“Ya, he has been so kind to me. I do feel I am a burden. But I know I will regain my strength when I am not with child anymore.”
“Ya, you will. You certainly will.”
***
That evening, Samuel walked with Mary Ruth to her bedroom after dinner, speaking softly to her along the way about how his day had gone and what the children had accomplished. Although Martha was so young, the older girls were taking her to the schoolhouse with them, where there was a group effort in caring for her.
“She is going to be one smart little lady,” Samuel said with pride in his voice. It warmed Mary Ruth’s heart to hear it since the little girl wasn’t his own. It made her smile. “She learns more every day. She is speaking so well, I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
“Ya, she can speak in full sentences. I didn’t know they had been taking her to the schoolhouse, but I am glad she is learning so early.”
“She’ll be out of eighth grade before her age, I believe.”
Mary Ruth raised her eyebrows. “Do you think so?”
“Ya. I do. She is very bright.”
Mary Ruth sighed with a smile. “How wunderbaar. Truly.”
He nodded as he reached out and opened the door for her. He took her elbow and guided her through. She went straight to the bed and sat on the edge, plopping down heavily, placing one hand on her large belly. “I will be able to help care for her once I have this Bobelli,” she said. “But perhaps I should continue to let her go to the schoolhaus. I would not want to hold her back if she is able to accomplish more by letting her go.”
“I think it is a gut idea to let her continue going. And I know the other kinder at the school would miss her.”
“I will perhaps let her continue then,” she smiled. “I will have my hands full.”
“You will have help,” Samuel sat next to her. “Anna will continue coming to make sure you are able to do all that you need to do.”
“Ya, she has already said that she will come and cook for me.”
He nodded. “Mark has been quite understanding with this.”
“Is he not a reasonable man?” Mary Ruth was surprised to hear that it was a concern at all. She was under the impression they were all there to care for each other. But after thinking about it for a moment, she realized that her Bishop and Miriam had done something similar by making arrangements for her to leave their home so that they would no longer have to care for her. The thought made her depressed and she steered her thoughts back to her new baby and Martha and her new family.
“He is, ya. But I’m sure he misses having Anna home more often.”
“The burden will be lifted soon,” Mary Ruth murmured, pushing herself back on the bed so that she could stretch out. She had spent the first four months of her pregnancy not showing. Now, it was as though she had grown to full term in just two and a half months. She couldn’t imagine getting bigger in the next two months or so. She wondered if perhaps her midwife had gotten the dates wrong but Deborah had confirmed it. She would not give birth until late March. Her date was approximately one week before Rhea would have her baby.
“Are you comfortable?” Samuel stood up and helped her get onto the bed. “Would you like a cup of tea or water?”
“I would love a cup of tea, Samuel, Danki.”
“Ya, I’ll be right back.”
She watched him as he left. He was so caring and gentle with her. She was feeling very tired and useless. He always made her feel valued and special. She was glad she would be marrying him. She knew she was going to be happy. Every day he did something that reaffirmed that belief. The night before, he had come in while she was dozing. She’d heard him, but did not open her eyes as she was not fully awake. When she didn’t respond to his calls, he stayed in the room. After a few moments, she heard Martha enter and whisper loudly to him, “Datt, what is Maemm doing now?”
Her back was turned to the door, so the two did not see when Mary Ruth smiled.
“She is sleeping, kind. And what are you doing?” he whispered back.
“I wanted to see Maemm when she was awake.”
“Would you like to sit in here with me? We can protect her dreams together.”
“Ya, ya.”
Mary Ruth heard the sound of Martha clapping her hands very lightly and Samuel picking her up to sit on his lap.
“Perhaps you’d like to sing a little song with me,” Samuel continued in the same soft whisper.
When Martha didn’t respond, Mary Ruth knew she had nodded because after another moment, Samuel started to sing and soon after that, Martha joined in. Mary Ruth fell back to sleep listening to their sweet voices in her ears.
Chapter Eight
The next two months passed quickly. Rhea stopped by when their week had arrived. Rhea was due just a few days after Mary Ruth. She wanted to discuss things beforehand. Both women were excited to have their due dates arriving. They wanted to have their babies and not be pregnant anymore. Rhea was handling it very well. It was her fourth and she was already in very good health. She had been watching after Anna’s children while Anna helped Mary Ruth.
Although she was nine months pregnant, she was able to drag a cushioned chair over to Mary Ruth’s bedside. She sat in it with a big smile on her face.
“How are you doing, Mary Ruth?” she asked in an excited voice, setting a mysterious large cloth bag down next to her side. Mary Ruth couldn’t help letting her eyes stray to it a few times. She smiled back at her future sister-in-law.
“I’m doing well, Rhea, as well as can be expected, I suppose. How are you?”
“The same. I’m glad to see you smiling. I heard you have been so unwell, especially in the last two months.”
Mary Ruth nodded. “I haven’t been able to go anywhere that I wanted to go. I can’t even get down the stairs to dinner anymore. The children or Samuel bring it up to me.”
Rhea shook her head. “I am sure you are ready and waiting to have your little Bobelli!”
“I truly am,” Mary Ruth chuckled and noted that her belly bounced along with it. She had an active child in there and was ready to let him or her come into the world and stop stretching her body any further.
“I do hope things go smoothly for you like they did with Martha. She is getting so big!”
Mary Ruth laughed. “Ya, she really is! She’s such a smart little one. I am proud of her.”
“And you should be. They say she is learning along with the other students at the schoolhaus as if she was years older than she is.”
“That’s what I’ve heard! Now that she’s three, Lily feels even more special to have her around. They will both be three for a whole month!”
The two women laughed.
“I have been asking some of the ladies,” Rhea said, leaning forward as much as her large belly would let her, “about how to determine what kind of child we will have – a boy or a girl. Do you want to know?”
“I wouldn’t mind trying out a method or two,” Mary Ruth answered. “But I do not believe we will truly know until he or she is born.”
“Ya, I agree. But it’s fun to try! Do you have names ready to go?”
“I do. If it’s a girl, she will be Rachel. If it is a boy, he will be Nathan.”
“I like both of those names,” Rhea nodded approvingly.
“And you?”
“After extensive discussions with Charlie, we have decided on Charles Jr for a boy or Eunice for a girl.”
“Lovely.”
“I think so, too. So do you want to hear about the different ways we will know whether we will have a boy or a girl?”
“Certainly.”
“All right, here’s the first way. What do you think you are having?” Rhea looked at her closely, again leaning in inquisitively.
“That’s all?”
“What do you think?” Rhea pressed her.
“I…think I will have a boy.”
“And now you ask me.”
“What do you think you ar
e going to have?”
“I also think I will have a boy. Now, did I blush? Am I blushing?”
Mary Ruth looked at her cheeks. “I see no evidence of blushing.”
“Then we will surely both have boys! Grossmaami says that if there is blushing, the child will be a girl.”
Mary Ruth just laughed. “What other methods do you know?”
“Well, Grossmaami also says that if you... here, let me show you. I can’t do this one because I’ve already done it and Grossmaami says that I am going to have a boy.”
“If you’ve already gone through these methods, why are you trying them again? Don’t you already know the answer?”
“I think it’s fun. And perhaps it will change and be different!”
“Perhaps.” Mary Ruth thought it was unlikely. If any of the methods proved to be correct, the results of them would only change because the mother changed them herself.
“All right, here.” Rhea put a key down on the bed just beyond Mary Ruth’s reach on her thighs in the middle of her lap. “Now you lean forward and pick up the key.”
“Move it closer.”
Rhea pushed the key within her reach and watched. Mary Ruth leaned forward and grasped the key with her right hand. She held it up for a second and then handed it to Rhea.
“Okay, tell me what that meant.”
“I still say a boy,” Rhea said triumphantly. “You took the key from the fat end. If you had grasped the narrow end, it would have been a girl.”
Mary Ruth laughed delightedly. She was hoping for a boy. “I think I took the key from that side because I’m right handed and that’s where the fat end was. Do you have any more?”
“My Grossmaami also told me this, which I thought was something to think about. She says that if you are very sick with morning sickness in the first three months, you will have a girl. If you do not get sick until after the first trimester, it is a boy. You have been sick after the first three months, correct?”
“Ya.”
“But she also says that if you are sick all the way throughout your pregnancy, it is a girl.”
“I’ve been ill these last five months,” Mary Ruth confirmed. “But not throughout. I was all right until I moved here and that was when I was four months or more along.”
Rhea nodded. “That is very true. So we’re back to a boy. I think three signs is gut, don’t you?”
“Ya.”
“Have you desired foods that are sweet or those that are salty?”
“I don’t have cravings for certain foods. I never have really.”
“Oh, you are very blessed for that!” Rhea exclaimed, rolling her eyes. “I myself have been eating, oh, just bushels and bushels of oranges. You know, it’s quite shameful!”
The two women laughed again.
“What does that mean? Are you going to have a boy or a girl?”
“I have determined that I am having a boy. I believe we have a junior on the way!”
“Well, that is lovely, if it is true. I do hope that I have a boy. I am happy to have Martha. I would like to have one of each gender with Eli. It would be nice to give him a son. He will pass along Eli’s name.”
“And what name is that?”
“Stoltz.”
Rhea nodded. “We do not have a Stoltz family here. If your son decides to stay in this community, we will, though.”
“Ya. That will be nice. But since he’s not even here yet, let’s not jump ahead of ourselves.”
“I agree!”
Rhea laughed and Mary Ruth joined her.
***
Mary Ruth slept soundly the days after her baby was born. As with Martha, it had been quick and smooth, despite her illness. She was amazed to find that after she gave birth to the boy, she immediately began to feel better.
Nathan was a very large baby, which surprised everyone. He weighed just over nine pounds and was 20 inches long from head to toe. He had all his fingers and toes (she counted right away) and his cry was tremendous as soon as he breathed. After the initial crying, though, he quieted down and rarely made a sound unless he needed something.
Mary Ruth was grateful and happy that he was there, that he was healthy and that she would be able to also regain her own health. Her nightmares immediately stopped, she was able to breathe easy and her mood improved dramatically. She was told that Rhea had also had hers, four days after Nathan was born. She had also had a boy.
On Nathan’s one-week birthday, Mary Ruth was just drifting off to sleep when she heard the door to her room swing almost silently open. She peeked through tired lids to see Samuel and John enter the room on quiet feet. Her eyes opened wide but the two men didn’t see her. They crept quietly to the baby’s bassinet and looked in. Samuel put one hand on his son’s shoulder.
“He’s amazing, Datt,” John whispered. “He really is.”
“You had nothing to worry about, John. Mary Ruth is getting better very quickly and as you can see little Nathan is a big and healthy boy.”
“Ya.” Mary Ruth could hear his voice shaking. She didn’t move. She pressed her lips together and tears filled her eyes. “It was scary, Datt. I was afraid for their lives.”
“I know you were, my kind. You needn’t have been. They were both in Gott’s hands.”
“Why was she so ill, Datt? Why? I prayed so hard that she would not be so ill. I was very afraid that she would be taken like Maemm was.”
“Your Maemm was not sick during her pregnancy, buwe. She died while she was having Lily because she lost too much blood in the process.”
“It didn’t matter. I really thought the same thing was going to happen with Mary Ruth, because she was sick the whole time. I prayed so hard, Datt, I really did.”
“I know you did, buwe. You are a gut bu. You have a gut heart.”
“I’m so glad to have a new little brudder. He is seiss as he can be. I’m very pleased. We are so blessed.”
“Ya. Ya. We are blessed.”
Mary Ruth didn’t know whether she should reveal that she had heard the conversation. She was suddenly glad that she had never said anything to Samuel about how uncomfortable she had been with John’s behavior. He was not staying away for the reasons she had thought. He was terrified for her, terrified that he’d lose the new Maemm the same way he’d lost his own.
“Look, Datt, it’s raining again.”
“Ya.”
“Gott is washing the earth with his love again. He must be happy that my little brudder is healthy and Maemm will be well again.”
“Ya. I’m sure that He is.”
“I will pray some more, Datt. I will pray and give thanks. I will. And I will help take care of Nathan whenever Maemm needs me to.”
“You are such a gut bu. Let’s let them sleep. Come on.”
Samuel and John walked quietly out, closing the door behind them. The bright moon outside cast the room in shadows. Mary Ruth listened to the rain pelting against the window. It hadn’t been a sign of foreboding after all. Now she understood. John had said it. These were Gott’s drops of love, washing the unclean earth with His goodness.
She let the tears slip from her eyes, squeezing them shut and whispering, “Danki, meine Gott. Danki. Danki.”
*****
THE END
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Bonus Book 1: The Rancher's Brave Bride
By: Faith Crawford
Description
An orphan travels West to meet a lonely widower and his child. Will they find each other’s heart in this new wild world?
Theresa Doe never knew her parents. Abandoned on the day she was born, all she has ever known is life in the orphanage with the Sisters of Holy Mercy. For seventeen years she’s lived with hunger and cold, her faith the only thing to sustain her. But now a lonely widower out west has put out a call for a wife and Theresa has been chosen to go to him.
Henry Forth is a restrained and taciturn rancher in the Colorado Territories. He has struggled to build h
is ranch into a success and is in need of a woman to be his wife, the lady of his house, and a mother to his three-year-old child.
Theresa now must travel from her home in Pennsylvania to the wild west of the Colorado Territories, to live with the quiet Mr. Forth. In the shadow of the Rocky Mountains there is no law. Bandits lurk in the forests and danger waits on the horizon.
In this strange and dangerous place Theresa must transform from an orphan to a wife, even though she has no knowledge of married life.
Chapter One
The bells chimed six and I knew it was time for me to rise. I hadn’t slept a wink during the night. Last night, as I had for my entire life, I ate dinner silently with the sisters, completed my nighttime prayers and my ablutions and then climbed into bed. I normally fall asleep quite easily, but that night my mind refused to relent.
All around me the other girls slept quietly. There was the occasional whisper from Chelsea, one of the younger girls, talking in her sleep. She called out for her mother who had been dead for seven months. After a while, she quieted herself and there was nothing to break the night's silence.
From the bottom bunk in the crowded, but silent room, I lay awake and staring out the window. I watched the moon rise higher and higher, the pale light piercing the sleeping forms of the other girls. We were all orphans, completely alone in the world. The Sisters of Holy Mercy had taken us in. Some, like me, had been abandoned here shortly after being born. Others, like Chelsea, found themselves here after death had taken their family.
All night I lay awake as unwelcome thoughts ran around my head. This would be the last night I would ever spend at the convent. My entire future lay before me, but it was mostly blank. I had far too many questions and too few answers.
I sat straight up when the bells rang. Despite not getting any sleep the night before, I felt wide awake. I sat up in bed and stared around the room. Sometime in the night, the familiar dormitory had turned strange and foreign. This place was no longer my home.
[2016] The Precious Amish Baby Page 5
