by Senft, Adina
“I think so. But she doesn’t hold with fancy ways now. Maybe they’re hoping Aaron will get it all out of his system and settle down in a year or two.”
“It’s a shame he doesn’t use the wages I pay him to save up for a down payment on a place of his own, like you, instead of wasting it on worldly things.”
His smile turned rueful. “Not every young man has an eye to the future, I guess.”
She remembered what he’d said in the shop. “You bought your own place.”
“My dad left the farm to me, and I bought a section from the man next door with my own money. But it never seemed fair to me. Here I am all alone on that big place, and my brothers making their own way with families to feed. That’s why I’m looking about me. They can partner up on the home place, and I’ll get something more manageable elsewhere. At least until—”
He got married? How had such a nice person managed to stay single so long? Or had he been married and lost his wife? Amelia was dying to ask on Emma’s behalf but didn’t have the courage. Anyway, if the good Gott were paying attention, this would be the point at which Emma would walk up leading her horse and ask Eli to give her a hand with the hitching-up. Then the conversation could go where it would.
But no Emma appeared. And Amelia needed to be getting on with it.
“Well, I hope you find something,” she said. “If I hear of anything, I’ll send you word by Aaron King.”
“If I can hear the message over the sound of his music.” From across the field, the thumping of bass notes had begun as Aaron demonstrated his speakers for his admiring audience.
“I should collect my boys before they go deaf.” Amelia stepped away, half her concentration already on the little crowd.
“Ja, you better would,” he agreed. “Good-bye.”
She smiled and lifted a hand as she hurried up the field. But her fingers wouldn’t waggle with an answering good-bye.
The first appointment Amelia could get wasn’t until Friday afternoon, and by then her left arm had stopped working altogether. She stayed away from both the Thursday weddings and did bookwork at the shop instead. Both her helpers put in long hours on Wednesday so that they could go, which meant that at least the orders were up to date. And since she was right-handed, she could do the invoicing without calling someone to help. Not that there was anyone to call, though Carrie wrote a nice hand and could be counted on in a pinch.
So Friday found her stretched out on Dr. Shadle’s table while he kneaded and bent and worked her arms this way and that.
“A pinched nerve, your mother thinks?” He leaned on her shoulder blade and pushed. All the breath went out of her in a whoosh.
“Yes,” she said when she could. “But I’d rather know what you think.”
“Based on what you tell me, I wouldn’t say her diagnosis was correct. Turn over, please.” Test after test, pushing and pulling. “Nope, no pinched nerve here. Yet you say your left arm is numb?”
“Right to the elbow. And now this morning my right hand started getting pins and needles. I have to find out what’s going on before I don’t have any hands left to use.”
“Push against my hand, please. …Resist. …Relax. …Other arm. …Wait. …What muscles are you using to perform that test?”
She thought for a second. “These.” She indicated her upper arm.
“Bend your arm at the elbow and then push against my hand.” He waited. “Amelia?”
“I’m pushing, but nothing’s happening.”
“You have no muscle control at all?”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you.”
Test, test, pinch, pull, test. “Amelia, have you been to a doctor about this?”
“Yes. Right now.”
“I mean a medical doctor. Because there’s nothing wrong with you mechanically.”
He made her sound like an engine, made of metal parts. “No. It took me most of a week to get here.”
“Well, the good news is, you don’t have a pinched nerve. The bad news is, I don’t know what’s causing the trouble.”
Amelia was silent for a moment. “You’d better not let my parents hear you say that.” Such a thing had never happened in all the years her family had been trusting him to look after their aches and pains. “I don’t know any doctors.”
“You might ask around, then. There are a couple in town, but for something like this you might do better in Strasburg or even Lancaster.”
“I can’t drive that far with only one hand. The only reason I could come here is that I can walk from the shop.”
“You could call a taxi.”
“Taxis cost money.”
“Amelia, you need to get this looked after. Take my advice and find a way.”
Good grief. She really didn’t have time for this. So much for her hope that she’d leave his office with all her limbs in good working order again, blood flowing where it should and all feeling restored. She should have known that, with the way her week had been going, it wouldn’t be so easy. Amelia thanked him, paid for the visit, and walked back to the shop.
Carrie waited for her in the buggy out front. “Thanks for picking me up.” Amelia climbed in and settled herself while Carrie made the turn out onto the street. “Did you get all your errands done?”
“Ja. I went to Eicher’s—they had a big shipment of gums come in, so I got some for Melvin. He’s had wet feet in his old ones since last winter. And they had end lots of blue poly-cotton dress fabric. If you don’t want it, I’ll give it to Emma.”
“I’d love it. Light or dark?”
“Light. It’s from last summer, and it’s a nice weight. You can go to purple after Christmas and be in it by June.”
“One thing about black—it doesn’t take long to decide what to wear.”
Carrie glanced at her, then returned her attention to the street. “So what did Dr. Shadle say? I see you’re not using that left arm still.”
Amelia sighed. “He says there’s nothing wrong with me. Mechanically I’m as sound as a washing machine.”
“You haven’t seen my washing machine, or you wouldn’t say that.”
“I guess that’s my point. He says he doesn’t know what’s causing this and I should go see a medical doctor. I can just imagine what Mamm will say to that.”
Carrie chuckled. “She will be so disappointed to know that her doctor has feet of clay. Maybe you shouldn’t tell her.”
“I can’t keep anything related to medicine and physicks from Mamm. You know how she is.”
With a nod of understanding, Carrie said, “I do. But she did cure those boils of Melvin’s two years ago.”
“She got him to stop eating that awful cheese he likes. He was allergic.”
“It’s still a cure.”
Carrie was far too generous. When Ruth experimented with something and got it right, word went far and wide, and while it encouraged her, the result was that her family wound up as guinea pigs for progressively odder experiments.
“Do you know any doctors who would deal with this kind of thing?”
Carrie shook her head. “But I bet Emma does. She has a different doctor for each of her parents.”
Of course. Carrie was so smart. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. I’ll ask her.”
“Why not go now? It’s on the way.” And before Amelia could say ja or nei, she had snapped the reins over her horse’s back and they were off to the Stolzfus farm instead of returning home where she belonged.
Chapter 5
Emma lifted her eyebrows and looked from Amelia to Carrie in disbelief. “Dr. Shadle said you should see an Englisch doctor?” She set a cup of coffee in front of each of them, then stirred sugar into her mother’s cup, handing it to her with a smile.
“He’s Englisch,” Carrie reminded her. He was a friend to so many Amish that it was easy to forget sometimes. “But that’s the gist of it.”
“I don’t know where to start,” Amelia said. “When you had to take your p
arents to different doctors, what did you do?”
“Karen?” Emma’s father looked up from his Bible in the front room. “Are you having company? Who is it?”
Emma sighed. “He’s not having such a good day,” she said in an undertone. Then, louder, “It’s just Amelia and Carrie, Pap. They came to have coffee. Do you want some?”
“I never have coffee after lunch. Can’t sleep.”
“A doughnut or a whoopie pie? They’re the lemon ones you like.”
“Nei. I need to talk to your John about leaving the east field fallow. When’s he coming in?”
“Soon, Pap.” With a sigh she folded her tall body into a chair at the table. “Sorry. What were we talking about?”
“Don’t apologize. He can’t help it.” How did Emma bear it? Giving her life to her parents’ care while all the time her father thought she was someone else? “Doctors.”
“Right.” Emma paused for a second, gathering her thoughts. “I went to a Dr. Hunter in Strasburg at first, because Mary Lapp had gone to him for her neuralgia.”
Amelia wasn’t even sure what neuralgia was. Did that have something to do with nerves? “Did you like him? Was he any good?”
Emma shrugged and took a sip of coffee. “It was hard to tell. He listened to me, had a look at Pap, and recommended a specialist in Lancaster, and that’s who we’ve been seeing since. Not that there’s anything he can do except write prescriptions.”
“But you think this Dr. Hunter might be a good place to start,” Carrie put in. “And maybe he’ll know what’s wrong. Amelia can’t even use her left hand anymore.”
“It’s going to be difficult getting the lid off a jar of peaches in the morning, all right.” Amelia smiled at them both to cover up the butterflies that had lifted off in her stomach at the thought. “Good thing Matthew considers himself the man of the house now. He’ll be good for that kind of thing until I get this straightened out.” She couldn’t stand the expression on both their faces—a mixture of confusion and pity. This was just an inconvenience, not…something serious. “So we’ll see each other Tuesday, ja? Have you got all your colors chosen?”
Like a willow tree in the wind, Carrie bent gracefully with the change in topic. “I have green, purple, mauve, and if you let me, I can steal a couple of strips off that new sky blue. If we want to give the idea of a sunrise, it would be perfect.”
“You bought it, you can have as much of it as you like. I have lots of black for the background. The sky blue would look good in the skinny border, too, don’t you think?”
Emma nodded. “Mamm, can we look in your scrap basket?”
Lena Stolzfus took a deep breath as though she wanted to shout, but only a whisper came out. “You’re welcome to any of my scraps. Though they might be too dark for you Youngie.” She sat back, as if even such a simple generosity were too much for her, and breathed through the tube that ran into her nose from the oxygen tank on its little cart beside her chair.
Lord, I bend to Your will for my life, whatever that might be, but please don’t let me end up like either of Emma’s parents.
One was giving up his mind and the other her body. There were lots of ways to come to the end of life’s road, but Amelia hoped these two ways wouldn’t be in God’s plan for her.
That plan, for the moment, seemed to indicate that she should seek out an Englisch doctor. So to Dr. Hunter she would go. And then, she hoped, he could give her some medicine and all this nonsense would be behind her.
Later, when they were in the kitchen preparing a bite to eat, Emma took advantage of the fact that they were out of Lena’s earshot and leaned close to Carrie. “I was glad to hear your voice on Sunday.”
Carrie hesitated a brief second, then reached for another handful of oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies and arranged them on the plate. “If I hadn’t spoken, there would be too many questions.”
Amelia gave her a sharp glance. “You mean you haven’t made it right with Aleta?” Carrie wouldn’t say she was prepared to participate in Communion in front of the whole congregation when she wasn’t, surely?
“I mean that I apologized and she is taking her time realizing that she has an apology to make, too. My conscience is clear.”
Amelia would bet it was clearer than the atmosphere in the house. “But, Carrie, to take Communion you have to be at peace with each other. And last time I looked, peace came from both sides.”
“Which is why I’m praying that she’ll be able to humble herself enough to say those two words by then.” Carrie smiled at them both and took the plate of cookies in to Lena.
Emma glanced at Amelia. “She’s still offended, apology or not. This isn’t good.”
“And yet it’s so hard to blame her,” Amelia said with a sigh. “I’m lucky in my in-laws. Enoch had a much worse trade.”
Emma chuckled, and then her smile faded. “We need to pray for her.”
“I already do—every night. For you and her both. But I’ll add this as well.”
“What things do you pray for me?”
“That God will show you His will. That you’ll find happiness in it.”
“Not that I’ll find a husband?”
Amelia couldn’t tell if Emma was being deliberately flip or if the humor had an edge to it. “I don’t get specific with the Lord, I’m afraid. Whenever I do that, I find He either turns the tables on me or gives me so much more than I ever expected I have to do a whole new round of praying to be able to handle it.”
Except this thing with her hands. There she’d been getting very specific. She could only hope that the good Gott didn’t mind.
On the Sunday before Communion, Amelia and the boys usually joined Ruth and Isaac, as well as her brother Christopher and his wife Esther, and their family, at the Lehman farm for a morning of devotions, reading the Christenpflicht, and a story or two from the Martyrs Mirror. They would ask forgiveness of one another for any little hurts and spend the day quietly, visiting and doing their best to prepare themselves for the following Sunday.
The early fathers had known what they were doing, Amelia thought, to give families a chance to make things right in private. Even though something big might be confessed and forgiven at the Council Meeting, the little daily annoyances and disagreements had to be dealt with, too. And where better than at home, with those who knew all your faults the best?
During the eight-hour Communion Sunday service, Amelia was busy trying to listen to the sermon while keeping the boys from wiggling too much, whispering to each other, or playing too enthusiastically with the single wooden toy each was allowed to bring. But when it came time for the foot washing, her antennae went up. Carrie had dropped a hint at quilting the other day that had made Amelia wonder—something about going the extra mile to show someone the right direction to walk in. Amelia hadn’t asked then, but she wondered now if Carrie meant to act on her thoughts.
Sure enough, there she was, whispering in Aleta Miller’s ear. And to Amelia’s astonishment, Aleta sat and waited while Carrie brought the basin and towel over to her.
Her throat closed up, and she concentrated on teaching Matthew that washing his brother’s feet didn’t really mean that he had to get between the toes and scrub the way he did at home. “It’s a symbol,” she whispered, her voice cracking with emotion. “Christ washed His disciples’ feet, so we take the humble place and do the same for each other.”
“Mamm, why are you crying?” little Elam asked.
“Because I’m happy, Schatzi. Now you trade places and do the same for your brother.”
How could anyone hold an offense close to her heart when the so-called offender was willing to humble herself so? Amelia risked another glance at the side of the room and this time saw Carrie take her place on the bench while Aleta slowly, ponderously, got down on the floor with the basin.
Oh, my.
There could be no thorns of resentment or pride left to torment those two women, not if one was willing to humble herself and the other was
willing to forgive.
Thank You, dear Lord, for working in the heart of my friend whom I love and for giving her the strength to do the right thing in front of all these people. You know she was supposed to wash the feet of Erica Yoder, who’s next to her in age and length of marriage, but You moved in her heart to do this for the one person who most needed it, even though the cost was great.
Oh, Lord, I hope I’ll be as willing for what You’d have me do, no matter what it costs me.
It was a prayer that came back to her now and again during the following week. Because it took several days to get in to see Dr. Hunter, days when she wondered more than once what the best course of action was. By midweek her left arm had regained its feeling—and just when she’d begun to breathe normally and hope that maybe this strange episode was over, the pins and needles came back. And by the weekend her hand felt as if she were holding it too close to the stove.
“What do you mean?” Carrie asked when she came to drive her into Strasburg on Monday for her appointment. “Did you burn yourself ?”
Tears of frustration surged just below the surface, and Amelia restrained herself from snapping—barely. Her best friend didn’t deserve that. “No. I mean my hand feels like it’s burning. Hot, sore. I can’t explain it.”
She couldn’t do much better with Dr. Hunter. He pushed the sleeve of her dress up to her shoulder and poked and prodded while she tried to describe how it felt. He took blood pressure. He measured her responses to stimuli—which netted him nothing. Her arm lay cradled in her lap as unresponsive as if it had come off, the surface of her skin feeling as though it were on fire.
He glanced up at her from beneath bushy white brows that looked like coconut macaroons on a head that was perfectly bald. “You say it’s been like this for two weeks?”
“On and off. Earlier the feeling came back, and I almost called to cancel. And then it went away again, except for the pins and needles and this burning feeling.”
“I’m glad you didn’t cancel.” He took a sharp instrument and poked each of her fingertips. “Feel that?”