Blessed

by S. J. West

  “When you’ve lived as long as me, certain things stand out in your memory more than others. Seeing you sitting in that desk in physics class is a day I will never forget.”

  “Even when I’m old and grey, will you promise to remember me like that?”

  I could tell what I said made him sad. I didn’t mean to remind him of my mortality but I knew that was where I had led his thoughts.

  “No matter how old you are, you will always be beautiful to me, Lilly.”

  “We’ll see if you still think that when I’m ninety and some young college girl catches your eye,” I tried to joke in a failed attempt to lighten the mood.

  “No one will ever replace you in my life.” He said it so seriously it caught me off guard. “I’ll be yours forever, even after you’ve left me.”

  A selfish part of me hoped he was right. I didn’t even want to think of him sharing himself with anyone else but me. Yet, another part of me didn’t want to imagine him pining away, living through a lonely existence with no one to share the wonderful person he was with. It would be such a waste.

  But I didn’t feel like dwelling on such a morbid topic after the beautiful night he had planned for us. I felt certain each day of my life would be filled with his thoughtfulness. If anyone understood how short a time each person actually had to enjoy life, it was Brand. I knew he would do his best to make every day we spent together as memorable as he could because that would be all he had left when I was gone, memories.

  I stood from my chair leaving my hot chocolate forgotten on the table and made him stand up in front of me.

  “I seem to recall a very comfortable couch in this house of yours,” I murmured next to his ear. “Care to show me where it is again?”

  The roguish smile I loved so much appeared on his face and we spent the rest of the evening much like we did the first night we spent in his London home.

  It wasn’t until the following Monday that we received the call we had been waiting for from the private investigator in Indiana. She found my grandparents. Brand asked her to email the details to him as soon as she could and promised to leave her a hefty bonus for tracking them down so quickly.

  After the email came, I stood over Brand’s shoulder and read what it said. I had to read it a second time just to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood it during the first quick read through.

  “It says what I think it says right?” I asked not quite believing my eyes. How did my mother end up completely on the other side of the lifestyle spectrum from my grandparents?

  “Yes. Are you all right?” Brand stood from his computer worried by my reaction.

  “I…” I didn’t know what to say. To say I didn’t expect it would be an understatement. Now I understood why my mother didn’t want me to contact her parents.

  “They’re Amish?” I asked, surely I read the letter wrong. It had to be a mistake.

  “It appears they are,” Brand put his hands on my shoulders, forcing me to look at him. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I tried to reassure him. “It’s just… they’re Amish?”

  “You say it like it’s a bad thing.” He grinned at me like he wasn’t sure whether or not I actually did think it was a bad thing.

  “No, it’s not bad,” I assured him, “just unexpected. You know my mother. Would you have ever thought she was raised by Amish parents?”

  “Well, no,” Brand said understanding why I was having such a hard time connecting my mother with my Amish grandparents. “Would you like to go see them? She gave us instructions on how to find their home.”

  “Give me a minute.” I knew we should probably go to them as soon as possible, but I was still trying to get over the shock of our discovery.

  If anyone had ever told me as a kid that my grandparents were Amish, I would have just laughed in their face. As far as I knew, the Amish shunned most everything modern and liked living a simple lifestyle of hard work, communion with their neighbors, and worship. None of those things even came close to describing my mother. All the times I asked her where they were, she would always tell me we were better off without them. I always wondered why she didn’t want to contact them. What had happened in my mother’s life to change her so completely?

  We got into Brand’s car and phased to Interstate 90 heading east out of Chicago, IL. It was the closest point Brand had been to the town my grandparent’s lived near which was called Nappanee. It was going to take us about two hours to reach it by car.

  I knew from the P.I.’s letter that my grandparents owned a dairy farm. Their names were Amos and Rebecca Miller. Besides that, I didn’t know anything else.

  Brand tried to reassure me that everything would be fine and even tried to distract me from my worry with talk about the wedding. I loved him for trying but there was really nothing he could do to prevent me from dwelling on the very real possibility that my mother’s family would turn me away from their door, leaving us literally out in the cold. Without their help, I might not find the answers I so desperately needed to solve the mystery of my existence.

  As we entered the small town my mother grew up in, I finally took notice of my surroundings. Dotting the landscape were acres of what looked to be farm land. There weren’t any crops in the field, just bare fresh tilled earth. I supposed it was past harvest time now since it was late October. The farmers would have gathered all of their crops and were probably resting until the start of the next season. Brand told me on the way over that most Amish people either farmed or owned dairy farms to make their living.

  He turned the car off the highway onto a paved dirt road. I could see a large red barn in the distance with a plain, white two-story home not far from it. My stomach felt like it was tied up in knots so intricate there would never be a way to untie them again.

  After Brand parked the car in front of the house, he looked over at me asked, “Are you ready to meet them?”

  I took a deep breath to steady my nerves as best I could and nodded my head. We needed answers and there was only one way to get them.

  Chapter 17

  Brand laced his fingers with mine in an attempt to lend me his strength as we walked up the well worn wooden steps to the front porch of my grandparent’s home. My heart betrayed how nervous I was feeling. I was sure its beating was so loud Brand could hear it easily in the cool stillness of the autumn day. I tried to reason with myself that my nervousness served no purpose. This visit could only have one of two outcomes: either they would turn me away, not wanting to talk to me or acknowledge my existence; or they would welcome my unexpected arrival into their otherwise tranquil lives with open arms.

  Brand knocked on the front door for me. It only took a few seconds before it was answered by a woman dressed in a plain, calf-length light blue cotton dress. Her hair was pulled back from her face into a tight bun at the nape of her neck and covered by a thin white bonnet. She wore no make-up and looked like she had spent a lot of time in the sun from the fine lines and occasional sunspots on her face. When her soft brown eyes fell on me, they lit up in hopeful recognition. It left no doubt in my mind she knew who I was.

  She turned her attention back to Brand. “Can I help you?”

  “We’re looking for Amos and Rebecca Miller. Would you happen to be Rebecca?”

  “Yes,” she said looking back at me as if she wanted me to speak and confirm her supposition.

  I knew it was now or never. I let go of Brand’s hand and took a step closer to my grandmother, fearing to hope she actually wanted me.

  “I’m Anna’s daughter,” I said, using my mother’s true name. “My name is Lilly.”

  My grandmother no longer fought against her natural instinct and took me into her arms, hugging me tightly to her like she was afraid I would disappear if she let go. I could feel her tremble slightly in my arms. Finally, she released her hold on me and stepped back with her hands on my forearms to study my face.

  “You look so like your mother when she was your age,”
she marveled. “Please, come in.” She took one of my hands in hers and led us into a plain yet normal looking kitchen with a gas stove and refrigerator. There was a small, round wooden table that sat four in the middle of the room.

  “Please, sit down,” she said, pointing to the chairs at table.

  She quickly walked over to a cupboard and pulled out a plastic container from one of the shelves. Before I knew it, there was a plate full of cookies and two glasses of milk sitting in front of me.

  “Thank you,” I told my grandmother, wanting to reach for a cookie but unable to even make my hand move, I was still so nervous.

  “Your mother didn’t come with you?” my grandmother asked.

  “She’s back home,” I hesitated to say the rest but knew it would probably come up in the conversation eventually anyway. “She doesn’t actually know that I’m here.”

  “Ah,” my grandmother nodded. “I suppose I should have expected as much.”

  “Why?” I asked immediately, wanting the mystery of how my mother went from being Amish to what she was today solved. “Every time I’ve asked about you and my grandfather, all she would say is that we didn’t need you. Why would she say that? What happened between you?”

  “You’re mother was a wonderful child,” my grandmother began. A serene smile spread across her face as she seemed to be remembering my mother in the days of her youth. “We never had any trouble with her, not until she went on her rumspringa.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said with a slight shake of my head. “What’s a rumspringa?”

  “It is when our teenagers are allowed to go into the world of the English and experiment with their ways. Our children aren’t considered full members of the church until they declare themselves and choose to be baptized. They are given the chance to see how the outside world is first in order to make a conscience decision to give up the modern world and continue with our way of life. Your mother wasn’t interested in it at all at first until I told her she should purge herself of any desires she might not even know she had, to make sure our life was truly what she wanted for herself.” The regret on my grandmother’s face was evident. “She went with a few of her friends to Chicago on a weekend trip. It was there she met the man who is your father. At first we didn’t even know she had met someone. She came back and immediately wanted to join the church so we baptized her to make her a full member right away. It wasn’t until a couple of months later that we found out she was pregnant. Somehow, she contacted your father and he came to get her. She turned her back on us and said she wanted to live in the outside world with him.”

  “Did you ever meet my father?” I didn’t know anyone else who had ever met him, besides my mother. I was desperate for any information she could give me just to assuage my own curiosity about what type of person he was.

  “He was a handsome English man with a fancy car,” I saw my grandmother’s eyes flash toward Brand as she said this, obviously making a connection. “There was something different about him though,” my grandmother looked troubled as she thought more about the details on how to describe my father to me. “He looked pleasant enough on the outside but there was something inside him that didn’t seem quite right to me. Though, he did seem to have this overpowering connection with your mother that neither I nor your grandfather could break through. Anna came to us again after you were born. I think she thought it might soften your grandfather’s heart to perhaps forgive her for abandoning our way of life if he saw you.”

  “Did it?” I asked.

  “Your grandfather is very true to the old ways. Once your mother chose not to return to us, he followed the Old Order rules and shunned her. When she came with your father, unmarried and with you in her arms, any hope we had of her returning to us was gone. Even after we turned away from her then, she still came back to us one last time.”

  “Why?”

  “Your father passed away leaving her to raise you on her own. He had left her a little money to live on but she wanted to come back home and raise you in our community.”

  “And you turned her away?” I asked incredulously.

  “She was the one who left us,” my grandmother defended, although half-heartedly. “Your grandfather couldn’t allow her to come back.”

  I finally thought I understood my mother’s refusal to allow me to contact her parents. After being shunned by them, I couldn’t blame her for not wanting anything else to do with them. But why had she kept this information from me all this time? Was she ashamed of what she had done or was she ashamed her parents had turned her away when she needed them the most? She was most likely afraid they would not recognize me as their granddaughter and turn away from me too, breaking my heart like they had hers.

  “Your grandfather never mentions her name but I can tell he thinks of her often. He is not a bad man, just true to the ways he was taught when he was a boy.”

  “Will he mind me being here?” I asked, worried I might be causing trouble for my grandmother.

  “He would acknowledge your presence but he would not acknowledge you as his grandchild. For him, your mother is no longer a part of this family.”

  “And for you?” I questioned. “Do you still consider her your daughter?”

  A melancholy smile spread across my grandmother’s face. “I think it’s different for a mother. You carry a child for nine months inside you and ultimately the responsibility of raising children falls on the mother’s shoulders, no matter how good a man your husband may be. It broke my heart to turn away from her in her time of need. I don’t think I have the strength to do that again or to turn you away now. I can’t speak for your grandfather. He is a stubborn man. Once he sets his mind to something, it is set.”

  My visions of a cheerful reunion with my grandfather quickly evaporated.

  “Where is he now?” I asked.

  “He went into town. I do not expect him to be back for a little while yet.”

  “Perhaps it would be best if you asked your other questions before he returns, Lilly,” Brand quietly suggested.

  “Questions about what?” my grandmother asked.

  “I recently had a genetic profile done on myself, and I was hoping you could help me understand one of the results it found about my DNA,” I said. “It has to do with some genetic information that can only be passed down from mother to child.”

  “Are you sick?” My grandmother asked, clearly worried about my welfare.

  “No,” I reassured her. “I’m not sick. But the results showed I have a set of DNA that is completely different from anyone else in the world, except for my mother,” I answered, “and more than likely you. We came here to find out more about my mother’s family history.”

  “I would assume it has something to do with Lilith.”

  “Who’s Lilith?” I asked.

  “She is your ancestor. She was the first.”

  I sensed Brand’s body fill with tension at my grandmother’s words. Apparently, I was the only one who didn’t know who Lilith was.

  “The first what?” I asked, still completely at a loss.

  “The first woman.”

  My grandmother said these words so matter of factly I wasn’t sure what to make of what she was saying.

  “I thought all of Lilith’s children had been killed,” Brand leaned his elbows forward on the table, watching my grandmother intently.

  “Not the first,” my grandmother told him. “Not her child with Adam. She was the only one spared.”

  “Adam?” I asked. Then her previous statement started to make sense. “Are you talking about Adam, as in Adam and Eve?”

  “Yes,” she replied.

  I looked to Brand. “I still don’t understand. Who’s Lilith?”

  Brand’s eyes were troubled. Total and utter disbelief was the only way to describe his expression. He had not been prepared for the information my grandmother provided. “She was the first woman God made. Eve was the second.”

  “I will tell you the story that h
as been passed to each generation of Lilith’s daughters. I’m surprised your mother hasn’t told you this story before now,” my grandmother said, clearly disappointed in another failing of my mother’s. “Lilith thought herself equal to Adam since she was made the same way as he was,” my grandmother continued. “When she refused to be subservient to him, he asked God to make him another mate, one who would follow his orders without questioning them. So, God made Eve for Adam. Lilith left Adam and bore him a daughter in her home by the Red Sea. She hid the child from the demons who followed her and forced themselves on her because she could bare their children. She was even cunning enough to hide the girl from the angels who came and took away her demon spawn to murder them. The Jewish people still tell the tale of Lilith in their folklore, but she has been demonized by them and many other cultures just because she refused to follow the orders of a man and be true to herself.”

  I looked at Brand to see if what she was saying was true. He looked back at me and nodded his head slightly, silently confirming that my grandmother’s tale was accurate.

  “Since then, each generation of Lilith’s progeny has one child, always a girl. We are unable to have anymore children than that for some reason. You are the last, sweet child. You will give birth to a daughter when the time comes for you to carry on the line.”

  Brand sat back in his chair, trying to absorb my grandmother’s words.

  “Does that help answer your question?” My grandmother asked.

  “Yes,” Brand answered for us since I had no idea if the information helped us at all. “It clears some things up for us.”

  My grandmother eyed Brand warily and it was then I realized they hadn’t actually been formally introduced.

  “Grandma,” I said, not really knowing how else to address her. “This is Brandon Cole. We’re going to be married next month.”

  Her eyes lit up at the news. “Married? Oh how wonderful,” she said clasping her hands together. “Wait one moment.” She left us alone in the kitchen and quickly walked out of the room to somewhere at the back of the house.