by Adina Senft
“Amelia, Mary Lapp, my sister Susan. A few others. Among them they’ve had nearly a dozen children. There won’t be too much they don’t know, and they want to share it with you.”
“Thanks, but I’m okay.”
“Lydia—”
“Carrie, look. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I don’t need it. In six months this baby will be born and everything will go back to normal.”
The depth of her ignorance surprised a laugh out of Carrie. “My dear, you’ve got it backward. Nothing will ever be normal again. It will be so much better.”
“For whoever adopts the baby, maybe. But for me, I’ll be leaving and never coming back.”
Again, that squeezing sensation around her heart. Carrie sucked in a big breath of cold air and tried to stay calm. “You’re putting the child up for adoption? What about your family? What do they say?”
“What family? Daed? Are you kidding?”
She didn’t dare say what was really in her mind, so instead she said mildly, “I was thinking of your aunt. I’ve asked her to come on Wednesday, too, because I didn’t know any of your other female relatives.”
“Thanks to my father, I don’t either. But even if I had aunts coming out my ears, it wouldn’t matter. This kid isn’t growing up Amish.”
Breathe. You have to breathe or you’ll fall in the water. “Not Amish?”
“Nope. If they won’t take it in the hospital, I’m going to leave it at the fire station on the way home. If I can’t do anything else for it, at least I can make sure it doesn’t grow up the way I did.”
The daughter of Abe Zook.
“Lydia, not everyone is—has been hardened by life like your father. Some of us—I—would fall on my knees rejoicing to have a baby to care for.”
For the first time, the hard lines of the girl’s mouth softened. “I know you would. And I’m sorry. I hope you have a baby someday. But my mind is made up.”
Carrie had a moment’s vision of a tiny newborn on the cold steps of the fire hall, where men in great big boots clomped in and out and the sirens shrieked and it would be all too easy to lose the sound of a cry. All too easy to miss a tiny body until the cold stilled it. Even in early summer it could be cold.
Who could throw away her child?
Her stomach turned over. Breathe. Don’t be sick. O Lord, please give me the words.
“Do you think an Englisch family would love it more than an Amish family?”
“I get along just fine without love.” Before Carrie could think of a word to say to that, Lydia went o:. “I’m thinking of how she’ll grow up. She’ll be free of the Ordnung. Free of always being judged all the time. Free of having to do stupid things like drive a buggy. She’ll grow up and get a driver’s license like it’s normal. Bake a cake in an electric oven. Wear high heels if she feels like it, or work boots if she doesn’t.” She chucked a chestnut across the creek, where it hit a tree with a clack. “I’m going to do all those things, too. Just as soon as I can get away from here.”
“What about the baby’s father? Wouldn’t his family—”
“Nei.”
“Does…does he know?”
“Of course.”
“Is he Amish?” She couldn’t imagine any family allowing the baby to be left on the firehouse steps. Grandparents, aunts, and uncles would absorb the child into the family and make sure she grew up healthy and loved.
“Nei.”
It took a moment for this to sink in. “The father is Englisch?”
“If he’s not Amish, he’d have to be, wouldn’t he?”
Carrie made an effort not to react. This was an emotional time for a woman. Hormones were going crazy. A little rudeness could be forgiven. “And he thinks it’s okay for his son or daughter to be adopted by strangers?”
“What’s he going to do with a baby?”
“I don’t know, Lydia. I don’t know who it is, unless you’re going to tell me.”
“I’m not. I don’t even know why I’m telling you what I have, except that everybody seems to tell you everything.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“The girls say it. They know you don’t pass things on.” She chucked another chestnut and missed the tree this time. “Except for now. Your little get-together of women will have lots to chew over when you tell them, won’t they?”
“I’d rather you came and told them yourself.”
“No, thanks. They’d only preach at me and try to stop me. Especially Mary Lapp. Why did you invite her?”
“She already knew.”
“What?” Lydia spun, her jade-green skirts swirling to catch up. “How? Did Joshua blab to her, too?”
“It’s not a secret you can keep forever,” Carrie told her a little dryly. “The older women have eyes, you know. They know the signs when they see them.”
“They need something else to keep their minds occupied, then.”
“They are occupied…with helping you. Please let us.”
“Nei. There’s no point.”
“Are you afraid they’ll talk you out of this?”
Lydia crossed her arms, her black quilted jacket making a soughing sound, like the rush of the creek behind them. “I’m not afraid of anything. Not anymore.” She turned and took a few steps downstream, away from the buggy and the prospect of a ride home. “Thanks for the visit, Carrie. And for being concerned. But you should just go back to your gut Mann and your nice house and let it go.”
Carrie watched her pick her way along the creek bank, then duck under a tree, where she was lost to sight around a bend.
The rush of the water filled her ears. Her lungs pulled in cold air and couldn’t seem to warm it into breath.
She wondered if you could actually suffocate from grief.
Chapter 18
Groggy and out of sorts from a third night without sleep, Carrie made breakfast for herself and Melvin and wondered how she would get through the Sunday preaching and Council Meeting. At least they didn’t have far to go; in fact, Melvin suggested they leave Jimsy in the barn and just walk across the frost-hardened fields to Abner Yoder’s place, which bordered theirs on the east side.
He took her hand as they walked. “Are you all right, Liebschdi? I don’t think you’ve been sleeping very well.”
It was barely light enough to see, but dark enough to hide your face if that was what you wanted.
Carrie squeezed his hand. “Too much thinking and not enough sleeping.”
“Thinking about what?” Caution crept into his voice.
“Not about that. I’ve put my IVF notions into God’s hands. If it’s His will, then Bishop Daniel will say something about it today during the Abstellung. If not, then I guess that will be my answer.”
“But that was days and days ago that we talked about it and I told you how I felt. What is bothering you now?”
She couldn’t tell him. If she did, and he said, oh, something crazy like, “Of course Abe would take the child in,” or that he knew an Englisch family who would be glad to adopt, she didn’t know what she would do. Fall to pieces and never come back together, maybe.
“I don’t know. Winter. Weddings. Maybe I’ve overdone it lately.”
“Maybe you have.” They were almost to the yard, and the light was strong enough now that the buggies rolling in no longer needed their lamps on. “Tell you what. I have a surprise—one I was going to save until tomorrow so we could keep our minds on the Lord’s Day. But maybe now would be a good time.”
“A surprise?” Melvin cooked up lovely surprises. One time he’d kidnapped her in the buggy and taken her swimming at a lake some twelve miles away, abandoning his stubborn fields and her laundry. They’d played like children, and she’d done the washing on Tuesday instead. She’d been the only woman in the settlement with a row of dresses and shirts on the clothesline, but she didn’t care.
“Ja. Turns out Brian wants me to go up to Rigby to the big RV factory, and talk them into buying our cabinet
ry for their high-end vehicles. I want you to come and we’ll turn it into a little vacation.”
“A vacation? In November?” She couldn’t imagine what there would be to do in a big place like Rigby, which was all the way up by Pittsburgh.
“Ja. In a nice hotel, with a swimming pool. Brian said he would pay for two nights if I paid for the train ticket.”
They were in the yard now, and this was a highly inappropriate conversation to be having on the way in to one of the holiest days of the year. “We’ll talk about it at home.”
Melvin nodded comfortably and stopped to talk with some of the men. Carrie went into the machine shed, which was huge and filled now with benches, and took her place among the married women. Though strictly speaking, she was supposed to sit between Christina Yoder and Erica Steiner, she fudged a little and slipped in next to Amelia.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispered. “I can’t wait for our time together on Tuesday.”
“Neither can I,” Amelia whispered back, “after that tempting little hint you gave out the other day.”
After the preaching and the hymns, it was time for the Abstellung, whose purpose was to go over the Ordnung—the standards of behavior and the expectations to which the community held its members. Carrie had heard these same things since she was old enough to be carried into church in her mother’s arms. Some of them were obvious—how a buggy was to be fitted out modestly, without a lot of reflectors or those looping strings of dangly things the boys were enamored with. How a home was to have no wiring, even if it was an English one that an Amish family had purchased. Some of them were not so obvious but were equally familiar—the number of pleats in a woman’s dress, the width of a man’s hat brim depending on whether he was married or not, or a church member or not. These things did not change from one year to another, especially with Bishop Daniel standing in the place of responsibility. He was a traditional man, and no modern changes such as generators in the back room of a house or rubber tires on buggy wheels would find their way into the community on his watch.
But at the end, after all the Ordnung had been spoken in order to remind the church of its example, the bishop would deal with the new and the troublesome. This was for Carrie the most interesting part—doubly interesting today, when he might bring up what had been lying so heavily on her heart.
The bishop fell silent and then lifted his head, as if beginning a new chapter. “I am placed in front of this room as the least among you,” he said, “but I am given authority by God’s grace and keeping. There are things I wish to talk of now that have been troubling to me. I hope they are troubling to the church, too. I have been in prayer a long time about them, and so have the ministers and preachers who serve at God’s command and stand in the breach for the Gmee.”
In their places, Moses Yoder, Young Joe Yoder, and Abram Steiner nodded gravely.
“We have heard of some who have been considering going to worldly doctors to have procedures done that are contrary to the will of God. I will not go into details, but I will say that this seeking after Englisch technology to achieve a blessing that only God can give—the blessing of children—is a sin, and must not be considered by a man or woman who is a member of God’s family.”
Amelia’s arm, which pressed softly against Carrie’s because of the number of women on their bench, went rigid. Carrie bowed her head as her face flamed scarlet. She turned slightly toward her friend, who leaned against her in the most comforting of silent support.
Here was her answer. Sin.
She had expected it, known it would be this way, but some wild, fluttering hope in her heart had wondered if the result might be different—if God would speak to these men and help them see the question from a woman’s point of view.
Yes, she’d put it in God’s hands. But He could put it in the bishop’s hands, couldn’t He?
No, it seemed He could not. Had not.
The bishop’s voice faded in and out. She caught snippets of things like “colors becoming to modesty” and “tractor tires” and even “single curtains in the windows—two is overdoing it.”
Then Amelia elbowed her sharply in the ribs and Carrie sat up. Bishop Daniel was giving the final blessing, and then he said, “Would all those who are not baptized into the family of God please leave us. We will have a members’ meeting today.”
This was unusual. Members’ meetings happened several times a year, when the Gmee decided as a whole on matters brought before the church, following Jesus’s words about two or three being gathered together in His name. But during Council Meeting, which had already gone nearly four hours with the Abstellung? What matters could be so urgent that they couldn’t wait until after Christmas?
“—must wipe out sin from among ourselves and present each one a pure and living sacrifice to God. There is one among us who has committed sin. In order to keep her place among us, she must cleanse her conscience and present the truth to her brethren by means of public confession.”
Not for worlds would Carrie look behind her for the one he was referring to. It just wasn’t done. The congregation kept their heads bowed, as if to avoid looking upon the sinner—and the sin. Carrie heard the rustle of dresses and the tap of shoes as the Youngie and the unbaptized filed out.
“Lydia Zook, please do not leave. Please come forward and confess this sin on your knees before God and your brethren.”
Carrie grabbed the bench on either side of her skirts, feeling as dizzy as if she were about to be thrown off it into a tossing sea. She needed to focus on something. The back of Selma Byler’s apron would do.
Footsteps came slowly up the center aisle. A skirt swished. The soles of a woman’s shoes scraped once, twice. She was kneeling.
“What sin do you come before your brethren to confess?” Bishop Daniel asked gently.
“Fornication,” Lydia said in a voice so low and shaky Carrie hardly recognized it. The room was so quiet that her voice sounded clearly.
“And do you confess?”
Lydia’s breath scraped in her throat. “I confess that I have sinned. I b-beg God and the Gmee for patience with me. F-from now on I will be more concerned and be more careful, with God’s help.”
“We hear your confession,” the bishop said. “This sin…I understand it will bear fruit?”
“I will have a baby in June,” she said, the words hitching on a sob. “I think. Thereabouts.”
“And whose baby is this?”
Silence. Carrie held her breath.
“Lydia Zook, you kneel before God, Who knows what is in your heart. Whose baby is this?”
“No one you know. A—a summer boy. A tourist. He’s gone.”
Skirts rustled as people shifted on the hard benches. Carrie exhaled. An Englisch boy, she had said, who knew he was to be a father and had chosen not to acknowledge it, leaving Lydia alone.
“Lydia Zook, please step outside while God’s people take counsel together.”
The girl practically fled down the aisle. The shed door closed behind her with a bang.
Bishop Daniel regarded his flock. “The elders and I have consulted on this matter. Lydia Zook has not yet been baptized, but all the same, the Bible is firm on the subject of fornication. With prayer and fasting, we have come to the conclusion that she should be shut out of the body of Christ for the space of six months, until after her baby is born. Do you agree with this remedy?”
One by one, the members responded. “Ja, I agree,” Carrie said when it was her turn, echoing the voices around her.
When everyone had agreed, the bishop glanced at Abe Zook, who went to the door and called his wayward daughter. His thin cheeks were as pale as granite.
“Lydia Zook,” Bishop Daniel said to her, “know that you are not under die Meinding, but are excluded from fellowship and communion with your brothers and sisters until after your baby is born. You will take admonition from the ministers humbly and with grace, and you will attend church and sit here in the front row, where all
may see you. Do you accept these consequences?”
She nodded, and returned to her seat in silence. The bishop announced the final hymn, and while Carrie’s mouth moved with the familiar words, her mind was churning.
The rebellious teenager by the creek yesterday had not been in the frame of mind for confession. Had old Abe Zook forced her to do this? And why so fast? On the very rare occasions that someone had to undergo a public confession, there was at least a couple of weeks between the announcement of it and the performing of it, so that the person could repent privately before the elders and not have to make a spectacle of herself.
Were they making an example of Lydia, to keep the Youngie in line? Though, Carrie had to say, there weren’t a lot of rebels in Whinburg—not like in some districts, where fast living and cars and all-night parties presented temptations the young people couldn’t resist.
Carrie shook her head and filed out with the others when the service was over. What was done was done, and it was none of her business anyway. What was her business had been dealt with during the Abstellung.
And that was enough for anyone to handle for one day.
* * *
Aleta Miller whipped a kitchen apron off its hook on the back of the pantry door. She tied it behind her with movements so jerky that the fabric practically snapped.
“That man.” The frying pan barely missed the fruit basket as she banged it onto the stove. “Of all the performances I ever saw in my life…that poor girl.”
“It’s not the first time one of the Youngie has had to make a confession,” Carrie ventured, staying well clear of the pan and concentrating on slicing the potatoes to go in it.
“Maybe not, but there aren’t too many who have had to do it practically the day the bishop found out.” The fat sizzled briskly, and Carrie put the potatoes in, unsure which would hurt worse—her mother-in-law’s uncertain temper or the bacon grease. She stepped away from both.
“Abe Zook is behind this, I’m sure of it.”
“What makes you say that?” It wasn’t like he was one of the elders, or ran the biggest farm in the district, or was even related to the Lapps. Abe Zook probably had less influence in the community than Carrie herself. Meaning, next to none.