The Covenant

by Beverly Lewis

  There had also been a few times when Leah, as a young girl, had happened upon them and they’d startled her a bit by ceasing their talk when they saw her—embarrassed her, really—acting as if they were still youngsters themselves . . . secretive little sisters playing house. Made her wonder, though she had no idea, really, just what they were whispering. Probably nothing at all about her. Yet such things had been going on for years, for as long as Leah could remember.

  “Didja have a very long rumschpringe?” she asked when Lizzie and she were alone in the front room at last.

  “Well, I wouldn’t say long really.” Her aunt offered her a plump strawberry from the bowl she held. “I can tell ya one thing . . . I’m not proud of those years. Not a bit.”

  “Oh? Didja tempt the devil?” The words flew out before she thought to stop them. “Like some young people do, I mean.”

  Aunt Lizzie sighed loudly and turned her face toward the window. The rain was still coming down hard, hammering against the roof. “I wish I could say I led a godly life during that time. Truth is, I went the way of the world for too long. I should’ve put my trust in the Lord instead of . . .” She stopped then, looking at Leah. “You’re comin’ into that time of your life, too, honey-girl.”

  Leah was surprised to hear her aunt use the nickname. How long had it been since Lizzie had called her that? She sighed. “Well, I don’t want to make the mistakes many young folk do,” she told her aunt.

  “ ’Tis a gut thing to wholly follow the Lord no matter what age you are. My prayer for you is that one of our own boys will court you when it’s God’s will.”

  One of our own . . . The way Lizzie said it had Leah thinking, wondering if Lizzie knew something about Sadie. But no, how could she? As for the Lord God having anything to do with her courting days, well, she wondered if Aunt Lizzie had forgotten about Dat’s plans—that Smithy Gid would be asking for Leah’s hand in marriage sooner or later. How could the Lord God heavenly Father have any say in that?

  She felt she had to ask, wanted to know more. “Did you fall in love with a Plain boy back then?”

  A faraway look found its way into Lizzie’s big eyes again. “Oh, there were plenty of church boys in my day, jah, there were. One was ’specially fond of me, but he ended up marryin’ someone else when all was said and done. Can’t blame him, really. En schmaerder Buh!—a smart fellow he was.”

  “To miss out on marryin’ you, Aunt Lizzie? Why, how on earth could that be? I say he was dumm— stupid—if you ask me.”

  “No . . . no, I dawdled, sad to say. Fooled round too long. He had every right not to wait for me.”

  Leah wasn’t so curious about the boy as she was annoyed that her aunt thought so little of herself. “I think you’re ever so perty, Auntie,” she said suddenly. “Honest, I do.”

  Eyes alight, Lizzie touched her hand. “Keep as sweet as you are now, Leah, will ya?”

  She wanted to say right out that she’d never think of hurting Mamma and Dat—nor Aunt Lizzie either—the way Sadie was bound to if she kept on rubbing shoulders with the world. But she said none of what she was thinking, only reached over and covered Aunt Lizzie’s hand with her own, nodding her head, holding back tears that threatened to choke her.

  When the day was through, long after Aunt Lizzie had gone back up the hill to her own little house, Leah lay on her bed in the darkness. Positioning her still-painful ankle just so beneath the cotton sheet, she thought of her newfound joy— needlework and mending with her sisters and Mamma. Of course, she didn’t dare tell Dat she thought she might prefer to work inside, where she rightfully belonged. No, she wouldn’t just come right out and say something like that to him. She’d have to bide her time . . . wait for the right moment, then feel her way through, just the way she carefully gathered eggs of a morning, so the fragile shells wouldn’t shatter in her gentle hands.

  Leah sat out in the potting shed, glad the afternoon shower had held off till just a few minutes ago. After returning home from school, Hannah and Mary Ruth had helped her hobble out to help Mamma redd up the place a bit before it rained.

  “This place has never been so filthy,” Mamma said, using a dustpan and brush to clean off the counter that lined one complete wall. Several antique birdhouses sat there, waiting for spring. A collection of tools—hand rakes, gardener’s trowels, hoes, and suchlike—and a bag of fertilizer were arranged neatly at the far end, along with the family croquet set and a box of quoits on the highest shelf. And the shared work apron, hanging on a hook.

  “I’ll wash the inside of the windows,” she volunteered, happy to be of help. Today had been her first day outdoors in nearly two weeks. She’d gathered eggs in the chicken house and later scattered feed to a crowd of clucking hens and one rooster, who, come to think of it, had treated her like a stranger. She’d never considered her interaction with the chickens before and burst out laughing as she sat washing the dusty streaks off the shed window.

  “Well, what’s so funny?” Mamma asked.

  Just now, looking at her mother, Leah noticed yet again that gleam of contentment. Mamma was always lovely to look at.

  She began telling how the hens especially had behaved oddly, backing away from her as if they didn’t know her.

  “Hens are temperamental, that’s all. Don’t make anything of it, dear.”

  “It’s funny, ain’t so?”

  Mamma seemed to agree, her blue eyes twinkling as she smiled. “They ate the feed, though, didn’t they?”

  That brought another round of laughter. “Jah, they did.”

  Still smiling, Leah was happy to share the amusement of the moment. Seemed to her that she and Mamma had made some special connection in the last couple of weeks. “Mamma, what would you think if I told Dat I want to sew and cook and clean, like you and Sadie do?” she asked.

  An unexpected burst of sunlight streamed in through the newly washed window, merging with the dust Mamma was sweeping up. “Sounds like you’ve been thinking hard ’bout this.”

  “I have” was all she said, and she found herself nearly holding her breath, waiting to see what Mamma’s answer might be.

  “Jah, I think it’s time you learned the womanly skills. It’s all right with me.”

  She felt more than relieved with Mamma’s response. After all, wouldn’t be too many more years and she’d be married, keeping house for her husband, sewing clothes for her children. It was high time she caught up on her hope chest, which was fairly empty at the moment, except for the few quilts and linens Mamma, Aunt Lizzie, and several other relatives had given as gifts over the years.

  “Wouldja like me to talk to your father?” asked Mamma.

  Leah felt she wanted to do it herself. “Denki . . . but no. Best for me to see how Dat takes to the notion. All right?”

  Mamma shrugged her shoulders, going back to her sweeping. Leah felt some of the burden lift. Jah, in a few more days she’d get up the nerve to talk things over with Dat.

  Chapter Eight

  Leah’s ankle had improved so much by now she was able to wash down the walls and floor of the milk house. She had to be mindful about where to place each step, hesitant to ask for help from the twins anymore, though her family was more than willing to rush to her beck and call. Stopping only to catch her breath, she gingerly climbed up the ladder to go sit high in the haymow. There she coaxed a golden kitten out of hiding and was stroking its soft fur, rubbing her hand gently down its back, when Dat opened the upstairs door and stood there with a serious look on his sweaty face. “Hullo, Leah,” he said.

  “Mind if we talk, Dat?”

  He came and crouched in the hay, eyeing the kitten in her lap. Then slowly he removed his straw hat and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. “Glad to have you back, Leah. Missed ya.”

  “Me too. I was just thinking . . .”

  “I was hopin’, now that your ankle’s all healed up, that I could still count on you.”

  She waited patiently for him to go on, wonder
ing now if Mamma had said something, even though Leah had made it clear she wanted to be the one to break the news to her dear father.

  His eyes were flat, his ruddy face deadpan. “Truth is, Leah, as much as you want to help your mamma and sisters, that’s how much I need your help out here in the barn . . . in the yard, and with the harvest.”

  Am I stuck doing men’s work forever? she wondered, though she didn’t dare speak up.

  “If I thought you were going to marry in, say, a year or two, well then, I might think otherwise,” Dat explained.

  She was ever so glad he hadn’t put Gid’s name in the middle of things. “I don’t even have my hope chest filled yet.” The kitten’s purr turned to a soft rumble in her lap. “What sort of wife would I be with no table linens or bed quilts? How could I keep a husband happy with no cookin’ skills, not knowing how to make chowchow, put up green beans, or make grape jelly?”

  “This you’ve been thinkin’ through, jah?” A hint of a chuckle wrapped round Dat’s words.

  “Just since I hurt my ankle. Before then I was downright ignorant to what I was missing in the house.” She filled her lungs for courage, smelling the sweet hay and the hot lather of the animals in the stalls below. “Now that I know how to stitch and mend, make Chilly Day stew, and bake date-and-nut bread—all the things Mamma enjoys—well, I’d like to have a chance to practice . . . be as skilled at keepin’ house as every other girl in Gobbler’s Knob.”

  Dat’s jaw twitched a bit, but he looked straight at her, his honest eyes filled with understanding. “Are ya tellin’ me that you’re ready to be a daughter, too, ’stead of just a son?” A twinkle appeared in his eye.

  “Aw, Dat . . . I—”

  “What do ya say we make ourselves a deal?” He was more serious again.

  She was all ears. After all these years, what would he tell her?

  “What if you do the milkin’ twice each day, gather the eggs, and if Dawdi Brenneman comes to live with us—and he needs help feeding and waterin’ the barn animals—well, you could do that, too?”

  Ach, she could think of a gut many things he’d failed to mention. Things like mowing and fertilizing the front, side, and back yards, shoveling manure out of the barn, washing the milking equipment, and much more. Did he mean to tell her that Dawdi might be up to doing all of that? Sure, what Dat had suggested was a place to start, so she spouted off what she thought he was getting to really. “Then, I ’spose the rest of the day I can work helpin’ Mamma?”

  Dat smiled weakly, nodding his head one slow time. He lifted his hat to his oily head and stood up, still looking her full in the face.

  The kitten in her lap was not one bit interested in being moved or set free. Not when the sun’s rays had found both Leah and the cat there in the haymow, where Dat had spoken some mighty important words, letting her know that he knew she was no longer a tomboy but a young woman. Truly, she was.

  Goodness, she felt like jumping up and running round the barn. Glory be! she thought, grinning for all she was worth. Such gut news.

  At sunset Gobbler’s Knob was one of the pertiest places in all of Lancaster County, Sadie felt sure, with its view of the farmland below, dotting the landscape, shadowed in the gray-blue dusk.

  She had become braver in her visits to the knoll, not waiting for Derry behind the barn any longer. She didn’t feel the need to be led into the depths of the woods. After so many weeks, she knew the way to the hunters’ shanty. Sometimes she arrived a half hour or so before Derry did, perched on the wooden ledge hewn into the wall. Or she might move to the windowsill, where she sat silently, peering out of the tiny square window, waiting for her beloved as darkness gathered over the forest. Often she remembered Derry’s cautious yet compassionate remarks, told to her on one of the first nights they’d walked together amidst the brambles and undergrowth, all the things in the knoll that were dangerous, even deadly. Things like poison oak, wild orange mushrooms, a certain genus of herbs . . . and if you weren’t careful, the way the darkness could creep up suddenly, almost out of nowhere, catch you unawares. “You can easily get turned around in here,” he’d said, looking up at the dense trees, “or even lose your way completely.” At the time she thought it was ever so kind of Derry to point out such things. She still did. It was as if he was looking after her, caring for her in a way that other boys wouldn’t think to.

  Oh, how she cherished everything he was to her, living for the hour when they—each of them—left their individual societies behind and sneaked away to the woods. To their secret place against an unforgiving world. They shared an unspoken pact now, a lovers’ promise that she belonged to him and he to her. There was no one else for Sadie in all the world. And she was more certain than ever that Derry felt the same way.

  Not even the coming rain, the wind high in the trees, disturbed her eagerness for the arrival of her beau tonight. When she and Derry Schwartz were together, she was able to forget who she was, really—to play a trick on herself and dismiss the truth that she was Abram and Ida Ebersol’s firstborn, that sooner or later she would join church, marry within the confines of the Amish community, give birth to numerous children, carry on amidst countless work frolics with fifty or so other women, dress Plain forever, and live a life with strict rules and regulations set down by a bishop she scarcely knew.

  Yet the reality of her future faded when she was with Derry. Then, and only then, was she free to be herself. Someone her own mamma would never even recognize, probably . . . a seething yet fragile spirit that knew no bounds. And when it came time for Derry and her to part, she attempted to grasp each precious moment, wishing she could lengthen the span of time, resenting the walk home alone, knowing she would gladly do anything he said, even run away with him, never looking back, she was convinced. She was frustrated at what she might have to face if Leah happened to be awake again when she tiptoed past their bed, slipped into her long white cotton nightgown, her beloved Derry long since having returned to his own separate world, his “I love you” still resounding deep within her heart.

  You could lose your way. . . .

  With trembling fingers, she traced the embroidered butterfly on the corner of her handkerchief, made by Hannah. She wished she might one day be like this butterfly and fly away, to just where, she didn’t know. A place called freedom, maybe.

  Counting the seconds now, she wondered how much longer before she’d see Derry running through the drenched woodlands, fast as can be, to her side. Would he ask her about her Plain life and heritage this time? Whisper of his anticipation for their future together? With all her heart, she truly hoped that maybe tonight he would.

  The next day was a shining afternoon, and what a good opportunity to visit Leah’s dear friend, once all the barn chores were finished. It felt wonderful-gut to have some mobility back, though her ankle was still tender certain ways she walked. Together she and Adah walked slowly through the moving meadow grass toward Blackbird Pond, out behind the Peachey barn and stables.

  Leah shared her newfound joy of sewing and quilting, talking up a blue streak about all she’d learned in the last few weeks. Of course, she didn’t share a thing of her hopes and dreams concerning Jonas, not with Adah thinking she might like to have her best friend for a sister-in-law and all.

  “Wouldn’t it be ever so much fun to live like real sisters?” Adah said. “Then I wouldn’t feel so much like I’m the middle child, sandwiched in between Gid and Dorcas.”

  “I know how that feels,” Leah replied, bypassing the real question. “Sometimes I think I’m nearly invisible in my own family.”

  “Ach, you, Leah?”

  “Oh jah. I’ve always felt a bit lonely somehow. I don’t rightly know how to explain it, really. Maybe it’s . . . well, a little like the way Aunt Lizzie must surely feel.”

  “Seems to me middle children don’t have any idea how important they are to their families,” Adah said.

  Leah bent down to pick a white snapdragon, growing wild in the expa
nse of grassland and flora, where meadow-foam grew to be five feet tall, striking the sky with pink cotton-candy-like blossoms in June. “Children comin’ along behind the firstborn have their opinions, too, but seldom are heard . . . or understood,” she said softly, unsure why she’d said such a thing.

  “ ’Tis awful sad to feel lost,” Adah replied, reaching for Leah’s hand. “You don’t feel that way now, do ya?”

  “Well, no . . . not when we’re together.” And this was ever so true. Leah and Adah were as close as any two sisters could hope to be. Sometimes she even wished Adah was a real sister to her. The only reason to even consider marrying Gideon, maybe.

  Hand in hand, they came upon the glassy pond, where many a happy winter day had been spent skating and playing with the Peachey children. Even now, as teenagers, they would all be out sledding and skating here once winter’s first hard December freeze came and stayed through February. Wouldn’t be safe to skate on Blackbird Pond otherwise, since the water was mighty deep. Leah knew this was true, because Gid had held his breath for forty-five long seconds just so he could dive to the bottom and touch the muddy pond bed one summer when they all were little. “It’s spring fed, for sure,” he’d told them after a huge gasp of air, his face raspberry red from holding his breath longer than he ever had in his young life.

  “We’ll be together at our first singing soon,” Adah spoke up.

  “Jah, won’t be long now.”

  Adah brightened. “We could ride to the local singing with Gid, in his open buggy.”

  “Best not.”

  “We ll , now, what’re you saying?” Adah demanded, letting go of Leah’s hand.

  “Just that I thought . . . well, that I’d like to go to a different one.”