Belonging

by Karen Ann Hopkins

  Suddenly it hit me. I leaned back and shouted out an “Aha!”

  “What?” Justin looked at me with confusion.

  “I just remembered where I saw that hot little redhead before.” I was so pleased with myself I couldn’t help grinning from ear to ear. Jumping up, I carried my bowl to the sink and dumped it in. I was pretty sure it was Justin’s day to do the dishes, so I wasn’t worrying about it. I had more important places to be.

  “A redhead—I thought you were dating a blonde,” Justin said.

  “Hurry up, kid. We’re wasting time,” I said as Dad walked in through the back door. He looked fairly run-down from his all-night shift at the hospital.

  “What’s going on, Sam? It’s only seven—you have plenty of time to get Justin and yourself to school,” Dad said as he deposited his briefcase on the table and headed for the refrigerator. He pulled out the orange juice, and I handed him a glass, feeling especially generous all of a sudden.

  “Ah, there’s this girl—a very uptight little woman, actually—who I just figured out something about. And I’m looking forward to talking to her today.” Actually, I was almost giddy with the thought of seeing her again, even though I didn’t know what her name was—yet.

  “Sam, really, you spend way too much time focused on girls.” Dad took a swig and tried to give me a “superior adult” look.

  I laughed. “Yeah, you’re one to talk. How many times have you been out with Tina this week?” I looked over at Justin who shrugged. He wasn’t moving fast enough for me, either. I crossed the room, swatting him on the head to get him up from the chair.

  “Maybe three—or is it four times?” I finished, looking smugly back at Dad.

  He seemed tired and for an instant I regretted saying it. “That’s none of your concern. And, as I recall, Tina’s made a couple of dinners for us here and did the laundry once, so you shouldn’t be complaining.”

  “When does she become our stepmom?” Justin asked innocently, reminding me of Rose. He took more after her with his quiet, subtle ways of stabbing a knife into a person. Me, I liked to be up-front and attack head-on.

  Dad found his sense of humor. “You’ll be the first to know, Justin.” He messed up the kid’s hair and then returned to staring at me. “When did you meet this new love interest?”

  Okay, Dad was playing my game, trying to divert attention away from his own issues. Fair enough, except I couldn’t really tell him I’d met the girl on the road in the middle of the night. That wouldn’t make a good impression. And then there was the whole Rose being with her and all. I thought for a few seconds and answered as honestly as I could without selling Rose out.

  “Met last night—it was no big deal. I don’t think she’s even my type, really.” I grabbed my backpack and keys and headed for the door. “I’ll be waiting two minutes, Justin. If you’re not in the truck by then, you’re riding the bus today.”

  That got Justin sprinting into the hallway.

  “Bye, Dad,” I said just as the door was closing. I didn’t want to give him any time to question me. He might be a doctor, but he would have made a decent lawyer, too.

  * * *

  Squeezing through the crowded hallway, I couldn’t think about much except the redhead. It bugged me, too. I had encounters with pretty girls every day and had never gotten a headache over it before. Maybe it was the fact that she was quite literally the first girl that I’d ever encountered who wasn’t instantly enamored with my good looks and charming personality. Sure, some girls didn’t get all worked up in my presence, but this chick was actually hostile toward me...making her all the more intriguing. I wouldn’t be able to get a good night’s sleep until I figured her out and won her over.

  Somehow I knew I’d find her somewhere in the junior hallway—and so that was my destination. A small group of the varsity football players greeted me and attempted to slow me for a chat, but I brushed them off. Then several girls in succession went out of their way to get my attention, only aggravating me. I didn’t have much time before my English class, and I needed to get this conversation out of the way, so I could get on with my life.

  She wasn’t hard to spot. Reddish-blond hair like that was not very common, especially if it wasn’t out of a bottle, and I was fairly certain this chick’s wasn’t. I slowed, not wanting to startle her. My heart started to pound with nervousness, making me both angry and totally bewildered. I hadn’t felt this way since I’d had a crush on Madison Tully in sixth grade.

  Just as I reached her and was hesitating, she turned, and in her hurry to get wherever she was going, she smacked right into me.

  Bouncing off, she first looked surprised that I was in her space, and then she glared at me.

  “What do you want?” she seethed, hugging her books to her chest.

  I felt more confident now that I understood her attitude toward me, and I smiled nicely.

  “I just wanted to explain to you about that little incident that happened last week.”

  Her green eyes narrowed, and she waited. I couldn’t help but notice that those eyes went very well with her hair. Even though we were crammed in the middle of the hustle of dozens of kids, I felt as if I were alone with the girl in our own bubble. The girl’s intensity was interesting, strumming some chord way down deep inside me.

  And, I didn’t even know her name.

  Skipping ahead, I offered my hand and said, “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Sam Cameron.”

  She looked at my hand as if it was a dead rat, not even deigning to take it. I let my hand drop to my side. I had to admit, the fact that she wouldn’t touch me made me feel like crap.

  “I know who you are,” she said without telling me who the hell she was.

  At this point, the normal thing to have said was, “It’s nice to meet you, my name is blankety-blank,” but of course, I wasn’t so lucky. I was quickly getting sick of her difficult nature.

  “Why do you even care?” She tilted her head, her voice softening maybe a little bit.

  I took my chance. “Hey, I’m sorry about what Shaun said to you.”

  The scene ran through my head for the hundredth time: me, Shaun and several of the other guys charging through the hall to get to practice. When we’d turned the corner, Shaun had bowled this little redhead over. We’d been in a hurry; if we were late to practice again, our play time at the next game was going to be docked. As we’d hurried past the girl, she’d gotten up and I’d only seen the back of her head as she’d begun walking away. I’d commented to Shaun about it, hesitating in the hallway. He’d just laughed, saying out loud something to the tune of “the girl is just a country bumpkin and doesn’t deserve my time.”

  Yeah, I should have gone back, apologized and made sure she was okay, but I didn’t. I was in too big of a hurry. Now, as I gazed at the little redhead, a girl who was becoming increasingly prettier by the minute, I was paying the price.

  Her face began to brighten as if a light in her brain had just turned on. “So, you’re feeling guilty about your buddy’s bad behavior. Is that it?”

  The twist to her voice said she was mocking me. It was not the response I was hoping for.

  “Hey, I just wanted you to know that I was in a rush that day. I’m not a jerk like Shaun.”

  The hallway was emptying, and I realized I was going to be late to my class. I didn’t care, though. For some insane reason I didn’t want to break contact with the girl. But she didn’t have that qualm. When she noticed that we were almost alone, she brushed by me without speaking.

  “Hey, you never did tell me your name,” I shouted after her, not caring what the few slackers around us thought.

  My heart skipped when she slowed and began moving backward for a few strides. She called back to me, “Summer—Summer Sage.”

  She smiled and disappeared around the corner.

  I mulled the name as I made my way to class—Summer Sage—a very cool name for a very cool girl. And, the fact that she was frie
nds with my runaway sister was just icing on the cake.

  7

  Rose

  I yawned as I dumped the half cup of sugar over the grapes in the quart jar. It was an easy job, but given the sixty or more jars crowded on the counter waiting for sugar, it was also a tedious one. Ruth was at the stovetop, her head hovering over the giant steaming pot when she called me over.

  “Rose, come here and I’ll show you how to safely remove the jars.”

  I stifled another yawn, putting my measuring cup down. I hadn’t recovered physically from the wild night a few days before. It was Wednesday now, and I was still dragging. Of course, waking at five o’clock every morning to get the laundry and other chores done early enough that I’d still have time to do my schoolwork and keep Dad happy wasn’t helping my sleep-deprived situation, either. If I was really Amish, I’d have been done with education in the eighth grade and, like the other girls my age, I’d have more time to do the grueling workload.

  Wiping the sweat from my forehead, I joined Ruth at the canning jars. Just the place I didn’t want to be, closer to the rolling heat.

  Ruth handed me the thingamajig to lift the jars out, which I did, setting them onto the towel that was spread out on the table. After they’d been removed from the churning water, I added replacement jars, starting the process all over. A crescendo of pops sparked through the air, startling me.

  Ruth must have noticed. “When the top of a can pops, it means it’s sealed properly.” She pressed her finger down on one that had already popped and then picked up my finger and did the same with mine. “See, you test them this way. If they are firm, then they’re fine.”

  I went to touch another one, and she stopped me. “No, don’t start pressing them now. Sometimes it takes a while and you will only disrupt the process.”

  “Oh,” I mumbled, surveying the work that still needed to be done. “We have quite a bit of grape juice here, don’t you think?”

  “In the end, I hope to put up about a hundred quarts. I’m doing extra this year for Emy. She doesn’t need to be working over a hot stove in her condition.”

  The mention of Emilene brought the picture of the gigantically bloated woman I’d met the day before to mind. She’d come over for dinner with her husband and ten kids. The poor thing was having some major swelling problems with her pregnancy.

  The husband, Jeremiah, was a useless log as far as the kids were concerned. I’d been stressed out just watching Emy waddle around filling her littlest kids’ plates with food. I’d attempted to help, but the kids had seemed to sense I was an oddity and avoided me. The language barrier with the children hadn’t helped, either.

  “When did you say Emy was due?” I asked as I continued with my sugar-topping job.

  “Only about two weeks, but I doubt she’ll go that long with all the difficulties she’s having this time.” Ruth began adding the water to the jars that I had ready for her.

  The afternoon sun was shining in the windows and mixing with the saunalike conditions in the kitchen to make the room unbearably hot. I’d have to change into a fresh dress before the youth gathering since the one I had on was sticking to me in too many places to count.

  I smiled, thinking about how strange my thought patterns were nowadays. The figureless dresses were still hideous, but I was almost getting used to them. I didn’t like my hair in a bun, though, and I reached up to tuck some loose strands back into the cap. Ruth wasn’t as strict about my hair being in perfectly tidy condition as Mrs. Miller was, so I got away with not coiling it so tight. Still, it was the worst part about being an Amish woman, I decided—and the laundry.

  I missed the boring days when I had nothing much to do except lounge on my bed listening to music. I missed my favorite bands and TV shows, but not as much as I imagined I would—probably because the days were so full of stuff to do. I didn’t have any time to lament about what I’d given up to be Amish—and to be with Noah.

  Thinking about Noah stirred up all sorts of excitement in my body, remembering how he’d kissed and touched me the last time we’d been together. My mind was so sure of my decision when he was close by. The doubts only crept in when he was away from me.

  And then there was the whole business with Miranda and her disgusting brother, Levi. When I wasn’t obsessing about Noah, I was replaying the part of the night when Levi had shown up uninvited.

  I still hadn’t decided what to do about him yet.

  And I wasn’t so sure I should tell Noah about the situation. First of all, I’d be betraying the oath of secrecy that Miranda had made me and Summer swear to in the morning before the four of us had gone our separate ways.

  Yet I was certain that if I thought enough about it, I could come up with a way to make Levi pay for what he’d done to his sister without breaking my promise.

  “You look mighty deep in thought, Rose.” Ruth stopped her work on the canning assembly line to stare at me.

  What should I tell her? Nothing, but maybe she could help me make my decision without learning anything.

  “I was wondering about the punishment system in the community.” I continued to work, acting as nonchalant as possible.

  “The only thing you need to know, my girl, is that if you do wrong, you’ll be leaving us right quick,” Ruth said firmly.

  “I know that. I was just thinking about the other kids.” I paused, searching her face for understanding, but she was going to make me spit it out. “What happens to them if they disobey the Ordnung that you’ve been telling me about?”

  Ruth sighed a little, and I could tell she deemed my question worth answering. She wiped her hands on her apron and said, “That depends on what they did.”

  “Uh, well, what if a courting couple were caught kissing?” I threw out the first thing that came to mind.

  Ruth laughed. “Usually, something like that would be taken care of by the parents. Unless the kissing was getting out of hand—then the ministers and bishop would get involved.”

  Now we were getting somewhere. “Hypothetically, of course, what would the Elders do if a couple did the deed?” I was almost embarrassed taking to Ruth about sex, but she did have ten of her own kids. Surely she was an expert about it.

  Ruth’s face darkened a shade, and her voice came out harsh. “You and Noah haven’t crossed into that territory, have you?”

  “No, no. This isn’t about me at all. I promise. I just was wondering about what kind of punishment happened to the young people in the community that do things that are considered really bad. You know, like having sex, or drinking and smoking, that sort of stuff.”

  Ruth’s face softened a bit, and she seemed to resign herself to a cultural lesson for me. “First off, not all Amish communities are run the same way. The Forest Grove Church is only about eight miles away, and they follow a very different Ordnung than we do here in Meadowview. When the teens there reach the age of sixteen, they practice rumspringa.”

  Seeing my eyes widen at the word, she chuckled before continuing. “Sometimes I forget just how ignorant you are about our ways. You have to forgive me when I make assumptions about your knowledge. What that word means is that the young people are given the freedom to run around and be wild before accepting the church—sometimes being wild means driving a car or drinking alcohol. Many of those young men begin smoking over there also.”

  “Amish people smoke?” I was too dumbfounded to keep my mouth shut.

  “Not in our community they don’t, but elsewhere, the men are allowed to do it in private. A nasty habit if you ask me. But getting back to what we were originally talking about, the youth here in Meadowview are held to a more Godly approach to life, and our church will not tolerate such behavior. If a couple were participating in sinful touching, they would have to go before the church to answer to their wrongful ways.”

  “You mean they’d have to tell the entire church on Sunday what they did and that’s the punishment?”

  Definitely horrible, but still better than the
torture devices I was imagining.

  “Abram would announce the couple’s sins to the congregation while the young woman and man sat before the people. Then they would suffer some amount of shunning. And that varies, depending on the actual level of sin and disobedience.”

  She waited for more questions as I rolled the information around in my head before I bombarded her. Certainly, Noah and I would have to behave ourselves, or at least not get caught, to avoid such an embarrassing situation. Now I knew that I could never bring Levi’s abuse of his sister to any adult in the church. The last thing Miranda needed was all the dirty details broadcast by Bishop Lambright to the entire community.

  “What exactly happens when a person is shunned?” I’d heard the word before, and just the sound of it sent chills up my arms. Dad had given his own idea of the meaning, but what I was really interested in was the truth from an expert like Ruth.

  “Not all churches or families handle a shunning exactly the same way. Basically, though, when a person is shunned they are not allowed to mingle or take a meal with the members of the church for the period of the shunning.”

  “So if a person were shunned for life, then they couldn’t hang around with their family?”

  Here’s what Noah was so afraid of.

  “Oh, some Amish people keep a bit of a relationship up with shunned people, but it is always limited.”

  Ruth must have seen my disapproval, because she jumped to a defensive position quickly. “Rose, this is difficult for Englishers to understand, but shunning those church members who have chosen a different path than our way is how we preserve our traditions and our whole way of life.”

  Hearing little Hope barking on the porch, both of us turned our heads to the window. The light shining from a car alerted me that Dad had arrived. Pushing the conversation to the back of my mind, I untied my apron and tossed it on the chair by the table.