The Shunning

by Beverly Lewis

  What if one day she dared to wear a pink or yellow dress; let her hair hang down her back in curls or pulled into beautiful braids? How would it feel? Would it change who she was inside?

  Several months ago she’d discussed the topic discreetly with Mary, and her friend had said that it wasn’t only the wearing of plain clothes that made them Amish, it was who they were. “It’s what we believe,” she’d stated with conviction. “We’ve been taught to ‘make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.’ You know without me telling you what that means.”

  Katie knew. Her best friend was, of course, referring to the Scripture in Ephesians that taught uniformity of dress, transportation, and dwellings.

  “What about the Englishers—what about them?” Katie had persisted.

  Mary had become exasperated with her. “They don’t know beans, that’s what. They—those worldly moderns—keep on changing and changing their clothes and themselves ’til they don’t know which end’s up. They don’t know who they are or whatnot all!”

  Katie had listened, wincing inwardly at Mary’s stern reminder. “Besides, it’s much too late now to be questioning. You already took the vow for life.” She’d paused for breath, pinning Katie with an unrelenting gaze. “Better never to take the vow . . . than to take it and break it.”

  Disobedience to the Ordnung brought dire consequences, Katie was well aware. The Ban and Meinding were a frightful, fearful part of the way things were—das Alt Gebrauch, the Old Way.

  Without warning, Jacob jumped up in the buggy. “Oh, look, there’s Daed!” He pointed toward a large, two-story white clapboard house.

  Katie jerked her thoughts from their ramblings. How much of Jacob’s boyish jabber had she missed? In her preoccupation, she’d nearly ridden right past the Beiler house!

  Her guilt made her almost shy as she returned John’s exuberant greeting from the high porch that spanned the entire front of the house. “Gut morning to ya, Katie!”

  Katie reined Molasses in to the barnyard, where he halted on the frozen ridges made by the bishop’s buggy wheels. As was the Old Order custom, John earned an income for his family from the land and the smithy, while serving God and community as a bishop. From the tracks, she could see that he’d already made several deliveries to customers this morning.

  Katie let the reins rest loosely on her lap as she took in the snowy landscape extending far out and away from the road—John’s long-ago inheritance from his father, now deceased.

  It was a peaceful, sweeping spread of land, with three stately mulberry trees gracing the front yard. She could almost imagine the purple impatients hugging the base of the trees on warm days, and the lush flower beds, well tended in the spring and summer by bright-eyed Nancy, the bishop’s eldest daughter. Hanging from one of the low-lying branches, left over from the children’s play, was a thick, long rope with an icy double knot tied in its tail.

  Jacob turned to speak to Katie, short puffs of breath gusting in the cold air with each word. “Did I hear ya singin’ back there just now . . . on the road?”

  His innocent question took her by surprise. “Singing?”

  “Jah, coming up the lane . . . I thought I heard a song.”

  Katie’s pulse quickened. In a few long strides, John would be at her side. She certainly didn’t want to be discussing her songs with Jacob when the bishop came to greet her.

  “Oh, probably just a little humming is all you heard.” Maybe the youngster wouldn’t press her about it.

  But he wasn’t about to give up. “One of the hymns from the Aus-bund?” Jacob asked. “I like singin’ in church, too. I like ‘The Hymn of Praise.”’

  Katie smiled nervously. Here was a boy who loved music almost as much as she did. She only hoped that he hadn’t noticed how different her song was from the ones in the sixteenth-century hymnbook.

  With eyes shining up at her, Jacob pleaded, “Will ya come for supper tonight? We can sing some hymns then, maybe.”

  “Well . . .” She hesitated, uncertain how to answer, since his father had not yet declared himself.

  “Oh, please, Katie? I’ll even help ya cook.”

  John stepped up, tousled the tumbled curls, and drew the boy close just as the older children appeared at the window, waving and smiling, looking like a row of stairsteps.

  “Then we’ll invite not only Katie but her whole family, too.” John’s obvious delight was touching. Even in his heavy black work coat and felt hat—his full beard indicating his widowed status—the bishop made a right impressive sight. “And speaking of invitations, all my relatives and friends have been notified about the wedding. I finished up just this morning,” he added with an air of satisfaction.

  “Mamma and I are all through, too,” Katie said, relieved that the first awkward moments had passed. “All except her Mennonite cousins, the Millers. We’ll probably send them a postcard.”

  “Well, if you need to borrow any of our dishes for the wedding feast, just let me know.” He reached into the buggy and touched her hand. “Will you come for supper, then?”

  She fought back her fears and put a cheerful smile on her face. “Jah, we’ll come. I’ll tell Mamma when I get home.”

  “Gut, then. We’ll be looking for all of you later.” His blue-gray gaze held Katie’s with an intensity and longing she’d not witnessed before, not in John Beiler’s eyes. And he leaned close and kissed her cheek.

  Despite the wintry temperature, her face grew warm and she looked down, staring at the reins in her lap. The desire in his eyes made her uncomfortable . . . aware of her own innocence and her femininity. She’d witnessed this look passing between other couples, long before she was old enough to comprehend its meaning. But there was no mistaking it now. Without further word, she inched Molasses down the slippery slope toward the main road.

  “Da Herr sei mit du—the Lord be with you,” John called after her.

  “And with you,” she replied, willing the sting out of her cheeks.

  Six

  Rebecca was in the kitchen pulling on her boots when Katie arrived. “I’m awful late,” she sputtered in a flurry to put on her shawl and black winter bonnet. “What’s been keepin’ you, anyway?”

  “Oh, I rode down to Mary Stoltzfus’s for a bit.”

  Rebecca’s lips twitched with the beginning of a smile. “Mary’s?”

  Katie grinned. “Everyone’s there waiting for you, Mamma. Ella Mae, some of the cousins . . . and probably lots more by now. Better hurry.”

  “Jah, I ’spect they’re waiting, all right.”

  She bustled out with a wave and a gentle reminder to Katie to finish sewing her wedding dress.

  It seemed odd not to be attending the quilting bee today. Quiltings were popular in winter, Katie knew. When the land was resting, the women of the church district often got together to do their needlework, waiting for the first spring thaw that would wake the good earth again.

  Katie could almost hear the chatter and laughter as she thought about the frolic and the quilt they’d be finishing by sometime around dark tonight. Some of the women would probably mention how lonely poor Bishop John had been these past years since his first wife went to Glory, and how wonderful-gut it was that Katie had accepted his proposal. Most likely, they’d be passing on a bit of gossip, too, from time to time. And always there would be Mam’s tales.

  Katie wondered which story it might be today as she hurried to find her sewing basket. With the wedding only a few days away, she’d better listen to her mamma and finish up her wedding dress. She sank down into a rocker and was nearly halfway around the hem when she remembered Bishop John’s invitation for supper. She’d forgotten to tell her mother.

  And she’d forgotten something else. Mam would be happy to hear that she’d abandoned her doubts and decided to go ahead and marry John, music or no music. All around, it was the best thing. The right thing, as Mary would say.

  Still, in spite of everything, Katie struggled with a
restive feeling. She picked up her sewing and headed through the kitchen to the long, rectangular-shaped front room, where they gathered for Sunday preaching when it was their turn to host the meeting. Had she not been marrying a widower, her wedding night might have been spent here in this very house. As it was, her first night as John Beiler’s wife would be spent at his place, a spacious farmhouse brimming with children. She would sleep next to him in the bed he had shared with his first wife.

  Brushing tentative thoughts aside, Katie hurried to the doorway connecting the stone house with a smaller addition—the white clapboard house her ancestors had built many years ago. With both sets of grandparents now deceased, the Dawdi Haus remained vacant. But someday, when her father was too old to work the land, it would become her parents’ home. Then Benjamin, the youngest son, would inherit the main house and forty-five acres of fertile farmland—passing the family homestead from one generation to the next.

  Katie opened the door and surveyed the living room of the smaller house. Sparse furnishings had been left just as they were when her maternal grandparents lived here—matching hickory rockers with homemade padding on the seats, a drop-leaf pine table near the window, and a tall pine corner cupboard. Colorful rag rugs covered the floor, but the walls were void of pictures except for a lone, outdated scenic calendar hanging in the kitchen.

  Katie closed the door behind her and entered the Dawdi Haus, wandering through the unheated rooms, wishing Dawdi David and Mammi Essie were alive to witness her marriage. She imagined them sharing in the joy and the preparation of the community ritual, knowing they would have delighted in becoming instant step-great-grandparents to five young children.

  Katie sat down in Mammi’s rocker, the unhemmed wedding dress still in her hands. She leaned back against the wooden slats and shivered. It was much too cold to sit here and sew, yet she remained seated, recalling a childhood memory involving her mamma’s mother, Essie King—twin sister to Ella Mae Zook, the Wise Woman.

  Mammi Essie had caught young Katie humming a tune, just as Jacob Beiler had earlier today. One of those fast, made-up tunes—way back when Katie was but a schoolgirl, around first or second grade. She couldn’t remember which grade exactly, but it really didn’t matter. The memory that stuck in Katie’s mind was what Mammi Essie had said when she looked up from snapping peas.

  “Lord have mercy—you’re like no little girl I ever knowed! Like no other.”

  At the time, it seemed like a reproach—the way the words slipped off her wrinkled lips and stung the childish heart. Condemning words, they were, and Katie had blushed, feeling ashamed.

  Yet, as she thought back to the incident in their backyard, where honeysuckle perfume hung in the air and bees buzzed messages back and forth, it seemed that Mammi Essie was making more than a verbal rebuke. Had her grandmother sensed a streak of stubborn individualism? Such a thing was strongly discouraged; Katie knew that. By the time you were three, the molding of an obedient Amish child was supposed to be evident. That is, if the parents had done a thorough job of teaching the ways of Gelassenheit, total submission to the community and its church leaders.

  Katie had overheard her grandmother talking with some of the other womenfolk at a quilting frolic not long after. “Rebecca gives the girl a little too much leeway, if you ask me. But then little Katie’s the only girl child—and the last ’un at that, it appears.”

  Leaning down, Katie placed her sewing basket on the floor beside the rocker. Silently, she crossed the room to inspect a deep purple and magenta afghan on the back of the davenport. She lifted the crocheted afghan and held it, feeling the rough texture in her hands.

  “Mammi Essie knew I was different,” Katie said aloud. “And she knew it had nothing to do with Mam’s doting on me—nothing like that. Mammi knew there was something inside me . . . something longing for a way to let the music out.”

  There were no tears as Katie refolded Essie’s afghan. Her Mammi had died suspecting the truth—that the music had been a divine gift within Katie. God, the Creator of all things, had created her to make music. It wasn’t Katie’s doing at all.

  Still, no other living person truly understood. Not even Mary Stoltzfus. Only one had fully understood and had loved her anyway, and he was dead. Maybe it was because Daniel Fisher had shared the same secret struggle, the same eagerness to express the music within. While everyone around them seemed to be losing themselves—blending together like the hidden stitches of a quilt—Katie and Daniel had been trying to find themselves.

  Looking back, Katie wondered why she hadn’t been stronger in her stand, hadn’t at least tried to follow the church rules. But, no, she’d gone right along with Dan’s suggestion that they write out their songs. He’d shown her how to use the treble clef to sketch in the melody lines, notating the guitar chords with letter symbols.

  Why hadn’t she spoken up? Had she been too weak in spirit at seventeen to remind him of what the church required of them? Too much in love with the boy with blueberry eyes?

  Trembling with cold, she heard a faint sound of voices through the wall. The men were back inside, no doubt warming themselves by the stove. They’d been out all morning—removing loose stones from the fields—and would most likely welcome some black coffee before taking the cab wagon down the road to a farm sale.

  Katie hoped her father had not already summoned the preacher for a private confession. Reluctantly, she picked up her wedding dress and the basket with her needle, thread, and scissors, and opened the door leading from Mammi Essie’s former home. Then she trudged into the front room, toward the toasty kitchen awaiting her on the other side of the stone house.

  ————

  “Ach, what a beautiful quilt this’ll be,” Rebecca said, hurrying to find her place at the large frame in the Stoltzfus house. She pulled out the only vacant chair remaining and sat down with a sigh. She waited a moment to catch her breath, then picked up the needle.

  “A warm quilt’ll come in mighty handy on such cold nights, jah?” Ella Mae asked in a near whisper.

  Rebecca glanced over at her petite aunt. Lately, the old woman’s bouts with laryngitis seemed to linger longer and longer. But at her age, it was a wonder she continued to carry on as she did—attending quiltings and rug braidings, tending her herb garden, having the women in for pie occasionally, and even assisting her middle-aged daughter, Mattie Beiler, with her midwifery duties. Not all the young wives went to outspoken Mattie to have her “catch” their babies, but a good majority did.

  “Ain’t it lovely . . . our Katie getting married to Bishop Beiler?” Mary Stoltzfus remarked, speaking as only a best friend could. She tied off an intricate row of stitches and snipped the thread free.

  “It’s such a long time for the bishop to be without a wife—too long—raising all them little ones by himself,” Mary’s mother commented.

  Rebecca agreed, thinking it would soon be time for her to entertain the quilters with one of her best stories. She’d told them all—the same tales over and over—so often that the women knew them by heart. But still they called for more. Did they believe the stories . . . that they were absolutely true?

  She glanced again at dear Ella Mae, the Wise Woman. Through the years, the slight woman had been found to be trustworthy with shared confidences, as well as wise in counsel. Rebecca noticed that her wispy white hair nearly matched the kapp perched on her head till a body couldn’t tell where one left off and the other began. The woman looked downright angelic—the way the light streamed in from the window. And today, for some reason, she looked more like Rebecca’s own mother, Essie King, than she’d remembered. Being her mother’s twin, Ella Mae had every right to look like Essie, of course, but Rebecca had forgotten how closely they resembled each other until now. Maybe it was the way the brightness shone through the curtainless windows, highlighting her aunt’s pleasant, dimpled face and high forehead. Maybe it was the way Ella Mae sat with back erect, defying her eighty years.

  Rebecca had always
been interested in searching out the physical characteristics in families—especially the similarities between mothers and daughters, sisters and brothers. She hadn’t meant to stare, but evidently she was staring now, because Ella Mae’s wide hazel-gold eyes met hers.

  “Something on your mind?” The hoarse voice penetrated Rebecca’s thoughts.

  “Oh, nothing . . . nothing a’tall. You just look . . . well, so lovely.”

  Rebecca’s words surprised even herself. She wasn’t given to complimenting folk; it was not the way of the People.

  Ella Mae was silent. To acknowledge such a remark would be to imitate the ways of the English.

  “In fact, you’re looking near like an angel today,” Rebecca blurted out, blushing furiously.

  Ten other heads jerked up at the mention of a heavenly messenger. Ella Mae chuckled demurely but said nothing.

  If they could have read Rebecca’s mind, they would know that she yearned for a resemblance between herself and her auburn-haired daughter—the same as others in this room. These family traits were like the very threads the women stitched into the fabric of Katie’s quilt—joining, attaching . . . linking them one to another.

  “The Samuel Lapp family is expanding by six more come next week,” Mary Stoltzfus said, changing the subject.

  “A gut thing, jah?” There was a twinge of doubt in Ella Mae’s whispery voice, as though she suspected something amiss.

  “Ach, we all know how ferhoodled Katie gets before time to do something awful important,” Mattie Beiler cut in. “But my brother-in-law, the bishop, is a patient, kind man—no question about it. He’ll be gut for her.”

  Hearing Bishop John referred to as a patient man was not surprising to Rebecca. As long as she’d known him, she had felt at ease around him. He ran his farm well—working long hours every day—as well as handling much of the blacksmithing in and around Hickory Hollow. And he managed his children soundly, with help from young John—nicknamed “Hickory John” to distinguish him from his father—and Nancy, the oldest daughter, always admonishing the youngsters in the fear of the Lord.