by Beth Shriver
Omar stroked his white beard, his eyes never leaving Annie’s. “That is sufficient.”
Zeke paused at the unexpected word from Omar. “Does the congregation agree to place Annie under the bann for the time equal to her time away?”
How many months had she been gone? The time swam in her head. Three, or was it four? How could she live, work, and commune with no one for over three month’s time?
Each person placed their vote. A raised hand and verbal consent. “Ich bin einig,” Zeke asked if they agreed and waited for others to follow suit. But there was only silence.
“Enough.” Amos stood and looked from one elder to another as he began to speak. His tired, watery eyes pleaded with each one of the men who sat before him in their sacred tongue.
“Onze vader die in de hemelen zijt. Our Father who art in heaven.” All the elders’ heads lifted to Amos. “Our Abba, loving Father. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come.” Amos’s voice was but a whisper. “His kingdom, not ours. Thy will be done on earth, as in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive our trespasses.” Amos’s voice lifted. “Forgiveness. Jah, Lord, show us how to forgive.
“As we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation,” Amos was almost yelling now. “As we have all been tempted. But deliver us from evil,” Amos lifted a shaking fist. “And we have all stood face-to-face with the devil. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power.” He pointed to each of the men. “Help us not to claim Your power as our own. En de heerlijkheid in der eeuwigheid. And the glory, forever and ever. Amen.”
Amos stopped as if he’d come back to his senses and shoved a finger under his nose as if uncomfortable. The room was cold-still, frozen for a second in time, digesting his words of passion.
Annie had never seen him speak more than a sentence at a time. Judging from the reaction of everyone in the room, neither had anyone else. She stood and went to him. Small steps at first turned into a run. The pat, pat of her leather shoes hit the cold wood floor. She bent down to where he sat and hugged him. He tilted his head to her shoulder and returned her embrace.
“Order, order here!” Zeke hollered.
Omar went red and jumped to his feet, ready to chastise him. “Silence!”
“But, Omar.” Zeke was humbled at Omar’s rebuke. His forlorn face resembled that of a wounded animal.
John rose to his full height. “Let him speak.”
Mammi stood in the back of the room, then Eli. Mamm remained seated, staring at her hands folded in her lap with Hanna next to her.
Omar motioned with his palms down for all to sit. “I don’t need permission to speak as bishop, Brother John.” He gave him a stern stare. Then his eyes scanned the congregation and rested on Zeke. “This meeting will now disband.” He stepped behind Zeke and down the row of elders to the door. As he passed Annie, he touched her shoulder, and she knew this would be the end of it.
Chapter Thirty
JOHN LEANED AGAINST the barn door watching Annie juggle three glass bottles of milk. Her kapp sat askew, lopsided on the back of her head. She pressed her hand down her wrinkled dress when their eyes met, and she stood tall, the scene so familiar it hurt.
He took two of the bottles without asking. “Haven’t seen you since church the other day.” They both stared straight ahead. He waited against the thick silence, sure she would speak eventually. When she didn’t, he took two steps in front of her and stopped.
“Have you been hiding from me?” He tipped half a smile her way. But to his surprise the face he expected didn’t appear. The drawn lips and pinched face was not one he had ever seen. His concerned response was a hand to her cheek. “It’s over, Annie.”
She pulled away, her eyes misting against the morning sunrise. A small groan caught in her throat. He waited, but nothing.
The feel of her skin swept away so quickly made him take a moment to regroup. John squinted into the rising sun. “It’s a new day, Annie.” His eyes cast over to her. “It’s all new.”
“No, it’s a continuation of the day before.” Her lip trembled. “And the next day, and the next…”
“Annie, what’s wrong?” he questioned. “Your daed was incredible.”
“He shouldn’t have.” Annie’s head dropped.
Her reaction seemed to be one of disapproval. He guided her to a rock by the barren oak trees and sat by the dried-up brook. The leaves crackled under his boots, filling the silent air.
“The Annie I knew would have wanted nothing more than to hear those words from Amos.” He took her hand. She startled at his touch and met his eyes. “What’s happened to you?”
She shook her head and swallowed hard. “So much more than I’d expected.”
“Can you tell me what that means?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Okay, you’ll tell me when you’re ready.” He crossed his arms. “But in the meantime, you should be grateful for what your daed has done, and for Omar. Even the elders could have spoken against you, but by the grace of Gott they didn’t.”
He leaned forward, set his elbows on his knees and looked up at her. “A lot of this was overdone. The timing of the Nickel Mines shootings changed Zeke, all of us, but for Zeke it was different. Not every Amish agreed as wholeheartedly that all should have been forgiven. And you were a baptized member that left the community without your family’s consent.” He stopped, long enough for affect. She needed to hear this, to go to the people who saved her. This was no small thing to them. “But you know all this, and you still don’t respond.”
There was silence again.
“I missed this place.”
John drew his brows together in response to the change in conversation. They stared out to the slopes of the Appalachians’ frame and dormant farmland ahead. “What did you miss?”
“I needed the everyday routine of our life here. I lost my stability out there.” She gestured, palm flat, toward the hills. “It was the feeling of being disjointed I couldn’t bear.”
As he studied her, John realized she hadn’t even thought to mention him. She was still lost to something. “You found your birth mother. What’s missing?”
“My birthright was taken from me.” Her lucent eyes stared through him.
The bang of the front door drew their attention to the house. Hanna walked out and looked their way. When she started to approach, John held out his hand. Hanna tilted her head in understanding, but her rigid lower lip let him know she wasn’t happy about the rejection.
Annie’s expression was unfamiliar, one of malice and envy. “I should go.” She stood.
“Are we done talking?” He laid his arms over his knees.
“You shouldn’t keep Hanna waiting.” She answered with appropriate words but spite in her tone.
He grabbed her by the arm, causing Hanna to stare. She took a long moment before she turned and marched over to the barn. He could fix that later. What he needed to do now was bring Annie back to him. He rubbed a hand over his face. “You used to tell me everything. Is she why you’ve stopped? Or is it because of what happened in the city?”
Annie rocked back and forth in her boots, similar to a caged animal performing a trick to earn its reward and be left alone. But he could wait. Without communication with her mamm and Hanna, John knew he was the only one she had to confide in, and that Annie knew it too.
Her voice cracked. She stopped and began again. “I can’t understand you and her together.” She looked toward the door, and Hanna.
“How do you know she wasn’t coming out here to talk to you?”
“Because she hasn’t talked to me since I came home, except for the night of Dawdi’s wake. And I’m not blind, John.”
John looked away, not wanting to confess but knowing it was the only way to bring trust again between them. “It was hard.”
Annie let a tear fall but quickly brushed it away. “Jah, John, it was.”
“I wanted to be with your family, like I always have
been. She helped make that happen.”
Annie crossed her arms, refusing to meet his gaze. How could she be so selfish to not see what she’d done to him, to them? “And you had Rudy.”
Her head slowly turned his way. Unblinking eyes filled with anger and tears. “I didn’t leave you. I went to find myself.” Her voice rose with each word.
“She was here for me when you weren’t.” He turned and walked up to the house. He didn’t want to see Hanna. But he would, for all the wrong reasons. With each step he listened for Annie to call to him, waited for those words that didn’t come. He grunted. He’d always known what to do with Annie, how to lift her up and when to slow her down. But this Annie he didn’t know.
Chapter Thirty-One
YOU CAN TELL me, Augustus. It’s been tough on all of us.” Hanna’s soft voice floated down the hall. Annie stepped slowly and then came to a stop when she heard her brother’s response.
“Eli says we shouldn’t talk about it.”
Annie heard the shuffle of his boots on the wood floor. She didn’t dare move, chancing the floor to creek.
“All right, then. I’ll tell you how I feel.”
Annie leaned to the side past the crack in the door to see Augustus shake his head. “Only if it’s good.”
It was strange how Hanna had changed to the opposite as before. It couldn’t all be about John for her to behave this way. As much as Hanna had hurt her, Annie still couldn’t accept that things would stay this way between them.
“Annie’s changed since she was sod, in the world. It’s full of deceitful things out there.”
Annie heard the bed springs squeak and pictured Hanna sitting next to Augustus giving him her distorted picture of what Annie had been through. Hanna couldn’t know if she’d changed; how could she without breaking her own personal bann that she alone had set between them? Even though she spoke when no one else was around, she apparently was adamant about rules now. Maybe she liked the roles reversed.
“Annie wouldn’t do them.” Augustus’s voice convicted her. He still saw Annie the way she was.
“When you get out there, you do and say things you never thought you would. It corrupts you. Remember that if someone shuns her.”
“Bishop didn’t say we had to.”
“He didn’t tell us not to either. Listen to your heart, Gus.”
It was so silent, Annie thought she’d been discovered, and her blood went cold. She decided to make herself known. “Hanna, can I speak with you?” she asked, walking to the door.
“Annie.” Augustus opened the door wide and walked up to her, giving her a fine hug. “Can we talk to you now?”
Hanna stared at Augustus as if he were now the enemy. “Gus, you go play.”
Augustus turned to Hanna. “Are you gonna talk to her?” He looked back to Annie. “She wants to talk to you.”
Hanna gave him a shove. “Go on, now.”
He stood in front of Annie.
She touched his shoulder. “This is something you don’t need to worry about, Augustus. I’ll be fine.”
Augustus half smiled and ran down the hall. “Walk,” Hanna yelled after him.
His boots clomped down the stairs, so loud in Annie’s ears it hurt. She waited for Hanna to speak.
“I don’t feel comfortable talking with you yet, Annie.”
“Then it’s personal, not the law.”
“In my opinion, Zeke said what should be done. And Omar is still deciding. So jah, I guess it’s a personal decision at this point.”
“Why were you okay with my leaving before I left?”
Hanna dropped her arms. “A lot has happened since then. It was not acceptable for you to leave without permission. You knew you were breaking the laws when you left. Did you really think all would be forgotten? Why? Just because you’re Annie Beiler? When it comes to the law, there is no exception.”
“You participated in rumspringa.” Annie hoped to humble Hanna by remembering that she had experienced things that the outside world does—more so than Annie had in the many weeks she’d been gone.
Hanna had been one to take full advantage of the freedom the order gave the teenagers before baptism, one of which is a party held in one of the teenagers’ barns to socialize. But there was always more—alcohol, driving, and couples alone together. Others left the community for a while, and sometimes they didn’t come back.
Hanna would come to Annie, who was usually with John, and confess her experiences to her. Most times it was a situation she’d gotten herself into with a boy—any boy—to earn his affection.
“How can you compare the two? Our parents all know and condone rumspringa. They don’t condone living out of the community.”
“This won’t get us anywhere, Hanna, and it isn’t what I wanted to talk with you about.” Even Hanna’s eyes were different. Or maybe it was just the way she looked at Annie. “I want to know that when this is over, we can be sisters again.”
Hanna grunted. “We’re still sisters.”
“Not like we were. I want that back again, Hanna.”
“Can you accept John and me together and still be close to me?”
A pain went through Annie’s chest. Who was this person in front of her? She knew her only choice was to be patient, to wait for her sister to get over the time away from each other. “This isn’t about John. It’s about us.”
Hanna let out a forced laugh. “Everything’s about John. And that I have taken on the responsibilities of the oldest child in this house—a duty you deserted.”
Annie heaved a sigh. “I didn’t leave anyone any duties or relationships.” She lifted her palms up. “Why is this about everyone else? Don’t you want to know about my birth mother?”
Hanna squinted. “You’re so hurtful. Your mamm is downstairs in the kitchen. Not out there.” She pointed to the nearest window. “Don’t you see what you’ve done to her…to us?”
Whether her words were true or not, Annie couldn’t bear hearing them. As she looked into the eyes of the one with whom she used to share her soul, Annie wanted to scream or cry, wishing that person were still there.
She turned and walked down the stairs, hearing again a conversation she didn’t feel comfortable listening to. It was in the way they talked, as if they knew their words were lethal but were compelled to say them anyway.
Annie watched Mamm wash potatoes in the sink as Samuel crunched on a sugar cookie. “Why do people still act funny?” he questioned.
Mamm twisted slightly toward him. “These things take time, Samuel.”
As Annie rounded the corner, she joined Samuel sitting at the table with Thomas. He just smiled. Samuel always smiled because he didn’t like to talk. He listened and took it all in, sometimes talking with Annie, asking her questions about people’s behaviors he didn’t understand.
Annie reached over, stealing one of his cookies, making him grin again. Mamm watched and slowly smiled.
“Are you still in trouble, Annie?” A milk mustache lingered on Thomas’s upper lip, lifting Annie’s spirits. She’d missed this. She glanced at Mamm, who continued to prepare the potatoes as if Annie weren’t there. So Annie would act like she wasn’t when she answered him.
“I think Bishop has shown mercy on me, Thomas.”
“That means he forgives you?” Thomas ran his sleeve across his upper lip.
Annie could feel the swing of his legs under the table, almost kicking her. “It means compassion, kindness.”
Mamm lifted her head to look out the window over the sink. “Thomas, Samuel, finish up and do your evening chores.” She ran the knife blade over the potato skins, dropping the strips in the sink. Each stroke was harder than the next. “Annie, were those words directed toward me?”
“I didn’t mean for them to be.” Annie could hardly breathe. She’d longed for her mamm’s words even more than Hanna’s. Her mamm’s understanding was more important than anyone’s.
“Your leaving changed everything, Annie.” She cut her
hand but continued to peel. “Nothing’s as it should be.” A trickle of blood trailed down the side of the sink. “Your dawdi is gone. Mammi’s alone, wants no visitors. Your daed has become even more silent than before, what with you and his daed gone.”
Annie became distracted with the cut, staring at the red line streaming into the drain. “Do you think my leaving would have prevented those things?”
“Maybe, but one thing I know is John wouldn’t be with Hanna. She’s made a terrible mess of things with David. Now I wonder if my daughters will marry at all. It’s not as it should be.”
“You can’t blame me for all of those things. And does anyone care what I went through?”
Mamm finally turned to see her. “It was your choice to leave. Not ours.”
Annie shook her head. “I didn’t break the ordung, and even if I did, it’s our traditions, not a set of rules.”
Mamm’s eyes glazed. “You found her?”
“Jah.”
“Was she who you thought she would be?” Mamm’s glassy eyes stared aimlessly into Annie’s.
Annie bent her head to look away from her mamm’s haunting eyes. “She was nothing like I thought she would be.” This being true to her, Annie knew it would be interpreted differently to her Mamm. She chose to let this be, for both their sakes.
Mamm placed a blood-stained potato on the counter and took another. Annie couldn’t watch any longer and walked to the sink, taking the knife from her. She stared at her mamm. Mamm dropped her hands as Annie cleaned the vegetables and counter. She held a towel to Mamm’s cut in silence. There would be no mercy from Mamm—not yet.
Chapter Thirty-Two
THE NEXT FEW days were spent tending to the chores. Physical labor was the only thing that helped Annie push the worries away. It was a little better with her family, all but Hanna and Mamm. Others addressed her as usual, but she also heard whispers when she turned her back.
Annie wiped the cow’s teats with a newspaper in preparation for milking and then held the suction cups to each. The machine ran on a generator. The hum and slush of the milk being pulled through the cups then letting up created a familiar and comforting rhythm.