The Amish Bride

by Mindy Starns Clark

“But he was still able to walk last night. How could he be dead this morning?”

  “It happens that way sometimes.”

  I stood beside the bed and began to weep. For Freddy. For Zed. For me. For Mom. She wrapped her arms around me and held me while I cried.

  “He took so much from me,” she said. “But he also gave me my two greatest gifts. I have no regrets. Only joy mixed in with sorrow.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  The day was a blur. Ada had had a baby boy in the early morning, not long before Freddy passed. They named him Abraham after our great-great-great-grandfather from Switzerland, but said they would call him Abe. Will had phoned right after the undertakers left. Mom shared our sad news with him, saying what a blessing it was that Abe came into the world just as Freddy was leaving.

  That morning Luke and Rosalee called, and I caught them up on things. It was good to hear from them both. Before lunch Mom and I went to the funeral home and planned a simple graveside service for my father. While we were there, Uncle Alexander called Mom’s cell and offered a plot in the Amish cemetery near their house. He knew Freddy had died penniless, and buying a plot would be a tremendous strain on Mom’s budget. He’d already talked it through with the bishop. Mom cried as she told him yes. After she hung up, I offered her the little bit of money I had in savings.

  She shook her head. “Thank you, Ella, but this is my responsibility.”

  “You have Zed’s medical bills too.” I couldn’t imagine what those would be. I knew Mom had health insurance, but her part of the hospital bill would still be a lot.

  “I’m not going to worry about that,” she said. “Not now.”

  Mom told Zed about Freddy’s passing that afternoon. I told him about Freddy’s concern for him and that I’d reconciled with our father before the end. Zed acknowledged what I said but didn’t want to talk about it. I guessed it was all too much for him to process, considering his injuries.

  He walked that afternoon with Mom and me at his side. Not long after we got him back into bed, Izzy called, and Zed waved us out of the room as he talked with her. When we came back, he said she did have strep but was on antibiotics and would come see him after a couple of days. He couldn’t stop smiling as he told us that last part.

  Mom and I stopped by Aunt Klara’s on our way home to see Ada and little Abe. Lexie’s rental car was still in the driveway. I hoped she’d been able to get some rest. The house was full of chaos with the twins running around in circles and Christy hollering at them to calm down.

  “Where’s your daed?” Mom asked Christy.

  “At our house, choring. He’ll be back.”

  I wondered where Ezra was. He should have been doing that for his brother.

  Mom headed upstairs, where I assumed Lexie and Aunt Klara were helping Ada, and I settled the little girls down at the table, getting coloring books and crayons from the box Aunt Klara kept under the puzzles. I helped them for a few minutes until I heard Mom call my name from the stairs.

  “Ada wants to see you.”

  “We’ll go with you,” Mel said, hopping down from the table.

  “Not yet. Let me check and see how Ada is first,” I said. “Color your picture so you can take it up to Abe after a while.” I hurried up the stairs, heading down the landing to Ada’s old room. The door was open, and I could see Lexie perched on the end of the bed. Aunt Klara was sitting beside Ada, who was holding the baby. He had a head full of curly hair.

  I looked down at him, but something about him seemed familiar, for some reason, so familiar that I stared at him for a long moment before I remembered to gush.

  “He’s so cute,” I said. And he really was. He was beautiful. “Oh, Ada, I’m so happy for you.”

  “Would you like to hold him?”

  I nodded, taking him in my arms. His weight settled against me, and the longer I stared into his little face, the more familiar he seemed. He was awake, and he looked up at me with inky eyes. His face was round and full. He was small but alert, and his head full of curly dark hair made him appear much older than he was.

  Aunt Klara was standing beside me, her eyes on the baby too. “I can’t stop staring at him.” She stroked the edge of his face. “I do believe he is the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen.”

  “How did it go?” I glanced from Ada to Lexie and then caught the smile between them.

  “Really well,” Lexie said. “Ada did great.”

  Ada shook her head a little. “I did what I had to do.”

  “How’s Will faring?”

  Both women chuckled. “You’d think he had the baby himself for all his shenanigans,” Lexie said.

  I smiled. Turning to Aunt Klara, I asked, “Has Mammi seen him?”

  “Ya,” she said. “This morning. But then she went back out to her house. She said she wasn’t feeling well.”

  That was when I realized whom Abe looked like.

  The baby in the painting.

  “I should go check on her,” Aunt Klara said.

  “No, you stay here. I can do that,” I said.

  She reached for the baby, and I slid him into her arms.

  “The little girls are restless,” I said to Ada. “They are coloring pictures for Abe.”

  “Good idea,” she said. “Tell them to come on up—quietly—when they finish.”

  I relayed the message when I reached the dining room. Christy was coloring too now, and all of them seemed engrossed in their work, so I slipped out the back door to the daadi haus. When I entered, it was completely dark.

  “Mammi?” I reached for the light switch. She wasn’t in her chair, but my bag was exactly where I’d left it the day before, next to the wall of the kitchen. I headed down the hall, calling out her name again.

  Her bedroom door was open. “Mammi?”

  “Is that you, Giselle?” Her voice was so soft I could barely hear her.

  “No, Mammi. It’s Ella.”

  She struggled to sit up. She was on top of her quilt, blinking, confused, her dress and kapp still on. Aunt Giselle, Mammi’s middle daughter, had been in Switzerland for more than twenty years.

  “What’s the matter?” I sat down on the bed beside her.

  “Oh, nothing,” she said. “I’m just resting.” She blinked a few more times, and as she did, it was almost as if I could see her coming back to herself. “Ella. Of course. I’m sorry.” She found my hand and gave it a squeeze.

  “Why did you think I was Aunt Giselle?”

  Mammi put her hand to her forehead. “Oh, my. I’m not sure. She’s just been on my mind all day. I keep remembering when—” She covered her mouth with her hand. “When the girls were little.”

  I studied her features. “What do you think of little Abe?”

  Pain filled her eyes. “He’s beautiful, ya?”

  “Ya,” I answered. “Aunt Klara said she’s never seen a baby quite so beautiful.”

  Mammi was quiet for a moment then looked away. “I have.”

  “I have too.” I crawled off the bed. “I’ll be right back.”

  All along I had figured the baby in it was probably Mammi’s brother Gerry. But now I had to wonder if the picture wasn’t of an older brother but of a younger one. A younger brother who had died. Mammi must have been old enough when he was born that she still remembered him and what he looked like, even now.

  Thinking of my love for Zed, I couldn’t fathom the pain of losing him at a young age. Had Zed died as a babe, perish the thought, I, too, would have remembered his face and mourned his passing for the rest of my life.

  I unzipped my bag and took out the painting, the game, and Sarah’s book. When I crawled back on Mammi’s bed, I put the book and cookie tin between us but placed the painting on the other side of myself.

  I opened the tin first. “Do you remember this?”

  She gasped, sitting up straighter. “Where did you find it?”

  “The Home Place. In the root cellar.”

  “Oh, my,” Mammi said. “The girls
used to play this for hours.”

  I opened the book. “Many of the drawings on the cards are in here too. Except for this one.” I took out the card of the baby that I’d tucked into the pages and handed it to Mammi. She held it in her hand a long time before she spoke.

  “The game was more than just a game, you know,” she said finally. “It was a teaching tool, a way for my mother to talk to the girls about important things.”

  I waited in silence for her to go on.

  “She added this card after I’d had several miscarriages to help the girls understand about babies and life and death.”

  Mammi handed it back to me, and I tucked it into the book. Then, taking a deep breath, I told her there was one more thing. Though I was glad to get information about the babe on the card, I wanted to hear about the boy in the painting, about her baby brother.

  Reaching around behind me, I picked it up and handed it to her.

  “Oh, Ella,” she gasped, taking the framed canvas from me carefully, caressing the edges. “Where did you get this?” she finally asked, her voice barely audible.

  “It was at the dairy,” I answered. “In the farmhouse. My friend Luke found it under the floorboards of his room when he was a little boy.”

  “The room at the top of the stairs?”

  I nodded.

  “That makes sense. That was Giselle’s room.”

  I blinked. “Why would it have been in her room? She couldn’t have painted it. She wasn’t even alive back then.”

  Mammi looked at me, confused. “You’re right that she didn’t paint it. But you’re wrong about the other. Of course she was alive then.” Her eyes returned to the painting, she gazed at it tenderly as she added, “Giselle loved baby Paul. She was only ten, but she was like a second mother to him. Like you were with Zed, though of course you were much younger with your brother than Giselle was with hers.”

  It took me a long moment. It took longer than it should have. But then I finally got it. This painting, this baby named Paul, hadn’t been a child of Sarah’s who had died.

  He’d been a child of Mammi’s.

  “No,” I whispered, hand to my mouth.

  “I couldn’t seem to keep a baby to delivery, not for anything. I was always just so tired and worn out. But then finally it happened five years after your mother was born. I had one more child. A son. Paul.”

  Tears filled my eyes.

  “All of us were so happy. Even Malachi became more bearable.”

  I shook my head, not wanting to hear what was coming next.

  “Then when Paul was just four months old, we lost him. Our baby boy died.” She swiped at her eye.

  “What happened?” I whispered, imagining a tragedy—a fire, a buggy wreck, a horrible disease.

  She met my eyes and then looked away.

  “We never knew for sure. He wasn’t exactly robust, but I blamed that on the fact that I’d had troubles nursing him and had had to put him on the bottle instead. Still, he would smile and coo. He slept well. One morning Giselle put him down for his nap. She’d done it many times before. She was always my little helper. I’d give him his bottle, and then she would change his diaper and put him in his cradle off the kitchen. It was our routine. She was so good with him.” Mammi drew in a shaky breath. “That morning he slept longer than usual, and finally she went to check on him.”

  My eyes were wide, my heart pounding.

  “I was in the garden, but I heard her scream as if she were beside me. Malachi heard it from the barn. Both of us went running. We found Giselle at the back door, Paul’s lifeless body in her arms.”

  “Oh, Mammi.”

  “Malachi blamed her, even though the doctor said it wasn’t Giselle’s fault.”

  “What was it? What had happened?”

  “The baby just died. In his cradle. In his sleep.” She swallowed hard and then continued. “Malachi was sure Giselle put Paul’s head against a blanket or that she should have checked him sooner. He blamed me too, saying I never should have trusted Giselle with the baby. And that if only I’d been able to nurse him…But I was so careful with his bottles. Always boiling the water first to mix with the formula. Taking extra care with everything.”

  “What did the doctor say?”

  “That sometimes these things happen. And the bishop said it was God’s will. That we needed to trust God to know what was best for our baby.” At that a sob wracked my grandmother’s chest.

  “Oh, Mammi,” I said, wrapping my arms around her.

  After a few more sobs, she took a deep breath and then continued. She told how her mother came over and prepared the baby to be buried. She assured Giselle she was not to blame and Mammi too. Finally, a week after the funeral, when Malachi was ranting through the house, Sarah stood up to him.

  “She told him she’d move me and the girls back to the Home Place if he continued. Furious, Malachi took off in the wagon, but he hadn’t hitched it properly and the horses dragged him to death.”

  I could feel an actual ache in my heart. I knew Malachi had died around that same time, and I even knew how he had died, but to hear these details—and to know that it happened so soon after Paul’s death—was almost too much to bear.

  “I was beside myself, as you can imagine,” Mammi said. “I sold the dairy. My oldest brother needed a housekeeper, and I decided to move to Lancaster County. My mother thought it was best for us. She encouraged me to take the girls and start anew. I think it must have broken her heart, though. She died soon after.”

  Her story told, Mammi settled back against the pillows and gazed at the painting some more.

  “So when did Sarah paint his picture?” I asked gently, wondering if she’d done it before or after his death.

  Mammi looked up at me in surprise. “My mother didn’t paint this.” She touched the swallow at the bottom right corner.

  Startled, I sputtered, “Who did?” Sarah hadn’t painted it. Aunt Giselle hadn’t painted it. But there weren’t any other artists in the family, and it was far too beautiful to have been done by just anyone.

  Her hands held the canvas tenderly. I waited for her to answer me, but she again leaned her head back against the bedstead and closed her eyes.

  “Mammi?”

  “Give me some time, Ella. It’s been a hard day.”

  I wanted to tell her she couldn’t give me most of the story but not all. But I didn’t. “Would you like me to leave the painting?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want anyone asking questions. Bring it back when you come again though, ya?”

  “Ya,” I answered, kissing her forehead. I tiptoed from the room and collected my bag, willing myself to be patient.

  THIRTY-TWO

  As it turned out, Izzy didn’t come to the hospital. Zed’s recovery surprised all of us, especially the doctors, and he was released before she had a chance. Instead, her father, Eli, brought her to the cottage the evening before Freddy’s service. Eli was a quiet man, and he sat on a dining room chair while Zed and Izzy sat on the couch together. Mom chatted with Eli, asking about his wife, Peggy, his youngest son, Thomas, and his other children. The oldest daughter had married the year before and his second daughter, Becky, was working as a teacher.

  “Ya, she likes it,” Eli said. “She’s convinced Izzy it’s the best job in the world. If all goes well, I imagine we’ll have two teachers in the family soon.” Those three sentences were the most I’d ever heard Eli say. He obviously thought Izzy would make a good teacher. I wondered what he thought of her visiting a Mennonite young man, but of course I didn’t ask, and he didn’t give any indication of what he might be feeling. I imagined it was a stretch for him to allow her this time with Zed, and it was probably out of compassion for our family.

  I hadn’t seen Ezra since the night before Freddy had died, but he assured me he would be at the service. He ended up coming late. Half of the congregation from our church was there, plus Will, Aunt Klara, and Uncle Alexander.

  The se
rvice was short. The pastor from Mom’s church said a few words about eternity and then read Psalm 23. None of us cried, although Zed sat with his head bowed the entire time. I mourned the father I’d only met long enough to forgive, but I was pretty sure Zed mourned the man he knew. Mom stared straight ahead, back to her stoic self.

  After the service, Ezra asked if he could give me a ride home. I asked where his motorcycle was, and he said at his friend Jake’s.

  “So you sold it?”

  “Nah,” he answered, flashing a grin. “But it’s hardly appropriate for a service.”

  Once we were settled in his buggy, I asked where he’d been the last three days.

  “Working.” He stared straight ahead.

  “I thought maybe you would have come by.”

  He shrugged. “I thought you might need some space to be with your family.”

  I concentrated on the rhythm of the horse’s hooves on the asphalt.

  “I can see that living with Will and Ada wouldn’t be the best. I imagine you want to be with your mamm and Zed now.” He reached for my hand and held it tenderly. “I told the bishop of the district closest to you that we’d like to stop by tomorrow.”

  “All right,” I said.

  Bishop Schwartz turned out to be an older man, past fifty for sure, with a long, long beard.

  “So you want to join the church,” he said, peering at me over his glasses.

  “Yes.”

  “And you grew up Mennonite?”

  I nodded.

  “But not Old Order?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “But my mother grew up Old Order Amish, and most of my relatives on her side are Amish.”

  “So you speak Pennsylvania Dutch?”

  “I’m learning,” I said. “I’ve been living with an Amish woman in Nappanee, Indiana, for the last few months. I’ve been going to church with her.”

  He scowled. “Ya, I’ve heard.” I wondered what else he’d heard about me—perhaps someone had told him about my going with Ezra to Indiana.

  “I have a few concerns.” He smiled then, the first time all evening. “I don’t condone joining the church to marry, not even for Amish folk, but especially not for an outsider. And no other bishop should either.”