Portrait of a Sister

by Laura Bradford

  But now, looking between the sketch and the photograph, she knew it was time. The skyscrapers and bridge were all the proof she needed that she could draw what she didn’t understand. So really, why should this new Hannah be any different?

  Her mind made up, Katie closed her fingers around her pencil and began to draw.

  Chapter 9

  Katie stared down at the half dozen neatly folded dresses on the left side and the half dozen neatly folded aproned fronts on the right. In the center were socks, a smattering of hair pins and clothing pins, and an extra kapp should she soil the one currently on her head.

  She’d seen these same clothes hanging from the hooks on her wall countless times, yet somehow, in Miss Lottie’s suitcase, they looked different. Like they belonged to someone else . . .

  “It’s almost as if Hannah were here and getting ready to leave us again.”

  Katie whirled around to find Mary standing just inside the bedroom doorway, her pale blue eyes, so like Mamm’s, staring back at her. “Like Hannah? How do you figure that?”

  “Your clothes. In that suitcase Miss Lottie lent you.” Mary took a few more steps into the room but stopped well short of Katie’s position beside the bed. “Hannah’s clothes are the only clothes I’ve seen folded like that.”

  “Hannah’s clothes are English. Mine are not.”

  Mary’s gaze lifted to Katie’s for several beats before dropping to the floor and then shifting back toward the door. “Everyone is hoping you’ll come downstairs for a bit before Abram arrives so we can give you a proper”—she stopped and swallowed—“goodbye.”

  “Mary? If you are uncertain about me leaving, I will stay.”

  “Dat says it is good.”

  “I don’t know why he says that or why he thinks that.” Katie let the last pin fall from her hand into the suitcase and then turned and perched on the edge of her freshly made bed. “It is good for me to be here . . . with you and the other children. . . doing as Mamm wanted. That’s what is good. Not riding in a bus into the big city where I don’t belong.”

  “But you will be with Hannah and that is good. Unless . . .” Shaking her head, Mary hooked her thumb over her shoulder and stepped back through the open doorway. “We will be downstairs. Waiting.”

  And then she was gone, leaving Katie alone with Miss Lottie’s suitcase and an ever growing sense of dread. She knew she wasn’t to question Dat, knew he was only trying to do what was best for her, but leaving wasn’t best. She belonged right where she was, doing what she always—

  The clip-clop of an approaching buggy wafted through the open window, propelling her off the bed and back to her suitcase for one final check of its contents.

  “Hurry, Katie! Hurry!”

  Breathing in the courage she knew she needed but was having a hard time finding, Katie grabbed hold of the zipper pull and worked it around the bag, stopping suddenly as she reached the halfway point. With one ear cocked toward the hallway for the first sign of footsteps, she reversed the direction of her hand until she was looking down, once again, into the neatly packed bag. Only this time, instead of looking at her clothes, she tried to gage whether the bag was wide enough for—

  She dropped her hand to her side and made haste around the bed. When she reached the correct spot, she slipped her hand beneath the mattress, retrieved her sketch pad from its hiding place, and made her way back to the suitcase. A quick reorganization of its contents yielded a place just big enough to house the pad before Sadie appeared in the doorway.

  “Abram is here, Katie. Dat says it is time for you to go.”

  “I am ready, sweet girl.” Katie zipped the bag closed and hoisted it off the bed and onto the floor. “Lead the way.”

  Sadie marched ahead, the excitement over Abram coming to call guiding her little feet back down the staircase and into the kitchen. At the base of the stairs, Abram smiled, took the suitcase from Katie’s hands, and carried it out to his buggy while Katie remained behind. With the girls.

  She spied Annie peeking out at her from behind Dat’s chair and squatted down beside her. “Don’t do any growing while I’m gone, okay?”

  Annie’s eyes widened with uncertainty across the top of her sucking thumb, but she said nothing.

  Swallowing hard, Katie turned her attention to Mary, next. “If you need anything while Dat and the boys are in the fields, you can always go next door. To Martha’s.”

  “I don’t want to be a bother,” Mary protested.

  “It is not a bother. Martha knows I am going and she made sure to tell me you are to come straight to her if you have any questions.” Katie lifted Annie into her arms and looked at Mary across the baby’s head. “But you will do fine. I know it.”

  “Thank you, Katie.”

  Using her tiny hand to shield her mouth from Katie’s view, Sadie slid off the bench seat and moved closer to Mary, her hand doing little to block the volume of her words. “Can we give Katie her surprise now?”

  “Surprise? What surprise?” Katie echoed.

  Sadie dropped her hand to her side and looked up at Mary. “I tried to say it quiet. I really did.”

  Rolling her eyes, Mary pulled a tan-colored book from behind her back and swapped it for Annie.

  “What is this?” Katie asked as she looked from the book to her sister and back again.

  “It is a place to write what you do and what you see . . . so you can share it with us when you are back.”

  Slowly, she opened the book, the lined pages untouched. “Oh Mary, this is lovely. Thank you!”

  “And here is a pen from me and Annie!” Sadie pulled a small wrapped package out from behind her back and handed it to Katie. Sure enough, it was a pen . . .

  “You knew I’d need a pen to write with, didn’t you, sweet girl?” At Sadie’s excited nod, Katie pulled the book and the pen against her chest, inhaled the courage she wanted to portray, and then spread wide her free arm for the hug she both needed and feared all at the same time.

  Sadie, in turn, flew against her and began to sob. “P-please, Katie . . . do not go.”

  “Sadie!”

  Katie met Mary’s eyes over the top of Sadie’s head and quietly shook off the older girl’s angst. Then, turning her attention back to the distraught child in her arms, she waited until the tears slowed enough to be heard. “Sweet girl, I’m only going for a few days. In fact, it’ll be so quick, I’ll be back before you even really notice I’m gone.”

  “What if y-you ch-change your m-mind?” Sadie wailed.

  She tried to shush the tears away, but when that didn’t happen, she met Mary’s eyes once again. “What am I missing?”

  “It is nothing to worry about.”

  “It is something Sadie is worried about . . .” Katie reminded.

  Mary tightened her hold on the thumb-sucking toddler and took a step closer to Katie and Sadie. “She’s afraid you will stay in the city forever. Like Hannah.”

  “Stay in the . . .” Katie stopped, whispered her lips across the top of Sadie’s head and then slowly extricated the child from her arm. “Sadie, I’m not staying in the city. I’m just visiting, that’s all.”

  Sadie hiccupped. “What happens if you change your mind?”

  “Not a thing. Because I won’t.” She brushed the tears from the little girl’s cheeks and replaced them with kisses. “Blue Ball is my home, sweet girl. It is where you and Annie and Mary and Jakob and Samuel and Dat are.”

  Sadie waited until the kisses were over and then stared at Katie. “Hannah didn’t come back.”

  “Katie is not Hannah, Sadie.” Mary set Annie down on the ground and then motioned toward the front room and the door just beyond. “Katie, Dat does not want you to miss the bus. He told me so.”

  Mary was right. Time was ticking. Abram had taken time from work in his father’s fields to deliver her to the bus station. To delay any further would be unfair.

  Still, she couldn’t ignore Sadie’s continued sniffles and tear-induced hiccups.
They had a special bond, the two of them—a bond that began within hours of Sadie’s birth. Mamm had placed it on Katie’s presence during the child’s delivery, but she’d been present at Annie’s as well. And while she adored Annie to the ends of the earth, her relationship with Sadie was different. She’d tried to put it into words for Abram after a hymn sing one day, but it wasn’t until she was alone in her room afterward that the true reason had reared its head with startling clarity.

  Sadie looked at Katie as if she was courageous and strong—all the things Katie dreamed about being, but wasn’t . . .

  “P-please d-don’t g-go, Katie.”

  Pulling the little girl close once again, she channeled the strength Sadie needed in that moment and hoped it sounded more real than it felt on her tongue. “It’s just a visit, Sadie. I promise. By this time next week, I’ll be right back here . . . in this kitchen . . . with all of you. And I’ll have lots of stories to share with you from my special journal.”

  * * *

  She didn’t need to turn away from the window to know she was being scrutinized by the woman in the next seat. It was a feeling you got used to when living in an area frequented by tourists wanting to get an up-close look at people who lived as Katie lived. Instead, she focused on Abram as the bus pulled away from the curb; his smile widening as she returned his wave in kind.

  “I take it you two are newlyweds, yes?”

  Startled away from the view, Katie turned. “No. Abram and I are not married.”

  “Ahhhh. Then the lack of a beard makes even more sense now.” The woman Katie guessed to be about Mamm’s age reached into a bag at her feet and offered an apple to Katie. When Katie declined, she shrugged and took a bite herself. “I’m Gabby, by the way. Which, you’ll soon see, is a fitting name. Or so I’m told.”

  She sensed she was supposed to laugh, but the best she could do was smile in return. “I’m Katie.”

  “I take it you’ll be changing buses in the city and heading upstate? To one of them Amish communities way up north?”

  “No. I’m going to the city. To visit my sister.”

  Gabby drew back. “Your sister?”

  “She is English now.” She hated the way the words sounded, hated the pain they stirred every time she said them, but to deny them would be akin to lying.

  “And you can still talk to her?”

  “Hannah was not baptized.”

  “Ahhh. And was that your brother? In the buggy back there?”

  “No, that is—” She sat up tall as another look outside the window turned up no sign of Abram or his buggy. “Where did he go? He was right there a minute ago.”

  “A minute and a mile ago, sweetheart.” Gabby wiggled what was left of her rapidly shrinking apple and then pointed at the bag on the floor. “You sure you don’t want one? I’ve got three.”

  Even if she was hungry, which she wasn’t, she doubted she could get anything past the growing lump in her throat. More than anything, she wanted to run up to the driver and beg him to turn around, to take her back to the station and Abram. But she couldn’t, especially if she didn’t want to disappoint Dat.

  Still, the thought of making small talk when all she really wanted to do was cry was more than she could handle. So after a silent prayer for forgiveness, she faked a succession of yawns, murmured something about being tired, and let her eyes drift closed.

  Soon, the motion of the bus eventually made it so she really did sleep—a dream-filled sleep that included Mamm’s voice, Sadie’s cries, Katie’s sketch pad, and Hannah’s insistence that she had talent. But when Dat entered her dream in tandem with her sketch pad, she woke up with a start.

  It took a moment to remember where she was, but one look out the window at the passing cars and unfamiliar landscape delivered her reality in short order. Glancing to her right, she was grateful to see that Gabby, too, had fallen asleep. Not having to talk gave her time to think and feel, even if she wasn’t sure what to think or feel about anything at that moment.

  Was she excited to see Hannah? Maybe. A little. Before Hannah’s choice, they could talk for hours about the silliest of things—the barn cats, the garden, the English people they’d glimpsed that day, the last hymn sing, who was courting who, and so on.

  She wanted to believe nothing had changed; that they could still talk about everything and nothing all at the same time. But they lived in different worlds now. Yes, they could listen to one another’s stories, but they no longer knew the same things. Maybe after a few days in Hannah’s world, Katie could picture some of the things her sister wrote about in letters, but in the end, what difference did it really make?

  Hannah had chosen her life.

  And in turn, she’d chosen Katie’s, too.

  Chapter 10

  “Wake up, Katie, we’re here.”

  Pulling her head from its resting spot between the corner of her seat and the window she thought she’d been looking through, Katie looked over at her seatmate to find the woman pointing her back to the window. “We’re here.”

  “Here?” Her confusion was short-lived as she peered out at a sea of people that went on as far as Katie could see—people scurrying left and right in front of buildings that stood taller than she could see from her seat. “I-I must have drifted off to sleep again.”

  “There’s no ‘must have’ about it. You were out cold. I actually thought about waking you as we were approaching the tunnel, but—”

  She sensed Gabby was still talking but she couldn’t focus enough to nod, let alone respond. In her mind, thanks to Hannah’s picture, she’d visualized a few tall buildings, some trees, and maybe the kind of crowds they saw in and around Blue Ball during the summer tourist season.

  How wrong she’d been. How horribly, stupidly wrong.

  Every building as far as she could see was tall—reaching so high into the sky she had to press her face against the window to find the tops of the ones closest to the bus. Any greenery came from a person’s clothing as they scurried across the street, or into a building, or down a set of stairs, or around one of a half dozen corners Katie could see from her seat.

  “Where are they all going?”

  She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud until Gabby’s voice pulled her attention back inside the bus. “Where is who going?”

  “Them.” Katie pointed out her window.

  “Ahhh . . . welcome to New York City, young lady. Or perhaps, in your case, I should say, welcome to a completely new and different world.” Gabby stood, hiked her bag onto her shoulder, and stepped into the aisle. “Your sister is coming for you, yes? Because I don’t want to leave you alone in this city looking like”—she gestured first toward Katie’s kapp, and then lower to Katie’s aproned dress—“that.”

  Her stomach tightened at the woman’s words. “Hannah is to be here. Dat said so.”

  “Good.” Gabby filed in between the man who’d been seated in front of them and a woman who’d been in the row behind them. “Anyway, it was very nice to meet you, Katie. I hope you enjoy my hometown even half as much as I enjoy yours.”

  The woman took two steps toward the door and then stopped to glance back at Katie one more time, her brows furrowed. “If you’re waiting for your bag, it’ll be on the ground, next to the door, when you step outside.”

  “Thank you. I-I just need a moment to catch my breath.”

  “Sometimes it’s better just to jump right in, Katie.”

  And then Gabby and her bag of apples was gone, leaving Katie alone with her parting words and the overwhelming loneliness they stoked to the surface. She knew she was supposed to get up. That she, like everyone else, was supposed to get her suitcase and be on her way. But at that moment, all she really wanted to do was stay seated until it was time for her visit with Hannah to be—

  Hannah.

  Jumping to her feet, Katie made her way to the front of the bus and the stairs that led down to the driver and the single unclaimed suitcase at his feet.

  “
This yours, miss?” he asked, pointing down. “Because it’s the last one, like you.”

  “Yah, it is mine! It has all of my things!” She wrapped her fingers around the handle and pulled it close—her mind’s eye sifting through the contents in rapid succession . . .

  Her kapps.

  Her dresses.

  Her sketch pad and pencils.

  Her new writing book and pen.

  She knew it was wrong to feel such a pull toward worldly possessions, but at that moment those same possessions were the only thing that made her feel as if Blue Ball hadn’t disappeared completely.

  “Through that door, miss.”

  Startled, she looked back up at the driver to find him pointing her through a large doorway to the crowd beyond. She tightened her hold on Miss Lottie’s bag, looked around, and tried to clear her throat of the odd sensation that was making it difficult to breathe. “Dat said Hannah is to be here to meet me, but I do not see her yet.”

  “All waiting happens out there.” Again, he directed her attention back toward the open doorway and a room that looked like it was in need of a good scrubbing. “But be careful. People here are different.”

  “They look very different . . .” she whispered.

  “I’m not talking about their clothes, miss. I’m talking about the stuff you can’t see. Trust me when I tell you that there are people out there who prey on girls like yourself. So keep your eyes open, and if you don’t find your sister, or you need any sort of help, find a policeman.”

  Katie drew back. “I do not talk to the police. It is not the Amish way.”

  The driver turned, closed the luggage door beneath the windows, and then wiped his hands down the front of his pants. “That’s right, you’re a pacifist. I’ve read about that. That might work where you’re from, but here? In New York City? You might want to rethink that practice for your own well-being and safety.” He gestured toward the room on the other side of the door. “Anyway, I’ll be boarding soon for my next run, so I really need to hit the head and grab a bite to eat.”