The Outcast

by Jolina Petersheim

  Time and time again, Judah would try reviving the animal with milk through an eyedropper or worms or tiny rodents or insects, but their end was always the same: he would find the animal’s small chest shuddering for breath, and then it would shudder no more. My son’s own chest would start shuddering as his mournful tears started to fall, but Judah would still pick up the hapless creature and wrap it in whatever spare quilting material Verna had saved for this very occasion. After swaddling the animal, Judah would carry it to the strawflower field beside our house. There he would dig a hole with a little spade before placing the animal in its six-inch grave.

  Now, watching Rachel’s wide-eyed stare around that gloomy kitchen, I wonder if Judah wants to marry her because he loves her, or if he wants to marry her because she is another one of God’s hapless creatures he hopes he can save.

  Stepping toward the sink, Rachel takes a dish from Irene, dries, and returns it to the cupboard without making a sound.

  Ruth dispels the uncomfortable silence by asking her, “How’s Leah?”

  “The doctors say if she keeps improving, she’ll be home by the end of the week.”

  Irene and Ruth exchange glances, and Irene—the more domineering of the two—says, “Where you going to stay in the meantime?”

  Being careful to keep her eyes fixed on the plate she is drying, Rachel replies, “I haven’t given it much thought.”

  “Well. You should.” I wince at Irene’s tone of voice, which is as formidable as the set of her jaw. “It’s not proper for you and Tobias to stay here alone.”

  Rachel wipes and wipes the dish, although there is no moisture on it. “We’d hardly be alone,” she says, pointing over to the living room, where Sarah and Matthew are on the floor playing with a marble chaser. “Not with all the children around.”

  Ruth says, “Things are different now that Tobias is bishop. With that position comes a certain responsibility. An . . . an image to maintain.”

  Returning the dish to the cupboard, Rachel bangs the door closed and clenches the countertop. “Is it Tobias’s image or your own that you’re both so concerned about?”

  My daughters look at each other and raise their eyebrows. Ruth opens her mouth to speak, but Irene shakes her head.

  Raising her gaze from the countertop, Rachel looks them each in the eye. It would be impossible not to see the fire banked in hers even if the kitchen were as black as pitch. “That’s what I thought,” she says, then marches up the steps and closes her bedroom door.

  The gentle knock two hours later awakens Rachel with a gasp. Sitting up, she looks out the window to the sun that has started sliding behind the mountains, leaving a buttery streak across the pines. Swinging her legs off the bed, Rachel smooths the quilt to hide that she’s been sleeping on it and pulls open the door.

  My wife, Verna, is standing on the other side. The skin around her eyes is smudged with gray; sorrow has carved lines in between her eyebrows and along the sides of her mouth. Her plump frame seems to droop with the yoke of grief hanging from her shoulders. But despite this obvious exhaustion, Verna smiles at Rachel and passes her the sleeping child.

  “Has he been good?” Rachel whispers.

  My wife nods and smiles again. “He’s a precious little bobbel. Barely woke up all day except to nurse.”

  As Eli nestles against his mother’s familiar bosom, Rachel says, “Tell Mary thank you for me.”

  “I will.” My wife bites the inside of her lip and looks down, a sign that she has something to say but does not know how to say it. When Rachel has started to fluster from the uncomfortable silence, Verna asks, “Would you like to stay with us until your schweschder is out of the hospital?”

  Rachel does not reply, so my wife continues, “Miriam can care for Tobias and Leah’s little ones, and my dechder can check in on them from time to time. Make sure they have plenty to eat and such.”

  Rachel cannot seem to muster the same snap and fire she displayed with Irene and Ruth. Perhaps it is due to my wife’s sweet demeanor, or perhaps Rachel’s just tired of fighting a battle she knows she will lose. “All right,” she says. “Just let me pack a few things.”

  “If you forget something, Miriam can bring it up.”

  “You mean, you don’t want me to come back here at all?”

  Pausing, my wife says, “Irene, Ruth, and I thought this would be the easier way. Just until we can figure something better out.”

  Rachel nods and pulls her baby against her chest. “I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”

  My wife nods and turns to head down the steps before Rachel has even closed the door.

  Rachel

  Threading my cape dress with straight pins and rolling my hair into its standard middle part and bun, I don my prayer kapp and secure it with bobby pins. I dab a hunlomma in the bowl of water on the Kings’ dresser and wipe Eli’s face. He moans a little but does not wake up enough to cry. I change his cloth diaper and sit in the rocking chair to nurse him, which brings immense relief since he only ate once the night before.

  Tucking Eli against my shoulder, I pull open the bedroom door to find Verna’s kitchen table already laden with breakfast. In the center is a plate heaped with grummbeere, eggs, and slabs of honeyed schunke. Yesterday’s sourdough brot has been cut, toasted, and lathered with budder and rhubarb preserves. Hearing a noise in the cold cellar below the kitchen, I walk over and call down the stairs in Pennsylvania Dutch, “Can I help with anything?”

  To my shock, Judah is the one who begins clomping up the steps. “No,” he replies in English, “we’re almost ready.”

  “You made all this?” I ask. I’ve never seen my dawdy enter the kitchen unless he knows there is something in there for him to eat.

  Judah smiles. “Yes, I can make breakfast. I can’t bake any desserts except shoofly pie, but I’ve got fleesch and grummbeere down pat.” He mounts the final step and stands there, towering over me. I look at him in the darkness wafting up from the cellar floor, and although his shirt and suspenders are splattered with lard and there is a pungent bowl of koppche cheese in his arms, I have never seen him look so masculine. As his golden head leans closer to mine and his lips part, I almost wish that I could say yes to marriage with Judah King as easily as my sister had said yes to his brother, Tobias. I wish that I could go back and make my choices again. But different choices would mean this accidental child would not be in my arms, and I would not trade him for ten lifetimes of marital ease.

  Turning my head, I break the spell that had cast itself over both of us. I am thankful for the darkness, as my cheeks are ablaze with the embarrassment of wanting. Judah walks around me without a word and enters the kitchen. I hear him whistle as he makes final preparations for the meal. This unusual sound causes Eli to stir and his blue eyes to open. Extending a fist, he waves it back and forth as if in time to the tune, then his eyes drift shut even as a smile remains on his face.

  Despite all the uncertainty that I am facing, as I stand in the darkness waiting for the heat in my cheeks to subside, I am surprised to find that there is also a smile on mine.

  AMOS

  It is almost two o’clock before Tobias sees the huge truck pull up in the hospital’s circular parking lot and deposit Rachel and Eli in front of the double doors. Glancing over at his wife to reassure himself that she is sleeping, Tobias strides down the corridor, cuts a right, and punches the button for the elevator. When the doors slide open, he steps inside and barks, “One!”

  The Englischer nurse gives the Mennonite man with the fearsome disposition a puzzled once-over and presses the button for the first floor. With his muscular arms crossed and bearded jaw throbbing, Tobias descends the two floors and steps up to the door before it has even opened with a mechanical ding. He marches through the lobby, almost colliding with Rachel and Eli as she hurries around the corner.

  “Excuse me,” she says, before glancing up and seeing that it is him. As if a magic veil draws itself over her face, her apologetic smile is
replaced with a scowl.

  Rachel moves to sidestep Tobias, but he grabs the arm not holding Eli and drags her down the hall. “You need to leave,” he says. “Tonight.”

  “I already have left. Your sisters and mother made sure of that.”

  “No. I don’t mean you need to leave our house. I mean you need to leave Copper Creek.”

  Rachel looks up with confusion and the first glimmer of fear. Her voice betrays none of this as she says, “Bishop or not, you have no power to excommunicate me.”

  “No, I don’t. But I will do whatever it takes to protect Leah, and if you love her as much as you claim, you will try to protect her as well.”

  “Leah? What does she have to do with this?”

  “Everything. She’s upstairs in that hospital bed because she’s worried herself to death over you, and I’m sick of it.” After a pause, he says, “If you haven’t left the community by this evening, I swear I’ll tell Leah the truth.”

  “But that would kill her faster than worrying over me ever would!”

  “Exactly. Is that a chance you’re willing to take?”

  Rachel hangs her head. “No, it’s not. You know it’s not.” Looking up at him, she holds Eli against her chest and narrows her eyes. “You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?”

  Tobias growls, “I thought somebody should.”

  4

  Rachel

  Pulling the hospital’s pay phone closer to my mouth, I whisper into the receiver as if the baby in my arms can understand my words. “I need to be picked up. Something’s happened.”

  “To your sister?” Ida Mae asks.

  “No, to me.”

  “You sick?”

  “I’m fine. I just need you to come.”

  “It’ll probably take half an hour ’fore I can get back. You and Eli be all right ’til then?”

  I nod before realizing that Ida Mae can’t see me. I have only talked on the phone a handful of times and haven’t grown accustomed to the sightless communication. “Yes. We’ll be waiting at the entrance.”

  Returning the phone to its hook, I gather the leftover coins that clink into the slot and slip them into the front pocket of my black purse. I take two steps toward the bench before my legs grow too weak to support me. Panic pierces through the haze of my thoughts like the pale November sunbeams slice through the clouds above my head: Where will I go? What will I do? More than that, with my eighth-grade education, how am I ever supposed to provide for my son? Sure, thanks to Judah King I can read, write, and speak English better than my Mennonite peers, yet these days every decent-paying job involves computers, which I have seen only from a distance. And although my accounting skills probably rate lower than those of an Englischer eight-year-old, I still know I cannot afford to keep a roof over Eli’s and my head and food in our bellies on what I’d make doing reflexology alone.

  As my stomach heaves, I stumble over to the concrete bench so I don’t fall to the ground. Eli pays no attention to my erratic movements despite the way they cause his head to wobble against my chest. Sitting down, I lay my child on my lap and fold my trembling body over his. Will you ever know your cousin Jonathan? I wonder, breathing in Eli’s calming smell of baby powder and newborn skin. Will you ever know your aunt?

  These questions might never have answers, but unless I want Tobias revealing my past, that is something I am going to have to live with. Taking a deep breath, I sit up and wipe my eyes. Eli looks at me with an expression too serious for his age. “Oh, little one,” I whisper, “what has this world got in store for you?”

  A cloud scuttles across the sun, blotting out the light that had been shining down on Eli’s face, casting him into premature darkness. I pick him up and kiss his forehead as if sealing it with life.

  “Nothing’s taking you away from me,” I whisper into his ear before pulling him close. “Nothing. You have nothing to fear. Mammi will see to that.”

  Eli is concerned about neither my fear nor my promise, but I keep holding him until the foreseeing shadow has passed, and we are bathed in sunlight once again. I cannot fathom how I will keep my promise to this child, but I know to the maternal core of my being that I will find a way.

  Fifteen minutes later, when Ida Mae’s truck swoops into the parking lot and pulls up at the hospital’s entrance, I rise from the bench with Eli in my arms and look up at the third floor. The shades have been pulled across every window except one. I stare up at that window and see Tobias King staring down. As I walk toward Ida Mae’s truck, Tobias’s face wears an expression of triumph so pronounced that my blood is on fire. Opening the door, I strap Eli into Ida Mae’s car seat, which swallows his tiny frame.

  “What’re you doing?” Ida Mae asks as I step back down.

  I say, “Just hold on.”

  Reaching up with both hands, I rip bobby pins from my kapp, and they begin dropping at my feet with the sound of metallic rain. Yanking out the last two pins, I jerk the kapp off my head and clamber up into the truck. Ida Mae gives me a confused look, but still shifts into drive and guns the truck’s engine without a word. As we pull out of the parking lot, I turn and look up at that hospital window to ensure that Tobias is still watching me. I then release that white prayer kapp out into the wind. At first it glides through the sky like a dove, but by the time we’ve pulled onto the highway, I watch the filmy netting plummet to the earth, where it will be trampled into the ground until the purity it represents is completely unrecognizable.

  The ticking of the truck blinker snaps me out of my numbness as Ida Mae prepares to turn up Copper Creek Mountain. Pointing out the window, I say in my mother tongue, “We’re not allowed up there.”

  My driver pulls onto the side of the road and switches off the radio. “What happened?” she asks in rusty Pennsylvania Dutch. “Why’d you remove your kapp?”

  Astonished, I turn and look at Ida Mae, who must have more of a Plain background than she lets on. Shifting to English, I say, “Eli and I’ve been kicked out of the community by Tobias King.”

  Ida Mae’s calloused hands clench the steering wheel until her knuckles turn white. “That man!” she spits. “He wouldn’t know kindness if it bit him in the butt!”

  Despite my distress, I cannot help but smile at Ida Mae’s audacity in saying what I have been thinking for the past two years. “You know Tobias?” I ask.

  “Know him?” she crows. “I’d say I know him. He was my farrier for years ’til the day I come early and saw him grab my mare by her nostrils and smack her across the muzzle to stop her from leaning on him. I wouldn’t let Tobias touch my horses after that. Only worked with Judah.”

  “Judah’s very different from his brother.”

  Ida Mae sniffs. “’Bout as different as Cain and Abel. I can’t believe they even share the same blood.”

  I would usually smile at such a unique turn of phrase, but as I look out the window, I find instead that I want to cry.

  Ida Mae touches my knee. “Where should I take ya?”

  “I don’t know,” I whisper.

  “Welp, I’ve already given you a job, ain’t I?”

  “Yes, but—”

  Ida Mae holds up her hand. “Now, no buts. A deal’s a deal.” She cranks the engine and pulls the truck out onto the highway, back in the direction of the hospital.

  “Where’re we going?” I ask.

  “Blackbrier. You’re coming home with me.”

  When I look over in alarm, she punches the brake without checking her mirrors. “Or you want me to just drop you off right here, and you can find your way up Copper Creek Mountain by yourself?”

  “No, no,” I say, not wanting to lose my job or a free place to sleep. “Going home with you will be fine. At least—at least for tonight. Eli can get fussy, though. You sure you’re okay with that?”

  Ida Mae nods and turns up the radio. “Say so. Can’t hear nothing since I snore like a freight train anyway.”

  AMOS

  As the fever ravaging Le
ah’s body increases, she no longer remembers that her twin has been removed from her and Tobias’s home. Leah no longer remembers that Tobias has convinced her that this is a good thing since Rachel will now be out of sin’s—and Judah King’s—way. All Leah’s crazed mind understands is that her twin is not beside her sickbed. The fever seems to spike in direct proportion to the urgency of Leah’s cries.

  Tobias attempts to silence his wife by spooning more ice into her parched mouth. Leah swats the spoon away so that the chips spray across the tile floor and turn into puddles the size of melted snowflakes. Dropping the plastic spoon into the Styrofoam cup, Tobias leans his head back against the hospital chair and stares out at the bruised sky. In this moment of desperation, he considers finding Rachel and asking her to forgive his impulsive demand. He even considers asking her to return to his home and to his ailing wife’s side. But the truth is, Tobias was not being impulsive when he asked Rachel to leave Copper Creek. Ever since Rachel’s sin began to show, Tobias knew she would have to leave, but he also knew he would have to bide his time until his wife could not interfere with her twin’s removal from the sanctuary of their godly home.

  Around seven, when the night nurses have taken Leah’s vitals and the orderlies have cleared her untouched food away, her fevered question changes. Instead of asking for her sister with every toss and turn, she simply says, “Mudder.”

  My firstborn sighs upon hearing this, takes his wife’s hand, and presses her hot fingers to his cool lips. He knows what he has to do.

  Forty-five minutes later, Gerald Martin pulls up in front of the hospital’s double doors in his once-silver van, now spray-painted black. Tobias climbs into the passenger’s seat.

  “Where to?” Gerald asks.