Little Amish Lizzie

by Linda Byler

  “Emma, go get Dat. These fingers might be broken, as swollen as they are.” She frowned. “I don’t know why you girls have to act this way. You have to be careful, Emma.”

  “Well, Mam, you told me, me-e-e—” and Emma’s voice dissolved into a flood of tears. She sat way over on her side of the couch in a miserable little huddle and let her own tears flow. At least Lizzie was being held and pitied, while she was all alone on her end of the couch, with Mam glaring at her.

  Now Mandy started to cry, because everybody else was crying. Mam got up, put Lizzie on the couch, and went to find Dat.

  Lizzie sank back against the cushions and quit crying long enough to look at her fingers. They were huge. They thumped with every beat of her heart, and Lizzie had a horrifying thought. Her fingers were going to fall off—that’s all there was to it, which started a fresh round of sobs.

  Dat entered the kitchen, finding his three daughters in a lamentable state. He walked over to Lizzie first and picked her up, setting her on his knee. Mandy rushed to the safety of her mother’s arms, and Emma just sat huddled in the corner of the sofa, trying to quit crying.

  “What happened, Emma?”

  Emma took a deep breath, and smoothed back her hair with both hands. “Mam told me to get the bathwater ready, and Lizzie tried to do it first, and Mam told me to do it. So I got in first and pushed the bathroom door shut so she couldn’t get in. It’s not my fault her fingers were there!”

  Dat looked sternly at both of them. He ran his fingers through his hair and frowned. After that he picked up Lizzie’s fingers and frowned some more.

  “No, Lizzie, I don’t think your fingers are broken. They’re just smashed. Your fingernails will probably come off because the force of the pinch loosened them. You’ll be alright and it will help if you let Mam put ice on again.”

  Mam brought the ice again and held it over the injured fingers, with a soft towel wrapped around Lizzie’s hand. Her sobs slowly faded as she lay back against the pillow on the sofa.

  “So, Lizzie, don’t you think the next time Mam tells Emma to start the water in the bathtub, you should let her do it?” Dat asked.

  Lizzie’s fingers hurt so horribly, and here was Dat, trying to blame her. It was Emma who pushed the door shut, and she was the one to blame.

  So between hiccups and soft little “ows” and “ouches,” Lizzie told Dat it was Emma’s fault—not hers.

  Then Dat told them a story about a greedy little pig who ate all the other little pigs’ food, then got a severe stomachache and suffered for a few days, being allowed nothing but water.

  Lizzie listened intently, then looked up at Dat. “You mean, I was the greedy little pig?”

  “Exactly,” smiled Dat. “You wanted Emma’s share, and that was her job. So you got pinched fingers.”

  Lizzie looked long and hard at Dat. She didn’t agree with him. There was no food involved in this situation. Besides, what about sharing? Emma could have let her turn on the water. In Lizzie’s opinion, Emma was just as greedy as she was. Lizzie looked at Emma, and Emma looked at Lizzie, and both of them knew exactly what the other one was thinking … “It was your fault!”

  But since Dat was there and there was no possibility of arguing, they bit their lips and glared at each other.

  chapter 6

  A Ride to the Mountains

  The following morning the sun shone warmly through the yellow, red, and orange foliage surrounding the little shingled house where Lizzie lived.

  The back door opened and she stuck her tousled little head outside, saying softly, “Here, kitty, kitty. C’mon, Snowball—time to eat!”

  Snowball peeped out from under the porch and meowed. Lizzie scooped her up and set her down by the dish of milk, stroking her velvety ears as Snowball lapped at the warm, creamy milk.

  Lizzie was so glad Snowball was still alive, and a car had not yet driven over her. She sat and stroked her little white kitten, yawned, and gazed at the trees by the creek. They were really bright, and she wondered how they got that way, and why they had to fall off after being so bright. She wished they could go for a long drive to see lots of pretty trees on the mountain.

  She jumped up, scaring Snowball, who raced down the steps, then turned and watched Lizzie.

  Lizzie ran into the house, yelling as loud as she could, “Hey! Hey, Dat!”

  Mam was flipping golden brown pancakes on a smoking hot skillet. She turned and said sharply, “Shhh, Lizzie, don’t be so noisy. Dat isn’t here right now. He went to feed the horses.”

  “I’ll go find him,” Lizzie yelled, quite forgetting to lower her voice. Slamming the screen door, she pounded across the grass that was wet with dew. Her feet tingled with the wet coldness, and bits of grass clung to her toes as she raced across the gravel drive.

  “Dat! Dat!” She was quite breathless and very noisy as she stopped inside the open barn door.

  “What? What’s wrong?” Dat’s head appeared over the top of the wooden gate of Red’s pen. He was spreading clean yellow straw around Red’s feet.

  “Hey! I just thought of something. You know what?” Lizzie paused and took a deep breath. “You know what, Dat?”

  Dat laughed, slapping Red on the rump and pushing him over, in order to spread more straw. “Well, what?”

  “You know what we should do today?” Lizzie paused, climbing up the wooden sides of Red’s pen and leaning across the boards, with her elbows propped on the top.

  Dat went on spreading straw, while Red’s dainty ears flipped forward and back again, waiting for a command from Dat. Red was beautiful. He was a sorrel saddlebred horse, and his coat was so glossy he shone in the sunlight. When he trotted, his head was held high, while his legs lifted daintily as he moved. Lizzie thought nobody else in the whole Amish church had a horse as pretty as Red.

  “Dat, how long do horses live?” she asked.

  Dat smiled at her as he put his pitchfork down. “My, two questions and I don’t really know the answer to any of them. Why don’t you slow down and ask one thing at a time? First question—what should we do today?”

  Lizzie frowned. She wasn’t listening to Dat. She was watching Red eat his oats. She loved to hear a horse chew his feed. It sounded so good and crunchy, just like he was eating potato chips, and Lizzie wondered if the feed tasted as good to Red as potato chips tasted to her.

  “I love chips,” Lizzie commented. Dat closed the gate, hung up his fork, and came over to Lizzie. He grabbed her by her chubby little waist and lifted her down.

  “You look like a little potato chip.”

  Lizzie laughed happily. She loved Red and she loved to watch Dat do his chores, and everything just seemed so good at that moment that she was filled with something she guessed felt like pure joy.

  “I’m not a potato chip. How long do horses live?” she asked again.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Some of them live to be twenty-five years old, and others wear out a lot sooner. Just depends.”

  “Depends on what?” asked Lizzie as she watched Dat pull a piece of hay from a bale, put it in his mouth, and chew it. Lizzie did the same. If you chewed hay and bit down on the little knobby part, you could taste the sweet juice. Besides, Lizzie watched men chew hay when they worked on the farm at Grandpas. They pushed up their hat, leaned back against the fence, crossed one foot over the other and talked. Lizzie practiced it for hours, but nobody knew about it. She wished she was a man.

  “Melvin! Breakfast!” Mam stood on the porch calling to them. She paused to watch them come toward the house, noticing the fact that Lizzie was chewing hay again.

  That Lizzie, she thought. I don’t know why she isn’t a boy, as much as she tries to act like one.

  But she didn’t say anything, only smiled to herself as she watched them come up to the porch.

  “Lizzie says she wants to do something today, but she hasn’t said what,” Dat told Mam.

  Mam turned to go into the house, saying, “Well, c’mon, the pancakes and eggs wi
ll be cold if you don’t hurry up.”

  While Lizzie sat on the bench and buttered her pancakes, she still hadn’t told them her plan. She would wait, to make sure Mam wanted to go along. Sometimes Mam didn’t want to go away when Lizzie did.

  Emma was blowing her nose at the table. Lizzie wished she wouldn’t do that. It was disgusting. Besides, Emma was grouchy this morning and made Lizzie feed Snowball first thing. So Emma really provoked Lizzie, sitting there beside her, blowing her nose as loud as she could.

  Lizzie went on buttering her pancake. “Syrup,” she said.

  Nobody passed it.

  “Syrup!” Lizzie said, more loudly.

  Emma went on blowing her nose. Lizzie spied the syrup close to Emma’s elbow.

  “Emma, pass the syrup. And stop blowing your nose! It’s gross!” Lizzie said.

  Mam and Dat burst out laughing. Mam laughed till tears streamed down her face and she gasped for breath. Mandy clapped her hands and giggled, even if she didn’t know what was funny.

  Mam wiped her eyes, sighed, and said, “Emma, give the syrup to Lizzie.”

  Lizzie figured Mam and Dat were both in a very good mood, seeing them so happy, so she turned the syrup bottle upside-down and squeezed, saying, “Let’s hitch up Red and go to the mountain today.”

  Dat smiled. “Good idea, Lizzie. The leaves are colored really pretty right now, and it’s a beautiful day. Do you want to, Annie?” he asked Mam.

  “We could,” Mam agreed, and smiled at Dat.

  “Good. After dishes and a Bible story, I’ll hitch up Red and Mam can pack a lunch.”

  “We don’t have to have a Bible story,” Lizzie said.

  “Oh, yes,” Dat told her. “Every Sunday.”

  While Mam gathered the dirty dishes, putting away the leftovers, Dat sat on the couch and read the story of the lost sheep. Emma sat beside Dat and listened attentively, but Lizzie wasn’t interested in that little sheep story. So what if he didn’t make it into the pen with the others? He could stay out on the mountain till the next morning, when the shepherd drove his sheep back that way. Lizzie thought the shepherd wouldn’t have had to light his lantern and go look in the dark. That was a lot scarier than waiting till morning. He was lucky he didn’t get eaten by a bear, walking around the mountain yelling for one sheep.

  Now Dat was telling Emma to always remember to be a good little girl and do as Mam said. Lizzie picked at a scab on her knee and wished he’d be quiet now. She wanted to go for a ride in the mountains.

  After Mam packed sandwiches, apples, cookies, a jar of peanut butter, and saltine crackers into a big picnic basket, she combed the girls’ hair while Dat put the harness on Red.

  Lizzie despised having her hair combed. Mam wet her hair, then rolled it tightly along the side of her head. Sometimes she pulled it back so hard, Lizzie could feel the corners of her eyes being stretched. After she put in the ponytail holder, Lizzie propped her head on her arms while Mam wound her long hair around and around to make a bob, or a bun, low on the back of her head. If you held your eyes hard against your arms long enough, you could see stars. Then if you looked back up and opened your eyes, you could still see them for a very short time. Lizzie wondered why English girls could get away without a bob.

  Dat was ready, so he took a firm grip on Red’s bridle and led him to the sidewalk. Lizzie raced back and forth, carrying the thermos jug of chocolate milk, then the blanket. She clambered up the high step and tumbled into the buggy. Emma scrambled up beside her, and they wiggled against the soft upholstered seat to make themselves comfortable. Lizzie hoped Emma wouldn’t blow her nose and completely ruin her ride to the mountains.

  Mam and Dat packed the lunch and all the things they needed under the seat. Mandy sat on Mam’s lap while Dat clambered up beside her. He never had to tell Red to go, because the horse was always too eager. Dat could barely make it into the buggy before Red was off and running.

  Gravel crunched under the steel wheels as they turned onto the main road. Emma and Lizzie could look out the back window because Dat had rolled up the gray canvas and secured the roll with leather straps that hung on a hook. They hung their elbows out the back, giggling together with excitement. This is so fun, Lizzie thought. She had never, ever done anything “funner.”

  The breeze flowed through the buggy because Dat had his window open. Mam had Mandy wrapped in a small woolen blanket, and she was laughing and telling Mam in her baby talk about the horse and buggy.

  Red felt energetic and Dat had to pull back on the reins to keep him at a nice, steady pace. Red’s red coat shone under the clean black harness, and the little rings jiggled to the steady “clip, clop” of his hooves.

  Lizzie smelled leaves burning, and turned to look at a big pile of brown leaves. Smoke was curling up through the pile, and a man stood beside it, leaning on his rake. Dat waved and smiled as they drove past, as a little white dog ran out to the road, barking furiously.

  Lizzie hated that. She was always so afraid of the horse’s hooves tramping on little puppies, or the hard steel band on the wooden wheel going over the puppy’s soft body. She could never stand to think about it and now she grimaced and shut her eyes tightly, just hoping as hard as she could the puppy would not be trampled or killed.

  “Awww, isn’t that puppy cute?” Emma leaned out the window and watched the little ball of fur. “Isn’t he cute?” she repeated. “Dat, you should absolutely buy us a little puppy like that. He is adorable.” She dug into her sweater pocket for her handkerchief, arranged it over her nose, and gave a resounding honk.

  Lizzie just couldn’t believe it. “Emma, stop blowing your nose so loud. And we don’t want a puppy.”

  Lizzie didn’t say more, but she thought to herself how hard it would be to be worried about a puppy just when she was getting used to Snowball. Emma just had no idea how tough it was to be like that. So Lizzie looked out at the brightly colored trees and wished that puppy wouldn’t have come running out.

  Emma was wiping her nose again. “Do you have a cold or what?” Lizzie asked.

  “Of course. Why do you think I’m blowing my nose?” Emma leaned over closer and wiped some more.

  The road started to wind steadily upward. Red was breaking into a sweat, so Dat kept him at a walk until they came to a spot where they pulled off beside the road. Red shook his head up and down, so Dat climbed out of the buggy and loosened the rein that was connected to the harness. Red lowered his head and stood patiently while Mam spread the blanket in the soft green grass.

  Dat put the picnic basket down and Emma and Lizzie climbed over the front seat. Dat lifted them out, asking if they were hungry.

  They all sat together, and ate sandwiches with glasses of cold chocolate milk. Mam spread thick layers of peanut butter on saltine crackers and Lizzie washed hers down with the sweet, creamy chocolate milk. She ate so many crackers that Mam laughed and told her she would turn into a peanut butter girl.

  After they had eaten the tart, crunchy apples, Mam packed the leftovers back into the basket while Dat unhitched Red and took him down to the little babbling creek for a drink.

  When everyone was back in the buggy, Red pulled them slowly up to the top of the small mountain. They all stopped to rest and look out over the valley, colorful in its autumn splendor. It was a really pretty sight, but Lizzie had eaten too many peanut butter crackers and was getting sleepy. Dat said it was time to turn around and start home, so Lizzie leaned back against the soft cushion and relaxed. Her eyes got heavier as they wound their way down.

  Suddenly Lizzie’s eyes flew open. They had stopped. Dat was leaning out the door of the buggy and shaking hands with an English man. His wife stood beside him and introduced herself to Mam, who smiled and said hello to her.

  As they talked, Lizzie and Emma strained to see out the back window to look at the English couple’s home. It was really fancy, with pretty flowers and a swimming pool. Lizzie would have loved to live there and her eyes shone when she told Emma, “Look,
they have a swimming pool!”

  The English lady spied the little girls, and hurried into the house, returning with three candy bars in her hand. She oohed and aahed, exclaiming about Emma’s rolled hair, and Lizzie watched, hoping Emma wouldn’t blow her nose.

  After they said goodbye to the friendly couple, Emma looked at her candy bar. Lizzie looked at hers and they asked Mam if they could eat them.

  “Of course,” Mam said with a smile. “She gave each of you a whole one.”

  Lizzie carefully unwrapped hers, smelling the delicious chocolate. “Emma, mine has Rice Krispies in it,” she said. “Look.”

  They carefully nibbled on the corner of their candy, and it was so good when it melted on their tongues, Lizzie thought things in Heaven probably tasted like that.

  The sun was setting behind the trees as they turned into their driveway. Lizzie was so sleepy and so happy with the lingering taste of that delicious chocolate candy bar still in her mouth, she thought it was the best Sunday in her whole life.

  chapter 7

  Moving

  Lizzie knew something was going on. Something that kept Mam and Dat talking at night, and a man in a long white car came to talk to Dat one afternoon. He had on a brown suit, with a brightly colored yellow tie with a gold clip in it. Dat and the strange man walked around the house, to the harness shop, and even to the barn. The man left soon after he had looked at everything, although he sat at the kitchen table first, talking to both Dat and Mam. He had a stack of papers and Lizzie watched while they both signed their name.

  Lizzie understood some of what they were saying, and she thought Dat had to pay the man some money. She knew they talked about money, but it didn’t really bother Lizzie much. Emma asked Mam what the man wanted, but Mam told her not to worry about it. Lizzie really looked at Mam because she thought Mam looked sad, and there was a tear in her one eye, she thought.

  But Emma wanted to play horse that afternoon and Lizzie soon forgot about the man in his suit and tie.