Mother For His Children, A

by Drexler, Jan

  One foot after the other, she climbed the steep, narrow stairway. Then why was she afraid to let him get close to her? Blood rushed in her ears, roaring against the icy wall enclosing her heart. She stopped on the fifth step, pushing the persistent nudge away. She knew the answer to her question. Nothing would change until she forgave Elam and Laurette. But she couldn’t...she just couldn’t.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Levi didn’t look at Ruthy at breakfast the next morning, but he caught her hand in his as she placed his coffee in front of him, giving it a brief squeeze before releasing it.

  With a kitchen full of family and the noise they made, it was the only way he could ask her to forgive his behavior last night. He had bolted out of the house like a skittish rooster.

  He had moved too quickly, he realized that. She wasn’t ready to hear how he really felt about her, and yet all night thoughts of her had filled his head, chasing sleep away. His bed had never felt so empty. But he was a patient man. God would open her heart to him, he was sure of that, and it would be in His time and His way.

  He sipped his coffee and listened to the children’s conversations. To his left, Martha and Waneta whispered together over Nancy’s head, most likely about some boy, the way they were giggling. Nellie concentrated on her oatmeal, while on her other side Sam had finished his cereal and was digging into his scrambled eggs doused with ketchup.

  Levi took the jar of ketchup from Elias and poured it over his own eggs and potatoes. He glanced up at Ruthy as he did it, enjoying the look on her face. She had never heard of eating eggs this way until she came to live here, but she soon learned to put a jar of ketchup on the table at breakfast. That didn’t stop her from showing him what she thought about the practice, though. He took a bite and winked at her.

  Ach, she was pretty when she blushed like that.

  “Dat, when will you start the plowing?” James asked. His face was eager, and Levi knew why.

  “Not for a few weeks yet, son. The fields are much too wet, you know that.”

  “But you need my help today, don’t you?”

  “James, you’re not getting out of school today. You only have a few years left, and then you’ll be home to help full-time.” James’s face fell. “But when I do start the plowing, I’ll need your help, for sure. Both you and Nathan, whether it’s a school day or not.”

  “Me too, Dat?” Nine-year-old David looked at him even though he got a sharp nudge from James when he asked.

  “Ne, son, not this year. This is James’s first year. You’ll be able to help with the plowing after you turn eleven.”

  At the end of the bench, Jesse looked at James with wide eyes and Levi chuckled to himself. The boy was watching his older brothers grow up before his eyes. But soon enough Jesse would be the one looking for a courting buggy and shooting up out of his trouser legs. They grow up fast. Too fast.

  Levi finished his eggs and sausage, mopping up the last of the ketchup with a biscuit. After the Bible reading and morning prayers, the family would scatter, most to school, while he and the boys would go out to their work in the barn and Ruthy and Waneta would stay in the house.

  What a difference from only a few years ago when there were so many little ones! Salome would fall into bed exhausted at the end of each day, but what joy filled her eyes each and every night as they shared the day’s events before falling to sleep. He missed having little ones around. Would he ever be blessed with more children?

  He glanced at Ruthy, sitting quietly at the other end of the table while she waited for him to begin. She looked up, gave him a tremulous smile and then turned to silence the little boys before they started a new conversation. The restlessness he had been feeling turned into an ache of longing. Did she ever desire more children? Her own little ones?

  Patience. He would wait patiently until the time was right. She would come around.

  * * *

  The scholars hadn’t been home from school for long that afternoon when Ruthy heard the boys shouting in the yard.

  “What in the world is that?” Waneta looked up from the table where she had been cutting some trouser material.

  Ruthy looked over the curtains. A man was walking up the lane from the road—an Englischer. He waved at the boys running toward him.

  “It’s Jack Davenport! He’s come back.”

  Waneta joined her at the window. “Do you think he’ll stay for a few days like he did last time?”

  “I certainly hope so. We put clean sheets on the bed in the front room after Mam and Daed went home, ja?”

  Ruthy opened the back door while Waneta quickly gathered up the sewing things and put them away. The man walking toward the house with Levi was a changed Jack. He wore new clothes, and his face was clean and shaven.

  When he saw her waiting in the doorway, he covered the last few feet of sidewalk with a bound. Standing on the step below her, he took off his hat. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Zook. I hear congratulations are in order.”

  Ruthy looked over Jack’s head at Levi’s beaming face. “Thank you, Mr. Davenport. I’m so glad to see you again. Please come in for some coffee.”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am.” Ruthy stepped back as he walked into the kitchen. When he reached the middle of the room, he turned in a circle, breathing deeply. Then he grinned when he saw the family watching him. “There’s nothing that smells so good as your kitchen, Mrs. Zook. I’ve surely missed it while I’ve been away.”

  Supper was filled with lively conversation as Jack told them about his travels to California.

  “Did you see the ocean?” asked James.

  “I sure did. Went swimming in it, too.”

  “In the winter?” Sam’s eyes were round as he gazed at Jack.

  “Sure enough. It’s warm there all year round. But the most important thing—” Jack turned to Levi “—is that I found a church there. I’m not a homeless wanderer anymore.”

  The table blurred as the emotion-strained words worked their way to Ruthy’s heart. That was the difference in Jack.

  “Why did you leave, then, if you found a home there?” Elias leaned forward in his seat.

  Jack smiled, looking from one face to the other. “My home isn’t in California. I have a heavenly home, just like your father told me about. It took a lot of thinking and the teaching of a good preacher to understand what he meant, but the Lord finally got through this thick skull of mine. I had to come by and tell you.”

  “Where are you going now?” asked Nathan.

  Jack looked down at his plate, and then back at Nathan. “I’m going back to Boston, to find out if my mother is still alive.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve been gone for eight years, and I’m not sure what I’ll find when I get there, but if Mother is still there, she deserves to know what happened to me.”

  The rest of the evening passed quickly, and after the children were in bed, Levi, Ruthy and Jack sat in the front room, sharing the last of the pie from supper.

  “Will you be able to stay a few days?” Levi scraped the final crumbs of the cherry pie from his plate with the side of his fork.

  “I’d like to, but no.” Jack set his plate on the side table. “I can’t stay anywhere too long. There’s this urge to get home that keeps pushing at me.” His voice dropped. “I’m afraid I’ll be too late.”

  “Is there something wrong? Is your mother ill?” Ruthy’s voice caught.

  Jack shook his head. “I have no idea. It isn’t just that I haven’t gone back to visit, I haven’t been in touch with Mother or anyone. As far as they know, I’m dead.”

  “Why? Why would you let them think that?” Levi leaned forward in his chair.

  “I guess I was too ashamed.” Jack didn’t look at either of them. “At first, I was ashamed at what I had done. I had squandered our family’s money...and I’ve asked
myself over and over if there was something I could have done to save my brother. And then Mother...” Jack broke off. His shoulders shrugged. “Mother told me she never wanted to see me again. She blames me for all of it, I know.”

  Ruthy ate the last bite of her pie and set the plate on the table next to her chair. Jack was too ashamed to even ask for his mother’s forgiveness?

  Levi looked at Ruthy, then back to Jack. “For sure, she can’t blame you even now, can she? Don’t you think she would be glad to see you again?”

  Jack shook his head. “I don’t know. But I’m willing to try.”

  Ruthy looked at Jack’s clean-shaven face, his handsome profile. All of the signs that he had been a troubled man were gone, but it still took all of his courage to ask his mother’s forgiveness. After all these years, would she be able to see past her own hurt and anger to see how sorry he was for what had happened? Surely she wouldn’t hold the past against him now.

  “My life is so much better now than it was a couple months ago,” Jack said. “But there’s still this one thing...I need my mother’s forgiveness. That’s the most important thing to me right now. But it’s so hard to ask when I know how much I hurt her.”

  Ruthy’s fingers suddenly grew cold in the warm room. Wasn’t that almost the same thing Mam had said about Laurette? Had Laurette gone through the same anguish as Jack when she wrote to her, asking for her forgiveness?

  Watching Jack’s face, the shadowed look in his eyes, the icy wall surrounding Ruthy’s heart cracked. Ach, Laurette, what have I done to you?

  She knew what she must do. She must write to Laurette tonight, before it was too late.

  * * *

  Ruthy held her breath as she lifted another scoop of litter from the henhouse floor and headed for the door. Her eyes smarted from the ammonia, but once out in the fresh air she could take a deep breath again. This was her least favorite of all the spring chores, but it was over quickly.

  “Do you think the chickens are thankful when we clean their house for them?” Waneta whooshed out her breath as she followed Ruthy to the compost heap with her own load.

  “Chickens are so scatterbrained, I doubt if they even notice.” Ruthy set her pitchfork into the soft ground of the dormant garden and wiped her forehead with her sleeve. “We have a nice warm day for the work though, ja?”

  “Ja, for sure.” Waneta poked around on the other side of the compost heap with a stick. “Look here! The rhubarb is beginning to come up.”

  Ruthy joined her and spied the curling leaves as Waneta moved winter debris aside with her stick. “For sure, spring is here to stay.”

  “And before we know it, the asparagus will be coming up.”

  Waneta went to the far side of the garden while Ruthy laughed. “Ne, you know we won’t see asparagus until at least May.”

  “You’re right.” Waneta straightened up and tossed her stick away. “But I get so anxious. There’s nothing like fresh asparagus.” She looked past Ruthy and shaded her eyes against the afternoon sun. “Someone’s coming. It looks like your friend who was here on Monday.”

  “Elam?” Ruthy turned to follow Waneta’s gaze. For sure, there was Elam, alighting from the buggy and striding up the back steps to the door. He pounded on it, and then looked around to the barn, finally sighting Ruthy by the garden. Ruthy’s heart sank. What could he want?

  “Ruthy,” Elam said as she met him at the edge of the garden, his voice broken. He handed her a yellow paper. “It’s Laurette...”

  Ruthy took the paper from him, a Western Union telegram. Her hands shook as she read the brief message. Wife dead. Baby fine. Come home.

  Laurette...

  “Ruthy, you have to help me.” Elam’s face was white, his eyes dark and flat. “What am I going to do?”

  Laurette was dead? She couldn’t be...she couldn’t.

  “Come with me. I can’t go back alone.” Elam grabbed for her hand, clung to it. “Please, Ruthy.”

  Go home? Now? “Levi isn’t here, and I have to talk to him first.”

  “The train leaves in just over an hour. Ruthy, please...”

  She looked at Elam, his face desperate. Laurette was gone, but Elam needed her, and she had to make her decision now.

  Ruthy turned to Waneta. “I must go home, they need me there. Will you explain to your daed? I’ll only be gone for a few days, maybe a week....” Waneta broke into a trot to follow her as she hurried into the house. Elam went before her to open the door.

  “Ja, I guess. Martha and I can do the work while you’re gone.”

  Ruthy stopped in the kitchen and gave Waneta a quick hug. “I know you can. You’ll take good care of your daed, just like you did before I got here.” Elam stood in the doorway, his hat in his hands. “Give Elam something to eat while I pack my bag, ja?”

  She hurried to the Dawdi Haus and pulled her bag out from under the bed. She folded her good dress, put in her extra kapp and her hairbrush and then fastened the carryall. Satisfied the Dawdi Haus was orderly, Ruthy hurried into the kitchen again. Waneta had made sandwiches and put them in a bag. Ruthy threw on her shawl and bonnet while Elam took her bag to the buggy. She kissed Waneta’s cheeks.

  “You take care of yourself and the family, ja?”

  “Ja.” Waneta’s eyes were wet. “You hurry back home.”

  “For sure, I will. As soon as I can.”

  With a glance at the clock, Ruthy gave Waneta one last hug. “That one is for the rest of the children.” She ran out to the buggy where Elam waited, barely taking her seat before he had the horse off down the road toward Shipshewana.

  Chapter Twenty

  “She said she’d be gone a week at the most,” Waneta said, spreading butter on slices of bread as she made sandwiches.

  Levi put seven apples into the lunch basket, followed by some cookies in a tin box. Martha wrapped each sandwich as Waneta finished it and he stacked them at the top of the basket.

  “But it’s been more than a week,” Martha said.

  “Lots more than a week.” Jesse carried his plate to the sink.

  Levi closed the lunch basket and handed it to Nathan as he went out the door into a pouring spring rain with the others just in time to meet the school bus at the end of their lane. Without Ruthy, the morning routine was gone. This morning, like every morning since last Tuesday, had been chaos.

  He poured himself another cup of coffee and sat at the table while Waneta started on the dishes. Elias had Sam with him in the barn where they were starting the chore of cleaning out the cowshed for the spring. He should be out there helping them, but he didn’t want to move. After his coffee was gone. He took a sip.

  “When do you think she’ll be back?” Waneta opened the reservoir and ladled hot water into the dishpan.

  “I don’t know.” Levi rubbed his eyes with one hand. “That’s all she said when she left, that she’d be back?”

  “Elam gave her a paper to read, and then she told me she had to go home.”

  With him. She left with Elam. The reminder made him burn all over again.

  Levi drained his cup and took it to the sideboard with the rest of the breakfast dishes.

  “You’re doing a wonderful-gut job taking care of us while she’s gone, Waneta.”

  “It isn’t the same without Ruthy—without Mam.” Waneta kept her head down as she swished the dish rag around each plate. “How long do we wait, Dat? Should I go after her?”

  “Ne, daughter. We know she’ll return when she can.”

  Levi stepped onto the porch and shrugged on his coat. He clamped on his hat and hunched his shoulders against the rain as he made the journey to the barn. He waved to the boys working in the cowshed and then went on to the workshop door.

  He shook the rain off as he stepped in and shivered at the chill. Li
ghting a fire in the small stove, he took his seat on the stool at the workbench. He picked up the harness he had been soaping the day before, but kept his gaze out the window. Every day this week he had sat here, waiting for her to return, except after dinner when he drove into Shipshewana to meet the daily train from the east. The train she might be on.

  No letter, no message, no Ruthy with her face pressed against the glass window watching for him on the platform.

  He was a fool to wait, thinking he had time to court her. He should have told her he loved her. He should have insisted that she live as his wife, not his housekeeper. He should have done something to keep her from going.

  Levi stared down the lane toward the road, the harness forgotten in his hands.

  It had been eleven days since she had left. Eleven days. What should he do? Go after her?

  He needed advice.

  Leaving the harness, he banked the small fire in the stove and went into the barn. He brought Champ out of his stall and hitched him to the buggy. Elias came into the barn as he worked.

  “Dat? We’ve done as much as we can in the cowshed today. Should we start on the plow?”

  “Ja, you know what to do. Look it over, grease the moving parts, and make a note of anything that needs replacing. I’m going to John Stoltzfus’s, and then to get the mail. I’ll be back after dinner.”

  The rain let up some as the horse trotted down the muddy road, but a drizzle remained as he pulled into the Stoltzfus barnyard. Levi tied the horse to the hitching rail and went into the barn. John was repairing his manure spreader.

  “A good rainy-day job, ja?” John said, laying down his grease pot and wiping his hands on a rag.

  “Ja, for sure.”

  “Would you like to come in the house for some coffee? Elizabeth has some pie.”

  “Ne, denki.” Levi shifted. He didn’t want to have this conversation at all, but for sure not in front of anyone else.

  John looked at him closely. “What’s on your mind, Levi?”

  “It’s Ruth. She went back to Lancaster County for a visit, but I haven’t heard from her since she left.”