Meek and Mild

by Newport, Olivia

  “But you’re very close to your mother.”

  “You’ll see,” Fannie said. “Sadie!”

  Fannie would reveal little in her daughter’s presence, so Clara did not press. Instead, as they walked they talked about the state of Fannie’s vegetable garden and whether the hens were laying enough eggs. Sadie circled around them in her bare feet, asking the names of sprouting vegetation and pointing out the birds swooping from their nests. On an ordinary day, Clara would have enjoyed the leisurely two-mile morning stroll. Today each step twisted her anxiety tighter.

  Clara heard the aching breath Fannie drew as they approached Martha kneeling between the budding rows of flowers across the front of the house. Sadie raced ahead to greet her grossmuder, throwing her weight against Martha’s back and disturbing her balance. Martha recovered quickly, but in the effort it took to stand up, Clara saw more than the strain of age.

  Martha was not an old woman. She was only forty-four and actively managed her household.

  Not only forty-four. Clara corrected herself mentally. A woman having a child at forty-four was not the same as a woman weeding her garden at forty-four. Already Martha’s balance was off. Already her back arced slightly to compensate for the rising mound in the front.

  Clara swallowed hard. Worry shot through her even as she reached out to put a hand on Fannie’s arm.

  “But your youngest brother is twelve,” Clara whispered.

  Fannie’s response was a choked sob.

  Even as Clara kissed her aunt’s cheek, she felt the color drain from her face. Once, a woman in the church was pregnant at forty-six. Even the English doctor said it was dangerous.

  Martha patted Sadie’s head. “There’s strudel in the kitchen. Why don’t you go get a piece?”

  Sadie’s penchant for strudel propelled her into the house.

  “You don’t have to hide what you feel,” Martha said softly to the two young women before her. “Clara, you’re worried something will happen to me or the baby—or both of us. Fannie, you’re heartbroken even though you want to be glad.”

  “Aunti Martha,” Clara said—but she did not know how to finish her sentence.

  Beside Clara, Fannie pushed her breath out slowly. “You didn’t tell me. You waited until I could see it.”

  “I didn’t know what to say,” Martha said. “I know how much you want another child.”

  Clara moistened her lips and glanced at her cousin.

  “Gottes wille,” Martha said. God’s will.

  They went inside for strudel and coffee. Sitting on a stool, Sadie’s face was already smeared with cherry filling. When Fannie took cups down from a shelf, clinking nearly obscured the toddler’s cry.

  “Thomas is here?” she said.

  Martha nodded. “Lizzie asked me to keep him for a few hours this morning.”

  Sadie wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “I’ll get him.”

  “Be gentle,” Fannie called after the girl. “Hold his hand. Don’t carry him.”

  Thomas, her brother’s son, was a year and a half old. When Fannie heard the news that he was on the way to the newlywed couple, she was genuinely glad for them. But now another two years had passed. In all that time, Fannie had not had even one delayed cycle, not one morning of conflicted signals from her body, not one morning of hope that her faithful patience was rewarded at last. Lizzie and Abe likely soon would announce that they were expecting another boppli, and Fannie would once again have to kiss their cheeks in congratulation.

  Sadie returned to the room with a crooked grin on her face and a sleepy boy wobbling on his feet.

  A boy.

  A son would please Elam. A stair-step row of sons, with another daughter or two along the way, would split his face in permanent joy. Fannie wanted to give Elam that vision. She wanted to hold that vision for herself.

  But after more than five years since Sadie’s birth?

  Fannie looked at her mother heating coffee at the stove. Perhaps if she steeled herself with enough pastry, she could say she was glad for her mother.

  She wouldn’t be glad—not yet. But she would try very hard to say that she was.

  Clara was grateful to be back at Fannie’s house. Though the outing lasted barely three hours, it had exhausted Clara. It was not the miles they strode in lovely sunlight.

  Her aunt was right. Clara was fearful, and Fannie was heartbroken.

  At least in Fannie’s home, neither of them had to pretend they felt differently. They only had to avoid speaking of the subject in Sadie’s presence. As soon as Clara dropped into the davenport, Sadie snuggled against her and nudged her way under Clara’s arm.

  “Did you bring me a story?” Sadie looked up at Clara’s face hopefully.

  Clara stroked Sadie’s hair. “No, I’m afraid I didn’t think of it this time.”

  “Will you send me one in a letter, then?”

  “I’ll have to finish one,” Clara said. “I’m in the middle of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho.”

  Sadie turned her head toward her mother across the room. “Mamm, do I know that story?”

  “I don’t know,” Fannie said. “Do you?”

  “You’re being silly,” Sadie said. “Just tell me if I know it.”

  Clara tickled Sadie’s neck. “If you don’t remember, then I guess you don’t know it.”

  “But you do, right?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Then tell me from your head.” Sadie scratched one bare foot. “You can send me the paper later.”

  “Well, let me see. Have you ever been surprised by a very big job? Something that seemed so hard that no one could do it? Maybe it made you afraid?”

  “I remember when I was afraid of feeding the chickens.”

  “Bigger!” Clara said.

  Sadie pushed her lips out, thinking. “I used to be afraid of carrying the milk bucket from the barn when it gets too full.”

  “Bigger!”

  “I’m not afraid to pick up Thomas.” Sadie giggled. “Mamm is afraid I’ll drop him, but I’m not. And I’m not afraid to let the horse take an apple out of my hand.”

  “You’re a brave little girl,” Clara said. “But I’m sure if you think very hard, you’ll remember something that seemed like a big, huge job, and when you do, you’ll know just what Joshua felt like when God told him to lead the people in a walk around the city of Jericho. Joshua had to be brave enough to lead the people, but he also had to be brave enough to believe that when he obeyed God, the very tall and very thick walls around Jericho would fall down. That’s how the people would get inside the city.”

  Sadie’s eyes were wide and bright. “Are you going to make sounds in this story? I like it when you make sounds.”

  “Now that you mention it,” Clara said, “there are some very exciting sounds in this story. I’m going to need your help with them.”

  Sadie clapped.

  “I’ll make some lunch,” Fannie said. “It should be ready by the time you get to the part about walking around the city seven times.”

  “We’ll be hungry by then,” Clara said. “Now Sadie, let’s practice a trumpet sound.”

  Clara kept her voice cheerful for Sadie even as she watched the deepening droop in Fannie’s shoulders.

  After lunch, Sadie scampered outside with a promise that she would not stray far from the house. As soon as her daughter was out of earshot, Fannie turned her strained face toward her cousin. They stood at the front window watching Sadie run in circles.

  “She’s a gleeful child,” Clara said. “I hope I didn’t wind her up too much with all the marching and horn blowing.”

  Fannie gave a wan smile. “She’ll never forget that story. She remembers all the Bible stories you tell her. And soon as she gets a letter, she makes me stop everything and read it.”

  “We’ll have to work on teaching her to read them for herself.”

  “Thank you for coming.” Fannie squeezed Clara’s hand. “None of my friends here would understand. Eve
ryone in the church will think it’s such happy news.”

  It was happy news. Perhaps on another day Fannie would be able to make herself feel the gladness new life should bring.

  “Have you decided whether to marry Andrew?” Fannie said.

  Clara pulled her bottom lip down in a grimace. “What will I say if he asks me again?”

  “Yes! You should say yes!”

  “I know. I do care for him. Truly I do.”

  “Then don’t try his patience any further. The wedding season will be here before you know it.”

  Fannie’s mind flashed to what might happen by this time next year. Andrew and Clara could marry in the fall or early winter. By next summer, they could have a baby of their own on the way.

  And it would be one more child wrenching at the grief in Fannie’s heart, even though Clara would be terrified at the prospect of giving birth.

  Martha’s child—Fannie’s own brother or sister—would be sitting up on a quilt in the sunshine, perhaps even rocking on hands and knees preparing to crawl.

  Fannie swallowed the thickness of her throat. The world did not stop because God did not find her deserving of another child.

  “Don’t miss out on Andrew’s love,” Fannie said. “If there should be a child…”

  “Let’s not talk about that now,” Clara murmured. “I should go.”

  Fannie nodded. If Clara didn’t get to the Maple Glen Meetinghouse on time, she would miss the milk wagon going back across the border.

  The pressure in Clara’s chest triggered tears in her eyes before she opened them the next morning. The dream had come again. Sadness trailed behind the vague shapes that never quite came into focus in those gray moments between disturbed sleep and opening day.

  At least she had not wakened whimpering.

  Clara hesitated to use the word dream for the unprovoked gloom that swam through her from time to time, as it had all her life. Nothing happened in these dreams, if that is what they were. She saw no faces, no landscape, no burning sun or swirling river water. The babies were gone before she heard their cries.

  The babies. It was always the babies. Sometimes she thought she was the baby, but sometimes the baby was a boy.

  Clara pushed her quilt away and swung her feet over the side of the bed. She had not woken this way for months—long enough to hope that perhaps the misery she feared had dissipated and perhaps she could marry Andrew after all. Daylight had not yet broken through the window, but Clara would not sleep again. She never did when this happened. Her fingers knew where to find the matches on the corner of her nightstand, and she lit the lamp. She might as well finish writing Joshua’s story for Sadie.

  She didn’t want to think about anybody’s baby today.

  This time Andrew did not linger over the electric table lamps or toasters.

  On Saturday morning, he entered the hardware store with no list and no intended purchase. Instead, he sought space to wonder what he would do with the Model T. What he understood about the functioning of a motor—of any variety—was sparse enough that he could write it on the flap of an envelope. Andrew was fairly confident a hardware store was not the place to be schooled in the workings of an automobile engine. He would have to learn what the English meant when they said words like piston and spark plugs and throttle. For now he only wanted a place where he could look thoughtful and occupied while acquiring a basic knowledge of what the store might offer in terms of supplies an automobile owner might require.

  Andrew stood in front of a display of motor oil. How much did an engine use? Next to the oil was a rack of gloves made especially for driving. Were they essential? What about goggles? Andrew squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them again. He wouldn’t need to worry about gloves or goggles unless he got the automobile running.

  And since he did not know why it wasn’t running already, he faced a conundrum.

  “Andrew!”

  At the sound of his name, Andrew snapped his gaze up. He let out his breath. It was only John Stutzman.

  “Good morning, John.”

  “It is a good morning, isn’t it?” John nodded his head in satisfaction.

  Andrew had always liked John. The nine years’ difference in their ages was enough that until not so long ago Andrew had called him a respectful “Mr. Stutzman,” then “Smiling John” to distinguish him from his father, and finally simply “John.” A husband and father of seven children, John was in a season of life Andrew hoped would arrive for him before long. The older Andrew got, the less marked the age disparity became. They were two farmers who went to church together and shared a way of life.

  John stroked his beard and glanced at the display before Andrew.

  He wouldn’t ask. Andrew was sure of that. John Stutzman believed that a man’s conscience was his own, which was just why Andrew felt no need to hide.

  “I found something the other day,” Andrew said.

  John’s eyebrows arched. “A horse that drinks oil?”

  Andrew gave a half smile. “What if I said yes?”

  “Then I’d say it was a horse that didn’t eat hay.”

  “Not so far as I can figure, no.”

  “Not having to muck a stall would bring certain advantages.”

  Andrew laughed now. “Do you want to see it?”

  “Do you mean to say you’ve taken possession of the remarkable beast?”

  The remarkable beast. The description seemed apt, both for the automobile and for Andrew’s rapidly growing affinity for it.

  “I have indeed,” Andrew said. “Free and clear.”

  “I will confess that does spark a certain degree of curiosity in me.”

  The fine lines at the corners of John’s eyes creased, offering a faint suggestion of his age. For the first time, Andrew noticed wisps of faint gray in his friend’s hair curling at the back of his neck.

  “Then we shall have to arrange something,” Andrew said.

  With their heads tilted toward each other, Andrew revealed where the Model T was and the circumstances under which he acquired it. He’d poked and tugged at every loose edge inside and outside the automobile, looking for any evidence that the note and papers giving the Model T to whoever was willing to take it off the hands of its exasperated owner were not as straightforward as they seemed. Finding nothing, he took the papers home and stored them securely where even Yonnie would not know where to find them.

  John laughed at Andrew’s recounting. “You’re hiding an automobile and you’re worried someone will find the papers?”

  Andrew shook his head. “I have no regret about taking the car. The possibility of being falsely accused of how I came to possess it enters my mind.”

  “What about Yonnie?”

  “What about him?”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “He’s my relative and my childhood friend.”

  “Yes. And do you trust him?”

  John looked over Andrew’s shoulder, and Andrew turned to follow his gaze. Yonnie stood at the end of the aisle.

  Clara sometimes wondered what it would be like to court as the English did—always properly chaperoned, but without secrecy. Amish pairings were not always a surprise when engagements were published in church, but until that moment, no one could be certain a young man who offered to take a young woman home from the Singing where the unmarried gathered had true affection for her or whether she returned it. If a group took a buggy and food baskets for a picnic along the Casselman River, there might be a romantically aspiring couple among them or there might not be. Three minutes of conversation beyond the ears of anyone else could be casual insignificance or stolen, treasured words. Clara had her suspicions who might be announcing engagements as the harvest season approached this year—Ruth and Peter, for instance—but she made no claim to be certain of anything.

  One thing Clara did know was that if she never left the Kuhn farm, she would never run into Andrew coincidentally—or not so coincidentally. After all, was there such a thing as
a coincidence? Was not all that happened God’s will?

  So when Rhoda casually remarked on Saturday morning that she had forgotten to purchase green thread the last time she was in town and was now disappointed that she was not equipped for the mending in her basket, Clara cheerfully offered to go to the mercantile. To her surprise, Rhoda did not refuse the help and in fact gave Clara a list of several other small but needful items that would more than justify the excursion.

  Taking just one horse with a small cart, Clara kept her eyes open for any sign of Andrew, who might come from a side road because he had been visiting a neighbor or who might come from the direction she was traveling. When Clara passed the turnoff to his farm, the urge to see if he was home tempted her, but she knew a daytime meeting would be much safer out where anyone might observe it and think nothing of it.

  The thought that she might run into him, that it might be God’s will for them to see each other today, was enough to stretch her neck in anticipation, but she chastised her own hope with determination not to lose her grip on her errand for Rhoda. If she wanted to prove herself useful, she could not disappoint Rhoda by tumbling into distraction and failing to come home with green thread and a few practical items.

  Clara got all the way to Springs, where she drove around two small squares of shops looking for a place to leave the horse and cart. The shops still had hitching posts in front of them, but every time Clara came into Springs, there seemed to be more automobiles. Irritation pulsed through her good mood. The automobiles themselves did not bother her, but why did their owners have to leave them in front of the hitching posts?

  The annoyance fled when the circuit around the blocks led to a sighting of a brown stallion with a stripe of white running down his long nose.

  Andrew’s horse—and room to share the hitching post. Clara eased her gentle spotted gray mare into the space and knotted the reins to the post before reaching under the bench in the cart for the sack of apples her father always kept there. She offered one to the mare and one to the stallion, tempted to feed them all the apples in the bag while she loitered with the thought that Andrew would have to return to this spot eventually.