A Ready-Made Amish Family

by Jo Ann Brown

  “What is it?” Isaiah asked, leaning toward them. “What’s wrong?”

  All four pointed at Clara. Shock riveted her. Were they insulted by her comment about the house becoming a disaster area in a day? No, they were barely more than toddlers. They didn’t care about the state of their house.

  “No laugh,” said Nettie Mae around the end of her braid she’d stuck into her mouth again. She put her finger to her lips and regarded them with big, blue eyes. “Quiet and no laugh.”

  “No laugh. Quiet.” Nancy pointed at Clara. “No laugh. Gotta be quiet.”

  Clara listened in appalled disbelief. Isaiah’s face revealed he was as shocked as she was.

  “Not laughing is hard,” Andrew lamented. “Really, really hard.”

  “Squirrel funny, but no laugh,” added his twin, his words coming out in an odd mumble. Was he trying not to cry? “Really, really hard no laughing.”

  “Really, really hard.” Nettie Mae’s lower lip wobbled, and a single tear slid down her plump cheek.

  Clara gasped when Isaiah sat on the floor. He held out his arms, and the kinder piled onto his lap. But there was nothing joyous about them as they held onto him like leaves fighting not to be blown away by a storm wind.

  “Tell me about the squirrel,” Isaiah said. “I like funny stories.”

  Andrew shook his head, and his brother and sisters did, too. “No laughing. Be quiet.”

  “Who told you to be quiet?”

  “She did.” He pointed an accusatory finger at Clara.

  When Isaiah frowned, she said, “I asked them—”

  “It’s gut,” Andrew said. “What Clara told us. To be quiet when we sing so Jesus can hear what’s in our hearts.”

  Again Isaiah’s pale brows rose, but his voice became calmer as he replied, “That is true. Clara was very kind to help you learn that. Has anyone else told you to be quiet?”

  “You!” Nancy poked one side of his suspenders.

  He tapped her nose and smiled. “I’ve told you that a lot, because you make more noise than a whole field of crows, but you don’t listen to me. You keep chattering away.”

  The twins exchanged glances, and Clara couldn’t help wondering if they had some way to know what one another was thinking. She’d heard that twins seemed to be able to communicate without words, but had no idea if it was true.

  “Tell me the story about the squirrel,” Isaiah urged. “Did he chatter, too?”

  Four small bodies stiffened. Nettie Mae chewed frantically on her braid, and Nancy’s thumb popped into her mouth. The boys grabbed each other’s hand and shook their heads.

  “No laughing,” Andrew whispered.

  Clara squatted beside them and Isaiah. “Who told you that, Andrew?”

  The little boy clamped his lips closed as his eyes grew glassy with tears. Beside him, his siblings’ lips quivered.

  When Isaiah started to speak, she put her hand on his shoulder to halt him. She wasn’t sure if she was more astonished at her temerity or at the pulse of sensation rippling up her arm. She didn’t want to be attracted to her employer—or any man—until she had sorted out what to do with her life. She wasn’t going to make the same mistake of believing a man loved her and then being shown how wrong she was.

  Pulling her hand back, she forced a smile. Now wasn’t the time to worry about herself. She needed to focus on the kinder. “Let’s have supper,” she urged. “It’ll taste better hot than cold.” She made shooing motions, and the twins clambered onto their chairs.

  She started to stand but wobbled. When Isaiah put a steadying hand on her back, she almost jumped out of her skin at the thud of awareness slamming into her so hard that, for a moment, she thought she’d fallen on the hard floor. She jumped to her feet as the kinder had and edged away so he could stand without being too close to her.

  He asked quietly, “Do you have any idea what’s going on with them?”

  “You’d know better than I would. You’ve been around them their whole lives.”

  Gritting his teeth so hard she could hear them grind, he said, “My guess is, sometime during the funeral or the days leading up to it, someone they respect enough to listen to must have told them laughing was wrong.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. You see how they don’t always listen to me, and they love me. I’ve got no idea who might have told them not to laugh.”

  Why hadn’t she seen the truth for herself? But who could imagine four little kinder would believe they shouldn’t laugh again? When they’d become silent in the buggy, she’d known something was amiss.

  But not this.

  Putting her hand over her mouth before the sob bubbling up in her throat could escape, she turned away, not wanting them to see her reaction. “Kinder take everything at face value, so if someone told them not to laugh, they couldn’t guess it meant only at the...” She gulped back the rest of what she was going to say. She didn’t want to speak of their parents’ funeral and cause further distress. “How much do they know about what’s happened?”

  He shrugged. “They attended the...the event.”

  “Ja, I assumed that.” She was relieved he didn’t say funeral or the names of the deceased. It was further proof he cared deeply about the twins.

  “Who can guess how much a young kind understands?” His mouth grew straight. “I’m an adult, and I find it hard to believe my friends are gone.”

  “Are we going to eat?” called Andrew, again the spokesman for his siblings.

  “Of course.” Hoping her smile didn’t look hideous, Clara slipped past Isaiah and went to get the casserole. “We don’t want supper to get cold, do we?”

  She placed the casserole dish in the middle of the table. She reached to pull out an empty chair next to where the girls sat on red and blue booster seats, but moved to another at the sight of the stricken expressions on the twins’ faces. Nobody needed to explain the first chair was where their mamm used to sit.

  Isaiah lifted Andrew out of his chair and moved him over one. Sitting between the two boys, he winked at them before bowing his head. Clara watched as the kinder folded their tiny hands on the table and lowered their eyes, as well. They had been well-taught by their parents. Looking from one to the next and at Isaiah, she closed her eyes and, after thanking God for their meal, prayed for Him to enter the Beachy twins’ hearts and ease their grief.

  And Isaiah’s heart, too, she added when he cleared his throat to signal the time for silent grace was over.

  The kinder dug into their meal with enthusiasm. Clara was sure it was delicious, because it’d smelled that way while heating. In her mouth, the meat and noodles tasted as dry and flavorless as the ashes on Isaiah’s forge would have. She saw Isaiah toying with his food as well before scraping it onto the boys’ plates when they asked for seconds.

  He raised his eyes, and his gaze locked with hers across the table. In that instant, she knew what he was thinking. They needed to help the kinder. She agreed, but couldn’t ignore how uneasy she was that she and Isaiah were of a mind. It suggested a connection she wasn’t ready to make with a man again. She wasn’t sure when she would be.

  Maybe never.

  * * *

  Isaiah smiled, hoping the youngsters wouldn’t guess he was forcing it. Kinder were experts at seeing through a ploy, so he tried to be honest with them. When Clara gave a slight nod, he hoped she shared his belief they had to help the twins laugh again.

  He was astonished when she pushed back her chair and rose. She opened a cupboard and took down the chocolate cake Fannie Beiler had brought over yesterday. The Beilers lived next door to his mamm, and Fannie’s daughter Leah was married to his brother Ezra. He’d stashed the cake away so the kinder didn’t tease for it before they ate.

  And then he forgot about it.

&
nbsp; As Clara carried the cake to the table, the twins began squirming with anticipation of chocolate and peanut butter frosting. “Who wants a piece?”

  “Me! Me! Me! Me!” echoed through the kitchen.

  She smiled and took six small plates out of a lower cupboard. Setting them on the table, she cut the cake. She sliced four small servings and then put a plate in front of each kind. The piece she put in front of him was much bigger.

  “Is that enough, Isaiah?” she asked. “Or do you want more?”

  “How about if I say I want less?” he asked.

  “I wouldn’t believe you.”

  “And you’d be right.” He fought not to chuckle, not wanting to distress the twins again.

  “Don’t wait for me,” she said. “Try it.”

  The kinder needed no further urging. Within seconds, they were covered with chocolate crumbs and wearing broad smiles.

  Though he was as eager as the twins to sample the cake, Isaiah waited for Clara to cut herself a small slice. He watched as she ate and glanced at the kinder, smiling at their silliness.

  She was gut with them. He’d seen that from the moment she walked into his blacksmith shop and took control of the chaos. She had an intangible air of calm around her that seemed to draw the kinder’s attention so they listened to what she said.

  And with her face not half-hidden beneath her bonnet, her hair rivaled the colors of the sunset. Somehow, her red strands weren’t garish but more a reflection of the glow that transformed her face when she smiled. Really smiled, not a lukewarm one aimed at hiding her true feelings.

  “Wasn’t the cake gut?” Isaiah asked and was rewarded with four towheads bobbing together, though Ammon wasn’t as enthusiastic at first. The youngsters must be exhausted. “Next time we see Fannie Beiler, you must tell her how much you enjoyed this cake.”

  “Yummy!” Nettie Mae said, patting her stomach. “Yummy in my tummy!”

  A laugh, quickly squelched, came from where Clara sat beside the girls. She had her hand over her mouth and a horrified expression on her face.

  He put hands on the boys’ shoulders to keep them from running away from the table again. Clara had slipped her arm around the girls and started to apologize to them.

  “No, don’t say you’re sorry,” he hurried to say. “There’s nothing wrong with laughing, right?” He looked at the boys.

  Andrew nodded. “Clara can laugh, I guess.”

  “But not you?” she asked.

  When the kinder remained silent, Isaiah pushed his plate away, though he hadn’t finished the delicious cake. He folded his arms on the table.

  “God wants us to be happy,” he said as he looked from one young face to the next. “He loves it when we sing and when we pray together. Do you believe that?”

  They nodded.

  “And when we laugh together, too,” he added.

  The boys ran into the front room. When Nancy let out a cry, Clara drew her arm back from the girls who chased after their brothers and huddled with them by the sofa.

  He wanted to go and comfort them, but wasn’t sure what to say. He couldn’t tell them they should accept the hurts in their lives because God had a plan for them to be happy in the future. He couldn’t say that because he wasn’t sure he believed it himself any longer. Since he’d learned of Melvin’s and Esta’s deaths, the uneasiness that had begun inside him after Rose’s death had hardened his heart like iron taken from the forge. Every heartbeat hurt.

  He struggled with his faith more each day. He believed in God, but it wasn’t easy to accept a loving God would watch such grieving and do nothing. More than once, he’d considered seeking advice from his bishop, because he trusted Reuben Lapp as a man of God. But he knew what Reuben would say. Trust in God and be willing to accept the path God had given him to walk. Once he’d been happy to follow, but that was before Rose died from a severe asthma attack and then his friends’ lives came to an end, leaving behind hurt and bewildered kinder who couldn’t understand why the most important persons in their lives had gone away.

  “Don’t push them,” Clara said from the other side of the table. “There’s got to be a way to persuade them it’s okay to laugh again like normal kids. I know there is.”

  “I wish I could be as sure.”

  When she stared at him, shocked a minister would speak so, he rose and went to the back door. He grasped his straw hat, put it on his head and said, “I’ve got to milk the cows. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

  He didn’t give her time to answer. Striding across the yard to the big barn where the cows were waiting, he knew he needed to have an explanation for her when he returned.

  He didn’t know what it would be.

  Chapter Three

  When Isaiah came in after finishing the barn chores, the kitchen looked as neat as it had before supper. The room was empty, so he glanced toward the front room.

  The twins were stretched out on the floor, coloring, while Clara sat on the sofa facing the wood stove and the rocking chair Melvin had bought for his wife when they first learned they were going to have a boppli. At that time, nobody had guessed Esta was carrying two bopplin.

  He didn’t move as Andrew got up and went to show Clara the picture he’d been working on. While she listened to the boy’s excitement with the colors he’d chosen, she curved her hand across his narrow back, making a connection to the kind. Andrew was grinning when he dropped beside his sisters and brother. Clara returned to stitching a button on a shirt that must be from the pile of mending Esta kept in the front room.

  It was the perfect domestic scene, one he’d believed he and Rose would one day share. The troubles they’d had in the first couple of months of their marriage had been behind them, and he’d been looking forward to building a family with her in the days before she died.

  Alone.

  Thinking of that single word was like swallowing a lit torch. There must have been a sign he’d missed, a wheezing sound when she breathed or a cough that went on and on or blueness around her lips. Something he should have seen and known not to go to work as if it were any other day. Something to tell him to stay home and comfort her and call 911.

  He’d failed in his responsibility to her, and he couldn’t make the same mistake with these youngsters. He owed that to his friends who had trusted him with their precious kinder.

  Crossing the kitchen, Isaiah was surprised when the kinder were so focused on their coloring that they didn’t raise their heads until Clara greeted him. She continued sewing, and he was astounded to see it was the shirt he’d lost a button on the other day.

  “You don’t have to do my mending.” His voice sounded strained.

  “I don’t mind. I like staying busy.” She looked at the kinder. “They’ve been coloring pictures for you.”

  “For me?”

  She nodded, and he saw Andrew was coloring a bright red cow while his twin was using the same shade for a tractor. Nancy had been working on a blue bird with most of the strokes inside the lines, but Nettie Mae’s page was covered with green with no regard for the picture of a dog in the middle of it. The little girl had her nose an inch from the coloring book.

  When Nettie Mae paused to try to stifle a yawn, he had to wonder if she was half-asleep already. It had been a long day for the twins and an upsetting one, as well.

  Clara stood and set his shirt on a table beside the sofa. “Time for baths.”

  The youngsters groaned, but gathered their crayons and put them in the metal box. She snapped the lid closed and picked up their coloring books while the twins asked what he thought of their pictures.

  His answers must have satisfied them, though he couldn’t recall a moment later what he’d said. His gaze remained on Clara as she set the books and crayon box on the lower shelf of a bookcase. The thin organdy of
her kapp was warmed by her red hair. Every motion of her slender fingers seemed to be accompanied by unheard music.

  When she turned, he didn’t shift his eyes quickly enough. She caught him watching her, and the faint pink in her cheeks vanished. Was that dismay in her eyes? Dismay and another stronger emotion, but he couldn’t discern what. As she had before, she lowered her eyes.

  She remained on the other side of the room while she said, “Isaiah, I must get the kinder ready for bed.”

  “I’ll give the boys their bath,” he said, trying to lighten the situation. “I’ll check behind all four ears.”

  His hope the twins would forget themselves and giggle was dashed, because they had become silent again. Did they sense the tension in the room? They couldn’t know why. He didn’t. He couldn’t have said anything wrong, because he’d said less than a dozen words since he returned to the house.

  But how was he going to convince the kinder it was okay to laugh? Though he and Clara had assured the twins a gut giggle would be all right, the twins continued to limit themselves to smiles.

  I know I should be grateful they can smile, God, but a kind without a laugh seems wrong. You know what’s in their hearts. Help me find a way into them, too, so their laughter can be freed.

  He understood why the youngsters might not trust Clara to release them from their promise not to laugh. They hardly knew her, though they seemed to like her.

  And why wouldn’t they like her? She was gentle and showed an interest in what mattered to them, acting as if each toy they showed her was the most amazing thing she’d ever seen. They wolfed down the food she put in front of them as if they hadn’t eaten since birth.

  But that didn’t explain why the twins didn’t heed him. He’d loved them before they were born. They called him onkel, and they were as close to his heart as his true nieces and nephews. Why didn’t they trust him when he told them it was okay to laugh?