A while later the back door opened, and I assumed it was Alexander coming in from the field.
“What are you reading?” It was Giselle. She’d snuck up on me, not on purpose I’m sure, in her stocking feet.
Embarrassed, I held up the book. “I like your piece in here.” Immediately my face grew warm.
“Oh, that. I used to send books to my mother now and then.”
“Ya, she has a nice collection.”
“I understand you do handwork.”
I nodded.
“What are you doing now?”
I pulled one of the bookmarks I’d been embroidering from my bag and handed it to her. Then I pulled out the original card, stored in a plastic bag, that I got the idea from, sure she’d be interested in it.
“This is quite the find,” Giselle said, holding it in her hand. “Women used to make these long before the mass greeting card industry started.”
“Really? This is a greeting card? I thought it was a bookmark.”
Gisele shook her head. “Where did it come from?”
As she sat down on the other side of the couch. I told her all about Verna’s boxes and going through them and how I’d been able to hear so many of her wonderful old stories.
“Fascinating,” Giselle said, but then she stifled a yawn. “Though personally, I’m much more interested in fabric than old people’s stories.” Giselle handed the card back to me. “So you’re doing the costumes for Zed’s next film, huh?”
I must have given her a surprised look.
“He told me. We email back and forth.”
I’d gathered it from when they had greeted each other. I just hadn’t known they chatted about me.
“He asks me questions. That sort of thing,” she said.
I couldn’t help but ask, “What kind of questions?”
“Oh, historical things about Switzerland. Or European viewpoints.” She laughed a little. “Whatever.”
I put the card back in my sewing bag.
“He’s mentioned you many times,” she added.
Now my face burned.
“All good, of course. He says you’re very smart, very gifted. You helped with the costumes for his last project too, right?”
I nodded.
“He said you’re one of the reasons the film won at the festival.”
“Zed is being too generous.”
Giselle shifted toward me, and for a moment I thought she was settling in for some girl talk. She just seemed to grow so animated, her eyes so sparkly, that I expected her to come out with some question about me and Zed and our relationship. Instead, she said, in a breathless voice, “Tell me about the costumes you have in mind.”
I smiled. Clearly, this was a woman after my own heart.
For the next hour, until Frannie woke, Giselle and I discussed fashions, costuming, and fabrics. I was thrilled to have someone so knowledgeable to talk with, someone who knew even more about this stuff than I did. It was rare to find another person this much into sewing, and it made me feel, well, normal for a change, as though I weren’t the oddball in the room.
Instead, for now at least, she and I could be oddballs together.
The next morning, after Frannie had fallen back asleep, Klara sat at her side as Giselle and I left with Zed for our expedition to Rod’s farm. Giselle slipped into the back seat before I reached the car and refused to move up front. Zed smiled, indicating it was fine.
When we arrived at the old Westler place, Rod met us in the driveway, and I introduced both Zed and Giselle to him.
She stepped forward and shook Rod’s hand. “I’m Frannie Lantz’s daughter.”
“Oh,” Rod said. And then as if it had just registered who Giselle really was, he said, “Oh!” again, but this time more loudly.
I suddenly saw her from Rod’s point of view. The skinny jeans. The spiked hair. The leather coat. The medallion around her neck.
He smiled. “I remember you from when I was a little boy.”
Giselle laughed. “I haven’t changed a bit, have I?”
Rod chuckled and tugged on his thick, dark beard. “Neither have I.”
She laughed as he motioned for us to follow him. “The trunk is in the shop.”
A couple of chickens darted in front of us as we followed him, and then as he slid open the door to the barn, a lanky cat ran in.
I squinted in the dim light. We walked around a stack of hay bales and through a door. The cement floor was swept clean. A bird flew up in the rafters, startling us.
Rod pointed to the corner of his shop. The trunk was old and warped, looking as if it had gone through a flood. I hoped the contents hadn’t.
“Like I told your daed, Izzy, that’s the last of Verna’s old papers, though I think everything in there is mostly junk. He said you would want to go through it anyway.”
“He was right.”
Smiling, Rod brought out several paper bags from under his workbench. “Very well. You can use these for anything you want to take with you, and while you’re at it, go ahead and bag up the rest for the burn barrel.”
I thanked him, grateful he hadn’t already destroyed the contents.
“I’ll be in the barn. Holler if you need anything.”
I opened the trunk and tried to prop up the lid, but it fell back down. I opened it a second time and Giselle stepped to the side to hold it. A moldy smell greeted me, which didn’t bode well. A mix of things—newspapers, magazines, and papers—halfway filled the inside.
“How about if we each grab a handful,” I suggested. “It will go faster that way.”
Zed stepped close to reach in, and as he moved aside I grabbed stacks for Giselle and myself. She closed the lid and then we all sat down on the cement floor and started going through the material, making one pile for newspapers and one for magazines.
I came across several water-stained receipts and what looked like tax records from 1959. Fearing the contents were just another collection of junk, I worked faster, sorting through several moldy magazines and more receipts.
“Look at this,” Giselle said, holding up a yellowed piece of paper. “Oh, my goodness. It’s dated 1 August, 1764.”
I held out my hand, making give-me motions with my fingers.
Zed laughed. “Technically, it does belong to Izzy.”
Giselle handed it to me. “It’s too faint for my old eyes to read, anyway.”
The bottom of the page was water stained but the rest was fine, except that the ink had faded considerably.
I held it close to my face, cleared my throat, and then read:
Dear Papa,
I received your news about Mother’s grave illness with a heavy heart. She has rallied so many times before, but I fear as you do that she is surely at death’s door this time. Gorg and I have assessed the maturity of the growing fruit here in North Carolina and have determined that returning to our home with you is what is best for our family.
As the journey could take two or three weeks, please pray she will hold on until we get there.
Your loving daughter,
Abigail
“Wow!” Zed scooted to my side, reading over my shoulder. “Looks like Abigail and Gorg must have returned to Lancaster County that summer, about six months after they left.”
“What does she mean about the fruit?” Giselle asked.
I explained that they had been staying down there on an apple orchard with a family friend. Looking down, I read the letter again, to myself this time. The situation sounded sad, of course, but otherwise there was nothing unique or unusual about this letter, such as no mention of “recent unrest” as there had been in the first one.
I looked at Zed, my lips pursed. “What if we’ve been wrong, and their trip to North Carolina had nothing to do with the massacre at all? What if she and Gorg really did go down there just to learn some new kind of growing techniques and the dates are simply a coincidence? Maybe when she said ‘period of unrest,’ she was talking about something as
simple as a blight.”
“Or an infestation of some kind of bugs in the orchard,” Zed agreed.
“Or problems hiring enough apple pickers,” Giselle offered.
Zed and I looked at each other, stumped. As exciting as this new find was, it was starting to feel that every answer we ran across only brought up more questions.
I folded the letter and slipped it under my cape into the pocket of my apron. We went through the rest of the trunk, but there was nothing else worth keeping. Once we got to the bottom, we crammed all of the contents—except for the letter in my pocket—into the paper bags and carried them with us into the main part of the barn to find Rod.
We told him about the letter, and though he seemed enthused for our sake, he didn’t even ask to see it.
“Where do you want the stuff to be burned?” Zed asked.
“The barrel is behind the shed. Thanks so much.”
Once we were on our way again, we tried to decide what our next step would be. We were out of time for today, but Zed said he was free in the morning if we wanted to follow up with any of this elsewhere. I told him it depended on how Frannie was doing—and if Klara would be willing to spell me again.
“If it works out,” he said, “tomorrow we should go by the Mennonite Information Center. We could see if by some wild chance they have a complete copy of the chapbook.”
“Weren’t they on that list of numbers I gave you to try?” I asked him. “I thought you said nothing panned out.”
“When I called, the woman I needed to talk to wasn’t in. The guy on the phone suggested I come in some other time and pursue the matter in person.”
“Oh. Okay. I guess it’s worth a shot.”
“Wanna come too, Giselle?” Zed asked, glancing in the rearview mirror.
“Nah. When it comes to research, I’m more into textiles than to people.”
“There’s a fabric museum in town we could go to,” Zed offered. “We’ll probably have time to do both.”
“Oh, great! In that case, I’m definitely in.”
Later that afternoon, as Frannie slept, I took out my notebook and pen and began writing out a list of characters I knew for sure would be in Zed’s film. I already had some designs in mind, but soon I would need to start collecting swatches of fabric as well. With Giselle here, there would never be a better time for that.
I brought it up when she came in to sit with Frannie for a while. In response, she shocked me by saying, “Actually, I’ve been thinking it would be really cool to weave the fabric for the costumes. That’s why I wanted to do some research, to see what I’d need to know to pull it off.”
I gaped at her. “From scratch?”
She grinned. “That’s how weaving usually works, yes.”
“But…but we would need so much.”
“That’s what looms are for.”
“I don’t know a thing about—”
“Not you, silly. Me.”
I shook my head. “Are you serious? That sounds like a lot of work.”
“But it would be authentic. Can you imagine the close-ups, Izzy? And how fun it would be for you and me to experience all of this the way an eighteenth-century seamstress would?”
I thought about that for a moment, intimidated by the scope of the project but thrilled by the enthusiasm that shone on her face.
“These people would have woven their own fabrics?”
Giselle nodded. “Some did. Some purchased it from a weaver. Either way, once they had the fabric, they would have sewn it by hand.”
That I knew, of course, but then I realized what she was implying. Not only was she offering to weave all the fabric, she was suggesting I use that fabric—and sew all of the costumes by hand!
“We might be talking about an awful lot of costumes here. Authentic or not, I don’t know if you or I are up to that.”
She shrugged. “Right now it’s just food for thought. Have you made any sketches yet?”
I nodded, flipping through the notebook as she came and sat on the couch at my side. I showed her what I had—britches and a shirt, patterned off the painting in Frannie’s book. A woman’s cape dress, with a long skirt. An Indian’s leather leggings and vest.
“These are really good,” she said. “I’m impressed.”
Barely whispering, I answered, “Danke.” From the time I was little, I had enjoyed sketching clothing, but this was the first time I’d ever shown my drawings to anyone besides Zed.
Later, Giselle went out to the daadi haus and returned with a large piece of paper and a section of fabric. “I found some muslin in with Mamm’s sewing supplies. Pattern paper too.”
“What are you going to do with all that?”
“What do you think? I want to make a prototype for one of the costumes you designed, maybe the shirt, for an Englisch man.”
I was shocked and thrilled. Here was a world-renowned fabric artist about to execute one of my designs. Incredible. I didn’t know what God was doing in my life with all of this, but I couldn’t help but be thankful for it every step of the way.
Wednesday morning, the information center was just opening as we arrived. I’d been one other time with Zed and had enjoyed both the displays and the bookstore.
This time I’d brought along the chapbook, zipped in a gallon-sized bag, and Zed handed it the woman at the counter. She read the title through the plastic as we asked if she’d ever see anything like it.
“Sure. It’s a chapbook. These were popular back in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and contained things like poems, ballads, and religious tracts. The word ‘chapbook’ comes from—”
“Actually,” Zed said, cutting her off, “what I meant was, have you ever seen this one? Specifically. We’re hoping to find a duplicate copy.”
“Oh.” The woman handed it back. “No, but let me check our database.” She stepped to the computer and typed in a few things, and then she leaned over to the chapbook and reread the cover before shifting her attention back to the computer. Finally, she shook her head. “Nothing. You could try the Lancaster Historical Society. They might have a copy.”
“We can go there after the textile museum,” I told Zed.
“Did you say the textile museum?” the woman asked. “I’m sorry, that closed down.”
“Oh.” Zed looked at Giselle, who was crestfallen. “Sorry.”
It was just as well, because as soon as we got back out to the car, Zed got a call from Will, who asked if he could come in to work early. He dropped us off at the house, suggesting we give it a shot again tomorrow, this time at the Lancaster Historical Society.
Back at Frannie’s, I was glad to see she was awake and more alert than she’d been in a few days. At least that was how it seemed at first. Once we relieved Klara and took our places by Frannie’s side, she lasted only another fifteen minutes or so before falling back to sleep.
She dozed off and on for the whole afternoon, and I was touched to see that Giselle never left her side. I, on the other hand, was feeling unusually antsy, so I ended up taking a long break to do the wash, leaving Frannie in Giselle’s care as I tackled a load with the wringer washer and then hung it all out on the line. When I returned to the house, Frannie was awake and Giselle was telling her all about Switzerland.
“The cottage is down the hill from the big house, closer to the creek,” she said in a voice that was soft and almost musical. “Across the creek is a cave where the Anabaptists used to worship. I’ve been in there, and so has Ada.”
Frannie seemed pleased by that and closed her eyes.
“In the distance are the Bernese Alps, and around Amielbach the hills are green with trees, mostly pine. In the winter, snow blankets the ground like a white coverlet and the creek freezes. When I first moved to Switzerland, I used to slide down that creek with the neighbors.”
Frannie smiled, her eyelids fluttering a little. “Tell me about the people,” she whispered.
Giselle started with Herr Lauten, the man who
bought Amielbach from Frannie decades ago. “He’s grown frail over the last year. His son, Oskar, runs the kitchen. Daniel and Morgan are in charge of the gift shop and the tours.” She listed a few others, employees of the hotel, and then said, “That’s about it. We’re a small but happy group.”
Frannie smiled again, seeming pleased that Giselle had a community of people she could count on.
Klara wandered in and out of the living room as Giselle spoke, but I couldn’t tell if she was listening or not.
Later, when Frannie awoke again, Giselle offered to read to her.
“Ya,” she answered. “Psalm 23. There should be a Bible on the right side of the fireplace.”
I looked up to see Giselle’s frown as she followed her mother’s directions, wiggling behind the hospital bed to the bookcase. I got up and stoked the fire. It was another cold, damp mid-December day.
The Bible was big and heavy. Giselle managed to balance it on her lap and started reading.
“‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside still waters…’” She didn’t get to the third verse before Frannie was asleep.
I picked up my handwork and settled down on the couch again, while Giselle stayed at her mother’s side, staring out the window.
I could tell she was lost in her thoughts, not just at that moment but for the rest of the evening. She was more withdrawn and distracted than usual, as though she was eager to be alone, and yet once we called it a night and went out to the daddi haus, she acted as if that was the last thing she wanted. As I changed into my nightclothes, I could hear her puttering around noisily, first in her own room and then in the kitchen, which was quite unlike her. Something told me not to go on to bed but instead to seek her out.
I found her sitting on the floor in front of the sink, the cabinet open, just staring inside.
“Giselle? What’s wrong? Is there a leak under the sink?”
Startled, she turned to look at me. “No. But there is a vase.”
She reached inside and pulled out a simple glass vase, one that had probably been used by Frannie countless times over the years. Standing, she closed the cabinet and carried the vase over to the table as she continued.
The Amish Seamstress Page 30