by Jodi Picoult
He shook his head. "That's the craziest thing I've ever heard."
"Yeah? You ought to try my line of work. How long since you last saw your sister?"
Calculating quickly, he said, "Three, four months."
"Before that did she visit you on a regular basis?"
"I wouldn't say regular," Jacob hedged.
"I see. Mr. Fisher, did she develop any friendships or romantic interests when she was visiting you?"
"She didn't meet people here," Jacob said.
"Come on." The detective grinned. "You didn't introduce her to your girlfriend? To the guy whose chair I'm sitting on?"
"She was very shy, and she spent all her time with me."
"You were never apart from her? Never let her go to the library, or shopping, or to the video store by herself?"
Jacob's mind raced. He was thinking of all the times, last fall, that he'd left Katie in the house while he went off to class. Left her in the house that he was subletting from a guy who delayed his research expedition not once, but three times. He looked impassively at the detective. "You have to understand, my sister and I are two different animals. She's Amish, through and through--she lives, sleeps, and breathes it. Visiting here for her--it was a trial. Even when she did come in contact with outsiders here, they had about as much effect on her as oil on water."
The detective flipped to a blank page in her notebook. "Why aren't you Amish anymore?"
This, at least, was safe ground. "I wanted to continue my studies. That goes against the Plain way. I was working as a carpentry apprentice when I met a high school English teacher who sent me off with a stack of books that might as well have been gold, for all I thought they were worth. And when I made the decision to go to college, I knew that I would be excommunicated from the church."
"I understand this caused some strain in the relationship between you and your parents."
"You could say that," Jacob conceded.
"I was told that to your father, you're as good as dead."
Tightly, he answered, "We don't see eye to eye."
"If your father banished you from the household for wanting a diploma, what do you think he would have done if your sister had a baby out of wedlock?"
He had been part of this world long enough to understand the legal system. Leaning forward, he asked softly, "Which one of my family members are you accusing?"
"Katie," Munro said flatly. "If she's as Amish as you say she is, then it's possible she was willing to do anything--including commit murder--to stay Amish and to keep your father from finding out about that baby. Which includes hiding the pregnancy, and then getting rid of the baby when it was born."
"If she's as Amish as I say she is, then that would never happen." Jacob stood abruptly and opened the door. "If you'll excuse me, Detective, I have work to do."
He closed the door and stood behind it, listening to the detective's retreating footsteps. Then he sat down at his desk and picked up the telephone. "Aunt Leda," he said a moment later. "What in the world is going on?"
By the time the church service drew to a close that Sunday, Katie was light-headed, and not just from the pressing summer heat, intensified by so many bodies packed into one small home. The bishop called a members' meeting, and as those who hadn't been baptized yet filed out to play in the barn, Ellie leaned close to her. "What are they doing?"
"They have to leave. So do you." She saw Ellie staring at her trembling hands, and she hid them under her thighs.
"I'm not budging."
"You must," Katie urged. "It will be easier that way."
Ellie stared at her in that wide-eyed owl way that sometimes made Katie smile, and shook her head. "Tough beans. Tell them to take it up with me."
In the end, though, Bishop Ephram seemed to accept that Ellie was going to sit in on the members' meeting. "Katie Fisher," one of the ministers said, calling her forward.
She didn't think she was going to be able to stand, her knees were knocking so hard. She could feel eyes on her: Ellie's, Mary Esch's, her mother's, even Samuel's. These people, who would bear witness to her shame.
It didn't matter whether or not she'd had a baby, when you got right down to it. She had no intention of discussing her private matters in front of the congregation, in spite of what Ellie had tried to explain to her about a Bill of Rights and kangaroo courts. Katie had been brought up to believe that rather than defend yourself, you'd best step up and take the medicine. With a deep breath, she walked to the spot where the ministers were sitting.
When she knelt on the floor, she could feel the ridge of the oak boards pressing into her skin and she gloried in this pain, because it kept her mind off what was about to happen. As she bowed her head, Bishop Ephram began to speak. "It has come to our attention that the young sister has found herself in a sin of the flesh."
Every part of Katie was on fire, from her face to her chest to the very palms of her hands. The bishop's gaze was on her. "Is this offense true?"
"Yes," she whispered, and she might have imagined it, but she could have sworn that in the silence she heard Ellie's defeated sigh.
The bishop turned to the congregation. "Do you agree to place Katie under the bann for a time as she considers her sin and comes to repentance?"
Each person in the room got a vote, a hand in meting out her punishment. It was rare, in cases like this, that someone wouldn't agree--after all, it was a relief to see a sinner confessing and beginning the process of healing. "Ich bin einig," she heard: I am agreed; each member repeating the words in succession.
Tonight, she would be shunned. She would have to eat at a separate table from her family. She would spend six weeks in the bann; still spoken to and loved, but for all that, also apart and alone. With her head bowed, Katie could pick out the soft voices of her baptized girlfriends, the reluctant sigh of her own mother, the stiff resolve of her father. Then she heard the voice that she knew best of all, the deep, rough rumble of Samuel. "Ich bin ..." he said, stumbling. "Ich bin ..." Would he disagree? Would he stand up for her, after all that had passed?
"Ich bin einig," Samuel said, as Katie let her eyes drift shut.
The church service had been held at a nearby farm, so Ellie and Katie opted to walk home. Ellie slung her arm around the girl's shoulders, trying to cheer her up. "It's not like you've got a scarlet A on your chest," she joked.
"A what?"
"Nothing." Pressing her lips together, Ellie said softly, "I'll eat with you."
Katie flashed her a brief, grateful look. "I know."
They walked in silence for a few moments, Ellie scuffing at rocks in the path. Finally she turned to Katie. "I've got to ask you something, and it's going to make you angry. How come you're willing to admit in front of a whole congregation that you had a baby, but you can't do the same for just me?"
"Because it was expected of me," Katie said simply.
"I expect it of you, too."
She shook her head. "If the deacon came to me and said he wanted me to make my things right because I'd been skinny-dipping in the pond, even if I hadn't done it, I'd say yes."
"How?" Ellie exploded. "How can you let them railroad you like that?"
"They don't. I could stand up and say it wasn't me skinny-dipping, I have a birthmark on my hip you didn't see--but I never would. You saw what it was like in there--it's much more embarrassing to talk about the sin than to just get the confession over with."
"But that's letting the system walk all over you."
"No," Katie explained. "That's just letting the system work. I don't want to be right, or strong, or first. I just want to be part of them again, as soon as I can." She smiled gently. "I know it's hard to understand."
Ellie willed herself to remember that the Amish system of justice was not the American system of justice, but that both had functioned rather well for hundreds of years. "I understand, all right," she said. "It's just that it's not the real world."
"Maybe not." Katie sidled out of the way
of a car, one with a tourist hanging half out the window trying to photograph her from behind. "But it is where I live."
Katie stood anxiously at the end of the lane, holding a flashlight. She had taken risks before, especially where Adam was involved, but this would be the gamble of a lifetime. If anyone found her with this Englischer, she'd be in trouble for sure --yet Adam was leaving, and she could not let him go without taking this opportunity.
In the end, Adam hadn't gone to New Orleans to find his ghosts. He transferred the grant money to a whole different locale --Scotland -- and reorganized his plans so that he'd leave in November. If Jacob noticed anything odd about the arrangement, it was Adam's generous offer to let Jacob stay on as a housemate in spite of the change of circumstances. Jacob was so grateful not to have to move that he did not bother to see anything else --such as the ease with which his sister and his roommate conversed, or the way Adam sometimes steadied her with a hand on her back when they walked across the campus, or the fact that in all these months, Adam had not dated a single girl.
A car approached, slowing at the end of every driveway. Katie wanted to wave, shout, make Adam see her, but instead she waited in the shadow of the bushes, stepping out into his headlights only when he came close. Adam turned off the car and got out, silently studying Katie's clothes. Walking up to her, he touched the stiff organdy of her kapp, then gently pricked the ball of his thumb on the straight pin that held her dress together at the neck. She felt foolish, suddenly, dressed Plain --he was accustomed to her in jeans and sweaters. "You must be cold," he whispered.
She shook her head. "Not so much."
He started to slip off his coat, to give it to her, but she ducked away. For a moment, neither of them spoke. Adam looked over Katie's head to the faint silver edge of the silo, jutting against a seamless sky. "I could go," he said softly. "I could leave and we could pretend that I never came here after all."
In response, Katie reached for his hand. She lifted it, staring at the fine long fingers, stroking the softness of his palm. This was not a hand that had pulled reins and hauled feed. She brought it to her lips and kissed the knuckles. "No. I've been waiting for you for years."
She didn't mean it the way Englischer girls would have, as an exaggeration, accompanied by a pout and a stamp of the foot. Katie's words were literal, measured, true. Adam squeezed her hand, and let her lead him into the world where she'd grown up.
Sarah watched her daughter chopping vegetables for dinner, and then turned her attention to setting the table. Tonight, and for many nights from now, Katie couldn't eat at it--that was part of carrying out the letter of shunning. For the next six weeks, Sarah would have to live apart from her in the same house: pretend that Katie was no longer a large part of her life, give up praying with her, limit their conversation. Why, it was like losing a child. Again.
Sarah frowned at her dining area: it was really one long table, with two bench seats on either side--as she was unable to have more children, there wasn't much call for a bigger one. She looked over at Katie's back, painfully stiff, as if she was trying to keep Sarah from noticing how very much this hurt.
Sarah went into the living room and moved a gas lamp from a card table, one she sometimes pulled out when her cousins came over to play gin rummy. She dragged it by its front legs into the kitchen, and arranged the tables so that there was no more than an inch of space between them. She took a long, white cloth from the drawers of her china cabinet and billowed it over the two tables, so that when it came to rest, if you were not looking closely, you could not tell that it wasn't one big rectangle. "There," she said, smoothing it, moving the silverware that was set at Katie's usual place over to a spot on the card table. She hesitated, then moved her own silverware closer to the edge of the regular table, closer to where Katie would sit to eat. "There," she repeated, and went again to work at her daughter's side.
*
One of the chores that Ellie had been assigned was getting Nugget grain and water. The big quarter horse had scared her at first, but they seemed to have come to an understanding. "Hey, horse," she said, sidling into the stall with the scoop of sweet grain. Nugget whinnied and stamped his foot, waiting for Ellie to get out the way so that he could settle down to business. "Don't blame you," she murmured, watching his heavy head bend to the fragrant, honeyed oats. "The food's about the best thing this place has going."
She knew by now how well the Amish treated their buggy horses--after all, if a horse broke down you couldn't take it into the local Ford dealer for a tune-up. Even Aaron, whose quiet stoicism still managed to catch her off guard, was gentle and patient with Nugget. Apparently quite a judge of horseflesh, he was occasionally asked to accompany a neighbor to the horse auctions held on Monday afternoons, just to offer his opinion.
Ellie stretched out her hand tentatively--she was still a little afraid that those big square yellow teeth would clamp onto her wrist and never let go--and stroked the horse's side. He smelled of dust and grass, a clean, mealy scent. Nugget pricked up his ears and snorted, then tried to wedge his nose beneath her armpit. Surprised, Ellie laughed, and patted his head as if he were a pet dog. "Cut it out," she said, but she was smiling as she unlatched the hook of the nearly empty rubber water bucket from the eye on the wall and carried it outside to the hose.
She had just turned the corner of the barn when someone snaked out and grabbed her, one hand clamped over her mouth. The bucket fell and bounced. Fighting down the quick surge of panic, Ellie bit down on the fingers that covered her mouth and an instant later drove her elbow into her abductor's gut, all the while thanking God that Stephen had gotten her self-defense lessons for Christmas two years ago.
She whirled around, her hands in a ready stance, and glared at the man, who was doubled over in pain. There was something vaguely familiar about him--the bright cap of his hair and the lithe, rangy spread of his body--and it annoyed Ellie that she could not put a name to the face. "Who the fuck are you?"
One arm rubbing his middle, the man lifted his gaze. "Jacob Fisher."
"Well, you shouldn't have grabbed at me," Ellie said a few minutes later, standing across from Katie's brother in the hayloft of the barn. "It's a good way to get yourself killed."
"I've been away for a while, but you rarely find black belts wandering around Amish farms." Jacob's smile dimmed. "You rarely find murdered babies, either."
She sat down on a bale of hay, trying to read his face. "I've been trying to call you."
"I've been out of town."
"So I realized. I assume that by now you know there have been charges brought against your sister?" Jacob nodded. "Has the prosecution's detective found you yet?"
"Yesterday."
"What did you tell her?"
Jacob shrugged. At his reluctant silence, Ellie braced her elbows on her knees. "Let's get something straight right now," she said. "I didn't ask for this case; it sort of adopted me. I don't know what your opinion is of lawyers in general, but I'm guessing that since you've lived English for some time, you assume we're all sharks, like the rest of the free world. Frankly, Jacob, I don't care if you think I'm Attila the Hun--I'm still the best chance your sister has of getting off. You should understand better than your Amish relatives how serious a charge this is against her. Whatever I can find out from you that helps your sister's case will be held in the strictest confidence, and will help me decide what to do to defend her, but--no matter what you tell me-- I'm still going to defend her. Even if you open up your mouth right now and tell me she killed that baby in cold blood, I'll still try to get her off any way I can, and then get her the psychiatric help she needs. However, I'd like to think that you're going to give me information that paints a slightly different scenario."
Jacob walked to the high window in the hayloft. "It's beautiful here. Do you know that it's been six years since I've been back?"
"I know how hard this must be," Ellie said. "But Katie never would have been charged if there wasn't sufficient evidence
for the police to believe she'd killed the baby."
"She didn't tell me she was pregnant," Jacob confessed.
"I don't think she admitted it to herself. Is there anyone you know of that she might have been intimate with?"
"Well, Samuel Stoltzfus--"
"Not here," Ellie interrupted. "In State College."
Jacob shook his head.
"Did she ever show any inclination to leave the Amish church like you did?"
"No. She wouldn't have been able to stand it, being cut off from our Mam and Dat. From everyone. Katie's not ... how can I say this? She used to come visit me, you know, and go to parties and eat Chinese food and wear jeans. But you can take a fish out of the pond and dress it up in sheep fur, and that's never going to make it a lamb. And sooner or later, without that water, it's going to die."
"You didn't," Ellie said.
"I'm not Katie. I made a decision to leave the church, and once I made that decision, it led to other choices. I grew up Plain, Ms. Hathaway, but I've thrown a punch. I've taken theology courses that question the Bible. I've owned a car. All things that I never would have believed I could do."
"Wouldn't the same hold true for Katie? Maybe she made a decision to stay Amish--and therefore found herself forced to do things you'd never believe she could do."
"No, because of one fundamental fact. When you're English, you make decisions. When you're Plain, you yield to a decision that's already been made. It's called gelassenheit --submitting to a higher authority. You give yourself up for God's will. You give yourself up for your parents, for your community, for the way it's always been done."
"That's interesting, but it doesn't stand up against the autopsy report of a dead infant."
"It does," Jacob said firmly. "Committing a murder is the most arrogant act there is! To decide you have the power of God, to take someone else's life." He stared at Ellie, his eyes bright as beacons. "People think Plain folks are stupid, that they let the world walk all over them. But Plain folks--they're smart; they just don't know how to be selfish. They're not selfish enough to be greedy, or pushy, or proud. And they're certainly not selfish enough to kill another human being with intent."
"The Amish faith isn't what's on trial, here."
