Belle

by Sarah Price

  Susie elbowed her sister and shushed her.

  Biting her lower lip, Belle willed herself not to succumb to the tears that threatened to trickle down her cheeks. “I’m doing what must be done,” she replied, her voice soft and trembling. “It’s the only way to keep the farm.”

  “The farm?” Verna practically spat out the two words. “You’re going to become Adam’s fraa so that we can stay on the farm?”

  “Oh, Belle.”

  She met Susie’s gaze, surprised at the concern in her sister’s expression. She, too, seemed to be having difficulty controlling her tears. “It will be all right,” Belle said, forcing a small smile that she knew fell far short of appearing genuine. “We all have to make sacrifices in life, I reckon.”

  “But . . . Adam? Adam Hershberger?” She said his full name with such disdain that Belle cringed. “Why him? Why didn’t you go to Gabriel?”

  Belle shook her head, wanting to lower her eyes but refusing to give anyone a reason to doubt her decision. “Gabriel didn’t buy Daed’s farm, Schwester. Adam did.”

  She felt a hand on her arm and turned to see her father standing there. The color had drained from his face, and his eyes, wide and sad, studied her face.

  “Belle,” he said when he managed to find his voice. “Do you know what you are doing?”

  She nodded her head, just once.

  “You . . . you don’t have to do this. You can change your mind.”

  While his words were meant to soothe her, she knew that she had to follow through with her promise to wed Adam. To go back on her word after the banns were formally announced was unheard-of, even if she was marrying Adam Hershberger. It would reflect negatively on her and her family. After all, Scripture was clear on keeping promises made: “That which is gone out of thy lips thou shalt keep and perform.”

  “Nee, Daed. I cannot, and you know that. You yourself said that going back on a pledge is akin to lying.”

  Melvin remained silent, his eyes filling with tears.

  “We’ve a lot of planning to do,” Belle said, hoping that her voice sounded at least a little cheerful. But even she knew that her words sounded unconvincing and lacked enthusiasm. “Only eleven days until my wedding.”

  Her father looked away.

  Verna and Susie simply stared at her, no words forming on their lips.

  “I reckon I should speak to the bishop’s fraa, ja? She’ll know what needs to be done.” Belle walked away from her family, not truly eager to approach the bishop’s wife but wanting to remove herself with good reason. She knew that, if she stood with her father and sisters, she would risk crying once again. And crying after her wedding was announced would add more fuel to the fire of gossip that was, undoubtedly, burning bright.

  In preparation for the fellowship meal, the women were busy in the kitchen, dishing food onto plates and serving trays. It was always a simple meal: pickles, chow chow, bread, jam, cold cuts, small pretzels, and, on rare occasions, cup cheese. Dessert always consisted of two different kinds of pies. But Belle wasn’t hungry.

  Several of the older women caught her eye and smiled. Only the smiles lacked true joy, not like the smiles they gave to other brides. These were compassionate smiles. In fact, it was unusual for the bride to even be at the service when her wedding was announced. Usually she spent the morning with her fiancé, cooking him a meal and sharing time together alone at her parents’ house. Clearly that was not part of Adam’s plan.

  Belle tried to join the women, but no one directed her to help. So she wandered over to the tables where they would soon sit down for the meal.

  Ella and Sadie made their way to her side. “What on earth, Belle?” Ella said in a soft voice so that no one could overhear.

  “I had to do it,” Belle whispered back. “If I marry him, he won’t make my family leave the house. And after there’s a son . . .”

  Sadie bit her lower lip and widened her big brown eyes. “A son?”

  Belle nodded. “. . . then he will give the title to the farm back to my daed.”

  “Oh, help!” Nervously Ella scanned the room. “My maem will have quite a lot to say about this turn of events. I’ll never hear the end of it, I’m sure and certain.”

  Belle didn’t doubt for a minute that Ella’s stepmother would corner her at some point. Linda’s fascination with Adam, as well as her very vocal opinions, was well-known to Belle. “Perhaps I should leave,” she said, more to herself than to her friends. But once the words were spoken, Belle saw both Ella and Sadie nod their heads.

  “Let’s go walk a spell,” Sadie offered, putting her hand on Belle’s arm. “Fresh air might do us all some good.”

  Quietly, they slipped through the door and made their way down the lane.

  After they had put some distance between themselves and the Riehls’ farmhouse, Sadie was the first to speak. “Please, Belle, you must reconsider. You don’t love that man.”

  Ella quickly added her own thoughts. “Love him? Why, you don’t even know him!”

  But Belle stood her ground. “I’ve promised to marry him, and I cannot back out.” She paused. “Nee, I will not back out.”

  “But he’s—”

  Turning to Ella, Belle frowned. “Disfigured? Is that what you thought to say?”

  “Oh, Belle!” Ella’s expression changed from concern to sorrow. “Would you think so little of me? Nee, I was going to say that he’s such a recluse, and bad-tempered, too.”

  Embarrassed, Belle swallowed. “I’m sorry, Ella. I should’ve known you wouldn’t say something so horrid.”

  Her friend acknowledged the apology with a soft smile.

  “Ja, I know that he prefers a solitary life, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad person. And bad-tempered? Mayhaps that’s because so many people are so cruel to him.” At least Belle hoped that was the reason. Truly no person could be as irritable and cantankerous as the community’s whispered tales made Adam out to be.

  Her friends, however, were not so easily convinced.

  “I find this very sad,” Sadie said, reaching up to brush aside a stray strand of her black hair. “Getting married for convenience, rather than love? That’s not for me. Why, I can just look at my own daed and how he married so quickly after my maem passed away.”

  Ella concurred. “Mine, too.”

  Belle frowned. “But both of your daeds were happy when they remarried, ja?”

  Sadie shrugged. “My daed isn’t unhappy. But she sure does rule the house. It’s not a partnership like he had with Maem. And she sure is hard on me at times.” Something dark passed over Sadie’s face.

  Partnership. That term evoked an image of a business transaction, which was a far cry from Sadie’s declaration that she wanted to marry for love. In the long run, Belle thought, marriage was nothing more than a business relationship. And Belle knew that some people worked for bosses they did not especially like. Yet their professional business relationship did not necessarily suffer. While love was a fancy and fine concept, the foundation of many marriages did not rest on it. Instead, respect for the husband and faith in God were the true cornerstones to a good marriage. She knew that she had faith in God. If only she felt confident that she could learn to respect Adam as her husband, especially after experiencing his unprincipled method of obtaining a wife.

  Chapter Eight

  Four days went by after the banns were announced, and Belle heard nothing from Adam. At first, she didn’t find that troubling. She threw herself into cleaning the house and writing letters to the people she was inviting to the wedding. But when Friday arrived, less than a week before her wedding, she knew that she needed to speak to him. It was, after all, his wedding, too. Typically, the man delivered the invitations and helped with decisions regarding the food.

  But Belle was more than aware that her wedding was not a typical wedding.

  Ever since the wedding banns were announced, her sisters had avoided speaking to her. On a few occasions, Belle caught them staring in her
direction. But as soon as Belle turned around to confront them, they averted their eyes and hurried out of the room. Belle couldn’t help but wonder what, exactly, they were thinking.

  She suspected that Verna felt embarrassed, worried more about what other people would think, while Susie genuinely felt sorry for her. Regardless of their thoughts and feelings, Belle knew that their futures depended on her going through with this marriage.

  As for her father, he walked around as if in a gray fog. Sometimes Belle thought she heard him mumbling to himself, but she couldn’t make out the words. When she asked him what he was saying, he wandered away, his shoulders hunched over and his head hanging as he stared at the ground.

  Belle understood how her family felt. She, too, felt as if there were a hollow pit growing inside of her chest. Most nights, she tossed and turned, frightened of leaving her family’s home to live with Adam on his farm. Besides the fact that his house was a mess, Belle dreaded the isolation of living so far away from town. And with a complete stranger! If she thought about it too hard, she often began to cry and had to excuse herself, escaping to the outdoors, where she would walk down the road toward town, even though she had no intention of actually going there.

  On Friday morning, her feet seemed to have acquired a mind of their own, taking her to Ella’s house. Belle found her friend in the garden, weeding between the rows of tomato plants, a basket full of ripe tomatoes at her feet. As Belle approached, Ella seemed to sense her presence and quickly looked up.

  “Annabelle!” Quickly, Ella scrambled to her feet and hurried toward the fence. “Oh, Annabelle, you’ve been on my mind these past few days.”

  Belle tried to speak but couldn’t. She swallowed the sob that threatened to burst from her throat and through her lips.

  “Kum, Belle.” Ella motioned toward the gate. “Maem’s working at the store, so we can talk. It looks like you could use an ear and shoulder.”

  Obediently, Belle followed her friend to the porch steps. Once they were situated on the bench near the front door, Belle turned toward Ella and began to cry. “Oh, Ella! What have I done?”

  Ella wrapped her arm around Belle’s shoulders. “Now, now, Belle.”

  But, once released, the tears wouldn’t stop.

  Ella rubbed Belle’s shoulder and tried to soothe her. “You don’t have to go through with this. You can tell the bishop that you’ve changed your mind. There’s not a person in Echo Creek who would think twice about your backing out of this”—she hesitated as if searching for the proper word—“wedding.”

  “I can’t,” Belle whispered. She pulled back from Ella’s embrace and wiped at her eyes. “You know that I have to do this. Otherwise my family . . . well, it’s more than just selling the farm, Ella. If I refuse to marry Adam and he takes the farm, we’ll be unable to buy another farm and quite possibly not even a house. Why, I fear we’ll be homeless.”

  Ella gasped. With wide, shocked eyes, she stared at Belle. “Homeless? Whatever do you mean, Belle?”

  Sniffling, Belle began to share the details of the story with Ella, leaving out the part about her sisters’ anger that she would not marry Gabriel. Even if she might actually entertain that idea now, it was too late. “When Daed sold the property to Adam, he had no choice, you see. The mortgage is long overdue. Daed lost his horse. How can any Amish man make any living without a horse?” Belle accepted the tissue that Ella offered to her from her apron pocket. She dabbed at her eyes. “And his prototype. That’s destroyed. Selling the farm must have been the last thing that Daed could do in order to help keep us together.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’ll be homeless, Belle. Surely your daed will find another place to live in another town, not that I want you moving at all. But that seems preferable to marrying that Adam Hershberger.”

  Belle shook her head. “Nee, Ella. Who knows how long we could live on whatever money Daed would have left from the sale of the farm? Given all of Daed’s bills, surely it wouldn’t be much. Why, we’d just become a burden to any community that accepted us, and that’s no way for an Amish family to live.”

  After a brief moment, as if she were dissecting Belle’s words, Ella began to nod her head slowly. “I am beginning to make sense of this situation . . .”

  “I didn’t set out to marry Adam.” Belle gushed those words as if desperate for her friend to understand. “I thought I might barter with him. I could houseclean for him, I thought. His place is a disaster. Boxes, crates, leaves, garbage. But he laughed.” The sound of his laughter echoed in her mind. “He lives like an animal, Ella.” She blew her nose into the damp tissue. “I tried to appeal to his better side.”

  Ella frowned.

  “Exactly my thoughts,” Belle exclaimed, reading her friend’s mind. “However, I quickly learned that he simply does not have one!”

  “So what happened next?”

  Trying to remember, Belle stared off into the distance. In her memory, she only saw a dream, a surreal fog that masked what had truly come to pass. She had to think, to push herself to fight through the fog, to remember exactly what had happened. “He said he didn’t want a housekeeper. But there was something he did want.” Raising her eyes to stare at her friend, Belle felt a new round of tears threatening to fall. Somehow, she found the strength to whisper the words that she could barely believe he had uttered. “He wanted a fraa, someone to bear him a son.”

  Once again, Ella gasped.

  “And I . . . I agreed.”

  The color drained from Ella’s cheeks, and she reached out her hand to clutch Belle’s. “You don’t have to go through with it, Belle. You don’t!”

  Belle blinked her eyes as she nodded her head. But in her heart she knew that a promise made needed to be kept. Besides, to rescind her agreement to Adam’s proposal, no matter how unorthodox it was, would only infuriate him further and ensure the loss of the family farm. “I do. I do have to go through with it for the sake of my family.”

  Ella held Belle’s hands and shut her eyes. “Oh Belle. I’ll pray for you. It seems that is all I can do.”

  “That is all I can ask for,” Belle responded in a soft voice. “Prayers will be what get me through this . . . this arrangement.”

  The noise of an approaching buggy momentarily distracted Belle. It didn’t sound like a regular buggy. Instead, it sounded heavier and with more rumbling of wheels. She looked up and squinted in the sunlight as she saw the dark, boxlike buggy nearing Ella’s house. Immediately, she recognized it and gasped.

  The buggy slowed down as it passed the white picket fence surrounding the Troyers’ house. With the driver seated on the left side, it was hard to make out who it was. But Belle knew from the odd shape and shut doors that it was Adam.

  When the buggy stopped, the black horse stomping its hooves impatiently as it tossed its neck, uncomfortable with the tight bit in its mouth, Belle turned to look at Ella. “I . . . I suppose he wants me to go to him.”

  Ella clung to her. “You don’t have to go. You’re not married to him yet.”

  But Belle withdrew her hands and started to stand up. She wiped at her face in case her eyes were still damp. With a tilt of her chin and a deep breath, Belle tried to collect her wits. After the banns were read at church, she was as good as married. All that remained was the actual ceremony. “Nee, Ella. I must go to him. He is, after all, to be my husband.”

  Without another word, she turned and walked down the porch steps. Her bare feet padded against the slate walk as she headed toward the gate. She noticed that Adam made no move to open the door for her. Instead, he sat on the driver’s side and waited. As she neared, she could see that he was watching her, his eyes barely visible as he peered at her from beneath his straw hat.

  Rather than get into the buggy, she walked around it to his door. She stood there, trembling, as she silently prayed for God to give her strength to deal with this man, a stranger who had unexpectedly become her soon-to-be husband.

  After several long, drawn-out
moments, Adam slid the door back so that there was no barrier between them. “Get in,” he said in a fierce voice. “I’ll take you back to your daed.”

  Obediently, Belle walked to the other side of the buggy and climbed up, pausing just a moment to slide back the door. Rather than shut it, she left it open. She needed the air to keep herself from feeling faint.

  But Adam did not turn the buggy around. Instead, he continued driving toward town. Belle clung to the side of the open door, her face turned toward the road and not Adam as she tried not to bump against him in the small, confined area.

  Outside the buggy, several people lingered near the Troyers’ store and in front of the small post office. Echo Creek was a small town, and the center of it was the heart of the community. Not a day would pass without many of the residents walking up Main Street on the pretense of having an important errand when really they only wanted to see who else might be lingering along the sidewalks. As the buggy passed the people, each and every one of them stopped conversing and stared.

  Belle was too aware that, because she had not shut the buggy door, they were all staring at her.

  “I thought you were taking me to my daed’s,” she said in a small voice.

  He ignored her and continued driving the horse and buggy farther down Main Street to the small feed and grain store at the other end.

  “Are . . . are you running errands, then?”

  He glanced at her, but remained silent.

  She licked her lower lip, too aware that her mouth was dry and her heart palpitating, the rapid beat making her chest feel tight and strained. A man on horseback rode past them, his eyes staring at her from behind round sunglasses. Belle recognized him as Jonah Miller, the young husband of Lillian, the former teacher at the Echo Creek school.

  Embarrassed, Belle looked away.

  “Have you changed your mind, then?”

  Adam’s words startled her, and she felt the color rush to her cheeks. Certainly he had seen her reaction to Jonah’s inquisitive gaze. But Adam was still staring straight ahead, his face hidden beneath the wide brim of his hat. Even in such close proximity, she could not see the right side of his face. “Do you think yourself so disfigured that I would change my mind?”