My Amish Boyfriend

by Melody Carlson

  He reads the prescription, then gives me a bewildered look. “Is this for you?”

  “No, it’s for my mom.”

  His expression turns to suspicion. “Your mom takes this?”

  “Yes,” I tell him. “And she needs some right now.” He’s still staring at me as if sizing me up, and I suddenly get it. “Oh.” I point to my clothes. “You think I’m Amish, don’t you?”

  He looks even more perplexed now. “Well, I, uh—”

  “I’m not Amish. Neither is my mom. But my grandparents are Amish, and we’re staying with them this summer.” I point to the paper still in his hand. “You can call Dr. Hoffman’s office if you want to verify it. My mom is waiting for me there right now. She may have a brain tumor, and she needs the diazepam to deal with her dizziness and—”

  “Fine,” he says quickly. “I believe you.”

  “Thank you. Please hurry.”

  “There’s a line of orders ahead of you, but I’ll see what we can do. Give me ten minutes.”

  I thank him again, and then, remembering my charged phone, I step outside and push the speed dial for Merenda’s number. As I’m waiting for her to answer, I notice that I am being watched—not just watched but stared at—by a group of what I suppose are tourists. I’ve heard that they come by the busload to gape at the Amish, and some of them even try to take photos, which is forbidden by the Ordnung. I turn my back to these rude onlookers and face the pharmacy as Merenda answers the phone.

  “Shannon!” she says urgently. “What is going on with you? I’ve texted you like a million times and even called your landline over and over. I was starting to think you and your mom had been kidnapped or something. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, we’re okay. Well, kinda okay. It’s a long story, and I only have a few minutes.” Even so, I give her the quick lowdown about staying in Amish country with my Amish grandparents and relatives. She is stunned.

  “You’re kidding!” she cries. “That’s unbelievable.”

  “I know!” I can’t believe how good it is to hear her voice—her normal, enthusiastic voice. It makes me so happy that I feel like crying. “It’s been a strange few weeks,” I confess. “Seriously, it’s like being in a different world. Or on a different planet.”

  “You could be on one of those reality shows.”

  I frown down at my clothes. “Yeah, I guess. You wouldn’t believe what I’m wearing right now.” I describe my outfit.

  “No way!” she exclaims. “Can you send me a photo?”

  “Sure.” I laugh as I hold out my phone, taking a shot of myself. Of course, as I’m sending it I see the faces of the shocked tourists who are watching me. “Uh-oh,” I tell Merenda. “I’ve been spotted photographing myself, and that is a real no-no for the Amish.”

  “Will they throw you in Amish jail?” she asks.

  “No, it’s just some tourists.” I explain that I’m at a pharmacy, waiting for Mom’s pills, and without going into all the details, I tell her Mom is worse.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “She’ll get an MRI this week,” I say weakly. “So I feel a little bit hopeful.”

  “Wow, that’s a lot to take in.”

  “So much has happened to me here,” I confide. “I mean so much, Merenda. You wouldn’t even believe me if I had time to tell you everything.”

  “I’m guessing you didn’t get the butterfly tattoo then?”

  I laugh. “No, but seriously, compared to what I’ve been through, getting a tattoo would be a walk in the park.”

  “I know what’s happened to you,” she says. “You’ve fallen in love, haven’t you? I can tell by your voice.”

  “It’s a long story, Merenda.” I let out a weary sigh. “But yeah, you’re right. I guess I kinda did.”

  “Who is he? Is he Amish? Is he—”

  “I honestly don’t have time to tell you about it now. Besides, it’s all over with anyway. It all ended this morning.”

  “Oh. Are you okay?”

  “I think so.” I take in a deep breath. “I mean, I’ve never felt so hurt, ever. But at the moment, well, I need to focus on my mom getting well. I don’t want to go into it now, but her condition is really serious. At least there’s this really great doctor helping us.”

  “An Amish doctor?”

  “No, silly, there’s no such thing. Don’t you know their education ends after eighth grade?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. But I gotta go. Hopefully Mom’s pills are ready by now. And she really needs them. Keep praying for her, okay? There’s the MRI this week . . . and, well, it’s likely she’ll need surgery too.” I try not to consider all this implies.

  “I’ll keep praying. Call me when you can.”

  I promise to keep her posted, then go inside where Mom’s prescription is just being put into a bag. Once again I use her debit card, thankful that the Social Security check must have been direct deposited in the bank by now. Then I thank the pharmacist and hurry back to the doctor’s office to discover that Betty’s daughter-in-law, Leah, has come to take us home. She’s an ordinary looking woman, slightly overweight, dressed in baggy jeans and a faded pink T-shirt, but her eyes are kind.

  “Betty signed out this wheelchair for you,” she tells me as I’m giving Mom a pill. “So you can keep it until after the MRI.”

  I thank her again, but as we’re leaving I remember Ezra. I quickly explain the situation to Betty, but she assures me he’s already been here. “I told him you didn’t need him anymore,” she says as her phone starts to ring.

  “Yeah.” I wave to her as I wheel Mom out. “I don’t need him anymore.”

  As Leah drives us through the countryside in her air-conditioned minivan with her radio tuned to an upbeat Christian station, I know that what I told her mother-in-law was true. Despite feeling so hopeless and like I could not live without Ezra just this morning, I know that I do not need him anymore. Oh sure, my heart still aches from it. And as we pass a familiar-looking horse-drawn buggy, I avert my eyes, realizing it might take some time to get completely over him. But I do know I can live without him. After all, here I am, alive and well. As I help Mom lean back into the seat, using the weight of my own body to hold her steady, I’m not so sure about her, though. The grim expression on Dr. Hoffman’s face when she told me it could be a brain tumor seems to be etched in my memory.

  I suspect the next few days are going to pass very slowly for both Mom and me. It would be very easy to get consumed with worry, but that’s a good reminder that the only thing I can really do is pray. I realize that since I’ve been asking others to pray for Mom, it’s time I started doing this myself. So as the minivan continues zipping down the road, I pray.

  19

  After Leah helps me get my sedated mom into the borrowed wheelchair at the dawdi house, she hands me a slip of paper with her phone number on it. “You call me and let me know when your mom needs to go in for her MRI. I’ll pick you up, or else I’ll find someone who can.”

  “Thank you so much,” I tell her. “You have no idea what that means for us.”

  “Well . . .” She glances over to the barn, then slowly shakes her head. “You might be surprised about that.”

  “What?” I peer curiously at her as I set the shopping bag in Mom’s lap.

  “I grew up in a settlement not so different than this one.” She holds her hands to shade her eyes, looking all around with a hard-to-read expression.

  “And you left?” I say quietly. “Like my mom did?”

  She nods. “I didn’t fit in. I never did . . . never would.”

  “Oh.” I sigh.

  “You better get your mom inside.” She pats my shoulder. “But you call me when you know about the appointment.”

  I thank her again, then hurriedly wheel Mom up the graveled path to the house. I’ve never felt like I’ve seen an angel before, but today I feel like I’ve met three—Dr. Hoffman, Betty, and Leah—although I admit my dire and desperate situation might be
influencing my deductive skills.

  “You are home,” Mammi says as I struggle to wheel Mom into the house. I’m huffing and puffing from getting her up the porch steps, and now I discover her chair won’t fit through the bedroom door.

  “Yes,” I say as I try to get Mom to stand.

  “Let me help you.” Mammi comes over, and the two of us manage to get Mom out of the chair and into her bed. But because most of the bedding is still in Ezra’s buggy, I’m forced to roll up a blanket for a pillow. Fortunately, Mom is so out of it that she barely notices.

  As I put Mom’s wallet back into her purse, I explain to Mammi that Ezra has the other bedding. “Hopefully he’ll bring it by before bedtime,” I say.

  “Ja, or I will send Jacob to fetch it,” she assures me.

  “Mom needs to rest for now,” I tell Mammi as we leave the room. “It’s been a long day for her.”

  “Ja. I was afraid of that.” She frowns as we stand in the living room. “What did the doctor say?”

  I explain about the possible brain tumor and that she’s to have an MRI, but Mammi doesn’t seem to absorb this. If she does, she is pretending that it’s not very serious. Or else she is in deep, dark denial. However, I’m too tired to figure it all out.

  “I want to stay here again,” I tell her. “If you don’t mind. I think I can be more help to Mom here than at Uncle Ben’s house.”

  “Ja. Maybe that is a good idea. The garden is coming on good now. I will start preserving cucumbers and tomatoes this week. You can help.”

  I want to point out I’m coming here to aid Mom, not to make pickles, but decide not to go there right now.

  “You can move back here tomorrow,” she tells me. “Dawdi will get you a bed by then.”

  I remove Mom’s bottle of pills from the shopping bag. “She can have one of these every six hours or so, as she needs them.”

  Mammi studies the bottle. “This is the same as before?”

  “Yes. The doctor says she needs to keep taking them. Until she has the MRI.”

  “MRI?”

  “The test that tells us about the brain tumor.” I remove my cell phone from the shopping bag and hand her bag back to her.

  She frowns and shakes her head.

  “Make Mom eat food before she takes her medicine,” I remind her. “She’ll probably be ready for a pill around suppertime.”

  “Ja, supper. Jacob will be here soon. I better get to work on that.”

  Feeling slightly dismissed, I go outside and look around. I’m curious as to whether Ezra is back yet but suspect he still must have a fair amount of road time before him. I wonder if he is feeling any regrets for this morning—if he misses me at all—and then I tell myself not to think about it. I am over him. Okay, more honestly, I am getting over him.

  As I walk back to my uncle’s house, I realize that Ezra was right: it is for the best. I was living in an Amish fantasyland to think that it could truly work—that I could really transform myself into Mammi or Aunt Katrina. Oh, I might get used to the work, in time, but I don’t think I could ever get used to all these restrictions. And I could never get used to shutting down my brain. I’ve always dreamed of going to college and having some independence and freedom. Why would I want to give up all that to become subservient to a bearded man wearing weird suspenders?

  Still, as I notice what could be Ezra’s buggy going down the road, although it could easily be someone else’s since they all look very similar, I feel a sharp pang deep inside of me. I suspect that my broken heart has a ways to go before it catches up with my recovering brain. To distract myself, since my cell phone is still charged and can take a photo even if it can’t connect, I snap a shot of the horse and buggy. Then I take several of the barn and silos and other scenic shots before I slip the phone inside my bodice. I still don’t know why Amish clothes don’t have pockets. So inconvenient.

  “You are just in time,” Aunt Katrina tells me when I go into the kitchen. “Rachel is not back from my sister’s house. She went to get me some fabric. But the cows need milking.”

  I nod, realizing she’s not asking me to do this detested chore, she is telling me. She doesn’t know that Rachel already gave up on trying to transform me into a milkmaid. Instead, Rachel made sure I was stuck with even more mundane chores—the ones she was happy to pass down to me.

  As I struggle to milk the first cow, I remind myself that this is my last night at Uncle Ben’s house. I will no longer be under Aunt Katrina’s rule. Besides, I decide as I finally move on to the next cow, I’ll have some good stories to tell Merenda.

  For that purpose, I decide to snap some photos of myself milking a cow. Chuckling at the results, I know these shots could be priceless someday. Who would believe this when I’m in college or even next fall back at high school? Just as I’m taking a shot of me holding the bucket in one hand and posing by the cow, Uncle Ben walks in.

  “What are you doing?” he asks.

  Still holding the cell phone in the air, I give him a sheepish look.

  “Is that a camera?” he demands.

  “It’s my cell phone,” I confess.

  “You know that the Ordnung forbids taking photos,” he tells me.

  “I’ve heard that,” I admit. “But I don’t really know why.”

  His expression softens some as he hangs a coiled rope on a peg by the door. “Exodus 20:4 states, ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.’”

  “But I’m an artist,” I tell him. “Does that mean it’s wrong for me to draw a picture of, say, a horse?”

  “Ja. According to Scripture, that is true.”

  “Oh.” I shake my head. “That’s why Aunt Katrina doesn’t like seeing me drawing on my sketch pad.”

  “Ja.” He walks up to peer more closely at me. “I am pleased that you want to learn about becoming Amish, Shannon. It will not be easy for you. I hope you are ready to put English ways behind you.”

  I bite my lip, wondering how best to put this. “Actually,” I begin slowly, “things have changed. I don’t think I’m going to become Amish after all.”

  He frowns. “Why is that? What has changed?”

  “I have realized that I don’t really belong here.”

  “But you have been doing so good. We’ve seen you make progress. Why do you want to give up?”

  “The truth is, I was interested in becoming Amish for the wrong reasons, Uncle Ben.”

  “What reasons?”

  I sigh. “I thought I was in love with a boy, an Amish boy. I imagined I could be happy living here . . . married to him. But now I know I was wrong.”

  “Are you sure you were wrong?”

  I nod.

  “I will continue to pray for you, Shannon. I will pray that God will show you his right path and that you will learn to follow it.”

  “Thanks. And thanks for all your help and encouragement,” I tell him. Then, not wanting to feel like I’ve ditched him with no notice, I explain my plan to move back to the dawdi house to help with my mom tomorrow. “She needs me, and Mammi has a lot to do with her summer chores.”

  “Ja. That is good you can help her.” He seems a little disappointed but doesn’t attempt to talk me out of leaving.

  “But I really enjoyed my visit and getting to know all of you,” I say.

  He briskly nods. “I have more chores before supper.”

  As he leaves I turn back to the milking. I’d like to say I have him all figured out, but the truth is I don’t. I like my uncle. I respect him. But I do not fully understand him. I suppose I don’t completely understand any of my Amish relatives. Not really.

  During supper no mention is made of my intended departure tomorrow. I suppose I thought Uncle Ben might say something, but he doesn’t. I consider making an announcement myself, but there never seems to be an opportune moment. I decide I’ll break the news to the rest of them tom
orrow. I doubt that any of them will care. In fact, I suspect they’ll be relieved.

  It’s not until bedtime that I decide I should say something to Rachel. I’m not even sure why, but I feel a need to have a private conversation with her. “Ezra drove Mom and me to Hochstetler,” I tell her as we’re getting ready for bed.

  “Ja, I know.” Without looking at me, she continues braiding her hair.

  “But you don’t know everything,” I say in a somewhat mysterious tone. I have no idea where I’m going with this, but I feel compelled to say something.

  “What do you mean?” She puts a band around the end of her long, dark braid, then turns to peer at me. Once again, I’m struck by how pretty she is. Even in a plain white nightgown, she is really lovely. Creamy skin, clear blue eyes, perfectly shaped mouth. No wonder Ezra loves her. Thinking of this creates a lump in my throat again, and I question why I even opened my mouth.

  “Oh . . . nothing.” I focus my attention on hanging my dress on a peg.

  “No, what do you mean I don’t know everything?” she asks. “I want to know.”

  I realize I’ve opened this can of worms, and I need to either put a lid on it or get everything out in the open. Why not go for the latter? “Ezra has convinced me that it’s a mistake for me to stay here,” I blurt out.

  She looks slightly confused. “What?”

  “It’s just that I know I can never be Amish,” I say glumly. “You told me this some time ago.”

  She barely nods. “Ja. Why are you telling me this, Shannon?”

  “Because Ezra is in love with you.”

  She turns away, picking up the lantern. “Do you need more light?”

  “No.” I climb into my bed now, wondering why I even broached this topic. Really, what do I hope to accomplish? Why should I even care?

  She blows out the lantern, and in the light from the dusky square of the window, I watch her getting into her own bed. “Shannon?” she asks quietly.