by Sarah Price
Chapter Twelve
Long before the sun arose, Belle stood in the kitchen, sipping some weak coffee from a chipped cup. She wore her black dress and apron, ready for the drive to the worship service. It was Sunday, and she looked forward to seeing her family and her friends. It would feel strange not to sit with the other unmarried women. Now that she was married, she would sit among other married women. While she would miss sitting next to Ella, Belle rejoiced in the fact that she could visit with Ella and Sadie after the worship service and during the fellowship hour.
Just as she had the previous morning, Belle felt refreshed. She had, once again, slept well. The fact that Adam had disappeared after supper and never returned to the house certainly contributed to her ability to sleep without fear of his joining her. But when she awoke, she noticed that the bedroom door was open. Again. She knew that she had shut the door, just as she had on the first evening. Since she had never been a heavy sleeper, she knew that if Adam had come into the bedroom, she would have heard him. Wouldn’t she?
She set down the coffee cup and looked around the kitchen. The walls were still bare, which gave the kitchen a cold, unloved look. But the woodwork shone from her cleaning. And the walls, while in great need of painting, no longer had cobwebs and dust clinging to the corners. On the table, she had a ceramic pitcher filled with wildflowers that she had managed to find along the driveway. It lacked the warmth of her father’s home, but it was a definite improvement over the disastrous mess that had greeted her on Friday.
In two short days, she had transformed it into a livable room. Belle felt pleased with her efforts, even if she wasn’t pleased with the living arrangement.
Her thoughts were interrupted when the door opened and Adam stomped into the kitchen. He was wet, his hair matted to his head and his white shirt clinging to his chest.
Belle leaned forward and gazed out the window. She looked into the sky. It was gray and ugly. “Oh, help! Such rain!”
Adam shook his head, droplets of water sprinkling the counter.
“Let me get you some coffee!” She didn’t wait for a response as she reached for another cup and poured the warm coffee into it. “It’s not very good, I’m afraid. I suspect that coffee is rather old.”
He stared at her outstretched hand offering the cup, and, hesitating, he reached for it. Slowly, he raised it to his lips and sipped. “That’s terrible!” He glared at her. “You didn’t have coffee on that shopping list!”
Belle frowned as she sipped her own cup. “We had some already. I didn’t realize that it wasn’t good. At least we’ll get some nice coffee after worship.”
“Worship?” Adam winced, giving up on the coffee and setting his cup onto the counter. He didn’t seem to notice, or care, that the liquid spilled out. But Belle saw it and quickly wiped it up with a grungy towel that had been hanging over the edge of the stainless steel sink.
“Today is worship Sunday, Adam. Have you forgotten?”
From the look that he gave her, she almost second-guessed herself. Wasn’t it Sunday? She counted backward and, after reassuring herself that she was correct, she nodded.
But Adam shook his head. “I have work to do.”
Belle gasped, horrified at the mere mention of such a thing. “You can’t work on the Lord’s day!”
“I can and I will!”
“We have to go to church service!”
Adam placed his hands on the counter and leaned forward, his face fully exposed. “As the head of this household,” he said in a calm, even voice, “I don’t have to do anything.”
“Adam!”
She knew that he didn’t usually attend worship service. Despite his claim to have attended service, watching undetected from the shadows, Belle couldn’t recall ever having seen him on the alternating Sundays when the Amish community gathered at the different farms and houses in Echo Creek. She remembered hearing one of the Troyers comment that the bishop and preachers visited Adam at home, permitting him to skip worship in town. Whether it was because his farm was so far away or because he preferred to avoid contact with others, she didn’t know. But surely he hadn’t expected that she, too, would miss gathering with the others to worship God.
The realization that, perhaps, he had no intention of going—or even taking her!—caused her to panic. How could she survive if she was forced into the same isolation that had created such an insulated world for Adam?
“I . . . I need to go to worship,” she managed to say. What she wanted to add was that she needed to see other people, to have four hours of real life, in order to survive the next week living with Adam Hershberger.
But Adam did not seem to care. He glanced toward the window and snickered, a reaction that Belle found more than inappropriate; it was unsettling. “I will not stop you from attending.” He stared at her, his face turned askew. “Enjoy your long walk to town or wherever your worship service is being held.”
Her mouth fell open and she put her hands on her hips, flustered. Surely he didn’t expect her to walk all the way to town in such weather! “You’d have me walk? In this weather?”
“If that makes you happy . . .”
“What would make me happy is if my husband ”—she emphasized the word—“accompanied me to church.” What would people think if she showed up alone? It was bad enough that he had disappeared from her father’s house after their wedding ceremony.
For a long minute, he stared at her. From his expression, she knew that he was irritated with her demand. She felt conflicted knowing that, just three short days after their wedding, she was disobeying him. Yet she could not fathom the idea of not attending worship. Not only did she feel isolated and lonely, but she wanted to properly worship God, to thank him for his many blessings, even if she wasn’t certain that she saw too many of them at the current moment.
And then he raised his fist and brought it down on the counter, knocking over his cup of coffee, which immediately spilled onto the floor. Belle jumped, startled at his reaction. She moved backward until her back was pressed against the refrigerator as she cowered from the rage in his eyes.
“‘Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness, ’” he quoted, holding up one finger and slowly pointing it at her. “‘I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.’”
Belle trembled under his steady, repressive stare. His quickness to anger over something as righteous as worship frightened her. How could a man who felt compelled to stand before the congregation to declare his marriage vows refuse to honor God with worship? How could he confess his willingness to be a good Christian husband while rejecting worship service? And yet Adam quoted Scripture to her, which only added to her confusion.
Adam lowered his hand and turned, hastily making his way out of the kitchen and forgetting to shut the door behind him.
Taking a few seconds to catch her breath, Belle shut her eyes and leaned her head against the refrigerator. Clearly she was not going to attend worship on this Sunday that was set aside for God. And while that was disappointing enough, even more troublesome was that she would now be stuck in this house . . . this dreadful house with that dreadful man. She pressed her lips together as she walked across the floor to shut the door, pausing to peer outside in time to see Adam disappear into the barn.
To both her relief and her dismay, he did not emerge for the rest of the day.
The rainy weather brought a cold dampness that, by late afternoon, had chilled Belle to the bone. She had fixed a soup for dinner, but Adam had not returned to the house to take a meal. Belle left the soup on the stove, figuring she could reheat it if he decided to appear for supper. In the meantime, she wandered into the sitting room and made an attempt to start a fire in the fireplace. She crumpled some old newspaper pages and placed them under pieces of broken up crates that she had found in one of the rooms. It took her a few tries for the fire to catch, but when it did, the comforting smell of burning wood filled the room.
Belle sank down into the rocking chair with her Bible on her lap.
If she could not attend worship, she could still spend time with God’s Word.
But even when she tried to focus on reading her Bible, her eyes wandered to the mess that surrounded her in the room. Like the kitchen, it appeared that no one had used the room for years. A broken windowpane let in more dampness than the fire could warm. The green shades that covered the top half of the window were torn in different places. Garbage littered the corners. With a sigh, Belle put down her book and stood up. It wasn’t really working if she threw some of the litter onto the fire, was it? She didn’t answer her own question. Instead, she gathered some of the papers and tossed them into the fireplace. Near the window were leaves that must have blown in over the years. She knelt down and swept them into her arms. When she tossed them onto the fire, they began to burn at once.
She had so much to do around this house. While the task was daunting, she appreciated the diversion. Without it, she would be lost in her new life with a husband who did not honor his vows, either in marriage or in baptism. She walked over to a corner curio cabinet and looked inside at the items on the shelves. A few figurines. A pretty plate. A framed cross-stitch with the Lord’s Prayer. Clearly someone had loved this house at one point in time. Someone had tried to make it feel like home. But that person was long gone, leaving only a trace of hope amidst the years of dust, dirt, and decay.
After she had burned as much of the garbage and litter as she could find in the room, Belle returned to the rocking chair. The room felt warmer; not a lot, but just enough. She picked up her Bible once again and focused on reading Romans. Her feet gently pushed against the floor, the rocking chair making a soft squeaking noise whenever it rolled backward.
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” Belle paused at this verse, putting her hand inside the Bible and shutting the cover. She closed her eyes and thought about the words. Despite her suffering, she had to keep faith that God would reveal a glory in her future, even if it was not on earth but in heaven. What was suffering, she tried to tell herself, when heaven awaited the righteous?
She must have fallen asleep, for when she opened her eyes again, the Bible was on the floor by her feet and the fire had gone out. Yet she wasn’t cold. She yawned, wondering how long she had slept, for the room was dark. As she started to get up, she realized that someone had covered her with a quilt. It was old and torn in a few spots, obviously having been used frequently in the past. But now it was wrapped around her, and there was only one person who could have done that: Adam.
She stood up, holding the blanket against her chest. This one small act of kindness, so simple and thoughtful, surprised her. Perhaps it was his way of apologizing for not taking her to church. Or perhaps it was his way of extending an olive branch, an attempt to show the softer side that Belle had to believe was there.
Carrying the blanket into the kitchen, she noticed that there was a dirty bowl and spoon on the counter. For some reason, the realization that Adam had come back to the house, had chosen not to disturb her sleep, and had helped himself to the soup pleased her. There was hope, she told herself as she neatly folded the blanket and placed it on the table so that, if he returned to the house, Adam would see that she appreciated his gesture.
She returned to the sitting room to collect her Bible before wandering upstairs to retire for the night, wondering if Adam would, once again, visit her bedroom while she slept.
Chapter Thirteen
After Adam’s kindness on Sunday evening, Belle had hoped the week might progress in a more productive manner. Unfortunately, she quickly realized that hopes and dreams were the same thing: great to have but with no guarantees.
The rain continued until Tuesday evening. With the gray skies and the starkness of the house, which lacked any sort of warmth, or any feeling of its being a home—never mind her home—Belle felt as blue as the sky hidden behind the thick clouds. She spent the days cleaning the house, scrubbing walls and floors, washing windows and woodwork. But the house still felt cold and unsettled.
On Wednesday morning, she had ventured down the narrow wooden stairs to the basement, and, with a kerosene lantern in her hand, she had searched the boxes and crates, most of them covered with cobwebs. That was when she made the discovery of an old dresser filled to the brim with yarn.
A sigh of relief escaped her lips. Yarn meant that she could crochet. Even if it wasn’t autumn or winter yet, the seasons when she usually crocheted, at least she would have something to occupy her time. She dug through the different drawers, each one cleverly sorted by color, and picked out various skeins in shades of brown, cream, and tan. With her newfound treasure tucked under her arm, she hurried back upstairs to the kitchen.
After retrieving her crochet hooks from her bedroom, Belle settled onto the bench at the kitchen table and started a new blanket. She chose the arch column afghan pattern. Using each of the three colors to crochet a thick two-block row, she would use the tan to edge it. Maybe, she thought, with little items like a homemade blanket tossed over the rocking chair in the sitting room, the house might begin to feel like a home.
The thought of home gave her a moment’s pause. She wondered what her father was doing. She glanced outside and, after seeing that it was still raining, decided he was probably in the barn trying to rebuild his grill, the one that would set him on the path to riches. Well, not riches, but financial freedom.
“What are you doing?”
Belle jumped when she heard Adam’s voice. His words were asked not as a question, but more as an angry statement. She regained her composure and set down the four rows of crocheting that she had finished. With as much self-control as she could muster, she looked at him and replied, “I’m making an afghan.”
He stood in the doorway, his large frame filling it. The look of displeasure on his face was more than apparent. “I can see that!”
Surprised by his response, Belle raised her eyebrows. “Then why did you ask?”
He raised his hand and pointed at the yarn on the table. “I meant that yarn! Where did you get that?”
Confused, Belle reached for one of the skeins. “This? Why, I found it in the basement.”
He stormed across the room and snatched it from her hand. “That is not yours!”
Belle frowned, pursing her lips together. “Adam. It does no one any good in a cabinet, does it now? Besides, who else would be using it?”
“It was my mother’s!” he practically growled at her.
But, this time, Belle was not intimidated. She stood up and faced him, squaring her shoulders and meeting his eyes. Reaching out, she snatched back the skein and held it against her chest. “Regardless of whose it might have been, from the looks of the basement, no one has been down there for years. I may not know much about you or your family, but I can guess your mother would not want the yarn going to waste. Especially since her new daughter—your chosen fraa, might I remind you?—is using it!”
Adam glared at her.
When he did not respond, Belle presumed that she had made her point. Carefully, she laid her crocheting onto the table and stood up. She clasped her hands before her waist as she faced him. “Now, since it is almost noon, I’ll happily prepare you some dinner.”
He glanced around the kitchen.
“Nee, Adam, I’ve yet to start cooking. You didn’t come to the haus for dinner for the last three days. I thought it better to wait to cook for you, rather than waste food. It won’t take me but a few minutes to prepare it, though. Perhaps you might wash up in the meantime.”
He grunted, but, to her surprise, he followed her suggestion.
For some reason that Belle could not understand, his acquiescence made her heart race. Why had he decided to come into the house today? She hadn’t seen him at dinner since Saturday, although the previous few evenings he had come in for supper. Always for supper
, it seemed.
She busied herself with heating up leftovers from the previous day. She had made fried chicken and mashed potatoes, and while they were warming in the oven, she sliced some fresh bread to set upon the table, along with some homemade butter and ajar of store-bought jam.
When she finally joined Adam at the table, the kitchen had taken on the scents of a home, and the table was covered with enough food to restore his energy for an afternoon of work.
She lowered her head for the silent prayer, thanking God for the bounty of the food that she was about to eat (and adding a quick prayer that Adam might soften his harsh tone with her). When she looked up, she noticed that Adam had waited for her to finish. Small miracles, she thought.
“You have been busy these past few days,” she said as a way to ease into conversation.
He dished the food onto his plate, heaping a pile of potatoes alongside two big pieces of fried chicken. Belle watched, amused at first, and then horrified when he took three pieces of bread and began spreading butter over them with such force that the bread crumbled.
“Oh, help!”
“What?” he asked before taking a large bite of the bread.
“I imagine you must be rather hungry, then,” she commented, not hiding the disapproval in her voice. “You are eating like a starved horse!”
He glanced down at his plate and then back at her. “That is the point of the noon meal, ja? Eating?”
“Well, one might slow down to enjoy it a bit.” As if to prove her point, she began to dish regular-sized portions onto her plate. “And the other point of meals is fellowship.” Setting down the bowl of potatoes, she looked at him and forced a small smile. “It hasn’t been a whole week, Adam, and I know even less about you than before our . . .” She hesitated before she added the word “wedding.”