by Amy Lillard
“Yes, sir.”
“Ach, there’s no need for that. We only bestow those called by the Lord with titles.”
“But aren’t you . . .” he let his voice trail off. “Yes, deacon.” He was unable to stop his smile from stretching across his face. “I’ll be by to get you.”
“Better come about an hour before. I want to make sure I get a good place to sit.”
Zane wasn’t clear as to why Ezekiel Esh was so worried about a chair. Only a handful of people were afforded seats, the old deacon being one of them. There was also a chair for Ruth and one for a very pregnant woman who looked as if her baby could arrive at any moment. Silently Zane prayed that it was her full-skirted dress that made her look so very big and that the baby wasn’t due for a few more weeks. Out of all his travels, everything he’d seen and done, delivering a baby was not among his accomplishments, and he’d like to keep it that way, thank-you-very-much.
More and more people filed into the tiny schoolhouse until he was certain that not one more person could squeeze in. He leaned down and shared his observation with Ezekiel, who sat in a chair directly in front of him.
“Repeat that, son,” Esh yelled at him in return.
Zane hid his smile. There was just something about the old man, something so genuine. All of the Amish he’d met were sincere, but like any group of peoples there were always those who weren’t as honest and true to the cause. Esh certainly wasn’t one of them.
He leaned down closer to the old man and repeated his comment.
The deacon nodded and banged his cane against the floor. “Jah, a good turnout it is.”
Along with Katie Rose’s desk, the ones belonging to the children had been moved to the perimeter of the room. The children stood nervously in front of the blackboard awaiting the time to begin. Parents and relatives smiled and waved at their offspring much like any Englischer program, with the exception of the rabid mom taking pictures and multiple dads with video cameras.
The room fell silent as Katie Rose walked to the front of the crowd. She smiled sweetly, and Zane was certain she had never looked prettier. He knew if he told her so, she would blush that perfect shade of pink that made him want to run for his camera and save the moment for eternity. What it couldn’t capture was the goodness of her heart—the way she cared for those around her, the children at the school, her mother, Gabe’s brood.
“Danki,” she said, her gaze travelling around the room. “Thank you, everyone, for comin’.”
Zane was glad she switched to English, though he had a feeling he’d understand only about half of tonight’s performance. That wasn’t the point. He’d come because Katie Rose had asked him to, and he couldn’t tell her no, couldn’t bear to see a frown on her lovely face.
“The children have a special program planned for you tonight. But first we will pray.”
Matthew, Gabriel’s oldest boy, stepped to the front of the group and said in his clear, though squeaky, pubescent voice, “Bow your heads.”
There was a slight whisper of noise as the group bowed their heads, silently praying for the children and the program they were about to perform.
Zane automatically lowered his head, closed his eyes, and asked God to be with the children, to keep them from being nervous and allow themselves to make mistakes without frustration. He prayed that the evening should go well for all involved.
“Aemen,” Matthew finished, then stepped back into his place in line.
A small group of girls moved forward, and the evening was underway.
He couldn’t help but wonder if the pageant was spoken in English for his benefit, but decided that was extremely arrogant. Katie Rose had told him that most of the children only heard Pennsylvania Dutch spoken at home. English was learned after they started school and German was studied after the eighth grade. Surely they spoke English in the pageant in order to practice their skills with the language.
The first set of girls performed a sketch about making Christmas cookies. Another group acted out a three-person skit about soup they didn’t think had enough salt. It ended up that all the women added salt without tasting the soup and thereby added too much. A good lesson in minding one’s own affairs.
Some scholars sang songs. One little boy sang a beautiful song in German. Though Zane didn’t understand a word of the language, he still had to wipe the tears from his eyes. The young boy was so tiny, barely waist high, with smooth blond hair and an angelic voice. The timbre of his voice alone was enough to move even the hardest of hearts.
Katie Rose stepped forward. “Now we will have a Bible readin’ from Luke.”
Zane expected a boy to step forward, Bible in hand to read.
Instead, a little girl about seven or eight stepped forward and recited, “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole empire should be registered.”
She stepped back into the formation of children, and another child stepped forward, this time a little boy about the same age. “The first registration took place while Quirinius was governing Syria.”
Gabriel’s son Simon came forward, shifting from one foot to the other. “So everyone went to be registered, each to his own town.”
One by one, the children came forward, each reciting a verse.
“And Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and the family line of David.”
“To be registered along with Mary, who was engaged to him and was pregnant.”
“While they were there, the time came for her to give birth.”
“Then she gave birth to her firstborn son, and she wrapped Him snugly in cloth and laid Him in a feeding trough because there was no room for them at the lodging place.”
“In the same region, shepherds were staying out in the fields and keeping watch at night over their flock.
“Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.”
“But the angel said to them, ‘Don’t be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all people.’”
“‘Today a Savior, who is Messiah the Lord, was born for you in the city of David.’”
“‘This will be the sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in cloth and lying in a feeding trough.’”
“Suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying . . .”
“‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to people He favors.’”
“When the angels had left them and returned to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let’s go straight to Bethlehem and see what has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.’”
“They hurried off and found both Mary and Joseph, and the baby who was lying in the feeding trough.”
“After seeing them, they reported the message they were told about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.”
“But Mary was treasuring up all these things in her heart and meditating on them.”
“The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had seen and heard, just as they had been told.”
Zane exhaled, realizing, only in that moment, that sometime while the children were speaking he held his breath.
Then Matthew gave his brother Samuel a gentle push. The sweet, red-haired child grinned at everyone and yelled, “aemen,” with as much enthusiasm as Zane was sure the angel of the Lord had used when talking to the shepherds.
Everyone laughed at Samuel’s zeal, and he ran to Katie Rose and promptly buried his face in her skirts.
After the pageant, everyone milled around, looking at the artwork posted on the walls of the school. Coo
kies, punch, and hot chocolate were served as the members of the district talked among themselves and with the beautiful teacher. Zane wanted an opportunity to talk to her himself. He wanted to tell her how glad he was for the invitation, how much the message meant to him.
He couldn’t say he’d never heard the story. Surely somewhere in his agnostic life he had heard about Mary, Joseph, and the manger, but he’d never taken the time to examine the situation, to sit and listen while someone told the story, read it straight from the source.
He got chills at the thought of a woman forced to travel so close to her time to give birth. He thought about the woman who’d sat in the front row during the pageant. He couldn’t imagine her on the back of a donkey, or walking all the way from Nazareth to Bethlehem. He didn’t know how far it was, but if it were farther than across the street, it was too far. Mary couldn’t get a room at the lodging house. How crazy was that? How selfish that no one would help a pregnant woman to the point that she had to sleep with the animals, give birth in a barn, and then lay her child in a feeding trough instead of a crib. If that happened today, Child Welfare Services would be all over it. That it happened at all was morbidly amazing to Zane. Didn’t these people know who the baby was?
They didn’t. They couldn’t. Only the shepherds who had been visited by the angels knew the child was the Savior.
How wonderful. How amazing. How—
“I’m ready to go now.” Esh banged his cane on the planked floor for good measure. “You can stare at the pretty young teacher later.”
Zane jumped, not realizing he’d been staring. No one would believe he’d been that caught up in the story of Christmas that he hadn’t realized he was staring at Katie Rose. He hardly believed that himself.
She looked up and caught his eye, her cheeks blooming into that rose-in-winter pink that made her look even more angelic.
Zane gave a small wave, mouthed “thank you,” then helped Esh to his feet. He’d get the old man home, and then he would figure out when Jesus stopped being just a Bible story and became the Son of God.
The day after the pageant dawned cold and bright, a beautiful, typical day in an Oklahoma winter. For Ruth the pageant was the first outing other than church since she had finished her treatments. Too much travelling—too much of anything—left her exhausted and drained. But the pageant meant so much to her, so much to her family, that she had rested extra the day before, lying down with Zane Carson’s cell phone near in hopes of resting, but ready in case the doctor called. Her sleep had gone undisturbed, and she felt better than she had in months. Maybe it was life as usual that made her heart light.
And the pageant! Hearing the children last night reading from the Bible and singing songs of God and His love, and hearing the Christmas story again had uplifted her too. She had heard it every year of her life at Christmastime, but that made the story no less powerful. She thanked God for the message, His Son, and all things good and holy. She especially thanked God that Zane Carson had received the story too.
She had heard through family gossip that Zane Carson hadn’t been raised in church, hadn’t had the privilege of hearing God’s Word each day like she had. The thought saddened her more than she could say. There was a pain in his eyes, a sadness she was certain he didn’t know was there. Yet there was nothing more healing than God’s Word.
It was so much easier to see what other people needed than to accept these things for herself.
Ach, last night was gut, for sure and for certain. She had missed the activity of her day-to-day life. Amish women worked as hard as the men, gardening, canning, cooking, and baking. But since she had been sick, the majority of these chores had fallen to Annie. Gideon’s intended was more than willing to do her share and even more, but Ruth hated relying on her. It was one thing to teach and quite another to be unable to do the work herself.
Ruth’s easy mood vanished the minute she looked at herself in the mirror. It wasn’t vanity that chased away her joy, but the fear of disobedience. Just looking at her bald head, devoid of the hair that she had groomed her entire lifetime, filled her with sadness like none she had ever felt before. Even when Megan had left. Ruth had always worn her hair long and covered at the request of God, and now it was gone.
She understood why the women she had seen at the hospital had covered their heads with handkerchiefs. But a scrap of cloth covered with drawings of pink ribbons would be considered vain by the bishop and somehow prideful. Those other women wore their pink like a badge of honor. Her heart gave a hard pound of recognition when she saw the ribbons that signified breast cancer and being a survivor. A part of her wanted to display a ribbon on her dress, pin it to her apron, or even get one of those pink rubber bracelets to show what she had been through. Why she looked the way she did. Why after being so carefully obedient her entire life that she appeared to have lost her faith. Instead she had to hide her badges. The little pink ribbon the nurse had given her when she started treatments was pinned to the underside of her dress. No one knew it was there. Not even Abram. Only she and God knew her secret. She tied the bonnet under her chin and tried to find the peace she had so fleetingly felt earlier.
She had done what God had asked of her. What she thought the Lord had wanted from her, but in the side effects she could find no peace. She couldn’t uphold her end of the marriage. She could no longer cook and clean for her husband, not like a proper Amish wife. She required frequent rests and naps in order to make it through even one day. She didn’t know if she would ever be the same again, or if the treatment would leave her dependent on others for the rest of her life.
Ruth didn’t know how she would handle that. She was used to being strong, dependable, capable. Now she felt as helpless and as weak as a newborn fawn.
Annie was already in the kitchen when Ruth arrived downstairs. If she knew her energetic son at all, John Paul had already coerced Zane Carson out of the bed and into the barn. Abram had risen before her, as was his custom of late, not even bothering to wake her before he headed out to his chores.
They used to get up together, make their way downstairs and sit at the table and talk, enjoying the few quiet moments of their morning before the day took off into whatever direction the Lord pulled them. At night they’d meet back up in their room, sharing thoughts of the day, questions, ideas, troubles, and triumphs before bending their knees to thank God for the day’s blessings.
That was just one more change her cancer had brought about, one more thing to be saddened about. She could barely look at her husband these days, so ashamed she was of her body. It was no longer whole, no longer the way the Lord had made it. She and Abram had made the decision together, but the repercussions of that decision she had to bear alone.
“I’ve made you some coffee,” Annie said, pouring her a cup and setting it down at the table. “Biscuits should be out in a few minutes.”
“You didn’t have to do that.” Yet Ruth was glad that she did. Annie made the best coffee, and her biscuits were coming along quite nicely.
Ruth eased herself into one of the kitchen chairs, resting her bones from the trip downstairs. It was downright shameful that her body could barely take the journey each morning and night. She had played with the idea of moving into Noni’s quarters and avoiding the stairs altogether, but the thought so saddened her that she quickly let it go. She and Abram were so distanced that she couldn’t imagine furthering the rift by not lying beside him each night. Her heart ached at the thought of not being able to hear him breathe as she fell asleep. Of not being able to roll into his warmth in the morning before sunrise. To know he was there in body, strong and steady, even if his heart was drifting.
Annie pulled the bacon out of the refrigerator and started laying strips in a big black frying pan. “The boys ought to be back in a few minutes.”
Ruth hadn’t rested her fill, but couldn’t sit still any longer. Oh, Annie mad
e fine bacon, but Ruth couldn’t sit by and let her do all of the cooking by herself. There were too many mouths to feed. Too much responsibility. “Let me.” She pushed herself to her feet, fully intending to take the meat away from Annie and cook the bacon herself.
“What are you doing?” Annie asked as she reached for the bacon.
“I’m going to help you.”
“You most certainly are not.” She turned so that her body shielded the meat from Ruth’s grasp. “You had a late night with the Christmas pageant. You need to rest.”
“Annie, I—”
“Don’t start, Ruth. We are soon to be family, and families work together to help each other.”
“But I—”
“No buts.” She placed a gentle hand on Ruth’s shoulder and pushed her back down in the seat. “We are working together.”
Ruth shook her head with a frown. “Me sittin’, and you workin’ is not workin’ together.”
Annie smiled. “I’m counting on you helping me later.”
“Jah? What do you mean?”
Annie blushed. “I hope that one day, after Gideon and I are married of course, that you’ll come help me with the baby. Or help me get ready for the baby. Then I can sit with my feet up, and you can make the biscuits.”
The thought of Gideon getting such a second chance at love and life filled Ruth with the brightest feeling she’d had in a long time. If she hadn’t known better, she’d’ve thought she swallowed sunshine.
She took a sip of her coffee to hide the tears that sprang to her eyes. Thankfully Annie had turned away to pull the biscuits out of the oven. Then the bacon required her attention and Ruth was able to swallow down her emotions without the young girl being able to know they were even there.
That afternoon, as she and Annie sorted through her stash of fabric looking for the perfect cloth to make Mary Elizabeth a new dress for Christmas, Zane Carson’s phone buzzed once again. This time Ruth recognized the purr against her side and didn’t jump out of her skin. But her hands were still shaking as she retrieved the device and looked at the tiny screen the way Zane had showed her. 918 . . . Tulsa. The doctor was calling.