Plain Truth

by Jodie Picoult

  She did not want to harp on the pregnancy, especially not today, but she felt duty-bound to acknowledge Katie’s thoughtfulness. “The tea,” Ellie whispered, as they climbed into the backseat of Leda’s car twenty minutes later. “It was just what I needed.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Katie whispered back. “Mam made it for you.”

  For the past months, Sarah had been piling her plate at mealtime as if she were a sow to be fattened up for the kill; the sudden change in menu seemed suspicious. “Did you tell her I’m pregnant?” Ellie demanded.

  “No. She made it for you because you’re worried about the trial. She thinks chamomile settles your nerves.”

  Relaxing, Ellie sat back. “It settles your stomach, too.”

  “Ja, I know,” Katie said. “She used to make it for me.”

  “When did she think you were worried?”

  Katie shrugged. “Back when I was carrying.”

  Before she could say anything else, Leda got into the driver’s seat and peered into the rearview mirror. “You’re okay with me at the wheel, Katie?”

  “I figure the bishop’s getting used to making exceptions to the rules for me.”

  “Is Samuel coming with us today or what?” Ellie muttered, peering out the window. “Being late on the first day of testimony doesn’t usually sit well with judges.”

  As if she had conjured him, Samuel came running from the field behind the barn. The jacket of his good Sunday suit hung open, his black hat sat askew on his head. Pulling it off, he ducked into the seat beside Leda. “Sorry,” he muttered, twisting around as Leda began to drive. He handed a tiny, fading sprig of clover to Katie, the four leaves of its head lying limp in her palm. “For luck,” Samuel said, smiling at her. “For you.”

  “You have a nice weekend?” George asked as they took their places in court.

  “It was fine,” Ellie answered brusquely, arranging the defense table to her satisfaction.

  “Sounds like someone’s cranky. Must’ve gone to bed too late last night.” George grinned. “Guess you were partying till the cows came home. What time do they come home, anyway?”

  “Are you finished?” Ellie asked, staring at him with indifference.

  “All rise! The Honorable Philomena Ledbetter presiding!”

  The judge settled into her chair. “Good morning, everyone,” she said, slipping on her half-glasses. “I believe we left off on Friday with the prosecution resting its case, which means that today, Ms. Hathaway, you’re on. I trust you’re ready to go?”

  Ellie rose. “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Excellent. You may call your first witness.”

  “The defense calls Jacob Fisher to the stand.”

  Katie watched as her brother entered the courtroom from the lobby, where he’d been sequestered as an upcoming witness. He winked at her as he was being sworn in. Ellie smiled at him, reassuring. “Could you state your name and address?”

  “Jacob Fisher. Two-fifty-five North Street, in State College, Pennsylvania.”

  “What’s your relationship to Katie?”

  “I’m her older brother.”

  “Yet you don’t live at home with the Fishers?”

  Jacob shook his head. “I haven’t for several years, now. I grew up Plain on my parents’ farm and got baptized at eighteen, but then I left the church.”

  “Why?”

  Jacob looked at the jury. “I truly believed I would be Plain my whole life, but then I discovered something that meant just as much to me as my faith, if not more.”

  “What was that?”

  “Learning. The Amish don’t believe in schooling past eighth grade. It goes against the Ordnung, the rules of the church.”

  “There are rules?”

  “Yes. It’s what most people associate with the Amish-the fact that you can’t drive cars, or use tractors. The way you dress. The lack of electricity and telephones. All the things that make you recognizable as a group. When you’re baptized, you vow to live by these conditions.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I was working as a carpenter’s apprentice, building bookshelves for a high school English teacher over in Gap. He caught me leafing through his books, and let me take some home. He planted the thought in my mind that I might want to further my studies. I hid my books for as long as I could from my family, but eventually, when I knew I would be applying to college, I realized that I could no longer be Plain.”

  “At that point, what happened?”

  “The Amish church gave me a choice: Give up on college, or leave the faith.”

  “That sounds harsh.”

  “It’s not,” Jacob said. “At any point-today, even-if I went back and confessed in front of the congregation, I’d be accepted back with open arms.”

  “But you can’t erase the things you’ve learned at college, can you?”

  “That’s not the point. It’s that I’d agree to yield to a set of circumstances chosen by the group, instead of trailblazing my own.”

  “What do you do today, Jacob?”

  “I’m getting my master’s degree in English at Penn State.”

  “Your parents must be quite proud of you,” Ellie said.

  Jacob smiled faintly. “I don’t know about that. You see, what commands praise in the English world is very different from what commands praise in the Plain world. In fact, you don’t want to command praise if you’re Plain. You want to blend in, to live a good Christian life without calling attention to yourself. So, no, Ms. Hathaway, I wouldn’t say my parents are proud of me. They’re confused by the choice I’ve made.”

  “Do you still see them?”

  Jacob glanced at his sister. “I saw my parents for the first time in six years just the other night. I went back to their farm even though my father had disowned me after I was excommunicated.”

  Ellie raised her brows. “If you leave the Amish church, you can’t stay in touch with those who are Amish?”

  “No, that’s the exception rather than the rule. Sure, having someone around who’s excommunicated can make things uncomfortable for everyone else, especially if you all live in the same house, because of the Meidung-shunning. One of those church rules I was talking about says that members of the church have to avoid those who’ve broken the rules. People who’ve sinned are put under the bann for a little while, and during that time, other Plain folks can’t eat with them, or conduct business, or have sexual relations.”

  “So a husband would have to shun his wife? A mother would have to shun her child?”

  “Technically, yes. But then again, when I was Plain, I knew of a husband who owned a car and was put under the bann. He still lived with his wife, who was a member of the church-and even though she was supposed to be shunning him, they somehow managed to have seven children who all got baptized Amish when it came time. So basically, the distancing is up to the individuals involved.”

  “Then why did your father disown you?” Ellie asked.

  “I’ve thought a lot about that, Ms. Hathaway. I’d have to say that he was doing it out of a sense of personal failure, as if it were his fault that I didn’t want to follow in his footsteps. And I think he was terrified that if Katie continued to be exposed to me on a regular basis, I’d somehow corrupt her by introducing her to the English world.”

  “Tell us about your relationship with your sister.”

  Jacob grinned. “Well, I don’t imagine it’s that much different than anyone else with a sibling. Sometimes she was my best buddy, and other times she was the world’s greatest pain in the neck. She was younger than me by several years, so it became my responsibility to watch over her and teach her how to do certain things around the farm.”

  “Were you close?”

  “Very. When you’re Amish, family is everything. You’re not only together at every meal-you’re working side-by-side to make a living.” He smiled at Katie. “You come to know someone awfully well when you get up with them at four-thirty every morning to shovel cow manure.”


  “I’m sure you do,” Ellie agreed. “Were you two the only children?”

  Jacob looked into his lap. “For a while, we had a little sister. Hannah drowned when she was seven.”

  “That must have been hard for all of you.”

  “Very,” Jacob agreed. “Katie and I were minding her at the time, so we always felt the blame fell on our shoulders. If anything, that brought us even closer.”

  Ellie nodded in sympathy. “What happened after you were excommunicated?”

  “It was like losing a sister all over again,” Jacob said. “One day Katie was there to talk to, and the next she was completely beyond my reach. Those first few weeks at school, I missed the farm and my parents and my horse and courting buggy, but most of all, I missed Katie. Whenever anything had happened to me in the past, she was the one I’d share it with. And suddenly I was in a new world full of strange sights and sounds and customs, and I couldn’t tell her about it.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Something very un-Amish: I fought back. I contacted my aunt, who’d left the church when she married a Mennonite. I knew she’d be able to get word to my mother and to Katie, without my father hearing about it. My mother couldn’t come to see me-it wouldn’t be right for her to go against her husband’s wishes-but she sent Katie as a goodwill ambassador, about once a month for several years.”

  “Are you telling me that she sneaked out of the house, lied to her father, and traveled hundreds of miles to stay with you in a college dormitory?”

  Jacob nodded. “Yes.”

  “Come on now,” Ellie scoffed. “Going to college is forbidden by the church-but behavior like Katie’s is condoned?”

  “At the time, she wasn’t baptized yet-so she wasn’t breaking any of the rules by eating with me, socializing with me, driving in my car. She was just staying connected to her brother. Yes, she hid her trips from my father-but my mother knew exactly where she was going, and supported it. I never saw it as Katie trying to lie and hurt our family; to me, she was doing the best she could to keep us together.”

  “When she came to State College for these visits, did she become-” Ellie smiled at the jury. “Well, for lack of a better term-a party animal?”

  “Far from it. First off, she felt like she stood out like a sore thumb. She wanted to hole up in my apartment and have me read to her from the books I was studying. I could tell she was uncomfortable dressed Plain around all the college students, so one of the first things I did was buy her some ordinary English clothing. Jeans, a couple of shirts. Things like that.”

  “But didn’t you say that dressing a certain way is one of the rules of the church?”

  “Yes. But, again, Katie hadn’t been baptized Amish yet, so she wasn’t breaking any rules. There’s a certain level of experimentation that Plain folks expect from their children before they settle down to take the baptismal vow. A taste of what’s out there. Teenagers who’ve been brought up Amish will dress in jeans, or hang out at a mall, go to a movie-maybe even drink a few beers.”

  “Amish teens do this?”

  Jacob nodded. “When you’re about fifteen or sixteen and you come into your running-around years, you join a gang of peers to socialize with. Believe me, many of those Plain kids take up stuff that’s a lot riskier than the few things Katie experienced with me at Penn State. We weren’t doing drugs, or getting drunk, or party hopping. I wasn’t doing that myself, so I certainly wouldn’t have been dragging my sister along. I worked very hard to get into college, and I made some wrenching deci sions in order to go. My primary reason for being at Penn State was not to fool around, but to learn. Mostly, that’s what Katie spent time doing with me.” He looked at his sister. “When she came to see me, I considered it a privilege. It was a piece of home, brought all the way to where I was. The last thing I would have wanted to do was scare her away.”

  “You sound like you care very much for her.”

  “I do,” Jacob said. “She’s my sister.”

  “Tell us about Katie.”

  “She’s sweet, kind, good. Considerate. Selfless. She does what needs to be done. There is no doubt in my mind that she’ll be a terrific wife, a wonderful mother.”

  “Yet today she’s on trial for murdering an infant.”

  Jacob shook his head. “It’s crazy, is all. If you knew her, if you knew how she’d been brought up, you’d realize that the very thought of Katie murdering another living being is ridiculous. She used to catch spiders crawling up the walls in the house, and set them outside instead of just killing them.” He sighed. “There’s no way for me to make you understand what it means to be Plain, because most people can’t see past the buggies and the funny clothes to the beliefs that really identify the Amish. But a murder charge-well, it’s an English thing. In the Amish community there’s no murder or violence, because the Amish know from the time they’re babies that you turn the other cheek, like Christ did, rather than take vengeance into your own hands.”

  Jacob leaned forward. “There’s this little acronym I was taught in grade school-it’s J-O-Y. It’s supposed to make Plain children remember that Jesus is first, Others come next, and You are last. The very first thing you learn as an Amish kid is that there’s always a higher authority to yield to-whether it’s your parents, the greater good of the community, or God.” Jacob stared at his sister. “If Katie found herself with a hardship, she would have accepted it. She wouldn’t have tried to save herself at the expense of another person. Katie’s mind just wouldn’t have gone there; wouldn’t have even conjured up killing that baby as some kind of solution-because she doesn’t know how to be that selfish.”

  Ellie crossed her arms. “Jacob, do you recognize the name Adam Sinclair?”

  “Objection,” George said. “Relevance?”

  “Your Honor, may I approach?” Ellie asked. The judge motioned the two lawyers closer. “If you give me a little leeway, Judge, this line of questioning will eventually make itself clear.”

  “I’ll allow it.”

  Ellie posed the question a second time. “He’s my absentee landlord,” Jacob answered. “I rent a house from him in State College.”

  “Did you have a personal relationship prior to your business relationship?”

  “We were acquaintances.”

  “What was your impression of Adam Sinclair?”

  Jacob shrugged. “I liked him a lot. He was older than most of the other students, because he was getting his doctorate. He’s certainly brilliant. But what I really admired in him was the fact that-like me-he was at Penn State to work, rather than play.”

  “Did Adam ever have the chance to meet your sister?”

  “Yes, several times, before he left the country to do research.”

  “Did he know that Katie is Amish?”

  “Sure,” Jacob said.

  “When was the last time you spoke to Adam Sinclair?”

  “Almost a year ago. I send my rent checks to a property management company. As far as I know, Adam’s still in the wilds of Scotland.”

  Ellie smiled. “Thank you, Jacob. Nothing further.”

  George tucked his hands in his pockets and frowned at the open file on the prosecution’s table. “You’re here today to help your sister, is that right?”

  “Yes,” Jacob said.

  “Any way you can?”

  “Of course. I want the jury to hear the truth about her.”

  “Even if it means lying to them?”

  “I wouldn’t lie, Mr. Callahan.”

  “Of course not,” George said expansively. “Not like your sister did, anyway.”

  “She didn’t lie!”

  George raised his brows. “Seems to be a pattern in your family-you’re not Amish, your sister’s not acting Amish; you lied, she lied-”

  “Objection,” Ellie said dispassionately. “Is there a question in there?”

  “Sustained.”

  “You lied to your father before you were excommunicated, didn’t you?”


  “I hid the fact that I wanted to continue my schooling. I did it for his own peace of mind-”

  “Did you tell your father you were reading Shakespeare in the loft of the barn?”

  “Well, no, I-”

  “Come on, Mr. Fisher. What do you call a lie? Hiding something? Not being truthful? Lying by omission? None of this rings a bell for you?”

  “Objection.” Ellie stood. “Badgering the witness.”

  “Sustained. Please watch yourself, counselor,” Judge Ledbetter warned.

  “If it wasn’t a lie, what was it?” George rephrased.

  A muscle jumped in Jacob’s jaw. “I was doing what I had to do to study.”

  George’s eyes lit up. “You were doing what you had to do. And you recently said that your sister, the defendant, was good at doing what needs to be done. Would you say that’s an Amish trait?”

  Jacob hesitated, trying to find the snake beneath the words, poised and ready to strike. “The Amish are very practical people. They don’t complain, they just take care of what needs taking care of.”

  “You mean, for example, the cows have to get milked, so you get up before dawn to do it?”

  “Yes.”

  “The hay needs to be cut before the rain comes, so you work till you can barely stand up?”

  “Exactly.”

  “The baby’s illegitimate, so you murder and dispose of it before anyone knows you made a mistake?”

  “No,” Jacob said angrily. “Not like that at all.”

  “Mr. Fisher, isn’t it true that the saintly Amish are really no better than any of us-prone to the same flaws?”

  “The Amish don’t want to be saints. They’re people, like anyone else. But the difference is that they try to lead a quiet, peaceful Christian life . . . when most of us”-he looked pointedly at the prosecutor-“are already halfway down the road to hell.”

  “Do you really expect us to believe that simply growing up among the Amish might make a person unable to entertain a thought of violence or revenge or trickery?”