by Linda Byler
“Lizzie, you should be ashamed of yourself. Lots of Amish families have torn plastic tablecloths on their tables. When I get married, I’m not going to go buy a new tablecloth just because it has a hole in it. Everybody has holes in their tablecloths,” Emma said.
Lizzie drew herself up to her full height.
“Emma, I don’t care what you say. Anyone that has a torn plastic tablecloth on their table is poor. If they weren’t, they’d buy a new one. When I’m married, I am not going to keep mine that long. It looks sloppy and makes you look like you’re poor, anyhow,” she said.
Emma added dish detergent to the hot water in the sink. “Well, I pity Mam.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just do.”
“I pity Dat,” responded Lizzie.
“I pity Mam most, because she’s always working in the shop and it’s just a fright how sloppy this house looks,” Emma had said.
Lizzie shook her head, remembering Emma’s words and the terror in her own heart. Well, at least they weren’t poor anymore. Not yet, at least. She turned to help Mam finish putting the pans away.
“Do you like it here now, Mam? I mean, better than you did that first time we saw the place?”
Mam turned and gazed across the kitchen. “Yes, Lizzie, I do,” she said quietly. But Lizzie heard a sigh in her voice, a kind of hollow undertone that wouldn’t quite go away.
“But you’re worried about Emma, right?”
“Well … yes, I am. I mean, turning 16 years old is hard enough in a settled community like Jefferson County. But here … I don’t know.”
“She’ll be 16 in six days.”
“I know.”
“Are we having a birthday party?”
“Who would we invite? There are no young people here.” There was an edge of bitterness to Mam’s voice.
Lizzie pushed the last pot into the cupboard and then quickly closed the door so it wouldn’t fall out.
“Who will Emma marry if there aren’t other Amish youth in this area,” she asked.
“I don’t know. Two new families are moving into the area from a neighboring community, but they have only a girl about Emma’s age,” Mam said.
“That’s nice!” Lizzie said, even though she knew Mam didn’t think that was enough to be happy about.
“Yes.” Mam opened a new box and started to unpack silverware, placing it into a drawer next to the sink.
“Mam, how does God’s will work if there are no boys to marry, anyway? How will poor Emma ever get married? I mean, this is getting serious. She’s soon 16, and in a year I’ll be, too. What are we going to do?”
Mam put down a handful of forks so she could look at Lizzie. She was clearly trying to muster her own conviction about this subject.
“Lizzie, if you would only read your Bible more and try to be more mature about your faith, you would not be so troubled. If you pray honestly, God will direct you to the right husband. Even if right now you can’t figure out how that’s possible.”
Lizzie nodded, but she couldn’t help but wonder how God would direct her if there weren’t any boys nearby. Before she could ask Mam more about God’s will and future husbands, Mommy Glick called them to dinner. Lizzie followed Mam into the dining room where the table was covered with food.
Mommy Glick had made chicken potpie with large chunks of potatoes swimming in thick chicken gravy. Chunks of white chicken meat were mixed with the potpie squares and sprinkled with bright green parsley. Mommy Glick made her own noodles, too. She mixed egg yolks with flour, and the potpie turned out thick and yellow and chewy. It was the best thing ever to eat with creamy chicken gravy.
Lizzie also admired the baked beans that had been baking most of the forenoon and now were rich with tomato sauce and bacon. Bits of onion floated among the beans, and steam wafted from the granite roaster. Applesauce, dark green sweet pickles, and red beet eggs completed the meal.
Lizzie was so hungry she forgot all about her diet for the day. When they finished eating the main part of the meal, Lizzie and Mandy helped themselves to pieces of shoofly pie and sat on the steps of the porch together. They each bit off the very tips of their pieces.
“No one else in the whole world can make shoofly pies like Mommy Glick,” Lizzie said.
Mandy nodded, her mouth full as she ate her way through the whole delicious piece.
“Do you think we’ll ever feel at home here?” Mandy asked, finally.
“Probably.”
“It’s going to take a while.”
“I know.”
“We can’t hear any traffic or see any lights. We don’t even have neighbors.”
Lizzie pointed toward a white house in the woods down by the creek. “There are people,” she said.
“Who are they?”
“Old people, Dat said.”
“How does he know?”
“I have no idea.”
They sat in silence, the breeze stirring the leaves of the walnut tree beside the sidewalk.
“We can make a nice farm out of this junky place,” Lizzie said, even though she wasn’t sure that was true.
Mandy nodded.
Chapter 7
MAM CAME OUT TO the enclosed back porch, her back bent as she coughed deeply, her handkerchief to her mouth. Mommy Glick and Emma followed close behind her.
“Emma, how long has she been coughing like that?” Mommy Glick asked, her brows drawn with concern.
“Most of the winter, it seems like,” Emma said, her eyes filling with unexpected tears.
Mommy Glick turned to Dat. “Melvin, I think Annie needs to see a good doctor, and soon,” she said.
“I’ve begged her to go,” Dat replied.
“I don’t like the sound of that cough,” Mommy continued as she helped Mam into a chair.
Mam sat down slowly. One of the twins ran over and buried her face in her apron. Mam stroked her head absentmindedly as she cleared her throat repeatedly. Mommy Glick watched Mam, while Emma hurried back into the house to get Mam a drink of water.
Lizzie and Mandy huddled together. “I wish Mam would stop coughing.”
“She’s going to end up in the hospital.”
“She can’t. We need Mam more than ever now.”
Lizzie gazed across the field and the trees beyond that, where the creek ran wide and cold. She shivered. She hoped fervently that God would watch over them way back here on this winding country road in the middle of nowhere. She had never felt quite so alone, or quite as old as she did right this minute, sitting on the concrete porch steps.
About a week after they had settled in, Mam’s cough became an alarming rasp. She held a Kleenex to her mouth as she bent over, painfully hacking from the persistent ache in her chest.
She had gone on as best she could, even as her strength sometimes failed her, Lizzie knew. But she worked more slowly every day.
One afternoon, Lizzie was outside pulling weeds around the little log cabin. She was tugging with all her strength on a very stubborn weed almost as tall as herself. She didn’t notice Emma running down the sidewalk until she called for Dat in a tone of voice that made Lizzie stop yanking on the weed.
She watched as Dat emerged from the barn and listened to what Emma was saying. When he walked toward the house with her, Lizzie knew there must be something wrong. She wiped off her grimy hands on her apron and hurried up the slope to the house.
As she entered the kitchen, Dat pulled up a chair and sat close to Mam, a concerned look making his tired face seem soft and vulnerable. Mam was struggling to breathe and her complexion was almost blue in color.
“Annie, you should have done something a long time ago,” Dat said. “You just go on and on and on, even if you feel so bad.”
“Well, Melvin, I can’t go on. I need to go to the hospital now. Every breath I take burns in my lungs, so I suppose I have a bad dose of pneumonia. I guess we’ll see a doctor first, but who? Everything is so strange and new here.”
Dat sat up resolutely.
“No, Annie, you won’t go to the doctor. You’re going straight to the emergency room in Falling Springs. There are no two ways about it.”
“I’m just so sorry. It will cost thousands of dollars if I’m admitted,” Mam said anxiously, searching Dat’s eyes.
Dat smiled at her tenderly, covering her hand with his own. “What are thousands of dollars compared to losing you, Annie?”
Mam tried to smile at Dat, but her nostrils flared as they always did when she had to cry. Her face turned a darker shade as her tears came uncontrollably.
“Ach, now you made me cry,” she said.
“I’ll go call a doctor. You get yourself ready and we’ll leave for Falling Springs.”
Dat glanced anxiously at Emma. Lizzie knew she was the one who would keep everything else going. She would take full responsibility for the laundry, the cooking, and the cleaning. She was naturally a very capable girl for her 15 years, as she had always been, even as a child.
Lizzie met Dat’s concerned look and smiled bravely, consoling him with her cheerful appearance.
“We’ll be all right, Dat. Please don’t worry about us,” she said, although Lizzie could see that Emma’s smile was a very good cover-up, hiding her own worries. Lizzie vowed to do all she could to be a good helper, working along with Emma, even taking on jobs she didn’t want to do.
Chapter 8
DAT LEFT TO CALL a driver, and Mam went to take a bath, even if it was mid-afternoon. Mam was very particular about being clean when you went to see a doctor. Even when she took the twins for a checkup, she gave them a bath in the middle of the day.
Emma hurried anxiously after Mam. “Are you sure you should be taking a bath, Mam?” she asked.
“Why, Emma?”
“Suppose you pass out?”
“I won’t. I’ll be fine.”
Mam always said that. Lizzie twisted her fingers nervously around the small hem of her bib apron. She could not bear to hear Mam coughing from the bathroom, so she hurried outside to the porch. Jason was sitting on the porch swing.
“Is she going to die in the hospital?” he asked, his voice quavering.
“No, Jason. She is just really, really sick. I’m sure the doctors can make her well.”
“Are you sure?”
“Oh, yes.” Lizzie said this with a lot more bravado than she felt inside. People died of pneumonia every day. That’s how Mommy Miller had died. But she didn’t say that to Jason. She just pushed the porch swing back and forth with her one foot.
The porch swing comforted Lizzie. It was the one thing that made her feel at home these first days of living on the farm. There was something very soothing about swinging back and forth on it in the clean spring air. Even if Lizzie was troubled, the porch swing always calmed her spirit.
Dat hurried up the sidewalk and into the house without even glancing at Lizzie. Emma called him, and Lizzie heard their low tones as they discussed something in the kitchen behind the screen door. Soon Dat reappeared, looking sternly at Lizzie.
“Where’s Mandy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, Emma said she doesn’t want to tattle or make you and Mandy angry at her, but you don’t always listen to her when Mam and I are away, that you just run off to the creek or go drive Billy, or do anything you can to get away from doing jobs she asks you to do.”
Lizzie watched her foot on the concrete floor of the porch, not sure what to say. She knew it was true. There was just something about Emma asking her to do a job that ruffled Lizzie’s feathers. She wasn’t as bossy as she used to be, but whenever Emma asked, Lizzie always felt like not doing the job Emma wanted done.
“Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
Lizzie wished her toes weren’t so crooked. She had the ugliest feet she had ever seen on anyone. She decided then and there that she would never go barefoot except at home. Her toes were hideous.
A dull thump from the direction of the living room and a piercing scream made Lizzie leap to her feet, almost upsetting the porch swing. Dat sprang to the door of the kitchen as Emma screamed again. They yanked open the bathroom door to find Mam in a heap on the floor beside the counter. She had been pinning her apron when she fell. Pins were scattered all over the floor.
Dat cried out as he stooped to lift her, but he wasn’t able to pick her up because she was so limp. Her face was so pale, Lizzie couldn’t bear to look.
“Emma open the windows,” Dat said.
He rolled Mam over.
“Lizzie, go get a pillow. Hurry up!”
Lizzie dashed to the bedroom, her heart racing. Poor Mam! Poor, sick Mam who just went on and on, feeling horrible all week. She grabbed a pillow off of her bed and ran back downstairs.
Dat lifted Mam’s head and gently placed the pillow underneath it. Lizzie was terribly alarmed to see how Mam’s head rolled around on her shoulders, just like a rag doll’s. Dat stood up and held a clean washcloth under the cold water faucet. After he wrung it out, he knelt to bathe Mam’s face.
Mam’s head rolled to the side, and she moaned as her eyes fluttered open.
“Annie!” Dat touched her face. “Annie!”
Mam’s eyes blinked, and she struggled to focus.
“Ach, my,” she whispered weakly.
“Annie, you’ll be all right. You fainted,” Dat said tenderly, as he kept stroking her forehead with the cool washcloth.
“Ach, my,” Mam said again.
Dat was just helping her to a sitting position when the kitchen door banged shut.
“Hey,” Mandy yelled.
Lizzie hurried out. “Shh!”
“What?”
“Mam passed out on the bathroom floor!”
Mandy clapped a hand to her mouth, her big green eyes opening wide. Hay was stuck in her hair, her face was grimy with dust, and she had torn a big hole in the sleeve of her dark purple dress.
“What happened?”
“Mandy, she’s terribly sick. She has to go to the hospital. Where were you?”
“In the haymow. Hey, I found a bunch of kittens. You know all those wild cats around here that have no tails? There’s a whole nest full of kittens and not one has a tail!” Mandy was so excited, the veins in her neck stuck out like cords.
“Shh! Mandy, calm down! Mam’s sick.”
“I know. Are they … is she … how are they going to the hospital?” Mandy asked as she made her way to the bathroom door.
Dat was helping Mam to her feet as Emma hovered nearby, picking up the pillow and comforting the twins who were crying.
Mam sank wearily onto the sofa, just as they heard the crunch of tires in the driveway.
“Your driver’s here,” Lizzie announced.
Dat helped Mam back to her feet while Emma hurried over with her black Sunday apron.
“Your apron, Mam.”
Mam could not answer. Her mouth was pressed into a straight, thin line as she used all of her concentration to stay on her feet. Dat shook his head at Emma as they slowly made their way across the kitchen, through the door, and into the waiting car. This was the first time Lizzie ever saw Mam go away without her black apron, but she supposed it was all right to do since Mam was so sick.
As Mam and Dat got into the car, the twins started crying uncontrollably. Susan wailed steadily, and no one was able to console her. KatieAnn finally sat in her little chair with great sad eyes and sniffled, her teddy bear clutched to her chest.
Emma reached down and scooped up Susan, holding her close until her wails at last subsided.
“Poor little things, Emma,” Lizzie said over the top of KatieAnn’s dark head.
“I know,” Emma agreed. “We just moved from the only home they’ve ever known, and now Mam leaves them like this.”
“Let’s rock them on the porch swing,” Lizzie suggested.
They took both little girls and held them, gently rocking the old wooden porch swing in the warm spring sunshine. Jason s
at on the steps, his curls lifting and falling as the breeze played with his hair. Mandy found a flashlight and ran across the yard to the barn, returning to her newly found nest of baby kittens.
Chapter 9
EMMA STARTED HUMMING AS she rocked back and forth on the swing. Here they were, way back in the sticks, or so it seemed to Lizzie, the twins crying, Mam sick, Dat on the way to hospital with her, everything frightening and unsure.
Lizzie felt as if her life was a jigsaw puzzle, all finished, each piece fitting perfectly into the next, until now when it seemed someone had suddenly come along and scattered the whole thing. Now nothing made any sense.
She thought of praying, but she didn’t really know how to word her scattered thoughts and fears. Would Mam die? Could God be so mean? The thought was so unbearable that she got up from the porch swing and went into the kitchen, balancing KatieAnn on her hip.
Just as she was opening the refrigerator door, she heard the dull, muffled sound of a car engine. Quickly she closed the door of the refrigerator and watched as an old green pickup truck ground its gears to a stop beside the sidewalk. Her heart leaped in her chest as she saw a young man leaning out from the window, his thick, hairy arm bent in a V shape. Huge red, black, and blue tattoos covered most of his arm.
His hair hung straight down over his face. His eyes were half closed. Lizzie clutched KatieAnn so tightly that she began to squirm and push at Lizzie’s arms.
“Sorry,” Lizzie muttered, without thinking.
Another passenger turned the handle of the old truck and climbed down to stand beside it. Looking more closely, Lizzie saw that this second person was a woman, dressed in ragged jeans and an old, torn T-shirt. Her hair was swept up in a tight ponytail that bounced as she moved.
Finally, the driver opened his door and ambled around the front of the truck. He was very heavy, with holes in the stomach of his shirt, white skin showing through. His hair was just as long and dirty as his companions’.
Lizzie shivered with raw fear. She swallowed, thinking wildly of where she could run. The attic. That would be the best. They would never find her in the attic back under the eaves behind some cardboard boxes.
