Becoming Bea

by Leslie Gould

  A moment later the chair scraped again.

  I waited until I heard Ben’s footsteps on the stairs before continuing on to the kitchen.

  That night, Hope and I dropped into bed exhausted, but for once she wanted to talk—all about her wedding. “It’s just a week away,” she said.

  “Jah,” I answered, thinking the Millers were crazy to agree to her getting married so soon when they had so much going on. I doubted Cate would be able to go to the wedding. Nan might be able to, but I didn’t see how. She wouldn’t want to take the triplets out in public and risk exposing them to so many germs.

  “I thought I’d start making wedding nothings,” Hope said. “And try to freeze them.”

  My mouth watered at the thought of the fried pastries sprinkled with powdered sugar, but I didn’t think they’d freeze very well. “I can help you the day before the wedding,” I said.

  Hope continued talking. She’d started a dress that day, a blue one. Her Dat would bring a new black head covering and apron that her oldest sister was making for Hope to wear.

  “You’ll be my Newehocker, won’t you?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said. I’d never been anyone’s sidesitter before.

  “Even though Ben is going to be Martin’s?”

  I pursed my lips together.

  “Bea . . .”

  “Sure,” I said. “But only for you.”

  She smiled at that. “At least he won’t be around anymore during the day.”

  I shook my head a little. “Why not?”

  “He’s going to work for the Schmidts, in their bookstore.”

  My chest tightened. “No,” I whispered.

  Hope leaned her elbow against the bed, her head in her hand. “He told Martin that you’re moving to Montana. So it shouldn’t matter to you. He said he’d rather work there, away from you, until you leave, than be reminded . . . You know.”

  I pulled the pillow over my head.

  “Bea?” Hope sounded a million miles away. “You can’t have it both ways. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want you to move to Montana. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. I want you to stay. I thought you’d marry Ben and we’d all spend our lives together. We’d live in the same district. We’d have babies at the same time. And they’d grow up to be friends, and—”

  “Ben was supposed to move away from Lancaster,” I muttered, acknowledging my fantasy, if only to myself, that Mamm and I would buy the Schmidts’ business and she and I could run it together. She could go to Montana every fall, after the tourist season slowed in Lancaster, to visit Molly.

  That was what I’d hoped for. I’d hoped for so much more than that only a couple weeks ago—but now my dream of the bookstore was all I had left.

  “Bea, talk to me,” Hope said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Everything.

  A few minutes later, in true Hope fashion, she was snoring gently. I took my journal from where I’d tucked it under the bed and headed downstairs with it. I added a log to the fire in the fireplace and pulled up a chair. In the dim light I poured out my heart, recording the events of the last month. I didn’t stop until I heard a baby cry.

  Chapter

  23

  I didn’t see Ben once during the next week. All of my spare time was spent helping Hope with her wedding plans, hemming her dress, writing place cards, and then making the wedding nothings. The snow melted, and we had another spell of bright blue sky with the temperatures just above freezing. Cate grew stronger, first walking around the house and then taking little trips outside. Pete would accompany her, carrying Wally as they walked.

  On Tuesday, two days before the big wedding, Hope whispered that she had some news for me after she’d been outside to see Martin on his break. “Come down to the basement when you can,” she said. We were trying to catch up on the laundry before her Dat arrived.

  A few minutes later, after I’d finished the dishes, I hurried downstairs.

  Hope fed towels through the wringer. When she saw me, she said, without fanfare, “Don’s back.”

  “What?”

  She nodded. “He came by the shop this morning, asking Bob for his job back. He thought he was a shoo-in, since Ben quit.”

  “Oh, no,” I said.

  “Don’t worry, Bob didn’t hire him.”

  I blinked back tears of relief.

  “In fact, Martin said things got a little heated. Bob said Don owed you an apology and the sooner he dealt with it the better.”

  I gasped. The last thing I wanted was for Don to seek me out to apologize.

  That evening Hope’s Dat arrived. He’d taken the bus to Lancaster, and then Bob had sent a driver to bring him the rest of the way. As Hope rushed into his arms, he dropped his bag on the kitchen linoleum and hugged her hard, picking her up and spinning her around.

  I felt a pang of sorrow for the loss of my Dat again—but then I breathed a prayer of thanks for my Mamm. We could have lost her too.

  Hope introduced her Dat to me. “William Troyer,” she said to me. “Dat, this is Bea Zook—the one I wrote so much about.”

  “Nice to meet you,” he said, a kind expression on his face. He looked to be sixty-five or so, around my Mamm’s age. His boots were worn and his hat a little shabby, but he made up for it with his warm personality.

  “I’ll go show you your room,” Hope said, picking up his bag. “Plus Nan and Bob are upstairs. They said to let them know as soon as you arrived.”

  “After you,” he said, wrestling the bag from her.

  I returned to the sink, to dry the last of the plates, when Love began to bark frantically. I was about to go tell her to stop it when a knock on the back door startled me. I flipped the dish towel over my shoulder, hurried through the mud porch, and opened the door.

  There stood Bishop Eicher, filling the doorframe, with Don and Phillip behind him. The bishop was as big as a giant. His sons, who were both good size, looked tiny next to him.

  I wanted to slam the door and run, but Love pushed her nose between Don and the bishop and then squeezed through to get to me. I, as graciously as I was capable of, invited them in, shooing Love out and closing the door. She stayed on the other side and whined.

  “I’ll go get Bob,” I said, even though I wanted to run the opposite direction, down the hall to the sunroom, and hide.

  I hated tearing Bob away from Hope and her Dat, but as soon as I said who had arrived, he excused himself and followed me.

  When we reached the kitchen, Bishop Eicher, who stood with his hat in one hand and the other braced against a chair said, looking straight at me, “We need to talk.”

  “Let me take your things,” Bob said. “And then let’s all sit down.” He took each of their coats and hats, and then as he headed to the mud porch said, “Bea, is there coffee?”

  “Jah,” I answered. “And apple cake.” I’d made it that afternoon.

  “Wunderbar,” he said.

  I said a prayer at the thought of serving Don anything, and God must have answered, because I managed to keep my composure.

  As I dished up the cake and then poured the coffee, the men talked about the weather and how the early snowfall had delayed Bishop Eicher’s plowing. “I’ll be back on track as soon as the ground soaks up more of the moisture.”

  Once I’d served dessert, Bob told me to take a seat beside him.

  The bishop cleared his throat and said, “I think I’m probably the last one to piece all this together, but between what Phillip told me, the rumors that have been flying around, and what Don has confirmed, I finally realized that something must be done.” He shifted his gaze to Don. “What do you say, son?”

  I expected an apology, but instead Don said, “You were the girlfriend I wanted that night under the tree.”

  I nodded. “I gathered that.”

  He raised his eyebrows and leaned backward.

  “Jah,” I said, “I figured out there wasn’t a girlfriend from Ohio. You were hoping I�
�d change my mind, but attacking me was an odd way to try to influence me.”

  He squared his shoulders. “I set it all up.”

  I didn’t respond. He’d thought I was a fool—for sure.

  He continued, “I told Mervin that Hannah wanted to meet him. And told Hannah that Mervin wanted to meet her. I told Ben to meet us in the sycamore grove.” He picked up his coffee mug. “But I didn’t plan to treat you the way I did—I expected that you would be more cooperative. I truly did want to court you.”

  “No,” I said. “You wanted to hurt me. And you did.”

  The other men grew restless but none of them contradicted me. Don lowered his head and stared at the tabletop. Finally Bob said, “Bea’s right.”

  And the bishop said, “Son, say what you came here to say.”

  Don kept his eyes on the table. “Will you forgive me?”

  “For . . . ?” I asked.

  “Lying. Mistreating you . . . All of it.”

  I supposed that was as sincere as I was going to get from Don.

  I stared at him, wondering why he wouldn’t look at me. A shiver passed through me. “Were you lurking around that night Love showed up?”

  He shrugged, his eyes still downcast.

  “Were you spying on the couple on the other side of the barn?”

  He shrugged again.

  “Who was it?”

  “Hannah and Mervin,” he muttered.

  I’d thought it was Hope and Martin, but it made more sense that it was Hannah and Mervin. “Did that give you the idea to use them to set me up?”

  He shrugged a third time, his head still down.

  “And then after Bob fired you, were you sneaking around then too?”

  He didn’t respond, but his mouth turned down.

  Bishop Eicher cleared his throat and then said, “It seems Don’s had a problem with boundaries, both physical and emotional.”

  I nodded and then shivered again at the creepiness of what he’d done.

  He’d been the pernicious one—the one who’d harmed so many of us. The bad apple in the bottom of the barrel.

  Bob said, “Bea, do you feel you can forgive Don? That might free him to do the right thing in the future, to move forward in his own life—because he’s a child of God too, just as much as all of us are.”

  “Jah,” I said, “I forgive you.” Instead of anger, all I felt for him was pity. But it wasn’t up to me to figure out how he was going to experience God’s healing. That was up to him. And God. “I appreciate the apology,” I added. “It helps.”

  “Denki,” Don said as he continued to stare at the table.

  “But,” I said, “I want you to be accountable to someone—to a man who can make sure you’re respecting others and their boundaries.” That would please me the most.

  Don nodded.

  I knew I’d never know for sure if he was or not, but still I had to state my wishes.

  “What are your plans now?” Bob asked Don.

  He kept his eyes on the table. “I’m going back to Ohio in the morning. I have some unfinished business I need to take care of there too. I talked to my bishop this morning.” He raised his head. “He told me I need to be accountable to him if I come back . . .”

  Both Bishop Eicher and Bob seemed relieved. Bob said, “I’ll contact the leaders in your district there and let them know exactly what happened.”

  Don seemed to accept that. I liked the idea. If Bob talked to the bishop and an elder or two, it would make it harder for Don to sneak anything over on them.

  The conversation turned to the wedding in two days. Don concentrated on eating his dessert and didn’t say anything more. He didn’t look exactly cheerful, but he didn’t appear as brooding as before either.

  Thankfully, they didn’t stay much longer. When they left, Phillip said he’d see me at the wedding, “Jah,” I said, without much enthusiasm, I’m afraid. “I’ll be there.” It wasn’t that I wasn’t excited for the happy couples. It was spending time with Ben that I dreaded, even more after Don’s confession.

  But at least Don’s actions had revealed Ben’s true character. It was better that I knew now rather than after I’d married him.

  I finished cleaning up the dessert dishes and then took a piece of cake down the hall to Cate. Pete had gone out to finish up some work in the shop before bed, so she was alone with the baby.

  “Denki,” she said, scooting into a sitting position. The little one was tucked in the crook of her left arm. She took the plate with her right hand and then balanced it on her lap. “I’m starving. But I could have come and gotten it.”

  “I know,” I said. One of the lessons I’d learned by working for the Millers was what a pleasure it was to serve others. It was something I longed to do with a better attitude for my own family, including Molly.

  “What did Bishop Eicher want?” she asked between her first and second bite.

  I explained what happened.

  “There’s no reason you and Ben can’t work things out now,” she said.

  I shook my head.

  “Why not?” She took another bite.

  “I can’t trust him,” I answered.

  “Ben made a mistake, one that’s devastated him. He still loves you.” She tilted her head as she spoke, the fork in midair. “You should give him another chance.”

  I pursed my lips.

  “You still love him. Maybe you thought this would be easy, but I can tell it’s not.” The fork reached her mouth.

  As Cate continued eating, I thought of Bob saying that Don was God’s child as much as any of us. It dawned on me that Ben was God’s child too, just as much as I was. God favored all of us—not just me. As Cate took her last bite, I said, “But what does it matter if I love him or not? How could I bear to be with him after being so angry? I’ve never been so mad at anyone in all my life—not even Molly.”

  Cate laughed. “That’s just it. We get the angriest with the ones we love the most.”

  I shook my head, taking the empty plate from her.

  She kissed the top of Wally’s head. “Except for babies. But someday Walter will exercise his free will and make me angry too. But I’ll love him just the same. That’s what true love is—we keep loving, keep working things out. We don’t give up.”

  I’d have to think about that. As I headed to the door, I realized that my anger with Ben wasn’t the whole problem. Part of it was how much I’d loved him, how I felt that day in the coffee shop and then later taking care of the babies together. How I felt sitting with him under the oak tree. I loved him with my very being. And he’d rejected me, rejected my love.

  How could I go from love to anger and back to love? How could I feel that love without becoming angry again?

  I retreated to my room after I washed Cate’s plate. Hope and her Dat were in the nursery with Nan and Bob, so I had some rare time to myself. I pulled my journal and pencil out from under my bed again, determined to get more of my feelings down on paper. Out fell the piece of paper folded in fourths with the Shakespeare sonnet Ben had written down for me. I ignored what I’d written at the top and skimmed the sonnet, reading parts of it out loud:

  “ . . . Love is not love

  Which alters when it alteration finds.

  . . . it is an ever-fixed mark,

  That looks on tempests and is never shaken. . . .

  Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

  But bears it out even to the edge of doom.”

  I sank down onto my bed. Shakespeare knew love was hard work. So did Cate. And Bob and Nan. And my Mamm. Ben expected it would be. Even Molly knew.

  Why had I been so naïve? My idealism had gotten the best of me. I took my pencil from my journal and wrote, Still, love fled, at the end of the sonnet, knowing I was mixing poets.

  As an afterthought, I wrote, If only. . . . What? If only Ben hadn’t been unreasonable? If only I could trust him? If only we could have another chance?

  I refolded the pape
r and put it on my bedside table as the tears started to pool in my eyes. I swiped at them, but they kept on coming. I tried to write in my journal, to pour out my soul again, but the tears kept me from seeing my words.

  Nothing came, except for a particular memory—and I certainly didn’t want to write about it. But I couldn’t help thinking about it.

  Cally Wetzel had been the teacher of our one-room schoolhouse all through our school years. When we started school, she was in her midtwenties, never married and didn’t seem to want to be. She loved words, both in the Pennsylvania Dutch language and in English. And she loved me. And Ben.

  When I started school and began studying English, it was as if my world doubled. I had an entire new vocabulary to learn and love. English enchanted me. Soon we studied German too, but although I enjoyed it, it didn’t hold the same power over me that English did.

  Cally started the spelling bees hoping to encourage her students to study our accumulative list of words all school-year long. Every year, either Ben or I won our grade’s contest. Our last year—the spring of eighth grade—he was ahead by one win. Cally didn’t keep track of our standings from the previous years, but we did. I could either tie him or he’d win it all.

  On the night of the end-of-the-year program, the two top spellers from each grade had their runoffs. For some grades, it merely took two words. For Ben and me it took forty-three. There we stood, in front of the blackboard, going back and forth while the younger children squirmed and the parents yawned.

  Finally Cally said she was going to add new words, off the top of her head. “Except, I’ll give you the definition and you give me the word and the spelling,” she said. She was tired too. She looked at Ben and then at me and said, slowly, “A lover of words.”

  I felt giddy with excitement. I knew the word and how to spell it, thanks to my Dat. He had told me a few months before that he was an ornithophile, a lover of birds. Together we figured out what a lover of words—logos—would be and then I confirmed it by looking the word up in my new and very large dictionary that I’d just received for Christmas.