by Leslie Gould
My heart welled with love for her. I felt like my old self for a moment. Worried about someone else. Wondering what I could do to help.
My mind whirred with ideas, and then I put my arm around her and whispered in her ear. “Don’t be surprised if God doesn’t have someone else planned for you. Joseph was probably just the warm-up.” A plan began to brew inside my head.
Not wanting to seem too obvious, I waited a few minutes and then asked Nell to see to my sales for a few minutes. I jogged up the hill. Martin had a couple of buckets ready to go, lined up along the lawn. I hurried into the house. “Ivan,” I called out. “I need your help.”
He stepped into the kitchen from the living room, his glasses in his hand.
“Could you carry some flowers down for me?”
He seemed a little put out, but did what I asked. I led the way, carrying one of the buckets while he carried the other. When we got to our booth, I put my bucket down first and then took his. Then, as if it were an afterthought, I said, “Oh, have you two met?”
“If we have,” Ivan said, “it’s been years.”
“Nell, my brother, Ivan. Ivan, Nell Yoder.”
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I do remember you from when we were young, although I think I’m quite a bit older.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Nell answered, followed by a sweet smile.
I left them to chat and wandered over to Joseph Koller’s booth. “Want to trade some flowers for a toy?”
His face lit up, confirming every word Nell had said.
I pointed to the wooden toy I had in mind—a carved horse. Robbie would be thrilled. The little boy had teased me relentlessly, but the next time I saw him, I planned to win him over. That’s what the old Molly would have done. I was going to try my best to lighten up.
The next morning, Mamm said she wanted us to go to Edna’s church. That surprised me, considering early Monday she’d be off to the hospital, but then it dawned on me—maybe that was why she wanted to be in church, and since it was our district’s Sunday off it made sense to go to Edna’s.
After breakfast, while Beatrice cleaned up, I hitched Daisy to the buggy, and once everyone was ready, off we went to the other side of Paradise.
Edna was overjoyed to see us. Mamm sat between Edna and me while Beatrice sat on the other side of Edna.
We sang the usual songs from the Ausbund, and then one I’d never heard before called “The Love of God Is Greater Far.” As everyone else sang, and we listened, Beatrice pulled out a small pad and pen from her apron pocket.
“‘O love of God, how rich and pure! How measureless and strong!’” Edna’s district sang with joy on their faces. The song must have been a favorite with this group. The last verse started with
“Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made . . .”
And then ended with
“To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.”
Beatrice scribbled furiously as Mamm and I joined in singing the chorus. Generally speaking, we weren’t to be so bold as to assume that we or anyone else was going to heaven. That was up to God. We were to live our lives as if we were—but only God could know our hearts. But I was pretty sure Dat was in heaven and experiencing the love of God in a way we could only imagine.
At the end of the song, an elder walked up to the front and began reading about Mary and Martha. I had to admit, it wasn’t one of my favorite stories. I always felt sorry for Martha. She worked so hard and did so much but then got chastised for it by Jesus. But as the elder read, I realized that Jesus only chastised her after she’d complained to him. She hadn’t been doing the work for him, or trusting him. She’d been doing the work for herself, which caused her to resent her sister.
“Mary sat still, worshiping the Lord,” the elder said, “while Martha worked frantically to get everything done.” He went on to explain that it’s not wrong to work. A few people laughed. “What’s wrong is to not trust God while we work. Just as it would have been wrong for Mary not to trust as she sat still.”
He kept talking, but I didn’t hear much after that. After he finished, another elder came up and read 1 Corinthians 13. It had been my Dat’s favorite passage, and Mamm squeezed my hand, her bony fingers digging into mine. The elder read from the King James Version instead of High German. “‘Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself . . . Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked . . .’”
I thought of the word for love in Pennsylvania Dutch—Leeva. And then the word for Christlike—Grishtlich. Loving others meant not wanting my own way.
What did that mean, exactly? Letting go of Leon to court Hannah if that’s what he wanted? If not, being willing to go to Montana with him? Did it mean selling the farm to Ivan without a fight?
I took a deep breath. It meant something—I just wasn’t sure what.
At the end of the service, the first elder came back up and said he had a verse from Psalms for us to remember through the next two weeks. He recited, “‘Make thy face to shine upon thy servant: save me for thy mercies’ sake.’” He smiled and then said, “Let that be our prayer.”
That’s what I needed—God’s saving mercy. In my grief, I’d ignored it the last few months. Dat had died—not God.
We stayed for the meal afterward and then gave Edna a ride to her place. Ivan would take Mamm to the hospital tomorrow, and Edna would come over to help us care for Mamm once she came home. She hugged Mamm extra long as she said good-bye.
Monday morning, Ivan arrived to take Mamm a few minutes earlier than we’d expected. “I’ll go grab your bag,” I said to Mamm, heading toward the staircase, not wanting her to attempt to carry it herself using her cane.
The room was in its usual meticulous order. I hadn’t been back in since I’d boxed up Dat’s things, and it looked exactly the same, including the blue notebook on the little table. It seemed everyone but me—at least Beatrice, Leon, and Mamm—had a book they wrote in.
This time curiosity got the best of me, and I went around the bed and opened the book. The pages weren’t lined, so it was more like a drawing book. There was a sketch of two birds—mockingbirds—on the first page, their wings both shaded in until they looked as gray as they were in real life, contrasting with the white feathers. I flipped to the next. There was a strike, a barred owl, a swift, and then a ruby-throated hummingbird. All were identified, in Mamm’s handwriting, but I wasn’t sure who’d drawn them.
“Molly?”
I jumped.
“What are you doing?”
I turned around, the book still in my hand.
“That’s private,” she said. She leaned against the doorjamb, no cane in sight.
I put it back on the table. “It’s just drawings of birds.”
“No,” she answered. “It’s more than that.” She shuffled over to her bureau, took her brush out of the top drawer, and put it in her bag.
I picked up her satchel and, feeling like a child, followed her down the stairs.
When we reached the kitchen, Beatrice asked for at least the third time how long Mamm would be gone.
“Until Wednesday, if all goes well,” Ivan said. “They’ll put Anna completely out for the biopsy—and then they’ll want to keep an eye on her.”
Beatrice hunched over the table. “What if it doesn’t go well?”
“Bea . . .” I stepped around the table and put my arm around her. She surprised me by grabbing my hand and squeezing it.
Mamm patted Beatrice’s shoulder. “It will be fine, child. Don’t worry.”
Ivan stood, his coffee mug in hand, and walked to the kitchen sink, where he gazed out the window. “Here comes the driver,” he said. He took a last drink of his coffee and then dumped the rest in the sink. He turned t
oward Mamm. “Ready?”
She nodded.
Mamm hugged me and said, “Take care of things around here.”
She seemed to have forgiven me for snooping. I hugged her back. “Everything will be fine—you’ll see—here and at the hospital too.”
After she hugged Beatrice, we all walked out to the car. Doris waved at us as Mamm climbed into the front seat.
Ivan hesitated a moment and said quietly, just to me, “Are you sure you two will be all right here alone?”
“Jah,” I answered. “Why wouldn’t we be?”
“It worries me, is all.”
“I’m plenty capable,” I answered.
He nodded, as if he’d heard it before, and climbed into the back seat. He would stay at his own place the next two nights. Doris would drive him back and forth to the hospital.
I watched as the car disappeared down the driveway. When they returned on Wednesday, they wouldn’t know the results of the biopsy. Ivan had said that would take a couple more days. But we would be that much closer to knowing what the future, for all of us, held.
I’d prepared myself, being the pragmatic person I was, for my parents to die while I was still young. I’d taken a rational approach. Chances were, they would. They had been as old as most of my friends’ grandparents. Still, when Dat had died, it caught me off guard.
And no matter how realistic I could be, I could think of no practical way to deal with the possible death of my mother.
Tears pooled in my eyes again, and I swallowed hard. The only way to get through the next two days was to work hard and put it out of my mind. I grabbed a hoe from the tool shed and headed out to the lavender. Two identical heads, both covered with straw hats, bobbed along above the purple blooms. Mervin and Martin were already hard at work.
At least I had that to be thankful for.
In the early afternoon, Ivan called my cell phone. He said the biopsy had gone well and Mamm was in recovery.
“I’ll call before I leave the hospital,” he said.
A few minutes later, a landscaper called to place an order, explaining Mamm had given him my number last week. The man had gotten a job when another contractor had a family emergency and couldn’t finish it. He needed sixty shrubs for a parking lot project—all by tomorrow. He’d send a truck in the morning.
I gladly accepted the order, and the twins and I got busy. Late in the afternoon, I pulled Beatrice from the house to help. She wasn’t pleased but pitched in. By suppertime we had the shrubs pulled, wrapped in burlap, and transported to the loading dock.
I sent Mervin and Martin home and Beatrice to the house to fix a simple supper. Then I headed to the office to write up the invoice. After that was done, I sprayed down the shrubs, soaking the burlap. Then I headed toward the lily field to see how the blooms were coming along.
As I passed the house, Beatrice was sitting on the front porch, her journal in her lap, staring off toward the lowering sun.
“Want to walk with me?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Come on, Beatrice. It’s not good for you to spend so much time by yourself.”
She held up her journal as if to indicate she wasn’t alone.
“Suit yourself.” The truth was, I needed to be with someone. It was too quiet with Mamm gone. A wave of loneliness swept through me. I missed my Dat. I missed the group of Youngie I’d hung out with for so many years.
I missed Hannah.
And I missed Leon, most of all.
The next morning, the landscaper was pleased with the shrubs and that we were able to fill his order in such a short time. As Mervin and Martin loaded his truck, he asked to talk with Mamm about what else we had.
“She’s not available right now,” I said. “But I can show you.”
Love stayed at my side as I led the way to the back field. She was friendly enough to the man but also protective of me. I showed him the trees, shrubs, and decorative grasses. It wasn’t a huge collection, but it was definitely adequate, especially for what it seemed this landscaper needed. He followed me down a row and then back up, commenting on the selection and the health of the plants.
“I’ll definitely be in touch,” he said as we walked back to the truck. “I have a project in a new subdivision next month. I’ll figure out what I need and let you know.”
After the man left, Mervin approached me. “Would you talk to Hannah?” He took his sunglasses off, showing his sad puppy-dog eyes. “Tell her how much I love her. She won’t believe me. She still thinks I’m teasing her.”
“She’s not really listening to me either,” I said.
“I’m afraid she’s falling for Leon.”
My heart sank, but I didn’t say anything.
“Well, if you get the chance to talk with her . . .”
I nodded. Chance was a disappointing word. If I got the chance to talk to Hannah . . . If I got the chance to talk to Leon . . . Mervin headed back into the greenhouse.
Lord, I prayed, how about an opportunity instead of a chance? To talk to both Hannah and Leon.
Ivan called my cell just after supper and said Mamm was doing well. “We’ll be home tomorrow,” he said.
“Edna’s coming to help us,” I said. “I know you shouldn’t be away from your work for much longer.”
“I’m bringing a stack of it with me. I’ll stay until the weekend at least.”
We would have been fine without him, but it might help Mamm to have Ivan stay. She’d been used to Dat’s support all these years. Ivan was definitely competent. As much as I’d—at first—felt as if it should have been my role to be with Mamm, I could see that he probably dealt with the doctors better than I would have been able to. He’d have a better idea of what questions to ask, both of the doctors and the business office.
After he said good-bye, I headed out to the front porch, leaving Beatrice to clear the table. Instead of doing it, though, she followed me out.
“You should call someone and go have some fun,” she said.
I shook my head as I leaned against the porch rail, focusing on the field across the road.
“No, really. You’re making me nervous hanging around so much. Go over to Hannah’s.” She stood behind me. “Or see if Martin wants to go to the party down by the river.”
I turned toward her. “There’s a party?”
“I’m guessing there is. If there isn’t, you could organize one.”
I shook my head. I had no desire to go anywhere—and certainly not to organize anything—but she was right. I was restless.
Mamm, Ivan, and Edna arrived at eleven on Wednesday morning. Mamm was pale and using the cane. She said her head ached but otherwise was fine. They’d used a needle to do the biopsy and hadn’t even shaved a patch of hair, which surprised me. We put her on the sickbed in the sewing room and then finished up dinner.
Ivan took over the desk in the living room, and when I went to call him to the table, he asked me to wait a minute.
“I just want you to know,” he said, twirling his glasses in his hand, “that if I buy this place I’ll never turn all of you out. If I resell it, you girls can stay with me, until you marry. Then Anna can live with one of you—or with me if that suits her better.”
I wasn’t going to bother saying I didn’t think Beatrice would ever marry, but I did ask, “What if I never marry?”
“Oh, you will.” Ivan put his glasses back on his face. “Perhaps not one of the Mosiers . . . or the Montanan. But someone will turn up.” He turned his attention back to his paperwork. “Someone will turn up.” He made it sound so devoid of love and emotion and everything I felt for Leon.
For the rest of the day Beatrice waited on Mamm, Edna saw to the housework and cooking, and Ivan did his accounting, while I saw to the outside work, ordering Mervin and Martin around, a role I was enjoying less and less.
Midafternoon, I went in for a drink of water, and Edna offered me a piece of strawberry pie. How could I refuse?
She sat
with me while I ate. “Do you remember us talking about the circle letter? The one that introduced my Mamm and yours?”
I nodded.
“And how your Mamm came out to visit?”
I nodded again.
“I thought of something else that happened when she did.”
“Oh,” I said, between bites.
“Your Mamm took over the kitchen while she was here, saying it was the least she could do. I was fifteen and Ivan was already out on his own. I’d been doing all of the cooking and cleaning, so it was nice to have some help. One night before dinner, your Mamm was cooking and mine was sitting at the table. She was bald from her treatments—with her Kapp on, of course—and in pain. We knew she wasn’t going to live much longer, although no one would talk about it.
“Your Mamm spilled something on her apron and took it off to rinse it right away. She said she’d run up to her room to get another, but my Mamm told her not to bother. My mother stood, a little shaky, and untied her own, and then handed it to your mother, saying, ‘I want you to have this. I don’t need it anymore.’”
I put down my fork and exhaled slowly.
“Jah,” Edna said. “I didn’t really think much about it at the time, but now . . . I think it was as if she chose your Mamm—for Dat, for all of us.”
I shivered, my eyes filling with tears. That was love. Suddenly my view of Dat’s first wife took a 180-degree turn.
That evening, Ivan borrowed our buggy to go somewhere—although, even when I asked him point-blank, he didn’t answer. My guess was over to see Nell Yoder. That made me smile. Maybe there was hope for Ivan yet. I couldn’t wait to see how love might change him.
Maybe there was hope for me too.
Thursday we all continued with our routines, but after our noon meal a car I didn’t recognize turned into our driveway. I guessed it was a tourist who noticed our flower fields and wanted to buy some or perhaps was hoping for a tour. That happened every once in a while.