Bishop Enos spoke first. “Goot morning to all of you on this Lord’s day. We are thankful for another night’s sleep in which we could rest our weary bones.” Bishop Enos paused to chuckle and rub his knees. “There’s not much left but bones in these legs, but let me keep on the subject.” Several of the ministers joined in the bishop’s laughter. Emma didn’t smile, and Susanna couldn’t crack a smile if she tried.
Susanna forced herself to look up when Bishop Enos continued. “Anyway, we are here, and another day is upon us. I pray we can live it in a manner that pleases the Lord. I also hope that we can worship Him in the beauty of holiness.”
A chorus of “amens” came from the ministers.
Bishop Enos nodded and waited a moment. “Apparently we have some issues which must be resolved along those lines. Deacon Herman informs me that two of our baptismal applicants have strayed from the straight and narrow road and must be called back to the Lord’s will.” A deep silence filled the room as Bishop Enos paused. No one moved a muscle. Bishop Enos cleared his throat before he began again. “I am, of course, deeply sorrowed by this report. What a tangled web we do weave, as the Englisha poet once said. I had hoped all of you would take this time to learn more deeply of the Lord’s ways and the community’s ways, but this apparently is not the case.” Bishop Enos’s gaze drifted down the line of baptismal candidates and came to rest on Susanna’s face.
Hot streaks of fire ran up her neck. Shame filled her heart, but no words would come. The bishop didn’t expect any—at least not yet.
“It seems Susanna Miller is the most grievous transgressor,” Bishop Enos said. “I had hoped better things from Ralph’s daughter, but I guess one never knows what lies in the heart until it is tested.”
“I am mostly to blame for this,” Emma gasped.
Bishop Enos turned toward Emma. “And how is this, young sister? Are you also tempted with the things of the Englisha world? Do you also have an Englisha boyfriend?”
The words of protest sprang to Susanna’s lips, but she clamped her mouth shut. She had spent time with Joey, so Bishop Enos spoke the truth in part. Susanna trembled and held the sides of the chair so her hands wouldn’t shake.
Emma remained silent too.
“I thought so,” Bishop Enos said to Emma, and turned back to Susanna. “What have you to say for yourself, young woman? It seems you’ve had quite the experiences since we last met.”
“I…I don’t know what I can say that will be helpful,” Susanna said truthfully.
Bishop Enos glanced at Deacon Herman. “The deacon here tells me that you’ve made several contacts with your Englisha boyfriend from your rumspringa days. Surely you know that as a baptismal candidate you are to take seriously the vows you plan to make this fall. At least, I assume you still plan to make them.” Bishop Enos paused and waited.
“I…” Susanna began again, but she got no further.
“I see,” Bishop Enos said. “It’s that bad. Would you mind telling us what your plans are? I was led to believe you are considering Ernest Helmuth as your future husband. Is this not true? Normally I wouldn’t speak of wedding plans in public like this, but the situation calls for frank speaking, Susanna. I hope you understand.”
“I do,” Susanna managed.
Bishop Enos waited again, but he continued when she didn’t speak. “We have always had concerns about you, Susanna, ever since your Englisha mamm passed away and you came to live with your daett. Yet we are a caring people. The community did not wish to rush into judgment about you, since you could not help who your parents are. Those things lie in the will of the Lord, and He thought best to bring a child out of your daett’s sin. This we did not wish to hold to your account. For his part in this, your daett made his peace with the Lord and offered his confessions in a baptismal class very similar to this one. That same opportunity is in your power, Susanna. You can make your apologies for your own past choices—first to the Lord and then to all of us. We must speak plainly, of course, in front of these witnesses, so nothing can be hidden. You must speak even if you have sinned greatly with this Englisha boyfriend of yours. Perhaps that is what lies at the root of your drawing back into the Englisha world.”
“Joey is just my friend,” Susanna whispered. “He is an honorable man.”
“I see,” Bishop Enos said. “But you understand we are to forsake our friends who are in the world. Are you willing to do this and to make your confession?”
Susanna choked and said nothing.
Bishop Enos sighed. “So it is as we always feared. I had hoped for your daett’s sake things would never come to this. He has invested years in your godly development. He no doubt has wept many tears of regret for his own past, and prayed fervently that his sin would not be passed on to you. And yet, here we are with your heart drawn into the Englisha world. No amount of love will change that—only your choice to fully forsake what lies out there will bring you back.” The bishop gestured toward the bedroom window. “Even then the road from out there is often long and difficult, but we are willing to walk it with you. Please believe that. But you must choose the road. The miles may be rocky, but I believe for your daett’s sake that the Lord will give us grace for the journey. Can we begin that walk this morning with a full confession from you and a vow to leave the Englisha world behind forever?”
Susanna’s mind whirled as tears crept down her cheeks. All she could think of was Daett’s love and care for her. All that Bishop Enos said was true. How could she be so ungrateful? How could she walk away from Daett and his faith? How could she even think of jumping the fence? Many wished they had been raised in a godly community like hers, so why couldn’t she appreciate all that had been given to her?
Susanna stifled a sob and tried to speak clearly. “I’m very sorry for the trouble I’ve caused you and Daett and the community, and the shame of it all, and my own ungratefulness. I wish I had never been born at times, but I was brought into this world, and now I am what I am. I can do nothing about that.”
Kindness filled the bishop’s face. “We can all change, Susanna. The Lord washes clean a sinner’s heart if he confesses. And Ernest will love you and take you as his frau. There is a way out. You don’t have to leave us.”
“But you don’t understand,” Susanna began. “I don’t love—” She stopped. Her relationship with Ernest was not an appropriate subject. She could not expect the bishop to see what she meant anyway. He had never looked into Joey’s eyes and seen what she had seen. The bishop had never felt his fingers move over the piano keys, nor heard the room filled with sounds like the angels must sing in heaven. It was all useless. “I’m sorry, I just can’t,” Susanna finished.
“Can’t what?” the bishop asked.
“Do what you want me to,” Susanna replied.
“Then you know what that means,” Bishop Enos said.
“I do,” Susanna said. She stood to her feet and silently walked out of the bedroom.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The buggy ride home after the service was full of silence. Susanna sat in the middle with James on one side of her and Henry, holding the reins, on the other.
“So what was all that about?” James finally asked. “I know you met with that Englisha man again last week, but a little confession to Bishop Enos should have taken care of the problem. Instead you came down from the baptismal class before anyone else did.”
Susanna bowed her head at the memory. Mamm had looked up at her and burst into tears right there in front of everyone. When Bishop Enos had led the ministers downstairs after their meeting, he looked as if he had just presided over a funeral.
“You must have—” James stopped. “Oh well, what does it matter? I just wish you’d act normal for a change. I don’t need the whole community to think I have a strange sister.”
“Does this have to do with your wedding with Ernest this fall?” Henry asked. “Because if it does, then coming down early from the baptismal class will be pretty bad for your rep
utation. Daett has always gone easy on you, but if you ask me, he ought to chew you out good for this.”
Susanna wiped away a tear. How was she to break the news to her brothers? Bishop Enos had finally made things abundantly clear to her. After that painful session in the baptismal class, she must explain things to Daett first. The time had come to make her choice. Why she couldn’t have seen this before was beyond her, but to speak with her brothers first on the matter…that she couldn’t do.
“She’s not going to answer us,” James said as if Susanna weren’t in the buggy.
Was this what she would become to her family? A person who had never existed? Would the years she had lived with them be as if they had never been? If so, how could that be? They couldn’t act this way. She was a part of them, and if she left, that wouldn’t change—and yet it would. She had to leave. That was what Bishop Enos had finally made clear. The bishop hadn’t said so in words, but he had succeeded where others had failed.
“She’s still our sister whatever she’s done,” Henry said.
A sob escaped Susanna’s lips, and the tears rolled down her cheeks in a cascade.
James took a stab in the dark. “What did Ernest do to you?”
“Nothing,” Susanna choked.
“What about that Englisha man?” Henry asked.
“Joey is a goot man,” Susanna whispered. “He wants only the best for me.”
“Sometimes nothing needs to happen to make a woman upset,” Henry said. He gave James a superior look. “That’s lesson number one in dealing with a frau.”
“She’s not our frau,” James said softly. “I think sisters should tell their brothers what’s wrong with them.”
Should she tell them? The question burned. But how could she explain herself kindly, and without telling Daett first?
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Henry muttered. “It’s a shame that everyone always knows things before we do. Look at what we learned just a few months ago about Susanna’s birth, and here most of the community had already known.” Henry gave Susanna a quick glance. “It’s still hard for me to believe you had an Englisha mamm.”
“I’m sorry,” Susanna whispered. “I didn’t choose my mamm, you know. And can you imagine how I felt when I learned it? And then having Ernest, a man I don’t love, forced on me as a husband—all because no other man from the community would take a chance on a woman who had an Englisha mother?”
Henry didn’t appear convinced. “That’s not the whole truth, you know. If Daett had been stricter with you in your rumspringa time, and if you hadn’t taken up with that Englisha man, maybe things would have turned out differently. And Ernest is a decent match for you. He’s got plenty of character, and they say a woman can fall in love after the wedding.”
Susanna could no longer keep the anger out of her voice. “Do you plan to marry a woman who doesn’t love you?”
James piped up. “Is this what the problem is? You don’t love Ernest and don’t want to marry him? Well, no one’s making you.”
Susanna stared out across Ranger’s back. The familiar sound of his gait rose and fell in the soft afternoon sunlight. “I know they’re not,” she said. “But if I want to be part of the community and sit among the married women and have kinner and not be an old maid who stands on the edges all her life…” Susanna’s voice trailed into silence. How could she explain that above all she wanted to please Daett? His sorrow over the past would never end if she remained unmarried. Daett would always see her single state as the Lord’s punishment for his mistakes. No, she had reached for the best the community had offered and had fallen short because of her own weakness—as Daett had done years ago himself. In this she truly had been her Daett’s daughter. Now they would both have to live with what she had done.
“She’s fallen mute again,” Henry said as he pulled back on Ranger’s reins and turned the buggy into their driveway. “Whoa, there,” he called out as they came to a stop by the barn.
Susanna jumped down and fled toward the house. Henry and James would understand, even as they shook their heads at her actions. They had always been kind to her, but now her time with them was past. She would have to leave the house soon, maybe as soon as next week. How and when she didn’t know. The questions buzzed until her head hurt.
The beat of a horse’s hooves came from the distance, and Susanna turned to flee upstairs but then paused. Daett and Mamm would arrive any minute, and she might as well face them now. With a fixed face Susanna seated herself on the couch and waited. Long moments passed until footsteps sounded on the porch floor. Noah peeked in first, followed by Tobias. They had apparently been instructed not to ask questions.
“She’s on the couch,” Noah said.
Susanna looked away as the tears began again.
Mamm’s voice came next. “Everyone upstairs now,” she ordered, “and change into your everyday clothes. I don’t want one more smudge on your pants than what is already there.”
Susanna didn’t try to smile as her younger brothers trouped past her on their way upstairs. Mamm’s soft footsteps came up to her, followed by Daett’s heavier ones. Their rockers creaked as they sat down. Only then did Susanna force herself to look up and utter all she could muster.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I can’t tell you how very sorry I am.”
Daett lowered his head and looked away, but Mamm reached across the couch to touch Susanna’s arm. “We know you are.”
“But that doesn’t change anything, does it?” Susanna continued. Mamm was too kind to speak such words, but they were true. Nothing could change what had happened today.
“Ernest hasn’t given up yet,” Daett said. “He plans to come over in a few minutes. I told him to give us some time alone before he arrived, but I doubt he’ll wait long.”
Susanna groaned.
“You must speak with him,” Mamm said, sitting up straight in her rocker.
What was Susanna to say? She sat silently. She didn’t want to talk with the man. They would only go in circles again.
Mamm’s voice grew urgent. “You must speak with him! He obviously still has his offer of marriage open, even after all of this.”
Susanna kept her voice to a whisper. “I wish he didn’t.”
Daett winced and turned to face her. “Susanna, you are my daughter. I have loved you with my whole heart. I have wanted only the best for you. Obviously I’ve failed you through my own weakness.” He cast his eyes toward the ceiling. “Forgive me, dear Lord, for my sin, and my inability to stop it from affecting those I love. Truly You have spoken in Your holy Word that the ways of a transgressor are hard. I bear my shame in great sorrow, and yet what is the use? I have lost the daughter I love.”
“You still have four sons,” Mamm said. “I have given them to you out of my love for you. Do you count them as nothing?”
Daett hung his head for a moment before reaching for Mamm’s hand. “You are right, Linda. I’m sorry.” Daett tried to smile.
“You must let go of the past now,” Mamm chided. “Everything is not your fault. Susanna bears some blame for this. She has made choices.”
“Yah, it’s true. I have made choices,” Susanna volunteered at once. Silence again settled over the room.
“Where do we go from here?” Daett finally asked. “I spoke with Deacon Herman at the dinner table, and he says the church has done all they can do. If you refuse to repent, it would be best if you leave the community.” Daett’s voice caught. “I understand this. I know that the standards of the community must be maintained, and this is a blight that must be removed. They’ve tried their best. You were so close to the end, Susanna. Ernest Helmuth would have married you. Why did you have to turn back and destroy the only life you’ve ever known?”
“Well, it’s done now.” Mamm tried to comfort Daett. “And it can’t be undone easily if what Rebecca told me is true. Bishop Enos would find it difficult to trust Susanna again after what happened today.”
Susanna stood. She couldn’t bear this any longer, but Mamm grabbed her arm and pulled her back. “We must speak even the difficult words,” Mamm said.
“So what do you want to say?” Susanna asked. “Why don’t you just tell me what a failure I have been as your daughter?”
Mamm’s glance was not unkind. “I have tried to love you as my own, Susanna. The Lord knows I’ve not always succeeded. I confess that to you, and beg your forgiveness. Perhaps if I had been able to forget that you are not my daughter things could have turned out differently. So perhaps we all are to blame. I do not consider myself guiltless.”
“This is not necessary,” Daett protested.
“Yah, it is,” Mamm told him. “I have been silent far too often because I feared my own heart. I was afraid I would spoil your daughter if I interfered, Ralph. Rather than fear, I should have joined in with her training and said the difficult things. I should have protested when you gave Susanna so much leeway in her rumspringa. Yah, I was wrong to remain silent—and yet I was afraid to speak up. I doubted myself, and look where we are now. May the Lord have mercy on all of us.”
Susanna buried her face in her hands and was silent. Daett’s soft voice murmured beside her as if she wasn’t even in the room. “You have been a goot frau to me, Linda. I could not have asked for a better one. Yet I know I have failed you often. The memory of Mindy was in the back of my mind in bringing up Susanna. I see that my efforts to bring her up to not be like her real mamm only made things worse. I don’t dare ask your forgiveness, as I don’t deserve it, but I still am sorry for what I have done.”
Mamm took Daett’s hand in hers and stroked his arm. “You are forgiven, Ralph. How could I do otherwise with my own faults so fresh in my mind?”
Daett opened his arms and Mamm stood up to hug him. The two clung to each other. Susanna watched as tears streamed down Mamm’s face. This was the relationship the community offered those who abided by its rules. She had been given the chance to have this, but she had failed. Now all was lost. She would call Joey this afternoon. She must leave this place of her childhood once and for all because she no longer belonged. Susanna stood and slipped upstairs, and no one protested her departure.
Until I Love Again Page 18