?” Leah pushed out a nearby chair with her foot, inviting Ethan to sit.

  He sat. “What is this ‘feeding a line’?”

  “Giving somebody a compliment in order to get something you want from her.” She wondered if she was going to have to explain every idiom in the English language to him.

  “You mean lie?” He recoiled. “I do not lie, Leah. If I tell you you are beautiful, it is because it is so.”

  She couldn’t help smiling. “Well, thank you for thinking so. I would have never guessed you felt that way. You acted as if you wanted to avoid me. That can hurt a person’s feelings, you know.”

  “Have I hurt your feelings?”

  “I’m getting over it.”

  A smile slowly inched across Ethan’s face. “Good. I do not want to hurt your feelings.”

  She measured him quietly. Ethan’s hands were large and raw; he must work hard. His face was lean, with the hint of a beard in places. His hair curled against his collar and flopped appealingly across his forehead. She wanted to touch it, but she didn’t dare. She asked, “Are you going to tell me about Martha Dewberry and your buggy ride together?”

  He regarded Leah seriously. “It is our custom that when a man is interested in a woman, he takes her home from church or community gatherings in a buggy. It is his way of telling others that he has special feelings for this person.”

  Despite herself, Leah felt a tiny flare of jealousy. “Where I come from, if a guy likes a girl, he asks her out on a date and he picks her up in his car. Or his parents’ car.”

  “We have no cars.”

  “That’s what your sister told me. But you don’t mind riding in them.”

  “Public transportation is fine for long trips, but for each one of us to own a car would be prideful. And it would break apart our community.”

  Every family Leah knew owned a car. Sometimes two or three cars. Neil had given her mother a car for a wedding gift, and Leah had used it to drive herself to the hospital. But she could see how vehicles separated people. She thought of people driving on the expressways, each locked alone inside a car, cut off from fellow travelers. “So, are you a good buggy driver?”

  He grinned. “Passable.”

  “And do you like this Martha Dewberry? Is she your girlfriend?”

  His brow puckered while his gaze lingered over Leah’s face. “She is Amish.”

  And I’m not. She heard the unspoken message in his comment. Suddenly she wanted to turn the talk away from their differences. She liked Ethan. But nothing could ever come of their friendship; they were from two very different worlds. She moved forward. “I’ll bet you’ve never played a video game, have you?”

  He shook his head. “I have not ever seen one.”

  She grabbed his hand. “Come on. Let me show you how.”

  She led him into the semidarkened video game room. Several kids clustered around machines, but she saw a vacant one back in a corner and took Ethan toward it. “Sit,” she directed. She positioned herself across the table from him. “I’ve played this one before back in Texas. It’s got levels of difficulty, so we can start slow, until you get the hang of it.” She paused, suddenly stricken by a thought. “It wouldn’t be against your religion, would it?”

  His features glowed by the pale purple light emanating from the game. “Play is not forbidden. We play many games. I can see no harm in trying this one.”

  It didn’t take him long to catch on. Ethan’s hand flew on the trackball, spinning and turning it. Leah threw up her hands in defeat as he soared over the million-point mark. “Are you sure you’ve never played a video game before? If I didn’t know better, I’d bet you’d suckered me.”

  His face was lit with a heart-stopping grin of genuine pleasure. “What do you mean—‘suckered’?”

  “You know, pretended not to know how to play.”

  “I told you, Leah, I do not lie.” His eyes twinkled. “It is an exciting game. I like it.”

  “You have to admit that modern conveniences aren’t all bad.”

  He leveled his incredibly blue eyes on her. “They have their pleasures.”

  A tingling sensation prickled up her arms. “Too bad you need electricity to play it.”

  He laughed. “Electricity is not the only need. Time is necessary too. With so much to do on the farm, who would have time for video games?”

  “It seems to me that work is all you have time for.”

/>   “Work is a good teacher. It gives us Amish a sense of meaning and purpose.”

  “Does it give you meaning?”

  He pondered her question, and she hoped he could tell that she was genuinely interested in his perspective.

  “Work helps me understand that my life is but one small part of God’s greater order,” he said. “The seasons come. They go. Harvest comes, and with it, God supplies our needs. But if we did nothing but wish for a good harvest, if we did no work to produce a good crop, then that would be foolish. And worse, it would presume on God’s benevolence.”

  Presented that way, his point of view made perfect sense to Leah. “Don’t you ever get curious about the rest of the world, though?”

  She could tell she’d hit a nerve. For all of his confidence about his lifestyle, there was yearning too. And by the way he played the video game, she guessed, there was intense competitiveness. “I cannot tell you otherwise, Leah. Yes, I do wonder what certain things would be like among you English. Since I’ve been here in this hospital, I have seen many people who care and who help others. Like Amish ways.

  “But I have also seen your newspapers and your television programs since I’ve been here. They tell terrible stories about your world. People kill others to steal their cars—even when they have cars of their own.” He shook his head. “This is not a world where I want to live.”

  Leah couldn’t deny that horrible things went on in the world every day. “All right, I agree. The world’s not a perfect place. But why not try to change it instead of hiding from it?”

  He shook his head. “The elders tell us that it is far more likely that the English will change our ways than that we will change theirs.”

  “Do you always do what the elders say?” Both he and Charity quoted rules and words of others. Did they ever think for themselves?

  “Gelassenheit,” he said. “That’s German for patience and resignation. It means obedience to the Amish community. It is not something we do. It is something we are.”

  Leah had been raised to be on her own. Her mother’s many marriages, their frequent moves and different schools had taught her to be independent. But she saw quite clearly that for the Amish, individuality was not a virtue. It was a curse. She stood. “Well, it looks like we’ve come full circle, Ethan. You were right after all—the English and the Amish can’t mingle.”

  He stood too. “But we can care about one another,” he said carefully. “We can always care.”

  She knew he meant care in a brotherly way. But after spending time with him, she didn’t want to be just another sister to him. She wanted to be a girl who mattered to him the way Martha Dewberry mattered. Except that Leah wasn’t Amish. And she never would be.

  That evening, Leah overheard Ethan tell his sisters that he was returning home on a shuttle bus. Rebekah reacted immediately, asking him not to leave her and Charity. Leah reacted too, but quietly, deep inside herself. She knew she was going to miss him.

  “Papa needs me to work, but I will be back,” Ethan said.

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow evening. By suppertime.”

  Leah’s heartbeat accelerated. Good. He’s coming back. When he left the room, he passed the table where she sat, trailed his fingers across the surface and softly brushed her arm. She met his gaze and felt a rush of yearning. She wanted to stand up and throw her arms around him. Instead, she sat perfectly still.

  She was preparing to go to bed when Dr. Thomas came into the room. Leah was surprised to see him there so late on a Friday night. “I got tied up in the emergency room with a leg fracture; that’s why I’m so late making rounds,” he explained.

  “I’m not going anywhere.” She felt apprehensive. “So, do you know anything about what’s wrong with me yet?”

  He shuffled her chart, laden with X rays and papers. “I know that I want to do a biopsy on your knee first thing Monday morning.”

  “Why do you have to do a biopsy?” Leah asked Dr. Thomas.

  “A biopsy is nothing more than a diagnostic tool—”

  Leah cut him off. “I know what a biopsy is! That’s how the doctors discovered that my grandmother had cancer.” She gasped. “Do you think I have cancer? Is that why you want to do a biopsy?”

  “Now, calm down. There are some cancers that have a hereditary factor, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have cancer. I don’t want to make a false diagnosis, and since we don’t know what’s wrong with you yet, I want to do this test. I’ll put you under an anesthetic, take out a tiny sample of bone tissue from your knee, and send it to the lab for evaluation. Your knee might be sore for a day or two, but that’s all.”

  Leah felt afraid. “Do whatever you have to.”

  The doctor patted her arm. “You’ll be okay, Leah. We’ll take good care of you. I’ll see you Monday morning.” He smiled reassuringly as he left.

  Leah pulled the bedcovers up to her chin and closed her eyes. She didn’t want Charity or Rebekah to see the tears that were about to roll down her cheeks as, for the first time since entering the hospital, she surrendered completely to memories of her grandmother.

  Grandma Hall had tried to stay involved in Leah’s life even after Leah’s father had abandoned them. It wasn’t easy. For reasons Leah still didn’t understand, her mother had tried to keep Leah away from her grandmother. Her mother didn’t want Grandma Hall to see Leah at all. But Grandma Hall found ways to keep in touch. She sent Leah letters, even when they lived in the same city, and whenever she could, she stopped by Leah’s school during recess to visit.

  Leah remembered her grandmother as cheerful and smiling. She carried hankies that smelled like roses, and she loved to wear red. Most importantly, she was Leah’s only tie to her father—the father her mother wouldn’t allow her to mention. The father Leah longed for, instead of the steady stream of men who had dated her mother.

  Leah’s grandmother had told her stories about her father when he was a little boy and showed her photos of him as a child, as a soldier in Vietnam, as a new father proudly holding baby Leah. And when she’d ask, “Why did my daddy go away?” Grandma Hall would say, “He just had to go, honey. But he always loved you. And he still does.”

  When Leah was ten, Grandma Hall had gotten sick, and Leah’s mother had relented slightly about allowing Leah to visit her. Although feelings between the two were strained, Leah’s mother had often brought Leah to the hospital. “Hi, darling,” her grandmother would say, and she would stroke Leah’s hair tenderly.

  Leah had hated the hospital. Her grandmother looked awful, gaunt and pale, with IVs stuck into bulging blue veins. Leah hated the way the place smelled and feared the equipment, tubes, and syringes, as well as the nurses who shuffled in and out, dispensing medicine but bringing her beloved grandmother no relief. Secretly Leah hoped one day to walk in and see her father visiting his mother. But it had never happened.

  Grandma Hall lived three months from the time she was diagnosed. She might have survived longer, except that one day when Leah and her mother went to visit, Grandma Hall was sobbing uncontrollably. “He’s dead, Roberta. My boy’s dead. I got a letter from some hospital out in Oregon. They found him unconscious in an alley.”

  That was when Leah knew her father was gone forever. And after that, Grandma Hall went downhill quickly. She died, a shadow of herself, hooked to machines, in pain, alone in the hospital.

  And now, Leah thought, here I am, all alone, in a hospital. Grandma Hall, if she had been here, would have held Leah’s hand and told her not to worry, that she’d protect her. But Grandma Hall was dead. That left Leah’s mother—and tender loving care had never been one of her strong suits.

  Leah wiped her eyes with the edge of her bedsheet and rolled over. Charity was preparing for bed on a roll-away cot that had been brought into the room. “How’s Rebekah?” Leah asked.

  “Her fever’s down.” Charity was wearing a long nightdress of cotton flannel, and her light brown hair hung down her back in a long braid. “A
nd the swelling on her arm has gone down too. I have prayed for these things to happen. And I have asked God to let her go home in time for Christmas. It wouldn’t be the same without all of us together.”

  “Are you trying to tell me you believe your prayers made her well, and not the medicine she’s been taking?”

  “Of course the medicine helped her. But prayer is strong medicine too. Sometimes it is all we have when nothing else works.”

  “You know, I want Rebekah to get well, but I’m going to miss the two of you when you leave.” And Ethan too, she thought.

  “What did your doctor tell you?” Charity asked. Leah explained about the biopsy. “I will say extra prayers for you that this biopsy gives your doctor the answer he is looking for,” said Charity.

  They told one another “Good night,” and Leah switched off the light over her bed. Dim light from the hallway leaked under the bottom of the door, and the wall switches glowed in the dark. As her eyes adjusted, Leah could see Charity kneeling beside her bed, her hands folded and her head bowed. The simplicity of the pose brought a lump to Leah’s throat. She wondered if there really was a God after all. Then she thought of her beloved Grandma Hall, dying in the hospital. Leah was touched by Charity’s taking the time to pray on her behalf. But nothing had helped her grandma when she was sick: not prayers; not doctors; and not all the love Leah held in her heart for her. What could possibly help Leah?

  Leah was awakened by a night nurse for vitals, but long after the nurse had left the room, she remained awake. She kept thinking about Ethan and how attracted she was to him, in spite of his simple and unsophisticated ways. Maybe that was what attracted her. He was singleminded and focused, confident of what he believed, positive of the direction his life would take.

  Leah couldn’t say any of those things about herself. She meandered through school, doing just enough work to get by. She’d vaguely thought about college, but only because it seemed like the thing to do, not because there was anything particular she wanted to study or learn. Yet she didn’t want to be like her mother either, drifting from place to place, marrying and remarrying, always searching for something more or better or just different.