The Outcast

by Jolina Petersheim

  “A donor? For bone marrow?” Leah tramples the sodden ground and kneels before her brother-in-law, not even caring about the dirt that is grinding away the flowered pattern of her dress. “Can anyone be a donor?” she whispers. Her mind cannot traverse the conundrum of the medical field, but somehow her spirit knows that everything that has taken place until now—all the heartache, the tears, the emotional pain bringing with it an onslaught of physical repercussions—has happened for a reason.

  Trying to recall what Rachel tearfully revealed to him last night, Judah says, “No, not anyone. It has to be someone whose bone marrow is an exact match for Eli’s.”

  Leah swallows and shifts her right knee that has found a pebble lodged in the earth. “Like a parent?”

  Judah shakes his head, and his sister-in-law finds momentary relief. Perhaps that premonition she had felt had been nothing; perhaps this new turn of medical events will not bring everything into the light that is safer kept in darkness. Even secrets kept from a husband by his wife. For Leah—sweet, naive Leah whom Tobias would never suspect of deception—has secrets of her own.

  “No. A parent wouldn’t be a close-enough match,” Judah says. “The best donors are usually siblings.”

  “Siblings,” Leah breathes, the fear of her words trailing on the wind like smoke.

  Judah’s eyes are so swollen that he cannot see the panic flaring up in hers. “But since Eli doesn’t have any siblings, he’s been put on a waiting list to try to find a match. Now we just have to hope one is found before it’s too late.”

  “You don’t mean that . . . Eli could die?”

  “Rachel didn’t say as much last night, but she wouldn’t be this bad if Eli had hope beyond a transplant.”

  “How long since she’s known?”

  “Rachel?”

  Leah nods.

  “A few weeks.” Judah sighs. “She kept it from us for as long as she could.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “I guess she didn’t see any point in telling anyone, since Eli has no siblings. And Rachel’s had to carry so much on her own, she didn’t think one more burden would make any difference.”

  Leah can hear the accusation threading my son’s innocent words: that she hasn’t been to the hospital since Rachel and Eli have been in there; that she hasn’t helped support her sister’s burden even after Rachel moved down from Pennsylvania to help support the weight of hers. But Judah does not know the whole story; he does not know the secrets that were created beneath Leah and Tobias’s roof. Leah springs to her feet. She marches toward the gate with old leaves clinging to her dirtied dress and determination hardening her spine.

  “Where are you going?”

  But Leah does not stop. Opening the graveyard gate, she lets it slap shut behind her. “I’ve got to get back to the barn. To make a call.”

  “Wait!” Judah cries. “Use my cell phone.”

  Leah freezes before she turns back to face him. She accepts the small flip phone that Judah is holding out. “Do you have Norman Troyer’s number?”

  Nodding, Judah steps so close she can smell his lemon aftershave as he helps her scroll through the programmed names to the one she wants.

  Leah takes a deep breath as she looks at Norman’s office number. “I’m going to need some privacy,” she says.

  Five minutes later, after Leah has confirmed her mounting medical suspicions with the only medical professional she knows besides her mamm, she steps from beneath the pine tree overshadowing Abram Beiler’s grave and squints up at the bleached disk of sun. The juxtaposition of light and darkness has never felt like such a presentiment to Leah before; that soon—perhaps within weeks, perhaps within days—the truth is going to be illuminated for the entire Copper Creek Community to see.

  “Judah,” Leah calls, and then pinches her lips to stop their quivering.

  My son stands from the resting place of his brother’s first wife, Esther, and brushes from his hands the vinelike tendrils that had been crawling up around her gravestone’s simple base, threatening to erase the proof of her short existence until he plucked them all away.

  “Can you take me to the hospital, Judah?” Leah asks before her resolve has a chance to fail. “Can you take me to see my sister?”

  Rachel

  Three weeks have passed since Dr. Sengupta placed my seven-month-old son, Eli Michael Stoltzfus, on the bone marrow donor list. Yet nothing has changed. Even the oncology nurses seem subdued by this endless purgatory of waiting. Red-haired Leslie no longer prattles about her boyfriend, who picks her up on his tandem bicycle with a wire basket in the front. Even Donna files in and out of Eli’s hospital room, smiling her dimpled smile but not meeting my troubled eyes. It is as if they fear my sorrow is catching, but I know they just do not know what to say.

  I don’t know what to say either. I don’t know what words of comfort to give my mamm, Ida Mae, or Judah because I fear that whatever I tell them will only be false hope and lies. All I do know is that every day when I wake up on that pullout bed and watch the sun rise over Nashville, I pray that Dr. Sengupta will come up and tell us that a bone marrow donor match has been found. But then the hours drag by. I flip through one of the hardback classics Judah brought, which I am too tired to read, or I look at the TV, although my eyes cannot focus long enough to watch. And as the city lights flicker on to dispel the gathering darkness, I know that we are one day further from hope of finding a donor and one day closer to the death of my son.

  My eyes are scanning the litany of Faith, Hope, Love . . . Faith, Hope, Love stamping the chapel walls in cursive script when my head sinks down onto my chest, and I find that I am softly snoring without my mind being fully disengaged in sleep. Stirring myself, I drape my body across the upholstered seats. The chapel was deserted when I entered, and I haven’t heard anyone enter since. Perhaps I can take a short nap and then return to Eli’s room before the milk shake I purchased for Ida Mae is completely melted.

  I have no idea how long I have slept when someone shakes my shoulder. Bolting upright, I wipe a hand across my mouth and look up into the smiling face of my twin.

  “Hated to wake you,” Leah says. “You looked peaceful.”

  The fog of slumber clears from my mind, and I find myself again amazed at the nonchalance with which my sister approaches our reunion. I have not seen Leah since that snowy day outside the schoolhouse when I felt such distance between us. But now, here she stands in her flowered cape dress and black bonnet, smiling down at me as if she doesn’t know the turmoil I have endured over the past three and a half months. The turmoil, if it had been up to her, I would have endured alone.

  “Where have you been?”

  “What do you mean?” Leah asks. “I just got here.”

  “No. Where have you been.” I point to the stained-glass window depicting a multiethnic array of children smiling and laughing because their young lives have recently been freed from disease. I point out the words Faith, Hope, Love parading around the room, reminders of all the things the patients and their parents have in short supply. “Where were you when my son was throwing up in his crib? Where were you when his tube slipped from his port and blood gushed down his chest? Where were you when he had such a high fever, I wasn’t sure he’d live through the night?”

  Exhaustion removes my filter, and the condemnation of my words pours out of me, toxic as gall. Tears pour down my face, but they are only a visual extension of the anger erupting inside. Mopping my face with my sleeve, I suddenly panic and turn toward the double doors of the chapel that are standing wide. But no one is viewing this quarrel between two oddly dressed women who are identical twins.

  Leah follows my gaze and then looks back at me. Giving me the same measured glance as that Sunday she came out of the schoolhouse to find me talking to her husband, she walks over to the doors, kicks the stoppers away with her black lace-up shoes, and lets them swing closed. She grabs a box of Kleenex, tugs out two tissues, and dabs the skin beneath each
eye. Balling the tissues up in her fist, she strides toward me with her narrow shoulders squared.

  “I did not come here today to confront you,” she says in Pennsylvania Dutch, her body and voice shaking. “But then you come at me like this. You tell me that I have betrayed you, when you, dear sister, are the one who has betrayed both me and yourself. You, who I fought for when no one else in our family, no one else in the community, would. You, who I let remain in my home when no one else, knowing the full depth of the situation, the full depth of your betrayal, would. But I didn’t know the situation; I didn’t know that you had betrayed me. I was too blind to see the adultery taking place beneath my own roof. The adultery taking place in the room right next to my husband’s and mine.”

  My thoughts crash over one another like waves racing toward shore. But my heart does not race so much as it ceases to beat. If my sister had walked across the chapel and slapped me across the face, I could not be more surprised; her words and the tone in which she conveys them are a slap in the face in themselves. And though every word is painful to hear, I find an odd relief in having my culpability exposed by the person my selfishness has destroyed.

  “Even when you first moved in with Tobias and me,” Leah continues, “I had to repress this feeling that you were the other woman, his other wife. I thought it was just because of how we were in childhood, me always vying for dawdy’s attention while you had it effortlessly, and that it had scarred me to the point I carried it over into adulthood. I told myself that I was being foolish, even immature. That I could trust my husband. And even if I couldn’t, I could at least trust you . . . my sister, my twin.”

  Leah’s voice cracks, the only disclosure of pain she gives. Staring at the lacquered floor running down the chapel’s center aisle, she says, “Even after that day I saw you and Tobias kneeling together in the kitchen, I never thought you would betray me. To this day, I still cannot believe it, but somehow I know it’s true. I know it by the anger you and Tobias have for each other—an anger that was spawned through the debasement of immoral love. I know it by how frustrated Tobias is whenever you come around. This frustration that he takes out on his children, on me, was created because of what the two of you have done. And yet . . .” My sister’s head comes up. Anger settles in her cheeks. If someone from the community saw us, they would think we have never looked more alike than we do now. “And yet, Rachel—my sister, my twin—I cannot help but love you. Despite everything you have done, despite how you have betrayed me and betrayed my family, I do not want to cause you the same level of pain that you have inflicted. I do not want your son to suffer even more because of the sins of his father. Because of the sins of his mother.”

  My voice is both confused and contrite as I ask, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, why I came here today: not to confront you about your betrayal with my husband, but to give you the most precious possession I have ever had.”

  I am so perplexed, I can’t ask any more questions because I do not know where they would begin.

  “Eli’s bone marrow transplant,” Leah says. “I think I have his match.”

  Shaking my head, I say, “But he doesn’t have any siblings. The doctor put him on a waiting list for a donor—”

  “Rachel,” she interrupts, “you’re wrong. Eli does have a sibling.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Genetically,” my twin says, like this should be common sense, although I have never been more mystified, “genetically, Eli does have a sibling.” Leah puts a hand on my arm, a smile returning to her face even as her cheeks are still bright with anger. “Rachel, he has my son.”

  18

  AMOS

  Leah has not mounted the first porch step when Tobias digs a hand into her forearm. “Where have you been?” he snarls.

  Her curved spine straightening, Leah scrapes his hand away like it is leeching blood from her flesh. “I was at the hospital.”

  “I already told you—” Tobias scrutinizes her features to gauge if she is lying—“you can’t go see your sister.”

  “I wasn’t going to see my sister.” Leah marches up the steps, turns, and looks down at her husband, who is no longer in position to tower over her. “I went to see our nephew.”

  Slamming his truck door, Judah strides across the yard and spits from between his teeth, “Or, not your nephew so much as your son.”

  Tobias knocks Judah’s accusing finger away from his chest, dismissing both his younger brother and his younger brother’s viewpoints as he has always done. Judah’s temper that has been simmering since Rachel’s confession reaches its boiling point. Rearing back, he shoves his brother with both hands; the impact sends Tobias sprawling on the division line between gravel and grass. But my firstborn does not remain down for long. Scrambling to his feet, he crouches low and drives his head into Judah’s stomach, ramming the breath from his lungs. Judah staggers backward but remains standing. In the middle of the driveway in front of the white farmhouse, my eldest and youngest begin circling each other—their fingers outstretched and nostrils flaring—resembling a dark and a light alpha wolf from the same pack.

  “Leah and I know everything,” Judah gasps. “Rachel told us. . . . She told us that you fathered Eli.”

  Tobias cuts his eyes up to the porch. Seeing Leah’s face, her wan features highlighted only by her blonde hair and tear-filled eyes, his black gaze narrows into slits. “Why would you believe that harlot?” he growls. “I bet Rachel can’t even remember every man she’s slept with.”

  Judah lunges. Binding both arms around Tobias’s torso, he drives the arrogant bishop to the ground. In Tobias’s thirty-two years and Judah’s twenty, neither has been allowed to fight. Now, it seems the energy they have suppressed throughout childhood comes surging through their adult veins, causing them to grunt and curse as they wrestle more than swing fists. But the tumbling of their flesh across stones lances blood from their faces and scores cuts and bruises into their skin.

  “You knew I loved her,” Judah cries through broken lips, his wrath transforming into pain. “You knew I loved Rachel for years and you—you slept with her!”

  Flipping his body on top of his younger brother’s, Tobias grabs Judah’s head with both hands and smashes it back against the gravel, the golden curls spilling over gray stones. “I did nothing to Rachel that she didn’t want,” Tobias hisses, the spittle of his words carrying further than he knows. “She wanted it all. She encouraged me.” Judah turns his head from the stink of his brother’s sweat and lies, but Tobias grapples Judah’s cheeks, forcing him to listen to these words Tobias knows have the power to wound his brother more than any physical blow. “Rachel never loved you.”

  Tobias actually does not know if Rachel ever loved Judah or not. In this frenzied moment, he just wants his younger brother to learn the lesson that Tobias has yearned to teach him for years. That Judah—the overindulged child the Lord granted to Verna and me in our old age—cannot have everything he has ever wanted without sacrificing anything in return. Judah cannot have Rachel, the woman he dreamed would be his bride, for Tobias has already taken her, and in that one fleshly act, he has already taken her from Judah.

  “She never loved you,” Tobias repeats, not able to resist pouring salt into the wound he has just inflicted. “She never has, never will.”

  “Stop it!” Leah releases the porch post and stumbles down the steps as if awakening from a dream. “Just stop it!” she wails. “Both of you!”

  She is almost to them when—without closing her eyes or breaking her fall—her knees give way and her body crumples onto the gravel. Clambering to his feet, Tobias runs over and scoops his wife against his chest. Leah’s reed-thin legs dangling over his arms, Tobias rushes up the porch steps and bangs the front door closed with a hind kick of his boot.

  Judah remains lying in the bloodied gravel outside his elder brother’s farmhouse with tears leaking from his honey-colored eyes and sliding into the roots of his hair. He
is grieving the loss of the woman he loves. But more than this, he is grieving the loss of the life with her that he will now never have.

  Rachel

  The day Dr. Sengupta went through the innumerable risks Eli faced if a transplant match was ever found, he also explained that there would be no real risks for the bone marrow donor himself. The donor could not be very active for a few weeks, but in comparison to Eli’s being confined to a hospital room for one hundred days and not being allowed to be carried into the hall without a mask first placed over his face to protect him from airborne infection, the side effects for a donor were really quite mild. When Dr. Sengupta told me this, I had pictured the donor as a thirty-five-year-old man with shaggy hair and an athletic build, a person who would bounce back from the surgery not feeling like something had been taken from him but that he had given something away. A gift, the incomparable gift of life.

  But now that Jonathan might be going through the procedure involving a hollow needle inserted into the wings at the base of the spine to extract bone marrow, I am filled with dread. What if something goes wrong? What if Jonathan gets an infection? What if the transplant does not work and he lives with survivor’s guilt, even if he cannot remember the infant cousin who died? With this perspective, a bone marrow transplant no longer seems like the best choice out of a selection of impossible ones. Yet, as I sobbed these questions through the sieve of Leah’s skirt, she stroked my hair and reminded me that we were beyond the spectrum of best and worst choices, that we were at a crossroads where we must do whatever it takes to sustain life—even if it means risking the life of someone we love as much as the life we are hoping to save.

  Leah and I must have remained in the chapel for over an hour; the milk shake Ida Mae had requested showed no semblance of its former state once I gathered it to leave. Still, no one entered the chapel in all that time. Twice, I heard one of the double doors open, then close, the people—displaying empathy only known when you have been in such a distraught place yourself—understanding that my sister and I needed the sanctuary of the chapel’s walls a little more than they did.