Saving Susannah

by Beverly Bird

  She knew she should get up and help serve, but the truth was that she felt too much like an outsider. She decided to remain very quiet, with the vague hope that they all might forget about her. But when Joe finally took his seat at the head of the table, Kim felt him looking at her.

  Her eyes went warily to his. Brown met blue. There were questions in his, she realized. Her heart gave an odd thump.

  She wondered if he was going to tell Jake and Adam why she had come here to find them. Why had she trusted this man with that? she despaired again. Then she assured herself it didn’t matter. She certainly intended to ask for their help at this meal. There was no sense in dragging things out.

  Jake raised his glass of milk in a toast, laughing. “Here’s to the passing of Sugar Joe. Long live Loe Japp.”

  Joe reached up quickly to tug down his hat. He looked abashed when he found it wasn’t on his head, Kim thought.

  “It’s going to stick, Pa.” One of his sons hooted—Matt, Kim thought his name was. “You know it.”

  “Who’s Sugar Joe?” Kim asked tentatively.

  “It’s a long story,” Adam said. “First you’ve got to understand that everyone in the settlements has maybe one of only ten different last names.” He glanced at his wife, as though to make sure he had things right. “They’re all descended from the same group of immigrants. And all their first names are usually German or biblical, so...”

  Kim heard nothing more. German? She’d thought these people were Dutch. Yes, the Amish were called “Pennsylvania Dutch.”

  Adam was rambling on. “There are a lot of Rachel Fishers, for instance, and a lot of Joe Lapps.”

  “So folks have nicknames,” Nathaniel explained. “That way we can differentiate between one another. Call out ‘Joe Lapp’ at a Church Sunday, and twelve guys will answer. So we’ve got a Chicken Joe and a Boundary Joe, and so on. Dad’s always been called ‘Sugar Joe.”’

  “Uh...why?” Kim asked, though she could have sworn she didn’t care. Her mind was still circling around that single word—German. Which Bobby had been.

  “When he met my ma, it was at a Church Sunday,” Nathaniel continued. “He saw her across a paddock and went silly before he ever spoke a word to her. He even forgot to get his own ma a cup of coffee. Grandma had to remind him. So then he went and got it, and he poured the whole sugar canister into it because he was staring at Ma. It spilled all over—coffee, sugar, everything.”

  “He’s been ‘Sugar Joe’ ever since,” Mariah said, laughing.

  “Not quite,” Joe said shortly.

  At that, they all grew more subdued. Even Nathaniel seemed to realize some obscure implication in what he had just said. His face went crimson and hard.

  “Well, that’s true,” Mariah said quietly after a moment. “People have stopped these past few months out of respect for Sarah’s passing.”

  Kim’s heart thudded strangely. In that moment, it dawned on her why they were teasing Joe. He’d “gone silly” when he had met his Sarah. And his tongue had apparently fumbled over his name when he had met Kim. It hadn’t been her hearing at all. She shot to her feet. Panic, embarrassment and a crowded, threatened feeling tightened her muscles. Then she inadvertently met Joe’s eyes. And once again she saw comfort there, commiseration and understanding.

  His eyes said, I’m not comfortable with what I did, either.

  Kim sat down again slowly, still staring at him. She pressed a hand to her stomach. She was on an emotional roller coaster.

  She realized everyone was talking about a wedding now. “Who’s getting married?” Kim heard herself ask, because it seemed easier than dwelling on the man at the head of the table.

  “Adam and I,” Mariah said happily.

  Kim’s eyes fell to the woman’s pregnancy and widened a little. Mariah laughed.

  “We were married in your world ten months ago, by a justice of the peace in the city. But we couldn’t have an Amish wedding until Adam converted. He did that. He was baptized last week.”

  Kim’s gaze moved uncomprehendingly to her brother. “You converted to...to all this?” She looked around at the quaint, old-fashioned kitchen. Full dark had fallen outside. The light hanging over the table wasn’t electric, she realized. It had a flame in it. Three other lanterns were hanging on the walls. They gave off a warm golden light, too, rather than the harsh white of electric bulbs.

  Suddenly, her heart began beating hard. Not at the idea of Adam getting married—she’d thought he already had, and legally, technically, that was true. It was at the idea that he had joined this religion. That he had reached out to a God she had always believed abandoned them.

  “Why?” she asked, her voice cracking. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I believe in it.”

  She shook her head helplessly.

  “It didn’t happen overnight,” Adam conceded.

  “Hey, I’m still a little blasted by it myself,” Jake offered.

  Kim’s head finally cleared as she thought she understood. “You’re doing it because of the baby.”

  “I’m doing it because this place has given me everything I never had.”

  Kim felt something as solid as rock cram into her throat.

  “A lot of it was Katya’s doing,” Adam continued. “What she went through brought a lot of things into perspective for me.”

  Kim looked at Jake’s wife. They hadn’t spoken much yet. Katya seemed vaguely shy, definitely quiet. She was sitting apart from the table, her food on her lap, and Kim thought that odd.

  “I think what he’s trying to say is that I left this place,” Katya explained. “The settlement. It didn’t turn out to be exactly right for me. I was raised here. I lived twenty-nine years here. But I was married to a man who hurt me, and the ordnung, our...well, our rules, wouldn’t allow me to leave him and start over. It wouldn’t give me or my children a second chance at life. So I took my babies and I left.”

  Kim felt herself nodding.

  “I had a problem with any society that treated women as second-class citizens,” Adam admitted. “With an ordnung that controlled their lives and left them no choices. It reminded me of Mom and the rules of the Catholic Church, the way they wouldn’t let her divorce Dad.”

  Kim felt something spear deeply into her heart. It made her whole body jump. She never even allowed herself to think about her parents anymore. Now they were creeping up naturally in conversation.

  “I always blamed the church for the fact that she couldn’t leave Dad,” Adam said. “Then I realized that adhering to that Catholic doctrine was her own decision. Just as not adhering to Amish doctrine any longer became Katya’s decision. I came to realize that the people here really are here of their own free will.”

  “People have the right to leave,” Joe said.

  It seemed to Kim that his voice was pointed now. He was looking at his elder son.

  “In fact, Nathaniel will be leaving for a New Order settlement shortly, the one where I was born and raised.”

  “Unfortunately, it’s written that when one breaks the ordnung , we’re shunned,” Katya explained. “And leaving the faith, as I did, is most definitely against the ordnung. So no one can see me here anymore. No one can speak to me. I can’t eat at the same table or from the same bowls as everyone else.”

  Kim finally understood why Katya was sitting back from the table. “It doesn’t seem like that big a deal,” she muttered, unsure herself if she was talking about this shunning business or what Katya had done.

  “The meidung, this business of shunning, can be horrible,” Joe said. “It pushes some people beyond endurance. I don’t necessarily approve, which is why I refuse to follow the meidung to the letter in my own home.”

  Kim looked at him sharply. “Yet you’re willing to see your own son shunned if he leaves?”

  “Nathaniel hasn’t been baptized here yet. People are only bound by the ordnung once they’re baptized and have vowed to live by Amish rules,” Joe answered. �
�And we don’t allow baptism until a child is old enough to understand what he’s getting into.” Abruptly, he changed the subject. “Half an hour,” he said suddenly, looking down the table at the kids. “Nathaniel, would you mind haying the horses? The rest of you can burn off the last of your energy for a little while. Then it’s off to bed for the lot of you.”

  Matthew and Gracie shot to their feet. Adam’s boy, Bo, stood more slowly, looking at his father as though for confirmation.

  “You, too,” Adam said. “We’ll leave in about half an hour.”

  Jake glanced at Katya’s kids. “You share the rules of the house while we’re here,” he said. “Be back in half an hour.” That throng bolted for the foyer, too.

  Susannah stared longingly after Katya’s eldest girl, Rachel. Then she looked back at Kim.

  Kim stifled a moan. She wanted to keep Susannah nearby so they could leave as soon as possible, as soon as she had either gotten or been denied the help of her brothers. But so many of these kids were close to Susannah in age and perfect playmates, Kim noted.

  What if she really does die? The pain and protest that reared up merely at the thought of that were unbearable. The possibility tightened Kim’s skin. It made her want to scream. But she had to force herself to acknowledge it. And if it happened, then she wanted every remaining day Susannah knew to be one of pure, unadulterated happiness.

  “Sure,” Kim said, her voice strangled. “You go play, too.”

  Susannah ran out into the foyer. The steady banging of a door somewhere distant echoed in the room as the kids spilled outside.

  Mariah got up to begin taking their plates. Dinah, Joe’s eldest daughter, was still standing beside the table uncertainly, holding the baby.

  “Pa?” she asked tentatively.

  Joe shot to his feet. “Excuse me,” he said shortly, and left the kitchen.

  Dinah looked down at the baby and her eyes seemed to fill with tears. Kim saw Mariah and Katya exchange helpless looks.

  “I’ll take her,” Mariah said. She collected the baby and Dinah went outside with the others.

  Kim stood, as well, to clear the table. She felt eyes on her, boring a hole in her back between her shoulder blades as she turned toward the sink.

  “Why did you come here?” Jake asked suddenly now that the adults were alone.

  Kim’s fingers tightened around the casserole dish she was holding. Oddly, she wished that Joe were still here. For moral support? Because he knew the basics of why she had come and he hadn’t seemed to judge her for it? She’d always stood on her own two feet. She had never needed anyone. She placed the casserole dish carefully on the counter, then turned and leaned against it, meeting Jake’s eyes.

  “Katie wants me to believe that God waved a magic wand and brought you,” he added. “But I don’t think I buy that.”

  Kim managed a tight smile. She looked at Katya. “Well, God waved something,” she answered.

  Jake shot to his feet. “You didn’t even know we were looking for you,” he said again.

  “No,” she agreed.

  “But here you are.”

  “I need your help.” There. It was out. Her heart began thumping.

  “Of course,” Adam said evenly. “With anything. Whatever you need.”

  She gazed at him. “What’s happened to you?” she demanded. “Eleven years ago we never paid any attention to one another! It was each of us for ourselves! I didn’t help you—you didn’t help me. We just...survived. We’re not normal! We were never normal! We didn’t care about each other! Now you don’t even know what I need, but you’re acting as though you’re willing to jump through hoops to give it!” Just as Joe had said, she remembered.

  “You’re wrong,” Adam argued.

  Jake’s face appeared white.

  Kim shook her head. “I was there. I know how we always were.”

  “You were a toddler when we were in our teens.” Adam looked at Jake, too. “There’s a lot you probably don’t remember.”

  “She remembers what counts,” Jake said harshly. “Like the day Dad bounced her off the walls in her room and I didn’t help her.”

  Suddenly Kim did remember. She remembered looking over her father’s shoulder when he lifted her to throw her. She had been about eight. Jake would have been seventeen or so. She had opened her mouth, had started to cry out—and then her father had dropped her and Jake was flat on the floor.

  “I was trying to tell you to go away,” she whispered wretchedly. “I’m sorry.”

  Jake was thunderstruck. “You’re sorry?”

  “I never had a chance to get the words out before he hit you.”

  “I should be sorry,” he said angrily.

  That was when Kim recalled that both her brothers had always been extraordinarily stubborn, as well. It was a Wallace family trait.

  “I started searching for you this last time late last summer, to tell you that,” he admitted. “That I was...am...sorry.”

  Kim blinked at him in confusion.

  “I should have stopped him that day.”

  “He would have killed you! He nearly did!”

  “I was bigger than he was, at least toward the end.”

  “No. Not really. You were taller, maybe. But you were skinny back then, Jake. He was like a bull.”

  “I always said I would!” Jake yelled.

  “And none of us believed you could!” she hollered right back.

  “So much for family reunions,” Adam said dryly.

  Silence fell, and it seemed to have weight. Indeed, it seemed to Kim that none of them was even breathing.

  She took a deep breath. “I knew you wanted to,” she stated. “I knew you wanted to stop the nightmare with all your heart. But there was nothing any one of us could do, Jake. Except survive. We only survived. And one by one, we got out.”

  Everything appeared to go out of Jake—the air and his strength. He sat down hard. “What do you need?” he asked finally, hoarsely. “Tell me what you need, what brought you here. Let me give it to you. I need to give it to you. I need to...make amends.”

  Kim stared at him. Even moments ago, she had been here purely for her own selfish reasons, to save Susannah, nothing more. She could have sworn she didn’t give a damn about any of them beyond that. She believed that for as long as it took her to look into Jake’s eyes. She swerved her gaze to glance at Adam.

  They would help. They wanted to help. It was almost overwhelming.

  “Susannah’s dying,” she whispered. And that was the exact moment she saw Joe Lapp reappear in the kitchen door. Adam made a startled, strangled sound and Jake only continued to stare at her.

  “It’s leukemia.” She rushed on. “She needs a bone marrow transplant. Even then, there’s only a fifty percent chance that it will cure her.” The words were tumbling over each other now; she felt helpless yet desperately hopeful. “But there’s a ninety percent chance the transplant will let her live at least three more years. She’d be able to wear lipstick for the first time. She could go to a school dance—” She broke off briefly as her throat constricted. “The doctor says the closest marrow matches are...family.”

  She expected either Jake or Adam to answer. But they continued to stare at her mutely, apparently still in shock. It was Joe who came to her, Joe who spoke, simply and without all the poignant emotion she’d always avoided.

  “Well,” he said slowly, “that’s one thing you’ve got, Kimberley. It’s lucky you were able to find them.”

  “Is it?” she murmured, looking at Adam’s and Jake’s faces again. Then her legs gave out and she sat down at the table hard.

  Chapter 5

  The half hour they’d given the kids stretched into an hour. None of the children came inside to question their good fortune.

  Kim told the adults everything she knew of Susannah’s condition. And Jake contributed some solid facts of his own. “They have these donor lists now,” he said. “It’s all computerized. They’re trying to get more m
inorities involved. When an African-American kid needs marrow and no one in his family matches, he needs an African-American donor. Same goes for any and all other ethnic backgrounds.”

  Kim stared at him. “That’s true. But how did you know?”

  “Jake’s a walking encyclopedia,” Adam said. “His mind has more files than the Library of Congress.”

  Jake ignored that. “What doctor did you speak to?” he demanded.

  Kim blinked. “His name is Manuel Parra.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Why should you?”

  “Because just last month ChildSearch was looking for a kid who’d been diagnosed with an immunity problem. Not HIV, something else. Something rare and congenital. He needed a marrow transplant, too. His father took off with him—the guy was the noncustodial parent—and the mother called in every law enforcement agency and every child welfare system in the country. Anyway, I figured he’d need to get the kid help, so, on a hunch, we checked with all the best transplant doctors and facilities in the country. This Parra wasn’t on that list.”

  Kim wasn’t sure that she had even heard of a marrow transplant before last week. Now it would seem that the brother she hadn’t seen in eleven years had had cause to learn all about it, a month before even she knew she needed his help. Her head spun.

  “Did you find the boy?” she asked, her voice thin.

  Jake nodded. “Sure.”

  “Is he...okay?” She had this irrational feeling that if he had survived, then Susannah would, also.

  “Don’t know yet,” Jake answered. “But his dad took him to Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. Turned out that he only snatched the kid to get him help. He wasn’t satisfied with the treatment he was receiving in Albany. The parents are together again, by the way, at least until the issue of the kid’s health is resolved. Anyway, we need to get Susannah to Children’s Hospital,” he continued. “That’s probably the best pediatric place in the country insofar as this sort of thing is concerned. Let’s see what they have to say.”