by Linda Byler
Today was the day. She was surprised to feel unexpected tears well up, run over, and trail down her cheeks. Before the wind dried them, a river of tears followed. She stopped singing, allowing her mouth and eyes to scrunch up as she cried in earnest.
The thing was, this whole rumschpringa business made her sad. She did not want to be sixteen years old. She wanted to be thirteen or fourteen, sleep at Lydia’s house in her huge flannel pajamas, and play Yahtzee without one care in the whole world.
Why was it required to start running around? Oh, she knew better than to dwell on the question. She had asked Mam and Nancy, and they said she didn’t have to start at sixteen; she could stay home. But both their eyebrows were raised in that anxious way, like umbrellas over eyes wet with pity.
They felt sorry for her, large and unprepared, a loaf of bread left on the counter to rise too long.
She was fat, that was the thing, so why add the oddity of staying home to that dubious trait. Being heavier than the “normal” girls was like growing a pair of horns on each side of her head, and this she told Mam, who protested wildly, saying “Oh no,” over and over, and lifting her hands to ward off Becky’s words. But in the end, when all the artificial exclaiming stopped, she met Mam’s eyes deeply, and they both knew the truth.
Becky cried, gasping and gulping, hiccupping and sobbing. She cried for her carefree years, for having to grow up, for the futility of wishing she wasn’t who she was. Then she reached into her coat pocket, blew her nose, wiped it, dried her eyes, and stopped. It was here, now, her sixteenth birthday, and she would make something of it.
She dressed carefully in her newly redecorated room. (The curtains were gray and white.) She arranged all the pillows on her bed, adjusted the new comforter just right, then went downstairs to meet her first arrival, Lydia, her best friend.
Mam was mixing the spinach and bacon dip; Nancy was arranging crackers on a tray. The large birthday cake had been delivered from the local Weis Market and was hidden away in the pantry. There would be around fifty youngie, the young folks from ages sixteen to twenty-five, or older.
Becky knew most of the girls, a few as friends, but most as acquaintances. The only boys she knew were Jake’s friends, Ray and Ivan, and her cousins, so naturally she was extremely nervous.
Lydia accompanied her upstairs, shrieking at Becky’s “plum-down crazy” room, which delighted Becky and bolstered her courage, at least for a few moments. When the other girls, or most of them, made a fuss about her room, Becky laughed aloud, completely surprised that her taste in decorating would make such an impact.
But when the time came to gather in the kitchen, when the cake was brought out, the candles lit, and everyone sang “Happy Birthday,” she would have loved to crawl under the table, pull the tablecloth around herself, and stay there.
But she smiled, her even white teeth flashing, her eyes lit up by the small flames of the sixteen candles. She opened her gifts—yards of fabric to make into dresses, pretty vases and lamp shades, journals and picture frames. Lots of cards held twenty-dollar bills or ten-dollar ones, all of them with handwritten congratulations and best wishes, or “May the Lord bless your sixteenth year.” Some of them contained poems and spiritual verses of guidance for teenagers.
Because of the cold, they played games in the shop, lit by gas lanterns and Makita battery lamps. Ping-pong was going in one corner, ringed by a group of cheering boys; shuffleboard in another. A few card games had started along the opposite wall.
Lydia stood with Becky, her support for the evening, a head taller and about half as wide. When two boys asked them to play a game of Rook, Lydia’s face lit up, but she checked to see if it was okay with Becky.
Aaron Fisher’s Elam was the one boy. Tall, brown-haired, and brown-eyed, with a spattering of freckles dotting his nose, he had a quick smile with one crooked tooth. Becky instantly liked him.
The other one was even taller and thin as a rail, with long arms and legs. His back stooped a bit; his hair was like straw in both color and texture. Becky couldn’t tell what color his eyes were. They looked half-closed and small to begin with.
His name was Daniel, but everyone called him Jack. “For what? Why that name?” Becky wanted to know.
Daniel looked at Becky, never changed his expression, and said dryly, “They say I look like my dog.”
For some reason, that tickled Becky, and before she could stop it, her laugh—the genuine one that rolled so easily, the laugh that was infectious to everyone around her—could be heard clearly throughout the room. When heads turned, she became embarrassed, her cheeks tinged with pink, and her eyes lowered, but she was still laughing inside.
She stole another glance at him, but he was shuffling cards, looking bored and even a bit melancholy. Something about him reminded Becky of a scarecrow, those homemade men with straw sticking out from under discarded hats, arms and legs made of slats.
They played a lively game of Rook, with hardly a word from Daniel. He simply laid his cards, with an occasional smile, but the expression of relaxed boredom stayed. Elam, however, proved to be a good player—smart, witty, and quick to speak his mind—and Becky became increasingly intrigued by this nice-looking, well-spoken young man.
Her birthday party, however, taught her a lesson about the group of youth in her Wisconsin community. She had found someone attractive, but this young man was not attracted to her, but to the willowy Lydia. The attention paid to her cousin seemed constant; she was endlessly being noticed, while Becky remained consistently in the background.
Oh, everyone was friendly and nice. Not once did anyone speak rudely or in a way that made her feel self-conscious. She just wasn’t there, if you observed many of the boys.
Becky got it. She was not slow to learn, but quick-witted, aware of the attitudes of others, and a good judge of character. And too overweight to be completely attractive. She was coming to accept this.
Her friends were numerous. She genuinely enjoyed her weekends and learned not to expect much from anyone. So she got along well.
When winter rode in on a steady wind, bringing intense cold, farm life slowed down to the point that Becky learned to sew. She made a blue cotton dress out of an old piece of fabric which Mam allowed her to cut and sew, for practice. She proved to be quite a seamstress, bent over the Bernina sewing machine, working the treadle with her strong legs, producing a wearable dress in a few hours with only a few questions for Mam.
She learned to bake and decorate birthday cakes from a book of ideas she found at the local library. She produced moist chocolate cakes and iced them to perfection with her own recipe of buttercream frosting, then dotted the tops and sides with carefully sculpted roses, leaves, scallops, or daisies, all of which she made.
Word got around, the way these things do, and before long she had an order almost every week. Her cakes were creations of beauty and great flavor.
Mam was rife with praise. Becky’s eyes sparkled with gratitude, loving her mother for every generous word, and gladly accepting kind words from Nancy as well.
Her life was good; she was blessed beyond what she deserved. She filled her journal with words of thanksgiving and gratefulness to God. She had become a good hired hand, seamstress, and baker. And she could sing.
When Becky sang, her voice came from deep in her throat, rich, full, and vibrant, sending chills down her listeners’ spines. She loved to sing. She could remember every hymn from school and only had to listen to a song once or twice before she could sing it perfectly, imitating any song from the radio or wherever she happened to hear it.
She started many songs at the youth’s hymn-singings, unaware of the impact her own beautiful voice had on many of the parents who sat in the room with the young people. “Oh, selly Becky kann singa,” they said, shaking their heads. Too bad she didn’t try and lose some of that weight, they said. She could have anyone she wanted.
That winter when she turned sixteen, Becky was happy and truly content, until—in qui
te a short amount of time—she wasn’t. The barn chores were cold and dirty, the ice packed around the doors a nuisance. Dat worked on her nerves with his endless, low whistling. She didn’t want to sew or bake cakes. Even her weekends were cold and filled with endless snow, with nothing to do but play Rook or ping-pong or sit at the long table and sing on Sunday evenings.
Lydia was asked out on a Sunday evening by Elam Fisher, the charming, brown-haired boy with freckles scattered over his tanned skin. He asked her for a real date, so of course that left Becky alone, without being able to lean on her best friend and favorite cousin.
Becky shrugged her shoulders inwardly, warding off the ghost of despondency by not caring, the answer for all of life’s ills. Outwardly, she gave all the expected congratulations, squealing, hugging Lydia, the forced gladness in her eyes disguised as real joy.
Even Mam and Nancy thought Becky was admirable, the way she was genuinely happy for her cousin. What they didn’t know was that Becky was lying in her room, a Kleenex stuffed to her nose, her eyelids trembling with tears, as she wrestled with the disappointment of having her friend join the daters.
Now what? She’d have to be with Rachel and Linda, those other sixteen-year-olds who would accept her only because they had no other choice.
Suddenly, the world seemed big and scary as she floundered in the choppy waters of her own making. No one would ask her to be his girlfriend. She was too young. And large. No one would want her; no one would care if Lydia dated without her.
She sat up suddenly, wiped her eyes, and told herself that this was enough of this stuff right now. Wallowing in her misery like a pig in its slop would not get her anywhere. (She cringed at the likeness.)
She would go out and get a job. She wanted to work in the kitchen of a restaurant. She would learn to cook. Every day she would wear a white bib apron—so English, she thought—and she would be a cook in a big, clean kitchen at a restaurant. Some Amish girls did.
So she asked her parents, meeting the disappointment in Dat’s eyes, the fear and mistrust in Mam’s, her brothers’ surprise, and Nancy’s indifference. She let it all roll off her back like water on a duck and pressed on, saying she needed a challenge.
Dat said the challenge she needed was spring arriving with all the fieldwork. Mam said a restaurant kitchen was no place for an Amish girl. Her brothers came right out and said she didn’t realize how hard it would be cooking in a restaurant, getting all those scribbled orders at one time. Nancy said she didn’t know the first thing about cooking anywhere but in a home, and what was wrong with staying right here on the farm helping Dat?
Becky felt irritation rise in her throat like acid, and she chose not to suppress it. She told her family it simply wasn’t right if she wasn’t permitted to try, since everyone else was allowed to experiment with new things, to go out and see what they could find, to get off the farm and get a job.
In the end, they said okay. Becky got her wish—employment at a local eatery, a restaurant known for its home-style cooking, called simply “Fred’s Diner.”
By the time the biggest snowfall of the year arrived, Becky was lifting oblong baskets of French fries from the hot oil, flipping burgers, and learning the art of getting along with her coworkers. They were all English, diligent, and not too crazy about having to work with this inexperienced young Amish girl.
Fred was hard to work for, they said. Keep your head down and your opinions to yourself. He always knows more than you do. So Becky did what they told her.
CHAPTER 3
SHE WAS OBEDIENT, TRUE TO THE TEACHING SHE learned at home. In spite of complicated orders that were scrawled haphazardly on too small pages of the waitress order book, Becky not only survived, she flourished.
She was extremely fast with her hands. Multitasking came naturally for her. She flipped burgers as if she had been doing it all her life, kicked refrigerator doors closed with one foot when her hands were full of ingredients. She whirled and twirled about the greasy kitchen behind the swinging doors, stained along the edges by years of hands and trays bumping them open.
At first Fred had been a lot more disagreeable than he was now. He was small and swarthy, his skin pocked with old acne scars, his dark hair combed in perfect ridges across his head. Dark sideburns grew low on his face; his small black eyes darted busily, missing nothing. He ran a tight ship, the waitresses warned, but to Becky, it was no different than hard work on the farm, especially on sweltering days when Dat’s temper ran short.
Becky worked on the grill, that smooth, hot piece of tempered steel that had been greased so often it resembled black ice. She learned fast, knowing which section was for things done in a hot pan, and which foods were done over low heat. She handled the fryer, chopped food, and prepared meat, until one day Fred actually paid her a compliment, saying she was doing a great job. Then he frowned immediately and told her to wipe the counters down with Clorox.
There was one waitress, however, who made her job as miserable as she could. Her name was Kit, short for Katrina. With short, spiked, black hair, a complexion as dented as a walnut shell, numerous tattoos, and an attitude like frozen meat, she evaluated Becky on her first day with a long, frank stare from beneath half-closed lids and sneered, “Whatever.”
Kit never fazed Becky. She decided she was the most worldly person she had ever encountered, so she’d leave her alone, the way you respected a porcupine and its quills. As long as Becky stayed in the kitchen and Kit waited on tables, she could overlook her snide remarks about her clothes, her weight, and her Amish practices.
But then, the small blue slips that hung above the grill, with the orders scrawled across them in barely legible handwriting, became completely undecipherable. Turkey tracks would have been as informative.
As the orders piled up, Becky became completely bewildered. She caught Fred’s attention and voiced her complaint.
In disbelief, she soaked up the scathing words of her employer, who told her that was the trouble with the Amish—they never went to high school—so figure it out.
She couldn’t. She had no idea what those scrawls meant, so how was she supposed to cook? Unbidden, her lower lip trembled, and she swallowed back a lump of defeat.
Just as unexpectedly, a quick flush of anger suffused her face. This was unfair. It wasn’t right. Fred was not going to do this to her, making her feel like she was a nobody, a dumb, uneducated Amish girl. She had rights, same as everyone else, and he was not getting away with this.
She walked after him, calling his name in a loud, firm voice. He turned, his eyes half-closed with displeasure. Becky thrust the orders at him, a handful of small blue papers covered with chicken scratches.
“Here, you can cook. I quit. This is no way to treat anyone, Amish, English, anyone.”
With that, she grabbed her purse from the hook, and without looking back, marched solidly through the back door, past the greasy, stinking Dumpsters, between Fred’s flashy truck and Kit’s scroungy-looking Honda with the bumper off on one side. She turned right and walked the entire four miles home without a trace of guilt. Her coat kept her warm, and the air was crisp and invigorating. She wore good shoes, so her walk was actually a pleasure.
What had she been thinking?
The diner was no place for her. The stale air, the poorly lit kitchen, the endless sizzling of grease; she was glad to be out of the place.
She laughed aloud, thinking of Fred’s bulging eyes and the disbelief on Kit’s face as she pushed past her. Nope. Not a place for her.
As she walked in the driveway, the farm looked solid, plain, even a bit stark with the maples stripped of their leaves. But it was okay. It was home, a place where people were kind. Even Nancy would have helped her decipher those words. Anyone would have. She hoped Fred had a hard time finding a cook to replace her.
So here she was. Best friend dating and no job. With a nice crop of acne on her face because of the unhealthy food. And no prospects of another job. Well, she’d take a day at a ti
me and see what occurred.
What did occur in the following weeks was nothing. Nothing at all. With winter coming on, the farm work slowed to a crawl. Dat attended horse sales and cow auctions. The house contained no oxygen for Becky, or so it seemed. The four walls surrounding her stifled her breathing, as if they meant to collapse at any minute.
Nancy irritated her, the boys ignored her, and Mam was prickly that Christmas was coming so fast and she was barely finished housecleaning. Becky’s “Now ain’t that somepin’” was on the tip of her tongue, but she was wiser than her years and knew better than to say that when Mam was in a dither.
She milked cows twice a day with Dat, the only time she felt any sense of fulfillment. She loved the cows. One elbow propped on a cow’s back, she stood and watched the way their long, coarse tongues gathered up the vinegary silage, their heads moving efficiently as the milkers chugged beneath them, extracting the warm, frothy milk into the shining, stainless steel bucket.
Dat whistled low under his breath or hummed nameless tunes that surrounded Becky with security. Dat was content in the cow stable, and easy. He required nothing of Becky except her companionship. If no one spoke, that was fine with him, and if Becky did start a conversation, that was fine with him as well. He’d bend his head slightly and shift the long piece of hay in his mouth. Fine lines would appear at the side of his eyes as his face smiled only a bit. He’d nod, the lines would deepen, then he’d laugh outright or shake his head, depending on the nature of her words.
He knew his Becky was different. She was not like the boys or Nancy. She viewed the world with the brilliant light of her own humor and sharp wit. She was no dummy, his Becky. He’d watch her short, solid form wash the milkers with intense concentration, water and soap up to her elbows, the low whine of the cooling unit on the bulk tank accompanying her as she burst into song.