The Amish Spinster's Courtship

by Emma Miller

  The men chuckled at the sister comment.

  “Hold up!” Jethro called from the hay wagon, and he eased his Percherons to a stop. “Got a twist workin’ in the harness.”

  “Sam,” Marshall called up. “Jump down and give Jethro a hand.”

  As they waited to get the operation under way again, the men gathered behind the wagon. Someone had brought an insulated gallon jug of water and they passed it around.

  “I don’t know why you’re asking about Mary’s sisters, Gabe,” Caleb said. “I heard you’ve been walking with a girl from Seven Poplars. Elsie somebody from Wisconsin. Staying with the matchmaker?”

  “Elsie? Ne.” Gabe laughed and spat a stream of tobacco on the ground. “We’re not walking out together. I’ve taken her home from singings a few times, but I like keeping my options open. My parents say there’s no rumspringa here in Delaware, but I like to think I can keep my options open with that, too.”

  The men laughed again, but Marshall didn’t join in. It wasn’t that they were saying anything inappropriate. The conversation was harmless enough, and a year or two back, he probably would have laughed, as well, maybe even had something to add. But now that he had Lovey, now that he was certain she was weeks, maybe days, from agreeing to marry him, any pretty girl other than her didn’t interest him. Recently, his mind had turned to more domestic thoughts, like when they would marry and if Lovey would like to travel out west for a honeymoon. Couples often did that. After marrying, they would hire drivers and spend a few weeks visiting relatives on both sides, staying in their homes. It was a way to get to know each other better without the day-to-day stresses of housework and fences that needed to be repaired. In their case, it would also be a good opportunity to spend some time alone before they joined Sam and Lynita on the farm.

  “What about you, Marshall?” Asher asked, leaning on his pitchfork. “Any plans for a wedding? I heard you were walking out with that girl who just moved here from Vermont.”

  “New York,” Marshall corrected, accepting the water jug from Caleb.

  Asher frowned. “Sorry. Gabe told me she was from Vermont.”

  “She’s Benjamin Miller’s stepdaughter,” Marshall said. “Benjamin has the new harness shop in Hickory Grove.”

  “Wait a minute!” Gabe passed his pitchfork to his brother and snapped his fingers as if trying to recall something. “She’s the girl who made a bet with her sister?”

  Marshall had the water jug halfway to his mouth when he stopped. He was quickly becoming annoyed with Gabe. He just wanted to finish the work here and get home. He and Sam had plans that afternoon to repair a blade on their windmill. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you do.” Gabe was doing that clicking thing with his fingers again. He laughed, but it came out as more of a cackle. “The girl from Vermont or New York or wherever, she’s the one who accepted the dare. Girls are like that, you know. You want to think they’re not, but they are.”

  “Gabe.” Caleb shook his head. “No gossip.”

  “Ne, this isn’t gossip.” Gabe stepped into the center of the circle of men, coming to stand in front of Marshall. “The sister dared her.” He started the finger clicking again. “Cute thing. Ah,” he groaned. “What is her name?”

  Marshall took a drink from the water jug and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sam and Jethro getting back into the wagon. “Looks like we’re ready to go again.”

  “Ginger! That’s it! I met her at Spence’s one day. Pretty little thing,” Gabe declared. “Her name was definitely Ginger. Ginger Stutzman. And Elsie heard directly from Ginger, so it’s not gossip, that she’d dared her sister to walk out with some guy.” He shrugged. “You know. As a joke. And she did it.” He cackled again and pointed. “And that was you. You’re the one she went out with. Are you still dating her?”

  Marshall stood there with the water jug dangling on its handle from his hand, trying to decide how to respond. A part of him felt like he needed to correct him. He didn’t like the idea of anyone making up stories about the Stutzman girls. Or any young women, for that matter. But a part of him thought maybe he should just let it go, that arguing with Gabe would only egg him on.

  “Gabe, don’t.” His brother Asher shook his head. “It’s not funny.”

  “Ne, you’re the one.” Gabe was pointing at Marshall again. He was like an old dog that had gotten ahold of a bone. He wasn’t going to let the subject drop. “What’s the sister’s name. Not Ginger. The other one. The one you’re going out with, I guess. Got an unusual name.” Yet again, he clicked his fingers.

  Marshall just stood there and stared at Gabe for a minute. His annoyance was turning to anger. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Marshall, come on. Let’s get back to work.” John Gruber took the water jug from him. “Gabe’s like this. He likes to talk.”

  “Her name is Lovage,” Marshall told Gabe stiffly. “I’m walking out with Lovage Stutzman.”

  “Well, good for you.” Gabe looked at his brother and laughed, but his brother didn’t laugh with him.

  Marshall hesitated, debating whether or not to ask his next question. He didn’t want to, but now he had to. “What dare?”

  “I just told you.” Gabe spat tobacco juice on the ground between them. “Ginger dared her sister to walk out with some guy from Hickory Grove.”

  Marshall made a show of pulling his boot back. “What do you mean, dared?”

  “I don’t know.” He threw up his hands. “He...you, I guess...asked her out and she said no, and then her sister, the blonde, dared her to go out with you. The blonde ended up doing the sister’s chores for, like, a month or something.”

  “Jethro’s ready to go,” John told the group. “Let’s get the rest of this hay in before dinner. We’ve all got things to do at home.”

  “Good idea.” Caleb walked past Marshall, patting him on the back as he went by. “Don’t pay Gabe any mind,” he said. “He’s one who likes to stir up trouble. And he never gets his facts right. He probably made the whole thing up.”

  Marshall nodded, and took a minute to take off his hat, wipe his brow and put it square on his head again. He wanted to tell himself that Gabe had fabricated the whole story to get attention, but the fact that he knew Ginger’s name and that she was a blonde and that Lovey had just come to Hickory Grove? He suddenly felt like he was falling. He saw all of his dreams tumble away. He was heartbroken and he felt like a fool. He’d told Lovey he loved her. He’d asked her to marry him. Not once, but over and over again. And all this time, she’d been silently laughing, making him the butt of her and her sister’s joke. And now, thanks to Gabe, everyone in the community would know that she’d just been playing with his feelings.

  * * *

  “Ohh...can we have snack cakes?” Tara pointed to a display of snowball-looking cakes covered in coconut and sold in individual packaging in boxes. She turned down the next aisle of Byler’s store, but was still looking back. She was pushing one cart, Nettie was pushing the other, and Lovage and her mother were loading the carts and checking items off their lists.

  “We don’t need snack cakes,” Rosemary said absently as she scanned a section of shelves featuring spices. “I need anise, but I want the whole stars. I like to grind it myself.” She rubbed her protruding abdomen as she searched. She’d been quiet all day and seemed preoccupied, but Lovage wondered if that was just normal. With only six weeks to go before the baby was born, she had to be tired, getting up at dawn every day and working until evening prayer.

  Lovage grabbed a large shaker jar of cinnamon, eyeing her mother, and contemplated asking her if she was feeling all right. But she’d asked earlier in the morning and her mother’s rely had been a curt “I’m goot.” Lovage had later suggested that maybe she could take the buggy into Dover with the girls and leave he
r mother home to rest, but Rosemary would have none of it.

  “I’ve been buying our groceries once a week since I married your father!” she’d declared when Lovage had tried to convince her to stay home. “An eight-pound bobli is not going to slow me down!”

  Lovage checked the cinnamon off her list and looked for the next item. They also needed baking powder and baking soda. As she searched the next shelf, she spotted a little Englisher boy peeking at her from around the corner. He had big almond-shaped eyes and a round, flat face with a small mouth and nose. She recognized the features at once. The little boy, who looked to be about four, had Down syndrome. Back in New York, there had been a family in their church district with twins, a boy and a girl, who had it.

  Lovage smiled and waved at him and his eyes grew round with surprise. Then he shyly wiggled his fingers at her. She wiggled her fingers at him.

  The little boy crept around the display and stood at the end of the aisle staring at her. He had on a blue coat and a long, colorful knit stocking cap with a big pom-pom on the end that looked like something Lovage had once seen in a children’s book set in Switzerland.

  The little boy slowly raised his hand to his cap and then pointed at her head.

  “What?” She touched her hand to her black dress bonnet. It had been chilly in the morning when they left the house. First, they’d gone to Spence’s, because it was Tuesday and their mam had had a hankering for some pickled fish she bought at a stall there. Then they came here to Byler’s, making it their last stop because ice cream was on the grocery list. They were all wearing their black cloaks and black Sunday bonnets over their prayer kapps. “My bonnet? You like it?”

  He nodded, a little smile playing on his lips. Then he pulled off his hat and offered it to her with one hand, while pointing at her bonnet with his other hand.

  Lovage laughed and her heart swelled for the little boy. She knew that some societies sometimes looked at people with a disability like this child’s negatively, but among the Amish, all children were a gift from God and a blessing. Seeing the little boy made her imagine what it would be like to have a child of her own. Marshall’s child. And the thought brought a mist to her eyes.

  Did she love Marshall? She’d been denying it for weeks. Afraid of her feelings for him. But why should she be afraid? He’d already told her he loved her, that day at his house when they’d talked about organizing his finances.

  After that day, she’d gone to his house several times, with Lynita always there, to help him put it all in order. She’d specially arranged her visits around Lynita’s presence because after the kiss she and Marshall had shared, Lovage understood why parents preferred their unmarried, courting children to always have a chaperone. The feeling she had experienced when his lips had touched hers were nothing like any she’d ever had. Now she knew why Amish couples weren’t encouraged to court long term. Especially at the ages she and Marshall were at. Marshall was right to push marriage at this point, because if they were committed to each other, to a Godly life, it was better that they not struggle long, fighting temptation.

  “Duncan? Duncan?” a woman called from the next aisle over, sounding distraught.

  Lovey walked closer to the little boy and leaned down so she was at eye level. “Is your name Duncan? Is that you?”

  The little boy nodded slowly.

  Lovage took his hand. “I’ll be right back,” she called to her sisters over her shoulder.

  Tara was leaning against the cart, reading the ingredients on a box of the snowball cakes she’d somehow gotten ahold of, and their mam had two jars of spice in her hands, comparing the two. Lovage didn’t know where Nettie had gotten to. Maybe she’d backtracked to get something their mother had forgotten. Rosemary was tiring more easily now than in the first two trimesters of her pregnancy, and even though she wouldn’t admit it aloud, she was making concessions for the health of herself and the baby.

  Lovage led the little English boy named Duncan to the next aisle. “Here he is,” she said to a distraught-looking woman standing in the pasta section. She was wearing a baby in one of those pouches Englisher mothers liked to use and there was a toddler in the front of her grocery cart, which was so full of stuff that Lovage didn’t know how she pushed it.

  “Oh, Duncan, sweetie. Mama was looking everywhere for you.” She leaned down to brush her son’s chubby cheek with one hand, then stood. “I’m so sorry,” she told Lovage. “He was here one minute and then, poof. Gone. He knows he’s supposed to stay with me.” She glanced at him. “Otherwise he’ll have to stay home with Mom-mom, isn’t that right, Duncan?”

  “It’s fine. It’s my fault,” Lovage said. “He was looking at my bonnet. I think he was trying to trade me his hat for my bonnet.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” She took the knit cap from her son’s hand and pulled it down over his hair. “We don’t trade hats with strangers in stores, remember, Duncan?” She smiled at Lovage. “He has this thing for hats. He loves hats. He has an entire storage bin at home full of them.”

  Often Englishers stared at the Amish. Sometimes they even pointed. Or worse, came up and asked silly questions, like the woman in a market back in New York who had asked Lovage if she watched the reality TV show about the Amish people who’d been shunned from their communities and were living in the English world. Duncan’s mother either wasn’t as curious about the Amish as most Englishers, or had enough sense not to behave rudely.

  “You like hats, do you, Duncan?” Lovey asked him.

  He nodded.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t give you mine, but I can show you another one I’m wearing. Would you like that?” she asked.

  “He doesn’t talk much,” his mother explained softly. “But he understands everything we say.”

  “This is my outside bonnet. I wear it when I go to town or to church,” Lovage explained. “But underneath, I wear my inside hat.” She lifted her black bonnet off her head. “See?” She gently touched her prayer kapp. “This is what we call a kapp,” she said, using a Pennsylvania Dutch accent.

  “Isn’t it pretty, Duncan?” the woman asked.

  He stared wide-eyed and nodded, obviously fascinated.

  “Lovey,” Tara called from the next aisle. “Mam’s ready to move on. I don’t know where Nettie’s gotten to. You’ll have to push the cart. I can’t push both of them.”

  “Coming,” Lovage called. “I have to go,” she told the mother. “My sister.” Then she looked down at the little boy. “It was very nice to meet you, Duncan. My name’s Lovey.”

  “Thank you,” the mother said. She looked down at her son. “Tell Lovey goodbye, Duncan.”

  The little boy didn’t speak, but he waved, and Lovage was still smiling when she went back around the corner to the next aisle. Tara was standing there alone, with both carts nearly full. It took a lot of food to feed thirteen people, especially when half of them were men.

  “Mam said never mind, and for me to just stay with the carts. She’s almost ready to check out but she wants you to stand in line at the deli. She says get three pounds of sliced honey ham, two pounds of sliced smoked turkey and four pounds of American cheese. Be sure to get the white kind, not the yellow.”

  Lovage nodded and, as she put her black bonnet carefully back over her white kapp, repeated the order to her little sister.

  “That’s it,” Tara said. “Mam said we’re almost done here, so meet us at the registers.”

  Lovage eyed the grocery carts and spotted a box of the snowball cakes on top of one. She tapped it.

  “Mam said get two boxes,” her sister said defensively. “That way everyone can try one after supper tonight.”

  Lovage rolled her eyes and headed for the deli section. She took a paper slip with a number from the little dispenser and stepped back to get out of other customers’ way. As she waited, arms crossed, she nodded at two Amish women about her age
, maybe a little older, also waiting their turn at the deli counter. She didn’t know them, but there were a lot of Amish families in the Dover area, and even though she’d traveled a couple times to the homes of folks outside her church district, her circle of friends and acquaintances was still small. Both Amish women had red hair and one was holding a newborn. The woman with the baby smiled and Lovage got a warm feeling as she imagined what it would be like to hold her own baby.

  With nothing to do but wait her turn, she glanced at other customers waiting for service. There was so much to see that she felt like her head was spinning. Two middle-aged, blonde women were bickering loudly over someone they knew named RuPaul. One liked him and one didn’t. There was a woman on her cell phone in very tight pants, wearing high-heeled boots and a green sweater that had big holes in each arm so that her shoulders were bare. Lovage felt sorry for the woman; she couldn’t imagine what it would be like to stand there in line perched on those shoes and feeling cold. Standing beside Lovage, an old Englisher with big hearing aids in his ears smiled at her and she smiled back. A clerk called out another number to serve the next customer.

  Turning to look behind her, to see if she could spot either of her sisters or her mother, Lovage caught sight of a man holding a gallon of milk. He was leaning over a display of bread, with his back to her, but even from the rear she knew the broad shoulders and the dark hair that stuck out from beneath the black beanie.

  “Marshall!” she called, trying not to be too loud or obnoxious. She hurried over to him, a big smile on her face. She hadn’t seen him since Friday. There had been talk of going visiting together on Sunday, but the plan must have fallen through because he never came by. Then she’d heard, through Will, that on Monday Marshall had hired a van and taken both Lynita and Sam to the dentist. “Marshall,” she repeated, and when he didn’t seem to hear her, she brazenly put her hand on his back. Right in front of everyone in the store.