After a time, when her sobbing slowed to a whimper, Sadie lay quietly with her head on Lizzie’s lap, soaking up all the love, the soft humming, and an occasional ‘‘now there.’’ At this moment she secretly wished Lizzie were her mother instead of merely her aunt. She could only wonder what life might be like living up here in the woods with Aunt Lizzie, not being the eldest sister to three, no, four girls, but rather a cousin-sister to Leah, the twins, and Lydiann. Goodness’ sake, it was a trial putting up with Mamma’s colicky baby crying all hours of the night. ‘‘Every time Lydiann wails, I feel like crying, too. ’Cept I do it inside.’’
‘‘No wonder you weep,’’ Aunt Lizzie said. ‘‘You have strong ties to the babe you carried close to your heart—right or wrong—and nothin’ can take away the emptiness, now that he’s not in your arms.’’
Sadie raised her head and looked into Lizzie’s pretty hazel eyes. ‘‘So there’s nothin’ wrong with me?’’
Lizzie smiled faintly. ‘‘No, my lamb. Don’t be thinkin’ thataway.’’
‘‘Oh, Aunt Lizzie, what would I do without you to talk to?’’
‘‘Well, now . . . you’d prob’ly do like we all do, sooner or later, and be talkin’ to the Good Lord about your trials.’’
‘‘What’s the point of prayin’?’’ Sadie asked. ‘‘I doubt the Lord would hear me, anyway.’’
‘‘You may be thinkin’ that, but believe me, there ain’t a shred of truth to it.’’
She sat up, wiping away her tears. ‘‘Why’s it seem so, then?’’
‘‘Your spirit’s all closed up—like a rock-hard honeycomb. Back when you gave up your innocence, you hardened your heart to the gift of purity that’s meant for your husband. You’re altogether different now that you’ve been awakened to fleshly desires, the longings a wife has for her husband.’’
Sadie felt her pulse pounding in her stomach. She did yearn for Derry every day of her life. ‘‘You seem to know what I’m feelin’, Auntie.’’
Lizzie turned to look out the window for a moment. Her lip quivered slightly. ‘‘I’m guessin’ it’s about time I own up to you. You’re plenty old enough now. . . .’’ She sighed. ‘‘Indeed, I do know what you’re feelin’. Know it as sure as you sittin’ here next to me.’’
‘‘Whatever do you mean?’’
Aunt Lizzie faltered, and if Sadie wasn’t mistaken, there was a sad glint in her eyes. ‘‘As a young woman I committed a grievous sin against the Lord God, one of the reasons my father, Dawdi John, sent me here to Gobbler’s Knob—to escape the shame that was sure to come in Hickory Hollow.’’
‘‘Are you sayin’ what I think?’’ Sadie asked, nervous to hear more.
‘‘You must keep this between just us. Abram would not want me speakin’ of this, not without his say-so.’’
‘‘Dat wouldn’t?’’ She was truly perplexed, yet the urgent look on Aunt Lizzie’s face was nearly irresistible.
‘‘He’s an honorable man, Abram. Still, he is tight-lipped, and with all gut reason.’’
Sadie purposely turned to face Lizzie as they sat on the couch. She felt ever so drawn to her aunt now, desperately needing to concentrate on her gentle face, witness the haunting sadness and the truth-light in her eyes as Lizzie whispered tenderly, if hesitantly, of ‘‘the darlin’ baby girl born to me when I was but a teen.’’ Lizzie’s eyes spilled over with tears, but she kept them fixed on Sadie.
‘‘A baby?’’
Lizzie nodded her head slowly.
‘‘I never would’ve guessed. Not now, not ever,’’ Sadie whispered, unable to speak in her normal tone, so stunned she was. Had Aunt Lizzie been required to live as a maidel for this reason?
‘‘I’ve borne this secret these many years.’’
‘‘Oh, Aunt Lizzie . . .’’
‘‘My dear girl, I’ve suffered the terrible consequence of my sin by not bein’ able to raise my child as my own. But long ago I purposed in my heart to follow God in spite of what had happened to me.’’
‘‘So . . . I’m not the only one to lose a child. . . .’’ She was aware of Aunt Lizzie’s steady breathing. No wonder I feel so close to you, she thought, leaning her head against her aunt’s shoulder.
Lizzie caressed Sadie’s head, and for a moment they sat there, not speaking, scarcely moving.
After a time Sadie opened her eyes. Her heart was bursting with love and sympathy both, and she wondered just where Lizzie’s daughter was now, all grown-up. Had one of Dat’s or Mamma’s many siblings stepped in to raise the little one? She didn’t have the heart to ask just now, though she was dying to know.
Leah sat in the waiting room, hoping the doctor could help ease Dawdi’s pain, his being the last patient of the day.
Dat had said the strangest thing about the sudden onset of Dawdi’s health problems the other day. He’d indicated Dawdi surely had something ‘‘all bottled up inside,’’ and when she had asked just what that could be, Dat had brushed it off like it was nothing to worry over. Well, far as she was concerned, Dawdi wasn’t putting on. She’d seen him shuffle along, nearly lame. She’d seen him wince as he stepped in and out of the buggy, too.
Reaching for a magazine on the lamp table, she opened to a full-page advertisement. A sense of guilt swept over her as she read the caption: Which Twin Has the Toni? She stared at the smiling faces of identical twin girls with matching home waves and bare necks. Englishers seemed bent on short hair, lots of curls, and too much skin, along with the many things their money could buy. She had come to this conclusion the few times she’d allowed herself a glance at the magazines displayed here in Dr. Schwartz’s office. Convicted, she returned the magazine to the table.
Thinking now of Sadie, she hoped maybe her sister had run off to see Aunt Lizzie this afternoon after the spat with Mamma. Surely their aunt could help focus Sadie’s mind on holy living—on obedience, too.
Getting up, Leah went to the window and stared out. The lone horse and buggy looked nearly out of place in the empty parking area, yet she was glad for Dr. Schwartz’s willingness to see patients besides his English clients.
She pondered again the frightening night Sadie had given birth. She alone had been the reason the doctor had come to help Sadie, having ridden bareback on one of Dat’s horses—a phantom ride through the midnight darkness, up the narrow road to the clinic. She recalled how reluctant she had been to travel back to the Ebersol Cottage and up the mule road with Dr. Schwartz in his fast automobile . . . yet she had. Gripping the door handle, she’d worried herself nearly sick at what might await them in Aunt Lizzie’s log house.
Moving away from the window, she walked slowly about the room, noticing the many framed photographs on the light-colored walls. Pictures of people intrigued her, perhaps because she had been warned to avoid cameras, ever present in the summer when English tourists came calling. It was all right to display pastoral scenes on the walls, along with crossstitched designs and floral or nature-related calendars. Bishop Bontrager permitted such things, but photographs of people were downright prohibited.
But here she was met by one smiling face after another, each framed in wood, all English folk. Nearly a whole wall of people dressed in fancy clothes, especially a woman with cropped and curled hair, seated on a white-wicker bench. Two young boys and a man encircled her, all smiling at someone’s camera.
Looking closer, she recognized the man to be Dr. Henry Schwartz. Is that his wife? she wondered.
Several more photographs featured the foursome, no doubt posing at the photography studio she’d seen in downtown Lancaster, though of course she had never dared darken the door. The last in the lineup was a portrait of a boy with thick brown hair and exceptionally dark eyes, wearing what she guessed was a baseball team uniform, since there was a baseball bat in the youngster’s hand.
She was drawn to the smiling face and saw the words: Thanks, Dad . . . Love, Derry in the bottom corner.
How peculiar to think someone would actually
write on a photograph. But then she guessed that this, too, was another one of the strange customs of the English.
Derry . . .
Suddenly she began to shiver uncontrollably. Her scalp felt prickly as she stared at the boyish scrawl. She’d heard of only one such Englisher by that name in her life.
Her mind was spinning now. But no! This couldn’t be Sadie’s Derry, could it? Did Sadie go and fall in love with one of Dr. Schwartz’s sons? she wondered.
Rejecting the notion, she went back and studied each of the framed pictures yet again, discovering one that was surely the same boy, only much older, possibly a graduating high-school senior. She moved back and forth between the two pictures, double-checking the young man’s features against those of the child. She was desperate for something more to go on.
At last she spied gold lettering in the far corner and the name of the photo studio. Gold Tone, 1946.
Could this be the boy Sadie still wept for . . . the father of her dead baby? Going to sit on one of the several wooden chairs that lined the wall, she felt truly bewildered. If what she suspected was true, then Dr. Schwartz had delivered his own grandson last April.
Her heart was pounding. Her sister had been defiled by the good doctor’s son!
She bit her lip, refusing the anger that threatened to overflow. She felt like running out the door and all the way home; she wanted to ease her exasperation but was ever so mindful of her surroundings. I’ll wait right here for Dawdi . . . I must hold my peace. . . .
To stave off her fury, she turned and looked out the window yet again, across the yard to the road and the forested hillock beyond. She wanted to hurry home and ask Sadie if Derry Schwartz was, in fact, the father. On further reflection, she determined not to. She must not question her sister because it would be one more irritation between them. She was unwilling to further jeopardize their sisterhood.
When Dawdi emerged on the doctor’s arm, still rubbing his thigh from the sting of a shot, she felt her head spin a bit. Carefully she rose and helped Dawdi John out the door and down to the horse and carriage. ‘‘Ach, I forgot to pay the doctor bill,’’ Dawdi said once she had him settled.
‘‘Not to worry, I’ll return tomorrow,’’ she replied, her thoughts in a flurry.
‘‘Denki, Leah. You’re such a gut girl.’’
Gut girl . . .
If only Sadie had been so. If only Sadie had refused the affections of an English boy.
Purposely Leah directed her attention to dear Dawdi, engaging him in slow conversation, attempting to soothe him, as well as to drive away the anger within herself.
Chapter Thirteen
After breakfast Mamma said she would be the one to go to Dr. Schwartz’s clinic to pay Dawdi’s bill from the day before. ‘‘I won’t be but a minute,’’ she announced before stepping out the back door.
Sadie was aware of Leah scurrying out to the chicken coop to feed the hens and the lone rooster while the twins kneaded two mounds of bread dough. It was Sadie’s morning to tend the roadside stand, but instead of heading there she stood in the window and watched Mamma leave in the carriage. Aunt Lizzie’s heartrending confession continued to fill her mind. To think both Lizzie and she had done the selfsame evil in the sight of God. During that troubling time, Mamma and Dat had taken Lizzie under their united wing, helping her through the pregnancy and delivery of a baby girl. But Lizzie had stopped short of telling the whole story, saying, when Sadie had asked at long last what happened to her baby, that the bishop decided the child should be given away. ‘‘To be adopted?’’ Sadie had said, horrified. Lizzie indicated it had been so with a solemn nod of her head. When Sadie pressed for more details, Lizzie assured her ‘‘ ’twas best for the baby, indeed.’’
Befuddled, Sadie hadn’t even thought to ask how old Lizzie’s daughter would be by now. She was astounded at the account Lizzie had given of her wild and youthful days. It wasn’t any wonder why her wounded aunt was so understanding and kind toward her. Toward everyone whose life she touched, really.
Sadie went and asked Mary Ruth to cover for her out front at the roadside stand. ‘‘Just for a few minutes, would ya?’’ And Mary Ruth reluctantly agreed, washed the flour off her hands, and headed out the back door.
Sadie then crept up the stairs to the biggest bedroom, Dat and Mamma’s room. There in the corner, snug in an oversized cherrywood cradle, Lydiann slept soundly. Last night had been a ruckus of sorts, a difficult one for the whole household. Lydiann’s crying had kept Mamma and Dat from having much rest at all. Both Sadie and Leah had awakened to Dat’s voice, then to his footsteps on the stairs as he headed outside for a spell, probably needing a bit of repose. Mamma had been the one to stay with Lydiann, humming and cajoling, finally getting her settled down again in the wee hours.
Standing over the pink-cheeked bundle, Sadie peered into the cradle. Lydiann’s facial features, even her little head, were changing ever so quickly. Maybe all that crying and fussing made her grow faster. In no time at all she’d be sitting up, even crawling, talking . . . and before they knew it, she’d be off to singings, married, and a mamma herself; so the life cycle went. Goodness, Sadie had observed enough babies and toddlers growing up just that quickly in the church and at home, too, right under her nose.
She knelt beside the cradle, touching the side ever so lightly . . . rocking, rocking. She stroked the precious, dimpled hands, soft as cotton. ‘‘You’re a perty baby girl,’’ she whispered. ‘‘But you cry every night like your heart’s a-breakin’. What an awful sad time it is round here. But you . . . just look at you. You’re all right, Lydiann. You’re alive . . . breathin’ and growin’. . . .’’
She leaned down and lifted the sweet-smelling bundle out of the cradle. Pacing the wide-plank floor in her bare feet, she gazed at the sleeping angel in her arms. You . . . you’re as sweet as a flower, but my baby’s dead. You came to us just as I lost my own little one.
She went and sat in the big rocker, across from the dresser, her arms warm with Lydiann’s body so close to her. ‘‘A sorry excuse I am for a big sister,’’ she whispered. ‘‘It’s not that I don’t love you, Lydiann . . . I do.’’
She began humming a mournful tune, something Gideon Peachey had played on his harmonica years ago. Back when they, all the girls and Dat and Mamma, had been invited by the smithy and his wife for a family picnic. And Gid, surrounded by his two younger sisters and the four Ebersol girls, had played the sad melody. Maybe he was outnumbered by girls and miserable, or he was secretly longing for a girlfriend, but Sadie had never forgotten the song. Nor the light in Gid’s eyes for young Leah, who seemed oblivious to him, except that she nodded her head slowly to his melancholy music.
So Sadie hummed for Lydiann, thinking back over the years . . . all the happy days growing up here in Gobbler’s Knob, playing both in and near Blackbird Pond, swinging on the haymow rope, making grape jelly with Adah and Dorcas, watching Gid with his newest batch of German shepherd pups. . . .
Unexpectedly, the baby stirred, and lest the melody awaken her, Sadie stopped humming and began to rock more steadily. Then, once Lydiann had relaxed again and drifted back to sleep, Sadie talked to her, oh, so softly, scarcely able to stop. ‘‘I wish it weren’t true, but you’ll never, ever know your tiny nephew, my dead little baby. Not this side of the Jordan. You see, the Lord God took him away . . . before he ever had a chance to breathe or live or know how dearly loved he was.’’
She struggled, trying to hold back the tears lest they fall unchecked onto the tiny cotton nightgown. Besides, if she gave in to her urgent need to cry, she might not stop for a long time, like Lydiann did each and every night. But no, Sadie didn’t want Mary Ruth and Hannah aware she was up here confessing her sins to a sleeping baby, of all things.
Confessing . . .
She sat there, rocking and sniffling. Leah’s and Aunt Lizzie’s constant urging echoed in her ears—and now Naomi threatening to tell if she didn’t. . . .
She pondered
what it might be like to tell the sorry truth of her sins to her parents and, eventually, to the church brethren . . . how she would kneel low on bended knee in front of the entire membership of the People. Such a hushed silence there would be in the house of worship, with the newly baptized young people staring at her, including the young men.
Awful difficult it was to imagine, yet she persisted. She would be required to speak up enough to be heard not only by the deacon and the preachers, but all the People must be able to hear what she and Derry had done in the private haven of the hunter’s shack, in the name of love.
She felt the heat of her shame and reproach like the fires of hell licking at her feet. Sadie shuddered at the mental images—the sadness and shock on Mamma’s face, the tense set of Dat’s jaw, the accusing eyes of the People boring into her, the ministers asking repeated questions.
How could she go through it? How could she repent of loving her child? Repent of her anger toward God, who had taken her child, had killed him?
She looked down at Lydiann. The sweet peace of sleep on her wee face gave Sadie a sudden and terrible panic. She realized anew that repentance would mean the loss of everything she’d ever wanted. No boy in Gobbler’s Knob would give her a second look, pretty as she knew she was. And worst of all . . . having a dear, precious baby of her own, one just like Lydiann, would be forever impossible.
Hannah felt uneasy standing there in the hallway. She had come upstairs to inform Sadie that Mary Ruth was getting more customers than she alone could handle at the vegetable stand. She preferred not to run out front herself but wanted Sadie to go instead, since it was Sadie’s responsibility, anyway.
When she finally found her oldest sister, she almost called to her. But she was taken aback seeing Sadie sitting in Mamma’s rocking chair, talking to Lydiann, who was sleeping right through it.
The Betrayal Page 10