The Outcast

by Jolina Petersheim

  If Leah were in her right state of mind, she would never drink this elixir of healing herbs. Helen knows this; that is why she must work fast. Leaning over the hospital bed, Helen whispers, “Open your mouth, Dochder.”

  Leah, always complaisant about everything except what Tobias has trained her to avoid, lowers her bottom lip and even smiles at the sound of her mother’s purposefully soothing voice.

  “That’s right, my meedel,” Helen says, tipping the bottle’s contents into her mouth and then rubbing Leah’s throat, forcing her to swallow.

  Leah’s eyes open. She grimaces at the bitter taste ballooning inside her mouth, and her bleary gaze comes to rest on the woman who is putting the cap back on the vial.

  “Mammi?” she rasps. “That you?”

  “Yes, meedel.” Tears deepen the timbre of Helen’s voice. “I’m here.”

  “What did you give me? What’s in the bottle?”

  “Just a blend of healing herbs. . . . Norman Troyer made it for you.”

  “You know Tobias doesn’t like Norman.”

  “It doesn’t matter who Tobias likes or who he doesn’t. What matters is getting you well.”

  Leah looks down and plucks at her IV. “Why do you and Rachel despise my husband?”

  Sighing, Helen sits on the edge of the bed and takes her daughter’s feet in her lap. “I guess the reason I get so angry with Tobias is because . . . well, because I feel responsible for your union. That letter—”

  Leah holds up the hand trailing the IV and shakes her head. “Please don’t bring up that letter again. What’s done is done. I’ve said my vows, and I will live by them until I die.”

  Staring down at the bed to hide her fear, Helen rubs and rubs her daughter’s feet as if she can cure Leah’s ailments by her determination alone.

  6

  Rachel

  Today is my first day working at Ida Mae’s Amish Country Store. Her only stipulations are that Eli and I dress as Amish as possible and that I speak to him in Pennsylvania Dutch whenever Englischer customers enter the store. I told her that dressing Amish is difficult, since all my Mennonite cape dresses are printed with tiny flower patterns, whereas Amish dresses are cut from plain cloth. Ida Mae just waved her hand and said, “Honey, nobody round here’s gonna know the difference.”

  I just nodded and smiled, but I’m not as gullible as Ida Mae must think. I know she’s hired me more for decorative purposes than for reflexology, though I am not about to complain. McDonald’s wouldn’t see my Plain heritage as a benefit, nor would they allow me to flip burgers with one hand and juggle my son with the other. Plus, $8.50 an hour just to sit around and mutter nonsense at Eli, whom Ida Mae placed in some Amish doll clothes and matching straw hat so he’d look “more authentic,” is not that bad. I have no need for pride, and if I raise Eli up the way I intend, neither will my son. As far as I have seen, pride’s never gotten the people of Copper Creek very far.

  Ida Mae calls out, “Somebody’s comin’!” and reaches to turn up the CD player lilting instrumental hymns. Smoothing the green gingham apron over her bust, she sits up higher on the stool and runs fingers through her mop. Although Ida Mae has left the “Amish” garb up to me, whenever she’s in the store, she trades her tight Wranglers for an ankle-length skirt whose stretchy material suctions to her backside. Her muddied boots she trades for clogs, and her gray army jacket for a jewel-toned sweater over a red turtleneck.

  “You ain’t the only one who can play dress-up,” she snapped when she caught me giving her outfit a double take over breakfast. “Tourists don’t wanna come in my store and see an ol’ biddy behind the counter. They wanna see their grossmammi, so that’s what I give ’em. I fawn over their young’uns. I hand ’em peppermint sticks and slivers of fudge in wax paper. I let ’em set in little tables and color in the Amish books I get from Lehman’s. I’m telling ya, it makes the parents come back. Not just for my baked goods and pickled beet eggs, neither, but ’cause coming to Ida Mae’s Amish Country Store is an ex-peri-ence.”

  Looking at my new employer now, smiling from ear to ear and calling out to the customer, “Velcome! Let me know if ve can help vith anything!” I have to agree.

  The bleach-blonde woman wearing dark sunglasses on a sunless day, on the other hand, does not see the appeal. “Are these baked goods fresh?” she asks, poking the bread with one manicured nail.

  “Fresh this morning,” Ida Mae says, even though I know she tugged them out of the freezer last night.

  Pushing her sunglasses on top of her head, the woman squints at the ingredients on the baked goods label. “Shortening!” she exclaims. “But I thought Om-mish people cook organically!”

  “Look at it like this,” Ida Mae says with a stiff smile. “Everything’s organic one way or another, even shortening.”

  “I see,” the woman says, then flounces toward the door in her designer heels and lets it slam behind her.

  Ida Mae looks out the window as the woman whips around the store in her champagne SUV. “I’m telling ya, Rachel-girl,” she sighs, “this organic kick’s really gonna do us in.”

  “Then why don’t you tell Hostetler’s to bake organically? Couldn’t they just charge a little extra to cover the ingredients?”

  Ida Mae rolls her eyes. “I’ve tried telling them that, but they’ve been using the same recipes since the days of Menno Simons. They ain’t ’bout to change their ways now.”

  “Why don’t we do the baking? We’d just need a few really good mixers and ovens. I’ve been baking since I was a little girl. I know how it’s done.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she says. “But I know one thing you ain’t gonna bake.”

  “What’s that?”

  Ida Mae slaps my back as a Frito-Lay truck pulls into the parking lot. “Cinnamon rolls!”

  When the broad-shouldered trucker in the tan Carhartt jacket and steel-toe boots enters the store, the bell above the door is the only thing heralding his arrival. I find this strange, since Ida Mae practically fell off her stool trying to make the last customer feel “velcome.”

  “How are you, Miz Speck?” the man asks, unmoved by her stony silence.

  She takes out a ledger from beneath the table. Flipping it open, she begins entering debits with a red ballpoint and credits with a black one.

  “Did that honey ever come in?”

  Ida Mae points to the shelf without looking up.

  “Is it local? I can only do local honey or it won’t help my allergies.”

  Scribbling out an entry in the ledger, Ida Mae snaps, “Read the label.”

  The man lumbers over and takes out a pair of glasses from his jacket pocket. Putting them on, he picks up the honey jar and scans the bottom. “Sure enough,” he says. “Bottled in Blackbrier, Tennessee.”

  “So, you ready to check out?” Ida Mae asks like we’re about to close rather than just having opened.

  The man shakes his head, his eyes crinkling up behind his glasses. “You sure are in a good mood,” he says. “I bet it’s that pretty sweater you’re wearing. Puts some color in your cheeks.”

  “My cheeks and their color are none of your business.”

  I would be cowering beneath the baked goods shelf if Ida Mae said these things to me and in such a threatening tone, but this man just says, “Oh, but I wish they were my business.”

  Ida Mae slaps the ledger closed and glares up at him. “If you don’t come over here and pay for that honey right this minute,” she says from between clenched teeth, “I’m gonna get my new girl here to throw you right outta the store.”

  Alarmed, I look at the man, but he just glances at me and smiles. “Why, that baby she’s holding’s bigger than her. She couldn’t throw out a brute like me.”

  “You might be surprised,” Ida Mae says. “She was corn fed.”

  Ambling up to the counter with his right hand tucked in the pocket of his jeans and the other holding the honey, the man sets the jar on the countertop and I glimpse a wedding ban
d.

  “Can I writcha a check?” he asks.

  Ida Mae nods. “Long as it ain’t rubber.”

  Reaching in the basket beside the cash register, the man grabs a peach fried pie and sets it next to the honey. “I’ll take that, too,” he says.

  Ida Mae says, “No, you won’t. Those things will give ya a heart attack.”

  The man shrugs. “Already had two.”

  “Like I don’t know it . . . you out picking ginseng seven miles from home.”

  “And you keeping me in bed for a day rather than taking me to the hospital. Shoulda known you were trying to get rid of me then.”

  My eyes dart between Ida Mae and this man as I try to understand the dynamics of their relationship. Maybe he’s her brother? But that doesn’t make sense because the look in the man’s eyes isn’t the least bit brotherly. No wonder Ida Mae is being so rude to him. She’s trying to deflect the attentions of a married man.

  He finishes signing his name with Ida Mae’s black ballpoint and plinks the pen into the empty coffee mug next to the register. Turning the check over, Ida Mae stamps it with the store’s name and address and slips it into the bottom drawer of the cash register.

  “You want your receipt?” she asks, tearing it off and holding it up.

  The man shakes his head. “I never doubted you were honest.”

  Ida Mae flips open the ledger again like she can’t wait for him to leave. Not until he has left (with his paper sack of honey minus the peach fried pie) does Ida Mae hit N/S on the cash register.

  Pulling out his check, she inspects it under the fluorescent lighting as if it’s a counterfeit. “Ugh, that man. I can never read his writing. You mind?” she asks.

  I nod and take the check. His cursive letters and numbers are equally difficult to read, but after a moment of compare and contrast, they become clear. “Two hundred and fifty dollars seems pretty expensive for honey,” I say. “Even if it is local.”

  “That scoundrel keeps doing this,” Ida Mae says. “Paying for a little something, then giving me a whole bunch of extra money.”

  I glance down at the check again, reading the name in the top left corner: Russell Speck, 317 Red Herring Road, Blackbrier, Tennessee 37842.

  Speck, Speck. Somewhere I’ve heard that last name before; then I realize and look over at Ida Mae in confusion. “Russell Speck? Is he your brother?”

  Snatching the check from my fingers, she rips it in two, and then in four. “No,” she says. “My husband. My second husband. And my first ex-husband. The other one, we didn’t divorce. He died.”

  “How?” I ask.

  She drops the check pieces into the trash can beneath the counter and wipes her hand off on her apron as if it is dirty. “That Russell Speck,” she says, “my second husband, my first ex-husband?”

  I nod.

  “Welp, he killed him. He killed my first husband.”

  The words are out before I can think of how accusing they will sound: “Then why did you marry him?”

  Ida Mae uncaps her red and black ballpoints and resumes entering debits and credits in the ledger. “It’s a long story,” she says. “And honestly, Rachel-girl, I’m in no mood to tell it.”

  AMOS

  The hospital releases Leah the day after her mother arrived in Tennessee. If Tobias suspects that something has been used to accelerate his wife’s recovery, he keeps it to himself, for he is just happy to have her home. Leah is not so grateful. In the hospital, it had been easy to distance herself from the fact that her sister was truly gone. Tobias had even planned it that way. He had waited until his wife’s mind was softened by medication to whisper into her ear that Rachel had not only left their home, but Copper Creek as well.

  Now, unmitigated by sleep aids, the reality of Leah’s twin’s departure comes rushing in, and with it, a pain of separation so pronounced it is as if Rachel and Leah were Siamese twins severed without their consent.

  Why’d she leave without saying good-bye? Leah wonders, walking through Rachel’s room and seeing remnants of hers still there—a baby bootie, a box of nursing pads, a sheaf of bobby pins. Comforting herself with the fact that perhaps Rachel had come to the hospital to say good-bye but Leah had been too addled to respond, she turns to exit the room and jumps when she sees her mother standing in the doorway.

  “Did you know Judah’s left too?” Helen asks.

  “No. When?”

  “Two mornings ago. He hired a driver and no one knows where he’s gone.”

  “You think he’s with Rachel?”

  Helen folds her arms. “It’s possible, but I don’t think she’d do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “It makes sense. It’s what the community expects of her. And of him. Rachel often refuses to do things when they’re expected of her.”

  Leah picks up the baby bootie Rachel left behind. Slipping two fingers into the delicate yellow and white sock, she sighs. “Jah, she does.” After a moment, she adds, “How do you think we can find her?”

  “The drivers.” Helen says this without hesitation, letting Leah know that she has thought this through already. “We just need to find out who drove Rachel that day, maybe even who drove Judah, too.”

  “Gerald Martin?”

  Helen shakes her head. “No, I already asked. It wasn’t him. He said he’d been asked not to help Rachel.”

  “What?” Leah drops the baby bootie to the dresser and whirls around, incensed. “Who would do that to a young mother?”

  Seconds pass. Helen stares at her daughter with blue eyes conveying a message Leah cannot decode. “Your husband,” she finally says. “Your husband paid Gerald Martin not to drive Rachel around.”

  When Tobias climbs into bed beside his wife, eager to make up for the conjugal separation her hospital stay had required, he finds Leah’s body as rigid as a board and her waterfall of hair—a reservoir formulated for his pleasure alone—still twisted into its bun. My son does not understand this, but lately there have been a lot of things about Leah and her family that he has not understood. Trying to remain patient, he puts an arm around Leah’s frail shoulders and attempts to turn her body toward his. She remains planted on her side.

  Tobias gives up and flips onto his back. “What’s wrong?” he says, failing to keep the irritation from his voice. “Are you in pain?”

  Leah shakes her head but does not say a word. Tobias sighs and glares up at the ceiling, thinking she is just being emotional again. But if he could see how her eyes glitter in the moonlight flickering through the window, he would know the emotion she is feeling is not sorrow, but the first stirrings of anger. Not anger toward her husband, exactly, but anger toward the irreparable situation in which she has placed herself. For the first time Leah allows herself to imagine what her life would be like if she had never responded to my son’s urgent request for a wife to mother his children, if she had stayed in that yellow house on Hilltop Road where her and her sister’s lives revolved completely around each other.

  There is no question that Rachel would have married one of the boys vying for her attention and left Leah alone, in the same way that Leah, shockingly enough for everyone in the Muddy Pond Community, had left her. But at least Leah could have gone and stayed with Rachel and her new husband, who would’ve never forced his sister-in-law out into the street. At least Leah’s and Rachel’s days could have been lived together, even if at night Rachel went off to her marriage bed. Now, Rachel is gone—taking her child and irrepressible spirit with her. Even if Helen somehow makes contact with Rachel through her driver, Leah knows that Tobias won’t allow her to visit Rachel again. He might not even allow them to speak ever again. This, more than anything, is the reason Leah remains on her side, facing the window rather than her husband. A year and a half ago, if she could have known that by choosing Tobias she would be choosing to abandon her twin, she would have never done it. She would’ve rather lived out her days in spinsterhood than marry a man who would sever the bond between two people
so intertwined it was hard not to see them as one, for with Rachel’s departure, Leah understands that it is easier to leave than to be left behind.

  This realization crashes over Leah like a wave. With it comes an undertow of tears. At first they trickle down her face without effort or sound, but as their intensity increases, Leah’s body begins to convulse with sobs, and she loses both her rigid back and her resolve.

  Tobias, sensing her will’s breakdown, reaches over and turns his wife to face him. Her small body is as malleable as a child’s, and Leah curls up against his warm chest not because she wants her husband’s comfort, but because she cannot stand to be alone on such a cold and lonely night. Unaware of any of these emotions—because he will not ask and does not want the answer—Tobias kisses the brine of his wife’s tear-streaked face, and then her mouth. With every gesture of affection, the decibel of Leah’s wails increases until Tobias stops and grips her by the shoulders.

  “Stop it! Just stop, Leah!” he barks, his lips curled back as he shakes her. “She’s gone! Rachel’s gone! You must get used to this!”

  Leah nods and turns to bury her head in the pillow.

  Hitting the headboard behind him with the flat of his hand, Tobias rolls onto his side and looks toward their bedroom door. Leah flips onto her side and faces the wall.

  Hours pass with Leah biting her sobs into the feather pillow, but Tobias has hardened his heart against her unrelenting emotions and forces himself not to hear.

  Rachel

  Ida Mae has not been her talkative, bossy self since Russell Speck was here a couple of days ago, and the more I ponder our conversation, the less I understand it. Although Ida Mae’s personality is a rare one, I still cannot imagine that she would marry the man who killed her spouse. I know from one glimpse into her murky brown eyes that Ida Mae must’ve loved deeply for them to reflect such loss. But is that loss over the husband who was killed or over the second marriage that ended just as devastatingly as the first?