Abby Finds Her Calling

by Naomi King

  “I wasn’t the one who broke my promises by running around with Jonny Ropp. You had your dance and now you’re paying the piper, missy.”

  Biting back an attempt to smooth things over, Abby stepped to the stove to help her nieces. Her heart ached: Zanna looked wretched, with dark crescents under her eyes and her kapp askew from being put on in a hurry. Matt came inside then, and they all sat down at the big table—everyone but Zanna, who slumped at the small folding table, all alone. They prayed silently. Zanna waited until all the dishes had been passed around before she came over to fill her plate.

  “Better take more than half that roll, Zanna,” Mamm urged gently. “And as gut as this creamed chicken smells, it’ll set just right in a jittery stomach. This stage will pass.”

  Zanna shrugged halfheartedly. She took two spoonfuls of the chicken mixture and returned to her place. Sam and Matt ate heartily, discussing the ewes, while the rest of them remained silent. Abby had no doubt, however, that the topic would change before long: her brother had allowed Zanna to sit in uneasy peace yesterday and at breakfast, but it wasn’t his way to let important questions go unasked.

  As Sam took the first slice of apple pie, he gazed pointedly across the kitchen. “And how did you spend your day, Suzanna? Mamm could have used your help with covering her hanging baskets—”

  “I’m sorry, Mamm,” Zanna murmured.

  “—and when I said you weren’t to clean houses anymore, I didn’t mean you could spend your days in bed,” Sam went on. “We’ve got another six weeks of your ban—and six months of this situation. So we’d best settle some things here and now.”

  “It’s not a situation, Sam,” Mamm remarked. “It’s a baby, and we’re to care for it as one of God’s children—”

  “So where’s Jonny Ropp, now that he’s caused such a ruckus?” the man at the head of the table asked. “And why on earth did you hook up with him?”

  The kitchen rang with an uneasy silence. Zanna swallowed, her head hung low. “He and I were scholars together all through school, you know,” she murmured. Her fork clattered to her plate and she left it there. “It wasn’t like I took up with a stranger.”

  “Well, hasn’t Jonny always been stranger than most?” Sam glanced around for acknowledgment of his play on words, but everyone else remained focused on the pie they were passing. “What’s strange is that you knew better, Zanna. I’m figuring you hadn’t been engaged to James but three months—not to mention how your kneeling vows from joining the church should’ve still been fresh in your head. Does your faith mean nothing to you?”

  Abby’s eyes widened. Their brother didn’t need to be such a bully with his words, but there was no telling him that. When she opened her mouth, Mamm squeezed her wrist, reminding her to keep her opinions to herself. A silence darker than the storm’s clouds filled the kitchen. They all jumped at a sudden crack of thunder, which seemed to further inspire Sam’s tirade.

  “So now that you’re catching the brunt of the trouble, little sister, what’s Jonny planning to do about this baby he’s made?”

  A sob escaped Zanna and she curled over until her face nearly touched her plate. She didn’t speak for a long moment. “I… haven’t told him. Haven’t seen him since—”

  “Well, then, it’s time to pay that boy a visit. Or, since you’re so chatty on the phone,” her interrogator added wryly, “you might want to call his cell and fill him in. If he won’t stand by you, it tells the tale about what a fence jumper he is—seeking out selfish pleasure rather than taking responsibility for what he’s done to you.”

  Sam paused to shove a large bite of pie into his mouth. Abby fidgeted with her napkin. Matt eased his chair back from the table. “Got to see to those ewes,” he murmured. “May I please be excused, Dat?”

  Sam dismissed him with a wave. “I’ll be there in a few. Soon as your aunt Zanna gives me some answers that mean something.”

  Zanna’s whimper tore at Abby’s heart. Through the window she saw the dim lanterns on the front of a carriage, and hoped it was Barbara—or anyone else who would give Sam a reason to stop hounding their sister. True enough, he was asking questions that needed to be addressed, but he’d never known how to deal with women when their emotions came into play.

  “I told you, I’m raising this baby!” Zanna insisted in a shaky voice. “I’ve saved away most of my cleaning money, and I’ll be a gut mother—”

  “You have no idea, missy,” Sam replied. “And why you humiliated James is beyond me, too. Such a dependable, steady man he is. You could’ve been making a new home with him instead of putting us all through the wringer over a no-account—”

  “All right, then! Here’s an answer for you!” Zanna rose, composing her thoughts as she braced herself behind her chair. “There’s nobody I’d rather be living with than James,” she began. She was glaring at Sam, continuing while she still had her nerve up—before he could challenge her again. “It’s Eunice I can hardly stand to be in the same room with! What with her constantly fussing at Merle, and him not responding, it’s like a—a circus gone haywire over there.”

  Abby glanced at Mamm. This revelation came as no surprise, as Eunice had stung them all with her tongue over the years. But what a sad truth Zanna had confessed—the real reason, at last, for her unthinkable behavior.

  “They’re James’s parents.” Sam stood up, as well, wearing a look of total disbelief. “James can’t help who they are—or the way they are as they get up in years. He and his sister are doing their best.”

  “Eunice has never liked me. She thinks I’m not gut enough for her son.” Zanna swiped at her eyes but managed to keep talking. “She never thought I should be cleaning houses, either, when you and Mamm have work in your stores I could be doing.”

  Mamm sat forward to comment, but Abby nudged her under the table.

  “That’s not Eunice’s concern, is it?” Sam pointed out. “We’ve known all along storekeeping’s not to your liking when things get slow. You have to ignore what other people think.”

  “Well, there’s no ignoring the way Eunice gawks at me through those awful old glasses,” Zanna cried. “And she talks about me like I’m not even in the room. And the way she squawks at poor Merle for every little thing—why, it might’ve been her constant yammering that made him have that breakdown. That voice of hers could wake the dead.”

  Sam’s girls glanced at each other, their lips twitching. Abby had overheard other folks say those very things about the decline in Merle Graber’s health, but this was no time to point it out to Sam.

  “Merle had a stroke,” their brother stated emphatically. “It’s not our place to speculate about why—”

  “Can you imagine living with that racket day in and day out?” Zanna grimaced as tears streamed down her cheeks. It took her a moment to find her voice again. “I—I feel real bad about the way I treated James, but I don’t see how he and Emma stand it. I knew if I married him, I’d be saying things I shouldn’t—or going crazy myself. And I didn’t know how to tell him.”

  Mamm sighed sadly. “Well, there it is,” she murmured.

  Nodding, Abby noted that Zanna looked so young and so devastated, gripping the sides of her chair as though to hold her life together. Her head hung so low that the strings of her kapp dangled above her untouched dinner. It didn’t help to know that James had probably been counting on Zanna’s sunny personality to brighten that household across the road. And her sister’s admission, while more complete than what she’d confessed in church, didn’t really solve anything, did it?

  Sam slid his chair under the table with a whack, preparing to leave. “That’s the most useless, juvenile excuse I’ve ever—why, if my kids hinted they felt that way about me and their mother—”

  “You know that’s not true, Dat!” Phoebe exclaimed.

  “We’d never feel—it’s a whole different life in this house,” Gail chimed in.

  “—I’d order them out,” Sam continued sharply. “They’ve
been raised to respect their elders, just like you were, Suzanna, and—”

  The kitchen door blew out of Barbara’s hand and banged against the wall as she stepped in out of the storm. Her black bonnet dripped and her wet coat clung to her shivering figure as she bent to take off her saturated shoes.

  “Let me help you.” Ruthie jumped up from her chair, as eager as the rest of them for this diversion. While Barbara’s youngest took her bonnet, Gail and Phoebe draped her soaked coat over the pegs and put a towel beneath it.

  The lines were etched more deeply than usual in Barbara’s face. Her eyes, normally a sparkly brown after a delivery, somberly took in the scene as she stood on the rug. Clearly, the nasty weather had been the least of her worries.

  “Let me reheat the rest of this creamed chicken and fix you a plate,” Abby said as she took the serving bowl to the stove. “Looks like things didn’t go so well with Marian.”

  “An ambulance took her to the emergency room. The babies are early, but I think the first one will be fine.” Her pause—what she didn’t say—made everyone’s eyes widen sadly. “The second twin’s cord got tangled while the first one was coming out, and… well, there’s no telling how much brain damage happened when her oxygen got cut off. No way to anticipate such a trauma,” she said with a sigh, “nor do I think a hospital team could have done any better. Even so, I’m feeling mighty low about it.”

  Lord Jesus, I ask Your comfort and tender mercy for poor Marian and Carl and their babies—and Barbara, too, Abby prayed as she stood at the stove. Babies had a lot of folks in an uproar lately, it seemed. And in a way, she was grateful that her maidel status meant she’d not endure the risks and discomfort of childbirth.

  Which means it’s your calling to comfort those who face such trials and heartache… to bind up the brokenhearted.

  The thought came at Abby from out of nowhere, but she recognized that still, small voice, didn’t she? She stood for a moment, her head bowed over the pot she stirred.

  Barbara cleared her throat. She took in Zanna’s tear-streaked face and Sam’s high color as they stood across the large kitchen from each other. “I heard your raised voices as I was coming in, and I’m saying right now that I’ve had enough conflict and despair for one day,” she stated solemnly. “Life is precious. We shouldn’t waste it making other people feel small and worthless, nor should we cry over spilled milk and make endless excuses,” she added. “We should love each other. We should do the work God’s given us. It’s as simple—and as complicated—as that.”

  Chapter 12

  The next morning, Zanna moved her clothes into Abby’s spare bedroom before breakfast. No one consulted Sam about her change of residence, but he made no fuss about it: Abby thought her brother seemed quieter, maybe because Barbara’s request for less disagreement and despair was sinking in. The cold drizzle kept traffic in the mercantile to a minimum, so Abby decided to spend the dreary afternoon at home working on the rag rug Adah Ropp had ordered before all the hoopla about Zanna’s baby had kicked up.

  “Will you be needing anything before I leave?” Abby asked her brother.

  Sam had arranged a big display of apples from Mose Hartzler’s orchard, and he was filling the shelf alongside it with jars of apple butter that Mose’s wife, Hannah, made to sell in their roadside stand and local stores. “Nope,” he replied. “Unless you’ve got answers to all those questions concerning our sister.”

  Abby smiled gently. He looked older today, yet he seemed drained of the temper he’d spewed last night—maybe because he enjoyed this physical work in the store. “It’s not what you want to hear, Sam, but sometimes—like Vernon said on Sunday—we have to watch and wait. We can’t always know what lies ahead, and we’ve got to have faith that the right things will happen for Zanna—and for Jonny Ropp and James and the rest of us, as well.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “I’ll keep praying on it.” She tugged his beard affectionately. “Your name will come up when I do. Did I hear you say another truckload of flour and spices is on its way from Lancaster?”

  “It’s arriving tomorrow afternoon, they tell me.”

  “Gut. I know a couple pairs of hands that will be happy to bag those for you.”

  As Abby stepped out the front door of the Cedar Creek Mercantile, she noticed that a light burned inside the carriage shop across the road. It meant James was working on that glittery white carriage again, and for that she was thankful. Next door, at Treva’s Greenhouse, Mamm’s silhouette moved inside the fogged glass walls as she tended houseplants and the potted mums she’d brought inside when the weather had turned colder.

  Before long, snow would be clinging to the hillsides. No matter what sorts of trouble people caused, it was comforting to know that the seasons would still come and go. Fall would be followed by Thanksgiving and Christmas, with all their extra baking and celebrations, and for that Abby was grateful, too. The upcoming holidays were a reminder that no matter how unsettling their daily life became—mostly because of the mistakes folks made, thinking they knew best—God was in charge. The trick was to accept this, to submit to His higher wisdom, and to patiently believe that all things were possible for Him, even when all hope seemed lost.

  As Abby entered her house and walked through the kitchen, she felt a welling up of gladness. Zanna sat at the table by the window. She looked rested, and she was ripping out the hems and seams of the old clothing they’d collected at the store. “I figured you’d be starting a rug soon, and I’m in the mood for ripping strips,” she announced.

  “That’s gut,” Abby replied with a wry smile, “on account of how I need to write up my piece for the Budget. But jah, I’ll be needing a rug soon, and yours are just the hands I want working on it, too.”

  Zanna’s brows rose. “You realize it’s been a while since I made a rag rug, ain’t so? I hope it’s all right that I want to use your big crochet hook rather than braiding coils and then stitching them together.”

  “I like that method best myself. The rug’s easier to handle as you work, and it’ll hold together better.” Abby went to the cabinet in her front room and came back with a large box. “I’ve got some fabric scraps left from the last quilting frolic, too. Adding in these new prints will brighten up those old clothes—because we want this to be a special rug, Zanna,” Abby added in a thoughtful tone. “A true work of your hands and heart.”

  Her sister glanced up warily from a faded brown dress she’d cut some notches in. “And why are we saying this piece will be any different? Your rugs always turn out better than anyone else’s, Abby. Mine won’t be as flat and even and perfect as yours.”

  Abby smiled, and then took her writing tablet from the kitchen drawer. She put on a kettle for tea. “It’s for Adah Ropp. She ordered a rug while you were away.”

  Defiance clouded Zanna’s blue eyes. “If you think I want to—”

  “I think you’ll see this as a way to mend some fences. To offer up a gift that says you can rise above Adah’s sharp remarks,” Abby replied. “Adah’s none too happy about what her boy’s done this time—on top of jumping the fence and not associating with his dat these past few years.”

  Abby wasn’t surprised to see the resistance rising in her sister’s face, but the more she thought about it, the more perfect this idea seemed. “Consider it a peace offering, Zanna—a gut thing to work on while you’re under the ban, don’t you think?” she murmured. “When you do your best work for somebody who rubs you the wrong way, you show the kind of love Barbara was talking about last night. And besides that,” Abby added with a grin, “when we deliver the rug, it’ll be you Adah’s paying.”

  Zanna’s shoulders were rising like a cantankerous cat’s. “Maybe this isn’t such a gut idea, Abby. Adah’s sure to find all sorts of things wrong with a rug I make—”

  “That’s why it has to be the prettiest, sturdiest rag rug anybody’s ever made for her.”

  “Maybe I could work it up and we’ll say yo
u did.” Zanna widened her eyes, pleading like a little girl.

  “Then the money will be mine, sister. Think on it while you’re ripping those strips.”

  Abby poured boiling water into two mugs, added tea bags, and then sat at the opposite end of the table from Zanna. Through the back window, the view of the brightly colored maple trees and sweet gums usually inspired her—except last night’s wind had stripped off most of their leaves. It was yet another reminder that winter would soon arrive… and watching Zanna rip strips gave her an idea for the piece she’d write.

  It was a mysterious process, putting words on paper. Abby had found that composing her thoughts for a Budget article often clarified her feelings about the events she reported. And if ever she had needed more clarity, the time was now. So much had happened so quickly this week, she’d had no time to ponder what it all might mean in the grander scheme of things… in the way the Lord wanted her to live her life for others.

  Here in Cedar Creek, life has been a lot like making a rag rug, Abby began. She sipped her tea and then let her thoughts guide her pencil without interrupting their flow. The good ideas often got lost when she imposed judgment too soon.

  You start by washing old, faded dresses and shirts, thinking how you can bring new life—new usefulness—to this castaway clothing. Rag rug making involves tearing garments apart, then working in strong, brighter fabric left from other projects so as not to waste the materials you’ve been given. Sometimes you must rip out stitches that become too tight—or add in extra stitches to ease your way around tricky curves. This is never something you can plan ahead of time. Only working your way around by feel and instinct, adding in your love with each and every stitch, will make a rug that lies flat and holds together well. When you’ve finished, you’ve created something new and beautiful from materials that had been discarded.

  Folks here in Cedar Creek are especially sorry for Marian and Carl Byler: their newborn, Elizabeth, is doing well in the medical center after an early arrival but her twin sister, Esther, lived only one day on account of severe trauma during the delivery. It’s another way life brings us strips that aren’t always bright and perfect and beautiful, while God provides ways to stitch in strength and fresh hope so our rug holds together anyway.