Balm of Gilead

by Adina Senft

  He glanced at the clock on the top of the stove. “We need to be home by six.”

  “You will. It’s only over the hill.”

  “I mean, Ginny’s home.”

  Her stomach dipped as she realized how much had changed while she was determined not to look. “Well, maybe ten minutes will still do some good. I’ll put some more in a quart jar and you can take it with you when you leave. Soak them again in the morning before you start work. I don’t want those wounds to get infected, Henry, or you’ll be in even more difficulty.”

  “I know, and I appreciate that.” He submerged his hands obediently.

  “Is this the cure, then?” Rafe said, watching the proceedings with interest.

  Sarah shook her head. “According to my book, the best thing is balm of Gilead, which is made from the sap of poplar buds.”

  Rafe looked as though she’d just given him a present. “You mean there really is balm in Gilead?”

  She smiled at him. “It seems there is somewhere—I just wish I had some.”

  “You don’t?” Henry asked.

  “No,” Sarah admitted. “Poplars bud in very early spring, and we’re only in October now. But Ruth will know where to get some. Oh, I wish you’d come sooner. I was there for my lesson only yesterday and I could have asked her.”

  “Ruth is what the Amish call a Dokterfraa,” Henry explained. “Sarah is learning herbal medicine from her, but Ruth lives in Whinburg, which you would have driven through on your way here.”

  “Whinburg’s not so far,” Rafe said. “Just a few minutes.”

  “Not with a horse and buggy,” Sarah told him. “It’s an all-day journey for us, there and back.”

  “Ah. Well, maybe we could take you over tomorrow in the car,” Rafe said. “Ginny’s promised me a tour of the township, and I can’t think of anything more interesting than meeting another Amish woman in your line of work—a Dokterfraa.”

  Sarah smiled at his pronunciation, but gave him credit for trying to say it. “Would eight o’clock be all right, then?” she asked. “Ruth usually opens her door for the day at nine, but she won’t mind if we come a little early. Like us, they’re up at four.”

  Rafe glanced at Henry. “Is Ginny planning on serving breakfast?”

  “I’m sure she is. But we’ll be back by nine.”

  “Donnée will appreciate the sleep-in, then…she hardly ever gets a chance to do that. She works as hard as I do.”

  “What do you do for your living?” Sarah asked.

  “I’m a pastor at the Episcopal Gospel Church of Douglastown. That’s a neighborhood in Philadelphia.”

  Sarah nodded, and hoped her thoughts weren’t open for anyone to read on her face. She bottled up the quart of the calendula wash for Henry in a Mason jar and sent them on their way so they wouldn’t be late for Ginny’s dinner. When they were gone, she sank into what had become her reading and sewing chair in the front room.

  Caleb would be home any minute, and Simon had promised to be back for supper, so she might only have a few minutes alone to think.

  She’d resolutely managed not to think about Henry for all these weeks, and now here he’d come into her kitchen, needing help and undoing all the good work she’d accomplished. And with a worldly pastor as a future father-in-law! There was some kind of ironic justice in that, wasn’t there—to run so far from God, only to marry into the family of a man who made God his business.

  But at the same time, there was a big difference. Henry could enjoy his father-in-law and even worship in that church with the long name. It wouldn’t be the same as giving his life to God in service. It wouldn’t mean Uffgeva, that giving up of one’s own will and doing the will of the Lord, as Jesus had done—of saying, “Not my will, Lord, but Thine be done.”

  And what about her? she thought in despair. Was this the Lord’s will for her—that her greatest temptation should be brought into her own kitchen for treatment so that she had to see him time and again before he was married? Even though Scripture said that God would not tempt her more than she could bear, Sarah wondered how she was going to manage it.

  Because this would rip the scab off the wound that Henry had dealt her on that summer evening in June, when she had met him on the hill and he had told her he was going to marry Ginny.

  Oh, she’d known then. Her own treacherous heart had been revealed to her in all its pain and glory, and it had taken her months to recover from it.

  She had made the mistake of allowing herself to care, and she’d been paying the price ever since.

  It had come on slowly at first—so slowly she’d hardly been aware of it. She and Henry had been friends, neighbors—as much as an Amish woman could be with a man who had walked away from the church and chosen to be Englisch. Somehow their lives had become entwined with those of several others over the summer, and they had become a team, time and circumstance binding them together with invisible cords. They felt good, those cords, soft and sweet and ever so dangerous because the sweetness hid the tiny thorns. Even Sarah couldn’t deny that having a male friend to whom she could say anything was a treasure she didn’t get to hold very often. Not since Michael’s death. So she had held it close—taken it out to examine its beauty—hoarded every feeling and look and shared moment of laughter or discovery.

  And then—the hill.

  She had realized to her mortification that his relationship with Ginny had progressed much further than she’d had any idea of because he hadn’t told her—further even than his own relatives knew. But God had told her.

  God had revealed her once and for all as a complete and utter fool.

  It simply wasn’t fair that when Henry needed help with his cracked hands, he turned to her instead of doing the sensible thing and making an appointment at the Mennonite cash-only medical clinic, or even going to the county hospital outside Whinburg. This was clearly God’s doing. He had brought Henry back to her to test her strength, and now it was up to her to be kind and professional and get his hands fixed up in the shortest time possible, and deliver him unscathed back to Ginny.

  Sarah curled up in the chair, pulled the afghan off the back of it, and buried her face in its comforting softness. And by the time Caleb and Simon came in a few minutes later, every last trace of her tears had been scrubbed away.

  Chapter 11

  The blessing a person always found at the bottom of a well of tears was the end of herself. There she found the place of prayer.

  As she knelt by the side of her bed the next morning, Sarah felt a kind of weary relief that she could hand the day over to God.

  Lord, You know my struggles, and how little sleep I’ve had. I know that I could tell Henry just to go to the clinic. But Your strength is sufficient for me, so I must trust You. I pray that Henry will find healing in Your hands for his—and for his spirit, too. Lord, if it’s Your will, I pray that You would draw him back to Yourself in love.

  She’d risen at four to make breakfast for Caleb and say prayers with him and Simon, and had his lunch bucket ready when he left at five. He got a ride with two of the other men on the crew, so he was always on the work site by six, which meant she had the use of the buggy if she needed it. When the car rolled into the driveway at eight, she and Simon had already had another cup of coffee together and cleaned up the kitchen, and she even had time to strip the dried flowers from a whole sack of lavender stems she’d collected earlier in September and had been drying upstairs.

  “I smell lavender this morning instead of fruit,” Rafe said as he held the car door for her, indicating she should sit in the front.

  There was no way she was going to sit beside Henry in the backseat, so she smiled as she folded herself in on the passenger side. “That’s because I was bagging it for sachets,” she told him as he backed the car around and headed up the lane. “I have them hanging in bunches upstairs in the boys’ rooms because it’s cleaner there than in the barn.”

  “Boys’ rooms are cleaner than a barn?” Rafe�
�s pretend amazement made Sarah laugh.

  “Mine are. They learned early that he who brings in dirt has to clean it out again, so they keep things tidy up there. And the lavender makes them sleep like logs…there’s a method to my madness, you see.”

  If only she’d thought to hang a few bunches in her own room last night.

  “How are your hands this morning, Henry?” she asked over her shoulder. “I see you have them wrapped in gauze.”

  “That was my daughter,” Rafe said. “Turn here?”

  “Yes, take the county highway for twelve miles, and turn right at the stop sign in Whinburg,” Henry said. “Ginny didn’t want me dripping blood on the furniture, so she soaked some gauze pads in your daisy water and wrapped them. Same again this morning. I don’t know if it’s healed them, but the skin around the cracked part isn’t so red.”

  “Then it’s done its job,” she assured him, pushing away the mental picture of Ginny ministering to him. While it would be Sarah’s place to do that if she were going to take him on as a patient, she couldn’t very well begrudge Ginny the privilege of loving service to the man she was going to marry.

  The fact that it irked her was annoying, even so.

  “We were watching a show on television,” Rafe said, driving with comfortable confidence. Henry stirred restlessly in the backseat. “It’s called Shunning Amish. Have you folks heard of it?”

  Sarah gazed at him, a little at sea. “A television program? About the Amish?”

  “More about those who have left the church,” Henry said.

  “Oh my,” Sarah said. Then, when she couldn’t control her curiosity and amazement any longer, she said, “Why on earth would you waste time with such a thing?”

  “Now see what you’ve done,” Henry grumbled to Rafe.

  “The folks who make the program want Henry to be on it,” Rafe told her.

  Every sensible word left her head as she goggled first at him, then at Henry, who looked as though he had a headache. “I know what you’re thinking, Sarah,” he said.

  “You do? Because I don’t know what to think. Are there really such crazy things out there? Why on earth would anyone want to watch a program about people who have left the church? Why not make a program about people who have left the…the Episcopal Gospel Church of Douglastown?”

  Rafe laughed while Henry simply shrugged. “It’s a mystery,” Henry said. “I’m with you—I don’t see the attraction. But apparently there is one.”

  “On the good side, millions of people will see Henry’s pottery,” Rafe put in.

  “And the Rose Arbor Inn,” Henry added. “Don’t forget that.”

  “And on the bad side?” she asked. “You talk about why you left everything you knew to take your own way in the world?”

  “Way to sugarcoat things, Sarah.” Henry shifted again and appeared to be trying to adjust the seat belt without using his sore hands to push against the upholstery of the car. “I write to my sisters the way I always have, and taking my own way doesn’t mean turning my back on God. Not that any Amish person would believe that.”

  Oh dear, she’d made him angry blurting out exactly what she thought. When would she learn to school her tongue to a soft answer? “I’m sorry, Henry. I sinned in saying those words and judging you. Please forgive me.” She swallowed. “But it’s so strange. I don’t understand this Englisch television at all.”

  “You might have liked the episode last night,” Rafe said. “It was about this group of young women who make quilts together. They all have low-income jobs, but they pool their spare change and make quilts out of used clothes they get at thrift shops and cut up. Apparently it’s cheaper than fabric yardage.”

  “Like a quilting frolic?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes,” Henry said. “One of them even makes pictures of Amish life and stitches them down. I forget what it’s called.”

  “Appliqué?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Many of the Mennonite ladies are very good at it. But we don’t use appliqué here. It’s too fancy.”

  “I know,” Henry said, “but this young lady isn’t bound by those rules anymore. I had to give her credit for taking what she knows and making art out of it. And a living, too, I hope.”

  “A better living now, I suspect,” Rafe said. “It’s a good bet those quilts are going to sell as fast as those girls can make them, after being on the show.” Sarah saw Rafe’s gaze lift to the rearview mirror, as though he were looking at Henry instead of the buggy they’d just passed.

  “If that’s a hint, it’s not a very subtle one,” Henry told him. “Don’t tell me you’re going over to Venezia’s side.”

  “Being outnumbered by females, I don’t take sides,” Rafe told him comfortably. “But I was impressed with one thing—the show didn’t sensationalize those girls or try to make them more or less than they are. The focus was on their taking the skills they learned in their Amish homes and translating that into making a living in their new world.”

  “If you’re drawing a parallel here, Rafe, I didn’t learn pottery until after I moved to Denver.”

  Sarah kept her thoughts to herself as Henry turned to look out the window at the familiar countryside. From what she could see, these girls they were talking about were living something close to an Amish life. But they had abandoned the church and its standards—of dress, of humility, of putting God first—and kept the parts they liked or could use. On the one hand, it was gut that they could make a living using what their mothers had taught them. On the other, couldn’t they have done that without giving up their faith?

  Didn’t Henry see the real parallel? In some ways, he was living an Amish life. He hadn’t put electricity in yet, even after half a year, and was running his home and studio on propane and the generator. He was the first to lend a helping hand when it was needed and the last to take credit for it. He might be on the Internet in a video for that department store, but he led a humble, self-effacing life otherwise.

  When someone left the Amish church, people called it “jumping the fence.” Why couldn’t he see that the only fence he had really jumped was that of his own will? It wouldn’t be such a leap to return to the church he had been brought up in, would it?

  Nor such a leap to come to her. Neh, you can’t think that way. That’s presumptuous and vain and just adds to your sins this morning—because what makes you think he would choose you anyway, even if he did come back?

  Sarah spent the last few miles hauling on the reins of her emotions, thankful beyond words for the stiff black brim of her away bonnet. In its sheltering modesty, no one could get a good look at her face.

  When they pulled into the Lehman yard, Isaac stepped out of the barn, wiping his hands on a rag. “Hallo,” he called when they got out. “Sarah, is everything all right?”

  She bumped the car door shut with her hip. “Ja, Isaac, all right. But Henry here is in some pain, and I wanted to see if Ruth has a certain cure on hand for him. So they drove me over.” She made the introductions quickly. “Rafe is interested in Ruth’s practice,” she explained.

  “Then let us find her.” Isaac led the way into the house, and across a kitchen smelling of warm peanut butter to the Dokterfraa’s compiling room, which had once been a screened-in porch.

  After Sarah had introduced Rafe and explained Henry’s problem, Ruth removed the gauze from Henry’s hands and looked them over, turning them this way and that. At last she nodded. “I agree that balm of Gilead is the right thing to use here. I have some, but it’s in the Gerlings’ freezer, two places down the road. They’re Englisch, but after I treated him for eczema, they offered their freezer if I needed it. I never thought of using such a thing before, but for out-of-season cures like this, it’s come in real handy.” Her granite gaze took in Henry and Rafe. “Maybe you’d want to visit with Isaac in the barn? We won’t be gone long—twenty minutes at most. Luckily all these peanut butter cookies are out of the oven.”

  The Gerlings had a dee
p chest freezer and had allotted Ruth one of the wire baskets that sat in the top. She retrieved a zip-top bag labeled POPLAR SAP, and after a few words of conversation with the lady of the house, she and Sarah set off again.

  “Is it true what I hear, that Henry is going to marry the woman who runs the Rose Arbor Inn?” Ruth asked as soon as they were on the road and out of earshot of anyone else.

  “Yes.” Best to keep this brief. “Before Christmas, I understand.”

  “This is the second time I’ve seen you here with him.”

  “Only because of the car.”

  “That’s not his car.”

  Sarah stopped, and simultaneously, both of them reached up to pick several bunches of rich purple elderberries from the wild tree nodding by the fence. When she’d filled her apron, Ruth was smiling. “I told you in the beginning that you had a calling. You look where you’re walking the same way I do. But I can also see through a grindstone when it has a hole in it. Be careful, Sarah.”

  “There is nothing to be careful of.” If only her throat wouldn’t close up on the words. “There’s nothing,” she repeated.

  “I’m glad to hear it. Because I can’t think of anything more painful.”

  Was it so easy for others to read her feelings in her face? After all these months, Ruth knew her pretty well, and Henry’s name had come up now and again in conversation. Maybe more again than now. But perhaps there was a way to pull herself out of the hole she’d dug herself into, before this went any further.

  “There is a man,” Sarah said hoarsely, past the lump in her throat. “In Letitz. We—we are corresponding.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Ruth said with some surprise. “Do we know him?”

  Better to have his name on people’s lips than Henry’s. “You remember Silas Lapp? He came with us that day with your cousins Fannie and Zeke.”

  “Oh yes, I remember. He seemed like a good man—and I wondered then if he was interested in you.”

  Not for worlds would she tell Ruth that Silas had asked to court her back then and been turned down. She just needed the idea of him now, not the reality. And she hadn’t fibbed. He had corresponded with her, and she owed him a letter.