The Outcast

by Jolina Petersheim

  Just like when we were children, I dart over to try and calm Leah’s fears. I stroke her hair and hold her bird-bone hand in mine, but it is as if she doesn’t even know I am here.

  “You’re tired, Leah. That is all. If we could just rebuild your strength, you’d soon be back to your normal self.”

  “My normal self?” She laughs. “Even at my best, I was never like you. You gave birth less than three months ago, and already you’re back taking care of me.”

  “What if I wrote Mamm and asked her to send some herbs?”

  Leah holds out a hand. “Tobias doesn’t like putting faith in such things.”

  I bite my tongue to prevent a scathing reply, but Leah can still read my expression.

  “What is it, Rachel?” she asks. “What about my husband bothers you so?”

  Instead of looking at my twin, I glance down the length of bed where my own son slumbers with his chubby arms far flung and mouth gaping wide. How amazing it must feel to be protected. It seems like years since I haven’t felt vulnerable, but I know it must be only months.

  “I don’t know, Leah. I guess, at first, I resented Tobias because he took you away from me. Now . . . now it seems he holds this strange power over you, and you can’t say or do anything without asking his permission, just like Dawdy always lorded over Mamm and us.”

  Sitting up, my sister reaches for Jonathan. I pass him to her without disturbing his rest, and she drapes him across her lap like a blanket. “Tobias is my husband,” she says. “The head of our home. The Bible calls me to submit to him, to get his permission before I do things.”

  “Like take an herb? Like going to see a doctor when you so obviously need to? That kind of submission you will never see from me!”

  “Are you saying that I am in the wrong? That I should defy my husband?”

  “No. I am saying that he is in the wrong by not getting you the help you need!”

  Either from the severity in our voices or the bony thighs he is resting upon, Jonathan awakens and begins to cry. Leah mistakes his brutzing for hunger and brings him to her breast, which he will not take since he is already full from mine.

  Her face twisted with anguish, Leah looks up. “See?” she says. “My own body can’t bring him nourishment!”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do. I think you should nurse Jonathan. Just until he’s stronger or I am stronger. The way I am now, he is not getting the nourishment he needs. Look at the differences in our sons, Rachel.”

  My eyes do as they’ve been told. I note that though there is a five-and-a-half-month gap between Eli and Jonathan, their bodies are almost the same size. Jonathan has a balding scalp that is spotted with flakes of dandruff; Eli’s hair is corn-tassel blond that already shows hints of curl.

  “Will you do that for me, Rachel?” my twin asks, clenching my hand between hers. “Will you take care of my son as if he is your own?”

  Removing myself from her grip, I say, “I can’t. You know I can’t. Tobias wouldn’t want Jonathan being nursed by me.”

  Leah leans in until her stale breath fluffs the few hairs that have slipped from my kapp. “Tobias will let you nurse Jonathan,” she says. “At least ’til I can get back on my feet. You must trust me on this.”

  I look into my twin’s face, at the passion that dabs color into her thin cheeks and stirs the blue cauldrons of her eyes. “All right,” I say, only to appease her. “If Tobias agrees to it, I’ll be a nursemaid to Jonathan, but you will always be his mother.”

  Satisfied, Leah leans back against the pillows and closes her eyes. “Oh, I’m not worried about that. Somehow children always know who their real parents are.”

  AMOS

  Two hours after everyone in the haus has gone to bed and an hour after Rachel began her vigil, Tobias returns, unhitches his buggy in the barn, and leads the horse to its stall. It takes over thirty minutes for him to fill the horse trough with sweet grain, replenish the water supply, and brush down the black mare with the starburst blaze and four white socks (a wedding gift from his vadder-in-law, the horse trader). But even after all this, the heat of the words he and Judah exchanged causes Tobias’s body to hum with an energy only forgiveness or death—as I have so recently experienced—can diminish. He returns the currycomb and shoe pick to the tack room and, after checking that Reuben has milked the three Holsteins and one Guernsey and given them corn silage, makes his way out of the barn.

  A sigh passes his lips. He looks up at the plain ten-room farmhouse with ten plain unshuttered windows and finds the one in his and Leah’s bedroom as black as the sky stretching beyond it—signaling that she has not had the strength to wait up for him, as she has not had the strength to wait up for him time and time again.

  Tobias plods up the porch steps on weary feet and unlaces his boots. Holding them in one hand, he opens the door and enters the foyer. The moment the door closes behind him, my son’s nostrils are pricked by smoke. He turns to see an oil lamp whose untrimmed wick casts strange shadows across the kitchen cabinets. He walks toward the intermingling of shadow and light with his boots still clenched in his hands.

  “What are you doing up?” he asks.

  By the sharpness of his voice, Rachel knows that he has not mistaken her for Leah again. She does not turn or even blink as she says, “Waiting for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we need to talk.”

  Only on that last word does Rachel look over her shoulder to meet her bruder-in-law’s gaze, which is so heavy with dread, he looks like he could fall asleep standing. “I haven’t changed my mind, Rachel,” he says. “And I won’t. You have two weeks to get off my land.”

  Taking a sip from the mug of meadow tea that has grown cold in her hands, Rachel shrugs. “I know. That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. What I want to talk to you about is Leah.”

  “What about her?”

  “She needs to see a doktor. Should have seen a doktor weeks ago. She’s so weak right now, she can barely take care of Jonathan. She even asked me to—”

  “No,” Tobias interrupts as he drops his boots to the floor. “I lost one wife to an Englischer doktor; I won’t lose another.”

  “That was different. Your wife got an infection after a botched hysterectomy. They might not even have to do a hysterectomy on Leah. They just need to find out how to make the bleeding stop. She can’t keep living like this, or she’s certainly going to die.”

  Tobias walks around the table and leans against the doorframe with his thumbs locked behind his suspenders. “How can you say that? You don’t know anything—”

  “I know what my mother taught me.”

  “Jah, nothing but witchcraft.”

  In the lamplight, Rachel’s eyes glitter as her mind forms words she won’t allow herself to speak. Once her temper has abated, she says, “At your request, I haven’t done anything to help my sister heal. All I now ask is that you allow me to make her an appointment with a reputable English doctor.”

  Taking his thumbs from behind his suspenders, Tobias folds his arms. “Leah may be your sister, but she is my wife. My answer is no. Will always be no. Leah’s body will heal itself in due time. She doesn’t need some doktor taking out an organ God has placed there for good purpose.”

  “That is your choice,” Rachel says. “A bad one, but wholly yours. The only thing I ask is that you don’t make my sister with child, for her body won’t be able to withstand another pregnancy.”

  Tobias’s jaw pulses. “What happens in my marriage bed is entirely between my wife and me!”

  Scraping back the kitchen chair, Rachel stands to face him. “It would be entirely between the two of you if what you were doing weren’t risking my sister’s life!”

  “Tobias?” At the sound of Leah’s weak voice, Rachel and Tobias step back from each other and look toward the staircase where Rachel’s twin stands, her hands clutching the sturdy railing as her questioning eyes flit between the two people she l
oves most in the world. When neither of them will reveal anything, she asks, “What’s wrong? Did something happen to the children?”

  “No, Leah,” Tobias says, offering her a reassuring smile. “Rachel and I were just discussing the funeral.”

  Leah looks down at the step beneath her bare feet. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it. I thought I could, but—” Her lips clamp shut, blocking her words.

  Tobias runs forward as Leah crumples onto the staircase. Crying his wife’s name, Tobias kneels on the step and takes Leah in his arms. Her head lolls back, her waist-length hair brushing dust from the steps.

  Crouching over her sister, Rachel places her right index and middle fingers against the side of Leah’s neck. “We need to call 911,” she says. When Tobias does not respond, Rachel digs her fingernails into the muscles of his shoulder. “If you do not run out to the barn and call 911, you will lose your wife. Do you understand?”

  Tobias nods as Rachel comes to take his place and supports Leah’s head, which feels as heavy as a stone. “Get me a hunlomma before you go,” Rachel calls.

  Tobias turns from the front door and looks at her in confusion. Rachel motions to her sister’s nightgown where patches of blood have started seeping through. Tobias’s eyes widen. He darts toward the kitchen table and jerks down the clothesline that hangs high above it during colder months.

  Tossing the threadbare hunlomma at Rachel, Tobias gives his wife one last fret-filled look before running out the front door and slamming it behind him.

  I watch him sprint in his stocking feet the whole way to the barn.

  3

  Rachel

  At lunchtime, when Tobias returns, I press my sister’s forehead with a kiss, leave the hospital room without acknowledging her husband, and enter the maze of corridors. One by one, the nurses lower their clipboards and stare as I walk past, still in the black cape dress and white kapp I was wearing at Amos’s funeral. I am not accustomed to such scrutiny. In Lancaster County, there is such a large concentration of Mennonites, Brethren, and Amish, tourists are the only ones to ever give us a second look. I nod and smile at one nurse. Her penciled eyebrows disappear into her bangs, but then she nods and smiles in return. Long ago, I decided I was not going to bow my head and shuffle along like the rest of our community when faced with rude stares. No, I’d stare right back and remind them that I was a human being just living my life, not an oddity to be captured on film.

  Exiting the double doors, I sit on a concrete bench and watch for Gerald’s conversion van that is never hard to spot since he spray-painted it black due to his black-bumper Mennonite restrictions. Ten minutes pass . . . fifteen . . . but still our driver does not come. My adrenaline wears off and exhaustion slips over my shoulders like a cloak. I am becoming more and more frustrated by the stares of passing strangers when a huge truck lurches to a stop in front of the hospital’s double doors, a tinted window lowers, and a heavyset woman bawls, “You’re the girl I come to pick up, right?”

  I stare at the woman just as unabashedly as those who have been staring at me. All I can see of her is the bottom of her chest to the top of her head, but that is more than enough. She is so well endowed, her bosom strains against the snap buttons of her Western shirt. Her wiry gray hair looks like it has been shorn with a dull razor blade. One of those Indian dream catchers I once saw at Root’s Market in Manheim swings from the truck’s rearview mirror, and country music blares from the sound system.

  “Welp, girl,” she calls, “you gonna get in here or not? I can’t be waiting round all day.”

  Getting up from the bench, I walk toward the truck. “Where’s Gerald Martin?”

  The woman shifts a wad of snuff to her other cheek. “Dunno. All I know’s I got a call to pick up some Amish girl from the hospital.”

  “I’m Mennonite,” I correct. “You’re sure you’re here for me?”

  “Honey, I doubt there’re too many Amish or Mennonites running round this place. I’m sure it’s you. Now get in. I ain’t gonna bite.”

  Sighing, I walk around to the passenger’s side and open the door. The truck is so high off the ground, I don’t know how to get in it without exposing myself.

  Seeing my predicament, the woman points to my cape dress and says, “Just tuck that skirt between your knees and jump. Nobody’s paying you no mind.”

  I glance around the parking lot to see if this is the case. It isn’t. Three paramedics, two nurses, and one janitor on his smoke break are watching this exchange. I cannot say that I blame them; if there ever was an oddity to capture on film, this is it. Coiling the seat belt around my hand, I use it to lever my body inside. Before I have even closed the door, the woman starts driving out of the parking lot.

  “Kinda like Indiana Jones getting up here, ain’t it?” she says. I look at her blankly, and she waves her hand. “Never mind.”

  Once we’re back on the highway, she asks, “Where should I take ya?”

  “Copper Creek Community,” I reply. “Up on the mountain.”

  “No need to direct me,” she says. “I know right where you live.”

  “You do?”

  “’Course I do. That’s where I get my sorghums and jams.”

  Staring out the window, I watch the colorful trees zip past, but we are driving at such a frightful speed, the blurred kaleidoscope of them makes me sick. I instead focus on the four-lane highway unwinding in front of us. “Do you buy a lot?” I ask.

  “What?” the woman asks.

  “Sorghum and jams.”

  “Yeah, but not for me. I sell ’em in my store.”

  “What kind of store is that?”

  “An Amish one.” Pausing to spit in a small green bottle, she says, “Ida Mae’s Amish Country Store.”

  “Are you Ida Mae?”

  “The one and the only.”

  “Were you Amish?”

  “Not exactly, but I got kin that was.” She nods and points out the window. “Somewhere up in Ohio.”

  I pause to imagine how Bishop Tobias would react if he entered an Amish store and saw a tobacco-chewing, men’s-shirt-wearing, big-bosomed, big-mouthed Ida Mae behind the counter. The thought makes me smile.

  “You get a lot of customers?” I ask.

  “Boatloads.” She lazily moves her hand over the steering wheel. “They come up from Nashville, and most of them don’t care that I’m not even Amish—just that my stuff is. The Amish and Mennonites I buy from, they don’t care about me not being Plain, neither. They just care that I can sell their stuff for a higher price than what they’d get in their little podunk communities.”

  “You work on commission?” I ask.

  Ida Mae nods, looks over at me with calculators in her eyes. “Why? You got something you wanna sell?”

  I open my mouth to answer, then close it fast. If Tobias knew I was using my skills on the public, he would find a way to banish me from the community and my sister for sure. But if he never found out . . . “I don’t have anything to sell, but I do have a service.”

  Ida Mae raises one eyebrow. “What kinda service is that?”

  “Reflexology.” She gives me as blank a look as I did when she mentioned Indiana Jones. “Do you know what reflexology is?” I ask.

  “Ain’t that Chinese stuff? Where you stick people with pins and things?”

  I shake my head. “No, I just know the pressure points in people’s feet and hands and massage them until the tension goes away. It’s simple science, really.”

  Ida Mae snorts. “Sounds it.”

  For a few miles we’re silent as each of our business wheels are busy turning, and then she says, “How would you get to my store? I reckon you can’t drive if I was called here to drive ya.”

  “No, I can’t. But I could come to your store two days a week if you could pick me up. I’d give you 30 percent of my earnings.”

  Ida Mae stops to consider my offer. “Gas money would have to be pulled from that too, ya know.”

  “If I was driving,
I’d be spending money on gas anyway.”

  My new driver shoots me an admiring grin. “You sure got a business head on your shoulders for being such a scrawny runt.”

  I try to take this as a compliment. As Ida Mae turns on the blinker and barrels her truck up Copper Creek Mountain, she suddenly slaps the steering wheel and laughs until I can see the silver filling her cavities. “Whew,” she says. “An Amish massage therapist. That’s really gonna bring my customers in.”

  “I’m Mennonite, you know.”

  “Not when you’re working in my Amish store you ain’t.”

  I just nod, wondering what in the world I have gotten myself into.

  AMOS

  When the truck drops Rachel off at Tobias and Leah’s, she walks up the porch steps, takes a deep breath, and goes inside. My older daughters are both in the kitchen. Irene is washing up the lunch dishes; Ruth drops rivvels into boiling hinkel broth for a side dish to go with supper. Although it is early afternoon, the lack of electricity plunges the kitchen into darkness, making it hard for Rachel to read my daughters’ expressions. As their vadder, though, I can read them each like a book, and I am ashamed to see the disdain lurking beneath their mudder’s precious features. I don’t know where my children have picked up such self-importance. They did not learn it from Verna or me. My children act like they’ve never done anything wrong (despite my belt and their behinds knowing far better), and it is their personal mission to ensure that the community knows this and is therefore writhing over their own past mistakes.

  Well, all except for our youngest. Even when Judah was a child, I could never place him in the same category as his siblings. He was always sensitive toward God’s creatures no matter how insubstantial those creatures might be. So sensitive, in fact, that he was often ridiculed by his schoolmates, who would flatten anthills with a solid stomp or place toads under buggy wheels and force Judah to watch as those wheels slowly turned. There aren’t enough stars arcing over this celestial sky to number all the times my son would come running to me with tears snaking down his dusty cheeks. Cradled in his hands would be a rabbit, bird, kitten, or puppy whose body had been caught in a piece of farm machinery or in a larger creature’s jaws.