The Shunning

by Beverly Lewis

  In the painful hours that followed, not only did Katie’s entire family nix any conversation with her, they also refused to accept written notes from her. Katie had come up with the idea of writing when she found herself wanting more information about Mary Stoltzfus, who had taken ill—best Katie could tell. During supper preparation, she had overheard her parents talking about her friend.

  “Rachel said she’s got some awful pain in her head,” Rebecca told Samuel as he was washing up. “Ain’t contagious, though. Sounds like something’s up with Chicken Joe quitting her.”

  “Well, why don’t you go over and offer some of your gut chicken corn soup tomorrow?” he suggested.

  Katie dashed across the kitchen, eager to communicate with them. She scribbled a note on a piece of paper—How long has Mary been ill?—and held it up for her mother to read.

  Both Samuel and Rebecca turned their backs. Katie, not about to give up, ran around in front of them, pointing to the words on the paper and holding out a pencil for them to write a reply.

  Samuel shook his head, refusing to respond. Rebecca’s eyes grew sad and moist, but she, too, remained silent.

  Katie wrote once more: Why didn’t anyone tell me? Mary’s my dearest friend!

  She pushed the paper under Rebecca’s nose.

  Silence.

  “Well, I’ll not be staying around here when my friend is in need,” she announced. “I’ll go where I’m wanted!” It was then that she decided to see for herself how Mary was doing, even though it was already near dusk. Surely her best friend would be glad to see her. Surely she would.

  Desperate for someone to talk to, she grabbed her shawl and left the house with Molasses and the family carriage, startled at the emotions the shunning had begun to rouse in her. Angrily, she urged the old horse on.

  Along the way, she passed several buggies. Instead of the usual cheerful hellos from other Amish folk, Katie’s greetings were met with downcast eyes.

  When another buggy approached her on the left, she could see that it was Elam and Annie, probably going visiting. Eager to greet them, even from a distance, she called out to them, “Hullo! S’good to see ya!”

  They responded with the same blank stares as all the others. Tears sprang to Katie’s eyes, and approximately a mile from the sandstone house, she turned the carriage around and headed home.

  Heartsick and lonely, she suffered through her first meal—five feet or so away from the family table, stuck off in the corner of the kitchen by herself. She overheard the chatter of beloved voices and the friendly clink of silverware on plates, yet was not included in the conversation. Sadly, she decided that she might as well be five thousand miles away.

  Later in the evening a choking heaviness settled in, and she put her dowry money—the eighteen-hundred-dollar gift from her parents—in an envelope and shoved it under their bedroom door. The money did not belong to such a sinful, rebellious soul, and she penned a note on the outside of the envelope to tell them so.

  No “good-nights” were exchanged, and Katie went off to her cold, dark bedroom, undressing there while her family shared in evening prayers downstairs in the warmth of the kitchen. With a lump in her throat, she climbed into bed without offering her usual silent prayer.

  Nineteen

  One by one, the empty days dragged by, each more dismal than the last, now that winter had come early, shrouding the barren land with bleakness.

  Four days had passed since Katie’s first attempt to visit Mary. She longed for her friend’s bright smile, the joyful countenance. Was Mary improving? No one seemed to know. At least, if they did, they weren’t saying. Even Benjamin had clammed up, though he’d had plenty of chances to steal a moment away from either Eli’s or Samuel’s watchful gaze to speak to her privately. And Katie knew why. Benjamin, Eli— all of them—were afraid of getting caught, of being shunned themselves.

  She could take it no longer. Twenty-four hours seemed like an eternity. So many eternities without Mary—lonely, friendless days. Katie sighed, wishing she and her friend had not exchanged cross words on the mule road last Thursday. It was time to make amends.

  Rachel Stoltzfus met Katie at her kitchen door. But seeing who was there, she proceeded to shake her head and back away, putting both hands out in front of her.

  “I’ve come to see Mary,” pleaded Katie, wrapped up in her warmest shawl. “Is she feeling any better?”

  The door was completely closed—not slammed in her face, but soundly shut—by the time the last word left her lips.

  Cut to the heart, Katie turned to go. Suddenly she knew the meaning of the word alone. Knew it more powerfully than she’d ever known anything. She shot the word into the crisp, cold air as she coaxed Molasses out of the lane. “Alone. I’m all alone.” The sound of it throbbed in her head.

  In the past—when Dan died—she had experienced what it meant to be separated from someone she loved. But she’d been surrounded then by caring friends and relatives to help her over the worst days. And, on the whole, her life had never been a lonely one. There was always something to do and someone to do it with in Hickory Hollow. Some work frolic—a rug braiding or a quilting; weddings and Singings; games such as “The Needle’s Eye” and “Fox and Geese,” and in the wintertime, ice-skating marathons on Dat’s pond under a vast, black canopy of sky, studded with a thousand stars shining down on them all.

  No, she had never been truly alone in her life. But she was beginning to understand what it meant. Worse, she knew what she was missing—a whole community of People, lost to a bishop’s decree. She couldn’t help but wonder if the probationary shunning hadn’t been a retaliation of sorts—John Beiler getting back at her for not marrying him!

  Maybe John thinks he can win me back this way. Make me repent— then marry him on top of it. She forced a laugh that ended in a fit of coughing.

  It was then she decided to turn around and go back to Mary’s house. She halted Molasses on the dirt drive next to Mary’s bedroom window and tied him to a tree.

  “I’ll throw stones,” she told her horse. “That’ll bring her running.”

  Katie went to the dried-up flower bed near the tree, avoiding the rise in the earth where tree roots had pushed up random hard lumps. Reaching down, she gathered a few small pebbles and tossed them gently, hoping not to attract Rachel’s or Abe Stoltzfus’s attention. She waited a moment, then tried again, aiming for the second-story window. To her great relief, Mary came to see what the commotion was about.

  “I miss you, Mary,” Katie called lightly, hands cupped around her mouth. “I want to talk to you.” She gestured for her friend to raise the window, but Mary didn’t seem to get the idea. She just stood there, looking down with a forlorn expression on her face.

  “Are you all right?” Katie mouthed.

  Mary didn’t say a word, nor did she use sign language to make herself understood. But what happened next was more eloquent and heart wrenching than anything she could have said. She simply placed her hand on the window and held it there—as if to make contact through the cold glass—then slid it down and inched away until she was out of sight.

  It would do no good to plead with her to stay, Katie knew. So she turned and trudged back toward the carriage. She climbed in with a sigh of resignation, then made a circular swing around the side yard before driving Molasses out onto Hickory Lane.

  There was no song in her now, no desire to hum. She was an outcast among the People. What would Daniel think of her if he knew? Would he be ashamed?

  She craned her neck to look up at the sky, wondering if the dead had any idea what was happening down here on earth.

  “I best be making some plans,” she announced aloud. It probably wouldn’t take much to get her old housecleaning job back. But if she was going to make it on her own, she would eventually have to learn to drive a car, most likely. Maybe even go to school somewhere. One thing was certain, though, she had made up her mind that she would not confess after the six weeks were up. As diff
icult as it was, she might as well admit that she was as good as shunned for life.

  A quarter of a mile ahead, she spied David and Mattie’s place. Impulsively, she pulled into the main drive, then parked her buggy directly behind Ella Mae’s Dawdi Haus. If there was anyone left on the face of the earth who would speak to her, it would be the Wise Woman.

  Hesitantly, Katie approached the door and knocked.

  “It’s open” came the reply.

  Katie stepped through the door and into the warm kitchen. “It’s me, Ella Mae. Katie,” she called, feeling something like a leper—as though she should sound a warning. “I might not be welcome. . . .”

  The Wise Woman appeared, carrying her needlework. “Nonsense, lamb. anne—come right in and sit down. Warm yourself by the fire. It’s right nippy out there, ain’t?”

  At the sound of another human voice—especially Ella Mae’s thin, quavery one—Katie all but hugged her. “Oh my, it’s so wonderful-gut to see you! No one else will talk to me.”

  “Jah.” Ella Mae nodded thoughtfully. “And it just don’t seem right, insulting a body the way they are.”

  “Don’t you believe in the Meinding?” Katie pulled her braid over her left shoulder, wondering if Ella Mae had noticed that she wasn’t wearing her kapp.

  The Wise Woman only waved her hand in the air—the way Rebecca often did when she didn’t want to discuss something. So Katie sat at the table and let the matter drop.

  She watched, comforted by the familiar ritual of Ella Mae making tea—putting a kettle on to boil, getting out the teacups, pinching off two sprigs of mint. . . . “I hear Mary Stoltzfus is under the weather.”

  “Jah, but she’ll live, I ’spect.”

  “It’s all because of Chicken Joe and Sarah Beiler, ain’t?” Katie said, careful how she phrased the question since Sarah was closely related to Ella Mae.

  “Love plays cruel tricks on its victims now and again.”

  Katie wondered if the bishop felt she’d played a cruel trick on him.

  “John’ll find someone else someday, won’t he?” she asked, hoping to justify herself. “Someone much better suited for him.”

  Ella Mae shook her head. “Don’t be downin’ yourself now. You’re as fine a woman as any, with or without your kapp.”

  They laughed together, the old woman coming around to inspect Katie’s irreverent braid. It was a shining moment they shared, a moment of triumph.

  “My goodness me, it’s nice to have somebody come for tea,” Ella Mae said, heading over to fold up her counted cross-stitch linen. She placed it on the arm of the sofa behind her before joining Katie at the table. “You’re like me, I’m a-thinkin’. Not many folk drop by to visit anymore—and the nights get long and lonesome.”

  “Maybe it’s the weather . . . the cold and all.”

  “No, no, no. I know better.”

  “Why, then? Why don’t they come?”

  “Well, I’m thinkin’ the church leaders got wind of my string of visitors—the ones who look to me for a bit of advice, ya know.”

  “That’s too bad, really. I would have thought they’d know you’re doing people a big favor, the way you listen to all of us talk out our sorrows and such.”

  “Ach, it’s just that Preacher Yoder wants the People to look to him, I do believe. Maybe he figures I’m Dummkopp—touched in the head, ya know.” She patted her kapp and began to laugh that warm, won- derful chuckle that started deep inside and rumbled out, on good days, when her voice was stronger.

  It was pure heaven to hear her go on so. Sitting there in Ella Mae’s toasty kitchen, Katie felt her spirits lift. She was happy for herself, of course. Glad, too, to be company for the poor old soul who had welcomed her—shunning or no.

  “I ’spose word got out that young Levi and I had a cup of hot cocoa together down at the General Store one morning a few weeks back,” Ella Mae put in.

  “Why would that matter?” Katie was truly astonished. How could such a small thing cause the People to turn their backs on an old woman?

  “Ach, it’s hard to say, really. But it’s my guess that Levi Beiler went home and told his Daed that old Ella Mae Zook was saying this and that, and thus and so.” She reached over the table and patted Katie’s hand. “We do need one another, child. The People just ain’t enough, I fear.”

  Now Katie was beginning to worry. Was her great-aunt’s mind truly failing her? She wasn’t making sense. “Well, the bishop and Preacher Yoder are only doing what they believe is best for both of us now,” Katie spoke up. “It’s das Alt Gebrauch, the Old Way, the way we’ve always done things here in the Hollow.”

  Startled at her own words, Katie realized what she had just said. Had she spoken out of habit—defending the People that way—or was she beginning to believe that she deserved the temporary Ban? Was the weight of guilt beginning to press in on her? Was this how the Meinding ultimately worked to bring sinners to repentance?

  Ella Mae sat up straighter, releasing Katie’s hand. “No, no, I ain’t talkin’ about your predicament with the church just now. You’re payin’ for your sin, that’s true, and you’ll probably be confessing here sooner or later. We all do. A body can’t go around forever without communing with friends.” She paused to catch her breath. “No, no, what I’m talkin’ about is far different. Something to do with eternity— where one life ends and another begins.”

  Katie gasped. “Oh, Ella Mae, you’re not dying on me, are you?”

  “We’re all dying in one way or t’other.” She got up to take the teakettle off the stove and pour the boiling hot water into two cups. Next came the sprigs of mint leaves. “You’re young, and you may be thinkin’ you have all the time in the world. But I hope ya don’t go wasting your allotted time—any of it.”

  “Don’t go worrying about me,” Katie reassured her, still confused. What was the old woman trying to say?

  Then, out of the blue, the Wise Woman spoke, her words reaching deep into the private corners of Katie’s soul, where no one else had ever dared to go. “I was born Amish, and I’ll die the same. The Plain life is the only life I’ll ever know. But you, Katie, you have a chance to see what’s out there, what’s on the other side of things.”

  “You mean . . . the modern world?”

  “It’s what you’re looking for, ain’t?”

  The question struck Katie like a blast of cold air. Was it? Was she searching for the boundary line, the proverbial fence around the People? Hoping someday to break through, to find her true self? “Why are ya saying all this?”

  “Because you seem out of place somehow,” Ella Mae said in a raspy whisper. “Always have.”

  Katie felt a tingle of discovery. “I’ve been coming over here since I was little, telling you my troubles, trying to be a gut Plain girl—and here lately, an even better grown woman, worthy of the bishop’s . . . trust. I tried . . . but I failed. . . .” Her voice trailed away.

  “You’re a thinker,” said Ella Mae, shaking her head. “Thinkin’ and submittin’ to the Old Ways don’t mix.”

  Katie caressed her braid. “You’re probably right.” She stared off into space, remembering that Dan Fisher had said the same thing once.

  Ella Mae placed a cup of mint tea in front of her visitor, struggling with her own conscience. Should she tell Katie what she and young Levi had seen a week ago? The black limousine and the worldly woman . . . with hair the color of Katie’s own? And the letter the lady was so eager to hand over?

  She watched the poor girl hold the cup to her lips and sip her tea. When she set the cup in its saucer, she began to pour out her troubles in a steady stream—like the mint brew in the old teakettle.

  “It wonders me about the strange thing Mam told me before my wedding day,” Katie began. “And I’m more puzzled by it now than ever.”

  Ella Mae sipped, then sighed. “Ach, was it about that little dress you brought over to show me?”

  Katie nodded. “That dress has changed everything. It’s turned my
whole life upside down. The family’s, too.”

  Ella Mae appeared not to notice Katie’s distress. “I believe I know what your mamma may’ve told ya, Katie. I wouldn’t sit here and lie to ya, pretending I didn’t.”

  Katie was elated. At last, someone else—someone she could trust— knew the secret! Of all the People she could have chosen to speak with about it . . .

  Ella Mae continued. “I saw her, Katie. I saw your birth mother, clear as day.”

  Katie nearly choked on her tea. “My birth mother? Where? In Hickory Hollow?”

  Ella Mae nodded thoughtfully.

  “I can’t believe it! Why was she here?”

  “She’s a-lookin’ for ya, Katie. Isn’t that what your mamma told ya?”

  Katie fought back tears. “No, no, you must be mistaken somehow. Mamma never told me any such a thing.”

  “Himmel,” Ella Mae whispered.

  “Mamma told me that my real name was Katherine Mayfield—that I was given as an infant to her and Dat to raise after their fourth baby was stillborn. But she never said anything—” Her breath caught on a sob.

  Ella Mae shook her head woefully. “Ach, I’ve spoken out of turn, I’m afeared. Forgive an old woman for heapin’ more pain on your head, child.” She set her cup down and removed her glasses to wipe her eyes. The startling truth, although she had suspected as much, tore at her heart.

  “When did you see her . . . my real mother?”

  “There was a letter over a week ago,” Ella Mae began, telling Katie how the fancy lady had approached her carriage at the General Store. “She pleaded with me to help her find a woman named Rebecca. Told her there were lotsa Rebeccas in the Hollow, but she seemed in an awful big hurry to get her fancy letter into the right hands.”

  Without warning, Katie leaped out of her chair.

  Following the direction of her gaze, Ella Mae peered into the shadows across the room. “ Ach, Mattie, is that you standin’ over there?” she muttered.

  Her daughter stepped into the lantern light, revealing herself without a word, while Katie steadied herself, leaning hard on the back of the chair.