Copyright © 2012 by Nancy Grossman
All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011-5690.
ISBN 978-1-4231-7809-5
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Acknowledgments
To my parents, who read to me
To Kevin and Maggie, who let me read to them
To Shari, who reads with me
And to Kenny, who reads me
The strangers were coming, as they did every Thursday night, to bring a burst of color into our plain home. I circled the dining room, checking each lantern to be sure there was enough fuel inside. June sunlight streamed through the windows, but by the end of dinner we’d need the lanterns to brighten the room and help the guests find their way back to their cars, parked in a crooked row on the lawn behind our buggy.
“How many strangers are coming tonight?” I called to my mother, in the kitchen.
“Visitors, Eliza, not strangers,” my mother said. “We’ll be having eight guests tonight.”
I tried to settle my jittery limbs as I folded a napkin beside each plate. My head was filled with thoughts about what the strangers would look like and how many holes would be in their earlobes and how many colors would streak through their hair. My mother always scolded me that these guests were coming to dine on a simple Amish meal and take a peek at our lives. She didn’t want me to be peeking at theirs. They live in their world and we live in ours, she would say, as though that would satisfy my curiosity.
My mother and I had been busy in the kitchen all afternoon, preparing roasted chicken and mashed potatoes, and the air in the house was thick with cooking smells. I walked around the table setting the silverware neatly on each folded napkin. Then, pitcher in hand, I stepped through the arched doorway that connected the dining room and the kitchen.
“Is everything ready?” my mother asked, plunging the masher in and out of the fluffy white potatoes. “The English will be here in five minutes.”
“The table’s set,” I said, carrying the pitcher to the small pump mounted on the side of the sink. I pushed the handle up and down a few times until the cold water gushed from the spout, then pumped the handle more slowly until the pitcher grew heavy in my hand. Back in the dining room I filled the glasses before my mother and I made two trips to carry the piping-hot food to the sideboard.
I watched my mother as she arranged the serving dishes. She’s never said so, but I had the feeling that she liked these Stranger Nights. While she lit the two candles that stood in the center of the table, I tried to see her the way the visitors would. Her brown hair was twisted into a severe bun that pulled the skin taut around her gleaming silvery eyes. A white bonnet, called a kapp, sat on top of her head, the two strings untied and draped over her shoulders. Her dress was a dark gray, contrasting with the crisp white apron tied around her waist.
Looking down, I smoothed my own apron and fingered my bonnet strings. My dress was blue and slightly rumpled, but otherwise my clothing was identical to my mother’s. Sometimes visitors would ask about our clothes, and my mother would explain how our dresses are sewn in a uniform style—a square neckline, three-quarter sleeves, the skirt settling just below the knees. The dress is fastened with snaps because buttons are considered fancy and are forbidden. Our clothes are plain, and so are we.
A car door slammed, and the murmur of voices reached me from outside. My mother nodded to me in her serious way, and I went to my usual spot beside the table while she greeted the visitors at the front door. They came into our living room as they always did, eyes round, heads down-turned a bit, as though trying not to stare. I saw a woman with short choppy hair scanning the books on the wooden shelf. Another woman brushed her fingertips along the back of the rocking chair, her red dress swaying as she walked. Then Mr. Allen, who owns the inn where the guests were staying, led the group to the dining room table. Mr. Allen isn’t Amish, but he knows our ways. He brought the idea of these dinners to my parents a year ago, and since then he has been a weekly guest at our table, along with the visitors.
The guests filed to the table in a quiet, orderly way, their eyes taking in the cherrywood furniture that my father had made with his own hands. I knew from other dinners that their conversations would start up again during the meal, but for now they were hushed and alert. As I watched them settle into their chairs, their eyes roaming around the dining room and the adjoining kitchen, I knew they weren’t noting what was in our house, but rather what was absent. A computer, electric lights, a telephone.
Five women and three men were gathered around the table. When I looked closer, I realized that two of those women were actually girls about my age. They sat between a man in a navy sweater and a woman with hair as orange as the carrots in the garden. I assumed they were a family. This was the first time there had ever been English teenagers in our house, and a nervous excitement rose in me. One of the girls was wearing black pants that looked more like heavy stockings than trousers, and a black shirt that hung in a billowy way just past her hips. Her hair was the color of strong coffee, and the black lines drawn around her eyes contrasted sharply with her pale skin. The other girl wore tight blue jeans and a V-neck T-shirt with bursts of pink and purple, as though a tin of paint had tipped over onto her clothing. Her dark hair was feathered with uneven streaks of deep red.
I wondered how the girls’ hair hung so straight and silky, as though it had been draped across an ironing board and pressed flat. Maybe they had used one of those gun-shaped hair dryers I’d seen at the inn. My fingers flitted to the thick brown hair trailing down my back. It was pulled back with an elastic band, but curly wisps had already come loose, and fluttered around my face. I thought fleetingly that maybe a hair dryer could help me.
The girl with the paint-spattered shirt was looking at me. Our eyes met for a moment, and I saw that her eyelids were tinted the color of lavender. The dark-haired girl stared down at her lap while the colorful girl spoke. “Hey, I’m Jess,” she said, as though it was perfectly natural to have a boy’s name. “This is my sister, Caroline.” The other girl didn’t look up.
“I’m Eliza,” I said. Then my mother stepped beside me and cleared her throat. The faces around the table turned to
us, open and expectant. My mother stood serenely, one hand folded over the other, and I watched the “stranger smile” sweep across her face. I’ve come to know this expression that brings her lips outward but not up. It’s a polite smile, but not a friendly one. I glanced back at Jess and let my smile lift up in a way I hoped she would consider friendly. She grinned back, and I felt a tiny thrill.
“Thank you all for coming,” my mother said. “My daughter Eliza and I are happy to have you here. Now, let us all bow our heads in prayer.”
Before my chin dropped down to my chest, I raised my eyes and caught a quick glimpse of the strangers. Their heads were lowered, but a few kept their eyes on my mother as though waiting for the command to be lifted. Jess and Caroline looked at each other, their eyebrows raised. Their mother nudged Caroline, and she lowered her head inch by inch. The dinner prayer raced through my mind, and I felt my lips move silently along with the familiar words my mother spoke. “We thank you, our heavenly Father, for the gifts which we are about to receive. May we be truly grateful for the bounty you have bestowed. Amen.”
The guests began to raise their heads as soon as my mother and
I did. Some glanced at each other, slightly embarrassed. The two girls exchanged a look as if they had just been part of a joke.
I turned to see if my mother had noticed, but she looked the way she always did after devotions: peaceful and refreshed, the lines around her mouth and between her eyebrows lightened. After prayers, my mother actually looks pretty. I’ve noticed this every time, but it’s always a revelation.
“Eliza and I will be serving you,” my mother announced. “After your meal, I’ll be happy to answer your questions.”
At her cue, I picked up the tray of chicken and balanced it on my left arm. “Do you prefer white or dark meat?” I asked one of the women. She wore a simple dress the color of cherries, with no adornments of any kind. Her brown hair swam around her shoulders, and her eyes were pretty in their plainness, with none of the painted-on colors that I’d grown accustomed to seeing on the faces of English women. She looked too boring to be English. “White meat, please,” she said. She was watching me closely as I served her. “Thank you, Eliza,” she said, as though she already knew me. “So, are you fifteen, sixteen?”
“Sixteen,” I said.
She nodded and smiled. Not knowing what else to say, I kept moving.
I reached the orange-haired woman, whose silver bracelets sang like sleigh bells when she pointed to the piece of chicken she wanted. When I got to Jess and Caroline, I gripped the tray carefully. Jess pointed to a breast, and I set it on her plate. Her sister was looking down, a sour expression on her face. “Do you prefer dark or white meat?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “Are you serving anything that doesn’t have flesh?”
“Caroline!” Her mother looked at me with an apology on her face. “I’m sorry. She’s a vegetarian.”
“We’ll also be serving potatoes and some mixed vegetables from our garden,” I said.
Caroline nodded, her arms folded over her chest. I wondered if her parents had forced her to come to our house for dinner, the way my parents require us to go to church and to fellowship meetings. Setting the platter of chicken on the sideboard, I picked up the vegetable bowl. My mother followed me with the basket of bread until all of our guests were served.
While they ate, my mother disappeared into the kitchen to prepare the dessert. I stood by the sideboard, ready to serve second helpings or refill water glasses. Usually I liked this arrangement because it let me quietly watch the English and hear their stories. But that night my hands dangled uselessly at my sides. My dress and apron felt baggy and unbecoming next to Jess’s and Caroline’s sleek outfits.
I’d often thought about what it would be like to meet English teenagers. In my imaginings I would strike up clever conversations with them, and they’d tell me about music and movies and dancing. But now they were here, and I was awkward and tongue-tied.
Occasionally, one of the girls would take a small black object out of her pocket and rest it in the palm of her hand. She would glance down at it, tap it a few times with her thumb, and slide it back into her pocket. I wondered if these were cell phones, but the girls weren’t putting them to their ears or talking into them. At least they had something to stare at besides me.
I picked up the water pitcher and walked around the table, refilling the glasses. When I reached the woman in the cherry-colored dress, she said, “You work at the inn, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I started there last week.”
“I thought I saw you there,” she said. “How do you like your job?”
“I like it fine,” I said, aware that Mr. Allen was sitting nearby. Then the orange-haired woman spoke up, asking Mr. Allen where she could buy a quilt.
“Right here,” Mr. Allen said. “Mrs. Miller makes quilts to order. I can bring you back tomorrow if you’d like.”
I stepped over to the girls and refilled their glasses. “Would you like more of anything?” I asked. Caroline gripped her phone in both hands, her thumbs moving wildly. “No thanks,” said Jess. “But could you show me where the bathroom is?”
I set the pitcher down and led her through the hallway. When I pointed to the bathroom door, she turned to face me with a smile. “I have to admit,” she said, her voice lowered, “I was worried it might be outside.”
I felt a wave of embarrassment when I realized this girl thought we did our business in an outhouse. But her smile was open and warm, and she seemed ready to admit her mistake. “We do have plumbing,” I said, grinning. “But don’t look for a hair dryer. There’s no place to plug it in.” Jess laughed, and I tingled with an odd sense of pride.
Later, as the guests exclaimed over my mother’s apple pie, and I poured rich black coffee into everyone’s mug, I waited for my favorite part of Stranger Night, when my mother would ask, “Does anyone have questions that I might answer?” It was amazing to me that these fancy people wanted to learn about our world. “How do you dry clothes in the winter when you can’t hang the wash outside?” asked a man in a red tie.
“We run the clothesline through the living room, and on wash day we all have to dodge around it when we come in and out of the house,” said my mother.
“Is Eliza in school?” asked the woman with the short haircut.
“Our children go to school through eighth grade,” said my mother. “So Eliza’s been out of school for two years now.” I looked down, not wanting the strangers to see that I was still a little sad to have left school behind.
When a man asked about television, my mother answered the way she always did. “I have been in English homes when the television is on, so I have seen what it is.” The teenage girls looked at each other. “No MTV?” asked Caroline. I didn’t know what she meant, so I just shook my head.
The man said, “You just mentioned the ‘English.’” He paused for a moment with a small laugh. “Is that us?”
My mother gave him a polite smile. “Yes,” she said. “It’s a term that we Amish use to refer to anyone who is not Amish.”
As always, my mother’s answers were quick and blunt. Never give too much information, she has told me. We have invited them into our home, but not into our lives.
The orange-haired woman mentioned that she has heard about “courting carriages” and she wanted to know if any children in the family were courting.
“Our son James has a courting carriage,” my mother said. “But, like some of you with your teenagers, I’m not always sure where he goes in it.”
There were soft chuckles around the table. “Are there any other questions?” my mother asked.
“Yeah,” said Caroline. “What do you do for fun?”
My mother turned to me. “Would you like to answer that, Eliza?”
Everyone looked at me, waiting. “Well, we get together with our friends,” I said. “There are parties. We go into town.” My words felt weak. The sisters
exchanged one of their looks.
Now I wished that I could be the one asking the questions. I would ask these girls what they did for fun, and how they painted their eyes, and what it felt like to pick out different clothes to wear every day. I would ask them what it was like not to be plain.
I took a breath as though to speak again. My mother glanced at me, and I held my tongue.
The woman in the cherry-colored dress cleared her throat, and when I heard her words, I froze. “Has Eliza reached the age for rumspringa?”
My eyes opened wide. Rumspringa is a time when Amish teenagers are allowed to run wild. To step out of the plain world. It was not a subject that ever came up at Stranger Night, and for once I didn’t know how my mother would answer.
My sister Margaret passed rumspringa by going right to baptism and marriage. Margaret is what the elders call “Good Amish.” My brother James had left home to apprentice at a woodworking shop and had written us letters about computers and video games. After he returned to work with our father, I would sometimes catch him staring out the window, and I wondered if he was thinking about that other world, where buttons aren’t sinful and where cars speed by, leaving the buggies behind.
Now it was my turn. Since my sixteenth birthday, three weeks ago, I’d been waiting to see what rumspringa would bring me. My head was filled with thoughts of leaving my home in Iowa and seeing how they live in the fancy world. But so far my parents had told me nothing about their plans.
Taking in a breath, I watched my mother’s hands clasp together a bit too tightly in front of her apron, and I waited to hear what she would tell these visitors. When she spoke, her voice was smooth and polite, the way it always is when she talks to the English.
“I suppose there are some of you here who don’t know what rumspringa means.”
The strangers shook their heads, and my mother continued.
“The Amish lifestyle is one that we choose, not one that we are born into. In order to choose properly, we Amish feel that our children must be given the chance to see what the outside world is like. So, our teenagers have a period of independence before they take up our ways.”
A World Away Page 1
