Sarah's Orphans

by Vannetta Chapman

  “To be a Bridge parent.”

  Mateo called to Mia, and she squirmed to be released.

  “No hiding,” Sarah called after her.

  Paul took off his hat and resettled it on his head. The day was sunny and unseasonably warm for the second week of February. Some of the children had even taken off their coats.

  “A Bridge parent. So you want to be a foster home?”

  “What I want is Mateo and Mia to stay with me, at least until their mother returns.”

  “What if she doesn’t return?”

  “We’ll deal with that later.”

  “But you need to have a plan.” Paul glanced around, as if he might see someone he could pull over, someone who could talk sense into this woman.

  “My plan is to do what Gotte has called me to do.”

  “Such as raising your bruders?”

  A clear look of defiance flashed over Sarah’s features. “You think I can’t do both?”

  “I don’t understand why you’d want to do both.”

  Sarah opened her mouth to argue. He didn’t give her the chance.

  “They’re gut kids, Sarah, but surely Gotte doesn’t expect you to take on so much.”

  “Is that so? Because I’m pretty sure the Bible tells us to look after the orphans.”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Nowhere does it say to do so only when the road is easy.”

  “It certainly won’t be,” he muttered, but she wasn’t listening. Nope. He’d hit a nerve in Sarah Yoder’s heart, and she was now as prickly as a porcupine.

  “I may not have the most money or the cleanest house, but at least they won’t be living in a barn.”

  Instead of being offended, Paul had to resist the urge to laugh. As if he would bring children to live in his barn. His home might not be ready to live in for some time, but he was a bachelor and fully expected to remain so.

  As for Sarah, he had to admit that his neighbor made a pretty picture, especially when she was angry.

  But he didn’t say any of that, because she had stomped away, gathering up her brothers, and saying goodbye to Mateo and Mia. She never once turned to look at him.

  CHAPTER 30

  The next ten days passed in a flurry of activity. Sarah made a good dent in the twenty-seven hours of preservice training required by DHS. Twice she hired a driver to take her to Tulsa for all-day classes. When she tried to pay the woman, she’d been informed that Bishop Levi had already taken care of the charge. She completed about half of the classes on the computer at their small library. At first she’d been filled with trepidation as she sat in front of the monitor. Rebecca had accompanied her and patiently explained how to use the device. The librarian even stopped by to offer help.

  “It’s only that it feels wrong.” Sarah worried the strings of her prayer kapp.

  “To use the computer? Phooey. There are reasons for our rules, Sarah, for our Ordnung. It’s not necessarily because something is bad. Sometimes it’s only that we don’t want a thing in our homes, distracting us from our family. But computers can be useful at times.”

  “I suppose,” she mumbled, still unconvinced.

  “Many of our men use them to read the latest in weather prediction or crop rotations. And I’ve known more than one woman who stops by when she is hankering for a new recipe.”

  “There are recipes? On here?”

  “Ya. You can even find Amish recipes.”

  That made her laugh, and suddenly she wasn’t intimidated anymore.

  Rebecca helped her to navigate to the DHS website and log on to the Resource page with the password Tommy Cronin had given her. She’d seen the social worker twice now, and though he seemed impossibly young and…well, Englisch…she did believe he had the children’s welfare at heart.

  The second time she’d gone to the library, she’d done so alone. The librarian smiled, assured her one of the computers was open, and offered to help if she had any trouble.

  “Danki. I think I’ll be okay.” And miraculously she was.

  The certification process was going smoothly, and Sarah found herself believing that everything might all work out.

  Until the day that they had to go to the police department to be fingerprinted.

  Luke was the only one happy about that. Apparently, it gave him new insight into the video games he wasn’t supposed to be playing with the neighbor boy.

  “This is totally radical,” he claimed, staring at the Wanted posters lining the walls.

  “There’s no time for that.” Sarah nudged him away from the harsh-looking photographs of unkempt men and women. “The officer is waiting.”

  Andy was restless, claiming he needed to be in the fields working.

  Henry was covered in grease, which she hadn’t noticed until they were already on their way.

  And Isaac had thought they were going to see Mateo.

  “Don’t you see him at school every day?” Sarah had been quite pleased to learn that Mateo had started school at their small, one-room schoolhouse. She agreed that the boy needed to spend time with other children his age, and he also needed to be in school. She only hoped that it wasn’t too hard for him.

  “Ya, of course I do, but we have to work at school. I thought we were going to the bishop’s house.”

  “I plainly said that we were going to help Mateo and Mia by getting fingerprinted.”

  “I guess I stopped listening at the word Mateo,” he admitted.

  They were a grumbly lot standing before the police station counter as they waited to be escorted to the back. The woman standing in front of them wore a uniform and sported a gun on her hip. The entire thing made Sarah nervous. Officer Holland was pleasant enough, though, and a few minutes after they arrived they were led to a back room where the fingerprinting was done.

  “Each person has a unique print,” Luke told her. “It’s so they can catch us if we do anything wrong.”

  “I don’t think that’s why we’re here today,” Andy said.

  Sarah wasn’t exactly clear on how Andy felt about her desire to become a Bridge parent. He was so busy outside around the farm, and out occasionally with friends (which she thought meant a girl), that they rarely had time to talk.

  Officer Holland, who was older with white hair, explained the process to them.

  It turned out he only needed Sarah and Andy’s prints. “To check against our database.”

  “What will that tell you?” Luke had been gravely disappointed that his fingerprints weren’t needed until the officer showed him a Junior Officer pamphlet and printed his right index finger.

  Isaac and Henry both passed on being printed, but seemed interested enough in what the officer was saying.

  “Every time you touch something, you leave a fingerprint.”

  “Believe me, I see those all over the house,” Sarah muttered.

  The officer laughed, putting them all at ease. “Indeed, we do transfer dirt and residue to surfaces, but you also leave a unique fingerprint.”

  “And you keep a record of them all in that computer?” Henry asked.

  “Actually, we upload them to a federal database—the IAFIS. That stands for Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.”

  “Sounds awesome.” Luke was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet.

  “There are seventy million subjects in the criminal master file, plus another thirty-one million civil prints.”

  “What’s the purpose of the civil prints?” Andy frowned at his right hand, each finger now smudged with ink.

  “Employment background checks as well as firearm purchases. Some employers, such as school districts or the government, require employees to be fingerprinted to ensure they are hiring people of good character. Law enforcement agencies can request a search, and, of course, civil searches can be performed as well for a small fee, which DHS covers.” As he described the process, he’d printed Andy’s other five fingers and now began on Sarah’s.

  She
felt oddly invigorated as he pressed each of her fingers into ink and rolled them on the card where he’d printed her name. To look at those swirls and think that there wasn’t another like it in the whole world…well, that was a humbling thing. She had heard often enough in church that they were “fearfully and wonderfully made,” but those little swirls put a specific image in her mind.

  The officer handed her and Andy each a disinfectant wipe to clean off their fingers.

  She rubbed vigorously, but some of the ink remained.

  “No worries. It’ll wear off over the next few days.”

  Andy thanked him, eager to get back to the farm. Her brothers followed him out of the building, but Sarah hung back.

  “How long does the process usually take?”

  “In the old days it would take several weeks, but things are faster now. Three to seven days at the most.”

  She nodded her thanks and was almost out the door when the officer called her name.

  She turned toward him, expecting that she would need to sign another form.

  But instead he simply said, “What you’re doing, Miss Yoder, is a good thing. Best of luck to you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Her words seemed inadequate. The man’s unexpected kindness had eased her anxiety. But her gratitude was all she had, so she again said, “Thank you,” and hurried out the door.

  CHAPTER 31

  Mateo had been going to the small Amish school for a week now. He still hated to leave Mia each morning, but he loved the school. He loved the subjects they studied, even though he had to work in the younger books. Brian had tried to reassure him. “It’s okay, Mateo. You’ll catch up in no time.”

  He loved that everyone called the teacher Brian, and Brian sometimes called them scholars. Mateo had never been called a scholar before. He’d often been put in remedial classes, and though the teachers thought he couldn’t understand the conversations they had about him, he could. He understood English quite well when he was listening. It was only when he was talking that he sometimes forgot the word he needed.

  Brian called that his expressive vocabulary. “You’ll learn to express yourself in time. Your receptive vocabulary is good, and one inevitably builds on the other.”

  Mateo wasn’t sure about that, but he trusted Brian, even though he’d only been in his class a short while.

  Amish school was different in a lot of ways. He’d learned that’s what the people were who had rescued him—Amish. They dressed differently, didn’t own cars, and their school was a completely new experience for him. For one thing, all of the grades were together in the same room. Mateo was a little intimidated by the older kids, though they seemed nice enough. But the math they did? He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to do that.

  The amazing thing was that sometimes he could help the younger kids.

  Brian had asked him just that morning, “Would you sit next to Simon and look over his addition? Check his answers and explain to him what he did wrong if something isn’t right.”

  The first graders’ math included very simple problems. Two-digit numbers. He’d learned to do those long ago. So he nodded that he would do as Brian asked. Simon had all the answers right except two, and he listened closely when Mateo explained what he had done wrong on those.

  It was a very odd experience. Mateo had never helped someone learn before.

  Mary Beth fixed him a lunch every morning, which he took to school. He no longer had to show a card to get his free lunch. As he carried that little pail with a sandwich and piece of fruit, Mateo felt more normal than he’d ever felt in his entire life.

  The very best part about school was that he was once again able to see Isaac. He was surprised the first day when Brian had told him to sit with other students his age, and he couldn’t believe his luck when he was assigned the desk next to Isaac.

  They were in the same class, though Isaac was ahead of him in every subject. It didn’t seem to matter. No one was worried that Mateo sometimes took a paper home to finish. There weren’t any embarrassing tests to take where he had to bubble the answers on narrow sheets. He’d done that the year before in a school in Texas. He must not have done very well, because the teacher had frowned when he turned his sheet in.

  “Ball game is starting,” Isaac said. A slow grin started spreading across Isaac’s face, and Mateo thought he knew what that meant.

  “Want to play? You hit the ball pretty good yesterday.”

  “We could.” Isaac glanced left and then right. “Or we could look for bugs. My frogs need to eat, and it’s still too cold to let them outside.”

  “How long have you had them?”

  “Since last fall.”

  “And they’ve been in that box all that time?”

  “Nein. When Sarah isn’t looking, I put them in the tub and let them hop around.”

  That sounded smart to Mateo, though he wasn’t sure Sarah would agree.

  “Okay. Let’s look for bugs.”

  It was cold outside, but the sun was shining. Mateo still couldn’t believe that they were given a full hour for lunch, and they always went outside. Well, probably they didn’t when it was raining or snowing, but otherwise they were outside playing ball, or taking turns on the playground equipment, or looking for bugs.

  They must not have heard the bell calling them back to class.

  Luke came looking for them.

  “Don’t know what you two are doing, but class is back in session.”

  Mateo had been in trouble in school before, when he’d gotten lost in the building and been late for class. He didn’t want to be in trouble again.

  They followed Luke back to the classroom and slipped into their seats.

  Brian was reading to everyone from a book called Treasure Island. Mateo liked the book even though he’d missed the first part while he was still living in the old trailer. Today Brian was reading about a cook named Long John Silver.

  Maybe Brian didn’t know they were late.

  If he did know, maybe he would forget.

  He didn’t forget.

  After the reading and when they’d started their writing work, Brian stopped by and said in a low voice, “You two stay after class and see me.”

  Mateo’s eyes must have betrayed his fear, because Brian touched his shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, Mateo. I just want to talk to you.”

  He did worry, though.

  All through his writing exercise. As they were doing map work. And finally through cleanup time.

  When everyone filed out, he and Isaac stayed in their seats.

  As Luke left, he had said, “You know your way home, so I’m not going to wait for you.” Then he’d added, “Good luck,” and grinned as if he found the entire thing very funny.

  Before Mateo could process how much trouble he might be in, Brian pulled around a desk to face them and sat in it. He was a big man with red hair and a bushy red beard. He looked funny sitting in that desk. Somehow it helped Mateo relax a little.

  “So what happened, guys? Why did I have to send someone to find you after lunch?”

  “We were looking for frog food,” Mateo explained.

  “And we thought we saw something hop under the woodpile—”

  “So we were trying to get it.”

  “But then we knocked a lot of the wood down.”

  “So we restacked it.”

  “And were waiting to see the bugs again.”

  The boys fell silent and waited for Brian’s reaction.

  To Mateo’s surprise, he grinned at them.

  “You’re keeping a frog?”

  “Three of them. In a box under my bed.” Isaac squirreled his nose. “Might be better if Sarah doesn’t know about it.”

  “You think she doesn’t know?”

  “She’s a little afraid of frogs. I’d have heard about it if she did.”

  “It’s a nice box,” Mateo added. “He has rocks and water and grass and stuff in there.”

  “So you
’ve built a terrarium.”

  Both boys shrugged.

  “What kind of frogs?”

  They shrugged again.

  Finally, Isaac said, “Just frogs.”

  Brian tapped on the desk a few times before standing and walking to the bookshelf. He pulled out a book and said, “I can’t send this home with both of you, so I want you to read it a few minutes during lunch each day.”

  On the cover of the book was a picture of a frog peeking out from tall, green grass.

  Mateo could read the title Frogs! easily enough.

  When Brian handed it to them, he traced the top words with his finger, slowly sounding them out, “Na-tion-al…”

  “Geographic!” Isaac high-fived his teacher. “These books are cool.”

  “They are. When you finish, we’ll talk about what you’ve read.”

  “We have to read it during lunch?” Isaac asked.

  “You have to do it during part of lunch. Come inside when I do, about ten minutes before everyone else, which will also ensure you’re not late again.”

  Isaac acted as if this was a terrible punishment, but Mateo thought it was pretty fair. And it would keep them out of future trouble.

  They were almost at the door when Brian called out to them.

  “And Isaac? Tell Sarah about the frogs.”

  “Okay.”

  Mateo almost laughed. Isaac sounded as if his frog home was doomed.

  “She’ll comprende…I mean, understand,” Mateo said. “Sarah’s cool.”

  “You don’t know how much she hates frogs.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Sarah suspected that Bishop Levi had pulled some strings.

  Her application to be a Bridge parent was proceeding at lightning speed. She had been able to finish her twenty-seven hours of training in record time. The background checks on her and Andy had been sent and were due back any day, and everyone had passed their physical. The bishop had stopped by earlier that afternoon to tell Sarah that her in-home study would happen within the next forty-eight hours.

  “They don’t give you the exact time so that it’s a surprise, but they give you a window.” He’d popped his gum and assured her she had nothing to worry about.