And of course I’ve never seen him look at anyone that way, except Sarah, and that was a long time ago.
So it is that as the Armstead visitors arrive and the women are assigning who will stay with the children at the creek and the young men are bouncing the volleyballs and choosing up teams that Miriam whispers to me, “You’ll not talk if we go with the other young women, will you? You won’t talk? Right?”
I promise her that I won’t. I want to see the Saturday night volleyball game as badly as she does because you learn so much about people when they are competing or even cheering for a team.
I pass by one of the young men visitors, and I can see the veins on his forearm are hard and blue and meander down his arm to his hand that has a ham-like thumb and fingers with surprisingly delicate fingertips. They languidly hold the orange ball—I’ve never seen a ball that color—up on his shoulder. I am coming from behind him, still holding onto Miriam’s hand like many of the girls do, and try not to let my face brush his elbow, and so many people are there that I don’t think anyone notices when it almost does. Except Miriam, of course, because she is watching me all the time.
This young man has never come to The Anchor before, I am quite sure of this, and in the part of my stomach that gurgles when I am hungry I feel an ache such as I have never felt before. He smells like hay, or green tomato vines, or something clean.
And then, to my surprise, he turns and looks at me and says, “Pleased to meet you. I’m Matthaus.”
“Matthew, the first gospel,” I stammer, and he looks intently at me, like the man sitting at the Gate Beautiful looked at the apostles. I hear Miriam breathing hard near my ear because she does not want this conversation to continue.
“What’s your name?”
And I stand there, flustered and unwilling to say the name to him because it is not my real name, not the name my mother gave me.
“Her name is Leah,” Miriam finally says, and I nod and shrug.
Then we keep walking, just like that, and sit with the other girls on the tree stump seats to watch the game. There is a great deal of good-natured shouting and spiked balls and crashing together and falling on the ground and laughing. But my stomach will not stop the clenching feeling and I wonder if I am getting sick.
I do not even remember which team won.
Chapter 3
There is no doubt that just those few seconds of eye contact and conversation with Matthaus left me raw. Not uncooked raw or unfinished raw—though I am in some ways certainly both of those—but raw like a chafed part of your skin that feels a breeze as if it had needles in it.
I have an explanation for why I couldn’t say my name but that would have ruined the moment. Better to let him think I was just flustered because that’s true enough. And he must be at least seventeen or eighteen, so he’d just see me as a kid anyway.
Nobody around here is going to tell him or any other outsider about the deal with names in The Anchor. I hope he doesn’t hear it from someone else, because it will sound weird to him, I’m afraid. Of course he will understand about having a biblical name; after all, most everyone in his community has one, too. But what he might not understand is how often Papa changes a person’s name, even when they are a teenager or young adult.
My mother gave me the name Tabitha Angelica when I was born. I remember her voice as she would call me from outside, stretching out the first syllable like something rounded and rich. She never shortened my name to Tab or Tabby or anything like that. It’s like she liked the way it felt in her mouth and in her ears. I’m sure Papa approved the name since I was his firstborn child, but something I once heard whispered between some women has left me with the impression that he really wanted a son and when I turned out to be a girl, his normally take-charge nature seemed to mellow and it seems he became passive toward me, I guess. So whatever name my mother chose he approved.
The Bible woman Tabitha, my mother told me, was famous for her sewing, for hard work of all kinds, actually. And when she died, Peter raised her from the dead, maybe because all her friends were crying and holding up the clothes she had made.
Now, I’ve thought about that a lot and wondered if my mother wanted me to be known for doing good for others. I like that idea. However, I’m pretty sure that the literal translation of the name Tabitha—gazelle, in Aramaic—isn’t something she would have had in mind for long. And she died before I had a chance to lengthen out. If there is any long-legged gracefulness in me, it has yet to emerge from the square solidness of my body and that’s been true for as long as I remember.
But Papa doesn’t change people’s names just because they seem inappropriate. It’s more that he changes names to something more appropriate, to help people identify us. He doesn’t say that, exactly, but I have figured it out. In my case, he decided just after my mother died that I should no longer be called Tabitha but Leah, the name of the mother of six of the tribes of Israel.
“Remember, my child,” Papa said, “one of the tribes was Judah, from which our Savior came, and another was Levi, from whom all the priests came.”
But that’s not why he re-named me that, everyone knows. Leah was a woman with weak eyes, like mine, which I think are serviceable enough with their hazel color and thick dark lashes, eyes good enough for reading and needlework, but through which everything fades to a shimmering fuzz when it is beyond the span of my arm.
Maybe I am supposed to learn not to concern myself with things beyond my reach, maybe that’s the lesson of my poor eyesight. And I don’t think anyone else notices it so much, because every chore and duty I have is close work.
And there’s another thing. When I read the story of Leah in the Bible, I read of a woman pawned off on others and told to mind her place.
Which brings me to why Papa renamed Miriam. She’s my stepmother Sarah’s only child, by her first marriage, before she met Papa. So we’re stepsisters. And shortly after Papa married Sarah, he told her not to call her daughter Gerti any more but to call her Miriam and both the girl and mother seemed to think that was fine.
Though Miriam is two years older than I and finished her schooling before me, we both know that she doesn’t have the math or reading skills of even the little school kids. But she seems to know more about greenhouse gardening than even Papa and can coax a wilting plant into blooms almost like a miracle. Many times I see her looking off and I know that she doesn’t notice people or animals as much as she could tell you every green thing growing along the entire road of our property. But much of the time she is assigned to watch after me, and that’s what I think Papa secretly had in mind when he named her after a girl who guarded a dangerous baby floating down a river.
I know that I am dangerous, I just don’t know why. Miriam doesn’t know this, I’m pretty sure it never entered her mind. She just knows she is supposed to keep an eye on me. Sarah knows I’m dangerous, I can see it in her eyes. I don’t know what to do with this knowledge, but I’m pretty sure it would be wrong to use it to hurt anyone, and besides Sarah has never done anything to hurt me. Papa knows too I’m dangerous, but he’s not afraid of me because he is the community leader, Brother Abe to all of them, and all of us owe a community leader respect and obedience.
As so often has happened in my life, those things which brought me a sense of security often turn out to be just the opposite. Papa has always taught us, “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall,” and I suppose I am aware of that even as it happens.
The morning after the volleyball game everyone, our community and our guests alike, is up at sunrise because our fields still need tending and our animals milked, fed, and put out to pasture as each requires. Our Amish guests are helping, and I can hear the songs as the men walk to the fields, deep rumbling but escaping like it never can when singing is within walls, almost like a chant would sound, I think.
I am sluggish this morning because I slept so little. It is not because of the events of the visit, I think, but because
I had the dreams again last night, and they came again and again like someone reading the same passage of Scripture over and over; or getting a verse of a new song stuck in your head and humming it mindlessly until someone tells you to stop. But no one told the dream to stop, or if I did, it made no difference. I feel like I did once when one of the community’s tutors, Sister Shiprah, tried to get me to understand how to turn a fraction into a decimal, and she thought if she just repeated the same equation over and over I would by virtue of sheer repetition suddenly understand after the nineteenth time.
I wonder with my mind as dull as an axe used on concrete what I am supposed to be understanding from the dreams, and why they never vary. My eyes are burning.
The women are spreading their best white cloths onto tables in the dew-laden grass, and they fill the surfaces with pastries, homemade grape juice and cocoa and pungent coffee and of course fresh milk. Sarah is hustling down to the tables with a turkey roaster full of doughnuts, some still steaming.
My job is with Miriam to take the unneeded milk just brought from the cows to the cold cellar storage in the old clapboard house, now used mainly as a shed except when we have visitors. As we are loading our carrying baskets with plates of cool butter layered with waxed paper to take back down to the breakfast tables, I notice an orange volleyball on a cot against the wall of the kitchen and realize with a start that this might be where the young man from last night, Matthaus, slept.
Miriam, standing at the door, anxious to get back down to the tables because she can see some of the young people beginning to gather there, is fussing at me.
I grimace as if I have a pebble in my shoe and I tell her I’ll have to sit down to take it off. She looks around and sees no one that I might talk to, and with her face out the door before her body, she tells me to hurry and she will go on so that they’ll have butter to start with.
I put my basket down and sit on the very edge of the bed. I can smell the green smell and I know for sure now that Matthaus has slept here. I breathe in the smell, throwing my arms back and shutting my eyes.
When I open them there is a young woman looking at me. I do not know where she came from, probably from one of the bedrooms. She is smiling a small, crooked smile at me and extending her hand. I guess she must have been sitting with all the girls last night, but I don’t really remember her.
“I’m Katie Lesher,” she says, as if it is the most normal thing in the world to greet someone who moments ago just sat for minutes with eyes closed and posed like an old car’s hood ornament. I scramble to my feet and notice that she is standing at a slant because she is carrying in one hand a basket full of mason jars, and they must be heavy. I point to my brimming basket on the floor and laugh.
“We’re both beasts of burdens today, huh? I’m Leah,” and my voice cracks as it always does at saying my new name, “I’m Leah Mohn.” She makes a little comic curtsey and her face seems so familiar to me that I am sure that I met her last night and just don’t remember.
As we walk toward the tables, Katie murmuring about the doughnuts, I see Miriam rolling her eyes at me but since I have been gone from her for so short a time she is hoping I haven’t said anything to Katie that will need to be explained later. Katie introduces herself to Miriam who looks at her with her head turned slightly to the side while she says her own name.
“Sisters, then,” says Katie, rubbing the inside of her elbow, and Miriam and I both shrug and say “stepsisters” at the same time. But then all the women are heading down toward the brush arbor. Normally on Sundays the families in our community take turns having the church services in our homes. But none of the homes is large enough for two communities, and so when the Amish began visiting us the men built an open-air frame of tall Y-shaped logs that support a pallet roof, and in the summertime the men throw leafy branches on top of it and use the rough benches that usually sit outside the corrals for extra pews.
The men are still in the barn, smoking and talking quietly. As soon as we approach the bush arbor we women take our places in families on the north-facing pews. After a while the men come out of the barn, the older men first along with my Papa and Brother Luke, then the married men, and then all the younger ones and all of them sit on the south-facing pews across from us. I keep my head low but I can see Matthaus and notice for the first time how dark is the area where his beard will be. I wonder how young he must have been when it began growing, or if perhaps he is older than I thought.
To my horror I accidentally catch his eye and his mouth has the tiniest crooked smile. My leg jerks involuntarily and both Sarah and Miriam reach out to grab my knee as if they are afraid I will kick someone. But I have just realized that Matthau and Katie are twins. I close my gaping mouth and duck my head.
We open our copies of the songbook and begin to sing. The visitors have brought their own copies, so I can see that Papa is disappointed that they may not notice that we’ve bought extra copies for when they visit. The stack of new ones stays by his side on the pew. After the first song he and Brother Luke and the other older men walk to the barn to talk again as we continue singing, and when they return Brother Luke gives a sermon about unity.
He is a short man with a round stomach and shoulders and forearms that curl forwards, making the palms of his hands face backwards. I look at his hands and wonder about what I’ve heard about him and the brauching and wonder if he heals people. His hands look ordinary enough to me.
His hair is white even though I’m pretty sure he is younger than Papa. He has brilliant blue eyes and flushed cheeks that become red disks like on a doll as he reads almost all of the book of Philippians to us, emphasizing the parts about longing for us when we are absent from one another and having us in his heart. He is so sincere that I can see some of the young men visitors becoming embarrassed and they drop their heads forward and sit with their wrists on their knees as if they are studying something on the floor. But after a while they begin to sit up again as Brother Luke talks about the dangers of outsiders, how they are not willing to make the sacrifices that we make, no matter how they might want to; how we must cling to one another because of truth, and tradition, and love.
When that and the scripture reading by our deacon are finished, I see all the people from our community settling back a bit, because they know that what Papa will preach will show the visitors how fortunate we are to have him as a leader and minister. And he does not disappoint anyone, as he walks slowly forward, his head hanging to one side as if he is deep in thought. He brushes away what looks like a tear, the man who is so tenderhearted he cries when he hears the women singing in the fields.
He is taller than almost any man there, handsome and ruddy like King David, I think, and his arms bulge underneath his shirt. His reddish hair catches a beam of light that has come through one of the branches and he looks like he is being anointed by the sun.
Then his voice booms out over our heads and he tells the story of Dinah in the Old Testament.
My throat clenches. I know this cannot go well, because Dinah was the daughter of my namesake Leah in the Bible, and she has an unhappy story.
But my father’s voice is strident now, saying how she wanted to marry a pagan man and how he made advances toward her and she fell in love with him and he with her. And how God’s people said the marriage could only come about if all the men of the pagan village were circumcised.
“He defiled young Dinah,” Papa shouts. There is complete silence as he waits. “No matter what she said she wanted, he defiled the young woman.” I see scores of white prayer caps around me pointing faces to the floor.
“And on the third day while they were still sore,” he draws the word out like a hissing threat, and the young men now are shifting on the benches. Nobody wants to think about enforced circumcision. Ow, ow, ow, they must be thinking.
“On the third day when the men were still sore, I say, God’s people attacked and killed them all, because they had defiled young Dinah.
“Thi
s story tells us that there is more at stake than fellowship when we make compromises with outsiders,” Papa says. “We must be alert. We must watch. We must not make deals. We must not compromise. When we close our gates at night, we must check them.”
He raises himself up with his arm outstretched toward the fields and shouts.
“We must not let them come up our corn rows with flattering words.” At this, everyone’s eyes follow his pointing finger, but I am watching him as a shudder passes over his face and he glances toward the women who are no longer looking at him and for one burning millisecond he is looking at me.
And though I tell myself that watching for enemies that would come in the corn was just an expression, I begin to shiver, for I know about part of that, of terrors that come in the night. With a sigh, Miriam puts her bony arm around me so no one can see my shoulders move.
This sermon, like all his sermons, lasts until the sun is straight up in the sky and our hearts and ears are numbed. No compromises for us, our aching limbs tell us, and I feel pity for the mothers who kept their children quiet through the hours of church in this heat.
After a blessedly and uncharacteristically brief song and a prayer to God to preserve us from all outside dangers, our deacon announces something the girls had whispered about: John, the eldest son of Minni and Adam Miller, will marry Brother Luke and Sister Rebekah’s daughter Amy the next time that the visitors come, in early December, after harvest. Everyone is delighted. For a while, I am able to forget about the dangers Papa preached about. And then the meeting is over.
What Will Be Made Plain Page 3
