Loving Jenna

by Amy Lillard

  Charlotte propped her hands on her hips and turned her attention to his dat. “I will not. Your son put my daughter in danger.”

  “He did no sucha-thing.” His mamm was on her feet in the very next instant.

  Jenna still sat in her seat, picking her nails under the table. If that was really what she was doing.

  Her mammi was strangely quiet.

  “Ladies,” Dat said. “This is getting us nowhere.”

  Charlotte’s face turned a very bright, very unnatural shade of red and Buddy wondered for a moment if she was having a heart attack. One of the ministers had one a while back, while he was preaching. Everyone said that was the best way to pass on, while he was preaching God’s word. Anyway, he had been that same color right before he fell to his knees mid-sentence. “I cannot have this,” she said. “You need to keep your boy away from my daughter.”

  “Buddy is not to blame here.” His mamm’s face was turning red as well, but she tended to do that when she was mad. Or hot. Or she had been out in the sun too long. He didn’t think she was going to have a heart attack. Plus she didn’t seem nearly as mad as Charlotte. Close, but not there. “Your daughter is trying to . . . lead my son astray.”

  “Gertie,” Dat started.

  “Lead him astray?” Charlotte’s voice was low now, almost too quiet. “Did you say she was trying to lead him astray?”

  “Ladies,” Dat said once again. “Let’s not say anything that we might regret.”

  They both started talking at the same time. Buddy couldn’t hear all of what they were saying, but he did catch a few words and phrases here and there. Danger to himself, unacceptable, delicate, and has to stop were among them.

  Jenna kept her head down the entire time. Her mammi continued to sit quietly.

  Then Dat slammed his hands down on the table between them. “Enough!” he roared.

  The two mamms leaned back and fell silent. The room was almost too quiet now. Buddy could even hear their breathing. And he could hear the tiny little sobs escaping Jenna with every little breath.

  “You’re upsetting Jenna,” he said in the thick quiet.

  All eyes turned to him. All but Jenna’s.

  “We didn’t mean any harm. We just wanted to go on a picnic,” Buddy continued. He looked over at Charlotte. “I went to your house every day for a week and asked, but you kept saying no.”

  “Jenna Gail doesn’t need to date. She’s too young. She’s not ready.”

  “Why don’t I get a say in that?” Jenna’s voice was small, but it stopped everyone.

  “Jenna Gail, my dearest, you don’t know what’s good for you.”

  She rose to her feet, he supposed to be even with the others. “I do know what’s good for me. Buddy. He’s good for me.”

  He couldn’t stop the surge of pride at her words. He felt as if his shirt buttons might pop off, his chest was puffed out so big. He was good for her. He loved that. And he felt the same.

  “You have made every decision for me since the accident. Maybe even before. But I’m an adult now. I can make decisions for myself.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying, my love,” Charlotte said.

  But Jenna’s confidence seemed to come out right before his eyes. “I do. Buddy is my friend. My only friend, and I want to spend time with him.” She sat back down once she had said her piece.

  “No,” her mamm said. “He put you in danger.”

  “I know my Buddy, and he would never force her to do anything she didn’t want to do.”

  “I asked Jenna about the water,” Buddy finally said. He wouldn’t hurt Jenna for anything in the world. Why couldn’t they see that?

  Her mother turned to him. “Just proof that Jenna is not capable of making decisions for herself. She has not been in the water since the accident and she won’t go again.”

  “What if I want to go?” Jenna asked.

  “See?” Charlotte looked at each of them in turn. “Unable to make good decisions on her own.” She turned to Mamm. “That is why I beg you. Keep your son away from my daughter.”

  His mamm opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. It was perhaps the first time he had seen his mother without words.

  “We’re very sorry,” Dat said.

  Charlotte nodded, a stubborn jerk of her chin. It said okay but not okay. He had seen that look before.

  Jenna’s grandmother stood. “Come, Jenna.”

  Obediently she rose to her feet. Once again her head was down.

  Buddy wanted to scream No! and grab her arm, haul her close, and not let them take her away. “We’re friends,” Buddy said. “She’s my friend.”

  “If you really are her friend, you’ll stay away from her,” Charlotte said, then she led Jenna from the room.

  Her mammi followed behind and his dat behind her. His mamm said nothing as she stood there and waited for his father to return.

  “I think we should talk,” Dat said when he came back in.

  Mamm nodded.

  “I don’t want to talk.” He wanted to go upstairs and fall down on his bed and cry. Once he got that out of his system, he would figure out a way to see Jenna. Because right now, finding times when they could be together looked bad. Sunday after church. That was it. Once every two weeks. He thought he might die if he had to wait that long to see her.

  He stood, intent on doing just that. Going to his room and crying his eyes out alone.

  “Sit down, Buddy.” His mother’s tone said she was in no mood for an argument. But Buddy was. He had just lost the only friend he had ever had, and he wasn’t going to take it lightly.

  “I’m going to my room,” he said. But he crossed his arms and dared her to dispute what he was saying.

  “Sit down, Buddy.” This time his dat spoke.

  Reluctantly Buddy sank into the chair. He wasn’t up for a whooping tonight. He’d only got one of those in his life, when he was ten. He’d left the paddock gate open on church Sunday and everyone’s horses got out. It took most of the afternoon to track them all down and get them back to the house so their owners could go home. And all on the Lord’s day. Dat had not been happy.

  “Did you take this girl to the pond?” Dat asked.

  Buddy nodded. “We just wanted to have a picnic.” He did his best to explain, but there were times when he wasn’t good with the words. “We were supposed to have a picnic that Sunday. Then rain and games and we never got to go.”

  His mother turned her head from side to side as if his words were hanging in the air for her to read. Right there in the open. “All of this was about a picnic?”

  “I like Jenna,” Buddy said. It was one thing he could say with confidence.

  “You like her?” Dat said. He gave a quick look to Mamm.

  Buddy nodded. “Jenna is nice and sweet. She doesn’t make fun of me or say I look weird.”

  “Who said you looked weird?” Mamm was on her feet in an instant.

  “Sit down, Gert.”

  His mother hesitated but only for a moment. But she no sooner got her bottom in the seat before Dat shook his head. “You know what? I think it’s time Buddy and I had a talk. Why don’t you go check on Prudy and Jonathan?”

  “I know where babies come from,” Buddy said. He didn’t wanna talk. He wanted to be alone. But it seemed his father had other plans.

  “Gertie?” Dat said.

  His mother stood and looked at Buddy. “Jah, sure,” and the next thing he knew, his mother was headed out the front door.

  “You like Jenna,” Dat said once she was gone.

  It wasn’t really a question.

  Buddy nodded. “She’s the prettiest girl I have ever seen.”

  Dat tapped his fingers on the table in front of him. “Yes, I would say she is a very pretty girl.” Then Dat leaned back. “And you know where babies come from?”

  “Jah.”

  “How do you know this?” Dat asked.

  Buddy scratched his head. He wasn’t nearly as wet as
Jenna had been and his hair was almost dry. As was the rest of him. It helped that he had left his T-shirt down at the pond and now only his trousers were damp from his wet undershorts. “There was a chapter in the eighth-grade science book.”

  “What?” Dat’s eyebrows rose so high, Buddy thought they might collide with his hair.

  “We weren’t supposed to read it,” he said, going back to what he probably should have said first. “The teacher had it all clipped together.” But he had gone to the public school instead of the Amish one.

  His dat didn’t say anything.

  “Dat?” Buddy ventured.

  “I think it’s time for a new science textbook.”

  Buddy nodded. He had no idea, but he wasn’t going to dispute his dat over school matters. Dat knew what needed to be done.

  “You and Jenna . . .” Dat started.

  It took him a minute to figure out what his dat was asking him without really asking him. Buddy shook his head. “I like her. I might even love her.” Saying the words made his heart feel free. “But I want to marry her before . . .” He shook his head. He wasn’t sure about all the things he had learned from the textbook. But he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Jennifer Abigail Burkhart. Was that love? Maybe.

  “You want to marry her,” Dat started. “And if you do, where are you going to live?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “What are you going to do for money?”

  Buddy shifted in his seat. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t have a job,” Dat said.

  “No,” Buddy agreed.

  “And there’s not a place here for you and a bride.”

  “Jonah stayed with us . . .”

  “Jonah has a house of his own now.”

  That much was true, and he came back to help his dat with some of the bigger chores, but he had started to work in town at the hardware store. Jonah had always been good at fixing things. Now he helped other people learn how, too.

  “You’re not prepared for a wife or a family, Buddy.” Dat’s voice was gentle, not accusing, but to Buddy it stung like a knife through his heart. “You might not ever be. So before you go around telling girls that you love them you better think long and hard about what comes next.”

  Buddy nodded. It wasn’t like he could argue with his dat over this matter, but he had a lump in his throat that felt like a wad of cotton. He couldn’t tell Jenna he loved her until he could find a way to provide for them both.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I don’t know what to say,” Mamm said on the way home. She and Jenna were taking the carriage while Mammi drove the tractor. Jenna knew that her mother had chosen the slower, somewhat quieter transportation in order to talk this out with Jenna. So far she had been the only one talking and so far she hadn’t said much more than I don’t know what to say.

  “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

  It was the first time she had been asked, and Jenna saw the opportunity to defend herself and her choices. She opened her mouth to do just that, then she closed it again. She wasn’t going to explain herself. She was an adult, and if she wanted to learn how to swim, then no one had any say. Not even her mother.

  “Well?”

  “I’m a grown woman,” Jenna said. “I don’t have to tell you why I did what I did.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I’m your mother and you do have to answer to me for the things that you do. And I want to know what you were doing out with a boy . . . in a pond, practically”—she lowered her voice when she got to the last word as if there were people around to hear it—“undressed.”

  “I’ve already told you. He was teaching me how to swim.” She had already said the words once, but her mother drew back like she had never heard them before.

  “I don’t ever want to hear you say those words again.” Mamm shot her a stern look to go with her words. She wanted to show Jenna how serious she was. Jenna had seen the look before, but today it didn’t have the desired effect.

  “I can’t go swimming ever again because I had an accident eight years ago?”

  “You died!” Mamm shook her head and pulled the buggy to the side of the road. They were almost home, but it seemed this couldn’t wait until they got there.

  “Shouldn’t I be able to make the decision for myself?”

  “No!” Mamm sucked in a deep breath and visibly tried to get control over her emotions. “Jenna Gail, I’m only trying to help you do what’s best for yourself.”

  And how would she know that, when right now Jenna didn’t know herself? But there was one thing that she did know. “I like him.”

  Mamm blinked. “The Miller boy?”

  “He’s kind to me, and he likes me back. And he has the best smile and I think I might love him.” She wasn’t sure, as she hadn’t quite got it all figured out, but she was working on it. Maybe she did love Buddy Ivan Dale Miller. Was there really anything wrong with that? Not from where she was sitting.

  “You don’t know what love is.” Mamm shook her head. “I know you think you do, but . . .”

  Jenna’s world turned bright red. She blinked until it was only tinted pink and turned to her mother. “You think because I’m retarded that I don’t know what love is?”

  “You shouldn’t say that word. It’s offensive.”

  “I looked it up in the library,” Jenna said. “It means to set back. And the accident set me back and maybe I really did die for a second or two. But I’m not dead now and I know what love is.” With tears in her eyes she swung down from the buggy, but her escape wasn’t without problems. The skirt of her dress caught on a loose screw in the side panel. Her descent was accompanied by the loud rip of material.

  Jenna looked down at her dress. Her second-best dress was now basically a rag. The skirt was ripped just above the hem halfway around. What a day.

  “Jenna Gail, get back in the buggy,” Mamm demanded.

  “I will not.” She started walking down the road toward her house. Mamm could drive the buggy and boss around Blaze, but her days of bossing around Jenna were over. Maybe that was the problem and the whole ordeal had practically nothing to do with Buddy. He was an innocent bystander pulled into this family drama. That her mamm wanted to dictate her life and not let Jenna make any decisions of her own.

  “Jenna Gail!” Mamm called, but Jenna kept walking.

  Her mother had no choice but to drive slowly and stay behind her or drive on ahead and trust that Jenna would make it home safely.

  Her mother slowed the buggy and drove at a snail’s pace all the way to the house. The entire time Mamm tried to talk to her, tried to explain, tried to bend Jenna to what she wanted, but Jenna kept her chin up and walked on.

  Only when the house was in sight did Mamm pull ahead of her and down the drive. Jenna allowed her shoulders to slump for just a moment after her mamm passed by, then she straightened her spine once again.

  “What took so long?” Mammi must have been waiting outside for them. Jenna was just on the other side of the line of trees planted between the house and the road. Mammi said it was to prevent soil erosion but Mamm said the person was trying to block the view from the road. Not a very Amish thing to do, fence oneself off from the rest of the community. The world? Sure, that was all part of it. But the district in which they lived? That was strange. But when a person sat in the right spot on the porch they could see between the trees to the road. If they were sitting at the right angle.

  “Jenna decided to walk. That girl has a stubborn streak a mile wide.”

  Jenna rounded the corner and came into view of the two most important women in her life.

  “That stubborn streak is what kept her alive when she was really dead,” Mammi said.

  “That was God’s doing,” her mother countered. “God’s will.”

  Jenna moved back and hoped that neither one saw her. It wasn’t a good idea to listen to their conversation, but she couldn’t help herself
. She wanted to hear what Mammi had to say.

  “And where do you think this stubborn streak came from?” Mammi asked.

  “Are you implying that she inherited that from me?”

  “I’m saying God gave it to her so she could survive almost drowning to be here with us today.”

  “She thinks she might be in love with this boy.” Mamm scoffed. Jenna couldn’t see her, but she could hear the familiar sounds of her unhitching the horse and preparing to take him into the barn. Normally Jenna was the one who brushed the horse when they got home after taking the buggy out. “She doesn’t know what love is.”

  “You’re wrong about that. Jenna is the most loving person I know.”

  Mamm shook her head. “You’re avoiding the real issue here.”

  “And that is?”

  “She’s talking about loving a man. She doesn’t understand all that. She has no clue,” Mamm said.

  Jenna almost stepped out and ruined her position to overhear. But she managed to stay in place.

  “Then maybe you should tell her about it,” Mammi said.

  “Absolutely not.”

  Jenna wished she could see her mother, see how she was acting, maybe what she was thinking. As it was, she had no idea what her mamm was really thinking.

  She stepped from her hiding spot, torn dress and all. “Tell me about what?” she asked.

  “Jenna Gail, sweetheart, you shouldn’t concern yourself,” Mamm started.

  “About the relationships between a man and woman who are married,” Mammi said on the heels of Mamm’s non-explanation.

  “Sex?” Jenna asked. “I know about it.”

  Mamm’s jaw dropped open.

  Somehow Jenna felt empowered. Earlier she was angry, but now she felt like she might have some control over herself, her life, her dreams.

  “What do you know?” Mamm asked.

  “I know enough,” Jenna said. Perhaps enough to be even more confused, but she didn’t want her mother to know that. Let her think her precious daughter had been corrupted by the world. Not that she had. But right now she wanted her mother to stew in it for a while.

  Her mother seemed to melt right there. Tears welled up in her eyes and slid down her cheeks.