by Lynn Burke
“They’ve taken her by helicopter to the hospital.” Deacon King said, squatting down beside me. “She was unresponsive at the scene…”
“And?” I asked, peering up at him through bleary eyes.
“I witnessed the accident and stayed with her until they took her away.” Deacon King shook his head, moisture coating his eyes. “I want nothing more than to give you hope, but I very much doubt she’ll survive.”
I opened my mouth to ask why Gott would allow such a thing, but I knew why. Punishment for my sin. Staring across the living room floor, I called up memories of Friday night game night, the love in my parent’s eyes as they gazed at each other. The twins’ bickering and flying fists, Little Nugget’s smile, and Sarah and Ruthie’s blue eyes like my own, Levi’s chubby little hands grasping at my shirt and hair…
A sob rose, but I stopped it from escaping. Naomi still lived. My focus needed to be on her.
“I have to get to the hospital,” I said, dropping the quilt and pushing to my feet on shaking legs.
“I’ll go to the Johnsons and ask if they can take you.”
“No.” I shook my head, knowing I needed the only brother I had left. “Call my cousin Eli. I’ll write down his number for you.”
“I don’t know if that’s—”
“Do it,” I said with Daed’s stern voice, snapping Bishop Stoltzfus’s jaw shut. I jotted down Eli’s number and turned back toward the bishop.
Lips pursed, he dipped his head and accepted the paper from my trembling hand. “I’ll go call him right now.”
Legs weak and head fuzzy like a mist-shrouded morning, I turned. “Thank you,” I remembered to call after the bishop before climbing the stairs.
Chapter Five
Four hours later, I sat in a white, beep-filled room that smelled like bleach. I had been told the hand I held belonged to my sister Naomi, but I didn’t recognize the swelled, purple-hued face before me. Massive head trauma, I had been told. No brain activity, a no-nonsense, unfeeling doctor stated as though Naomi was just another statistic in his past.
A handful of my extended family had shown up at the hospital to be with me—the bishop and Deacon King as well—but I sent them away so they wouldn’t have to see the extent of my sister’s injuries.
My body ached all over, and I shivered from the fever still clutching at me. Eli sat against the far wall, head tipped back and arms crossed, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling.
“She’s already gone,” I rasped. Unable to cry, my throat near closed off, I peered at my friend who had crawled out of his warm bed to bring me to the hospital and stay by my side.
“There’s always hope—”
“The doctor said this machine is keeping her alive.” I turned to watch Naomi’s chest rise and fall, accepting the fact it didn’t do so on its own. “I’m the only one left, Eli. I don’t have a parent to tell me that it’s okay to let her go.”
My eyes stung and vision hazed over. The tears finally came, pulling gut-wrenching sobs from my chest. I buried my face against Naomi’s slender, white hand and allowed my grief to flow. I prayed for her hand to squeeze mine, for her quiet laughter to pull me from my misery. I prayed to wake from the nightmare, to find my parents and siblings safely at home from the wedding.
“It’s all my fault.” The words ripped from me as a hand grasped my shoulder.
“It’s not,” Eli insisted, but I shook my head.
“I’ve refused to confess, refused to repent before the church for my sins, and now I’m paying the worst penalty possible.”
Eli didn’t respond, and I took comfort in his presence, the only brother—the only true family—I had left. Sure, I had aunts, uncles, and cousins beyond number, but they weren’t mine. They weren’t the ones I shared life and laughter with. The ones I loved beyond measure.
Father, Gott, I confess. Forgive me my sins, cleanse me of this sinful lust within my heart.
My mind continued its supplication as the tears fell, and I vowed to do better. Make gut choices. Abstain from evil and temptation.
The yoke didn’t lighten, nor did the heaviness in my soul ease.
My tears eventually dried and the numbness returned, and the following evening, I alone made the decision to end Naomi’s life support and allow her body to rest.
The next morning, Eli and I sat at my kitchen table, coffee mugs in our hands. He glanced around the tidy kitchen. “What are you going to do?”
“With what?”
“Going forward.” He focused on my face. “Now might not feel like the right time, but maybe you ought to finally marry Rebecca. Fill this house with children again.”
I stared into my black coffee. I had thought the same exact thing, but couldn’t imagine living with her—let alone sharing a bed with her. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t love her. I don’t … want her in that way.”
“Friendship is as good of a basis for marriage as anything,” he said.
Sarcastic laughter huffed from me. “Could you imagine marrying someone you weren’t physically attracted to?”
“Well, no.” He picked up his mug and sipped.
“Then why should I? Just because I’m alone doesn’t mean I need to fill the hole inside, the emptiness here in this house.”
“Sorry. I just thought—”
“I appreciate that thought, but I’d rather live alone than live a lie.”
We sat in silence for a time, the ticking of the wall clock in the living room loud in my ears.
“Maybe you should get away for a while,” Eli said, his voice low.
I glanced up at him. “Meaning?”
He shrugged. “Come live with me until you decide what to do with the farm.”
A frown tugged at my brow. “This is my home, Eli. This is the life I’ve chosen, and I will honor my parent’s memory by remaining here and staying true to my vows.”
A lopsided grin lifted his lips. “You always did have the self-control of a saint.”
“Not always,” I muttered. “I never should have looked at that magazine of yours my first day of Rumspringa. Never should have listened to all of your stories about the different women you slept with.” I met his gaze head on. “I gave in to my mental sin daily, entertaining filthy thoughts of dominating a woman. And, no matter how much I repented, I couldn’t rid myself of the darkness clutching my soul. Now more than ever, I need to focus on His commandments and the Ordnung. Because of my weakness, I’ve lost my entire family. Every person I could call my own.” My voice broke, and I turned my attention away from my cousin.
“You’ve got to be shittin’ me,” he said, voice higher than usual. “You really think God took your family because of your so-called sins?”
“Why else would He allow such a thing?”
“It was an accident, Abel. Nothing more. A fucked-up, shitty deal that had nothing to do with your darker desires or God’s hatred of them. Look at me.”
Jaw clenched to keep my sobs inside, I lifted my head.
Eli’s hardened gaze studied my face, his lips downturned. “There is nothing wrong with your desires. Not a damn thing.”
“What manner of man wants to tie a woman up, mark her skin, and make her beg for release?”
Eli’s frown dissipated into a grin. “A kinky fuck not much different than me.”
I stared at him. “You and Jane…”
“She’s my sub.”
“Sub?”
“Submissive, and I’m her Dom. It’s a different relationship than most, but there is complete trust between us. She belongs to me, and I to her. We share a deeper bond than I’ve ever experienced before.” He smiled, and I envied the peace and happiness in his eyes. “If that’s what you truly desire, Abel, I don’t think you’ll find it here in the community.”
“I know.” My eyes burned and my head ached. “But hopefully, someday I’ll find a plain woman attractive enough that my darker desires will no longer matter.”
Eli didn’t respond, and after a few minutes sitting beneath his stare, I stood. “I need to sleep.”
“I’ll be sitting here in the silence and chugging down more coffee.”
****
Three days later, our entire community and families from surrounding ones arrived in somber silence to pack into our barn where eight unadorned pine coffins rested, lids closed as per my request.
I had been forced to identify every single member of my family as they lay on metal tables in the morgue, bodies disfigured and broken, the faces of all but Mamm and baby Levi unrecognizable. I refused to allow friends and extended family to see such fodder for nightmares.
Stoic reserve held tears in check from all who offered condolences, but moisture coated countless eyes. I tired of hearing how Gott willed it to be so. That my parents’ and siblings’ earthly journeys had ended, but hopefully, new life began for them in eternity.
What was the point, I wondered, of their words? There was no assurance of heaven, only faith and hope it existed for those of us who believed. I clung to my faith and the promise I had made in memory of my family. I had paid dearly for my sins, regardless of how much Eli had tried to convince me otherwise, and while I wanted to rail at Gott, expressing my anger, I was the one responsible for the silence in what was legally my house.
As came naturally to us plain people, forgiveness was granted to the truck driver. I had personally gone to see him in the hospital and offered my hopes for his own recovery from the shattered leg he’d suffered. Accepting the Ordnung meant rejecting self-defense and revenge. Both came easy for me, as I knew why Gott allowed the accident to occur.
The Lapps stayed after the funeral, lingering in the living room. Rebecca and her mother had brought enough food to feed me for a week, and they promised to keep the house to rights in the coming months.
“I’ll be over this week to help with the furniture order,” Daniel Lapp, Rebecca’s father said as they readied to leave.
“I’d appreciate the help. With my being sick and everything that’s happened…”
Mr. Lapp clasped my shoulder, his brown-eyed gaze warm and compassionate. “I spoke with the store owners, and they’ve given us a few extra weeks to get caught up.”
“Thank you.”
“No thanks needed, Abel. We’re here to help in whatever manner we can. Please don’t hesitate to stop in whenever you have a need. There is always a place for you at our table.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He dipped his head and stepped out the door, his teary-eyed wife offering me a smile and nod before following after.
“Rebecca?” I said.
She ushered one of her siblings out and stepped toward me, head lowered. “Yes?”
“Could you stay a moment longer?”
Her face paled, and she glanced out the door toward her parents. “A moment.”
I motioned her to the couch, and we both perched on a cushion edge. “I’ve been courting you for a year, Rebecca,” I began, hating what I was about to do. “I’ve seen you looking at Melvin Stoltzfus.” Her gaze flew up to me, her mouth opening, but I continued before she could speak. “I’m wondering if perhaps your agreeing to our courtship was out of honor for your parents’ desires rather than your own.”
Her ample bosom rose as she inhaled, the corners of her eyes pulled down as though saddened by the truth of my words. “I’m sorry, Abel.”
I tried for a smile, some of the tension in my shoulders melting away. “I think that you ought to pursue what you want rather than what your parents want for your life. Go after the man that will make you happy—if he is what you long for.”
Tears filled her eyes. “I’ve always admired you. You will make a woman very happy someday, but you’re right … deep down, I don’t want to be that woman. Melvin is”—she furrowed her brow and glanced away for a second—“Melvin is a little man and makes me feel like I would be needed.” She smiled at me again. “You’re so self-sufficient and strong, and I don’t believe you would need me in the way that he would.”
“You would be the perfect helpmate for him.” I stood, and she rose as well, smoothing down her apron.
“Thank you for being so observant and self-sacrificing, Abel Beiler. You are a gut man.”
I stood in the doorway and watched as she walked toward her waiting parents and siblings with their swinging lanterns at the end of the driveway. Their own house lay over the hill, just out of sight so they hadn’t bothered with the buggy.
“How’d it go?” Eli asked from behind me as his heavy footfalls clomped down the stairs.
“Better than I expected.” I shut the door and headed back into the living room. Although my cousin had left our community, he had been at the viewing and funeral, a pillar of strength for me—even if almost everyone else ignored his presence.
“So.” He sprawled out on the couch in his jeans and T-shirt. “I know some ways of helping you forget reality awhile if that’s what you’re needing right now.”
I sank into Daed’s hickory rocking chair and shook my head. “Are you thinking anything different than what you’ve been suggesting since we came home from the hospital?”
“A few drinks. A woman.” He shrugged. “There are other options, but those are the two you’re missing out on most.”
I studied the Bible on the lamp stand beside me, thinking of the hours Daed had read the words between the worn leather cover. Eli’s suggestion appealed to the darker side of me, but I had made a vow—and I had reminded him of it countless times. “I think I’d rather not.”
“If you ever change your mind, I’m only a phone call away.”
I tried for a smile and nodded. “Thanks, Eli. For everything.”
“Anytime, brother.”
****
Eli stayed at the house with me for two days after the funeral as people visited and brought food and even more words of condolence. Once he left, I went about the farm doing necessary chores, trying to keep my mind busy, too occupied and tired to notice the silence at night. The missing chatter and squabbling.
Daniel Lapp invited me to dinner twice that first week, but not ready to make small talk and pretend as though everything in my life moved onward, I declined.
I soaked my pillow with my tears every night until the well within me dried and I went on, numb and focused on my vow to live a pure life.
When not working around the farm, I stayed in the wood shop until late at night, long after Mr. Lapp left, striving to fill the orders Daed’s—now my collaborators—had requested before his death. I owned the shop and had taken over the furniture making business, and they had been more than willing to continue the partnership.
Mrs. Lapp and her second daughter visited once a week, and I paid them to clean the house and do my laundry. I made do with meals and the canned goods lining the shelves in the basement. Come spring, I would need to plant a garden, but I had no energy to give it much thought.
Days, weeks, and eventually months passed. I woke alone, ate alone, rode to Gmay every other week alone in the new enclosed buggy I had to purchase, and watched with a smile as Rebecca and Melvin began courting. The wedding season ended, but I didn’t bother with socializing for enjoyment over the winter. I did offer the newlyweds my best wishes the Sunday after their wedding, pleased to see pink on Rebecca’s cheeks and Melvin’s puffed-up chest.
Planting season came and went, the harvest that first fall on my own smaller than any the farm had seen in past years. I toiled alone and eventually came to accept my solitary life. Within four months of marrying, Rebecca’s midsection expanded as Mamm’s had been when she had died. Her face glowed, and for the first time, I thought her pretty.
The long hours of another cold winter with record-breaking snow slowly passed, giving way to warmer weather and budding trees.
My twentieth and twenty-first birthdays passed without anyone to acknowledge them. I lost track of the date and realized I had missed my own twenty-second birthda
y.
Eli stopped by on occasion and offered to introduce me to a different life. Each and every time, the temptation pushed against my vow, seeking out a crack to sneak through, but I held strong. Same as when I had been sixteen, though, my mind lost control while sleeping, and I begged forgiveness for the semen coating my underwear every other month or so.
I had hoped my obedience and striving to live blameless before Gott would offer me the peace and joy promised within Daed’s Bible I read every night for prayer time in the still living room. I also continued to kneel for the Lord’s Prayer as my entire family had, but the words wouldn’t come. The yoke of my sins still clung to my shoulders, the deadened weight within my chest the chains of a man near broken. I stayed the course, however, honoring the memory of my parents as a riot of red curls and flashing green eyes haunted my dreams—the ones when I wasn’t visited by nightmares of my family members in the morgue.
Chapter Six
The early morning sun beat down on my straw hat, and I cursed the hair I had allowed to grow back over my ears years earlier as the Ordnung commanded. I hammered another nail into the rail fencing along the farm’s southern border that ran crooked and was in need of repair.
Bleary-eyed from lack of sleep thanks to another nightmare of the crushed buggy and my unrecognizable, broken family members, I went about my work, my mind fuzzy and exhausted.
A few minutes later, I swiped my hat off and picked up the jug of water I had brought along. Downing a few swallows didn’t cool me enough, so I dumped the remainder over my head, blinking the water from my eyes as I gazed eastward along the newly constructed bike trail toward town.
Birds flitted about the stand of brush a few feet off, their chirps doing nothing to lift my spirits as they used to when I was young and innocent.
Cursing the abnormally hot May morning, I slapped my hat back on my head and started to turn away, but a jogger appeared, heading my way.
Red hair, I noted from the distance, my mind drifting to the still distinctive memory of the girl I continued to dream of regardless of my prayers. Turning, I picked up my hammer once more and set to work. Every few seconds, I found myself glancing down the trail, watching as the woman drew closer.
