by Sarah Price
When Reuben finally returned to the house, Rosanna was standing at the sink, washing the plates and glasses. Cate was at her side, drying them. Rosanna glanced over her shoulder at the doorway. Reuben looked pleased as he stood there, a smile on his face. He watched her work with Cate for a long moment before he finally stepped into the room.
“That was quite nice, Rosanna,” he said.
She forced a smile as she returned her attention to the dishes. “Ja, vell, Nan seems pleasant enough.”
Cate didn’t hesitate to offer her own thoughts. “Didn’t like her. She’s too loud and talks about business too much.”
“Cate!” Rosanna rebuked her.
Reuben laughed. “She does have a point, Rosanna.”
Encouraged, Cate continued. “Why, I didn’t even think she was going to pray before we ate!” She looked at her stepfather. “Did you see how she picked up her fork before we gave our thanks?”
This comment caused more laughter from Reuben and another horrified gasp from Rosanna. “Cate Zook! I won’t have any more of that gossip talk now!”
Cate made a face and returned her attention to drying the dishes, mumbling something under her breath.
“Honestly!” Exasperated, Rosanna looked at Reuben, who was still smiling. “And you spur on the child!”
“I reckon there are worse things than speaking the truth,” he said, a teasing tone in his voice. “The truth shall set you free.”
“A little filter on her word selection wouldn’t hurt.” Although she had reprimanded Cate, Rosanna agreed with her daughter. Nan had talked an awful lot about the business, asking probing questions and not showing much interest in anything else. On more than one occasion, she had offered suggestions for improvement at the shop—all of which Reuben shot down, gently but without any hint of budging.
Rosanna thought that given Nan’s short tenure as a shop employee so far, her suggestions to change everything were inappropriate. After all, Reuben’s business was already successful. He hadn’t hired Nan to improve the business, something that he was much more qualified to do. No, he had hired her to manage the incoming orders while he worked with the clients and, hopefully, had more free time to spend at home.
Still, openly criticizing another person was not kind, and Rosanna didn’t want Cate to think that it was all right to say such things. It was difficult, but Rosanna knew that sometimes it was better to keep observations and thoughts inside. Speaking the truth aloud could hurt a person’s feelings as well as make other people wonder what was being said behind their backs.
And nothing good would ever come of that.
CHAPTER FOUR
By Thursday, Rosanna’s curiosity outweighed her dread of spending a good portion of the day cleaning someone else’s house. After more than a week of working together, Nan and Reuben seemed to get along well enough. He talked about her take-charge attitude with an amused look on his face while Rosanna sat in her rocking chair and embroidered her linens and smiled. She would reserve her comments until she knew Nan better.
Rosanna did know one thing, however. Reuben seemed more relaxed and at ease. He had offered to help Aaron with his new horse on Saturday. It would be the first time that he would leave Nan alone in the store to manage incoming orders and deal with the customers picking up their items.
“That would be great,” Aaron had responded to the unexpected offer. To Rosanna, Reuben’s offer was music to her ears. Aaron had needed a positive male role model in his life, especially after the hardship of the last few years. As a young man, he still had a lot to work out regarding his father’s alcohol abuse and sudden death. Reuben seemed to be more than willing to step into that role of guiding Aaron as a proper father should have.
But that was not the only surprising event of the week. On Wednesday Rosanna had visited with Mary King and Barbara Glick, two elderly cousins to each other who lived down the road. For an hour they had sat together on the breezeway outside the kitchen door.
“Your garden growing well, then?” Mary asked.
Rosanna nodded. “Oh ja! I should have thought to bring you tomatoes.” The truth was that with Gloria constantly watching them, Rosanna didn’t particularly care to tend to the garden anymore, and she was hesitant to delegate that chore to Cate.
“That neighbor still giving you trouble?” asked Barbara.
“Barbie!” Mary snapped, quick to reprimand her cousin. “No need to bring up troubled pasts!”
Rosanna wondered if she was so transparent that they were able to read her mind. Had it been her tone or her expression that indicated she had not told the truth? Rosanna tried to make light of the situation. “God loves unpleasant people, too, I reckon.”
Barbara chuckled, despite Mary’s disapproving look.
“Heard wind that Reuben’s haus is occupied,” Mary said, obviously changing the subject. “Right gut that someone’s living there.”
Rosanna welcomed the shift in conversation. Eagerly she shared her stories about Nan and Samuel Keel. It felt good to finally have something new and exciting to discuss, not just which person planted what crops or went to market that week. However, to Rosanna’s surprise, Mary King had frowned when she mentioned the newcomers to the district.
“Keel, eh?”
“That’s right. The Keels. They’re from New York,” Rosanna said.
“Not the Keels from that community in Conewango Valley, I suppose?”
Rosanna shook her head. “Frankly, I’m not certain of the town,” she admitted. “I hadn’t thought to ask.”
Clicking her tongue and shaking her head, Mary looked displeased. At seventy-eight, Mary was a year older than her cousin and one of the oldest women in the g’may. She commanded a high degree of respect from the others. If she was displeased, she would certainly let it be known.
To Rosanna’s surprise, however, Mary volunteered no information.
Curious, Rosanna probed. “Are you familiar with the name, Mary?”
She waved a weathered hand. “I know plenty of Keels. Don’t know no Samuel or Nan.” Still, she shook her head again. “It’s that particular community of Amish. They’re different, you know.” She lowered her voice and looked around the breezeway as if to ensure that there was no one else who might overhear her stories. “Those smaller districts have trouble keeping their young people, and you know what that means.”
No further explanation was needed. It was well known how hard it had become for the smaller Amish communities to thrive. That often meant that the families worked harder and also had fewer children. With limited youths, a lot of the children either moved away when they were of age or married distant cousins. As a result, genetic disease was prevalent.
Barbara Glick made a face at Mary. “Oh hogwash, Mary. That’s an old wives’ tale and you know it.”
“And old wives’ tales are often true,” Mary replied. “Anyway, I wouldn’t be marrying one of my dochders to that Samuel.”
“Your dochders are all married already!” said Barbara.
Mary pressed her lips together, and she narrowed her eyes in the other woman’s direction. “You know what I mean, Barbie!”
Rosanna quickly changed the subject, not wanting her visit with the two widows ruined by bickering. Despite the back and forth, Mary and Barbara were the best of friends. They were only cousins, but their closeness in age had strengthened their bond during their youth. In fact, Mary and Barbara were more like sisters. Even now, with both of them widowed, they lived together in the grossdaadihaus on the King property, part of Mary’s life-right when the farm passed down to her son, Abram.
Now, with Thursday upon her, Rosanna dutifully went to her husband’s former house to fulfill her promise to help Nan clean.
The front door had been left open.
“Hello?” Rosanna called out as she opened the screen door. No one seemed to be home.
Rosanna walked through the large, empty sitting room. The once white walls were gray, dark soot streaking from the wa
ll heaters toward the ceiling. The dirt on the floor shocked Rosanna. Clearly Nan had not bothered to even sweep it since they moved in.
Avoiding the staircase, for she was afraid of what she’d find on the second floor, Rosanna made her way to the kitchen. The old laminated table remained pushed against the wall, leaving a wide, gaping emptiness in the middle of the room. Dirty plates and glasses covered the counter, and one of the cabinet doors hung open.
“Oh help,” Rosanna muttered, suddenly wondering what she had gotten herself into. The house needed more than just a cleaning. It needed a complete overhaul, from top to bottom.
She wandered out the side door and made her way to the shop entrance. Two buggies were in the driveway, their horses hitched to the post outside the door. Quietly, Rosanna walked around the buggies, noticing that one had a black top while the other was gray. Team Mennonite, she thought as she passed the black-topped buggy, immediately recognizing them as the Old Order Mennonites, who chose to still use horses and buggies. It was easy to tell the difference between the gray-topped Amish buggies and the all-black Mennonite buggies. She hadn’t seen many of them in the area. It was a good sign that they were beginning to frequent Reuben’s store instead of driving to Jonas Hostetler’s harness store, which was located across town and much closer to their community.
Nan was standing behind the counter, talking with two of the men. Her natural ease in conversing with them surprised Rosanna. Unlike the other night at the Troyers’ house, Nan appeared much friendlier and more relaxed. Gone was the rigidness. Now she seemed like a warm, happy young woman.
“Rosanna!”
Rosanna turned around at the sound of Reuben’s voice.
He smiled as he greeted her. “What are you doing here today?”
“It’s Thursday,” she reminded him. “I’m to help Nan clean the house, remember?”
“Ah!” He snapped his fingers. Clearly it had slipped his mind. “I did forget,” he admitted. He glanced over at Nan dealing with the customers at the counter. “Why don’t you get started, and I’ll send her along when we have a break?” He leaned over and lowered his voice so that no one else could hear his words. “It’s been so busy all day! And I learned that the Mennonites in Leola aren’t happy with Jonas’s goods.”
“I saw one of their buggies out front,” she said.
“A shame for Jonas,” Reuben said solemnly. “I warned him about that material from overseas. Just doesn’t hold like good quality leather.”
Rosanna knew what that meant. Some of the Amish who made trade items found it increasingly difficult to compete with the products sold by Englische companies. The increasing use of the Internet hadn’t helped, either. As a consequence, some Amish tradespeople were using cheaper inferior materials to make their products in order to lower their costs. Reuben often complained that they were only hurting themselves since low-quality materials led to low-quality work and, as a result, damaged reputations. Apparently Jonas Hostetler was slipping into that category.
Upon returning to the rental house, Rosanna stood in the middle of the kitchen and turned around, taking in the mess. “Best start here,” she said out loud. After all, the heart of every home was the kitchen, especially among the Amish. The kitchen was more than just a place to share meals. It was where everyone gathered to tell stories, read the paper, study Scripture, can foods, bake bread, and pray in the evening. Without a clean kitchen, the rest of a person’s life would also be disorganized and untidy.
She began by washing the dishes that were in the sink and on the counter. Clearing her mind of any complaints, she felt herself slipping into a zone; Bible verses floated through her mind as she silently repeated her favorite Psalms. Just as she did at home, she began to forget that she was working and felt a sense of serenity wash over her. When she was cleaning and in this place of peace, she knew that she was with God. Giving to others, helping them when they would not even help themselves, was her way of honoring God and His love for her.
Two hours passed before Nan flung open the door and rushed inside, breathless, her prayer kapp slightly askew on the back of her head. “There were so many customers at the store!” she said as an explanation for her late arrival. “I couldn’t get away for a minute.”
“I understand,” Rosanna replied, although she wasn’t one hundred percent certain that she did. Had it truly been that busy that Nan could not slip away to help her? Certainly Reuben had plenty of experience handling customers on his own. Why would Nan think that now that she was working there, he was incapable of handling them? She suspected that she knew the answer, but decorum kept her tongue silent.
Already the kitchen was transformed from chaos to order. While there was still much to be done, it was clear that Rosanna had spent the past two hours working hard. She hadn’t wasted any time rolling up her sleeves and focusing on the task at hand.
“Looks like you didn’t need my help after all,” Nan commented as she walked around the room. “Surely there’s nothing left to do!”
“Oh, we aren’t finished yet,” Rosanna said. Her voice was soft but firm. She wasn’t letting Nan off the hook. A job half done was not good enough for her. And despite the happy glow on Nan’s face, Rosanna knew that there was plenty more to do. For a moment she wondered about Nan’s parents and what type of house her maem had kept given how willing Nan was to accept mediocrity rather than live in a clean house. “I just poured some Murphy’s oil in that bucket of warm water. The cabinets should be washed down and dried before we scrub the floor.”
To Rosanna’s surprise, Nan didn’t argue. She hurried over to the bucket and dipped a rag in before wringing it out. She seemed content to help. Rosanna wondered if she had been mistaken. Perhaps the shop truly had been busy and Nan wasn’t hiding behind work to avoid cleaning.
While Nan washed down the cabinets, Rosanna began scrubbing the floor. She started in the corners where the most dirt usually accumulated. Certainly Reuben had not cleaned very much when he lived here after Grace’s death. Still, it surprised her that no one from the g’may had come to help him tend the house. She knew that Reuben’s sisters lived farther away, having married Amish men from different church districts, but not to help their older brother?
“What does your other family think of you having moved here, Nan?” she asked to break the silence. She didn’t mean to pry into Nan’s private business, but she had to admit that she was curious.
There was a long pause. Too long. Rosanna looked up from where she knelt on the floor and turned her eyes to Nan, who stood by the counter. The rag hung in midair. She had stopped wiping the front of the cabinet, her back to Rosanna and her arm motionless. It was only for a beat, but long enough for Rosanna to know that something was amiss.
“Nan?”
The younger woman shook her head, just slightly, as if erasing something from her memory. “I’m sorry. I was just thinking about something.”
Rosanna remained silent, waiting for Nan to answer the original question.
“My parents only had my bruder and me. Maem couldn’t have more bopplies.”
That caught Rosanna off guard. Two children? Most Amish families had many children. And while she had always wanted a large family, her relationship with Timothy had been too strained to consider having more babies.
“Oh my,” she whispered, wondering what type of relationship Nan’s parents had.
“Ja, just the two of us,” Nan said, her voice soft and distant. “Samuel was to take over the shop, but his interest wasn’t in leather. He liked building things.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Rosanna said. “Jesus was a carpenter for a while, ja?”
Nan laughed. “Never thought of it that way. Not so certain that my daed would agree.”
Something in her tone told Rosanna that there was more. But whatever it was, the story held sorrow and pain for Nan. She did not offer further information, and Rosanna assumed Nan did not want to discuss it. Some matters were private and best left that
way. Rosanna knew better than to pry. A person’s business was personal and not meant to be shared until such a time that opening up hurt less than keeping it to oneself.
They lapsed back into silence as they worked. Rosanna glanced at Nan a few times, making certain that the younger woman was, indeed, working. While her wiping motions on the cabinets were not as thorough as Rosanna would have liked, at least Nan was helping with the cleaning. Rosanna had learned long ago not to criticize when someone was trying. People seemed to respond better to positive praise than negative observations.
“There!” Rosanna said finally, sitting back on her knees and dropping the scrub brush into the bucket of dirty water. “I’d say that this floor is worthy of being called clean!”
Nan dropped her rag into the sink. “Cabinets done, too!”
While Rosanna was tempted to disagree with her, she chose to say nothing.
“Finished, then? I need to return to work,” Nan said, drying her hands on the dirty black apron that covered the bottom part of her dress.
Finished? Rosanna almost laughed until she realized that Nan was serious. “We haven’t even started on the bathroom or bedrooms,” Rosanna responded in disbelief at having to explain what needed to be done. Hadn’t Nan used the bathroom recently? How could she be satisfied showering with that yellow stain on the bottom of the porcelain tub?
“Ja, vell,” Nan said, starting toward the door, “I should at least check and see how the shop is doing.”
Rosanna took a deep breath and wordlessly pressed her lips together. She wanted to remind Nan that the shop had run smoothly for years before her appearance just two short weeks ago. She wanted to tell her that no one was indispensable there, except perhaps Reuben. While these thoughts floated in her mind, her tongue held still, and she exhaled as Nan darted out the kitchen door.
Two hours later, she had just finished mopping the floor in Samuel’s bedroom when she heard footsteps in the kitchen. Setting the mop against the wall, she hurried to the stairwell to see who was there. “Hello?” she called out.