The Amish Christmas Candle

by Long, Kelly; Beckstrand, Jennifer; Baker, Lisa Jones

  To make herself feel better, Bitsy picked Farrah Fawcett up from her comfortable window seat, set her on the floor, and tried to get her to chase an adorable cat toy that was shaped like a mouse. Farrah Fawcett couldn’t have been more insulted. She glared at Bitsy as if she’d just thrown away all the good cat food. Farrah Fawcett turned up her nose at anything that seemed like play or exercise.

  Bitsy found the whole princess act irritating, but it did the trick. After three minutes of trying to get Farrah Fawcett to chase the toy, Bitsy felt comfortably grumpy once again.

  The problem was that Yost Weaver was never far from her thoughts. She grinned in spite of herself at the thought of Yost working up the courage to kiss her. Amish men were notoriously sure of themselves. Their wives were never supposed to contradict them, their children were expected to give unquestioning obedience. At least that was Bitsy’s view of most Amish men. Her nephews-in-law, while annoying and altogether too eager, weren’t such men. They were gute and honest and loving, and didn’t fancy themselves superior to or smarter than their wives.

  So maybe Bitsy needed to alter her generalized opinion about Amish men. And in truth, she already had. Just because Yost was set in his ways didn’t mean he wasn’t kind and thoughtful and . . . loving. Ach, du lieva.

  Loving.

  He loved her. He’d told her so himself.

  And against her will, she sort of liked him too. A dyed-in-the-wool Amish man. She never would have believed it if it weren’t happening to her.

  Yost was definitely aggravating in how set he was in his ways, but that stubbornness was also something she liked about him. He was steady and trustworthy, like a lighthouse in the fog or a mighty tree in a windstorm. He wasn’t righteously indignant when she argued with him, and he even sometimes admitted that he was wrong. How could she not love that?

  Despite his tightly buttoned-up notions, Yost was genuinely fun to spend time with. He teased her about the money she kept in her Bible and the candles she wasted by actually burning them. He was willing to try strange new foods like pot stickers and salmon tacos, and he always cleared his plate and announced whatever she’d cooked to be the best thing he’d ever tasted. They talked for hours about beehives and fruit trees, debated Amish doctrine, and argued about earrings and dress colors.

  And maybe she was fine with not wearing her earrings anymore, and maybe it was fine that she didn’t wear them because Yost was happier when she didn’t. Was it bad to do something purely for someone else’s happiness?

  He kept saying things to hint that he wanted to take care of her. She could probably put up with a companion, but she did not want or need anyone to take care of her. But what about that? Did he want to marry her? Did she want to marry him?

  Maybe she did.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to give up her earrings and her dancing and the little battery-operated CD player that she pulled out only in extreme emergencies, like after she went to visit her parents. Were those pieces of her Englisch life that maybe she didn’t need anymore? It would make Yost happy to see those things go. He liked her better without them, and he was concerned about her salvation. She couldn’t get mad at him for that.

  Besides, she floated to the ceiling and back every time he kissed her—which unfortunately had been restricted to once a day, because he hadn’t wanted to sin by overindulging. Once a day wasn’t enough, but at least it gave Bitsy something to look forward to when she woke up in the morning. Who knew kissing Yost Weaver would be the most glorious part of every day?

  Bitsy tucked an errant piece of hair under her kapp and caught herself smiling again. This was going to have to stop. She’d never get any work done if all she did was daydream all afternoon.

  At precisely two o’clock, Lily, Poppy, and Rose, waltzed into the house. Bitsy loved it when her girls were prompt. Promptness was next to godliness as far as she was concerned. She nearly smiled then thought twice about it. It would be better for everyone if she weren’t so chipper.

  Bitsy immediately took Luke Junior from Poppy’s arms and kissed him three times on each cheek. “Ach, he’s like an ice cube.”

  “It’s fifteen degrees out there,” Poppy said, giving Bitsy a strong hug. “I bundled him up but good.”

  Lily and Rose got their own hugs as well. “You look very well, Lily,” Bitsy said. Lily’s baby was due on New Year’s Eve. She looked more than a little uncomfortable.

  Lily placed her hands on her abdomen. “Ach, she does somersaults every night just as I’m trying to fall asleep.”

  Bitsy nudged the coat off Luke Junior’s shoulders. “Maybe she’ll be a dancer when she grows up.”

  “Or a hockey player,” Poppy said. Everyone but Bitsy laughed at the thought of that. She’d been cheery enough for one day.

  Bitsy’s girls took off their coats and rolled up their sleeves. “What should we make first?” Rose asked.

  Bitsy sighed. “I hope the community appreciates what a charitable woman I am. We’ve got to make a cake for the singeon at Millers, a casserole for Levi Weaver’s family, bread for gmay, and I told Yost I’d make some cookies for the school Christmas program.”

  Bitsy did not miss the look that Lily gave Poppy. “You told Yost?”

  “It’s not anything to get your knickers in a knot about. Mary is busy with her little ones, and Levi has the biggest part. Yost loves my Christmas sugar cookies.”

  Poppy propped her hands on her hips and studied Bitsy’s face. “B, Yost has been over here almost every day for the last two weeks.”

  Bitsy narrowed her eyes. “You don’t know that.”

  A slow smile formed on Poppy’s lips. “I live just down the road, B. I spy on you all the time.”

  “And Josiah says Yost passes our farm every day in his buggy,” Rose said, looking delighted and guilty at the same time, if that was possible.

  Bitsy decided to be contrary. “Just because he passes your farm doesn’t mean he comes to my house. There’s plenty of things between his house and mine.”

  Lily giggled. “But nothing as interesting as you.”

  Oy, anyhow. Her girls were nosy.

  Poppy eyed her with a smarty-pants look on her face. “B, you like him. You like him a lot.”

  She thought she probably loved him, but her snoopy nieces weren’t going to pry that out of her. “I suppose I do, even though he can’t keep a beat to save his life and he’s going gray at the temples and he chews his fingernails.”

  Rose and Lily squealed, and in a burst of insanity, jumped up and down and clapped their hands.

  Bitsy looked up at the ceiling. “Dear Lord, it’s gute you gave me the patience of Job, because these girls are sorely testing it. There’s no need to overreact.”

  “He’s wonderful nice,” Rose said. “He gives Josiah advice about farming, and he fixed our thresher when it broke down. He’s very handy yet.”

  Unlike Rose’s husband, Josiah. Rose hadn’t noticed the shortage of duct tape on the couch, and Bitsy didn’t want to hurt her feelings by bringing it up.

  Lily brushed her hand along the butcher-block island. “He’s a wonderful gute dawdi to his grandchildren. At least that’s what his daughter Hannah tells me.”

  “He could take care of you, Aendi Bitsy,” Rose said. “You wouldn’t have to worry about working the farm by yourself.”

  “B doesn’t need someone to take care of her,” Poppy said, almost under her breath.

  Rose tilted her head to one side. “Nae, but it might be nice, all the same.”

  Jah. It might be nice. Pulling honey nearly put her in her grave every year. She was fifty-three years old. They might as well start planning her funeral. Maybe it would be nice to give away her beehives and spend her last few gute years with Yost Weaver. She could throw away her earrings, sit around all day, and eat cake. At least getting fat wasn’t a sin.

  Ach. It probably was.

  She didn’t like the way her girls were staring at her, as if they were just waiting to be let
in on a secret they already knew. After handing Luke Junior to Poppy, she turned her back on all three of them. She reached into the cupboard and pulled out the cat food. The cats needed their bowl topped off.

  “Cum and eat, Snowball,” she said, shaking the cat food into the already-full bowl.

  “Who is Snowball?” Rose said.

  Bitsy looked up. The cat food had been a very bad idea. Now her girls looked at her as if she was the bearded lady at the circus, and her chin couldn’t have been that bad. She plucked it regularly. “Yost had a wonderful gute idea. Farrah Fawcett and Billy Idol are Englisch stars, and naming my cats after them only makes me long for the Englisch world.”

  Much as she loved Sigourney Weaver in Alien, Bitsy was fifty-three years old. A grown woman should have no problem letting go of such silly things.

  She cleared her throat and picked up the cat formerly known as Leonard Nimoy. “This is Carrot. The white, snobby one is Snowball. Sigourney Weaver is now Fluffy, and Billy Idol is Mittens.”

  Rose formed her lips into an O and laced her fingers together in front of her. Her knuckles turned white. “Those are very pretty names, Aendi Bitsy. Did Yost help you pick them out?”

  “Jah. I liked Pumpkin but he thought Carrot sounded more like a cat.”

  “Oh. They’re very nice,” Rose repeated, as if trying to convince herself. A painful smile formed on her lips. “Josiah named his dog Honey. Carrot is a food too.”

  The lines piled up on Poppy’s forehead. “B, your hair is gray.”

  It irritated her that Poppy was so observant. “I’ve been gray since thirty-five.”

  “You always dye it red at Christmastime.”

  Bitsy instinctively put a hand to the nape of her neck. “I thought I’d try plain gray this year. Yost likes it better this way.”

  All three girls eyed her as if she had a piece of spinach hanging from her nose.

  “You never try plain,” Lily murmured.

  Rose seemed on the verge of tears. “It’s . . . very pretty like that.”

  Bitsy took Luke Junior back from his mother and squeezed her arms tightly around him. “What’s the matter with everybody? You act like I died this morning. Don’t start dividing my furniture.”

  Lily pasted a smile on her face. “Of course you didn’t die.”

  Bitsy narrowed her eyes. “That is about the strangest thing you’ve ever said, little sister.”

  “So Yost won’t let you dye your hair or wear earrings either?” Poppy said.

  “Won’t let me? He doesn’t have a say whether I dye my hair or not.”

  Rose frowned one of her I’m-trying-to-be-kind frowns. Bitsy didn’t like it, and she didn’t even know why. “But you said he likes it when you don’t.”

  Poppy scrunched her lips. “Is he bossy about it?”

  “Bossy?” Bitsy took a deep breath. Annoyance felt like a pot of asparagus stew bubbling inside her stomach. Was she annoyed at her nieces or herself? Had she let the color fade from her hair only to make Yost happy? And was there anything wrong with that?

  Yost wasn’t bossy. He had told her he loved her while her hair was purple. Did he love her better now that it wasn’t?

  “Yost isn’t bossy, and we have fun together. Last night he took me ice skating and then to McDonald’s. And if I didn’t wear my earrings it was because I didn’t want my ears to get ripped off on the ice.”

  “You must like him if you let him take you to McDonald’s,” Lily said.

  “Their fries are pretty good. And I slid down the clown slide.”

  Lily giggled. “It sounds like the perfect date.”

  Bitsy smiled. It was a gute date. A wunderbarr date. She’d made Yost laugh, and he’d irritated her several times. “I got stuck on the slide, and Yost pretended he didn’t know me.”

  Rose’s eyes got as wide as caverns. “You got stuck?”

  “One of the kids in line behind me gave me a shove to dislodge me. The manager asked us to leave after that. He was quite rude so I prayed that the gute Lord would send him a pimple.”

  “But B,” Poppy said, “you love coloring your hair.”

  What was Poppy’s sudden concern for her hair? If Yost didn’t care that she colored it, why should Poppy? “I like it this way too,” Bitsy said, annoyed at how unconvinced she sounded.

  Well, no matter how she sounded, she was convinced. Gray hair was nothing to be ashamed of. Plenty of famous people had gray hair—Kenny Rogers, George Washington, Cruella de Vil.

  Rose leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “If he makes you happy, that’s all that matters.”

  Poppy didn’t seem apt to agree. “It matters very much if she loses herself in the process.”

  Bitsy tried hard to keep the impatience from showing on her face. For sure and certain, Poppy had some silly notions. A passerby might have thought Bitsy was dating a vampire or a werewolf. “I’m not going to lose myself. I have my address memorized. And it’s not me who needs a lecture. Luke ate every last cookie in the jar last time he was here. Has he no shame?”

  Poppy shed her somber mood and laughed. “Luke loves your oatmeal raisin cookies, B. He can’t help himself.”

  “He’s going to get very fat someday.”

  “Not when he works so hard.” Poppy’s grin took over her whole face. “Even his muscles have muscles. Ach, he’s so handsome.”

  “I won’t argue with that,” Bitsy said. “Luke Junior looks just like him, and Luke Junior is the handsomest baby in the world, at least until Lily’s comes along.”

  Lily laughed. “There will be no shortage of beautiful babies in this family.”

  Rose longed for a baby, but she smiled a beautiful, genuine smile. “Of course.”

  Bitsy look up at the ceiling and said a silent prayer. The gute Lord was taking his sweet time, but Bitsy could be wonderful tenacious. Surely Gotte would send Rose a baby just to shut Bitsy up.

  Bitsy and her girls spent the afternoon laughing and talking and baking. They made sugar cookies shaped like Christmas stars while Rose fretted about what latest gossip Paul Glick was spreading about their family, and they all decided he wouldn’t settle down until he found himself a wife. Unfortunately, the girls in Bienenstock were exceptionally sensible, and there wasn’t a girl with any sense who would have him.

  Lily made a broccoli cheese casserole for Levi’s family while Poppy kneaded bread and Rose and Bitsy made a pineapple-coconut cake, Rose’s specialty. They dyed the coconut red and green so that it would look extra Christmas-y for the singeon on Sunday night. They shared a light dinner of canned peaches and tuna fish sandwiches before the girls headed home.

  Poppy left first so she could feed Luke Junior and put him down for the night. Lily and Rose strolled across the flagstones arm in arm. It wasn’t a very Amish way to feel, but Bitsy was proud of her girls. They were gute, kind, and so much fun to have around. She liked to think it was because when they were growing up, she’d always dyed her hair some cheerful color and wore earrings that tinkled merrily. Who could be sad in the presence of a pair of tinkling earrings?

  Her frown sank deeper into her face. Yost could. He liked her better without the earrings or tattoos or hair dye. But how did she want herself to be? She was happy when she wore her earrings, but even happier when Yost came to visit. Could she have the one and still hold on to the other?

  Yost came whistling up the lane not ten minutes later, his hands stuffed in his pockets, his easy gait a sign of his wonderful happy mood. “I talked with the bishop,” he said, leaping up the porch steps and giving Bitsy a swift kiss on the cheek. Those quick ones weren’t as good as the long ones, but they still set her heart racing like a hound after a raccoon.

  “What did the bishop have to say for himself?”

  Yost’s smile could have set a dry field on fire. “He says we can see each other as often as we want, not wait two weeks between dates like die youngie.”

  Bitsy smirked. “He knows if we waited two weeks between, we’
d die before we had a chance to make any plans.” She cleared her throat and pressed her lips together. They sometimes came close to talking about getting married, but never came right out and said it. Bitsy didn’t want to come right out and say anything. She might like Yost a lot—she might even be in love with him—but marriage meant baptism and Gellasen-heit and possibly no tattoos ever again. She hadn’t worn a tattoo since the first night Yost had kissed her. Could she abstain for the rest of her life? Did she love him that much?

  Yost lost his smile. “But the bishop has advised me that sliding down slides at McDonald’s isn’t fitting. I told him we wouldn’t do it again.”

  In some sort of rebellion against the bishop, Bitsy grabbed Yost’s big hand and pulled him into the house. She got on her tiptoes, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him thoroughly. His surprise registered in the way he hesitated, his arms dangling at his side like two sausages. But it didn’t take him long to get over himself, slide his arms around her waist, and pull her close. She loved the warmth that seemed to envelop her when they kissed and enjoyed the thought of making the bishop just a slight bit annoyed.

  “That was unexpected,” Yost said, when she finally released him.

  “Sometimes, I have to do what I have to do.”

  “But nice too,” he said. A grin played at his lips before fading to nothing. “But I don’t think we should kiss like that again. It opens the door to temptation.”

  Bitsy felt slightly irritated for no reason whatsoever and couldn’t resist maybe irritating him just a little. “What’s wrong with that?”

  He didn’t take the bait. Chuckling, he took her by the shoulders and walked backward while pulling her forward. He guided her to the windowsill where she’d set one of the beeswax candles she and Levi had made. They’d both agreed not to burn it. It was such a pretty Christmas decoration, and they didn’t want to ruin it. “It’s the same reason you don’t burn this candle. We wouldn’t want to spoil something so beautiful.”

  She wanted to argue with him but didn’t have the heart. The bishop had given them some gute news, and she’d be a party pooper if she tried to pop Yost’s balloon. Instead she took him to the refrigerator and showed him the handle, which was missing a screw. He grinned, pulled a screwdriver from the drawer, and went to work.