The Tempted Soul

by Adina Senft

  “I can’t talk about this here,” Melvin said. “Too many people listening, too much noise.”

  Carrie choked back her dissatisfaction that he had not given her an answer while he paid the bill and even as they were walking upstairs to their room. But when the door closed behind her, she couldn’t keep it back any longer.

  “Do you think we can do this, Melvin? If Lydia agrees? It could take us months to convince her, but in the end I hope she’ll—”

  “Do you want to know what I think?”

  She resisted the urge to say, Wasn’t that what I just asked? Instead, she merely nodded.

  “I think this desire for children has become unhealthy. Carrie, you know my feelings on this. If it is God’s will that we become parents, then we will. But all this running after first one idea, then another…it has to stop.” He took a breath as though trying to control himself. “You break my heart, Liebschdi. One crazy plan after another, when if you’d just find peace in accepting God’s will, you would be so much happier.”

  “I am accepting God’s will. He keeps putting opportunities in front of me and I am following them.”

  “The devil is throwing temptations in front of you, you mean. Eavesdropping on two women in a shop is not an opportunity from God. Witnessing the shame of a girl who can’t say no to temptation is not, either. Listening to those who sin is no way to seek God’s will. It’s just the opposite.”

  How he twisted her words! “And what is listening to your mother? Is that a sin?”

  “Much as I love my mother, I also know her faults. She is a widow who loves to meddle in the lives of her children. All of us know that. And you weren’t so slow to see her faults not so long ago.”

  “We’re becoming better friends,” Carrie managed around the lump in her throat. “So you will not do this with me, either? Is that it? We can only become parents in the one way—your way—despite my feelings about it?”

  “There is only one way to become parents, Carrie.”

  “Don’t treat me like a child. Of course there isn’t. Lots of our families adopt—why, look at Young Joe’s youngest daughter. She and her husband adopted his sister’s children after their parents died in that pileup on the freeway.”

  “That’s different. That’s family. Not the random offspring of a child who will never know his father—or his grandfather, for that matter. The child has bad blood, and I don’t want it under my roof.”

  Now we are getting to the truth.

  “The child is not responsible for the sins of his parents.” She and Melvin never argued, and she never raised her voice to him. Then who was this red-faced virago she could see in the mirror over the desk, whose voice was perilously close to being audible in the next room?

  “Maybe not, but his parents can certainly be responsible for him. Lydia must take care of her own mistake, and if she cannot, then it is good that an Englisch family will make a home for it, and keep this sin out of the church.”

  Maybe he would make sense to Daniel Lapp—or Abe Zook—but her own beloved was making no sense to Carrie. “And this is your decision?”

  “Ja. It is, Fraa. Be content in His will, and God will provide.” He tried to take her in his arms, but she shrugged out of them and went into the bathroom.

  The water in the gleaming shower was gloriously hot, and never-ending. But it didn’t do much to wash away the tears that stung her eyes. She squeezed them shut, closing out the bright electric lights and the glint of the steel faucet and taps.

  Behind her lids, the darkness of the orchard stretched on and on in front of her. And everywhere she looked, there were trees.

  * * *

  Emma had written a piece for Family Life not so long ago about back sides—the back sides of people’s houses, the back sides of their businesses—the things you saw from the train and not the road. The messes people left where they thought others wouldn’t see them.

  Carrie had hardly been aware of them on the way up. It was true she hadn’t been that excited about the trip in the beginning, but the novelty of traveling so far with Melvin and excitement over how she would broach the adoption plan had overshadowed things like back sides.

  Unfortunately, she had no such happy thoughts to occupy her mind on the trip home. Mess after mess slid by the train windows, to the point where she wondered if there was any beauty left along the whole line, from Pittsburgh to New York City.

  Melvin spent the two-hour trip sketching and making notes of his conversations with the RV man. She put on a brave face and smiled when it was required, but the only real smile of the whole day was getting home to the chickens. Dinah and the others were glad to see her—she was away from home so rarely that they weren’t used to it.

  “Did you think I’d been eaten by a coyote?” she said into Dinah’s feathers as she cuddled the bird, then put her on her roost. “I’m safe, and so are you.”

  She had to snap out of it. Was this how her life was going to be now? A roller coaster of highs and lows as hope was kindled and then extinguished? One temptation after another until her strength was exhausted?

  Lord, I already put this matter of babies in Your hands. I don’t understand. Am I reading too much into the people you send me—reading signs and wonders where none exist? Help me, Lord. I don’t think I can do this anymore. Please give me the peace Melvin talks about. Or at the very least, some sleep.

  She shouldn’t have been so surprised, that night in her own bed, when she slept deeply and woke feeling refreshed. The gut Gott answered prayers, she knew that. Little ones and large ones, He heard them all. She just needed to have more faith in His plan for her.

  Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

  The Lord knew what she hoped for. She just needed to believe in what was hidden from her right now, that was all.

  She read that verse after breakfast, when she and Melvin and Aleta lingered in the kitchen over their coffee. Aleta was seven eighths of the way through her annual reading of The Martyrs’ Mirror, and Melvin read the German bible with quiet concentration. Carrie loved the off-Sunday mornings…the peace, the knowledge that it was the Lord’s Day to rest in and savor, without the bustle of getting ready for church.

  Aleta looked up from her reading, removed her glasses, and regarded her son. “Has Carrie spoken with you about Lydia and her baby, Melvin?”

  It took him a moment to surface from God’s word and bring his mind back to the kitchen table. “Ja, she did. And we agreed that this was another crazy plan, and she should seek peace in waiting on the will of God.”

  “She agreed to that, did she?”

  Carrie resisted the urge to take Aleta by the arm and hustle her outside for a quick summary of the situation. “I did,” she said quietly instead. “And I feel at peace—I must, because I finally got a good night’s sleep.”

  Aleta made a noise halfway between a snort and a cough. “I don’t believe it. Ja”—she held up a hand—“I know you’re being a good Amish wife and submitting to your husband, but Melvin, you remember there’s another side to that verse.”

  “I remember.”

  “Husbands, love your wives as your own flesh. Is it so easy to make the desire for a child go away in your own body, son?”

  Melvin closed the Scripture. “Mamm, this is a matter between Carrie and me. I appreciate that you’re supporting her in this adoption scheme, but I’ve already made up my mind. I don’t want the child of some nameless Englisch boy growing up in my home, bringing who knows what bad blood with it.”

  “You make it sound like it would have some kind of disease. He or she would just be a baby. A baby who needs love and food and a warm home.”

  “And I hope the child finds it.” He gazed at her. “But I’ll hear no more about it, Mamm. This is one bowl you can’t put your spoon into and mix things up. I’ve said my say, and that’s that.”

  “And you would take away Carrie’s dream so easily?”

  His cheeks r
eddened. Oh dear.

  “It’s my dream, too, Mamm. Don’t make me into the villain here.”

  “You’re allowing your imagination to run away with you. You, my boy, are making an innocent child into some kind of juvenile delinquent, ready to poison the well and burn down the house.”

  “I can’t help how I feel.”

  “No. Well, neither can I. And I feel your wife has the right of it, and you’re being a stubborn mule who is letting pride get in the way of giving a needy child a loving home. Maybe the women of this community can’t convince that girl to do one good and right thing. Fine. But I would have expected more of you.” She pushed away from the table. “Maybe you’d be kind enough to call an Englisch taxi.”

  His mouth fell open. “On Sunday? Are you going somewhere?”

  “I am going home.”

  Carrie finally found her tongue. “But you were staying for Thanksgiving.”

  Aleta’s face softened in a way Carrie had rarely seen before. “I’m finding it difficult to count my blessings right now. I can’t stay and not be tempted every single day to bring this matter up until Melvin yields. And that’s not right. He is the head of this household, and in order to respect that, I must take myself back to my own.”

  “Mamm, nei,” Melvin protested. “I won’t have you leaving on such bad terms.”

  “I’m not.” She put a comforting hand on his shoulder on her way past his chair. “But if I stay, I might, and that would be a shame. I’ll pack my bags and see if I can get the noon train. If not, I know there’s a bus.”

  And nothing they could say would change her mind. That was the Millers all over. Once they turned all the information over until there was nothing left to examine, they made a decision and stuck with it.

  The taxi came and Carrie clutched her shawl tightly around her as Aleta turned in the backseat to wave a final good-bye through the rear window. “I wish she hadn’t gone,” she said. “It isn’t right.”

  “She’s gone plenty of times before, and I’ve never heard you say that.” The angry color had long faded from Melvin’s face, and she had a feeling he wished he hadn’t spoken so harshly to his mother.

  But what was done was done.

  “It’s true,” Carrie admitted. “But I never felt I had a friend in her before. Isn’t it strange that it’s taken more than ten years for me to see her good qualities?”

  “Then at least someone has learned something from this experience.” And Melvin turned and walked across the yard. The barn door closed behind him with a hollow sound.

  He found his refuge in his horses and his tack and the sweet smell of old summer in the hay.

  She found hers in the chickens and their innocent companionship and the simple joys they found in garden and orchard.

  Why couldn’t they find their refuge in each other?

  Carrie was afraid to look at such a question too closely, in case she found the answer.

  Chapter 20

  Thank goodness Tuesday came before Wednesday, which meant Carrie could gather strength and grace from quilting with Amelia and Emma before she met with the women of the community.

  With the trip up to Rigby and everything that had happened, sending out another flock of notes to cancel the meeting had not occurred to her even once, and by the time Emma brought it up toward the end of their frolic, it was too late to call it off.

  So, on Wednesday at two, Carrie held open the door just long enough for the rain and wind to push women through it, and slammed it behind them. Amelia and Emma came together, bringing Amelia’s mother, Ruth Lehman. Carrie’s sister Susan picked up Mary Lapp, and then collected Lydia’s aunt, Priscilla Bontrager, at the Whinburg bus station on their way in. And to Carrie’s surprise, Esther Grohl brought her youngest sister, Sarah—she who had been seeing Alvin Esch.

  “She and Lydia used to be friendly, before all this happened,” Esther explained as she took off her coat and black away bonnet, both dripping with rain. “She wanted to help.”

  Carrie slipped an arm around the girl’s waist and squeezed her. “I’m sure she can.”

  She’d been up at five that morning baking, so there was a carrot cake, juicy with canned pineapple and raisins, three kinds of pie, and a blueberry coffee cake with a cinnamon streusel topping. Everyone had brought something—even Sarah opened her navy-and-pink backpack and shyly offered to cut the banana loaf inside if Carrie would lend her a knife.

  When everyone had a mug of coffee and a plate of something to enjoy, and had settled on the sofa and various kitchen chairs in the sitting room, Carrie cleared her throat, before everyone got to visiting and forgot the reason they were all there.

  “Denki, everyone, for coming. I know you’re busy and have households and hungry men to get back to before long.”

  “Aren’t you going to wait for Lydia?” Mary Lapp asked.

  “And Aleta?” Ruth Lehman angled her head to look down the hall, as though Aleta would step out of the guest room at the sound of her name.

  “My mother-in-law went home a few days ago,” Carrie said steadily, “and Lydia said she would not be coming.”

  Mary sat back in her chair. “Well, I wish I’d known that. It’s a little hard to make plans for a baby without its mother here.”

  “Carrie couldn’t exactly drive over there and force her into the buggy,” Susan pointed out. “Besides, we can help whether she wants us to or not. There are all kinds of things we can do.”

  Priscilla Bontrager looked from one face to another. Carrie had made sure she knew everyone’s names, but the woman hadn’t taken much part in the chatter over the plates of sweets. She was maybe thirty-eight or thirty-nine, with dark hair and a sweet, rounded face under her organdy Kapp. Her eyes were brown and filled with apprehension. And in the downward tilt of her eyelids, in the crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes, lay sadness—the kind she had lived with a long time. The kind that you don’t expect will ever leave, so you just get used to bearing it.

  Maybe that was what made Carrie say, “Priscilla, Lydia is your niece. Maybe you could tell us the best way to help her—even if she’s adamant that she doesn’t want any help.”

  Priscilla swallowed a mouthful of coffee as though it would give her courage. “I don’t know where to start,” she said hoarsely, then coughed and went on, “I haven’t seen Lydia since she was twelve.”

  Someone drew a sharp breath.

  “I know that sounds terrible, but it’s the truth. I only live fifteen miles away, but it might as well be fifteen hundred.” She looked out the window at the rain, which was now sheeting sideways with the violence of the wind. The big window shuddered under the fist of it. “Our family is small. My parents were old when they had Rachel and me—we’re twins—and they’re gone now. So is my older sister. After Rachel’s death”—her eyes filled with tears—“well, the doctors say it was pneumonia, but I know full well my dad died of grief, and Mamm wasn’t long behind him.” She sat straighter, and blinked several times. “I’m sorry. You didn’t ask for ancient history.”

  Aleta would have asked whether the family thought Abe Zook had allowed his wife to die. How many of the women in the room were silently wondering the same thing? But such a question could never be asked—or answered—in public.

  “Lydia has told Carrie that she plans to give the baby up to an Englisch family for adoption,” Susan said gently. “She says she wants it raised Englisch, not Amish. But if she could be convinced not to do that, are you able to take the child? You’re her closest relative that we know of.”

  Carrie drew a breath at the sharpness of the pain that lanced through her. Amelia and Emma both slid concerned glances her way. How could Susan ask such a thing?

  But then, in all fairness, Susan didn’t know that Carrie wanted the baby. Her question was natural. Right. It had to be asked.

  But oh, how it hurt!

  “My husband works at a shop in Strasburg, making things out of wood for the tourists. I sell quilts out of our hom
e, and we have eight children in a four-room house. Of course I would take the poor little Bobbel, but…” Her voice trailed off while the picture she had painted resonated in the mind’s eye of everyone in the room.

  Carrie felt a moment’s guilt at having three bedrooms for only two people in this big farmhouse when this woman would probably thank God rejoicing if she only had a lean-to out back to put some of the children in.

  Then again, if Carrie had eight children to love, she would thank God rejoicing, too.

  “Of course you would,” Mary Lapp said. “But if perhaps there was a home that had not yet been blessed with children, would you consider allowing them to adopt?”

  “Adopt my niece or nephew? My sister’s grandchild?” The color faded from Priscilla’s cheeks, then flooded back in. “I don’t know. Perhaps it won’t come to that. Perhaps Lydia will change her mind when her baby is put into her arms.”

  “And perhaps she won’t.” Esther Grohl glanced at her teenage sister. “Tell them what she told you, Sarah.”

  Sarah blushed scarlet at having to speak in front of a roomful of women who were older and had more responsibility than she. “She…she said her baby wasn’t going to grow up Amish, and if she had to take the bus into Lancaster to have it at the county hospital, she would.”

  “Why would she do that when we have a perfectly good hospital right close to Whinburg?” Ruth asked.

  “Anonymity,” Emma said. “A big, bustling hospital where you could give a false name on the way in and leave with no one being the wiser.”

  “I think they would be the wiser,” Ruth said. “Has that girl ever been in a hospital to have a baby? Have you, for that matter? I don’t think that would happen.”

  “Of course not,” Emma said with admirable calm. Ruth didn’t mean to be offensive, Carrie was sure. But she, Aleta, and Mary were afflicted with the habit of telling the truth without grace, and you just had to take it into account. “But I can see how a teenager would have these ideas.”