by Gayle Roper
Jake came through the doorway into the great room that filled the first floor of the Zooks’ home just in time to hear me tell Mary I was fine. He made a noise of disagreement. I pointedly ignored him and let his mother pat my hand.
Next thing I knew Mary was wiping my face with a cool cloth and fragrant tea was waiting for me on the little table beside my chair.
“Thank you,” I whispered, as I rested my head against the back of the rocker. What a luxury, being cared for like this! I tried to remember the last time anyone had done something special for me. I couldn’t come up with a single incident. I was the one who cared, not the one cared for.
I was so emotionally weak that I had to keep my eyes closed a few minutes or more tears of self-pity would have fallen.
I felt Jake’s eyes on me. When I finally looked at him, he gave me a half-smile as if to say, “See? You love being fussed over just like everyone else. And if you need to cry some more, it’s okay.”
Then he winked, and I swear I blushed.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Rose?” Esther hovered over me, her brown eyes wide with concern, her rosy cheeks stained a deeper pink than usual.
Esther wasn’t a Zook, but during the summer after Mary fell down the stairs, she had come to serve as a maud or maid for the family, something unmarried women often did within the Community when the need arose. Expediency dictated that the men of the family, needed in the fields, not care for Mary. So Esther had moved into the room vacated when Mary and John’s daughter Ruth had married and moved to Honey Brook with her husband Isaiah.
I smiled at Esther. She was so beautiful with her head of rich, thick chestnut hair caught beneath her organdy kapp, but I couldn’t tell her. She wouldn’t like the compliment or the attention; it would embarrass her. Her whole life she had been taught to emphasize community at the cost of self, and compliments emphasized the individual in a most prideful way.
“I’m fine, Esther,” I assured her. I took a drink of tea, jerking as I scorched my tongue. “Really, I’m fine.”
I ignored Jake as he gave another soft snort of disbelief. The man could say more with throat noises than anyone I knew.
Esther didn’t look any more convinced about my condition than Jake, so I forced myself to sit up straight in Mary’s rocker. I’d be fine if it was the last thing I did.
Mary went to the kitchen with the damp cloth in her hand, and I sat up straighter still as I realized she was walking with a limp.
“Mary! Your leg!”
She turned and shrugged. “Some days it’s better than others, but it’s always bad at night when I’m tired.”
“Arthritis?”
She sighed. “In the ankle and the hip. I tell John that I am a better forecaster of rain than that forecaster he has in the barn.” She walked to me with a freshened cloth which she put across my forehead. “But it’s you we’re worried about.”
“A couple of her friends died today,” Jake said. “It’s hit her hard.”
Mary looked horrified. “I should think so.” And she gently ran her hand over my hair until I felt like Hawk.
“Mom,” Jake said gently, “you’re hovering.”
Mary immediately withdrew her hand.
“No,” I said. “Don’t listen to him. Hover. Please.”
She placed her hand gently on my head for a minute, and then took a chair near me. “You drink your tea,” she ordered. “Then Esther can take you up to Cara’s old rooms. They’re empty and clean, and Esther made up the bed for you.”
I smiled at the thought of Cara, married three weeks ago to her Todd. We had all been at the wedding though Mary and John hadn’t stayed for the reception.
“Oh, Mary!” I was touched by her kindness. “I can’t stay. I need to get home.”
“Why?”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “Why?”
I sputtered a bit but could come up with no good reason. No one waited for me there, not even a cat. My landlord wouldn’t allow pets. No one would know whether I slept in my own bed or not. Certainly no one would care.
“In fact,” Jake said, “I think you should stay the whole weekend.” He looked at his mother who nodded her strong agreement.
“Oh, I couldn’t!” But the thought of being around these caring, thoughtful people instead of alone with the nightmares of today was so attractive.
“Certainly you could,” said Mary. “Please stay.”
Esther nodded.
I wondered what the sleeping John and Elam would think when they rose at dawn and found yet another English girl invading their house. I decided suddenly that I didn’t care. I had cried out to God that I couldn’t handle my memories, that I needed help. He had given me the Zooks.
“Yes,” I said, feeling tears again, but this time they were good tears. “I’d love to stay.”
“Okay,” Jake said. “Finish your tea, and I’ll drive you to your place to get whatever you need.”
“That’s okay,” I said automatically. “I can get the things myself.”
“No, Rose, you can’t.” Jake’s tone of voice brooked no argument.
I argued anyway. “I’ll zip right over and be back in no time.” I stood.
“You really have a hard time accepting help, don’t you?” He wheeled directly in front of me, blocking my exit.
“Jake,” Mary murmured. “She’s had a hard day.”
“She’s got a hard head, you mean.”
I was stung by his comment. “I do not! It’s just that I can take care of myself.”
“Who said you couldn’t?”
“You!” I stared daggers at him.
“All I did was offer to take you so you wouldn’t have to drive, upset as you are. I was being nice, for heaven’s sake!”
“Yeah. Right. Such a fine gentleman.” I flushed, immediately ashamed of my sarcasm. He was being nice.
“Rose, you will let me drive you. You will come along quietly. You will stop being so hardheaded.” He said it all through clenched teeth.
“Rose,” Esther said quietly, “you must allow Jake to help you. You mustn’t deny him that blessing.”
I stared at her. Helping me would be a blessing to Jake? There was a novel idea. While I wasn’t convinced, I recognized a better part of wisdom is knowing when you’re beaten.
“You’re right, Esther.” I offered her a weak smile. When I looked at Jake, I couldn’t quite sustain the smile. “Thanks, Jake,” I said stiffly.
I’ll give Jake credit. He didn’t gloat, not even once, as we went out to his van.
He drove with confidence and competence, his hands quick on the controls. He parked in front of the house where I had a small apartment on the second floor. I ran in, grabbed a duffel bag, and packed for the weekend. I stashed two novels and my Bible on top of my clothes. As I pulled the front door closed, I was glad I wasn’t going to be here alone for two days.
We made the entire trip back to the farm in silence, but it was a comfortable hush that spoke of friendship and ease. All of my anger was long gone as was his frustration with my immature refusal of help. I guess one definition of friendship could be when one friend sees the other at her worst and doesn’t hold it against her.
Jake left me at the foot of the stairs to his parents’ house. There he whispered, “Sleep well, Rose.”
I bent and kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry for being so ungrateful. I don’t know what I would have done without you, and I don’t know how to thank you.”
As I straightened, he ran a finger down my cheek. “Then don’t try.” And he wheeled away.
When I woke the next morning, I lay in bed staring at walls so white they shimmered in the sunlight. I shivered in the crisp cold and pulled the quilt, a patchwork of crimson and blue calicos, more tightly about my shoulders. I turned my head and saw a cluster of white, yellow, and ruby mums, surely the last of the season, squished rather inelegantly into a Mason jar. I hadn’t even noticed them last night, but I imagined Esther had brought them for m
e from her own room.
I was in the apartment that Kristie and then Cara had rented prior to their marriages. I was sleeping in the bedroom directly above Jake’s bedroom, occupying one of the rooms on the second floor of the grossdawdy haus.
Jake’s grandparents had originally lived here when they retired from the main responsibility for the farm, turning both the farm and the main house over to John, Mary, and their family. The senior Zooks had been killed several years ago in a buggy-car accident, something that used to be a much more frequent occurrence before the Amish began putting reflective triangles and blinking lights powered by batteries on the back of their buggies. They also added bicycle reflectors around the two sides and top of the buggies, sprinkled there much as the blood of lambs must have been sprinkled on the doorposts and lintels of the Israelites in ancient Egypt. Now on a dark night, a driver had warning before he was suddenly on top of the slow-moving buggies.
The grossdawdy haus had a small living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bath on Jake’s level. On my level were two good-sized rooms—the bedroom I was in and a living room—and a small bath.
I knew that when Jake had come home from the rehab facility after his accident, his parents had realized he’d never be Plain again. The need to accommodate their injured son had caused them to play mental tag with the Ordnung, the oral collection of laws that govern Amish society. They had brought in electricity and phone service to this wing of their home, providing exactly what Jake needed: privacy and convenience with help as close as his parents in the main body of the house. Since the electricity and phone didn’t go into the main house, Mary and John hadn’t actually broken the Ordnung, though a legalist could argue that they had bent it a fair amount.
The thing that always fascinated me about the Ordnung was that it was both elastic and brittle. It changed constantly as the bishops regularly evaluated modern life to see if new inventions and products would aid or disrupt family and church. Seen as acceptable were John’s weather forecaster in the barn and the iron wheeled tractor he drove in the barnyard. But if he drove that tractor into the fields or if he traded that forecaster for a regular radio, he would be in big trouble with the church authorities.
Accommodation, I thought. Yet these hair-splitting laws weren’t arbitrary, even though they frequently seemed so to us fancy folk. They were designed to preserve family and church, to insure the well-being of the community as opposed to the tastes of the individual.
Tractors in the field made the small Amish farms too small to be family undertakings. Children wouldn’t be needed to work alongside and be trained by their fathers. Grown sons and daughters would have to go elsewhere to seek employment. Family would disintegrate.
Radios brought godless music, vain teachings, and the outside world to a people who believed their closed community was God’s chosen way. The unvetted ideas, greed, and individuality promoted on the airwaves were certain to overwhelm the People unless the very presence of these dangers was forbidden.
If the Ordnung was broken and the community was threatened, it was serious indeed. It was sin and a shunnable offense.
I snuggled down further under the quilt and thought of Jake somewhere in the rooms below me. For reasons of his own, he’d rejected the Ordnung and the Plain life. When he’d begun his teenage rebellion, his rumspringa, he’d not stopped until his motorcycle landed on his back. And even then, he’d continued to rebel in his heart.
I sighed. Jake and his complexities were more than I could deal with this morning, at least before a shower and a cup of coffee. I glanced at the window again and could see rime about the edges of the glass, crystal shards growing across the pane in an intricate and beautiful pattern. I shivered. The room was frigid with a late November chill since in the chaos of last night, no one had thought to turn on the electric strip heater.
The chaos of last night. My shivering was suddenly not caused by the chill.
Sophie! And Ammon! And poor Peter, left all alone.
And flashing lights and crackling radios and memories long feared.
I sat up abruptly and felt the fear lessen as the cold wrapped its tentacles about me. I pressed my hands to my eyes.
Don’t think of explosions and fires and screaming. Don’t think of static and flashing lights. Oh God, please don’t let me think about it! Help me remember how wonderful Sophie was, how funny she was, always with spirit and pluck even at the worst of times.
And I remembered the wig Ammon had bought her to help her deal with her hair loss from the chemotherapy.
“I’ll look like a poor man’s Dolly Parton in that thing,” she told me in disgust. “I know he meant well, but who does he think I am?” And she began to sing very off-key about knowing when to fold ’em and when to hold ’em.
“Wrong singer,” I said as I looked at the veritable mountain of blonde ringlets lying on her bureau. “But you’re right. That thing is hardly the epitome of country club chic.”
“Country club chic? Is that how you see me?” Sophie looked pleased.
“Sure. Pageboys, Lilly Pulitzer prints, Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dresses, and small gold stud earrings. Not country western excess.”
We both stared at the appalling wig. Sadly it did remind me of Ammon: lots of good overblown intentions but no sense of rightness or feel for his market.
He’d recently had Pockets introduce a line of tacky plastic cars for almost the same price as the fine metal ones. From the little bit of conversation I’d overheard between the brothers and Sophie, the plastic cars were bombing big-time. Peter ranted about the cost of retooling production plants and the waste of advertising dollars on this fiasco. Sophie had begged Ammon to drop the inferior product before it undercut the reputation of the superior one. To my knowledge the issue had never been resolved.
Sophie looked from the wig to me. “You put it on, Rose,” she ordered from her recliner. She raked a hand through what little hair remained on her head. When a fistful detached in her fingers, she looked at the clump in disgust. “I’m never wearing that wig, but I don’t feature going out looking like Cameron Diaz in My Sister’s Keeper either. I’ll go the hat and scarf route. Now try that thing on. I want to see how ugly I’d have looked.”
I laughed but made no move toward the wig. Instead I pulled out my blood pressure cuff.
She watched as I suddenly became incredibly focused on my work. She grinned. “No, you don’t. You can’t escape that easily.”
I pretended I’d suddenly gone deaf.
“You know how important a patient’s mental outlook is in her struggle with her illness,” Sophie said in her best rich matron voice. “Well, my mental health today depends on you trying on that monstrosity.” I looked at her askance. “You just want to laugh at me,” I said.
“It’s better than laughing at me.” She pushed herself up against her pillows, leaned over, and dropped her swatch of real hair in the wastebasket. “Lots better.”
I lay the cuff on the night table and walked reluctantly to the bureau. I picked up the blonde ringlets, amazed at how heavy it was.
“This thing weighs enough to give me a permanent headache.” I held it as far away as my arm would reach, my lip curling in disdain.
“Then I’ll give you an aspirin,” Sophie said. “Try it on.”
“It’ll mess up my hair,” I said in a last ditch effort to avoid the inevitable.
“So comb it,” she said unsympathetically. “And if you don’t have a comb or brush with you,” she hurried on when I opened my mouth to offer just that excuse, “you can use one of mine. Or your fingers if you’re too fastidious to share a comb.”
“It’s a good thing you’re not the nurse,” I grumped. “You have no compassion.”
She grinned unrepentantly. “But I love a good laugh.”
“At my expense,” I groused as I lowered the mass of blonde curls onto my head.
Immediately Rose Martin, BSN, EMT, familiar person with a no-nonsense, short cut to her everyday curl
y, brown hair disappeared, and a brassy blonde with ringlets over my shoulders materialized. I shuddered as I studied my reflection.
“Cute,” said a voice from the door, and Peter walked in.
I grabbed the thing and threw it back on the bureau. It lay there like a small alien beast ready to pounce. I could swear I saw the hair rise and fall as it breathed. “If it’s so cute, why are you smirking?”
“I always take my social cues from my mother.”
I spun to Sophie and saw her unabashed grin. Then she made a big deal of trying to look contrite. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
“Like I believe that. But I’ll get the last laugh. I use needles.”
Sophie eyed the wig. “If you don’t want to wear the thing, I think I’ll breed it. It’ll be the latest fad. I’ll call it the Ammonopolus in honor of my elder son. After all, Ammon’s a blond.”
Ammon was tall, fair, and blue eyed like his father had been. In fact, he looked amazingly like the pictures of Tom Hostetter that sat in marvelous ornate frames all over the house.
Sadly, I often suspected that this physical resemblance was the extent of Ammon’s similarity to his brilliant and principled father. Not that Ammon was weak or unintelligent. He was just…ordinary. A regular person. Someone most families would be proud of, even boast about, but who didn’t hold a candle to his clever, inventive father.
But Sophie saw him as his father’s equal in spite of the plastic cars. Even as I disagreed with her estimation, I appreciated her mother’s heart.
Peter, in contrast to his brother, was Sophie’s image: short, dark, and intense though he didn’t have her God-heart. He was handsome, but her fine aristocratic features were blurred a bit in him, like he was a poor copy in which all the colors ran a bit at the edges. Her great, almost black eyes gleamed with life; Peter’s merely saw things. Her quick mind made her conversation lively; Peter merely talked.
But again Sophie never saw her son as less than wonderful. Her mother’s love wouldn’t let her.