She grabbed my hand and pulled me in the direction of the field. I didn’t like her suggestion because I had no intention of replacing my friends, so I gently pulled away from her.
“Maybe later.” Man, she’s a pushy little thing.
She seemed to get the message and let the matter drop.
“Please tell me more about your family,” she begged, as we walked side-by-side along the path.
“Okay. You already know my brother Mitchell. He’s eighteen and a half. Then there’s Nadine, who’s almost seventeen, and I’m almost sixteen. When I was six, my mother had my sister, Rachel who’s nine; then Cameron, my brother came along. He’s seven. Then there’s Lucy; she’s almost six.”
“I’m already gut friends with Lucy. We’re going to sit together in school,” she said.
“You already told me you’re friends with Lucy. Anyway; after Lucy is Molly, she’s the youngest at three, but only until the new baby is born. My parents are hoping they’ll have another boy, but I’d rather have all sisters.”
I stopped talking and rolled my eyes when I realized that the child had lost interest in what I’d been saying. She led me along the trail, calling out for Ida, until we reached the back of her farm. Their farm mirrored ours, with two homes and an out-house next to the barn. Tall grasses provided segue to the growing fields that furnished a means of capital for the Amish farmers.
We followed the trail through the tall grass that led to a field that seemed to stretch out over several acres. A few feet in front of me, a handsome, teen-aged boy stopped working alongside a large man, bailing hay. They both had on short-sleeved, white shirts, brown trousers with suspenders, and wide-brimmed hats. I could see wisps of dark blonde hair falling out along the boy’s slightly tanned face while he stared as we approached them. I recognized the older man as Abraham Zook, the man who’d sold our farm to my family. He wore a long beard with no mustache, in the traditional Amish style.
Upon our abrupt appearance, one of the brown and white horses reared slightly, jostling the primitive farm equipment to which it was attached. The wide, flat wagon behind it was hooked to a separate team of horses. It was full of round hay bales stacked high, which I thought closely resembled giant Shredded Wheat Biscuits. They didn’t look at all like the square bails of straw my father had bought in town for our barn.
“Gut afternoon, Miss.”
Mr. Zook tipped his hat slightly toward me.
I clasped my hands behind me, nodding nervously. I hated formal introductions, and momentarily felt anger rise up in me toward Rachel for luring me here.
“What are you two girls doing out in the fields on such a hot day?” he asked Rachel as he fanned his face with his hat.
“Elijah, this is Jane,” she said, ignoring her father’s question. “She’s Lucy’s older sister, and she’s helping me look for Ida. She got loose again. I thought I saw her go over to their house, but maybe I was wrong.”
She giggled as her attention darted back and forth between Elijah and me.
“That will be enough of the teasing for now, Rachel,” Abraham said.
“Yes, Papa,” Rachel said with downcast eyes.
That little girl just had to draw attention to me, didn’t she? Is it too late to run off? Elijah might think I’m a baby if I run, so I’ll stay put. Maybe I’ll even make an exception to my “no friend” rule—just for him!
I cleared my throat. “Nice to meet you.”
Elijah tipped his hat toward me, causing my cheeks to flush. I nodded, then, turned my face away from Elijah’s, pretending as though I were looking for a cow that I’d never seen before. I struggled with my thoughts, keeping my back to him so he wouldn’t see the redness that I could feel sweeping over my face. I wasn’t certain what it was that embarrassed me so when Elijah looked at me. Maybe it was because I felt an immediate attraction toward him because he was much different from any of the boys at the public school I had attended.
Maybe Rachel made a mistake about our ages. Elijah looks older than me. But if he’s Nadine’s age, oh, I’ll be so bummed out. He’s such a fox.
My thoughts surprised me. I’d never been in competition with Nadine and I wasn’t about to start now. How could I be jealous when Elijah hadn’t even shown any real interest in me? After all, we had just met. I pushed the thought from my mind as best I could and began to walk away from the three of them because I was certain my hot face had turned a shade of red that would surely reveal my intimate thoughts. I wondered how it was that I hadn’t seen this boy before now, and chided myself for wasting the entire summer in my room.
If I’d known I had such a cute neighbor, I might have left the house long before now.
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Jane,” Mr. Zook said before I walked out of earshot.
“Me too,” I said over my shoulder.
My voice cracked, exposing the awkwardness I felt over meeting Elijah. I held up a hand, turning only my shoulder behind me to wave, as I continued to walk away.
“Jane, please wait for me,” Rachel called after me, running to catch up.
After a few minutes of walking together in silence, Rachel spoke up again.
“Elijah was staring at you for sure and for certain!”
Her comment took me by surprise but I tried not to let it show. I pulled a tall piece of grass from the field and began twisting it around my fingers, suddenly realizing I’d somehow lost the flowers that I’d picked only a few minutes earlier.
“How old is he anyway?” I asked, shrugging as though I didn’t really care what the answer was.
“He’s almost seventeen. Nearly ready to marry soon, Papa says.”
I raised an eyebrow at her, but didn’t comment. Normally, I would have never believed such an answer, except for the fact that my father had sat the whole family down before our move to explain what our new neighbors would be like.
Growing up in a big city made it next to impossible to believe that people actually still drove horse-driven buggies instead of cars. It all seemed so backward to us as he explained it. Still, we sat with eyes wide, as my father prepared us for the type of language we would hear and the things we would see once our move was official.
I’d forgotten that my father had tried hard to convince us that a lot of the Amish were married by the time they reached eighteen. None of it seemed real at the time my father explained it, but Rachel’s statement had made it a reality for me. I felt a little unnerved, not knowing what bothered me more at the moment; the fact that Elijah was indeed the same age as Nadine, or that he might be looking for a girl to marry. I pushed the silly thoughts aside for the time being so I could concentrate on helping Rachel look for the cow. After all, I certainly had nothing better to do, and this little girl had somehow captured my curiosity. It’s funny how quickly something so simple can change things and put them in perspective, for I suddenly realized that looking for a cow was the most excitement I’d had in months.
TWO
A TIME TO LEARN
On September fifth, school was officially open. In spite of my father’s many talks, I wasn’t truly prepared for what I saw as I entered the one-room schoolhouse. Neither was Nadine.
We walked into the entrance to an area lined with bookshelves on one side; wooden pegs for coats on the other side. Above the pegs was a shelf already filled with round metal pails I suspected contained food; the smell of fried chicken mixed with rain-soaked suede coats, hung in the air. Nadine and I stood at the doorway and stared for some time. I wanted to leave, but where would I go for an entire day?
I tugged on Nadine’s arm. “We aren’t gonna stay here for real, are we?”
Nadine narrowed her eyes and gritted her teeth. “You heard what your father said. We have to stay here all day—every day.”
“He’s your dad too, Nadine. You need to stop disowning mom and dad whenever you’re mad. You make yourself sound so stupid when you do that.”
My father expected us to be in school all day, and i
n school we would be whether we wanted to or not.
When we finally mustered up the nerve to step inside, the other kids scattered about as though being there was second-nature to them. Nadine and I, on the other hand, looked as out of place as a couple of hippies in an uptown office.
I looked around trying to make some sense of it, but it all seemed so primitive. A homemade sign painted in black lettering hung above the door that read “Coat Room”; as if we didn’t already know. Rebekah Zook, the schoolteacher and my brother, Mitchell’s girlfriend, greeted us cheerfully as we entered the over-sized schoolroom full of children of all ages. Several rows of long tables filled the room; wooden chairs pushed neatly beneath them. On top of the tables sat a McGuffey Reader for each place setting in the first three rows. The older children were instructed to sit in the back two rows.
In the front of the room, a chalkboard covered the entire wall. The east and west walls consisted of tall windows, reaching nearly from floor to ceiling. Along the back wall, a length of rope with clothes pins for the hanging of wet coats was fashioned under a row of several worn maps that were attached with straight pins. After attending such a large high school, I suddenly realized it was going to take a lot of adjusting to get used to learning in such a small environment.
“Is Elijah coming?” Nadine asked Rebekah.
I cringed.
Why can’t that girl learn to keep her big mouth shut?
Nadine and I had secretly watched Elijah from the fence line for the previous two weeks. I disliked the idea of having Nadine tag along on such an important adventure, but I knew she would tattle on me if I refused to let her go. Nadine was just as interested in him as I was, but I was certain I had an advantage over Nadine to win Elijah’s heart since I’d recently made his acquaintance and she had not.
“The older boys don’t come back to school ‘til harvesting season is all finished up, but Elijah won’t be here at all since he’s too old. The boys don’t usually come to learn past eighth grade, and most times, the girls don’t come either if they’re needed at home.”
I nudged Nadine. “So tell me again why I didn’t stay home?”
“I ain’t going over this again, Jane. You know we ain’t allowed to stay home. Dad don’t care that we’re past the eighth grade. We have to go to school, and that’s the end of it.”
“You don’t gotta snap at me. I didn’t make the rules.”
“Besides,” Nadine said. “I thought I’d come and see what it was all about. I think it would be fun to see what the Amish are learning.”
Nadine sounded nervous. She was trying too hard to cover up her embarrassment over being at the school, and I wasn’t buying the act she was putting forth for Rebekah’s sake. The only thing I didn’t understand was why Rebekah even registered us if we were too old to attend. Other than our father’s stern persistence over continuing our education, the only thing we might learn here would be the values that he insisted upon. Right now, though, I was in total envy of my brother for finishing at the public school back home.
Rebekah cleared her throat. “Deborah Yoder is here, but Lydia stays home to help with the harvesting of their orchard. Deborah is trying for her teacher’s certificate.”
“She’s gonna teach?”
Nadine was practically screeching.
Deborah and Nadine had become friends, but her tone made me wonder if this new bit of information would change all that. I knew Nadine’s competitive nature all too well, and she was never keen on the idea of someone being one-up on her.
“Maybe you could teach too, Nadine,” Rebekah offered. “Because you went to public school, you may be ahead of Deborah. And if I am to marry your brother, I won’t have any need for my teaching certificate. The Elders will need someone to fill the position.”
The look of satisfaction on Nadine’s face told me she was eager to learn more about teaching, though I wanted no part of it. As far as Lydia was concerned, we’d met her briefly a few months back. She, too, had been interested in my brother, Mitchell, but Rebekah had won his heart. Mitchell and Molly were the only kids in my family not in attendance at the one-room schoolhouse, since Mitchell had graduated and Molly was only three.
As I gazed about the room, I noticed that all the female students were wearing the traditional long skirts or dresses and aprons with white kapps on their heads. The boys had on trousers with suspenders, collared shirts, and wide-brim straw hats—much like the one I’d noticed Elijah wearing every day in the fields.
I nudged Nadine and pointed slightly, drawing her attention to the others. She ignored me. It felt awkward that she and I were the only girls in trousers—even Rachel and Lucy had worn their summer dresses. I wondered if we were expected to wear dresses to school, even though Rebekah hadn’t mentioned it to our mother when she put our names in her school roster. After a heavy sigh, I decided it best to push the thought from my head, knowing there was nothing to be done about it until later.
Rebekah began to write upon the black board, so Nadine and I took a seat with the older girls.
“Today,” she began. “Is Monday, September fifth, nineteen hundred, seventy-seven; the year of our Lord.”
It’s 1977, the year of disco. Man, I miss listening to my record player.
Rebekah was still speaking, but I just couldn’t concentrate.
“I have written it out for the younger children. I would like everyone to write their name and the date at the top of a piece of paper and write down what they did over the summer. We’ll be sharing at the end of the school day.”
Oh great. I knew it was a waste of time to come here. The last thing I wanna do is write an assignment for babies.
Everything I started to write had to be erased. I wasn’t about to share with a bunch of strangers that we moved here after my mother sobered up in a clinic; or that I spent most of my summer crying in my strange, new room because I missed my friends back home. My father had been right about one thing, we had started all over in this strange place, and there was no reason to reveal our secret past to any of them. Since there wasn’t anything I could write that would be of any interest—except the secret that Nadine and I shared about spying on Elijah, I wrote about Ida. I wrote about the dumb cow, and everyone loved it!
****
When school was dismissed, I endured the long walk home. I skipped ahead of Daniel Zook and my brother, Cameron, who had tried several times to toss their ball over my head. All the kids in my family had already made friends—except me, and I really wasn’t interested in making any in this boring place.
Upon entering the long, dirt drive that led to the house, I noticed the plumbing truck, which was once again parked right in front of the house, drawing a lot of attention among the neighbors.
Miller’s Plumbing had worked for two straight weeks putting modern plumbing throughout the house, and had even turned a storage closet upstairs into a bathroom. Abraham Zook had been over once or twice to voice his protest in the beginning, but my father cordially reminded him that we weren’t Amish, and we could no longer tolerate hauling the water in from the well just to bathe. I was happy because I wasn’t looking forward to having to run to the outhouse in the middle of the night in the dead of winter. Yes, a bathtub and toilet suited me just fine, since it was something I’d grown up having.
Still, seeing the truck made me realize my family wasn’t doing a very good job of trying to fit in with the community. I also feared my family would lose the Zook’s friendship, which would destroy any chance I had at getting Elijah’s attention. I figured Mr. Zook’s protesting over the plumbing was due to his attachment to the house since it had belonged to his brother, Abner, up until he died. But every time I saw Mr. Zook, he was every bit as pleasant as always. It was a good thing too, because I’d overheard my father tell my mother he had plans to have the county hook up electricity.
When I entered the door to the main house, my mother and Naomi Zook looked up at me from their sewing.
“Ther
e’s lemonade out on the porch if you’re thirsty,” my mother said as I passed through the room.
“Don’t have time. I’m looking for Mitchell,” I said over my shoulder.
What I really meant was that I didn’t want to get caught up in adult talk—especially not the Amish folklore I’d overheard too many times already. I’d convinced myself the stories bored me, though I’d found myself listening intently on a few occasions when the two of them didn’t know I was lurking about the house.
“We made fresh cookies.” Naomi’s voice was faint by the time I reached the kitchen.
I ignored them, and quickly poured a glass of lemonade anyway, and ran out through the kitchen door to the Dawdi Haus out back. A quick holler let me know Mitchell wasn’t there so I ran out to the main field, which is where I’d been able to find him in recent days. He had offered to work the land for a small monthly wage so my father could continue to work in town until all the money was raised for our first year of operating the farm. In addition to his wage, my parents let him live in the Dawdi Haus. My father explained that the extra house is normally used for the grandparents to reside in when one of the sons takes over the farm after he marries. My parents said they would rather live in the main house until each of us kids was old enough to be out on our own, and Mitchell seemed fine with that arrangement because it meant he could have his own place.
Little Wild Flower, Amish Romance/Amish Fiction/Christian Romance Page 2