A World Away

by Nancy Grossman

  During a pause in the conversation, Beth leaned forward. “Tell me about Emily,” she said. Her voice had an urgent quality, and I recalled the story of Beth looking up at her friend’s window after she was turned away from the house.

  “Oh, jah, I forgot what good friends you were,” said my mother. “Emmy married Adam, and they have four children. But, you know, I always thought that he wasn’t her first choice for a husband. I had a feeling she was more interested in Joseph.”

  “She was,” said Beth. “It’s funny. Emmy shunned me for choosing my own husband. But in the end maybe she wished that she had done the same.” Her hands trembled around her cup of tea, and she looked at my mother. “What was it like when I left?”

  “Awful,” said my mother, without a hesitation. “We all went over to Mom and Dad’s house that night—Amos and me, Ike and Miriam, the children. We wanted to be together. Then, just as we were about to say grace, Mom looked at your empty chair and started crying. Dad got up from the table, lifted the chair over his head, and marched out of the room with it.”

  “That’s Dad for you,” said Beth. “Did he say anything?”

  I hugged myself, waiting, and glanced at Beth, whose fingers were fiddling with the end of her braid.

  “He said, ‘Everyone knows that we’ve had a terrible loss tonight. We have one less member in our family now.’” My mother’s voice slipped to a whisper. “Then he said, ‘We all need to remember that Elizabeth chose to leave. We didn’t send her away.’”

  “Was that all?” asked Beth. She sounded disappointed.

  “There was one more thing,” my mother added. She sent the words out slowly, as though it was a struggle to let them leave her lips. “He said that no one was to mention your name again. That we were never to speak of you.”

  Beth nodded. “I guess I’m not surprised.”

  My mother put her hand on Beth’s arm. “I’ve had so many regrets since that day, Beth. When you came to say good-bye to me, why didn’t I beg you to stay?”

  “Because you couldn’t,” said Beth. “You were following the rules.”

  “I didn’t always follow the rules,” my mother said. She turned to me then. I nodded and looked down, surprised that she seemed to be asking for my permission to speak.

  “What’s going on?” asked Beth.

  “I need to tell you something,” my mother said. “Eliza knows some of it. But I was wrong to keep it a secret for so long. It may explain some things about me.”

  “What is it, Becky?”

  “Well,” she began, “you know that I came home ahead of schedule from my rumspringa. But it wasn’t because Dad had cleared up the debt.”

  “Oh, no,” said Beth. “I always wondered if something happened there.”

  “Something did.” My mother closed her eyes for a moment, as if to see it all in her mind before she spoke. I wrapped my arms around my knees.

  “I loved it there. For a time, I thought it was a world I could live in.”

  “So what happened?” asked Beth. “Why did you rush home?”

  “I met a boy. His name was Matthew, and of course I thought I loved him. He was interested in politics, and we read the newspaper together and talked about current events. In the fall he was going to leave for college. We talked about my coming to visit him at the university, and I actually thought I would be able to do that.”

  My mother told the story plainly in a voice that didn’t shake with emotion or drift off dreamily. “We talked about how we might stay together,” she continued. “But it seemed impossible. He had four years of college ahead of him, and I was supposed to go back home when the debt was settled. So I decided that I wouldn’t be baptized, that I would stay with him.”

  The room was quiet. I was sure I could hear all of our heartbeats. Finally Beth spoke. “What happened, Becky?”

  My mother looked at Beth, and then at me. “I got pregnant.”

  I closed my eyes and felt the sick, dizzy sensations I’d had when I read the journal. Beth gasped. “Oh, Becky.”

  “I know. I was one of those girls who seemed so good, but really I wasn’t.”

  I shook my head. “No, Mom. This isn’t about good and bad. It’s about a mistake.”

  My mother turned to me. When she spoke, her words were measured and serious. But they were also kind. “Eliza, there is something you need to know before I say anything more.” I waited. “What I did with that boy was a mistake. But you must never think that Margaret was a mistake.”

  My mind filled with commotion. All through this week, thinking about my mother’s journal and waiting to have my fears confirmed, I hadn’t thought about Margaret. I hadn’t taken that step. Now I knew that my older sister, the Good Amish girl who had refused rumspringa, was born because of a coupling between an English boy and a rebellious Amish teenager planning to leave the Order. It didn’t seem possible.

  “I had this notion that I would go to the university with him.

  I would take care of the baby and he would study. It was foolish,

  I know.”

  “What did Matthew say?” I asked.

  “He said everything you’re thinking now. Where would we live? How could he finish school with a baby to support?” She paused, and we waited in silence. “But he wasn’t unkind. He was scared. He looked like a child about to get a spanking. It wasn’t the way I wanted him to take the news.”

  “So that was it?” Beth asked. “Did he just walk away?”

  “Not exactly. He apologized and cried. We both cried. Then he asked for my address at home so he could send me money each month to take care of the baby. And I understood that he wanted me to leave, and I knew that I’d never see him again.”

  “Then what did you do?” asked Beth.

  “I was up all night long,” my mother said. “Making my plans. Crying into a big towel so I wouldn’t wake anyone. In the morning I went into town and bought a train ticket and sent my parents a telegram saying that I would be home the next day, that the tailor didn’t need me anymore. Then I told the tailor and his wife that my family needed me back home. Everything about me was a lie.”

  I crept from my chair and sat on the couch beside my mother. She put her arm around me. “I’m sorry, Mom,” I whispered.

  “It’s okay,” she said, her voice soothing. “Everything’s fine now. I admit that for a while I thought I was in an impossible mess. But it all worked out.”

  “How?” I asked.

  My mother smiled and turned to Beth. “Well, you didn’t know it at the time, but you helped me. Right after I got home, I told you to go find Amos and tell him I’d be watching for his lantern. Sure enough, I’d barely gotten to my room that night when I saw his lantern glowing in the yard. I slipped out of the house and said a prayer that Amos would still love me and still want to marry me. We went off to a little spot by the pond. Oh, he was so happy to see me.” Her voice trailed off.

  “What did you do?” Beth asked.

  My mother’s voice was firm. “I stopped lying,” she said. “I told him everything. If we were going to start a life together, I wanted it to be an honest one.”

  “How did he take the news?” Beth asked softly.

  “He was very quiet at first. When he didn’t say anything, I asked him what he was thinking.” Her voice choked at the next words, and she stopped talking. We leaned closer to her. She took a breath and started again. “He said, ‘Before I ask you to marry me, I have to be sure that this baby will have no other father but me.’”

  “And how did you answer him?” whispered Beth.

  “I said that the baby would be so lucky to have him for a father.”

  A tear ran down my cheek. I saw Beth reaching for a tissue. Only my mother’s eyes were dry. Her face was suddenly peaceful, just as it was when she said grace before meals. I realized this offering of her story was like a prayer.

  “I can’t believe this all went on and I had no idea about it,” said Beth. She sounded out of breath, l
ike she had walked a long way.

  “Well, things got very busy in our house. We didn’t waste any time because we didn’t want tongues wagging about how soon the baby arrived after the wedding. The day after I got home we told our parents we wanted to marry, and right away Mom planted the celery and Dad went to speak to the bishop about publishing us. I was baptized the next week.”

  “Did people wonder about how soon Margaret was born?” I asked.

  “We did tell one more lie,” my mother said, with a wisp of a smile. “We told our friends that Amos had visited me while I was away, and what a good time we’d had together. So we hoped that if anyone was counting the months from our wedding to Margaret’s birth and coming up with less than nine, they would just assume the baby got started during Amos’s visit.”

  “Did you ever hear from Matthew again?” I asked.

  “For a while he sent a check every month. I opened the first envelope and saw that there was no note, just a check made out to me. I tore it up and returned the next letters unopened. After a few months they stopped coming.”

  The room filled with silence. We were still together on the couch, my head on my mother’s shoulder, Beth holding her hand as though seventeen years hadn’t come between them. During the quiet, the front door opened and John stepped inside. His smile was a cautious one.

  “John,” said Beth, getting up from the couch and walking to greet him. “She’s here, John. My sister is here.”

  Beth took her husband by the hand and led him to the couch. My mother stood up. I hoped that John wouldn’t greet her with a big lumbering hug, as he had when he’d met me. I worried that she would find it too familiar. To my relief, I saw John stand formally before my mother and reach a hand out to her. “Thank you for coming here,” he said, his smile widening as my mother returned his handshake. “I hope you know what an important day this is for Beth. And for me.”

  “I’m happy to meet you, John.” My mother took her hand out of John’s grip, and his smile slipped for an instant. Then she reached her arms around his shoulders and pulled him into an embrace.

  “Now, this feels strange,” came my mother’s voice from the twin bed beside me.

  I turned on my side to face my mother in the darkened room. I thought about all that must feel strange to her right now. Being in the home of the sister she hadn’t seen or talked about for seventeen years. Lying in a bed without her husband beside her for the first time in her marriage.

  “What feels strange?” I asked.

  “Sleeping under a quilt in August.”

  I laughed. “Right? All summer I’ve been thinking about what a fine invention air-conditioning is.” In the silence after my mother’s laughter I said, “Can I ask you something, Mom?” She turned to face me. “Did you want me to find the journal?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “I wanted you to know that this world is exciting. But it can also be dangerous. And, honestly, I wasn’t comfortable about having the conversation, so I hoped the journal would do it for me.”

  Suddenly I thought of something. “Does Margaret know?”

  “She does. We told her when she came of age. Your father was a bit reluctant, but I thought she should know before she started to make her adult decisions.”

  “How did she take it?”

  “Quietly,” my mother said.

  I waited for her to say more, but I understood that this was my sister’s story, and that our mother would want to respect Margaret’s privacy. I tried to remember my sister in the days before her baptism and marriage. Margaret had always been a dutiful girl, and now I realized that her calm obedience wasn’t because these were solemn occasions. She might have been working out the new understandings about her life. I remembered what she said to me when I was complaining about our mother at the barn raising. “You think Mother’s against you, but really she’s not.” Then she had said, “Trust me,” as though she knew more than I did. And it was true.

  “Margaret was always such Good Amish,” I said.

  “That was partly my doing, I’m afraid,” said my mother. “In those early years I was always aware of Margaret’s beginnings. I guess I was harder on her than I was on the rest of you. I was determined that she be a good Amish girl so there would never be a question of where she belonged.”

  There was something else I wanted to know. “Why did you agree to let me go away after what happened to you? And to Aunt Beth?”

  My mother propped herself on her elbow to face me. “Your father wanted to send you because of all that happened,” she said. “He told me he’d always wondered how things might have been if my parents had let Beth go away. He thought that if they had let her see that other world, she might have chosen ours.”

  “And you?” I asked. “Was that your reason, too?”

  “No,” she said. “My reason was in the atlas.”

  I sat up in bed and watched her, waiting to understand. “I looked in the atlas after Mrs. Aster told me where she lived, and I saw how close her town was to Evanston. I wanted you to find my sister.”

  My mother’s visit sped by. Aunt Beth had arranged to take the days off from work, and then set about filling them with plans. We went to the art museum and the historical society and the botanical gardens. We spent one night outside among a patchwork of picnic blankets, illuminated by citronella candles, and listened to the symphony.

  Sometimes Uncle John was with us, but most evenings he slipped into his study after dinner. It was the end of summer session, and he was busy grading final exams and getting lesson plans ready for the fall. But I also suspected that he was giving us our time together. I tried to call Josh each day, sometimes just to hear how delighted he was at the sound of my voice.

  I was most excited about the musical play my aunt had told me about, and when that night arrived, I entered the theater with a giddiness I hadn’t felt since the lights had dimmed at my first movie. But unlike in the movies, the people were real, and they stood a mere few feet away from us. It was over too soon, and when the actors assembled on the square stage to bow to the audience, I felt a little sad to say good-bye to them.

  As we filed out of the theater, slowed by the crowd, a little girl who had been walking beside us stopped and pointed at my mother. “Were you in the play?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry,” said the girl’s mother, tugging at the child’s pointed finger. Heads turned toward us, and we were enveloped in stares.

  Smiling at the girl, my mother said, “No, I wasn’t in the play. This is how I dress.”

  The mother pulled the girl away, and the crowd resumed their movements toward the exit. I could hear murmurs around us. “Must be Amish,” a man whispered loudly.

  Beth turned around, her eyes searching for the source of the whisper, a look of irritation on her face. We reached the door and stepped out into the cool evening, walking to the car in silence.

  In the car, Beth sighed. “All that gawking.”

  “Let it go, Beth.” My mother’s voice was quiet, but there was a tightness around her words. “When we choose to be different, we have to expect a little attention.”

  Back at Beth’s house, we went into the kitchen for tea, as had become our custom during these days together. We sat quietly, a plate of cookies on the table, our cups of tea warm and fragrant.

  “It still bothers you, the way people look at us,” my mother said to Beth. It was a statement, but also a question.

  Beth nodded. “It does. I hated it, Becky. I hated that life.”

  “So, John didn’t really take you away.”

  “No,” said Beth. “I probably would have left eventually. He just made it easier.”

  “You know, I always felt responsible,” my mother said. “I always wondered if there was something I could have said or done that would have made things different for you.”

  When Beth spoke, she exhaled the words, making them sound weighty. “There was.”

  My mother’s voice was quiet and formal when she asked, �
�What should I have done?”

  Beth looked up from her cup of tea, her eyes searching my mother’s. “You should have been on my side when I went under the bann. I needed you to be on my side.”

  My mother shook her head in a sad way. “That’s why I told you my story. I wanted you to understand that when you were facing the bann, I wasn’t in a position to support you. Being Good Amish was the only way I knew to put my life back together.”

  Beth got up from the table and carried her cup to the sink. I glanced at my mother, but she was looking down, studying her cooling tea. Finally Beth spoke, her back to my mother and me. “I just realized something,” she said. “You were welcomed home for telling a lie. I was driven away for telling the truth. I guess the Amish are funny that way. It doesn’t matter if you’re being honest or not, as long as you say what they want to hear.”

  My mother pushed her chair away from the table and stood up.

  “I’ve been punishing myself for the last twenty years,” she said, her voice sliced with anger. “I don’t need you punishing me, too.”

  Beth turned around to face my mother. “I don’t judge you for what happened, Becky. I think you were very brave. It was just hard to lose my sister.”

  “It was hard for me, too,” said my mother. “You broke my heart when you stopped writing.”

  I caught my breath and looked at Aunt Beth. Her eyes were wide, but she didn’t speak. I turned to my mother. “Dad wrote to Aunt Beth and said that her letters were upsetting you. He asked her to stop writing, so she did.” I looked at Beth, her eyes filling with tears, then at my mother, frozen in her spot, her hand covering her mouth. “Aunt Beth thought you knew about Dad’s letter,” I went on. “She thought you wanted him to write it for you.”

  She sank back into her chair, her shoulders slumped forward. “No,” she said. “When the letters stopped coming, I thought you were done with me.”

  Beth came back to the table and slipped quietly into the chair beside my mother. “Never, Becky,” she said. “I’ll never be done with you. I always hoped you would come and find me.”