Christmas Visitor

by Linda Byler

  Calm. I will remain calm, Ruth thought. She scooped up Lillian and checked her head for injuries. Her searching fingers found a large goose egg protruding from her daughter’s scalp.

  “Hush. Hush, Lillian. It’s alright,” she said softly, which did no good as her words were buried under a fresh supply of howling.

  “Roy. Barbara. Stop. Go sit on the bench until you can be quiet.”

  “It was her!”

  “It was Roy!”

  “It was not. She started it!”

  With Lillian on her hip, Ruth grasped Roy firmly by his shoulder and steered him in the direction of the wooden bench by the back door. Barbara followed, shamefaced.

  As she went through the laundry room door, she could hear little Benjamin crying lustily from his playpen, and by the look of his tired, wet face, he had been crying steadily for some time.

  Setting Lillian on the couch, Ruth crunched a few saltine crackers beneath her feet as she made her way to Baby Benjy, as they’d come to call him. She had to kick a plastic bucket of toys aside before reaching to extract him from the confines of his playpen.

  What was most important here? She put Benjy in his baby swing and pressed the button to set it into motion as she mentally reviewed Lillian’s fall, wondering if she should be taken somewhere. The ER was the only service available if she had a serious injury at this time of the evening.

  Hadn’t she heard somewhere that if a child yells and cries, it’s not too serious? Or if a bump appears on the skull? Was that a myth? She could hear her mother saying that if the lump goes in but is not visible on the outside, it can be fatal.

  A stab of fear made her cringe, the reality of Lillian’s head injury looming ahead of her. She had fifty-seven dollars in her checking account. That was all. The ER would send a bill, and then there was the amount she would have to pay the driver she’d need to hire.

  She held Lillian and felt the lump, undecided. She looked up to find Roy and Barbara entering the kitchen, followed by Elmer and Esther, their eyes wide with concern.

  “Is she hurt seriously?”

  “Is she okay?”

  Ruth nodded, assuring them, but she was still unsure about whether Lillian should be seen by a doctor. The last thing she needed was another bill to pay, but her daughter’s health was her first priority, she knew.

  Oh, Ben.

  She held Lillian, and Esther reached for Benjamin, who was not settling down. Ruth maintained a calm appearance as she tried to think rationally while watching Lillian’s face, where the color slowly drained away until even her lips were alarmingly pale. What should she do?

  She decided to watch her for an hour, then take action. She put a cool washcloth on Lillian’s forehead and gave her a dropper filled with children’s grape flavored Tylenol. The generic brand at Walmart had been half the price, thank goodness. Lillian swallowed dutifully, sighed, whimpered, and lay very still against her mother’s breast.

  Don’t let them sleep. She could hear her old family doctor’s voice as clearly as if he was in the room. Lillian’s eyelids sank lower, and Ruth shifted her position to keep her awake.

  “Lillian!”

  She began to cry.

  “Elmer, go get Mamie. Please?”

  “Alright.”

  Instantly, he was out the door. Ruth was thankful for Elmer’s obedience and wanted to remember to tell him so.

  “Esther, would you please pick up toys? Roy, please get the broom and sweep up these crackers.”

  They both did her bidding quietly, with reverence for their injured sister worrying them into obedience. Barbara brought a light blanket, and Ruth smiled at her as she covered Lillian’s legs.

  When Lillian’s eyes began to close again, Ruth sat her up, saying, “Lillian!”

  She was immensely grateful to see her neighbor, Mamie Stoltzfus, wife of Ephraim, come through the front door with her youngest, Waynie, hanging haphazardly on her plump hip. His thin blond hair was matted, his nose running, his blue eyes alight with interest—a small replica of his mother.

  Mamie was what Ruth lovingly called “roly-poly.” She was a heavy woman, though tall, with thinning hair and bright blue eyes. She viewed the world through rosy lenses, an extension of her heart overflowing with love and compassion toward every person she had the pleasure of knowing.

  “Ach (oh) my, Ruth.”

  She bent to look at Lillian with Waynie bobbing along on her hip. She felt the large lump, stepped back to look at Lillian’s face, and lifted the eyelids to look for contraction in the pupils. Then she clucked.

  Ruth was assailed by odors of cooking and baking, twice weekly baths, Waynie’s unchanged cloth diaper, and other smells associated with Mamie’s relaxed approach to life.

  “What happened? Here, Waynie, you sit here. Look, there’s a car. You want to play with the toys? Look, there’s a teddy!”

  Waynie gurgled happily and crawled across the floor, his questionable odor following him. Mamie grunted and straightened her substantial frame before sitting down beside Ruth, who promptly leaned against her as the cushions flattened under Mamie.

  “The children were playing and knocked her over. She hit her head against the corner of the sandbox. She really cried.”

  “Oh, she looks aright. Some color’s coming back to her cheeks. Gel, Lillian? Gel, doo bisht alright. Gel? (Right, you will be fine. Right?)”

  Nodding and smiling, Maime reached for her neighbor’s daughter, her arms and hands and heart needing to be about their business. She gathered Lillian against her greasy dress front and kissed her cheek.

  “Bisht falla? (Did you fall?)”

  Suddenly, Lillian sat straight up and said, “I broke my head apart.”

  “You did? Just like Humpty Dumpty?”

  Lillian nodded and giggled, watching Waynie crawl in pursuit of a rolling ball. She pushed against Mamie’s red hands and slid off her lap. She walked steadily over to Waynie and patted his bottom, giggling.

  Tears sprang to Ruth’s eyes, and her knees became weak with relief. Mamie beamed and said Lillian had quite a bump there but by all appearances would be fine.

  “You wouldn’t have a doctor examine her?”

  “No. She just had a good tap on her head.”

  “Tap?”

  Ruth shook her head, laughing.

  As the sun made a glorious exit behind the oak tree, Mamie settled herself into a kitchen chair with a cup of hot spearmint tea and a plate of chocolate peanut butter bars.

  “You didn’t need to do this,” she chortled happily, immensely pleased at the prospect of visiting with Ruth.

  “No, no, it’s okay. I need something to pick me up after that scare,” Ruth assured her.

  “I can’t imagine life without Ephraim,” Mamie said, quick tears of sympathy appearing in her happy eyes.

  Ruth nodded, then sent the older children out to finish the removal of the cornstalks. After they’d gone, she turned to Mamie.

  “It’s not always easy, although I can’t complain. I have so much to be thankful for, in so many ways.”

  Mamie dipped a bar into her heavily sugared tea, then clucked in dismay when it broke apart and the wet part disappeared into the hot liquid. Quickly, Ruth was on her feet to get a spoon, but Mamie held one up, laughing, and fished the wet particles out of the tea.

  “Drowned my chocolate chip bar! Oh well.”

  She slurped mightily as she bit into another half of a bar. She nodded her head in appreciation and shook her spoon in Ruth’s direction as she chewed, an indication of the volley of words that was to follow.

  “I don’t know how you do it. Everything so neat and clean. Your work is always done. You just glide seamlessly through your days and never complain. Waynie, no. Don’t. As I was saying, how can you handle all your children, and get your work done? Waynie, no.”

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nbsp; She heaved herself off the chair and extracted her young son from a potted plant, as Ruth winced at the trail of potting soil spreading across the linoleum, which was apparently invisible to Mamie.

  Mamie settled Waynie on her lap and began feeding him chunks of the chocolate chip bar.

  “You know Mert Ordwich died?”

  “Who?”

  “Mert. You know, the feed salesman. Oh, I forgot. You’re not on the farm. Well, he had hardening of the arteries and wouldn’t go to the doctor. That’s how thick headed he was. Ephraim says he’s stubborn as a mule. He was. I doubt if he is now anymore. We went to his viewing last night. The line was so long, and my feet hurt so bad. There we stood and stood, on and on. He didn’t look like Mert. His face was so puffy.”

  Mamie looked at Lillian.

  “She seems perfectly alright. Anyway…Waynie, komm. As I was saying, they say the David Petersheim place is sold. Eli Kings were standing in line with us. They said a young bachelor bought it. We…I don’t know if he’s a bachelor. I shouldn’t say. He’s single, but he’s going with Paul King’s Anna.”

  Ruth chuckled.

  “He’s single, but he’s dating?”

  Mamie laughed uproariously and thumped the table solidly in a most unladylike manner. Ruth watched her and felt her spirits lifting. She was also relieved knowing Lillian would be alright, and she was glad.

  “Ach Ruth, I’m getting old. I say the dumbest things. You know what I mean. He’s pretty old—to be unmarried. Anyway, he must have money, or his father does, paying four hundred and some thousand.”

  Mamie paused as she reached for another cookie bar.

  “I’ll just eat this one, and then I have to go. Oh, I meant to ask you. We have a shopping trip planned at the end of October—early Christmas shopping. Would you want to go with me and a few others?”

  Ruth simply didn’t know what to say. How could she respond honestly and yet keep her pride intact at the same time? So she hesitated, pulled Lillian onto her lap, and checked the lump on her head to buy time. Then she answered Mamie.

  “I’ll see.”

  “Good! Oh, I hope you can go! We’d love to have you.”

  Later that night, when the late September moon had risen above the oak tree and bathed the small house in a soft, white glow, Ruth lay in her king sized bed, her eyes wide, her mind churning with endless questions and possibilities. What to do?

  No one was aware of the state of her bank account. No one would need to know. Times were difficult for many people. They all had enough to do, simply staying afloat, paying mortgages, and providing for their own large families.

  “Arme vitve, vine nicht (Poor widow, do not cry).”

  Is that really what she was? How had it happened? How had she been toppled from her pedestal as Ben’s loving wife? Toppled and broken into a million pieces. Would she ever find a way out of this labyrinth of personal fear of failure? Could she survive financially, as a lone parent, raising these fast growing and maturing children? And these boys. They so desperately needed a father figure in their lives.

  Well, the fifty-seven dollars would hold them a few weeks. Then she’d either have to beg from her parents, or…or what?

  The quilt was almost finished. She had four hundred yards of thread in it so far. At seventy-five cents a yard, that would be three hundred dollars. The gas bill was almost a hundred and forty dollars, and the telephone maybe fifty or sixty.

  She’d go to B. B.’s Store, the bent and dent grocery in Quarryville. If she was especially careful, she could make do on seventy or eighty dollars.

  The horse feed was about all gone. Well, they’d have to wait till another quilt was finished. In a few more years, the boys would be fourteen and fifteen and able to earn a few dollars, but until then…she didn’t know.

  She rolled on her side and punched her pillow into a different shape. Then she stretched out her arm, her fingers searching for Lillian’s small form, and checked the rise and fall of her daughter’s breath, feeling that comforting, even rhythm that assured Ruth she was alright.

  Mamie was a treasure, asking her to go Christmas shopping with the others. Should Ruth have been honest with her? So far, she had no clue how they would celebrate Christmas—with gifts, anyway. Perhaps this year she would tell the children they would receive gifts from their grandparents and the teacher at school, but since their dat was no longer here, they wouldn’t have Christmas gifts at home.

  How could she manage?

  Elmer and Esther would understand. She pictured Elmer with his shoulders held too high and his hands in his pockets, the “little man” stance he’d developed in the past five months. Ruth ached with love for her eldest son.

  How could she—if she had a chance—replace Ben? How did one go about procuring a replacement for a husband? She guessed she couldn’t. At least not outwardly.

  There came a time, though, when she had to wonder what God had in store. Did He think it was best to stay alone? Was there anyone who would even consider taking the wild leap into the chaotic lives of six children and their mother?

  She remembered the emotion her sister, Verna, had shown. But that Vern was something else—slightly unstable. Ruth thought of the wrinkled, yellowing handkerchief, knowing it wasn’t laundered properly and had never seen an iron.

  None of the sisters knew why Verna was that way. Verna herself claimed she was adopted. She didn’t care one whit about her yard or garden or housework. She bought all her canned goods at B. B.’s Store in Quarryville, saying she could buy them cheaper than she could can them herself.

  She pieced quilts and bought Little Debbies for her children, or Nutter Butters or Chips Ahoy. Her oldest, named Ellen—Mam had a fit about that fancy name—did the washing just as fast as she could without paying much attention to the outcome.

  The thought of her sister and her questionable laundry was the deciding factor between sleep and more tumbling thoughts of worry. Ruth barely had time to pull Lillian’s softly breathing form against her own before giving into asleep.

  Ruth walked toward the house, leafing through her mail as the October wind caught her skirt and whipped it around her knees. The gas bill, a few cards from folks in the community who remembered to send lines of encouragement—sometimes containing crisp twenty dollar bills—some junk mail, an offer for a credit card, which was tempting.

  Hmm.

  A letter with no stamp? Without her full address? She struggled to pull the storm door completely shut and then laid the mail on the kitchen table before hanging her black sweater on the row of hooks by the wringer washer.

  Shivering, she sat down to open her mail. She found nothing unusual, but she was grateful for the cards with the usual verses, a token of care sent by people she did not know.

  She saved the one without a stamp for last, somehow savoring the mystery of it. She blinked and caught her breath. The envelope contained a plain sheet of notebook paper from an ordinary composition book with the loose fragments of paper still hanging from the holes where it had been torn from the notebook.

  One, two, three….She almost stopped counting as her heart started beating wildly in her chest. Ten. There were ten one hundred dollar bills. There was no greeting and no name.

  She hadn’t planned on crying. It just happened, starting with her nostrils burning and a huge lump in her throat that was relieved only when the splash of tears began. She folded her arms on top of the mail on the oak table and let the wonder of this generous gift overtake her.

  “Mam?”

  Elmer’s concern forced her to lift her head. She felt guilty now to be indulging in these senseless tears.

  “I’m sorry, Elmer.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Silently she handed the money to him and watched through blurred vision as he counted, then whistled softly.

  “We’re rich!”
r />   “What?! What?!”

  Roy came bouncing over with Barbara at his heels. That was the one thing Ruth would never understand—the way Barbara did that, always going where Roy went, only to be constantly irritated by his antics.

  “Somebody gave us a bunch of money!”

  “Let me see.”

  It was October eleventh, the day most Amish people set aside as a day of fasting and prayer in order to prepare themselves for the fall communion services. Ruth had always relished this rare day of relaxation to spend with Ben and the children. The day was an uninterrupted one, sanctioned for the reading of the German articles of faith or the prayer book, the traditional books read and re-read by generations of Old Order Amish.

  There was no breakfast for Ruth on fasting day, but she prepared buttered toast and Honey Nut Cheerios for the children. Lillian, of course, refused them, saying she wanted Trix. In her frustration, Lillian kicked the bench from her perch on the blue plastic booster seat and cried, squeezing her eyes shut and turning her head from side to side until the other children laughed at her. Then she lifted her face with her eyes closed and just howled because they were laughing, and Ruth had to shush the older ones. She took Lillian away from the table and talked to her firmly, saying there were no Trix in the house and if she wouldn’t eat Cheerios, she would have nothing at all and would be just like the three little pigs who were lazy and the wolf blew their house away.

  That made Lillian sit up straight and open her eyes. She told Ruth that a wolf could not blow houses away, but the story had served to get her mind off the Trix. She ate her Cheerios, and general peace was restored.

  Ruth read her Luscht Gartlein (Love Garden), her soul blossoming and unfolding, as it received the simple German words about the wise ways one could live a good and Godly life. The reading of the German took more of her time, but she savored the pronunciation and the meaning of these words, remembering the agelessness of them.

  At noon, she fried corn meal mush, cutting the squares from the aluminum cake pan and frying them in vegetable oil. It was Elmer’s favorite for fasht dag (fast day) lunch. Ruth heated milk in a small saucepan and then poured it over a bowl full of saltines and covered them with a plate while she fried eggs.