Portrait of a Sister

by Laura Bradford

  Tucked inside her sister’s familiar notepaper was another folded page that, at first glance, appeared as if it had come from the Amish newspaper Dat read each week. Confused, she set it down atop Eric’s envelope and focused her attention on Hannah’s letter.

  Dear Katie,

  It is almost bedtime and it has been a busy day. I took Jack to the zoo to watch the sea lion feeding. He loves to watch them do tricks to get fish. I wish Sadie and Annie could see them, too. I bet they would just stare and stare.

  I saw Eric on my way home from work the other day and he asked me for your address. When I asked why, he said he wanted to write you a letter! I hope that he does.

  Now, about the article I have sent. Mr. Rothman received this in the mail from the woman who bought your drawing of Mary for her daughter. Remember her? Anyway, from what Mr. Rothman explained to me, the local paper in the town where the daughter lives did this story on her and her veterinary practice as part of a who’s-who in town kind of thing. Her story is nice as it’s about childhood dreams and making them come true. But it is the picture that goes with the story that made her mother send it to Mr. Rothman. Look closely at the wall behind the daughter and be sure to read the caption underneath! I hope that seeing it here, in print, will remind you of your own dream and help you to see that New York City is where you should be. With me. And with Eric.

  Your sister,

  Hannah

  Swapping the letter for the still-folded piece of paper in her lap, Katie opened it a fourth at a time, the color photograph it revealed sucking the air from her lungs.

  Chapter 24

  Katie did her best to act as normal as possible when she returned to the house, the pile of potatoes waiting to be peeled providing the opportunity she needed to focus on something other than her stupidity. But it didn’t last long.

  Looking back, she should have demanded Hannah remove her drawings from the gallery the second she saw them. If she had, she wouldn’t have an envelope of cash stuffed under her mattress and a ticket to her own shunning tucked between her boot and her ankle bone. Instead, she’d stood by, in sinful pride, listening to strangers elevate her and her ability. And now, because of her sins and her stupidity, her little sister’s face looked out at people in places it should not be, and Katie’s name and ongoing sin were written in black and white for all to see.

  Slowly, she peeled her way through each and every potato and then transferred them to the pot of boiling water. Mamm’s recipe for Dat’s favorite chicken dish was next and while rounding up the ingredients certainly helped occupy her thoughts in quick bursts, it, too, led her back to her sin.

  Mamm had been so good. So thoughtful. So focused on making sure their family was okay before she took her last breath. Even on those days when she’d been unable to keep the pain hidden, Mamm had mustered up enough energy to write directions on how to make each child’s favorite meal.

  That was the way she’d promised Mamm she would be—making sure to look after Dat and the children. Yet, in reality, she’d taken care of no one but herself, giving in to the sinful urge to draw the things she drew, and then to cover it up with lies. And now, because of her choices, good people—people she loved—stood to be harmed by shame and disappointment.

  “Is something wrong, Katie?”

  She looked up from the assembled ingredients that sat, untouched, in front of her to find Mary looking at her with worried eyes. “No, I am fine. Why?”

  Hooking her thumb in the direction of the hallway and the voices they could hear through the open screen windows, Mary crossed to the cabinet of dishes and removed a stack of seven. “Many hands make light work. But yet, for some reason, you do not let me help with dinner tonight.”

  “I don’t know, Mary. I guess I just thought I’d take care of it this time.” She turned back to the counter, added the ingredients to the bowl in front of her, and gave it a quick, yet thorough mix. “It won’t be long before you must do all of this on your own.”

  “Sadie said you took two letters to the pond before Miss Lottie left. Hannah has not sent you two letters before.”

  “Only one was from Hannah.” She wiped the sudden dampness from her hands onto a nearby dishcloth and hoped its originating case of nerves didn’t manifest itself in her voice. “The other was from a friend I made when I visited.”

  “That is nice. What is her name?”

  She pulled a baking dish from the cabinet above her head, filled it with chicken, and then poured the contents of the bowl across the top, the desire to be more like Mamm mandating the truth. “Eric.”

  “Eric? But isn’t that a boy’s name?”

  Katie took advantage of her back being to Mary for a few seconds to draw in a much needed and fortifying breath. “Yah.”

  “An English boy wrote to you?”

  “Yah.”

  “What did he say?” Mary asked, surprise pushing her eyebrows toward her kapp.

  She hoped her shrug was casual as she grabbed hold of the baking dish, slid it into the oven, and mentally picked through the letter for parts she could share. “He talked about the park by Hannah’s house and a job he might get.”

  “Why did such a letter make you mad and sad?”

  “Who said I was mad and sad?”

  “I saw you, Katie.” Mary carried the dishes over to the table and set one in front of everyone’s spot. “I saw you walk right past Sadie and into the house when you got back from the pond with your letters.”

  “I-I must not have seen her . . .”

  “I’m not sure how you couldn’t. She was hopping up and down in front of you, telling you how the baby goat drank all of its milk, and you looked down at her, gave her a half smile like this”—Mary demonstrated, using the left side of her mouth—“and then walked right around her and up the front steps without saying a word.”

  Katie sank back against the edge of the counter. “Oh no . . .”

  “I told her you were busy with thoughts of supper, but I still see worry in her eyes, Katie. It is the same worry I feel looking at you now.”

  “Oh Mary . . . I-I don’t know what to do. I have made a mess of everything with my—” She jerked her gaze up to Mary’s as her words circled around to her ears, the horror of what she’d been seconds away from saying pulling her from her spot at the counter and sending her running for the back door.

  “Katie? Katie? Are you okay?”

  Tightening her hand around the knob, she opted to answer with a lie rather than a far worse truth. “Please take over for me with dinner and everything else . . . I-I think I am going to be sick.”

  * * *

  No matter how many times she looked at the photograph, or how many times she read the caption underneath it, Katie still couldn’t believe it was true.

  Sure, she’d drawn the picture of Mary and the cats that hung on the wall behind the woman in the photograph, and, yes, Katie Beiler was her name. But to have all of that end up in a newspaper for people to read and see? It was beyond her comprehension. Especially when Hannah knew as well as she did what would happen if Dat or anyone else in the district found out.

  She fell back against the pillow and stared up at the ceiling, the memory of Josiah Fisher’s shunning emblazoned in her brain. Josiah had been caught using electricity inside his home. Although he’d been the one to do it, his wife and his one baptized child had been shunned, too, for knowing about it and not going to the bishop to report the sin. For weeks, Katie and the rest of their district had to sit with their backs to Josiah, his wife, and his son, Isaiah, a boy Katie had gone to school with and often socialized with at hymn sings. And while they’d repented and things had since returned to normal, Katie couldn’t forget the shame Isaiah had worn. Or the sadness that had hung heavy across the rest of Josiah’s children, even the little ones.

  Now, because of Katie, that shame and that sadness could be Dat’s and the children’s if they found out about the picture in the paper and did not tell the bishop of her sins
.

  She wanted to be angry at Hannah, and in many ways, she was. But Hannah hadn’t told her to buy a sketch pad during Rumspringa, and Hannah hadn’t told her to keep drawing in it even after baptism. That had been all Katie.

  And while Hannah was the reason Katie’s secret was no longer a secret, it still came back to Katie and her choice to do wrong in the first place.

  “Oh, Mamm,” she whispered. “I have let you down. I have made such a mess of things and I am so very, very—”

  A soft tap at her bedroom door bolted her upright so fast the article with its accompanying photograph skittered off the edge of her bed and sailed onto the ground. Before she could grab it, the door inched open.

  “Are you feeling better?” Sadie padded into the room on bare feet, her focus solely on Katie.

  She tried to nod, to offer the closest thing to a reassuring smile she could, but all she could really think about at that moment was the article that was no more than two feet from Sadie’s toes and the sound of Mary nearing the door with baby Annie in tow . . .

  Dropping her own feet onto the floor, she reached down, grabbed the article, and balled it inside her hand. “I’m doing much better, sweet girl.”

  “What’s that?” Sadie asked, pointing at Katie’s hand.

  “Oh Katie, you’re up!” Mary strode into the room with a thumb-sucking Annie in her arms and stopped behind Sadie. “Does that mean you’re feeling better?”

  “She is!” Sadie lunged forward, wrapping her arms around Katie. “And she made a ball with the paper from the ground!”

  Mary surveyed the floor and then cast a quizzical eye in their direction. “I do not see paper on the floor.”

  Sadie squeezed Katie hard and then stepped back to point at her closed hand. “It’s in her hand!”

  She knew her face was red. She could feel it just as surely as she could the two sets of eyes trained on her hand while the third remained on her face. Slowly, she looked up, her gaze meeting Mary’s with what she hoped was a silent plea to let it go.

  After several long beats of silence, Mary reached down, took Sadie by the hand, and retraced their steps back to the door. When she reached it, she set Annie on the ground alongside Sadie, directed them toward their room, and then turned to Katie one last time.

  “I know it has only been a few months, but sometimes I am afraid I will forget many things about Mamm—the way she smiled when we brought her flowers, the sound of her laugh when Jakob did something silly, the way she’d walk out to the field with water for Dat when it was hot.

  “For now, I remember those things. I see them in my head, and I am glad for that. But they are not the only things I see when I think of her, Katie.”

  Intrigue laced with pain accompanied her onto the bed, her thoughts no longer on her hand but, rather, on Mary. “What else?”

  “I see Miss Lottie coming for visits just as she does now.”

  “Miss Lottie?” she repeated, confused. “I don’t understand. You were speaking of Mamm.”

  “Yah. I am. I see the cookies Miss Lottie would bring for us to eat while we wandered the garden and they sat on the porch and talked.”

  “They, meaning Mamm and Miss Lottie, yah?”

  Mary nodded. “I also remember times when Mamm would take us to Miss Lottie’s house. Sometimes she would give us jars of bubbles to play with, remember?”

  She smiled at the memory. “I do.”

  “Miss Lottie would tell us to take Digger into the yard and blow bubbles for him to chase.”

  Her smile morphed into a laugh. “That old dog sure did love to jump for the high ones, didn’t he?”

  Again, Mary nodded, her eyes never leaving Katie’s. “Sometimes, when we would walk to Miss Lottie’s house, Mamm would be quiet and her shoulders would be low with worry. But when we were done with our bubbles and our cookies and it was time to leave, she would be Mamm again, talking and laughing with us as we headed down the street and across the fields toward home.

  “We did not know what they talked about, but I think we all knew the time with Miss Lottie had been good for Mamm.”

  Katie looked down at her hand and then back up at Mary, her heart rate accelerating once again. Only this time, instead of being powered by fear and shame, it was propelled by . . . hope? “Thank you, Mary. I think tomorrow, when Annie is napping and you are working on your quilt, I will take Sadie to play with bubbles. Maybe Digger still has some jumps left inside him.”

  Chapter 25

  Katie sat on the top porch step and watched as Sadie blew bubble after bubble, the little girl’s uncomplicated pleasure temporarily easing the stress that had accompanied her all the way to Miss Lottie’s front door. Sadie, of course, had jumped at the opportunity to have special time with her big sister, and Katie, in return, had savored the feel of Sadie’s small and trusting hand inside hers as they made the three-quarter-mile trip.

  More than once, Katie had almost doubled back, the thought of sharing her sins with Miss Lottie churning her stomach in a way that promised to make good on her previous night’s purported ailment. Yet every time she stopped and opened her mouth to tell Sadie they needed to turn around, she found herself flashing back to all the same memories that had prompted her to come in the first place.

  Mary was right. Miss Lottie had been a steady pair of ears for Mamm for as long as Katie could remember. And while she often wondered what they spoke about, she knew the time had been good for Mamm.

  Casting her eyes down at the cookie in her hands, she sucked in a breath and then addressed the woman seated just over her shoulder. “I hope it’s okay Sadie and I just stopped by. I don’t want to impose if you have something else you need to do.”

  “Hush, child, you are never an imposition. In fact, seeing you and Sadie walking up my driveway was just what I needed to make a sunny day even brighter. Though, I do wish you’d tell me what’s been troubling you since you got back from your visit with Hannah.” Pushing the big toe of her right-sandaled foot against the porch floor, Miss Lottie adjusted the pace of her rocking chair and lowered her chin so as to allow a clear view of Katie across the top of the reading glasses she wore whether she was reading or not.

  “I guess I’m still trying to get use to Mamm being gone.”

  “While I’m sure there is some measure of truth to that, you have done a wonderful job, Katie. Yes, you were sad at times before your trip, but it has been different since you came back.” Miss Lottie smiled out at Sadie, but her focus, her attention was on Katie. “I see you going for walks you didn’t take before your trip. And Mary talks of you pacing in your room at night.”

  She, too, looked out at Sadie, the little girl’s squeals of delight every time Digger caught a bubble helping to steady Katie’s breath and quiet her fears enough to speak. “I did things I should not have done, Miss Lottie. Bad things, sinful things. Things that would bring my family shame.”

  The soft beat of the rocking chair ceased and Katie waited for the scolding she knew was next. But it didn’t come. Instead, the woman stood, dragged the chair closer to the steps and Katie, and then sat back down. “Did you drink, Katie?”

  She drew back, startled by the question. “No!”

  “Were you with a man? Perhaps this Eric who wrote that letter to you?”

  Her cheeks flamed hot as she made herself look at Mamm’s special friend. “No, n-not in the way you mean.”

  “Why did he write to you, Katie?”

  Pivoting her body to the side, she leaned against the upright so as to afford a view of both Sadie and Miss Lottie. “He is just nice. He came to get me when I arrived in the city and when I asked to walk instead of ride in the yellow car, we did so.”

  She watched Digger bound after a bubble and then gave words to the memory she’d revisited in her thoughts at least once a day since she’d been back in Blue Ball. “I was so scared, Miss Lottie. There were so many people . . . Everywhere. They walked one way and another way, passing by so close they practica
lly touched. Yet they didn’t look or speak to one another. They just walked. And the buildings—they were so big, so tall. And there was so much noise. It was all so scary. Yet . . .”

  “Go on, dear.”

  “He made it fun, Miss Lottie. He answered my silly questions without making me feel silly. He told me things about some of the buildings I could not know. And he made me try New York pizza.”

  Miss Lottie’s laugh, both hearty and familiar, helped lighten the atmosphere temporarily and Katie was grateful. Even Sadie paused in her playtime to wave at them.

  “So? Did you like the pizza?” Miss Lottie asked.

  “It was so very, very good. I think it is something Samuel and Jakob would love.”

  “You say that as if your brothers do not like to eat everything in sight.”

  It was Katie’s turn to laugh, making Sadie pause even longer. She waved out at the little girl to let her know it was still okay to play and then continued with the kind of things she’d wanted to share with someone, anyone since the moment they happened. “Later, on another day, Eric knew I was missing home, so he took me to Central Park where there is grass . . . and trees . . . and squirrels . . . and birds . . . and little toy sailboats that share a pond with ducks who do not seem to care they are there.”

  “Yes, it is a beautiful park.”

  She stared at Miss Lottie. “You have been there?”

  “I have.”

  Feeling suddenly foolish for asking an Englisher such a question, Katie moved her hand from her lap to the porch floor and began to trace the outer rim of a knot in a nearby board. “The day before I was to leave, Eric took me to the park for a picnic. He packed sandwiches and chips and cookies. I felt”—she rescinded her hand as her voice dipped to something resembling more of a whisper—“special.”

  “Because of the picnic?”