The Amish Bride

by Mindy Starns Clark

  I was positive this drawing was of the same farm that had been featured in the carving of my box. Underneath, in a cursive script that was shaky and hard to read, was written “the Home Place.”

  I shivered. What a beautiful illustration. What beautiful words. I wanted something like that in my life. A place where I belonged.

  I traced my finger above the ink, working my way through the maze again, thinking about my own life. Mom was at one turn. Zed at the next. My father at the end of a blocked-off pathway.

  Ezra was at the end of the maze, waiting for me at our own someday place. He was my daisy. I grabbed the spiral notebook I used for my journal and flipped to the next blank page. I picked up a pen off the bedside table and drew my own maze with a cottage and a motorcycle, a box and a book. I put a daisy in the middle with a question mark at its center.

  Like Sarah, I wrote “Recipe for Life” at the top. I flipped back to her list: Hang bird feeder. Finish quilt. Sort herbs. Marry D.

  I wrote my own list. Find job. Go to school. Open bakery. Marry E. And then, on a sudden impulse, I added one more item.

  Visit the Home Place.

  Then I sat back and smiled, knowing my words had less to do with Mammi’s request than they did with my own deepening curiosity.

  TWO

  A month later I still hadn’t found a job, let alone made any progress on the rest of my plan. It wasn’t that I hadn’t looked for work. I had—every day. First, I applied at my favorite bakery, a place called Nick’s. Then I applied at a few cafés. Finally, I even applied at five fast-food places. I took the bus downtown and crunched through the frozen snow day after day in my worn boots, checking back at the places I’d applied to, but I hadn’t even had an interview in all that time.

  I’d also done more research on culinary schools, finding possibilities across the country, several that I would absolutely die to go to. But the local community college offered classes at a very reasonable price. I was sure that was the direction I would take, starting next fall. As long as I could find a job to add to my savings from all the babysitting I’d done through the years to pay for it.

  On a Sunday morning in mid-February, Mom knocked on my bedroom door. “I have a mother in labor and don’t have time to get you and Zed to church,” she said. Public transportation was limited on Sundays and not an option. “Be sure to do your chores.”

  I called out a groggy “Okay.” I waited until the putter of her car disappeared before I crawled out of bed, collected my clothes and head covering, and went to the shower.

  The day loomed ahead of me, monotonous and boring. Zed would insist he had homework to do so he could spend time on the computer, which was only supposed to be used out of necessity. Still, Mom had recently upgraded our Internet service to help him with his schoolwork—something she hadn’t done for me, even though I’d asked multiple times.

  Zed had been avoiding me as much as possible due to my constant pestering about his birth mother. Mom hadn’t said another word about any of the family drama since the night she revealed that dear old Dad planned to move back to Lancaster County, and Zed had been just as tight lipped as she.

  It had been a bleak stretch of days, to be sure. The weather had turned cold and icy, which meant Ezra hadn’t been able to ride his motorcycle and I hadn’t seen much of him since our night on the covered bridge.

  Yesterday, the weather had finally warmed above freezing, but he would be going to church with his family today.

  The cold rain began to pelt the bathroom window as I dressed, and when I came back to my room and was making the bed, my eyes fell to Sarah’s book on the nightstand. Feeling listless and in need of a distraction, I got myself comfortable on top of the covers, grabbed it, and opened it up.

  I’d spent quite a bit of time the last couple of weeks studying the book, and every time I looked through it I saw something new. It was fascinating—at least, what I could read. Whole sections were in that coding system Sarah had used, which I hadn’t yet been able to figure out. I’d even done some research on breaking codes and tried to play around with the numbers in the first few entries. I couldn’t see any correlation between the numbers and letters they might represent.

  That wasn’t my only problem, though. Even sections not in code were hard to read because the handwriting was so small and flowery. It took a lot of time to go through it with a magnifying glass, and I had to review those sections several times to figure out what she’d written.

  At least some of my questions about her multiple husbands were answered. One section talked about her first husband and how he was killed in a hunting accident—shot by one of Sarah’s brothers, of all things—not long after they were married. It was so sad. Another was about her second husband, who died too. He was originally from Great Britain, which explained the recipes for trifle, scones, and Irish soda bread. She met him after her first husband’s death, when she moved to Indianapolis to go to nursing school. He was a doctor who ended up going off to serve with the Red Cross in the Great War and died from the 1918 flu pandemic while on the western front. This poor woman, twice widowed at such a young age.

  Besides the recipes, I was fascinated to see that the book also had herbal remedies written out, plus notes about how she used the same herbs in other ways. Lavender in pound cake and soap. Clove oil for a toothache and to “help a marriage.” I could only guess what her meaning behind that was.

  Mammi had said the images were symbols, and she was right. I was certain they represented people, places, or her way of life. For example, I felt pretty sure the edelweiss was for her mother and the alpine horn her father. The mountain peaks looked like the Swiss Alps and most likely represented her grandfather, Abraham. The first three symbols all ceased to appear after about the middle of the book, probably as those people passed away. I had a feeling that all of the birds represented people, mostly because of the eyes she’d given each of them. They weren’t the eyes of birds, that was for sure.

  A lot of her recipes had symbols at the top, and I felt pretty sure that was her way of indicating who liked that recipe or who had given it to her, depending on whether the symbol was on the right side or the left.

  Only one symbol was carried throughout the entire book, and that was the hen. It changed from the young one at the beginning to an old one at the end. The quality of the drawings improved over time, but what was especially interesting were the eyes. Although the eyes drawn on the first hen were amazing, each rendition grew more and more realistic, until the last few were absolutely full of life and pain and joy. It was odd that such detailed eyes were wasted on a hen, unless it represented a person.

  Toward the end was a page entitled “Home Place Recipe.” On it she had drawn all of the various symbols used previously in the book, plus the words “hope,” “trust,” “love,” “cherish,” “believe,” and “forgive.” Though the placement of the words and symbols seemed random, I couldn’t know for sure because they showed up in the middle of a long string of entries written in code.

  The more I read, the more I wanted to understand—and the more I really did want to visit the Home Place, not just for Mammi but for myself too.

  My stomach growled for some breakfast, so I put the book back on my table and went downstairs. Despite the pleasant diversion from the past, by the time I reached the dining room my mood had again turned as dark as the dreary winter day. Sure enough, Zed was on the computer, but when I turned to see what he was doing, he minimized the screen.

  “Did you find out who your birth mother is?”

  I’d asked him the same question several times over the last two weeks when Mom wasn’t around. I’d wanted to know for years, ever since I comprehended that his mother and my mother had been two different people. Then, when my cousin Lexie came searching for her own birth mother, I wanted all the more for Zed to do the same.

  He didn’t answer me.

  “Zed…” I cajoled.

  “It’s none of your beeswax,” he an
swered matter-of-factly, using one my favorite phrases and keeping his eyes glued to the screen.

  Certain he knew her identity by now, I decided to try a little nectar to get him to reveal the name to me. Mom had been around pretty regularly lately, and I hadn’t had a chance to speak with Zed alone for more than a few minutes at a time. Today was my chance.

  “What do you want for breakfast?” I turned toward our closet-size kitchen. “Waffles? Dutch babies? Deep-fried French toast with ice cream?” I’d seen that on an online cooking show.

  “I already had oatmeal,” he answered, and then he stood and stretched. In the last year he’d grown and grown, and he’d started shaving too. Not every day, but at least a few times a week.

  His blond hair had darkened a little and so had his eyebrows. His eyelashes had grown thicker, and he’d lost his baby fat.

  “Are you done with the computer?” My voice dripped with sarcasm.

  “No. Just taking a break.”

  “Because you have so much homework to do, right?” It was too early in the semester for him to have too much.

  His face stayed bland. “I’m getting started on my German project.”

  “When is that due? A month from now?”

  “Two weeks,” he answered as he headed into the living room.

  I heard him on the stairs, probably on his way up to our one bathroom. That gave me a couple of minutes to snoop for what he’d been looking at. I popped into the Internet history. The last item was an article from the local newspaper. I clicked on to it. It was about the legal case against Mom from two years ago, when she was the midwife for Lydia Gundy. She and the baby had both died under her care during childbirth. Mom had been exonerated when it was determined that the cause of Lydia’s death had been an undiagnosed heart condition and had nothing at all to do with any of my mother’s actions during labor and delivery. Of course, that never made the front page of the paper the way the other articles had—it was buried in the back. I couldn’t fathom why Zed was looking at it.

  I jumped as I heard him on the stairs. By the time he reached the computer again, I was in the kitchen. “Even though you already had breakfast, I thought I’d make you a Dutch baby. You’ll be hungry again by the time it’s done.” I’d found the recipe in Sarah’s book and copied it onto an index card. I’d been doing that with all of her recipes I could read. That way I didn’t risk ruining the book in the kitchen, and I only had to decipher the words once instead of each time I used the recipe.

  I beat the eggs with the wire whisk I’d purchased with my hard-earned babysitting money. It was stainless steel and weighted. I loved the feel of it in my hand and the way it blended the ingredients together so swiftly and smoothly. I added milk to the eggs and then gradually whisked in flour, nutmeg, and salt. The way the ingredients came together to create something entirely new thrilled me every time. Years ago Aunt Klara made Dutch babies for breakfast one time when I was visiting. All we ever had at my house was oatmeal, and I thought what she whipped up—sort of like a pancake but fluffier and baked in a skillet in the oven and then sprinkled with powdered sugar—was absolutely divine.

  I hadn’t thought to ask for her recipe back then. Now I wondered if it had been passed down from Sarah.

  Twenty minutes later, as we ate I smiled at Zed between bites, hoping to make up for my earlier attitude.

  “Stop it,” he said, his lips covered in powdered sugar.

  “What?”

  “Smiling. You’re creeping me out.”

  I pretended I didn’t know what he was talking about. After I was done eating, I asked him again about his birth mother. He just shook his head and then shoved in another bite.

  I folded my arms.

  He ignored me.

  I leaned toward him, the ties of my head covering falling forward.

  “Zed, you’re my brother. You always tell me everything.”

  “Who says?”

  “I say.” I tried to smile, but it came out more like a snarl. He’d always been so compliant. Until now.

  “Thanks for the Dutch baby.” He shoved the last bite into his mouth, sending a puff of powdered sugar down his chin.

  “Baby,” I said, “is the key word. You as a baby is what we need to talk about. Come on Zed.” Now I was whining. “Tell me. I’ve wanted to know, like, forever.”

  He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing around on his neck. He shook his head then, a little sadly, and took his plate into the kitchen. A moment later, I heard the water running. He was washing his dishes. Something was really bothering him.

  As much as I resented the secrets in our family, I couldn’t help but marvel at the decisions around those secrets that had been made so long ago. I was certain that Mom forgiving her husband’s sin, accepting his child with another woman, and adopting Zed could have only come from her Anabaptist roots. Some women would hold the child’s origins against him. Not Mom. Although she wasn’t much for physical affection or expressions of endearment, I knew she absolutely loved Zed. He’d been her own since the day she brought him home.

  After I fed the chickens, nagged Zed to clean the ashes out of the woodstove, and scrubbed the kitchen, it was nearly noon. My phone beeped with a text from Ezra. Just got done with church. Singing at the Benders’ tonight. Want to go?

  I answered immediately, overjoyed that I would get to see him for the first time in days. That sounds great!

  I caught myself humming after that. Zed may have turned on me, but at least I had Ezra.

  By the time Mom came home, I had a pot of vegetable soup simmering on the stove, a broccoli salad made, and biscuits in the oven. She’d delivered a nine-pound baby girl, the first for a couple near the village of Paradise. She stretched out on the couch and closed her eyes while I set the table.

  I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to be a midwife. Some weeks Mom wouldn’t have a single birth. Others she’d have four or five. Some years nothing went wrong. Others years lots went wrong. Sometimes she got a full night’s sleep. Other times she didn’t sleep at all.

  She lived by faith, is what she said. When we were little, she had to scramble to have someone stay with us when she was gone, hiring widows from our church mostly. But by the time I was eleven, she let us stay home alone. By then I was pretty much running the house. I’d grown up fast compared to my non-Plain friends at school, as far as responsibility and household duties went. Then again, I was about on a par with the Amish girls I knew, who also mastered such skills at a much younger age than their English counterparts.

  On the other hand, I was sure I had far more of an independent streak than any Amish girl ever would have. How could I not? I had more options. I’d be able to drive a car—although I didn’t have my license yet. I attended high school, and now I could go to baking school—or at least take classes. I could marry a man of another faith—if I wanted.

  The problem was I wanted to marry Ezra, who, despite his rebellious ways, was set on joining the Amish church. Once he did that, he wouldn’t be able to marry me unless I joined it as well. It would be a huge change for me, but at least I was familiar with the lifestyle, because Mammi and half of my family were Amish. I felt I could live as they did. And I was willing to do so for love—but only after I’d gone to baking school.

  Putting that out of my mind for now, I set the last spoon down on the table and told Mom it was time to eat. I had an hour before Ezra would be by to get me.

  I’d been sitting for a minute before she shuffled into the kitchen to wash her hands and then join me. She cleared her throat, getting Zed’s attention. He quickly popped up from the desk chair and joined us too. After a silent grace, I dished up soup for everyone.

  As Mom started to dig into hers, her cell phone rang. I hoped it wouldn’t be another baby, not tonight. Then again, if she did leave, that would make it easier for me to go with Ezra. It wasn’t that she would tell me I couldn’t. She’d just give me that look of hers.

  She stood and walked
into the living room as she said hello. It didn’t sound like a mother in labor by her tone.

  “You’re here already?” There was a pause. “I thought you were coming in a few weeks.”

  I groaned. Zed smiled.

  “That would work.” She sounded as if she were talking to an old friend, not the husband who had left her. There was another pause. “I know where that is. We’re just eating…” After another pause, she said, “Oh, no. It’s fine. We’ll see you in an hour.”

  We? I pushed my bowl and plate toward the center of the table as she came back into the dining room, her face calm and serene.

  “I have plans,” I said. What I didn’t add was that even if I hadn’t had plans, I wasn’t about to stick around for this.

  “Can’t you change them?” She looked at me with expectant eyes.

  “No.” I looked from her to Zed, who also had a hopeful expression on his face. They were fools. Absolute fools. “Have you no pride?”

  A confused look passed over Mom’s face, and then she touched the bridge of her nose with her finger. “I guess not,” she said. And then she laughed a little.

  “He cheated on you! He left you!”

  “Yes, Ella.” She wasn’t laughing anymore. “I know.”

  Ezra arrived right on time. Because we were going to a singing, he was in his courting buggy, which was open on all sides. He brought plenty of blankets, but I knew it was going to be a cold ride. At least we weren’t on his motorcycle—which he would never take to a church-sanctioned event—as that would have been an even colder ride.

  By the time I was sitting beside him, I’d worked myself into a dither over the matter of my father. Dither. That was one of my mother’s words for me: “To act nervously or indecisively.” So it wasn’t completely true tonight. Yes, I was nervous. But there was nothing indecisive about what I was going to do. I’d had an epiphany. Ezra and I could get married first and then join the church. Doing things in reverse that way would not go over well with our families or the church leadership, but at least it was better than running away to Florida and never coming back.