A World Away

by Nancy Grossman

  “Thank you for cleaning the dress,” I said.

  She nodded and turned to leave. As I watched her go, I thought about the words she usually used when she said good-bye. “See you around,” or “Later” or just “See ya.” I was glad she didn’t say any of these words, because they wouldn’t be true. I wouldn’t be seeing Valerie around.

  I carried the dress up to my room and pulled off the clear wrapping, letting it drift to the floor. It was so carefully pressed, it almost looked artificial. I pulled off my blue jeans and sweatshirt, leaving them in a colorful pile on the floor beside the plastic wrap. As I stepped into the dress, my skin tingled with familiarity. I tied the apron around my waist and set the kapp on my head with the bonnet strings hanging over my shoulders. In the mirror I saw myself the way I used to be, the way I’d looked every day before I’d come here. I had fought against this image, but now it was hard to remember why.

  Opening the door to the closet, I stared at the English clothes I had been so proud to acquire, hanging in a neat row. I reached to touch the second pair of blue jeans that Valerie had insisted I needed, the fabric stiff against my fingertips. I had thought these clothes would liberate me, but maybe Valerie was right. Maybe they were my way of wearing a costume.

  I changed back into the jeans and sweatshirt and put the Amish clothes on a hanger. For a minute I stood holding the hanger, looking at the familiar shape of the dress, the clean whiteness of the kapp and apron. Then I hung it in the front of the closet, beside my other clothes.

  The quilt was coming along. I was working on the decorative stitching that would attach the connected quilt squares to the fabric backing, with the fluffy batting material in between. It’s a satisfying time in the quilting process, but not quite as exciting as choosing the pattern and colors for each square, fitting it all together piece by piece, imagining what it will be when all the pieces are in place. The wondering was over for this quilt. I knew what it would look like finished.

  Pulling the thread through the layers, I thought about sitting in the quilt circle with my friends in Margaret’s living room, our knees bumping comfortably beneath the taut fabric. We had worked carefully, timing our movements so our needles all pulled up at the same time, and pushed back into the fabric at the same time. The watchful sequencing of these movements was natural to us. And our conversations flowed throughout that synchronized work, keeping us connected, reminding us of our history and what we shared. Now I realized that I had enjoyed piecing together the swatches and squares of this quilt, but I missed the comfort of my friends as I began the final steps of the process.

  I looked at the clock. There were still two hours before the children would be home, but I didn’t feel like stitching anymore. I set the quilt aside and went into Rachel’s office. Boredom was twitching at me again. It was becoming a common feeling.

  Sitting down at the computer table, I marveled at the comfortable feeling of the mouse under my fingertips. When I’d learned to operate the computer I’d been afraid that I would make some massive mistake that would shut it down forever. But soon the computer became another device, like the garbage disposal—scary at first, then a natural part of my day.

  Josh had taught me about Google searches, and I found I could sit for hours typing in a topic and then reading about it in quick gulps before searching for another topic. It was an unquenchable cycle—the curiosity, the tidbits of knowledge, the search for more.

  After Josh and I watched The Sound of Music, Rachel told me that the movie was based on the life of a real family. Now I wanted to learn more about the real governess and children who had sung their way from one world to another.

  I slid the mouse on the pad and saw that there was some text on the screen. Realizing that Rachel had forgotten to close down after her last writing session, I started to point the little blinking line to the command Rachel had taught me that would save the work. Then the word Amish caught my eye. I started to read. During rumspringa, Amish teenagers, who have been sheltered from popular culture and trends, can respond irresponsibly when they encounter the freedoms and potential dangers of American teenage life, such as those associated with drinking and sex.

  My heart rattled inside of me. I pressed the down arrow to let new words roll onto the screen. It is a vulnerable time for these indoctrinated youth, inexperienced amid their newfound freedom. I kept reading, recognizing in these words my awkwardness in navigating this new world, my lapse of judgment on Homecoming, my struggles to fit in with English teens.

  Heat crawled up my chest and arms. This is what Rachel was doing with all of her trips to the library and all of her hours in front of the computer. She was reporting on me. I had felt so welcome here, like someone who belonged in the household. Now I knew the truth. I was being studied. Rachel didn’t want a babysitter; she wanted a science experiment. I was her little Amish girl transplanted to the fancy world to see if I’d grow. While I stumbled my way around this new place, Rachel had been tapping out my quaintness onto her keyboard and storing my mistakes in tiny folders inside the computer.

  Puzzle pieces were latching together in my head. The wealth of Rachel’s knowledge about the Amish, her haste at hiding her books when I came to her room at the inn, her vagueness the few times I’d asked about her studies. I slid the chair back from the computer table and stepped away. It was hard to take in a deep breath. Everything was a lie in this place. I had to get out.

  I ran up the stairs to the room I had called mine, seeing again the Amish quilt I had found so comforting on my first day here. I ripped wildly at the buttons on my blouse, thinking how much easier it is to unlatch a snap. I wanted to be out of these English clothes that I had paid for with my own money but that didn’t really belong to me.

  Leaving the shirt and blue jeans in a heap on the floor, I reached for my Amish clothes, hanging where I had left them last week. In minutes I was wearing the dress, the apron, and the kapp, and I didn’t have to look in the mirror to see my reflection. I knew that I looked like myself.

  I reached into the back of the closet and pulled out the duffel bag and set it on my bed. Flinging the hangers across the closet rod, one by one, I watched my English clothes sail past me. The jeans, the khaki pants, the button-down blouses, the wrinkled blue dress that I had never laundered after the dance. I didn’t want any of it. I flung open the dresser drawers and rummaged through shirts and sweaters and sweatshirts, pulling out only one thing—the band shirt Josh had given to me for our first concert. I put the shirt in the duffel bag along with pajamas and underwear and socks. Then I went to the desk and lifted out the journal, with my mother’s pages stuck inside the hidden compartment, and all of the letters I’d received, folded and bundled together with a rubber band, and I packed them carefully into the duffel. I added the picture from the dance, and Daniel’s wood carving. Looking around at the open drawers, the disarray in the room, I felt no need to tidy up. I stepped into my old work shoes, leaving behind the sneakers and the sandals and the silly high heels. I also left behind the necklace and earrings I had bought for the dance. In the bathroom, I gathered my toothbrush and comb and shampoo, leaving the makeup in the drawer.

  I carried the duffel bag downstairs, adding the canvas bag with the unfinished quilt to my scant belongings. I was ready to leave, but I realized that I couldn’t go anywhere. Rachel wasn’t home yet, and the children couldn’t come back to an empty house. I would have to wait until Rachel returned, which meant facing her with my discovery. I dropped my bag by the front door and paced nervously. I picked up the phone and called Josh, hanging up when I heard his voice mail message. Then I called Aunt Beth, and when her scripted voice mail came on, I said, “I need to come over. If you’re not home I’ll come in through the garage door. If it’s okay, I’ll be staying the night.”

  I hung up and looked at the clock. The children would be home in a half hour. Then I heard Rachel’s key in the front door, and I looked up, alert and ready. The door closed, and there was a quiet
moment before Rachel called in a cautious voice, “Eliza?”

  I stepped out of the family room and walked toward the front door, my heart throbbing. Rachel was standing at the front door, staring at my duffel bag. She turned to look at me, and I could hear her take a tiny gulp of a breath when she saw me in my Amish clothes.

  “What’s happening, Eliza? Is everything all right?”

  “I’m leaving,” I said. “I was just waiting for you to get home for Ben and Janie.”

  “I thought you were staying through November. Did something happen?”

  “Yes. I saw what you’ve been writing.”

  Rachel clapped her hand to her chest. “Oh, no,” she said. “Please, it isn’t what you’re thinking.” Her voice had a choky sound I had never heard in her before.

  I shook my head and walked to the front door, passing inches away from where she was standing, her face twisted with emotions that I didn’t want to know about. Picking up my duffel bag, I looked at her for a moment. Rachel’s eyes were pleading with me. I turned away. “Tell the children I’m sorry I didn’t get to say good-bye.”

  Rachel’s hand was on my arm now. “Please, Eliza. Let me explain.”

  I looked at her and thought of how I had met her at Stranger Night, and how excited I was when I got permission to come home with her. “No,” I said. “You’ll have to find another Amish girl to study.”

  Then I was outside, heading away from this house. I walked awkwardly to the train station, the duffel bag bumping against my leg, thinking about the day I ran from services. I didn’t want to be someone who was always running. I wanted to stay put, to be happy where I was. Waiting for the train, I felt the stares and heard the murmured whispers, and I knew that I was different again.

  Aunt Beth was waiting for me at the door, worry etched in the mild lines on her forehead. She took my bag and pulled me inside, grabbing me into one of her hugs. My tears spilled onto the front of her blouse. She led me to the couch, and we sat down facing each other. “Rachel called me,” she said. “She’s very upset.”

  I couldn’t answer. My breath was coming in hiccups. “Okay,” said Beth, her voice low and smooth. She put her arm around me, and I lowered my head onto her shoulder. “I’ll talk, you listen.” I nodded, trying to breathe normally. “Rachel made a mistake. She should have told you what she was writing about. But this is the research she’s been doing for years. It isn’t about you.”

  “Then why didn’t she tell me?” I asked, my voice stuttery.

  “That was her mistake,” said Beth. “From what I could understand, she just didn’t know how to bring it up. She didn’t want you to have the wrong idea, and then too much time went by and she thought it was too late to explain it.”

  It made sense in a jumbled way, but I was too upset to let myself understand. I leaned against Aunt Beth’s shoulder until I was able to stop crying.

  “I’ve never seen you in your Amish clothes,” Beth said. “How do they feel?”

  I looked up at her. “Good,” I said. “They feel good.”

  “So,” she said quietly, “what’s your plan?”

  I lifted my head from her shoulder and turned toward her. “I’m going home.” It was the first time I’d realized that it was my plan.

  Beth nodded slowly. “Okay, but I think you should stay here for a little while until you’re sure. I don’t want you to run away in anger.”

  When I’d sat on the porch swing with Daniel the night before I’d left, he had asked if I was running away from him, but I wasn’t.

  “I don’t want to run away from something,” I said. “I want to run to something.”

  Aunt Beth’s voice was as delicate as a dandelion spore. “Is that what going home will be? Is home where you want to run to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then maybe you should wait until you know.”

  I nodded, and relief flooded Beth’s face. I realized how sad she would be if I left.

  Upstairs in the guest room, I went into the bathroom to wash my face. An Amish girl looked back at me from the mirror and surprised me for a moment. I stared at her until I knew her. We nodded to one other.

  At dinner that night, John and Beth and I talked about Rachel, and why she had kept this secret from me.

  “You know,” Beth was saying, “I thought Rachel was different. But maybe she’s like all those other tourists who come into town to stare at us.”

  John shook his head. “I don’t know, Beth. I think she felt awkward talking about her research because she was afraid you and Eliza would take it the wrong way.”

  “Is there a right way to take it?” Beth asked.

  John’s voice was gentle. “It’s academic research. She started working on it long before she met any of us.”

  I spoke up. “But that doesn’t make it right.”

  “No it doesn’t,” said Beth. “And you’ll need to think about whether or not you can forgive her.”

  “You know,” said John, “I think one of the most important things we learn when we grow up is that sometimes we have to let other people make mistakes.”

  Beth glanced at John with a small smile. “And those same people will let us make mistakes.”

  At that moment, the front doorbell rang, and John got up to answer. I heard Sam’s voice, quiet and measured. “Go ahead,” said Beth. “I’ll clean up.”

  Sam smiled cautiously when he saw me. “Is it okay if I come in and talk to you?” he asked. I led him to a chair in the living room and sat facing him on the couch.

  “Rachel’s a mess,” he said. “She never meant to hurt you.”

  “But she did,” I said.

  Sam nodded. “When you first came to us, Rachel and I had a little argument about this. I thought she should tell you about her research. She was afraid it would make you uncomfortable knowing she was studying the Amish. And at that time we thought you’d only be staying for the summer. A few weeks ago we talked about it again, and she said I was right, that she should have told you.”

  Sam looked at me, his face serious. “Eliza, when you and Josh made some bad choices the night of the dance, Rachel forgave you. She tried to understand your side of the story.” He paused for a moment, and I let his words slip inside me. “Do you think you can do the same for her?”

  I finally spoke. “I want to,” I said. “But I’m not ready yet.”

  Sam took a big breath and let it out. “Rachel called her professor after you left. She told him she isn’t going to finish her thesis.”

  I didn’t answer because I didn’t know what to say. He stood up. “Well, I have to get back home. Things are pretty chaotic over there.” I stood to walk him to the door. Sam put his hand on my shoulder. “Eliza, I hope you don’t leave. But if you do, please come back and see the kids. We told them you’re spending some time with your aunt, but they’ll need to say good-bye to you.”

  I swallowed. I hadn’t thought about how Ben and Janie would feel. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I would never leave without saying good-bye.” Sam seemed reassured.

  Later, Beth brought the phone to me in the guest room. “It’s Josh,” she said.

  “What are you doing at your aunt’s house?” he asked. “It’s not Sunday.”

  I told him the story. “That explains something,” he said. “One day I was waiting for you to come downstairs and I saw Rachel put a book in her bag. I could swear it was something about the Amish. And when I asked her, she just mumbled that it was overdue from the library.”

  “Everyone has secrets,” I said.

  Josh was quiet, and I waited. When he spoke, his voice was low, almost mournful.

  “You’re going to leave, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. It was an honest answer.

  The next morning, I woke up sluggish from a night of half-sleep.

  I went downstairs in time to see Aunt Beth before she left for work.

  “Have you decided what you’ll do today?” she asked.
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  “No,” I said. “I still have a lot to think about.”

  Beth checked her watch and then sat at the table beside me. “Let me tell you something my mother used to say to me when I was angry. She used to say, ‘Elizabeth, let your anger be like March snow.’” I waited for this to make sense. “When there’s a blizzard in January, you know that the snow is going to stay around for the rest of the winter. But when there’s a blizzard in March, it’s not cold enough for the snow to last too long. March snow seems fierce when it first comes down, but then it melts away.” She got up and reached for her purse. “I have to get to work,” she said. “And you have to figure out if your anger is going to be January snow or March snow.” She kissed me on my forehead like a mother checking for a temperature. “Let me know what you decide.”

  After Beth left, I thought about what I should do. I had made a commitment to Rachel and her family. And if I were to leave early, I would need to explain it to the children and help them understand.

  I sifted through the clothes in my duffel bag, regretting that I hadn’t packed a pair of pants to wear today. I stepped back into my Amish clothes and repacked my bag. Downstairs, I left a note for Aunt Beth:

  Thank you for letting me stay last night. I’ll call you later. Eliza.

  PS It was March snow.

  I walked back up to Rachel’s house and stood on the stoop for a moment. The key was in my bag, but I felt that today I should approach as a guest. Rachel opened the door, and I watched as her expression went from surprise to hopefulness. I stepped inside and set down my duffel bag. “I shouldn’t have left yesterday without letting you explain.”

  Rachel looked nervous and uncertain as she ushered me inside. We sat at the kitchen table, where we’d had so many talks. Janie’s cereal box and Ben’s sports page were on the table.

  “I’m so sorry, Eliza. I’ve been working on this thesis for years. It’s about coming-of-age in the Amish community. That’s why I was in your town. I was doing field research and getting oral histories. What you read was from that research. It wasn’t about you.”