The Covenant

by Beverly Lewis

  Now, though, she was being mighty careful to eat right—watching the sort of foods Mamma ate— and to get to bed at an early hour. Her body was in the beginning processes of making necessary changes, the baby growing ever so slowly at this point. All this was according to the helpful library book, which she had renewed one day here lately when she and Mamma drove to Strasburg for sewing notions and whatnot. She’d been allowed to keep the book for another three weeks and hoped by the time she had to relinquish it for good, such important things would be firmly fixed in her mind.

  Gone were her actively sinful days, though she had never confessed her wickedness to a soul. Not even to Mamma. She’d pondered confiding in Leah, but what good would that do? Her sister couldn’t redeem her. No one could. Unfortunately, her next younger sister was all caught up with Jonas, so dreamy eyed it was hard to get her attention during the day while she did her indoor chores. No, there was no need to spoil Leah’s joy . . . not just now.

  Mary Ruth was aware of Elias Stoltzfus’s presence well before the wedding feast, especially when the young people were attempting to line up outside and some of the boys showed great timidity in pairing themselves up with a girl partner. Some were even grabbed and pulled to the door, where they had no choice but to stand beside a particular girl. Once they were in line, all struggling came to an end, and each youthful couple approached the wedding-supper table hand in hand, just as those in the bridal party did.

  But Ezra Stoltzfus, who happened to be Hannah’s partner, of all things, looked downright delighted to have managed to get in line, just so, to be precisely across from her twin. Mary Ruth couldn’t help but think that somehow she and Hannah were supposed to be matched up with the Stoltzfus brothers for the wedding feast, recalling how spunky Elias had been about asking her if he could sit across the wedding table from her.

  Thinking back on his unexpected visit at the produce stand, she felt her heart beat a little faster at what might become of their friendship. And at the years ahead, maybe. Then and there she decided to be the most cheerful wedding-feast partner to smiling Elias, who kept eyeing her in the lineup of girls, then quickly looking down his line of boys and bobbing his head, as if counting how many there were—and where he landed—making double sure he ended up being her partner.

  Well, now, what a right fine day of days, thought Mary Ruth, overjoyed.

  Abram felt he’d done a dance of sorts, trying his best to avoid Ida’s brother, Noah Brenneman. Still, it seemed his brother-in-law was determined to confront him about the past. Yet another time.

  The weathered farmer walked up to him after the feast. “You’re avoiding me, Abram.”

  “ ’Spect I am.”

  “Well, now that we’ve witnessed a blessed wedding and ate ourselves full, don’tcha think you could stand still for just a minute or two?”

  “I’ll see ’bout that.” Abram wasn’t surprised at the gray-bearded man’s acute bluntness. Noah shot off his mouth thisaway quite regularly; at least he had back years ago when the knotty problem between them had first reared its ugly head.

  “Still holdin’ a grudge, I see . . . after all these years,” Noah said straight out.

  “Jah, maybe so.” Abram leaned on the well pump handle. “But you know the truth, same as me. What you had in mind for Lizzie . . .’twas awful wrong! That should be real plain to see now.”

  Noah stared him directly in the eye. “Maybe so, but I wanted to protect my family. I can’t say the same for you, though. ’Tis a mighty big secret you’re keeping, Abram. Mark my words. It’ll blow up in your face one day.”

  “You leave that to Ida and me. That’s our business.”

  “Don’tcha forget, Lizzie’s my sister. What you and your family do affects all of us Brennemans.” With that, Noah turned on his heel.

  Abram shuddered. Noah’s vicious remarks rang in his ears as Abram tuned out the frivolity, what with young people scampering round. He wished Noah would just keep to himself and his wife, Becky.

  By gollies, he thought, will we never see eye to eye?

  After supper that night the young people gathered in the Masts’ big barn. There they had a singing of sorts, playing games till late.

  Just before dusk, though, Leah and Adah Peachey left the games for a breather. They went for a quick walk by themselves, over in the high meadow behind the barn.

  “I’m wore out,” Adah said, reaching for Leah’s hand as they made their way up the slope.

  “A wedding day is always long. ’Tis understandable,” Leah said.

  “There’s another reason I’m done in. My brother wants to know if you and Jonas are officially courtin’.”

  “And that’s tiring you?” Leah said.

  “Well, he keeps askin’ . . . even though it’s not his business to know.”

  “What do you say?”

  “I tell him, ‘open up your eyes . . . what do ya see happening at the local singings?’ ”

  “Maybe he oughta go to a different singing,” Leah suggested.

  “I’ve told him that. Believe me.” Adah sighed. “But it does nothing. Gid’s waitin’ for you. He’s stubborn thataway.”

  This puzzled her. “Why should Gid be marking time? He could be courtin’ a girl of his own by now.”

  “Maybe so, but he cares for you, Leah.”

  The knowledge of this annoyed her. “Is this about something, well . . . that our fathers are wanting?” Leah had to know.

  “Gid’s future has been placed in his own hands now,” Adah said, then became ever so quiet.

  This was news to Leah. “Since when?”

  “Just here lately.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Adah nodded her head, letting go of Leah’s hand to reach down and pick a dried-up wild flower. Gathering a bunch of them, Adah stood up and rubbed them together between her hands, letting the breeze scatter dead pieces into the air. “Pop told Gid the other day that love can be fickle. ’Tis best not to hang too high a hope on it,” whispered Adah almost mysteriously. “My father told him to go ahead and court whoever he pleases.”

  Leah could hardly believe her ears.

  Adah turned and gave her a strange little smile. “Why wouldn’t you give my brother half a chance? I think you and Gid could’ve been a right gut pair is all I best say.”

  “I’m ever so sorry, Adah. Truly, I am.” Leah wondered all the rest of the day if her father and the smithy had resigned themselves to her courtship with Jonas, which surely they knew from either Adah or Gid.

  So most likely Dat knew about Jonas and had done absolutely nothing to stop them. Downright peculiar it was.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  They attended one wedding after another all the rest of November and deep into the month of December. The ongoing weather could not have been more bitter—with snow-laden hills and dreary gray heavens, scattered with unsettled clouds. Wind and sleet visited them from the northeast, coming in with a vengeance from the Atlantic Ocean.

  The forest behind the Ebersol Cottage seemed to grow darker with each passing day. Songbirds had long since flown south, and Ida especially missed hearing their cheerful warble as the babe within her grew. She looked ahead to spring with both a longing and a joy, and all who knew her said her face was simply “aglow” with radiance.

  Though she was preoccupied with her coming child, she suspected something was terribly wrong with Sadie. But Ida would not allow her thoughts to stray down that path.

  Leah was content to help her sisters and Mamma sew perty things for her own hope chest and others’ and attend quilting bees and cookie frolics. Often she kept Aunt Lizzie company on the coldest afternoons, donning her snow boots and tromping up the hill to the cozy log cabin. Sometimes she would spend the night there by herself or with Sadie or Mary Ruth. Hannah never was one to care much for sleeping away from home, though. There at Aunt Lizzie’s, they baked sweet breads and drank hot cocoa, or Lizzie’s favorite hot drink, Postum. Leah enjoyed jotting down dozens of he
r aunt’s recipes, asking for even more “for my own recipe files . . . come next autumn.” That way Lizzie would know enough to quietly tell Mamma they’d need to sow a plentiful batch of celery next July for Leah’s wedding feast in the fall. Lizzie’s eyes lit up as the truth dawned on her, and she promised to keep Leah’s plans quiet “till the time came.”

  Leah was ever so happy to entertain Jonas once each week all winter long, reading aloud to him from the book of Psalms and occasionally from Martyrs’ Mirror—stories from seventeenth-century Christian martyrdom. Together they looked at colorful pictures in Jonas’s book of birds, learning the voice and call of many different varieties.

  One evening Jonas shared his keen interest in carpentry with Leah, telling her that some years ago he and his father had discussed the possibility of dividing up the Mast orchard and surrounding land if Jonas never had the opportunity to learn the trade of cabinetmaking. He and his bride could make their living growing apples and overseeing a truck farm, but Jonas wanted them to live close enough so Leah could be within walking distance to her sisters. Thus, living on Grasshopper Level wasn’t an option, really.

  They talked of joining Leah’s church come next September, getting married early in November, settling down near the Ebersol Cottage, perhaps at first renting a little farm. They discussed in whispered tones their future children and grandchildren, and at times played checkers into the wee hours.

  Leah felt truly blessed to love and be loved in such a joyous way. She did sometimes worry, though, that she oughtn’t to marry before Sadie, since that honor should go to the first daughter of their family. So she prayed that God would send along someone right quick for her older sister.

  Sadie, who was becoming more self-conscious about her body as January came and went, promised herself she would somehow change her outlook on life. Without offering repentance—by sheer willpower—she made an effort to become a more obedient daughter and loving sister . . . especially to Leah, who had put up with far more than she herself might have tolerated from a sibling back last summer.

  On the Saturday nights that Jonas Mast came calling, Sadie stole next door to visit Dawdi John, who enjoyed telling her—sometimes the twins, too—the familiar stories of his growing-up years. “The olden days,” he’d say . . . how he learned to cut wood as a boy and catch fish with his own dawdi, and about the day he asked Mammi Brenneman to “get hitched” with him. If he happened to light up his old pipe and smoke by the fireside, the smell of sweet tobacco made Sadie feel a bit light-headed, took the edge off her deepest fears. At such times she came mighty close to letting her secret slip out, knowing full well she could trust Dawdi, but she never quite let herself go that far.

  Sooner or later, though, she knew she’d be telling Leah. Time was passing and she had fallen in love with her baby, felt it was surely a boy, though she wouldn’t have known how to explain such a thing. Yet she believed her precious unborn child would be the first male to grow up in this house in many years. Thankfully, she had never heard again from Derry and assumed he had gone to the army, nearly finished with his basic training by now.

  Meanwhile, Mary Ruth poured herself into school studies, making the best grades she ever had through February. More and more she hungered for book learning, knowing full well how this might sit with Dat and Mamma when she finally had the nerve to tell them she wanted to attend high school. Then . . . college someday. Her twin was the only one who knew her true heart on this, and it pained her—the realization that one day their paths would surely have to part, knowing full well that Hannah intended to follow the Lord in holy baptism and join the Amish church.

  Hannah had begun to write down her most personal thoughts in a journal every other day, starting back on New Year’s Day. Some paragraphs—about certain boys—she could just imagine Mamma’s eyebrows arching ever so high at what was being recorded. Her embroidered handkerchiefs had found a business outlet in a small gift shop in Strasburg. Hannah was saving her money toward helping Mary Ruth reach her secret goal of attending a teachers’ college in the future. Yet the thought of living without her twin nearby was almost too painful to ponder.

  Abram spent winter evenings reading the Bible in German and praying silent prayers with the family gathered near. Ida, who was putting on some extra pounds, sometimes complained that the wood stove put out too much heat for her liking. So they’d all get up and head to the front room, where the girls would shiver a little, all but Sadie, who seemed as comfortable in the cooler rooms as Ida.

  If the topic of politics came up at all, which it sometimes did, he made a point of emphasizing to his family, especially his daughters, that he didn’t have much use for America’s new president. “Anyone who’s bent on using such profanity, well . . . he ain’t leadership material, not in my book.”

  But even more than Harry Truman’s cussing, Abram was utterly annoyed by Jonas Mast’s out-and-out determination to win Leah’s hand. The smithy was none too keen on the idea, either, since Gideon hadn’t shown the least interest in any other girl in the church yet. Leah was obviously Gid’s one and only sweetheart girl, and he’d set his sights—and heart—on her, and nothing either Abram or the smithy thought about Jonas Mast made any difference. Far as Abram was concerned, his dear, dear girl was missing out on a gem of a boy while getting cozy with, even planning to wed, Ida’s cousin’s son. But if Leah loved him and he loved her, well . . . what was Abram to do? He couldn’t demand his own way, could he? Why, no, he might push Leah away from his own heart, and then how could he live with himself?

  Derek Schwartz never looked back once he’d packed his bags and headed for boot camp. His mother was teary eyed at the bus station, but his father appeared to be more serious than sad. Robert, not in attendance at Derek’s farewell, had managed to beat his brother out of town, driving to Harrisonburg, Virginia, where he planned to find a part-time job and settle into an apartment, then begin second semester at Eastern Mennonite College. His father had been baffled at Robert’s sudden interest in Anabaptist beliefs, in wanting to go into the ministry, too, but Mom had encouraged him to “follow your heart, Robert . . . wherever it may lead.” It was typical of her, though he knew she hadn’t taken too kindly to his brother’s leaving home again.

  Derek, on the other hand, figured it didn’t matter as much what he did with his life. Mom would have turned irate—Dad, too—if either of them had known he was completely shirking his duty as a father-to-be, leaving naïve Sadie Ebersol to cope with raising their grandchild on her own. But no turning back now. Hadn’t he offered to help her end the unwanted pregnancy? And she had refused in no uncertain terms. So there was nothing more for him to say or do. He had been smart, too, not falling for her ridiculous idea of marriage.

  It was on the day that Englishers celebrate love—Valentine’s Day—that Sadie decided she could keep her secret no longer. She and Leah were putting on their flannel nightgowns, and Sadie was straining to see the side view of herself in the small mirror at the dresser. “Leah, do you think I’m gaining weight?” she asked.

  “How could that be? You’re as thin as a rail.”

  “But, no, seriously, look at me,” she insisted, wondering if her sister would notice any difference in her shape. “Am I bigger . . . anywhere?”

  Leah shook her head, laughing softly. “What’re you getting at, sister? You look the same as always.”

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, Sadie breathed in deeply. Now was the time. She simply must tell Leah about the precious babe inside her. What should she say, and how to say it? After all, Leah hadn’t had nearly five months to become accustomed to the idea of a baby as she herself had. So she must be more guarded, careful to express the regret, even grief, she’d felt at her first knowing, back in mid-October. But now . . . now she was ever so eager to hold her tiny baby in her arms, cradle him, rock him, whisper “I love you” in his little ears. Yet she wondered how Leah would take such news.

  Well, she’d never know if she didn’t get the
nerve to speak up, and in the next minute or so. Leah was heading for the oil lamp now, ready to snuff it out. . . .

  “Sister,” she said softly. “There’s something I want to tell you.”

  Leah turned, a frown on her face at first. Then when Sadie motioned for her to sit beside her, she came quickly, eyes animated. “What is it?”

  “Just listen, Leah. . . .”

  “Have you met a boy, someone who wants to court you?” asked Leah.

  Sadie wasn’t taken aback at that remark. After all, it was a natural thing for a younger sister to be thinking such things, really . . . for Leah to feel awkward at being nearly engaged and here Sadie was almost nineteen and without a beau, or even the promise of one.

  Reaching for Leah’s hand, she clasped it tightly. “What I’m goin’ to say will be so awful hard for you to take at first. It was truly that for me.” She paused, stroking Leah’s innocent hand. “I have done wickedness, sinned in the eyes of the Lord and this family. Oh, Leah, my sweet sister, how do I tell you that I . . . am with child?”

  The room was still, the light from a winter moon on the snowy landscape bright enough to show clearly Leah’s stunned expression. “Ach, Sadie . . . what’re you saying?”

  “Do you remember that English boy I told you ’bout last fall? Well, we . . . he and I . . .” She could not make herself speak the words.

  “Oh, this is too awful!” Leah blurted.

  Sadie shushed her sister gently. “Best not alert the whole family to this just yet,” she said, but she understood Leah’s shock. She reached out and gathered Leah near. “I’m sorry you hafta know this . . . that you have such an immoral sister as I am,” she whispered.

  For the longest time Leah seemed unable to speak, struck dumb with anguish, weeping softly into the pillow. “How could you do such a thing, Sadie?” she said at last.

  Then they curled up together in their childhood bed, beneath ancient quilts sewn by the honorable and just women on both the Ebersol and Brenneman sides. And Sadie, sapped of strength, said no more, realizing anew this evil thing she’d done to bring such shame on herself . . . and her dear family.