Portrait of a Sister

by Laura Bradford

  Katie felt a resurgence of the anger she’d apologized for the previous night and worked to keep it in check. “I don’t know why you keep saying that, Hannah. I am Amish. This is the way Amish dress—the way you once dressed, too.”

  “A lifetime ago, maybe.”

  Katie stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and waited for Hannah to do the same. When she did, Katie closed the gap between them in an effort to keep her anger from being heard by passersby. “It has been one year, Hannah. One year. Was life in Blue Ball with Mamm, Dat, the children, and me so truly awful you must now pretend it didn’t happen?”

  “No, of course not, silly.” Hannah swept her arms outward, splaying her hands as she did. “But this here? It feels so right to me that it’s hard to picture myself anywhere else.”

  “You do not remember chasing the barn cats with me? Or laughing until our sides ached when Eli Fisher’s suspender snapped off in the middle of class that one day? Or sitting on the front porch listening to stories of Mamm’s childhood? Or . . . or waiting for the first taste of Mamm’s apple pie?”

  Hannah dropped her hands to her side and swallowed. Hard. “Of course I remember those things. How could I not?”

  “Then you haven’t forgotten what it is like to be Amish.” Katie held Hannah’s gaze for a few silent beats and then gestured in the direction they’d been going. “We should go. So you’re not late.”

  Resuming their previous pace, they made their way down the remaining half block to the crosswalk. When the pedestrian light changed to white, Katie repositioned her sketch pad beneath her arm and fell into step beside Hannah one more time. “I don’t know why you wanted me to bring my drawings if you want me to get to know Jack.”

  “Because Jack takes a nap after lunch every day and that will give you time to finish the picture of the park that you didn’t get to finish yesterday.”

  Katie slowed her steps even more. “I could help you do the lunch dishes or fold laundry.”

  “The Rothmans have a cleaning lady who does that. My job is to care for Jack.” Crossing her arm in front of Katie, Hannah pointed to the next street. “We’re almost there. The Rothmans live in a beautiful brownstone that is three whole floors.”

  “Three floors?”

  “The top floor is where Mr. and Mrs. Rothman sleep. It’s this grand room that is bigger than your room, the boys’ room, and the girls’ room all put together. And Mrs. Rothman’s closet? It is bigger than Dat’s whole room and it’s filled with beautiful clothes from fancy stores.”

  At the corner, they turned right, the excitement in Hannah’s voice continuing to build. “The second floor is where Jack sleeps. His room is a zoo theme and, well, I can’t wait for you to see it. He has a stuffed giraffe that is as tall as the ceiling and a stuffed sea lion that he can sit on while we’re reading books! He even has a table in one corner where he can play with colored dough and paint if he wants to. His room is the biggest on that floor but there are three others as well—all bigger than yours.”

  “Our—I mean, my room is plenty big, Hannah, you know that.”

  “Maybe. But just wait, you’ll see how much better the Rothmans’ place is, how much better everything about their life is.” Hannah tucked her hand through Katie’s arm and fairly dragged her to a stop in front of a staircase. It led to a dark brown door Katie recognized as the same kind of wood Dat had used to make Mamm’s chest. “We’re here!”

  Katie took in the door, the wide front window that bowed outward, and the handful of flowering plants she could see through the glass as they began their ascent. “Are you sure it is okay that I’m here?”

  “I’m positive. Mr. Rothman is anxious to meet you.”

  She stopped, mid-step, and eyed Hannah closely. “He is anxious to meet me? Why?”

  The question hung in the air for a few seconds as Hannah’s gaze traveled the remaining steps, her cheeks noticeably flushed. “Because . . . because he’s heard me talk about you many times, that’s all.”

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?” Katie prodded.

  “Don’t be silly, Katie. What would I not be telling you about my employer?” Hannah continued them up the stairs and through the front door as if she, too, lived inside. “Jack, I’m here! Find your hiding place!”

  A flurry of footsteps somewhere in their general vicinity built to a crescendo only to cease mere seconds before a muffled voice emerged from the end of the hallway. “I’m hiding! Find me, Hannah! Find me, find me!”

  Hannah slipped her arm out from under the strap of her bag and then pulled it off her neck, grinning at Katie as she did. “He’s hiding under the piano bench in the hearth room.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because he hides in exactly the same place every single morning.” Hannah placed her bag on a glass-topped table to their right and pointed for Katie to do the same with the sketch pad. “I keep waiting for him to find another place, but he doesn’t.”

  “Sadie did that when she was three, too, remember? Only her hiding place was under Mamm’s sewing chair.” The memory, while painful in some ways, was welcome, too, and Katie allowed herself the smile it stirred. “Now, she hides in all sorts of places—good ones that are hard to find.”

  “Playing with the little ones was more your thing. Besides, I left when Sadie was three. So the only spot I ever saw her in was under the sewing chair.”

  “Find me, Hannah! Find me, find me!”

  A woman, dressed in a jacket and skirt the color of warm chocolate, came down a winding staircase to their left with a shiny, darker brown bag in one hand and a pair of sparkly gold earrings in the other. “Good morning, Hannah.”

  “Good morning, Mrs. Rothman.” Hannah grabbed Katie by the arm and pulled her close. “This is my sister—Katie.”

  The woman’s large green eyes traveled the entire length of Katie—from the top of her kapp to the tips of her black lace-up boots before returning, finally, to her face. “Hello, Katie.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Rothman. Hannah has told me a lot about your son and—”

  Waving the rest of her sentence away, the woman crossed to the same door they’d entered only seconds earlier and opened it wide. “After shopping and lunch, I’ll be seeing a matinee on Broadway with a friend, Hannah. So I’ll be home after Mr. Rothman this evening.”

  And then she was gone, the door clicking closed behind her as Katie recovered her own jaw well enough to speak. “She didn’t say goodbye to Jack?”

  Hannah shrugged. “She leads a busy life.”

  “She’s shopping,” Katie protested.

  “You haven’t seen the stores here. They’re not like they are at home. They’re much busier and—”

  “Find me, Hannah! Find me, find me!”

  Katie grabbed hold of her sister’s shoulders and gave her a gentle shove in the direction of the now slightly less muffled voice. “Go find him so I can meet him.”

  Slowly, and with deliberate yet tentative steps, Hannah walked from room to room on the first floor with Katie close on her heels. “Can you believe this place?” Hannah whispered as they made their way from a fancy room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and leather couches, to the biggest kitchen Katie had ever seen. Two more rooms followed, including one with a table large enough to accommodate sixteen people.

  “How many people live here?” Katie whispered.

  “Three. Mr. Rothman, Mrs. Rothman, and Jack.” When they reached the final room, Hannah winked at Katie. “Okay, Jack, you’ve really stumped me this time, buddy. I’ve looked everywhere and I just can’t find you.”

  A giggle pulled Katie’s attention toward the piano on the other side of the cavernous room, and sure enough, a little boy with blond hair peeked out from beneath a bench.

  “Wait.” Hannah winked at Katie. “Did you hear that? It sounded like a gig—”

  “Who’s that yady?”

  Hannah shielded her mouth from Jack’s view with her hand and moved closer to Kat
ie. “Jack has problems saying his l’s, but he’s seeing a speech therapist and that should start helping soon.”

  “Who’s that yady?” Jack repeated.

  “Hmmm . . . Do you hear someone talking, oh sister of mine?”

  Jack sucked in an audible breath. “That’s your sister?”

  Hannah crossed to a couch, pretended to look beneath a few cushions and behind a pillow or two, and then froze. “I hear someone breathing, don’t you, Katie?”

  “Her name’s Katie?” Jack asked; his voice no longer muffled.

  Clapping her hands together, Hannah ran over to the piano bench, pointing. “There you are! Wow, Jack, I didn’t think I’d ever find you.”

  “I’m right here.” Jack crawled out of his hiding place and inched his way toward Katie. “I like your dress, Hannah’s sister. It’s very pretty.”

  “And I like your shirt, Jack, it’s my most favorite color.” Katie squatted down to the child’s eye level, the urge to pull him in for a hug the way she would Sadie, almost overpowering.

  Jack looked down at his pale blue shirt and then back up at Katie, his eyes wide. “How do you know my name is Jack?”

  “Because my sister talks about you all the time, that’s how.”

  “She does?” Jack looked from Katie to Hannah and back again. “You look just like Hannah.”

  “That’s because we’re twins.”

  “Twins? What does twins mean?”

  “It means we look exactly alike.”

  Jack leaned closer to Katie, pointing at her chin as he did. “You don’t have the same mark as Hannah.” Then, straightening up, he spread his little hands out. “Hannah fell out of a tree when she was yittle yike me.”

  “I know. I was there,” Katie said, grinning.

  He sucked in a second, louder burst of air. “You were there?”

  “Yah—I mean, yes. I was there.”

  “Did you fall, too?”

  “No.”

  Jack moved his little feet in place. “I’m glad.” Then, pointing from his shirt to Katie, he added, “You and me . . . we have the same color. ’Cept mine is a shirt because I’m a boy, and yours is a dress ’cause you’re a girl. But we both have blue.”

  “You’re right, we do.”

  He ran in place a second time only to stop and turn to Hannah. “Can Katie read to me? Please?”

  Hannah met Katie’s eyes across the top of Jack’s head and, at Katie’s emphatic nod, shrugged. “Of course. We’ll show her all your favorites and let her pick which one she wants to read.”

  “I want her to read all of them to me!”

  “All of them?” Hannah echoed. “I don’t know, Jack, that’s a lot of books—”

  “You can sit on my sea yion with me, Katie!”

  “Whoa. Slow down a minute, kiddo.” Again, Hannah’s gaze lifted just enough to meet Katie’s. “Are you okay with this? Because if you’re not, I could put on the television and let him watch one of his shows.”

  Katie stood, her heart melting as Jack wrapped his fingers around her index finger and tugged her toward the hallway. “I’m pretty sure you don’t need me to answer that, do you?”

  * * *

  Hannah was waiting when Katie stepped into the hallway, pulling Jack’s door closed in her wake.

  “So he’s asleep?” Hannah whispered.

  “His eyes were drooping before I was even halfway through the story of when we found Fancy Feet,” Katie whispered back. “I think his full tummy from lunch, and all those books we read this morning, tuckered him out.”

  Hannah motioned Katie to follow her down the stairs and into the hearth room. Though, this time, instead of playing hide and seek, Hannah dropped onto a cushioned chair next to the fireplace and pointed Katie toward its mate on the other side of the thick rug. “Jack sure loved you.”

  “He is completely adorable.” She felt her smile growing as she remembered the way he kissed her cheek after every book she read and then insisted on making her peanut butter sandwich when it was time for lunch. “I can see why you love your job so much. Though, for all your talk, it’s really no different than what I do.”

  “What I do here is nothing like what you do, Katie.” Hannah nestled into her chair, sweeping her hand around the room as she did. “I mean, first off, look at this place. It’s gorgeous. And unlike you, I don’t have to scrub floors or wash clothes. I don’t have to hang things on a clothesline and then run outside three hours later to pluck them down before the rain comes. I’m not here from the moment I open my eyes until they fall closed at the end of the night—I get to have a life with a boyfriend and friends, too.”

  Katie’s smile faded. “I have Abram!”

  “Who you see one evening a week . . . at a hymn sing with twenty other people. Besides, for all your talk about wanting your own thing, why are you so content to simply lead Mamm’s life? Don’t you want to do your own thing? Live your own life? Be your own person, like me?”

  “Perhaps you are trying to lead Mrs. Rothman’s life by caring for her child when she doesn’t?” Pushing off the chair, Katie wandered over to the corner and the handful of pictures displayed across the stone mantel. “Because that is how it sounds.”

  “This job is just temporary . . . So I can make enough money to do what I really want to do.”

  Removing her hand from a framed photograph of Jack on a swing, Katie turned back to Hannah. “What do you want to do?”

  “I want to learn how to do hair the way they do in the fancy salons Mrs. Rothman goes to. I mean, I’m trying to teach myself some things”—Hannah touched her long curls—“but I want to learn how to do all sorts of things. Like the stuff I used to show you on the cover of the magazines at the store, remember?”

  “I remember.” It was emblazoned in her brain as the starting point for losing her sister. Sure, she’d noticed the magazines while waiting to pay for something Mamm needed at the store, but as curious as she’d been about the English faces she saw, Hannah could speak of nothing else all the way back to the house.

  The hairstyles . . .

  The clothes . . .

  The makeup . . .

  And if there had been time to actually open some of the magazines while they’d waited to pay, Hannah would add in talk about the boys, the houses, the swimming pools, and sometimes even the naughty things she’d managed to read.

  Katie had always tried to change the subject. But no matter how many crops she’d pointed to, or farm animals she’d made a funny observation about, Hannah would find a way to bring the conversation back to English ways.

  “Hannah? Jack? Are you here?”

  Hannah’s eyes widened a split second before she rocketed onto her feet. “That’s Mr. Rothman,” she whispered, sliding her focus between Katie and the mantel clock. “He is early! Come on, let’s go!”

  She followed behind her sister as they made their way up the hallway to the front entryway. Sure enough, the tall dark-haired man Katie had spied in a few of the photographs with Jack was flipping through a stack of envelopes next to her sketch pad. When he heard them, he looked up, surprise filtering across his face as his focus came to rest on Katie.

  “If not for the vast difference in clothing at the moment, I’d think I was seeing double. But since I’m clearly not, you must be Katie.” He stepped forward, offering his hand to Katie as he did. When she returned his shake, he smiled. “I’m Doug, Doug Rothman. Welcome to New York City.”

  Then, moving his attention to Hannah, he gestured toward the staircase. “I take it he’s sleeping?”

  “He is. He played hard with Katie this morning and it tuckered him out.”

  Mr. Rothman smiled again at Katie and then pointed to the sketch pad lying beside the envelopes he’d abandoned in favor of talking to them. “Is this yours, Katie?”

  She looked to Hannah for direction and, at her sister’s nod, found her voice. “Yah.”

  “May I look?” he asked.

  Again, she looked at Hannah
, and again, Hannah nodded. “They are nothing special, just a few pictures I have drawn . . .”

  He lifted the pad off the table and flipped the cover back, a quiet whistle escaping his lips as his eyes settled on the picture of a healthy Mamm. “Who is this?”

  She opened her mouth to answer but it was Hannah’s voice she heard. “That was our mother. Before she got sick. If you flip ahead five or six pages, you’ll see her as she was at the end—see?”

  He leaned close as Hannah’s hand retreated to her side. He studied it for a few moments and then lifted his gaze to Katie’s. “In this drawing, I can see your mother’s strength and her fears, but I can also sense a peace . . . like she knew everything would be okay.”

  “She was at peace. Because she accepted what was happening to her as God’s will,” Katie whispered.

  Clearing her throat, Hannah reached across the pad and turned back through the handful of pictures her boss had missed, stopping on the one of Samuel chasing the chicken with a delighted Mary looking on from the garden.

  Mr. Rothman’s eyes darted back and forth between the children. “Here, you give us a sense that it is imperative the boy catches the chicken, yet, because of the inclusion of the girl and her pure amusement, you also let us feel as if everything will be okay in the end.”

  “He did catch the chicken . . .”

  Laughing, he changed the page to the drawing of Mary and Sadie walking hand in hand across the pasture. “Oh, Katie, this is absolutely stunning. Do you work from photographs or models?”

  “The Amish don’t take photographs,” Hannah interjected. “Katie draws these from her memory. By candlelight.”

  Katie could only nod along with her sister’s words, her focus torn between her drawing and Mr. Rothman’s expression as he continued to study it with rapt concentration.

  “You manage to capture the beauty in life’s simpler moments—the moments so many of us tend to overlook because of that same simplicity. Yet while doing so, you also manage to grip us with the same human emotion we see on the faces of your subjects—joy, fear, peace, determination . . . The kind of emotions we all face in life regardless of where and how we live. And it is in doing that, you make it so we feel as if we’re there—on the fringes of whatever it is you’ve drawn. As if we, too, are seeing it in real time.”