The Outcast

by Jolina Petersheim

  But it was, for as soon as it passes, his rasping coughs return to wheezes and he’s breathing again.

  I then start crying so hard that Eli does too. I press him against my shoulder and rub and rub his back, which feels so bony and vulnerable after he had to put up such a fight.

  Ida Mae leans down to massage my shoulders with tough old hands, and if the situation weren’t so serious, I would smile at the image the three of us must make. “You did real good, Rachel-girl. Your baby boy’s gonna be just fine. Now y’all both just need some sleep.”

  “Thanks,” I murmur in between sobs.

  She pats my back. “Think nothing of it. Any woman with a momma heart woulda done the same.”

  8

  AMOS

  Leah takes a seat at the long pine disch that had been a wedding gift from Tobias’s first wife’s parents and writes by the light of that oil lamp whose wick still needs trimmed. Last week, she wrote about the steady goings-on in their lives: what quilt patterns the women were making for the Fairview auction in the spring (wedding ring, spinning star, log cabin, compass, and postage stamp); how business in Copper Creek had picked up since Hostetler’s Bakery put an ad in the Bargain Hunter; that Matthew had lost his first tooth to his older brother, Reuben, who looped a piece of string around it and tied the string to the door, which he then slammed with glee. Soon, though, Leah found that this piffle was not enough. The standard opening, “Greetings sent to you on the wings of love,” does not suffice for what is truly going on inside her heart, which has nothing to do with quilts, jams, or business dealings in Copper Creek. My daughter-in-law wants to reveal how she contemplated, just for an hour, leaving my son so she could rejoin her sister. She wishes she could tell Rachel that her husband forced her to choose, and although she knew it was wrong in the eyes of both God and man, she had to choose her twin. Their bond is impenetrable by distance or even death, and she cannot imagine a life apart from her. But over a month has passed, and she’s only now found the courage to commit this treasonous thought to paper.

  Long after the pages blur in the flickering light, Leah sets down the pen and folds up the letter. She slips it into one of the business envelopes left over from Tobias’s days as the Copper Creek blacksmith and seals it with a quick swipe of her tongue. Leah dare not write Rachel’s address on the front in case one of the children or her husband stumbles upon the letter. Instead, she writes Geld and hopes the envelope’s label will discourage any interest from her children and husband.

  Tonight, one week since her clandestine letter-writing began, Leah decides that she cannot risk having these letters scattered about until her and Rachel’s paths somehow cross. So she bundles them up with baling twine, spools a shawl around her shoulders, and carries them—barefoot in the December cold—out beneath a navy sky thickened with stars. At first, Leah has no idea where to put the letters. She contemplates the barn, but fears that mice will get to the pages before she can devise a way to get them to Rachel. Then she remembers the birdhouse. It is for the purple martins—a white, multitiered structure that Tobias built far more intricately than their own dwelling. The only problem with the construction was that the children had wanted to peer down inside the birdhouse to see if any eggs were about to hatch. Accommodating only when it comes to his dead wife’s offspring, Tobias agreed. Instead of suspending the birdhouse on a standard twenty-foot pole, he kept it close to the ground, and he put a hinge on the roof so it could flip up to reveal the purple martin hatchlings. But in the past twelve seasons, not one purple martin has occupied the dwelling because it is so vulnerable to predators—children and cats alike. The beautiful birdhouse has just hunkered down beneath the sycamore, wilting in the elements.

  Leah remembers all of this and, smiling, flits down the porch steps and across the yard. Lifting up the roof to the purple martin house like a benevolent giant, she places the bundled letters inside. She takes a step back and peers at the birdhouse from every angle, making sure the letters cannot be seen through the numerous outside holes. Reassured that they cannot, she scampers back to the farmhouse and into her marriage bed as quickly as she had left it, eager for Ida Mae Speck’s next visit to Copper Creek, when Leah can retrieve the letters explaining her plans to her sister.

  Ida Mae’s next visit to Copper Creek happens sooner than Leah could have anticipated. With Christmas just around the corner, Ida Mae has numerous orders for “Amish” wares: dollhouses and miniature furniture to fill them; quilted tea cozies, hot pads, and pillowcases; crocheted baby sweaters and bonnets in every spectrum of the pastel rainbow. Englischer tourists are even willing to pay twice as much for candles that supposedly last longer when made by Amish hands. To Rachel’s chagrin, Ida Mae forces her to ride along to Copper Creek by saying that she needs help loading the truck with these orders. But Rachel knows better. Living with Ida Mae for a month and a half has allowed Rachel to see through her employer’s many well-intentioned guises, and this is the worst of them all.

  Ida Mae does not want Rachel running from her problems as she herself did twenty years ago, so she gives Rachel an ultimatum: face them head-on or lose her job. Of course, Ida Mae might have been kidding when she threatened this, but Rachel does not want to take the chance. As soon as Rachel transformed the little back room of the store into her reflexology office, word spread throughout Blackbrier about the soft-spoken Amish girl (Ida Mae was right: Englischers don’t know the difference between Mennonites and Amish) who massages people’s feet for twenty-five dollars an hour. Rachel’s meager income tripled within the month. She is not about to let such a financial opportunity slip through her grasp, even with Ida Mae receiving 30 percent of her earnings, for Rachel knows another one might not present itself.

  Job security is the only reason she is now riding along with Ida Mae, and it’s easy to see that Rachel is not enjoying the trip. During the past weeks, Rachel has forced herself to forget everything about Copper Creek: the events leading up to her banishment; the loss of her sister who lives only an hour away; how revolted Tobias’s face was when—on the day of my funeral—he reached out a welcoming hand, and then realized who he had extended it to; every scene between herself and Judah. Rachel tries to remember why she sent him away, knowing if he were here, she would be embracing a future with him rather than sifting through the past to find out where she went so wrong.

  As the diesel truck swerves off the highway and begins switchbacking up the craggy mountainside, every memory comes rushing back, and with them, a pain of regret that causes tears to nip at Rachel’s eyes. The emotional change within the cab is like snow tumbling through a sunroof in the middle of July. But Ida Mae says nothing, just turns down the radio and covers Eli’s legs with a blanket when he kicks it from his car seat onto the floor.

  “We’re stopping by Hostetler’s first,” Ida Mae says once the community’s buildings come into view.

  Rachel nods but doesn’t say anything, as she fears she will be sick. It makes no sense how she could have lived in Copper Creek for so long, and had Tobias not forced her to leave that fall day they had their confrontation in the hospital, she would still be living in the very place where she had conceived a lifetime of guilt and one innocent child. If everything weren’t so complex, Rachel could almost envision walking up to the new Bishop King and thanking him for blackmailing her into leaving Copper Creek. This would never happen, of course, but the image still helps Rachel breathe easier as Ida Mae pulls the truck up outside the bakery and shifts into park.

  “You staying?” Ida Mae asks, turning off the ignition.

  Rachel shakes her head and somehow manages a smile. “No, I’ll go inside. It’ll be nice to see everyone again.”

  Nodding, Ida Mae says, “That’s my girl,” and reaches over to pat Rachel’s knee. Ida Mae then hops out of the cab, slides two long containers from the covered truck bed, and swaggers up to the bakery door.

  Cinching the blanket extra tight around her son so the cold air won’t induce another coug
hing spell like the ones he’s been battling on and off for weeks, Rachel steps out of the cab and cradles him against her bosom, staring at the line of quaint Copper Creek stores. It is amazing what comfort such a tiny child can bring. Rachel understands that without this child, her soul would have been shattered by the betrayal she’d so callously dealt, even as her life beneath her sister’s roof appeared the same as it had before. She is glad her facade wasn’t allowed to continue; she is glad her sin was truly found out. Without it having bloomed inside her for the entire community to see, she would be hiding it to this very day—deep within the Pandora’s box of her chest—the same as Eli’s father is doing.

  Rachel

  I hoped the Hostetlers would treat me with the casual respect of a customer, but they stare right through Eli and me as if we are transparent. Ida Mae is too busy stacking pound and hummingbird cakes into plastic containers to notice their slight, and I am thankful. The two things I have learned about my employer over the past month and a half are that she is protective of those she loves and that she has no qualms about speaking her mind.

  “There’s seventy here,” Ida Mae says, snapping the lids shut and wiping her brow. “I ordered eighty. Didn’t you get my fax?”

  Lemuel nods, but his wife, Elvina, comes bustling around the counter and peers in at Ida Mae’s containers, which are already condensing with steam from the hot baked goods. I can see Elvina’s miserly mouth working as she counts everything again.

  “What?” Ida Mae puts hands on her hips. “You think I’m gonna lie?”

  I face the row of angel food cakes—plain, strawberry, lemon, and chocolate chip—to keep my smile from giving my amusement away. I had lived in Copper Creek for only a few weeks when I understood that no one dares cross Elvina Hostetler, not even her husband, who’s watching this interaction with an apologetic expression on his ancient face.

  From the corner of my eye, I watch Elvina fold her arms. Their fleshiness strains against the material of her sleeves. “I just counted up seventy-three,” she says, one eyebrow raised.

  “So?” Ida Mae retorts. “That still ain’t eighty.”

  “Perhaps the others are in the back,” Lemuel says.

  Elvina rolls her eyes. “Those are for the tea shoppe, Lemuel.”

  “We could make some more before Claudette comes this afternoon.”

  “We’ll do no such thing.” Wheeling back toward Ida Mae, Elvina says, “This is what happens when you don’t send us the fax the night before.”

  “No,” Ida Mae says, “this is what happens when you run your business like a circus show.”

  Elvina Hostetler’s nostrils flare; her mouth tightens into a hard little knot. “If you want your seven other pound cakes, you can wait. Not the tea shoppe.”

  “If you want to keep my business, you’d better learn how to treat your customers.”

  With this, Ida Mae jerks up the two plastic containers bowing beneath the weight of fifty pound cakes and twenty-three hummingbird and starts heading toward the door. “Wait!” I call. “Let me put Eli in the truck, and I’ll help you!”

  But Ida Mae is so infuriated that her burden seems to weigh nothing. Holding the awkward tubs at chest height, she stalks down the cement handicap ramp, across the gravel, and tosses the containers in the back of the truck before I can even get out of the store.

  Over the roar of the truck engine, Ida Mae yells, “You coming?”

  I scramble into the passenger’s side. Eli isn’t even strapped in when Ida Mae shifts into reverse and guns it out of the bakery. “That woman makes me so mad, I could spit!” she fumes.

  “Have you two always been at each other like this?”

  “Me and Elvina?” Ida Mae asks.

  I nod.

  “Yeah. She’s jealous.”

  “Of you? Why?”

  Pinning her eyes on me, Ida Mae says, “Believe it or not, Rachel-girl, back when I was skinny as a whip like you, I had my share of admirers.” She pulls into Mast’s Cannery and shuts off the truck. “I guess Elvina thinks that since I’m a divorced woman, I’m after anything in suspenders . . . including her husband.”

  “Lemuel?” I ask.

  Ida Mae pockets the keys. “I know,” she answers, shuddering. “What makes her think I’d want a piece of that?”

  My heartbeat reverberating in my ears, I take Eli from his car seat and carry him up the tree-lined pathway to Verna King’s house. I have no idea why six horses and buggies are waiting in front of the barn, so I am grateful when Ida Mae opens the storm door and steps inside first. Her unique appearance and personality are a diversion until I gather my bearings and glance around. At least ten Plain women are circled in front of the kochoffe, the position of their bodies mimicking the unfinished compass quilt draping their laps. One hundred unadorned fingers move deftly over the vibrant fabric they are hemming in with thread as ten mouths, equally unadorned, zigzag so fast over the Pennsylvania Dutch language, it is difficult even for me—a native speaker—to understand.

  Then the casual banter is broken apart by one high-pitched gasp, and I know that I have been spotted. Turning toward the source of the exclamation, I see my sister, whom I yearn to run to and throw my arms around, yet at the sight of all these Copper Creek women, my feet have forgotten how to move. I remain paralyzed by the door as Leah comes across the kitchen with her arms outstretched. I am amazed by the straightness of her spine and the blossoms in her cheeks. I feel a pang, wondering if the reason my sister is now thriving is because I am no longer here.

  “Rachel!” Leah embraces Eli between our bodies. He awakens and tilts his head up to first peer at me and then at my sister. Frightened by our identical appearance, he burrows his head in the cleft of my bosom and begins to cry.

  She laughs at this, and then clasps my shoulders. “How are you?”

  My head swims as I stare into Leah’s warm blue eyes. From her elated expression, you would never guess that I have been removed from Copper Creek, that this child in my arms is proof of my dalliance with sin. No, Leah embraces me like the father in Scripture embraced his prodigal son: without one word of complaint or censure, as if nothing I had done in my past were ever wrong. I wish I was so forgiving of the events that have transpired. But I am not. I am as filled with hatred toward myself as I am filled with hatred toward her husband, Bishop Tobias King, who has forced me away from this one person, other than my son, whom I love more than life. I know Tobias’s reasons for doing so, and I do not question them, but I do question what he must have told Leah for her to act in such a nonchalant manner. I have not returned to Copper Creek after a trip to another Mennonite community; I have not been gone for a few days or a few weeks, but for a month and a half. How can my sister smile at me like this? How can her eyes reflect only joy despite mine being filled with sorrow? Is she glad that I am gone from her life, that her life can now continue on its standard course in a way it never has before?

  “Rachel?” At the sound of her voice, I refocus on my sister’s face, which is erased of its winsome smile. “Rachel, do you need to sit down?”

  When I cannot answer, Leah guides me into a kitchen chair, sits in the one next to it, and takes my hand in hers. I look over at my twin, who is exuding such strength and confidence, and I realize that the two of us have switched places—the comforter being comforted—that with my banishment from Copper Creek, the tables have finally turned.

  An hour later, Ida Mae settles commission accounts and opens new ones for Christmas wares. Verna King uses this diverting activity to speak with me about her younger son, Judah.

  “Have you heard from him?” she asks. The intensity in her eyes contradicts the relaxation of her smile. “Have you heard from Judah?”

  All chatter ceases. Clutching needles and dark spools of thread, the women turn toward me with tilted ears, dogs hungry for the meat of my reply.

  “No,” I say. “Have you?”

  Verna shakes her head. “Ach, no. Judah left a letter saying he was going
to leave; that is all.”

  “Maybe he went to stay with his freindschaft in Lancaster?”

  “I’ve contacted the Kings and the Fishers. They’ve heard nothing.”

  The older woman traces the quilt pattern in her lap, but I can see from her trembling mouth and fingers that Verna King is about to cry.

  Leah stands and passes her sleeping child to me. “Who wants some fastnachts?” she asks, dispelling the tension with the prospect of sweets.

  As my sister takes requests and goes into her mother-in-law’s kitchen to fill them, Ida Mae comes over carrying three large garbage bags stuffed with quilts and a spiral notebook full of commission information balanced on top. “You ready?” she asks. I nod and give Jonathan to his grossmammi.

  Verna leans forward and whispers, “I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable just then.”

  “It’s fine,” I say. “I’m sure you’re not the only one who thought Judah was with me.”

  To my surprise, Verna reaches out and clasps my wrist. “If you hear from him,” she says, “please . . . let me know.”

  I tell her I will. But I don’t tell her that after the way Judah and I parted, I have a feeling she has a far better chance of hearing from him than I.

  “You’re leaving?” My sister’s panicked voice echoes across the lawn. “But I haven’t gotten to . . . to give you the letter!”

  “Mail it to me or something, Leah,” I call, without turning around. “I’ve got to go. I don’t belong here. Not anymore.”

  “That can change.”

  I wait until Ida Mae has climbed inside the truck cab before shifting Eli to my hip and looking back. “I saw how the women in there looked at me. How Elvina and Lemuel at the bakery wouldn’t. I don’t think changing this situation is possible.”