Rachel turned around to see if everyone else was as moved as she and saw many teary eyes just then.
“We have a special presentation we wish to make before we’re finished,” Priscilla said, and Rachel looked back to the front. “Elam, if you would....”
When the boy pulled back the curtain, a beautiful white quilt hanging on the wall behind Pris’s desk was revealed. The pupils names were embroidered in rainbow colors, surrounding a quilted school, flowers and trees, clouds, hills and valleys, even horses and buggies.
Priscilla surprised Rachel by taking her hand and urging her to stand. “Rachel, the children wish you to have this quilt, so you will remember them and to thank you for your patience and kindness in teaching them. Most of the girls stitched their own names. The boys’ mothers did theirs. Family names are grouped together. We worked evenings and took turns doing the quilting for the last two months to finish it.”
Rachel opened her arms to the pageant’s players who had been standing by and watching, and they came to her with hugs and kisses. Then she called the rest of the children from their desks. So many hugs, so much love, she was sobbing fit to start a Bible flood by the time she was done.
Simon came to stand by her, placing his hand at her back, looking as if he might be … happy. Rachel cried the more.
When her tears finally stopped, and the laughter at her weeping stopped, and Aaron was in Simon’s arms, Emma in hers, Rachel was able to speak. “Thank you, all of you, for such a very special gift, sewn and pieced together with love, I know.
“Christmas is the day when the inner light is shown on everyone and the true story of the Christ Child should be told. This afternoon has been one of the most beautiful tellings I have ever seen or heard. And the inner light in this room right now, is blinding.”
Everyone stood and clapped; some of the women had to stop to wipe their eyes.
Priscilla hugged her.
Daniel cried from the noise and Ruben came to take him from the cradle.
The noise grew as people began to leave.
“Glick salich Grishtaag, a most blessed Christmas,” people called as they left.
“S’nehmlich zu dich, the same to you.”
A dusting of snow made the evening magical.
Levi had left early; he was getting old and tired he’d told Jacob, but Rachel knew he could not deal with such emotion. So Jacob and the twins rode in the back of their buggy with her and Simon, and they sang carols all the way home.
After supper, Simon read the Nativity while they sat quietly in the best room before the fire. When the twins became sleepy, she and Jacob oversaw their leaving plates at their places at table so they would be found filled with candy, nuts and a toy or two.
Simon asked Rachel to stay downstairs when Jacob took the children upstairs, and Levi went to the daudyhaus. And when they were alone, he put his arms around her and held her close. And for the first time in years, Rachel was comfortable enough to let him.
“Rachel, it is Christmas,” he said. “Come with me. Come to our house and into our bed. Let me show you I have changed.”
Just then, Rachel believed him. But she’d believed before and been wrong. She wanted to make her marriage a normal one. She owed it to her husband, and to her child, to do so.
But she also owed her child protection.
She sighed and stepped back. “Simon, I am … uneasy. Not so much as I was. But for so long, I never knew what you would do, and it always seemed that … at night … I had more reason for fear. I do not think I am ready.”
“Ach, Rachel. For Christmas. Please? There would be no more wonderful a gift.”
She wavered, for a moment, then her heart began to race. “I am frightened, yet.” She touched his arm. “But I become less so each day. I see how different you have become. I see in your eyes kindness and understanding. I love how you care for Aaron. I know you are trying, Simon. Give me time. Please? Will you accept that if we continue in this way, after the baby is born, I will return to you and be your wife again?”
Could he? Would he? Like St. Joseph, accept a wife under such conditions? Could anyone change so much? And how dare she judge him when her sins loomed so greatly before her.
Simon sighed and kissed her forehead. “It is not the Christmas I would want, but it is a gift of sorts and I accept it. You have reason for the way you feel. I know that.”
“You do?”
“Ach, Rachel. I am not a stupid man. Just foolish sometimes. Headstrong. Driven by something I cannot name and it frightens me, perhaps as much as it frightens you. I get to blaming you, I think. Your father and I have talked. It helped me to see things more clearly.”
Rachel allowed herself to be taken into her husband’s arms. He bent his head slowly to kiss her goodnight. A lovely, soft kiss.
She might have fallen in love with him, if he’d acted like this beyond their wedding.
Upstairs, Jacob was sitting on the floor in the hall, his back against the wall, his knees bent, waiting for her. “I thought you might have gone with him,” he whispered.
Rachel ignored the agony in his voice. “I told him that after the baby was born, I would return to him.”
“It is best.”
“Yes.”
Jacob stood to face her. “A blessed Christmas, Rachel.”
“You too, Jacob.”
Their fingers touched, then dropped away, and as she went to her own room, Rachel wondered how her heart could be both healing, and breaking, at the same time.
* * * *
Christmas morning Jacob came in from shoveling his way to the barn to find Rachel filling the children’s plates with treats. She put a “lumba bubba,” a stuffed baby doll with prayer kapp, apron and cape, beside Emma’s plate and a stuffed, black lamb by Aaron’s.
“These the ones you made, Mudpie?” Jacob picked up the lamb and examined it. “They’re nice. I brought mine down earlier.” He retrieved a wooden cradle to fit the size she’d told him the doll would be, and a wooden marble chase game, from the inside bottom shelf of the jelly cupboard.
Levi came in yawning and put a tiny carved horse, brown with horsehair main, shiny harness and plaited tail in Aaron’s plate, and a white one, just as fancy, in Emma’s.
“They’ll like them, Datt. Thanks,” Jacob said. “Happy Christmas. Here, got you some pipe tobacco.”
“Thanks, son. Where’s Simon? Still milking?”
Jacob looked out the window. “He was right behind me when we finished. Here he comes. Oh no, what is he up to?”
Simon came in, his jacket bulging in way too many places. He wore such a sincere, happy smile, the likes of which Jacob never hoped to see. Aaron deserved the credit for coaxing Simon’s smile into place over the past months.
“I guess I can’t put these on the table,” Simon said, as the twins came running into the room.
“When did you wake up?” Jacob asked. “I didn’t hear you call Pa-pop? Look at you, no socks on your feet. It’s cold in here. Come on.”
“Wait,” Simon said. “I feel something warm.” He looked into his jacket. “Ach, what did you do?” Jacob and the twins stopped to watch.
With a groan and a wink, Simon pulled a tan pup from inside its cocoon, black-tipped tail wagging furiously, and handed it to Emma.
Her squeals were deafening.
Then a similar wiggling bundle, black with one white eye, stuck its face out for an inquisitive look. Simon knelt down before Aaron. “Take him. He’s yours.”
“Unkabear! A doggie!”
For a minute, the lump in Jacob’s throat threatened to choke him. Simon had never in his life showed this side of himself.
Despite the burden Jacob carried, he knew Christmas had never meant so much.
“One for each of you.” Simon petted Aaron’s puppy and smiled at his brother. “Both of them for your part of the house, Jacob.”
“Why you—”
Simon raised his hand to stop the curse. “Not in front of the
children.”
Jacob couldn’t believe it; his brother was joking! “All right, you two,” he said to Aaron and Emma. “Upstairs for warm clothes now, before anymore gifts for anybody.”
Jacob placed the pups back in Simon’s arms. “Find a wooden box with nice high sides for them, brother, or you’ll find them in your part of the house more often than you’d like.”
Simon chuckled as they walked away. Then Aaron turned and ran back. Simon bent down to see what he wanted and got his neck hugged tight. Jacob nodded to his brother when his son returned to his side, but he could not speak for the love he’d seen for Aaron in Simon’s eyes.
As his brother stood watching the children with longing, Jacob thought Simon just might take good care of Rachel and the baby after all. As should be.
This was going to be a good Christmas.
* * * *
This did not bode well for a good Christmas.
Rachel looked from Simon to Jacob. Their easygoing manner with each other had lasted nearly all the way through a hearty breakfast, complete with souse for toast. It survived puddle-making pups and Emma’s bowl of hot oatmeal upside-down in Simon’s lap.
But the test of gift giving was questionable.
Nothing as silly as envy over who got the better gift. That was never their way. No, this problem was older, more deep-rooted.
This rivalry had started when they were children, Rachel knew better than anyone, and it held her, almost as a prisoner, in its center. Which of them did she like best? Which would be her husband? Now, heaven help them all … which man had the right to present such a gift?
From the way Simon and Jacob stood staring at each other — each of them holding a wooden baby cradle to give her — Rachel knew if someone did not say something soon, words best left unsaid would once again come between them. Words that could destroy.
“Levi?” she implored.
But it was Ruben who harumphed and stomped both feet, propelling himself from his rocker to a standing position. “Like two schoolboys trying to give your lunch to a pretty girl, you act,” he said. “Rachel does not have to choose which cradle she wishes to keep — no, nor the giver either — witless boys.
“She can keep both. One can stay upstairs, the other down. Then there will be no toting, like I have to do.” He turned to his wife. “Hey, Es, now Daniel can use the downstairs cradle and we can leave ours home.”
Esther rolled her eyes.
Ruben looked from one frowning man to the other and sighed. “Still not happy I see,” He tutted shaking his head. “And on Christmas day too. All right, I will decide. Your painted one, Simon, matches the painted secretary in the corner there. Leave it down here in the best room. Jacob, put yours in Rachel’s bedroom. It’s a fine match for the chest of drawers she’s always favored.”
Rachel admired Ruben’s ability not to point out in which bedroom the chest now stood. She could tell Es was downright impressed.
Simon placed the cradle he’d re-painted by the secretary. “Looks good,” he said before he settled in one of the rockers.
Jacob carried the cradle he built upstairs to put in Rachel’s bedroom. He knew he was acting like a horse’s hind end … a little boy, just like Ruben said, and devil take his former friend for pointing it out.
It was Simon’s place, as Rachel’s husband, to give such a gift, not her brother-in-law’s, and as soon as he grew up a bit, Jacob promised himself he would tell Simon so.
When he came back down, he followed the aroma into the kitchen where Rachel spooned cinnamon apples over the ham in the oven. He reached over to touch the curls at her nape below her kapp, then thought better of it and clasped his hands behind his back, instead. “Sorry, Mudpie. I should know better.”
She shut the oven door. “You should.” Then she turned to him with a sigh. “But thank you for saying so. Did you say it to Simon?”
“Ach, Rache, do I have to?”
“What did Ruben call you? Witless?”
Even when she insulted him, he wanted her. He wanted to smooth his hand over the mound of her stomach to feel her child’s movement visible beneath her apron. When she was bent over the stove, he’d not only wanted to touch the curls at the nape of her neck, he’d wanted to kiss her there. Lord, how he wanted.
Simon stepped into the kitchen, and turned right around to leave.
“Simon,” Jacob said. “I was wrong. The cradle should have come from you. Not me.”
Simon relaxed his stance and nodded. “For the most part, you have been a good brother.”
No. He had not. Not lately. “I thank you for the words, but I do not deserve them,” Jacob said in earnest, and was glad he had a reason to smile just then. “I hear the twins squealing. Let’s go see what the pups wet now.”
“Pa-pop, look,” Aaron said as they came into the best room. “Unkabear, look. Momly. A barn from Boob.”
“And a Pokey,” Emma added, holding up a carved, black lamb for their inspection.
Levi laughed. “They will think all lambs are black.”
“And a moo-cow.”
“A whole farm, Ruben. You made them a farm?” Rachel asked. “It is so good. You could be a toy-maker.”
“Pop would scold you for that, Rache. He likes Ruben fine as a farmer. He never had it so easy.”
Ruben slapped his knee. “Never so easy.”
Aaron ran to the window. “They come, they come.”
“Pop must be here with Atlee,” Esther said. “Don’t crow so around Pop, Ruben, or you’ll be working twice as hard.”
His father-in-law entered the house. “Good man, your Pop,” Ruben said with resounding zeal.
Esther patted his cheek. “Smart man, my husband.”
“You staying, Pop?” Rachel asked as she kissed her father’s cheek and gave him a wrapped present which he took with no comment. He felt that gift-giving should not be given primary attention on Christmas, so he would open his gifts alone, later.
“No, Little One,” he said. “I bring Esther’s cakes to the older members of the church and say blessing for them over their dinners. I eat with you tomorrow, Second Christmas, at our house.”
Rachel accepted that happily. Second Christmas was always good as first in her book. Better, maybe. Downright lazy not to work two whole days in a row.
Atlee wasn’t having a good day. He thought at first Emma and Aaron were Jacob and Anna when they were little, then quick as a wink, he got it straight.
Ruben shook his head when Atlee gave everybody a handkerchief. Everybody needs a schnoopduff, already,” Atlee said.
“Ya, and they don’t cost too dearly, either,” Ruben muttered.
Atlee laughed heartier than any of them at the words. “You betcha, already.”
Simon placed the plates of roast turkey and ham on the table.
Rachel wiped her hands on a towel. “Kum esse, come eat, everybody.”
“Hard to choose what to eat, Mudpie,” Ruben said. “So many good things. Ah, German noodle ring.” He rubbed his hands together. “My favorite.”
Esther shoved his shoulder with hers. “Everything’s your favorite.”
With his return shove, Ruben managed to kiss his wife’s cheek. “Good pickled relish and chow chow, Rache.” He smiled innocently.
“Told you he liked the sours,” Esther said.
“Kissed you first. Proves I like sweets more.”
“The Christmas turkey, he fattens long enough, and he eats good,” Atlee said.”
“In North Dakota,” Jacob said, “we didn’t celebrate on December 25th, like this, we celebrated Old Christmas on Jan 6th, instead.”
“Pass the chestnut stuffing, Jacob.” Simon said. “When did you have second Christmas then?”
“We didn’t, and I missed it. Christmas is better here.”
After dinner, in the cozy best room, a fire burning in the fireplace, Atlee began the carol singing. The twins sat on a quilt near the fireplace, Daniel in a cradle beside them, while they pl
ayed with their new toys.
Later, Jacob took out the old sled and they all went out to get some exercise and make room for cake and pie. Esther’s long cumbersome dress did not stop her from taking a slide down the hill with Ruben, him screaming all the way. When they turned over at the bottom, Ruben kissed his wife with great fervor, then he covered her face with snow.
Esther got him back by shoving snow down his neck. He chased her around the barn.
The snow fight Jacob started went on a long time before Ruben and Esther returned.
Rachel doubted she and Simon would ever play that way. She could not look at Jacob while Ruben and Es were gone. She knew what would happen with them in the same circumstances.
Throwing off such thoughts, she went to take Simon’s arm. Come and take a fat lady for a walk. Their talk was of the day, mostly the children’s excitement and the puppies. It was good to be pleasant with Simon. It was good to remember why she married him, that she had not been stupid. He had been a good man then; he seemed to be so again.
* * * *
Rachel woke on second Christmas to the twins’ calls. “Siss widder am schneea.” It was snowing again.
“Come on then,” she heard Jacob tell them. “We’ll hitch Caliope to the sleigh, give the lines a jingle, and across the fields we’ll fly to see Uncle Boob, Aunt Es, and Daudy Zook.”
Tucked warmly between the adults, the blowing snow tickling their faces, the twins giggled the whole way. Es’s roast pork with apple dumplings ‘ate good’ too. So did the oyster pie and pickled pears.
During the meal, Rachel’s father surprised them all by inviting Simon to give the Anfang the next Sunday.
To give the opening sermon was a great honor for the Deacon. Simon lowered his head. “Thank you, Bishop Zook.”
Again her husband’s humility amazed her. Determined to show her appreciation, Rachel rose to go to him, placing her hands on his shoulders and her cheek against his. “I’m happy for you, Simon. That’s a fine Christmas gift, Pop.”
“It is not a gift. It has been earned.”
A minute of silent communication seemed to pass between her father and her husband.
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