A Promise for Miriam

by Vannetta Chapman

  His skin was all wrinkly, like mammi Sarah’s, and he had white eyebrows.

  She’d been so surprised when Miriam told her to stay and not to leave in Eli’s buggy. Then she’d peeked outside and seen her dad walking toward the school door.

  Was this a good thing or a bad thing?

  She knew the Englisch man was a doctor because he had a black bag like the doctor in Indiana. Only this man’s bag had funny stickers all over it. That was a little odd. Some of the stickers were animals, and she would rather like to have a better look at those, but she wasn’t about to move closer to him in order to do so.

  What was he doing here? Was he here to see her?

  The thought made her squirm in her seat.

  Maybe it was about her frostbite. Her cheeks still itched a little, but not so much as to make her uncomfortable. The cream Eva had given her helped a bunch, and she’d been surprised when the other kids didn’t make fun of her. Actually, they had been nicer this week.

  Grace rubbed the end of her nose. Why had they been nicer this week? She suddenly wished she had Stanley in her pocket.

  Instead, she sat at her desk and stared at the spot where Sadie had drawn a flower on her desktop. They had erased it right away, but she could still see the outline. It looked like a friendship flower, and it reminded her of spring.

  Hard as she focused on the drawing, though, she could still hear her teacher talking to her dad.

  “What do you mean you didn’t tell her?”

  “I meant to, but then I got busy.”

  “Busy?”

  Dad shuffled his feet the way he did when he wished he could be done talking about a thing. “I could see that the rain was about to start, and the barn was nearly done, but not quite.”

  When Miriam only stared at him, he added, “I read your note, like I said I would.”

  “You didn’t just take it out of her box? You read it?”

  “’Course I did. I told you I would.”

  “You didn’t throw it away this time?”

  Grace had to cover her mouth so she wouldn’t giggle. The doctor looked at her when she did that, so she tucked her hand back into her lap. Maybe giggling wasn’t allowed at this meeting. It sure was funny, though, how her teacher talked to her dad as though he were a student.

  “I thought you would talk to her,” he said.

  Miriam straightened a few things on her desk. Only thing was—everything on her desk was already in order.

  The Englischer had walked over to the door and was speaking into his small telephone.

  “I meant to, yes.” Now Miriam was fussing with her kapp. “However, the day was very busy. All of the children were stuck inside because of the weather, and then there was an episode with some mice, and Katie fell into the mud…but those are only excuses. I should have found the time to speak with her.”

  Miriam glanced up, caught Grace staring at her, and smiled.

  Something was not right. Not good at all.

  Grace tried to think back over the last few days to see if she might have done something wrong, but nothing came to mind.

  The doctor pushed a button on his phone and put it in his pocket. “Okay. I apologize. My nurse had a question, but it’s all tended to now.” He walked forward and offered his hand to her dad. “My name is Doc Hanson. Thank you for taking time out of your day to stop by. I realize how much work there is on a farm and that it’s difficult to leave it.”

  Dad shook his hand. “Thank you for traveling out to see Grace.”

  Grace nearly popped out of her seat at the mention of her name. Why? She’d already figured out that the doctor was here to see her. He wasn’t here to see her dad or Miriam.

  Everyone turned to stare at her.

  And everyone smiled.

  Uh-oh.

  Grace stood, walked over to her dad, and slipped her hand into his. The fast thump-thump-thump of her heart slowed down a little.

  “Hi, Grace. I’m Doc Hanson.” The Englischer paused a moment, but he didn’t look surprised when she didn’t speak. He motioned to the front of the room, where Miriam had placed four chairs next to her desk. Three chairs were grouped together, and one chair faced the other three.

  “Shall we have a seat?” Doc Hanson chose the chair next to Miriam’s desk, where he’d placed his black bag and some papers.

  Grace chose the chair between her dad and her teacher. That seemed like the safest place to be sitting if she couldn’t be in the buggy behind Chance. She told herself that soon she would be home, sitting at the table and drawing. Whatever this was about, it couldn’t last long.

  Whatever this was about, it wouldn’t be worse than the snow cave.

  “Grace, if it’s okay, I’d like to ask you a few questions. Now, Miss Miriam has told me that you don’t speak, so you answer as best you can—nod your head or such, and we’ll see if we can write up a kind of medical history. Sound okay to you?”

  Grace nodded her head slowly.

  She wanted to reach over and hold her dad’s hand again, but she didn’t want to look like a baby, so instead she sat in her chair and held on to the sides of the seat.

  “Does your throat feel sore?”

  Grace shook her head no.

  “Scratchy or tickly ever?”

  She hesitated, looked sideways at her dad, who was watching her curiously. Slowly she nodded her head.

  “All right. Now, I know you’re young.” He looked at another sheet of paper in his folder. “Eight years old, right?”

  Yes.

  “Can you remember the last time you spoke?”

  Yes.

  “You were able to say exactly what you meant without any stuttering or problems?”

  The color rising in her cheeks, Grace nodded. Yes.

  “How long ago was that, Grace?”

  She wished she had some paper and a pencil, but she didn’t, so she held up three fingers.

  “Months?” Doc Hanson asked, but something in his eyes, which were blue and nice even if he was an Englischer, told her he knew it wasn’t months.

  She shook her head.

  He set down his pen. “Years then?”

  Yes.

  Doc looked to her dad for confirmation.

  “That would be about right. It happened when her mamm died.”

  Doc nodded as if that made sense. “Was there an accident of some sort?”

  Grace knew he was asking her, but she didn’t know how to answer. The thing he was asking about was a memory she didn’t allow herself to look back on. It was one place she never went. The door was closed. That was how she thought of it.

  “No accident, no. Not like you mean.” Her dad’s voice was very sad. She reached over and put her hand in his. That didn’t make her feel like a baby at all. It made her feel that they would be okay. She always knew the two of them together would be okay. He was the one thing in her life she was sure of—her dad, and now maybe Miriam.

  “And she spoke normally before?”

  “Ya.”

  “Cough a lot?”

  Grace shook her head at the same time her dad did.

  “Trouble swallowing?”

  Grace shook her head so hard her black kapp strings twirled.

  “She eats her meals fine,” Gabe offered.

  Doc Hanson opened his black bag which was sitting on Miriam’s desk and pulled out a black instrument. He held it up and showed it to her. “See this? It has a magnifying glass on one end and a light on the other. Come over here and you can look through it.”

  Grace glanced at her dad and then at Miriam before sliding out of her seat and walking over to stand in front of Doc. That’s how she was starting to think of him—just Doc. He held the black thing up in front of her eyes.

  “When I push the button, the light will come on. You should be able to see my wrinkles really well.”

  He was right! His wrinkles looked like the crinkles in her blankets when she woke up in the morning.

  She smiled at him.
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  “Sometimes when a person has trouble speaking, it’s because their throat is hurt. If you open your mouth and let me shine this light inside, I’ll be able to see pretty far down and check it out. Would that be okay with you?”

  Grace’s heart started thump-thump-thumping again. She’d always wondered if maybe she’d broken her voice. Could that light-thing tell Doc?

  “Good girl. Now stick out your tongue like you were mad at one of the boys. Uh-huh. One more second. Perfect. Do you mind if I peek in your ears?”

  Grace grinned. What did her ears have to do with her throat? She shrugged and turned sideways. It tickled a little when Doc placed the instrument in her left ear and then her right. He made funny, “Uh-huh. I see,” sounds, but nothing too alarming. She forgot all about being afraid.

  He dropped the light-thing into his bag.

  Wriggling his bushy white eyebrows, he confessed, “I didn’t see anything in there I’ve never seen before, Grace. Mind if I touch your throat? Sometimes my eyes can’t tell me everything. Sometimes I have to trust these old hands.”

  She thought of how she’d crawled around in the snow cave, feeling her way with her hands. She’d had to depend on her sense of touch then. She’d love to tell Doc that story.

  Turning toward him she raised her chin high, making her neck as long as possible, as long as a giraffe’s neck.

  His fingers were soft and reminded her of the old sheets on mammi Sarah’s beds. He gazed off across the room as he squeezed gently, up and down her throat. When he was finished, he leaned back in his chair. “You can sit down now, child.”

  He fastened the black bag and closed the folder he’d been writing notes in. His attention moved from her dad to Miriam and then finally settled on her. “I’m going to be honest. I don’t know why your voice stopped working. I could send you to a specialist over in the city, and they could run more tests. Maybe they could tell you.”

  Her dad fidgeted in his seat.

  “Sometimes a thing has to work itself out. Other times we have to help it a bit. Your voice hasn’t been used in so long that I believe it’s going to need help from you, Grace. It’s going to need exercises like my legs would need exercises if I hadn’t walked on them in three years. At first they would be very weak, and they wouldn’t want to carry my weight.”

  Grace reached down for the hem of her apron and ran her fingers along the seam.

  “Your teacher is good at working with students who need extra help. Some students need help because their mind can’t catch up. You need help because your voice can’t catch up.” He paused and glanced at Miriam.

  “I’ll be happy to work with Grace,” she said.

  “I brought along three sheets of voice exercises. They are what we might use with someone who has experienced physical trauma, say, surgery or a prolonged throat illness.”

  “But Grace hasn’t been sick.” It was the first time her dad had spoken since Doc had begun examining her.

  “You know that and I know that, but Grace’s voice doesn’t know that. We’re going to have to coax it back into shape.” He handed one copy of the sheets to Miriam and another to Gabe. “Now, your teacher and your dad will help you, Grace, but the real work will be up to you.”

  He stood and picked up his black bag, the one with the funny stickers. She could see now they were actually patches with pictures of different animals—dogs, cats, and even horses. “It might feel funny at first. It might even embarrass you some.”

  Her eyes found his when he said the word “embarrass.” How did he know?

  “Sometimes, when I haven’t worked on something around my house, it’ll squeak. Say, maybe the gate on the fence. It gets rusty because I don’t go out the back way often. My wife reminds me that I need to go out there and take care of it, so I take my tools and go pay attention to it. Isn’t the gate’s fault, but I’m a little embarrassed at first that I’ve let things go and all.”

  He reached down and put his hand on top of her head. She was reminded of Bishop Beiler and standing at the front of the church. Doc smiled more than the bishop did.

  “After I work with it a while, the gate comes around. I suspect your voice will too.”

  He walked to the door with her dad, and Miriam showed her the sheets he’d given her. Grace didn’t pay much attention to the words and pictures on the sheets. She was listening to what her dad and Doc were saying.

  “How long do you think this will take?”

  “It’s hard to say. Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience.”

  “Ya. I know the old proverbs, but this is my dochder we’re talking about.”

  “I realize that, Mr. Miller. I do. I wish I had a better answer for you.” Doc ran his hand over the top of his head. “If you decide you want to do those tests, give me a call and I’ll arrange them. My number is on the bottom of those sheets. You have any questions at all about the exercises, feel free to call me.”

  He walked out the door and into the rain.

  Grace didn’t know what to think, but there was one thing she was sure of. Things were about to change.

  Chapter 21

  Miriam exchanged a knowing look with Esther when Grace closed her lunch box and stored it in her cubby.

  “Do you think she’ll speak today?” Esther asked.

  “I can’t be sure, but she’s not going out to play with Sadie and Lily.” Miriam cleaned off the corner of her desk and pulled out Grace’s folder with the exercises Doc Hanson had left.

  “I’ll go outside with the students.” Esther stood and reached for her coat.

  “You don’t have—”

  “I want to give you two privacy. And I really could use a walk around the school yard. All the quilting I’ve been doing has cut down on the amount of exercise I get.”

  “The amount of baking the parents are sending doesn’t help.” Miriam frowned at the stack of baked goods accumulating on the table near the stove. It seemed every student wanted to bring them something sweet this time of year. If they weren’t careful, both of them would be bigger than her father’s largest heifer.

  Grace moved to the front of the room as Esther slipped out the back door.

  “Are you ready for our exercises?”

  Grace nodded her head up and down, her chin nearly touching her chest in her enthusiasm. They weren’t supposed to work until Friday after school, but it seemed Grace had her own schedule, and it included ten minutes at lunchtime. Not that yesterday had produced any sounds. Grace had opened her mouth, but she simply shrugged when Miriam was the only person making the sounds on the sheet.

  “All right. Let’s do this.”

  They stretched their necks, flapped their arms, and worked their way through page one of doc’s sheets. Soon they were halfway down page two, and Miriam was sure it was going to be another day of her pushing out vowel sounds solo fashion.

  Grace participated. She had her arms stretched wide and her mouth open, but so far not a peep had escaped.

  Miriam was giving it all she had, hoping her enthusiasm would be contagious.

  She had practically sung her way through “ma,” “me,” and “mo.”

  Wait...had Grace spoken? She looked up from the sheet. Grace’s brown eyes were staring back at her.

  “Let’s try that from the beginning. I believe we might have rattled something loose. Together, or do you want to repeat after me?”

  Grace held both of her hands together.

  “All right. Ma, me, mo...” Miriam held the note and listened, but there was only her voice in the room, so she moved on. “Mu.”

  And then she was sure and so was Grace.

  The young girl’s eyes had been closed as she focused, but they popped open, as round as her mouth, making a perfect O.

  They both held the “mu” sound for three...four...five more seconds.

  When they ended the syllable, silence filled the room, and then Miriam couldn’t have stopped herself. She opened her arms and Grace practically jum
ped into her embrace. She held the young girl tight.

  “You did very well, Grace! I’m so proud of you. That’s the best ‘mu’ I ever heard.”

  She thought Grace might be embarrassed, might pop back into her turtle shell, but instead the little girl hugged her teacher one more time, and then she turned and skipped back to where the coats were kept.

  Apparently their lesson for the day was over.

  As she watched Grace run out to the playground, Miriam marveled that one sound, a single syllable, could make such a difference in both of their lives, but it had. It had opened a gate that for Grace might lead to an entirely different life.

  She closed the folder and slid her hand across the front of it, and then she bowed her head and thanked the Lord for today’s victory with this very special child.

  The plan had been for Gabe to work with Grace each morning as they readied for school and each evening before bed. Miriam would work with her Tuesdays after school was out, which meant Gabe would have to drive in to pick Grace up. This wasn’t so bad, as he probably needed to drive into town once a week anyway, and the school was on the way in.

  If he was honest with himself, he’d been avoiding town and the possibility of running into people. But now that he knew so many members of the district, and so many good-hearted men had been working on his barn, he found himself actually looking forward to stopping in at the general store for a little conversation.

  Miriam would also work with Grace while she closed up the school on Fridays, and then she would drive her home.

  Two afternoons a week working with Miriam.

  Every morning and evening working with Gabe.

  That sounded like a good plan. Only Gabe wasn’t holding up his end of the bargain.

  On Friday morning, he called to Grace one more time. The cinnamon rolls Miriam’s mother had sent over the day before were piping hot, and he’d poured fresh milk into her cup, but still no Grace. Where was she?

  “Grace Ann, get in here or you’ll be late for school.”

  He ate a roll while he waited, standing up, his work boot tapping out an impatient rhythm. When he finally heard her dragging her small book bag across the sitting room floor, he looked at the clock and saw it was time to leave. Wrapping her breakfast in a dish towel, he thrust the cup into her hands.