Portrait of a Sister

by Laura Bradford

  Katie could feel Hannah’s disappointment but, at the same time, she was glad for Mary’s response. It would give her time alone with Hannah. “Now run along. It won’t be long before Mamm’s body is here and the buggies start arriving.”

  Mary’s and Sadie’s chins both dipped downward at Katie’s words, but they remained stoic as they headed down the hallway. When the door banged closed in their wake, Hannah turned back to Katie and released an audible sigh. “It’s like I’m a stranger to them,” Hannah mumbled as she wiped a fresh set of tears from her cheeks. “Like they’ve forgotten I’m their sister.”

  Katie returned her focus to the sink and the dish that still needed to be rinsed and dried. “I don’t think they’ve forgotten. It’s just that you’re so different now.”

  “I’m different?” Hannah echoed. “Look at you.”

  “Me? I have not changed. I am still the same Katie I have always been.” She gestured at her aproned dress. “I wear the same dresses, I do the same chores.”

  “Plus now you will do Mamm’s, too.”

  Katie scrubbed at an invisible spot on the dish, the pity in her sister’s voice heavy. “Only for a while.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yah,” she said over the answering squeak of the dish. “It won’t be long before Annie is no longer a baby. When she isn’t, Mary will take over.”

  “Then what?” Hannah prodded.

  “Then I will be free to live my own life.”

  “Live your own life?” Hannah reached around Katie’s shoulder and plucked the dish from her hand. “Would you please stop that? You’re going to scrub a hole right through that plate if you don’t.”

  She stared at her soapy hands and then shoved them into the water. “Yes. Live my own life. With Abram.”

  “Abram Zook?”

  “Yah.” Katie waited for Hannah to finish with the dishcloth and then stole it back to dry her hands. “We are to be married. When things have settled down for Dat and the children.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this in your last letter?” Hannah asked, her voice a veritable potpourri of accusation and hurt.

  “I was ... busy. Worried about Mamm.”

  Hannah grew silent, her eyes searching Katie with an unsettling intensity. Katie, in turn, focused on the part of the balled-up dishcloth she could see between her whitened knuckles.

  “Are you really sure this is what you want?” Hannah hooked her index finger beneath Katie’s chin and guided it back to start. “To marry Abram Zook?”

  Inhaling deeply, Katie met and held her sister’s gaze, the taste of the lie bitter on her tongue. “Yah.”

  * * *

  Katie took one last look at the line of buggies stretched down the left side of the driveway and then slowly lowered the dark green shade to the windowsill. She’d been so busy greeting mourners all afternoon and evening, she’d been able to ignore away the heaviness pressing down on her chest. But now, in her room, with Dat’s orders for rest, it was crushing.

  “Dat doesn’t know what to make of me anymore, does he?”

  “Dat has much to think about today.” Katie filled her lungs with the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and then dropped onto her neatly made bed as it whooshed its way past her lips. “It has been a difficult day.”

  Wandering over to the waist-high dresser in the corner of the room, Hannah ran her fingertips around the edge of the porcelain bowl and pitcher it housed. “Do you think she thought about me?”

  Katie looked up from the boot she’d just unlaced and studied her sister. All her life she’d seen English girls—their clothes, their shoes, their hair so different than her own. It was the way it was for them just as aproned dresses, white kapps, and lace-up boots were for her and her sisters. Did she wonder about their life on occasion? Sure. But it was as fleeting as the glimpse itself.

  Hannah’s choice had changed that.

  “Did who think of you?” she finally asked, forcing her gaze off Hannah’s strappy heeled shoes and back to her own scuffed boots.

  “Mamm.”

  Katie snapped her head up at her sister’s sudden and strangled sob. “Mamm?”

  Tipping her own head back, Hannah stared up at the ceiling until her breath was steady enough to speak. “Before she passed . . .”

  “Yah.” Katie slid her feet out of her boots, tucked them under the bed, and then crossed to Hannah’s side in her stocking-clad feet. “Mamm spoke of you.”

  A flash of hope skittered across Hannah’s brown eyes before it disappeared behind thick lashes. “Don’t tell me that if it’s not true.”

  Katie drew back. “I do not lie. You know that.”

  “But you protect.” Slowly, Hannah opened her eyes to meet Katie’s. “You always have. Look at the way you care for Mary and Sadie and baby Annie. It is as if they are your own.”

  “That is what family does.”

  “Yes, but you have to protect yourself, too, Katie.”

  “Dat will look after us like he always has,” she protested. “And when the time is right, Abram will look after me and the children that we will have.”

  It was Hannah’s turn to give the once over, only this time, as Katie watched her sister’s gaze travel from her kapp to her stockings, she was aware of a wariness building inside her chest. All their life, they’d been able to communicate with one another without words; for the first time, she wished it wasn’t so.

  Words she could shush.

  The look in Hannah’s eyes, she couldn’t.

  “I’m talking about your heart and the things that matter to you,” Hannah finally said. “Keeping them hidden under your mattress for fear of being shunned isn’t right.”

  She stumbled backward into the table, rattling the wash basin in the process. “You-you looked under my mattress?” Katie stammered.

  “You say that like this is something I’ve just discovered.” Hannah coaxed Katie’s hands from her cheeks and gently guided her back toward the bed. “Katie, I’ve known about your drawings for a long time. I just kept waiting for you to tell me about them on your own. Only you never did.”

  She let Hannah pat her onto the bed but the roar in her ears made it difficult to be sure of much else.

  “You were always good at painting scenes on milk cans for Dat’s stand in the fall, but the pencil sketches in your sketch pad are . . . wow. You’re really good, Katie. I mean, really, really good. You should do something with that.”

  “Do something?” she repeated.

  “Yes. With your talent. It’s too good to hide away under a mattress.”

  She tried to clear the shame from her throat, but it refused to budge. “It is wrong, what I draw. You know that.”

  “Wrong?” The click of Hannah’s heels looped around the bottom edge of the bed only to stop in line with Katie’s pillow. With a knowing look in Katie’s direction, she lifted the corner of the mattress, slid her hand into the space underneath it, and pulled out the sketch pad Katie had secretly purchased at an art store while on Rumspringa. Flipping the cover back, she turned the pad into Katie’s sightline and gave it a gentle shake. “How is drawing a picture of Mary with her favorite barn cats wrong?”

  Katie pitched her upper body to the side and tried to grab the pad from Hannah’s hand, but Hannah pulled it just out of her reach. “Hannah, please. You know why it is wrong. ‘Thou shalt not make unto thyself a graven image.’ ”

  “It is a memory, Katie,” Hannah protested. “There is nothing wrong with a memory.”

  “A memory is for here”—she tapped her temple with the tip of her index finger and then moved it to her chest—“and here.”

  Hannah lowered herself to the bed, pulling the pad onto her lap as she did. “Trust me, Katie, when you’re missing someone as much as I miss you, a picture is a godsend.”

  “You miss me?” Katie echoed.

  “Every day.”

  “You could come back! It is not too late to be baptized!”

  “I miss
you, Katie. I miss the family. But this isn’t the right world for me. Not anymore anyway.” Page by page, Hannah made her way through Katie’s drawings, some stirring a smile, others a laugh. “I don’t know how you did it, but you captured Luke Hochstetler perfectly . . . right down to the frog he was always trying to sneak into the schoolhouse.”

  “I see it in my head.” Katie watched Hannah flip to the next page, the emotion in her sister’s ensuing gasp necessitating a fresh round of blinking. “Is-is something wrong?”

  “This one of Mamm in her bed, is-is this how she looked at the end?” Hannah whispered.

  “Yah.”

  “Her cheeks are drawn, and-and her eyes are dull, but . . .” Hannah’s words fell away, her gaze riveted on the sketch pad and the picture of their mother. When she finally spoke again, it was with a mixture of surprise and awe. “She looks almost happy.”

  “She was speaking of you.”

  Hannah’s eyes flew to Katie’s. “Me?”

  “Yah.”

  Slowly, Hannah lowered the pad to her lap, the tremble of her hands a perfect match to the one infusing its way through her voice. “What did she say?”

  “She said she loved you.” Just like that, the tears Katie had managed to keep at bay made their way down Hannah’s cheeks, streaking it in—

  “Hannah? What is wrong with your face?”

  “My face?” Hannah repeated.

  “Yah. It is turning black with your tears.”

  Tears turned to laughter as Hannah wiped at her cheeks. “It’s just my mascara, Katie. Next time, I will remember to buy the waterproof kind.” Sliding the sketch pad off her lap, Hannah stood, made her way over to the wall hooks on the opposite side of the room, and retrieved the small purse she’d arrived with earlier that morning. With a flick of her wrist, she opened the bag, fished out a small round mirror, and promptly wiped even harder at her cheeks. “I am glad Travis cannot see me right now. He might not think I’m pretty anymore.”

  “Who is Travis?”

  Hannah took one last look at herself in the mirror and then placed it back inside her purse. “Travis is my boyfriend. He’s smart . . . and funny . . . and really, really hot.”

  “Soon it will be cold again, yah?”

  “I suppose it—” Hannah’s words morphed into a laugh that echoed off the walls of the room they’d once shared. “Oh you silly, silly girl, I don’t mean that kind of hot. I mean the good-looking kind.”

  Propelled forward by an all too familiar warmth making its way across her cheeks, Katie narrowed her eyes on her sister. “Don’t you do that, Hannah Beiler!”

  Hannah jerked her head back as if she’d been slapped. “Do what?”

  “Talk to me the way the English kids always did when they drove by in their cars!” Katie reached up and under the edge of her kapp, giving it a tug as she did. “You wore one of these, too, Hannah!”

  Understanding traded places with shock before Hannah’s hand returned to her purse for the thin brown object she promptly carried over to the bed. “I’m sorry, Katie. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Here. This is Travis. So you can see.”

  Katie took the small book from Hannah’s outstretched hand and gazed down at the photograph housed beneath a clear plastic covering. Seconds turned to minutes as she studied everything about the man now looking back at her—the green eyes that sparkled with a laugh she could see but not hear, the dark blond hair that swooped to the side, the clean-shaven skin along his jawline, the muscled arms extending out from his short-sleeved shirt . . .

  “That is what I mean by really hot,” Hannah said, dropping onto the bed beside Katie.

  Katie looked from the picture to Hannah and back again, her mind running in a million different directions. “Is-is he nice?” she finally asked.

  “He is. And he is good to me.” Hannah flipped the picture over to reveal a second photograph, this one of Travis sitting next to Hannah on a picnic blanket covered in rose petals. “He took me to the park that day as a surprise.”

  On some level she knew Hannah was still talking, but what, exactly, was being said, Katie wasn’t sure. Her focus, her thoughts had shifted to the image of the veritable stranger sitting next to Travis—a stranger who just happened to share Katie’s every feature.

  “Katie?”

  A few hours earlier, she’d been convinced Hannah’s differences stopped with the makeup and fancy clothes. But she’d been wrong. They reached into Hannah’s very being and—

  “Katie? Are you okay? You look upset or something.”

  She looked down at her sister’s fingers atop her forearm and did her best to steady her breathing before she spoke. When she was fairly certain her emotions were in check, she temporarily removed her kapp from her head and the pins from her hair. “It has been a long day. Tomorrow will be even longer. We need to do as Dat said and get our rest.”

  “I know.” Hannah retrieved one of the pins from the top of Katie’s bed and turned it over in her hands. “He really is a good man, Katie.”

  “Of course he is. He is Dat.”

  “I was talking about Travis.”

  Katie felt the prick of unshed tears gathering in the corners of her eyes and rushed to blink them away. It was one thing to mourn Mamm. It was another thing to mourn someone who was alive and well and staring back at her, waiting. “Perhaps, one day, I will get to meet your Travis.”

  “He’ll be here tomorrow. For Mamm’s service.”

  “He-he’s coming? Here?” Katie echoed, rising to her feet and making her way around the bed. “To Blue Ball?”

  “He’s coming here to the house, Katie.”

  To the house . . .

  She swallowed hard. “So you told him you were Amish?”

  “Of course.” Hannah reached out, snatched the sketch pad from the top of the bed, and gave it a little shake. “You’re the one hiding who you are, Katie, not me.”

  Chapter 3

  All afternoon she’d watched them together, their respectful yet distinctly English attire standing out in the sea of kapped and hatted mourners finally making their way toward the road and the seemingly endless line of buggies. It had been a difficult day. The kind of day Katie was in no hurry to revisit again.

  Pressure against her upper calf broke through her thoughts, stealing her attention away from Hannah and placing it, instead, on the pint-sized little girl at her feet—a little girl who would soon have no memory of their mamm’s smile. Katie’s heart ached at that truth as she reached down, lifted Annie into her arms, and buried her face against the toddler’s freshly washed hair. “Hello, sweet Annie.”

  The little girl, in turn, popped her thumb in her mouth, sucked fiercely for a minute, and then let it fall to her chest as she looked at Katie. “Mamm.”

  Closing her eyes tightly against the sudden yet intense wave of pain that threatened her ability to function, Katie made herself breathe.

  It is God’s will . . .

  It is God’s will . . .

  More than anything, she wanted to believe those words. But she didn’t. Why would God want to take Mamm from them? From her?

  “M-m-mamm . . .”

  The quiver of uncertainty in Annie’s little voice filtered through the pain and forced Katie to open her eyes. She needed to be strong. For Annie. For Sadie. For Mary. For everyone. She needed to keep her promise to Mamm.

  “Oh, sweet Annie, Mamm is not here with us anymore. She-she is with . . . God now.”

  Annie’s pale blue eyes, so like Mamm’s, widened as if she were about to protest, but a kiss on her soft chubby cheek held it at bay.

  “Let me take Annie. You need to eat.”

  Startled, Katie spun around, her body sagging with relief at the sight of their neighbor, Martha Hochstetler. “Oh, Martha . . . thank you for all that you did today. For the food, for helping me ready the girls, for helping to make sure everything was as it needed to be. I do not know what I would have done without you.”

  “Many hands
make light work, Katie. Though, even with those hands, you still did not eat.” Martha reached out, took Annie from Katie’s arms, and then gestured toward a single plate of food on the top step of the front porch. “I shooed Isaiah King’s youngest boy from that piece of chicken just so you could have it.”

  “I do not need that chicken.” She looked toward the side of the farmhouse and then toward the open barn, but there was no sign of Jakob’s hungry friend.

  “Do not argue, Katie. You must keep up your strength. There is much on your shoulders now.”

  Even if it was polite to argue, she couldn’t. Martha was right. The last thing Dat needed was for Katie to get sick. Still, a second glance at the plate of food failed to stir anything even resembling an appetite.

  “I do not think I can eat right now,” she whispered.

  “Perhaps company will change that.”

  She followed Martha’s eyes toward the side yard and the elderly English woman seated on one of two rocking chairs Martha’s husband had brought over for the day. Dressed all in black, the familiar face met her gaze with a beckoning hand. “Take the plate and sit with her for a while, Katie. Annie and I will see to the last of the cleanup, won’t we, Annie?”

  Annie removed her thumb from her mouth and nodded up at Martha.

  “See?” Martha said, gesturing first toward Annie and then Katie’s waiting plate. “It is all settled.”

  “Martha, I—”

  “Go, child. Miss Lottie loved your mamm, too.”

  The pain was back. And this time, she let herself feel it as she swept her attention back toward Hannah and Travis, and whatever it was out in the field that was making them laugh.

  Laugh?

  Today?

  Squaring her shoulders, Katie crossed to the step, retrieved the plate of food, and made her way over to the pair of rocking chairs and the woman now nodding at her with the faintest hint of a smile.

  “Miss Lottie. I’m sorry I have not had much time to visit with you today.” Katie lowered herself to the empty rocker and set the plate atop her aproned lap. When she was sure it would not fall, she met the woman’s warm hazel eyes with what she hoped was a smile. “I-I’m touched that you came.”