by Linda Byler
Tears of longing rained down Hester’s face. She wished to bury her face in Kate’s old blue dress, her shoulder warm and soft and forgiving, to feel her soft hands pat her back, her voice crooning, making a terrible world into a perfectly beautiful one.
The shrill cry of spring peepers came up from the creek. It was the seasonal ritual, this beckoning of spring, along with a call for purple violets and yellow, round-faced dandelions. Turning, Hester lifted the latch to go inside. She hesitated at the high-pitched warble of the screech owl. Another one replied, a melodious sound of two of God’s creatures.
She slept fitfully, too exhausted to stay awake or to sleep soundly. Just before morning, when the clock’s hands on the mantle crept toward five, William breathed his last. Hester didn’t know. She had fallen asleep for only an instant. She woke with a start, went to William, and felt the difference immediately. There was no movement; the rising and falling of his chest had stopped. His face was slack, gray.
Quite simply, Hester did not know what to do. The tears that should have come, the grief she should have felt, were replaced by a familiar shroud of indifference, a separation from reality.
When Frances pushed her way in, her eyes wide with fear, her face white beneath the black kerchief on her head, she stopped at Hester’s chair, a question in her eyes, her mouth working.
Hester looked up. “He’s gone.”
Frances nodded and went to William’s bed. The familiar sighs and sobs of grief, the wet smacking of her lips, began all over again. She keened, lifting her face, then fell on her knees, her cries reaching levels of hysteria.
Hester stood, helped her up, and patted her shoulder clumsily. She spoke words of encouragement, but nothing could stop the rushing torrent of Frances’s sorrow. A mother’s grief, Hester reasoned, is a desperate hurt, the tearing away of a child before his time.
And so she comforted, answered questions, shouldered accusations. Yes, she should have stayed awake. She should have, certainly.
But the curtain of death was drawn, and Frances could find no way to push it back.
CHAPTER 16
COVERED COMPLETELY IN BLACK, HER HAT PULLED well over the sides of her face, Hester stood alone by the casket. It was a plain, wooden box where her husband lay, waiting to be lowered into the wet soil of Lancaster County, in the graveyard where mounds of fresh earth were heaped over the graves of the children who had not survived the winter.
The singsong voice of the minister reading the leid failed to bring any response from the grieving widow, while Frances blew her nose copiously behind her. Elias bowed his head, wept quietly, but remained calm, his face a harbor of peace.
The horses and carriages tied along the fence were in a neat row, the group of mourners all in black. The trees had not yet begun to push their buds, their branches stark and black as well. The grass was olive green mingled with the dead brown of winter, bent over, waiting to be pushed out of existence by fresh, lively, new shoots.
After the Lord’s Prayer, Hester stayed by the grave as Frances and Elias turned to go. She felt a tap on her shoulder. Hester turned.
“You can ride back with me.” It was Johnny, the brother-in-law. Without Naomi, his wife.
“No.”
Without another word he turned away, a deep crimson spreading across his face, his eyes blinking with humiliation at the low-lying fury in her one word of refusal.
The funeral dinner had been prepared by members of the Amish community. Long tables were set in William and Hester’s house, then filled with great platters of sliced beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, along with cheese and applesauce. Hester sat humbly with Elias and Frances, William’s brothers and sisters, and the family’s large, rowdy group of children. She spoke when she was spoken to and acknowledged well-wishers, but nothing seemed real.
She did not want to be noticed. She wished they’d all go away and leave her alone. Yet she did not want to be alone with her thoughts this first evening, with William’s passing so close. It seemed as if he should be there sitting by her side, laughing, always glad to be among his brethren.
She was so weary, so bone-tired, and yet she still needed to spend the remainder of the day with William’s family, the dreaded Johnny among them. She sighed a small breath of defeat. She was seated on a bench beside the fire, William’s sister Amanda holding her infant daughter beside her, surrounded by children, aunts, and cousins. She didn’t notice her at first. It was only when a narrow black form sat on the bench beside her and a hand reached over to clasp her brown one firmly in her own that she turned her head to see two bright-brown eyes, like polished stones, peer up at her like an inquisitive sparrow.
“Hester.” The word was spoken solidly, well placed, like bricks, square and useful and sensible. The voice was low, accompanied by a dip of heavy eyelids held there, shutting away curiosity, as if she wanted to share a moment of silence, of companionship. Then the eyelids bounced back and the curiosity resumed, brighter than ever.
“I am Bappie Kinnich.”
Hester smiled, a slow, hesitant widening of her perfect lips.
“Barbara King, in English. Every old maid in Lancaster Country is called Bappie. Don’t ask me why.” She chuckled, then quickly covered her mouth with her hand, clenched tightly around her chin as if to squelch any humor or unseemly words.
“You are Hester. The wife of my second cousin, William. We have never met, likely because I have been teaching school in Tulpehocken Valley, about twenty-five miles away as the crow flies. As the crow doesn’t fly, it’s a long arduous trip, hard on the backside.”
Hester wasn’t sure if she had heard correctly, so she didn’t say anything.
“So, Hester, what are your plans?”
Hester shrugged her shoulders, a gesture revealing the blankness she felt, the complete absence of anything called a plan.
“You don’t have any, right?”
Hester shook her head.
“I didn’t think so.”
Bappie leaned back to allow a large uncle to pass. Her eyebrows were lowered in annoyance, but only for a short time. “You don’t want to stay in this stone house by yourself.” It was a statement, not a question, and not a gentle inquiry either.
“I guess not.” Another statement. “No, I don’t plan on it, but I hardly know where else to go.” Hester spoke so softly Bappie had to lower her head to hear her.
Bappie’s head swiveled in both directions as if she were waiting for a passing team or a pedestrian, the way Emma Ferree did in town. Then she lowered her head. “You don’t have family, do you?”
“In Berks County.”
“Not Amish.”
“Yes, they are Amish. Hans and Annie Zug.”
Bappie’s mouth dropped open. “You’re …”
Clearly speechless now, she drew back, her eyes wide open, her small mouth open in disbelief. “You’re that Indian baby!”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“Oh, siss unfashtendich!”
Again, Bappie clapped a hand over her mouth and closed her eyes to stares of disapproval. When the coast was clear, she launched into a loudly whispered account of everything she had heard about Hester over the years. She knew Annie, all right. Couldn’t stand her. Mean as a wasp. No apologies were offered after each blunt statement, so Hester took it the way Bappie said it—as an honest opinion that didn’t bother to be clothed in masks of righteousness or pride.
“Well, here’s my offer. I don’t want to teach another year. Those people in Tulpehocken Valley are about the limit. I’m tired of their gamach. So would you want me to live here with you? I have my own place, but it’s small.”
Hester rolled awkwardly into a pit of despair. She searched for words, her eyes large and frightened.
Bappie saw immediately the need to reserve her proposition and said so quickly, grabbing both of Hester’s hands and holding them warmly in her own, as her brown eyes filled with quick, glistening tears of sympathy.
“Ach, Hester, I
’m not fit. No wonder I don’t have a husband. Forget what I said. You barely know who I am.”
Quickly, Hester grabbed back Bappie’s hands and hung on as if they were a branch in floodwaters. “No. Oh, no. Let’s just… Bappie, please come visit me on Sunday. I have no one and no place to go. Elias, Father, wants me to stay, but Frances.” Her voice faded away.
“Frances? She’s a regular scarecrow. Meaner, too.”
Hester smiled and lifted her own hand to cover her mouth as Bappie clapped a hand to her chin again. The eyes above the hand sparkled and danced mischievously, rolled in Frances’s direction, then closed as she laughed quietly.
“I’ll be back Sunday.” With that, Bappie got up and made her way quickly through the room, stopping to talk to a few relatives before heading out the door.
Hester held babies, talked to the bashful children, and listened to Frances’s account of William’s accident and his life with Hester. She acknowledged kind words of sympathy, shaking hands with so many people they seemed to be an endless line of faces and figures dressed in black.
Her head spun with weariness. She longed to lie down anywhere. She seriously thought of sitting against a wall somewhere, wherever she could close her eyes, but knew she could not until the last well-wisher had gone through that door.
The night did come, as it always does, but never was the veil of darkness more anticipated. She refused every offer from kind folks who wanted to stay the night, saying she would be safe here with Elias and Frances.
She fell into bed and remembered drawing the quilt over her shoulders before falling into a deep and restful sleep, the sound of the tree frogs and barking foxes going undetected.
The bedroom was pitch dark when Hester opened her eyes. The soft sighing of a spring rain against the windowpanes reminded her of William’s passing, a gray mourning that filled her heart, dripping from the battered portion that remained.
She had never imagined the despair his death would bring, the solid weight of guilt mixed with disappointment, the life-draining inadequacy of her spirit. If only she had done better. She had been unfit to be the helpmeet she had promised to be on the day she spoke her sacred vows. God had not blessed their union with children, heirs to William’s family, and it was her fault. Yes, he had been harsh at times, but that was his right. He was the husband, she the lesser vessel, and she had never succumbed fully to his will. Now she must live with the punishment God had wrought. He had taken William, and that, too, was her fault.
Wave after wave of humiliation accompanied the falling rain that blew softly against the dark windowpanes, until the thought of William became a torment. She must never think of marrying again. In her wildest imagining, she had not thought of marriage as the burden it had become, unable to bow fully to the will of her husband and his family.
She had spoken out boldly, accusing him of his lack of love, when all the while it had been her own stubborn will refusing to bend. It was the way the Indians in this Pennsylvania forest refused to bend to the demands of the white man who hacked down their sacred trees, who bought and owned the land they assumed belonged to the Creator they worshiped.
She would never be a white woman.
Somehow, before Barbara King came back to visit, she must leave. She would find her way to the western frontier, to her people. She would speak to Elias and Frances. Perhaps they would understand her sorrow.
The gray light of dawn brought fresh resolve. This time she would ask for a horse. She would plan better now that she was aware of the dangers, the thirst, the hunger that had been her constant companion when she left Hans and Annie’s homestead. She had one wish—to see Emma and Billy Ferree. She had never thanked them properly, or enough, for what they had done.
She was surprised to find herself weak, her joints aching, her head spinning dizzily, as she got out of bed, found her clothes, and stoked the fire. Her hands shook as she swung the kettle over the new flames. The room tilted as she brought the cold water to her face at the dry sink.
She was bringing the steel-toothed comb through her heavy, black hair when the latch was lifted with a resounding crack of steel, the door creaked open, and Frances stood in the gray, early-morning light.
“You’re up.”
“Yes.”
“Have you eaten?”
“No.”
“Then come eat breakfast with Elias and me. Johnny and Naomi have spent the night. It would be nice if you ate with us.”
Hester kept her back turned, her shaking hands twisting her hair into a bun on the back of her head.
“Well?”
“All right. I will come.”
There was no reply. Only the creaking of the door and the latch falling into place behind Frances.
Hester finished inserting the steel hairpins. She reached for the white muslin cap, placed it on her head, and tied the heavy strings under her chin. She made her bed, tucking the white quilt beneath the pillows, stroked the top to smooth out the creases, then turned to the corner for the bellows. She clapped them up and down to fan the small flames licking out below the chunk of wood she had placed on the dying embers.
She swept the hearth and carefully replaced the chairs. She would clean the house properly after the men had moved the wooden benches to the attic, where it was customary to store them until the next church service.
The act of carrying out normal, mundane chores was healing and allowed her a sense of well-being, if only in sparse amounts. She threw a thin black shawl over her shoulders and stepped out into the fine, misty rain, then made her way to the addition built onto her own stone farmhouse, hesitating at the door.
She dreaded the breakfast table with Johnny’s mocking eyes. Taking a deep breath, she knocked lightly, then pushed up the heavy latch to find the family seated around the table, candles on the mantle shelf illuminating the room, the smell of bacon and fried cornmeal mush hovering thickly around the room.
Frances cleared her throat. “We have been waiting.”
“I’m sorry.” Quickly Hester shrugged out of her shawl and slid quietly into a chair, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes downcast.
All heads bowed instantly in silent prayer. Then Elias lifted his head, cleared his throat, and looked around the table. “Everyone help yourselves now.”
How could Hester know her own stark, tragic beauty in the flickering yellow light of the candles? If anything, the experience of sadness only enhanced the dark luster of her large, almond-shaped eyes, the thick, black lashes drooping in remembered sorrows. She bowed her long, slender neck in humility, her mouth vulnerable with the sense of past mistakes, a sight that left Johnny’s eyes glued to her as he tried unsuccessfully to tear them away.
Naomi, a small wren of a woman, bright-eyed and quick in her movements, helped the four children with their breakfasts, cutting the slabs of fried mush, tying a bib around the one-year-old, completely oblivious to her husband’s wandering.
“You have slept well?” Elias asked, his eyes kind.
“Yes.”
“That’s good. I was afraid you wouldn’t sleep after everything was over.”
Frances blinked, once, twice. She opened her mouth as if to speak, hesitated, then closed it. She took up her spoon, toying with her bacon. Suddenly she spoke, her words cutting through the kind words of her husband. “I told you, Elias. Death is different to the Indians. They do not feel loss the way we do. Neither do they treasure life.”
Naomi looked up, her birdlike eyes darting from one face to another.
Hester’s heart leaped within her. She recognized the opportunity to present her case. It took all of her courage, but she folded her hands on her lap, lifted her head, and began. “Yes, Frances, you are right. I am an Indian. I have failed you in many ways, as I have failed William.”
Elias raised his hand to silence her. Frances drew in a sharp breath, then laid down her spoon, poised to hear. “If you will be kind enough to give me one good horse, I will leave today. I will ride away
from Lancaster County to find my people. I am not fit to be an Amish wife and mother.”
Frances hissed, “You can’t!”
“Why not?” Hester was calm and composed, drawing strength from her own words.
“How would that make us appear in the eyes of the Amish community? Our son’s wife! Riding off to join the… those heathen Indians? We would be the ones who failed then. They would excommunicate you.” Shrieking now, her voice high-pitched in desperation, her head bobbing in agitation, Frances was clearly horrified.
Elias sat as a stone, unmovable.
Johnny snickered self-consciously.
Naomi broke out. “Hester, why do you say that? You have been a good wife. By all appearances you have been an excellent housekeeper and a learned quilter. William seemed happier than I have ever seen him.”
Elias began nodding his head in approval. “I told Hester she can always stay here. She is now the heir to the farm rightfully. She is William’s wife.”
“Schtill!” Frances’s command slashed across the table. The children sat up and stopped chewing, their eyes wide with interest.
“I don’t know why you would say such a thing. Elias, how can Hester own this farm? An Indian? I certainly hope you have not gone to see a lawyer, unbeknownst to me.”
“It is the law, Frances. The wife inherits the husband’s share.”
“William had nothing!” Frances spat.
Hester listened. She could think of nothing she wanted less than this farm or the great cold stone house that held William’s austerity. His rules clung to the whitewashed walls; the shadow of his superiority stained the wooden beams of the ceiling. The wide oak floorboards sounded the echoes of his displeased footsteps; the marriage bed spoke of her inability to conceive. Every corner of the house was rife with the ghosts of her shortcomings.
“I don’t want the farm.” Soft and low, Hester stated the fact.
Johnny’s eyes pierced her face. Naomi saw the look of her husband. “I’ll take it,” he said quickly.
Elias looked to the eager, flushed face of his son. Frances trembled, then a slow smile spread across her face, the pleasure erasing the anxiety. “Why, of course. The most perfect solution! God be praised!”
