by Anya Monroe
He’d even found a computer lab to ask a tech guy to help him figure out how to use the laptop he had bought before he came. The other days he holed up in the massive library or a nearby bookstore, practicing typing on the laptop and reviewing all the textbooks the courses had assigned.
Still, he found himself looking out the window of his tidy bedroom in constant awe of how different the most basic things were. Light switches, sidewalks, the pleasure of holding his book in plain sight, not stuffing it under his pillow where a family member wouldn’t see it and find offense. Here, he was free. After the first week of classes, Saturday stretched out before Abel who woke to a silent dorm floor. Once showered and dressed, he stuffed his wallet in the back pocket of his trousers and took his straw hat from the hook, unceremoniously placing it on his head. He took his set of keys and locked the door, making his way to the dining hall.
Once there, he frowned, realizing weekend breakfasts were pretty lame on campus. Toaster ovens and cold cereal. He buttered a few slices of bread and layered raspberry preserves on top, not used to such simple fare. To be honest, he’d never cooked more than this in his life, and he felt a flush of embarrassment at this simple truth.
His Mom and sisters did all the cooking and cleaning, planning and shopping. They kept the house smelling of yeasty rolls and sweet pies. They provided him with the comfort of farm fresh eggs, warm biscuits, and sizzling slabs of bacon to warm him on the weekend mornings.
Thinking about the breakfast his family enjoyed two hours away caused his stomach to rumble and his head to hurt. Coffee. That’s what he needed. He looked at the machine sitting on the counter. He had enough experience the past few days to know it was much too weak to fuel him.
He uncharacteristically bit his fingernails. He could go out and find some. Simple. There were harder things than procuring a cup of coffee. But at the moment Abel couldn’t for the life of him think what one of those things might be.
Standing on the sidewalk, he looked both directions before deciding on left. He remembered a café on his map from Tara and knew they must sell coffee. Walking briskly, the humid heat of the city summer already warming his neck, he rolled up the sleeves of his button down shirt. It was still early, just after eight, and the streets were quiet, still not awake for the day.
He came upon the café’s corner quickly and paused, seeing a girl bent down at the entrance to the restaurant, trying to gather papers fluttering from her hands. She stretched her arm to catch them before they flew off.
Abel reached for one that landed on the pavement and handed it to her. “You okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine, truly. Thank you though,” she said, her voice revealing tenderness he didn’t expect. Her eyes widened and she took him in. “I know you.” She smiled, and then looked down at her shoes, as if regretting her words. She wore a pink cotton shirt as a dress, and ruffled socks to her thighs, brown laced boots nearly as high.
Abel looked up, blushing. Not at her clothes, his cheeks reddened because he didn’t remember her. “I don’t think–” he began.
“No, I mean I don’t know you, I just saw you. At the bookstore. Ugh. Now I sound weird. I’m not a stalker. I just.” She stopped, shook her head, and laughed. A laugh clear as crystal, he could see through it.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, her papers now buried in the crook of her arm. Her body so delicate it looked as if she could break, as if she was made of the bone China forbidden in his community.
“The bookstore, ja?”
“Umm, yeah. The other day? I don’t know why I told you that. That was weird of me. I’m sorry.” Her sentences were choppy and short; her cadence didn’t match her appearance. She looked fine, fragile. She looked lost.
Abel didn’t know his way around this city, these streets all jumbled together, and although he knew he had gone to a bookstore a few days before, he knew with certainty he couldn’t retrace his steps. The steps that got him here were a long way from home.
Maybe he was lost, too.
Marigold
She took in his suspenders and straw hat on the humid summer morning. His gray eyes and shaven face were a pleasant surprise. Most hipsters around campus wore a beard, or at least an ironic mustache. She liked seeing his jaw, he looked strong. A different kind of strong than most of the college students she met.
“My name’s Abel,” he said, sticking out his hand politely. She shook it, his hand calloused and rough.
“Abel. Like, Cain and Abel?”
He nodded.
“Are your parents Bible thumpers or something?”
He smiled one of those wide smiles that aren’t self-conscious or self-aware. A smile offered freely and easily accepted.
“Sort of,” he said, not seeming to take offense at her intrusive question. “They’re Amish.”
Marigold tilted her head to the side, and he matched her movements as she realized the cotton pants and black boots were not about being urban-chic.
“And you?” she asked.
“I’m a guy.” He didn’t offer more of an explanation, and Marigold understood that. The pause. The purpose of holding back. She was here at this café trying to muster up the courage to apply for a job, after all.
“What’s your name?” Abel said, breaking the un-awkward silence, as if he could sense it heading in that direction.
“Marigold,” she answered.
"Were your parents hippies or something?"
That made her laugh. She knew asking about his parents’ spiritual beliefs had been rude, and she liked that he didn’t let her off the hook.
“Sort of. My parents are writers,” she explained.
“I see. And you?”
That’s when Marigold looked up at him plainly, deciding if she should say anything more than the obvious, that she was a girl.
“I’m looking for a job.”
He pointed to the door, the one they had blocked for much too long.
“This place?”
“Yeah, I’d thought about it, but I don’t think it’s for me.” She didn’t want to work at this café, one glance at the familiar owner and she knew it was a bad idea. They’d had a run in before. Actually, she had with every shop owner on this street. Here, however, she’d been dressed like Lady Gaga wielding a fake blood splattered coat, pretending she’d just witnessed a murder. Maybe not her finest moment. Mostly because she’d videotaped the whole wretched scene. And posted it online.
“Not thrilled about the prospect?”
“Would you be?” she asked, peering in the café window then quickly looking away when she received an evil eye from the cashier.
“Not really.”
“Do you want to get coffee?” she asked, anxious to leave the sidewalk.
“I thought you were getting a job?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing.” She stuffed the resumes in the messenger bag hanging on her shoulder.
“Me either.”
His honesty caught her off guard in a good sort of way. In an “I’m not trying to be anything other than me” sort of way.
“Great, but let’s go somewhere … else.”
Silently she led him around the corner to a diner she’d never been to before mostly because it looked like the only patrons were over seventy. Abel held the door open for her, and she started to roll her eyes but stopped because for some reason she knew Abel wasn’t holding the door to be anything more than kind. Feminism wasn’t in his vocabulary in the way she had come to understand it. Kindness was first nature to him. He would hold open the door for a young boy or old man or stray cat.
A waitress with tired eyes sat them at a corner table where they both ordered black coffee.
“Did you want anything else,” Abel asked. Marigold shook her head, but before the waitress walked away, Abel stopped her.
“Could I also get a stack of pancakes, a side of bacon, scrambled eggs, and, if you have any, a bowl of applesauce? Oh, and a glass of milk.”
T
he waitress smirked at his requests. “Not sure about the applesauce. Peaches okay?”
“Danka.”
Marigold realized he was Amish, like, for-reals Amish. She watched as he placed his hat on the empty chair beside him, pushing dark hair from his face.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“It’s okay. Everyone stares. I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“I’m not uncomfortable.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. Uncomfortable only comes if the police show up.”
He cocked his head in an effort to understand, but Marigold didn’t want to go into details of her past. Instead she brushed it off and added, “I’m used to people looking at me is all I meant. I spent my freshmen year pretending I was in a Swedish hip-hop group, my sophomore year waffling between a French painter and pseudo dreadlocked Rasta. My junior year I was … all over the place.” She shook her head and looked at her coffee, biting her lip wondering if she should say any more. Deciding against it, she raised her eyes instead, taking in the warmth radiating off him.
“And senior year?” he asked.
“Oh. Then I was just me. Just Marigold. I stopped trying so hard.”
“You look nice as ‘Just Marigold.’”
She didn’t answer, she sipped her cup of coffee and continued to peer curiously at him over the lip of the mug. She didn’t know why she said those things to him, the part about her trying so hard. It’s not like anyone took her seriously as “Just Marigold.” Now, when she wore her “Just Marigold” clothes, they assumed it was some get-up, a nod to vagrant hippies or her way of romanticizing gypsies – see-through lace dresses and flowers in her hair and ruffles on her socks. A way to get attention with a different sort of spotlight.
Marigold never acknowledged their comments, her sister’s eye rolling, or her mother’s huffs, their questions about where her video camera was. She ignored them. But now, in this empty diner, she had no reason to defend her choices. She could be herself without pretense, Abel certainly was.
“So, you were saying,” Marigold started again. “Everyone stares?”
“Ja. I moved here last week, oh, danka,” he said to the waitress as she delivered a steaming plate of pancakes. Looking back to Marigold he kept talking. “I just moved to the city, actually. I’ve never been out of Lancaster County this long, and even though I think everyone else dresses and speaks and walks different, I’m the outsider. I’m the one people stare at.”
“Do you have to dress in those clothes?”
“Oh, I suppose not. I’m on Rumspringa. It’s the running around time for youth in our community. I can wear jeans or talk to girls like you or smoke a cigarette. Then when I return home and take my vows, I’m supposed to return to the Old Ways.”
“I’ve seen Amish Mafia.”
“I don’t know how that’s relevant.” He suppressed a smile.
“Me either.” Marigold laughed, appreciating his quick retort.
He poured syrup on his stack, ate bacon, added pepper to his eggs. He seemed extraordinarily happy with the food before him, and Marigold watched him eat the home-style meal with gusto.
“But you don’t want to change your clothes, even though you aren’t at home?” she asked.
“No. I didn’t come here to experience life as an Englisher.”
“Why did you come here then? You’re on your Rumspringa and just decided to hang out in D.C? Did friends come with you, like, to see the White House or something?”
He smiled, that slow, soft smile again, inviting her in, making her want to stay even though her coffee was gone.
“I’m here for school, I’m doing a Business Intensive at Jamestown for ten weeks.”
“Really? My sister is doing the Intensive too. Do you know a girl named Lily?”
“No, but it’s hard to remember anyone, everyone blurs.”
“My sister was obsessed with getting in. It’s crazy competitive.”
“Ja, well I don’t know all that, but the classes are really interesting. I’m in the Business Program.”
Marigold groans and shakes her head. “You want to be the next Industry Superhero?”
“What?”
“Nothing. But that’s my sister’s program, too.” She nods at the waitress who comes over and pours them both more coffee. “The summer program’s for incoming high school seniors, is that you then?”
“No, I mean, technically I don’t know. I’m eighteen, but I stopped school in eighth grade, everyone at home does. I’ve been teaching myself ever since. They based my acceptance off some test scores.”
“So you’re like an Amish genius?”
“No. I’m a guy who happens to really enjoy learning.”
“Sure.”
“You’re very easy to talk to, Marigold, I haven’t had a conversation this long all week.”
“That’s what all the boys say,” she said, joking, but he didn’t laugh. He looked at her, and she shook her head, not knowing why she sat here with this stranger, but also knowing she didn’t want to get up. “Honestly, Abel, you are too. Here I am supposed to be getting a job and you show up, and now I’m being totally irresponsible.”
“Are you usually quite responsible?”
“Usually I’m a disappointment.”
“That makes two of us.”
Seeing a shadow of sadness in his eyes, Marigold had an idea. “Can I show you D.C. today? Since you’re on Rumspringa, or whatever, you should probably have a proper running around.”
“You want to run around with me?”
“Yes.”
So they did.
Chapter 3
Abel
Walking out of the café, Abel put his hands in his pockets, surprised at how relaxed he felt in Marigold’s presence. Her hair hung to her waist, in a way that no Amish girl’s ever would. Women at home keep their hair wrapped in a bun under a small kapp, but she doesn’t appear sacrilegious in her choice.
She looks like an angel, and his mind flashes to the night he arrived, walking past the graveyard, when he saw a girl throwing coins in a fountain. That girl was Marigold.
“So, is this weird? I mean, we don’t know one another.” Marigold looked at him as they walked.
“Should it be weird?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t feel weird.”
“Are you always so honest? Is that an Amish thing, saying how you feel?”
At this Abel laughed, for he knew it was as far from Amish as anything. “No, I’m forever getting a hard time for speaking my mind freely. For asking questions when I oughtn’t. For being my own person.”
“That’s why you wanted to come to college? To try out being your own person?”
“I just like learning, that’s why I came.”
“Okay, I know exactly where we’re going then.”
Marigold hailed a cab, and fifteen minutes later they were at the Smithsonian Institution.
“You haven’t been here, have you?”
“No, but my roommate said we should come.”
“Will he be mad you came without him?”
Her thoughtfulness touched him, but he shook his head. “No, Lacey will be just fine. He’s probably too high to even remember mentioning it.” Lacey got stoned every night, and when high, seemed to ramble about art and politics and religion — everything taboo for an Amish guy.
“Well, you could come a hundred times and still never see everything.”
They walked to a map and Marigold told him to pick a place. When he chose an exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery she smiled. “American Cool?”
“I should learn a bit about that shouldn’t I? I mean, really.” He began reading the exhibit’s description with an embellished accent, trying to hide his obvious Pennsylvania Dutch. “What do we mean when we say someone is cool? Cool carries a social charge of rebellious self-expression, charisma, edge, and mystery.”
“Touché.�
� Marigold laughed and Abel’s shoulders straightened a bit when she did, wondering why he was so easy-going here with her. A girl who was off-limits if he was going to go back home. A girl who couldn’t be more than a fun time, because he was expected to be with a girl like Esther.
A girl, who wore a kapp, quilted, and bowed her head reverently. Not a girl like Marigold, whose laughter filled a room. Abel wondered if that’s what the bishop meant when he said he was too easily swayed by the lure of the outside world.
But Abel didn’t feel swayed, he just felt happy, and he let his shoulders relax. The afternoon passed quickly. At each photograph they, would attempt to match the portrait’s posed coolness, laughing the entire time. Marigold transformed easily, as if her body and face were moldable, easily altered to a serious stance and the next an exaggerated smirk.
Abel was less successful, and Marigold took his arm to reposition it to match, or order him to jut out his foot just so. When she pulled out her phone to snap a photo, Abel shook his head.
“Why not? You look seriously cool.”
“Amish don’t take pictures, it’s a whole ‘no graven images’ thing.”
“Oh, sorry.” She put the phone back in her bag.
“Don’t be.”
“Does it bother you, being different?”
“Nope.”
“You’ve just always been comfortable in your own skin?” she asked.
“I suppose it’s not something I think of that much. When I look in the mirror it’s not as if I think, hmm, there’s an Amish guy. I mean, do you look in the mirror and think hmm there’s an English girl?”
“I don’t. I stopped thinking about things like that when I just decided to be me.”
“So you get it.”
“I get it.”
Abel looked at her and believed the words of this wispy girl, because she didn’t pause at mirrors when she walked through the museum or self-consciously tug at her clothes. She spent the entire afternoon smiling and laughing, not texting people or tiptoeing around their differences.