by Senft, Adina
Luckily, there was no one in the office to see the hot blush of shame that scalded her cheeks. “I know. I’m trying to conquer it, but it’s hard. Even calling on the church for money sticks in my craw.”
“Each part of the body is designed to depend on the other parts. There’s no shame in that. We all work together.”
“I know. See you Saturday, Daed.”
“It will work together for good, you’ll see.”
So Saturday morning found her on Edgeware Road, holding the boys’ mittened hands in her own as they crunched the frosted grass on the waysides, soil hardened to concrete by the cold.
Either Ruth had been baking all of yesterday instead of sewing or she’d already had an array of coffee cakes, pie, and soft pumpkin cookies on hand just in case a crowd dropped in. She and her two grandsons left for town in the buggy just before the elders arrived. Amelia’s father, Bishop Daniel, Moses Yoder the deacon, and the two ministers all settled at the kitchen table while Amelia moved from one to the next, filling coffee cups and making sure everyone had at least one of everything her mother had left for them. If she came home and found that a big dent hadn’t been made in all this baking, she would think Amelia hadn’t been a good hostess. When they all had what they needed, Amelia settled into her old place at the table, a disjointed prayer gabbling at the back of her mind.
Bishop Daniel cleared his throat and put down his half-eaten cookie. “So, Amelia. You’re here to make a request of this congregation?”
“I am.”
“And what would that be, child?”
Amelia told them, though in more succinct terms and with much less humor than she’d told Emma and Carrie. She added in what she’d found out from the travel agency, ignoring her father’s soft intake of breath when she got to the part about taking the boys with her. When she finished, she twisted her fingers in her lap and waited for one of them to speak.
“This treatment with the cows, could you tell us a little more about that?”
She pulled Dr. Stewart’s packet of papers out of her bag and pushed them across the table to him. He put his spectacles on his nose and read them through, then gave them to Moses Yoder, who read them with equal attention and gravity while Daniel spoke again.
“I don’t understand this cow myelin business.”
“I don’t very much either, but apparently when they inject it into you, it starts to grow on the nerve casings.”
“And this takes four to five months?”
“The injections do. I don’t know how long it takes for…for things to start growing.”
“And it’s in Mexico.”
Something about the tone of his voice made Amelia’s heart sink. And since when did she care so much? When had something so laughable become a possibility, then hardened from that to a decision? Until she heard the doubt in him, she hadn’t known the certainty in herself.
“Isaac Lehman, may we have the room to ourselves in which to pray and talk this over?”
“Of course. Amelia, come with me out to your mother’s porch.”
It was the longest half hour of her life. Her father tried to make conversation, but under his words she found herself listening for a sound through the door, a phrase, any indication at all of which way the talk might be going.
Finally one of the ministers opened the door and leaned in. “Will you come now?”
They settled themselves in their chairs.
“It’s been our practice to support every member of the church in their medical needs,” Daniel said slowly. “The Englisch doctors, they know what they’re doing, and our people have received the help they need. Even Lila Esch, when she came to us, got the money for her medications during her lifetime.”
During her lifetime. Which was now over, as God saw fit.
“We support treatments that are accepted medical practice, Amelia. Treatments where we know that the hard-earned money of our people will be put to good use, and we’ve seen the results among us.”
Moses Yoder spoke up. “But it would be difficult to explain to the church members that we’ve taken their money and used it to put substances from a cow’s body into yours. To be honest, I’m not even sure that would be scriptural.” He glanced from Daniel to Isaac. “For this reason we don’t believe in organ transplants, and we certainly don’t believe in putting animal parts in a human body. That is blasphemy. Other congregations may find reasons to do so, but we here in Whinburg cannot.”
“But the rate of remission—”
“Have you spoken to these people?” Daniel indicated the paperwork, which now lay neatly next to her dessert plate. “Do you know this to be true? We cannot spend so much money based on words on paper, or on the word of a doctor we do not know.”
“But many Amish go to her and have been treated for their problems. My niece Marie says they have been made completely well.”
“For a skin rash or the flu, possibly they have. But have they had to go all the way to Mexico for it?” Had they forgotten Old Joe Yoder? He’d gone to Costa Rica, hadn’t he? But if she brought that up, they’d think she was being disobedient and argumentative and showing a bad spirit.
Moses’s eyes were kind, and she knew he honestly believed they were doing the right thing for her. Daniel’s next words confirmed it. “The church will be willing to fund your treatment using accepted medications, such as those Lila Esch used. But we cannot in good faith send you so far on such a crazy scheme. We have prayed about it, and we believe the Lord wills that you stay home with your boys.”
Amelia struggled for even a few words—for a breath. But she had nothing.
Her father spoke up. “What if she were to find a way to go to Mexico and have the treatment on her own? Like Old Joe Yoder, or Marianna Grohl that time years ago?”
“We would not stop her,” Daniel said slowly. “Old Joe paid his own way, and it was the Lord’s will to make his trip a success. But the cases are not the same. Having the substance of a cow injected into the body of one of God’s children? We would have to lay that at His feet.” His gaze rested on Amelia. “It is possible that you would be breaking His will as we know it in the Ordnung. And the punishment for disobedience is separation from His people.”
If she’d had trouble breathing before, she was suffocating now. Shunned? For getting a treatment that might possibly work and leave her able to care for her family and be active in the church? How was that possible?
“We will put things in motion for getting you started on your medications,” Moses said. “When the money is in place, we will let you know, and you can tell your doctor.”
The bishop rose, and the men stood up with him. “Peace be with you, Amelia,” Daniel said kindly. “I know this has been very difficult.”
She could not present another argument, even if she could think of one. To stand up and speak again once the elders had made their decision with the help of God was not only proud but selfish, too. Her place now was to submit, and to show it, she should get up and go with Daed to see them to the door. She should thank them for their time and care, as he was doing.
But it took everything Amelia had just to draw her next breath—and not allow the cry of despair in her throat to escape.
Amelia pulled her knitted shawl more closely around the shoulders of her coat as she walked. When Ruth got home with the boys, she would feed them a snack, and then Isaac would bring them home. She and her father had talked a while longer, trying to puzzle out why a medication made from cow myelin was so offensive, but in the end they could come to no conclusion. It was no use anyway.
“Even if you went and had this treatment, Amelia,” Daed told her sadly, “we would lose you as surely as if you had died. Your mother and I and your brothers and sisters would have to obey die Meinding, and what about the boys?”
She could hardly bring herself to think of it. They were too young to be baptized in the church, but even so, if she were under the Bann, they would join her in her shame. They could go to
her parents’ house with her, but she would have to eat at a separate table, and they couldn’t so much as take a bowl of potatoes from her if she passed it to them. She could drive them to church but could not go in. Would she gradually drift away from the church and deprive the boys of their family and traditions, because the pain of living among the Englisch was less than living among her own people, separate and unequal?
This can’t be Your will for me, Lord. Please show me what I’m to do. I want to go to Mexico and have a chance at remission. I don’t want to go on medication and die a slow death like Lila Esch. Show me a way to convince Daniel Lapp that having the injections is just as harmless as…as eating beef stew.
The clip-clop of hooves drew closer behind her, and out of habit she moved off the shoulder into the crisp grass. The sound slowed, and the horse snorted and stamped as its driver brought it to a halt on the side of the road instead of in a safe yard or a barn.
“Amelia?”
She turned to see Eli Fischer in the buggy, his hands firm on the reins.
“Can I offer you a ride?”
As if waking from a dream, she looked around her. Acres of harvested corn. Fence in perfect repair. A long hill with a stand of maples at the bottom, the last of their red leaves still clinging stubbornly to the bottom branches.
Old Joe Yoder’s farm. She had passed her own drive long ago, which meant she’d walked three miles or more in this daze. Was the disease beginning to affect her mind, too?
“Denki,” she said at last, climbing into the buggy. “I was thinking so hard I walked right past my place.”
“Are you headed home or somewhere else?” He flapped the reins over the horse’s back and clicked his tongue.
“Home. I just forgot to turn in, I guess.”
He looked up and down the road carefully before guiding the horse in a U-turn, and a moment later they were moving briskly in the opposite direction. “That must have been some pretty hard thinking.”
“Ja.”
His silence invited her to share what it was, but she couldn’t do it. How could she tell this kind man that he was giving a ride to someone he might have to shun later? So instead she said, “Were you on your way to visit Old Joe?”
“No, I was coming back from town. I’m staying with him for a few days now, you know, to give Anna and Martin a break from company. His daughters-in-law gave me a huge list of ingredients they needed for the baking Wednesday, when I said I was going to get parts for the baler, so I’m pretty full back there.” He nodded over his shoulder to the back of the buggy, which was crowded with cardboard boxes and grocery bags. “They needed me out of the house anyway. Church is there next week, and they’ve been in a frenzy of cleaning and washing for days.”
“So you’re not going to your home right away, then?”
“No.” After a moment of silence filled only with the sound of hooves and wheels, he said, “I might get invited to another wedding, you know, and I’d only have to come back for it.” When she smiled, he seemed to take it as encouragement. “Where are the boys today?”
“My mother took them to get boots before the snow flies.”
“Her timing is good. It won’t be long.” He drew in a long breath. “I feel it in the air.”
She did, too, now that he mentioned it. The sky seemed to have lowered and become sullen and gray, and in the air was a peculiar chilly silence that meant snow and not more rain.
“I’m glad you came along, then. I might have walked all the way to Strasburg and got myself caught out in it.”
“I’m glad, too.” His hands tightened on the reins and then relaxed, as if by an effort of will. “That must have been the reason I got myself invited to stay—it was to make sure you were all right.”
His tone was light, but his hands continued to flex and relax, flex and relax, his thumbs in their woolen gloves rubbing at the leather.
“I’m all r—” She stopped herself in the middle of the lie. She wasn’t. Maybe she never would be again.
Eli slowed the buggy as he took the right turn at Edgeware Road, and before she thought, Amelia averted her head from the scene of Victor Stolzfus’s accident. At the top of the hill, they saw a lone male figure walking on the side of the road, and because he wore no hat, she saw by the unruly brush of blond hair that it was Aaron King.
Amelia smiled as Eli pulled up. “Hello, Aaron.” The young man nodded, hitching his coat up on his shoulders.
“I’d give you a ride home,” Eli said, “but I’m full up. Amelia, she takes up a lot of room.”
Aaron’s smile didn’t even show a tooth. “It’s okay. Denki.” With another nod he walked on, and Eli shook the reins.
“That’s odd,” Amelia said. “I wonder what he was doing out here. The Kings are a mile or more south.”
“Maybe he was visiting a girl.”
“There aren’t any on Edgeware Road.” Well, except Emma, and a boy of seventeen wouldn’t have much to say to her after Guder Mariye.
“He might have been delivering something to John Stolzfus for Martin,” Eli said. “Parts or something.”
That was possible. He’d had a package under his arm.
Eli pulled a little on the reins, and the horse slowed to take the turn into her drive. “Amelia.”
There was only so long you could speculate about the walking habits of young men. “Yes?”
He brought the buggy to a stop in the yard. With no one home, the house looked cold and lonely, though she’d left a fire going in the stove. “Amelia, I—” His throat closed, and he cleared it. The horse bent its head to crop some grass at the edge of the lawn, and he let it—a sure sign in a man that his mind was otherwise occupied.
“Eli, what is it?”
“I wonder if you…if it would be all right if I came by from time to time. To see—to help you. There must be things that I could do around the place to make it easier for you.”
She was so surprised that she couldn’t think what to say.
He flushed, his cheeks going rosy between his coat collar and his black felt hat. “I didn’t wangle an invite to Old Joe’s so that his girls could get their flour and sugar delivered. I did it so I could be on this side of the settlement. To be more useful to you. If you needed me, that is. If I could help.”
Plain folks didn’t place much stock in words. A man could say whatever he wanted, and his words would blow away on the wind. But his actions were different. They meant something—had permanence, substance, and the results of them lasted. If a man wanted to show his feelings for a woman, he didn’t tell her. He showed her.
The way Eli wanted to show her now. If she would let him.
But she could not.
Oh, she wanted to, and no mistake. What a gift his help would be—cutting wood, bringing it into the house, wrapping the pipes for the winter, cleaning out the eaves while she dug the last of the potatoes out of the garden before the ground froze and didn’t thaw once the sun came up—the myriad things that had to be done even though she wasn’t running a farm.
The things Enoch had done.
But if she let him, her actions would have meaning, too. If she accepted his help, allowed him to give her these gifts, it would mean she was prepared to accept more. His courtship. Maybe his love, someday.
And that was what stopped her. Even if she left out the fact that she wasn’t ready for a new man to put his boots by the back door, how could she let him court her when he would be making a bad bargain? Who wanted a wife in a wheelchair? Or worse, one who might be under the Bann by the time he got around to proposing?
Oh, no. As tempting as it was, she would not use a good man like Eli Fischer as a sort of unpaid handyman, drawn in by a promise she wasn’t willing to make.
She lifted her gaze to his. He was watching her patiently, waiting for her answer to his stammered question. “Denki, Eli. It’s very kind of you to offer, and I’m grateful to you for thinking of it. But I— Between Daed and my brothers, I have all the help I ne
ed.”
She slid open the buggy door with her good hand and fled into the house, keeping her back to him even when she waved good-bye.
She could not bear to look into his face.
Chapter 11
There was no church the next day, but Amelia and the boys were invited to the Stolzfus house for the midday meal to say farewell to the last of the relatives who had come for the funeral. So of course, when she most wanted to avoid the topic, it seemed everyone was determined to bring Eli Fischer to her attention. Oh, not that she was so self-centered as to think they were doing it on purpose. Surely they weren’t. But it was embarrassing just the same.
“I hear Eli Fischer is still in town.” Emma bumped her shoulder after dinner, while she was out in the yard watching the boys floating leaf boats down the creek. If the older boys got to horsing around, they might make little Elam lose his balance and fall in, so Amelia felt it was prudent to watch from a distance. “You’d think he’d have things to do at home after all this time away.”
“I’m not sure he does,” Amelia said finally, when the silence had grown so long that Emma had begun to regard her with more concern than curiosity. “His brothers run the farm with their dad. He’s out here looking for work to do.”
“Maybe he’s looking for more than that.” Emma gave her a sidelong glance. “I also hear he gave you a ride home yesterday.”
Amelia swung to stare at her, mouth open. “How…? What…?”
“My sister was on her way back from town and happened to see you getting into his buggy. What were you doing all the way out there?”
There was no escaping the Amish grapevine. It was more efficient than the Englischers’ Internet. “I was walking. Thinking. I’ll tell you and Carrie all about it on Tuesday, when we have some privacy.”
“We have privacy now. Let me get Carrie. You can’t tease me like this and expect me to wait two days for the rest of the story.”
And before Amelia could say a word, Emma hurried off into the house. When she came out again, Carrie was with her, buttoning her coat. The snow that had fallen last night was only a promise of greater things to come, but it still forced them all to put gums on over their shoes. They crossed the lawn, covered now with footprints and animal tracks, and joined her at the top of the slope, where they could see the boys hunched on the stones next to the water watching the bright leaves race away on the rumpled current.
