Finding Mercy

by Karen Harper

  Holding her sides, Ella thudded up the stairs, bouncing off the walls, hitting her hip against the banister. She ran into the bathroom. Thank God, the morning light came in. She closed the bathroom door, then, leaning against the corner of the tub, she curled up sideways on the hard tiled floor, gasping for air. She couldn’t breathe! She couldn’t think. She couldn’t fight the drowning currents of dark, deadly fear.

  * * *

  As Abel giddyapped the big work team away—the Budweiser horses had nothing on those big babies, Alex thought—he actually wished he was going out to work in the fields with him. It was a great day, and, despite the allure Ella had for him, he didn’t want to spend more time weeding lavender, or even working in the barn at tasks he’d volunteered to do.

  But along the road and out in the open fields, sitting up on the wagon seat or plowing, he’d be an easy target. Abel could be injured too. At least he’d be busy tomorrow at Seth Lantz’s day wedding. He hadn’t even met the man yet, but he’d heard plenty about him from his family, and Ella had filled him in on the bride—the bishop’s daughter, Hannah Esh, one of her two best friends. The other one, Sarah Kauffman, she’d said, had been banned from her people when she “went to the world and married a modern,” and she missed her a lot. At the wedding, Alex would finally face the entire Amish congregation, but he was yearning for men’s work today.

  He knew next to nothing about farming, but it seemed so honest, so clean to him, despite the sweaty, soiled clothes and the dirt under their fingernails the Lantz men had when they returned. Wouldn’t they flip out if he told them he used to get an occasional manicure? That seemed really stupid to him now. So much of what he used to value seemed frivolous here in this solid, slow-paced place. New York and SoHo seemed far away. How had he ever put up with working all day in an enclosed office suite, even a luxurious one with lofty windows? Compared to these soft, rolling hills, he was sure the tall buildings of home would suffocate him now.

  He glanced over at what he’d come to think of as the lavender shop, since Ella wasn’t living there now. Was it his presence that had triggered the attack on her? Did someone who liked to harass the Amish think she was easy game? Or had some idiot taken a perverse liking to her? He should talk: though he’d not been here a week yet, he was really attracted to Ella, even when he knew it was wrong of him to so much as touch her.

  Despite that, he walked over to the lavender house and knocked on the back door. It was studded with four nails, some with tatters of black cloth and straw—or was it hay?—clinging to them. Now why had she done that to her door? “Ella! You need any help carrying more stuff in from the shed?”

  No answer. He looked in the back window. The narrow room just inside was a small sunporch or mudroom, but he could see beyond to the kitchen. No Ella, though he was certain she’d been heading this way.

  He turned back and scanned the lavender field, his gaze racing up to its crest where pale purple herbs stopped partway up the hill. If he hadn’t been tracked to Atlanta and shot at there, he’d hike all the way up right now to look around, but he didn’t need his ankle acting up again either.

  He opened the back door and shouted in, “Ella?”

  Why was it unlocked if she wasn’t here? He went in and nearly stumbled over a big, stuffed doll. No—a scarecrow, disfigured and ugly, attached to a lavender X with a black cloth for a background. A woman’s Amish cape? The one Ella had lost?

  “Ella, you in here?” he shouted, running into the living room, then checking the two small first-floor bedrooms. She had said Seth and his little girl had lived entirely on the first floor. “Ella!”

  He pounded up the stairs, saw the bathroom door was closed, but she surely would have answered if she was in there. He peeked in the bare room she had obviously meant to make her bedroom. A chest of drawers sat there and a treadle sewing machine on a wooden table. Of course, her bed was still over at the farmhouse.

  The second small bedroom was empty but for cartons and boxes, jars and bolts of cloth, all smelling of lavender—of her. His heart beat so hard it nearly shook him. He’d need to look in the closets and basement. He opened his mouth to call her name again. But then he heard it, a whining, a moaning. It almost sounded like a cat or kitten closed in somewhere.

  Yeah, she had to be in the bathroom. Had she suddenly taken sick? Had someone hurt her? He rushed to the door and put his ear against it. Sobbing? Wheezing?

  “Ella, it’s me. I’m coming in.”

  “Noooo.”

  “Are you sick?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’m going to get your mother,” he said before he remembered she’d left for the bishop’s house.

  He turned the doorknob, slowly, carefully. The door was not locked. He opened it a crack. “Ella, tell me what’s wrong, or I’m coming in.”

  He prayed—actually prayed—that his kissing and caressing last night had not upset her this much. She’d seemed normal at breakfast. An Amish woman—was he nuts? And in the volatile position he was in? He was betraying his hosts, playing with fire. He should leave her alone, be kind and polite but not touch her again.

  He strained to identify the strange sound she was making. Panting, like a dog. He opened the door farther, wishing the room had a mirror so he could look at her without going in. A foot sprawled on the floor, her foot. Had she fallen and hit her head?

  He stuck his head in and gasped at the sight. Her hair loose like a golden curtain, Ella was sprawled with her head buried in her arms by the claw-foot tub as if some dreadful, white-bellied animal stood over her. She lifted her head then, her eyes huge on him, her frantic face white and wet with tears.

  He rushed in, bent over her, unsure whether to touch her, hold her or run for help.

  “Ella, tell me. What is it?” he demanded, his voice breaking.

  “It’s all around me, dark and cold,” she cried, reaching out to grasp his wrist in a fierce grip. “I can’t breathe. I’m going to drown.”

  10

  ELLA WAS NOT only surprised but stunned. Never, in all these years had she let someone see her like this. But this man had barged into this room and into her life. His mere presence as he sat on the tile floor beside her and lifted her into his lap began to pull her back from despair.

  “Ella, your skin’s damp with sweat but cold as ice.” He cradled her, rocked her. “What happened? Are you sick?”

  “It—it happens sometimes. I don’t let people see, don’t let my family know—my weakness.”

  “Set off by that scarecrow downstairs? It had your ruined cape on it too. Was it nailed on the back door?”

  She barely nodded. Like a child, she clung to Andrew. At least she wouldn’t drown now. The black waters were receding, not pressing into her chest or stabbing into her nose and throat. How had her prayer kapp come loose, her hair free over her shoulders?

  “I knew someone once who had panic attacks,” Alex whispered, his lips in her damp hair.

  “What’s that?” she whispered. “Panic attacks?”

  “You have the signs of one. You shouldn’t have kept it to yourself. You can get counseling and help—”

  “Mental help?” she asked, surprised at her own feeble voice when she felt life flowing back into her limbs. “Andrew, I’m Amish. I tried to pray it away but can’t. It’s my sins still in me from the night I nearly drowned.”

  “Drowned? When? Where?”

  “In the pond, sneaking out at night with Sarah and Hannah years ago. They saved me. I made them promise not to tell. I was disobedient—I lied. And I’ve been defiant and dishonoring my parents ever since by not telling them.”

  “You never shared it with anyone until now?”

  She shook her head, then rested it on his broad shoulder. “Of course, Hannah and Sarah know I nearly drowned, but not about my—my attacks. I can’t control them, thought I’d been better lately. I didn’t even get sucked into the blackness when that van trapped me. But—that thing nailed on the door—from our
barn, with my cloak that got dragged…dragged to death.”

  “Stop that talk! We’ll tell the bishop and the sheriff. At least we know now it’s the same idiot who tormented you before. If someone was on the hill to cut your lavender and in the barn to take the scarecrow, maybe he took the telescope too. I should leave the Home Valley, go hide out somewhere else, but maybe this is not tied to me. Besides, you might need extra protection.”

  “I’m all right now,” she said, and reluctantly pulled away from his embrace and scooted off his lap. “It always passes, but at the time, I’m so frantic I just can’t fight it, and it seems like forever.”

  She gathered her loose hair into a horse tail, twisted it and found some scattered hairpins on the floor to fasten it into a tight bun. His eyes were huge as he watched her. Somehow, her kapp had gotten in the tub, and she retrieved it. Her arms ached from swimming so hard, trying to keep her head up in the surging water....

  No! she scolded herself. She was not in real water. It was only that black nightmare. Now she had a lifeguard, and she couldn’t bear to let him go.

  “I promise you,” she told him, “I’ll tell the bishop and the sheriff, but not until after the wedding. I don’t want to rile things up with law enforcement again or upset Bishop Esh when he’s father of the bride. I don’t want to ruin tomorrow for Seth and Hannah. And I’m still going to ask the bishop and Sheriff Freeman—and you—not to tell my parents. Please don’t tell Grossmamm Ruth. I’ll tell them when I can, when I’m ready.”

  “All right,” he said, standing and lifted her to her feet. “But you’ve got to get over the idea you’re being punished for some longtime sin. And I hope you don’t think what we shared last night was wrong. As for panic attacks, they just happen to some people—even to saints, I bet.”

  She shook out her skirts and smoothed her apron. “There are no saints anymore, only people, some of them evil, and that’s the problem.” Finally, her voice sounded more like her own. She was thinking now, not just panicking. At least there was a name for the blackness she’d fought for so long. Not bipolar, not mental illness, and others had it too. A panic attack. That sounded like someone or something outside herself was the enemy, not something within.

  She told him, “We’ll need to keep the scarecrow and lavender cross safe until we take them to the bishop and the sheriff.”

  “I’ll lock it all in the basement here, so we don’t upset your parents and the boys. Ella, does it usually take some sort of shock or crisis to bring on an attack?”

  She nodded as they went out into the hall and downstairs. “Some surprise—something that upsets me deeply,” she tried to explain. With her legs still wobbly, she descended slowly, hanging on to the banister, when she’d rather hang on to him, but she had to be strong. She could not, could not, fall in love with this Auslander, however much she needed and wanted him. Look what that had done to Sarah: gotten her put under the bann, forbidden to be at the wedding, even to sit at the same table with her Amish friends, her own family. What if that happened to her?

  In the kitchen, they stared down at the bizarre scarecrow and tattered, dirty black cape so ruined compared to the sweet-scented lavender cross. “I hope and pray,” Alex muttered, “that someone this sick is only into mental torment and not physical harm.”

  “Ya. We are not going to let him—or her—ruin tomorrow, not on my dear brother and best friend’s wedding day.”

  * * *

  “Andrew, you sit over here with me and the boys,” Eben Lantz told Alex as the Amish stopped milling around and began to take their seats for the church service and wedding ceremony. Alex was amazed how well behaved even the little children were. He was grateful that people had been kind. He almost felt he belonged. Though their German dialect swirled around him, they spoke English to him and obviously tried to make him feel at home. Ella, since she was a kind of bridesmaid called a side sitter, was with the women, but both Abel and Aaron had been introducing him to people in this shifting sea of the Home Valley Amish church members with everyone dressed in their Sabbath best.

  “We’ll take the back row,” Eben explained, “in case you need to get up and move around. The church service will be almost three hours, ya, then the short ceremony itself.”

  Three hours and in German, Alex thought, but it would give him a lot of time for people watching. Man, he wished he’d paid more attention in his high school German I class before he switched to Spanish because he heard it was easier.

  It turned out he could study the women best, because the men sat facing them on the other side of the Esh barn. Amazing a barn could smell this good, all swept and scrubbed. It was a pretty new one, he’d been told, built by a barn raising of the brethren headed up by Seth. He’d really liked Ella’s oldest brother when they’d met today. The bride, Hannah, looked radiant as the betrothed couple left with two elders for some sort of premarital counseling before returning later to take their vows.

  But his eyes sought out Ella. She still looked a little pale after her panic attack yesterday, but he knew the tears shimmering in her beautiful blue eyes were those of joy for her brother and her friend. She looked almost angelic with that pale blond hair, parted and pulled back under her white prayer cap as if it were a halo. It was almost as if she’d stepped off a Christmas card. He thrust away the image of her with her hair wild and loose, covering her shoulders, smelling of lavender. He shifted on the hard bench. That woman really got to him, and it wasn’t just because he’d been without one for so long. His SoHo neighbor had been right: If you aren’t sure which of the two women you’re dating you prefer, you don’t like either of them half enough.

  “Good to have you with us today, Cousin Andrew,” the elderly Amish man on the other side of him said with a nod and a little smile.

  That’s one thing he’d learned this week: the Amish were not austere at all, but had good senses of humor.

  Eben thrust a book called the Ausbund into his hands. “Our hymns,” he said, opening it to the page from which everyone began to sing in harmony, no parts. Oh, ya, he should have known it would be total togetherness. And had he just actually thought the word ya instead of yeah?

  The service gave him a lot of time to think. He had to admit he’d never had a close family, not even a friend who wasn’t a competitor or rival somehow, for better grades, for a starting spot on a team, for a promotion. Way into the service, when he started to doze off and his head bobbed, you might know he saw Grossmamm Ruth giving him a sharp look from across the way, as if he were her own grandson. It made him miss his grandmother, but it made him care more for this strong, old woman too. Ya, ser gut.

  For a guy whose favorite movie was once Wedding Crashers, Alex thought the solemn and sedate wedding of Seth Lantz and Hannah Esh was moving to behold. It was a combination of simplicity and complexity to someone who knew so little about the Amish, but who wanted to know everything.

  * * *

  Ella was surprised to see that Bishop Esh departed a bit from the usual ceremony after the marriage vows had been exchanged. Hannah and Seth had come back in with the elders and stood before them all, hand in hand. Their eyes were only for each other and Ella had to admit, she longed for a love like that. But with whom among her people? Because, unlike Sarah, she could never leave her family or her faith.

  “This new husband and wife have asked me to read a short passage from the Book of Ruth,” Bishop Esh announced. “Hannah is our wedding singer and Seth our vorsinger, song leader, and, of course, no one can sing at his or her own wedding—but they are singing in their hearts. So, from a song our Hannah has gifted us with at many weddings, I read to you and for them,

  ‘Entreat me not to leave you,

  Or to turn back from following after you;

  For wherever you go, I will go;

  And wherever you lodge, I will lodge;

  Your people shall be my people,

  And your God, my God.

  Where you die, I will die,

 
And there will I be buried.

  The Lord do so to me, and more also,

  If anything but death parts you and me.’”

  Ella tore her gaze away and glanced at Andrew. It was her secret that he was really Alex, that he knew all about lights in the night sky made by men to adorn—and to defile—God’s heaven. He was looking straight at her, his eyes surely as intense as the newlyweds’ mutual gaze.

  When they were dismissed and everyone congratulated Seth and Hannah, the congregation skirted the big garden and trooped across the lawn toward the Esh home for the dinner reception. Ella walked with Grossmamm Ruth, who was going at a good pace for her eighty years. Ella supposed she should have been running ahead with Hannah’s friends, especially the other side sitters. How she wished that Sarah could be here. Years ago, she, Hannah and Ella had made more than one vow that they would all be together on their wedding days.

  Abel rushed past, trying to catch up with his girl, Nancy Troyer. That might be the next Lantz wedding, after Barbara and Gabe’s. Then Andrew and Daad came along, walking with some of the church elders.

  “Andrew!” Grossmamm Ruth said, and motioned him over. “I want to tell you something more from the Book of Ruth, my favorite one in the Bible because it is named so good—ha!”

  His face lit. “Are you going to lecture me about staying awake and proper manners for Pennsylvania cousins?” he asked.

  “Now you just listen,” she told him, shaking her finger at him. “Your own grossmamms are not here to keep you on the straight and narrow, so you listen to this one.”