Meek and Mild

by Newport, Olivia

  Clara swallowed. She had been too little to remember the night her mother birthed a baby who never drew breath.

  “She held my hand the whole time.” Martha’s gaze found a distant point out the window. “The baby took too long. Catherine was exhausted, but she never let go of my hand. Not until…”

  Clara’s breath stilled against her will. She knew the story. Martha had told it more than once. Catherine bled too much too fast. The baby was gone and then Catherine as well. That was the moment when her grip on Martha’s hand slackened. Story and vague memories of a toddler swirled in Clara’s mind, leaving her once again uncertain of the difference between what she remembered from that day and the bits of information she had acquired over the years.

  Martha’s breathing sounded heavy to Clara.

  “Are you sure you feel all right?” she asked.

  “Perfectly fit. I’m just having a baby, and I miss my sister at a time like this.” Martha sighed. “And my daughter.”

  They dawdled through lunch, which Clara insisted on helping to prepare. The three Hostetler sons still living on their parents’ farm alternated between teasing and adoring Sadie. When the meal was over, Sadie announced she was going to help wash dishes and pushed a kitchen chair up to the sink. Clara and Martha worked on either side of the girl, both encouraging and inspecting her efforts.

  “Time to go, Sadie.” Clara hung the damp dish towel over the back of a chair.

  “Not yet!”

  “Your grossmuder needs to rest.” Clara glanced at her aunt over Sadie’s head and was relieved to see no resistance in Martha’s features.

  “Come give me a kiss,” Martha said to Sadie.

  Sadie leaned into her grandmother. “The boppli is getting big!”

  Martha took Sadie’s hand and laid it on her belly.

  A few seconds later Sadie gasped. “What is that?”

  “The babe is kicking.”

  “Is it trying to get out?”

  “Not just yet.”

  “Wait until I tell Mamm the baby kicked me.”

  Clara pressed her lips together to keep from grimacing. Sadie chattering about the active baby would do nothing for Fannie’s fallen spirits.

  “Let’s go, then,” Clara said. She kissed Martha good-bye and promised not to wait so long before visiting again.

  Sadie, who had practically run the entire distance that morning, now dragged her feet about going home. Clara kept up a brisk pace, pausing periodically for Sadie to catch up. She would see the child home, but she would not so much as drink a glass of water before setting out again.

  “Aren’t you coming in?” Fannie asked when Clara nudged Sadie through the front door.

  “I have an errand,” Clara said. “Does the midwife still live on the other side of the pond?”

  “Midwife?” Fannie startled. “Surely not yet.”

  “How often is your mother seeing the midwife?”

  “She’s weeks away from her time.”

  “Fannie, your mamm is having a harder go than she admits.”

  “That’s what Lizzie said.” Fannie glanced at Sadie, who picked up her faceless rag doll from the chair she insisted was the doll’s bed. “She scolded me for not visiting more.”

  “I can see her point.”

  “Not you, too, Clara!”

  Clara pulled on one kapp string. “I know it’s difficult for you.”

  “No one understands,” Fannie said. “I don’t know a single other woman who is watching her mother have the baby that should have been hers. Only me!”

  They stood on either side of the threshold, matching eyes inherited from their mothers fixed on each other. Clara’s heart thudded against her ribs. Only a few months ago she could not have imagined anything would separate Martha and Fannie. Their intimacy had always made her miss the mother she did not know—it still did. Clara never expected to stand between them aching for them both.

  “She misses you,” Clara whispered finally.

  “I know.” Fannie looked down at her skirt, her voice viscous and constrained. “But I can’t help her right now. I just can’t.”

  Clara nodded, a knot rising in her throat. “I’ll go see the midwife.”

  Fannie stepped back and closed the door, pressing it softly into its frame while Clara exhaled grief.

  Clara visited Martha again before she went home on the following Friday and had a word with her cousins. The boys were twelve, fifteen, and seventeen—old enough not to take their mother for granted, old enough to notice how tired she was, old enough to take over some of Martha’s chores without being asked.

  Now more than two weeks had passed. Every day that no urgent message came from Garrett County allowed Clara to breathe another day’s relief that her aunt was probably fine. She wished she could know for sure that the midwife had been to see Martha.

  Sitting in the Flag Run Meetinghouse in Somerset County for the first service in October, Clara pondered the fine line between calling and regret. Her reason for not going to the worship service with Fannie’s family at the Maple Glen Meetinghouse in Garrett County was that the repercussions might usher in regret. The decision was hardly an act of submission to the church. Keeping herself from a progressive church service might qualify as outward obedience—which was what people like Yonnie concerned themselves with—but it certainly was not a humble offering of her spirit to God.

  The Maryland congregation would have no worship service today, but many of them would restore their souls with Sabbath visiting. Fannie ought to visit her mother, but ought and could were not the same thing. Clara prayed Fannie would not be mired in regret so impenetrable that turning back would be as impossible as flying to the moon.

  For the first time in her life, Clara wished she could pick up an English telephone and tell the operator she wanted to talk to her aunt.

  None of this had anything to do with the Sunday morning church service of the Pennsylvania congregation. Clara readjusted her posture, laid her clasped hands in her lap, and gave her attention to the sermon.

  Clara saw no sign of Bishop or Mrs. Yoder, though one of their sons who lived in Missouri was present. She had not seen him in years. If he was home because of his father’s illness, it must be serious. Joseph Yoder concluded his sermon and suggested a hymn. Noah stood for his sermon. Sometimes Clara wondered if Mose Beachy even participated in casting lots for the sermon. What else would explain why it so seldom fell to him?

  After the final hymn, Noah stepped forward again.

  “We have the glad news of publishing several engagements,” he said.

  Clara glanced at Andrew. Noah named three couples, including Ruth Kaufman and Peter Troyer. As one by one, the brides’ fathers stood and issued invitations for the congregation to attend the weddings, Clara kept her eyes in her lap. She did not want to know how many eyes might be on her—including Rhoda’s—wondering if yet another harvest season would pass with no wedding celebration at the Kuhn home. While she plotted how to politely slip from the meetinghouse, at least long enough for immediate stares to wear off, Joseph stood again beside the preacher’s unvarnished table. At the sound of his shuffling feet, Clara tilted her head to one side, a necessity rising from her recent habit of sitting in the rear of the meetinghouse.

  Joseph unfolded a sheet of paper. “I have a letter from my father to read to you.”

  A wave of shifting posture rolled through the meetinghouse.

  “ ‘My beloved church,’ ” Joseph read. “ ‘As you know I have been unwell for some time. While I have faith in our Lord for my recovery, I know I am becoming older. My family encourages me to ease my load. Serving as your humble bishop all these years has brought me great joy. Now it is time that I find a new service. In obedience to God, I resign as your bishop effective October 1. May we continue together in our devotion to Jesus Christ. Humbly yours, Moses Yoder.’ ”

  October 1. Today!

  Joseph folded the paper. “The hymnals have been prepared by my father
himself. Following communion this afternoon, the ministers will prayerfully choose a hymnal and discover the slip of paper that reveals the will of God.”

  Andrew ate little, just a slice of bread and a few beets. He watched Clara make the rounds pouring black coffee, but he did not see her sit down to eat.

  Andrew’s mind jumped back and forth between the careful words of the letter Joseph read and his own conversation with the bishop in the Yoder kitchen. The bishop could not have written that letter on his own. Caroline had probably insisted on the resignation.

  The meal lacked the usual leisurely socializing. A baby wailed. Andrew didn’t turn his head to see whose it was, instead watching the ministers. After eating together, they now stood, a signal that benches should once again be arranged for a worship service.

  The fall communion service began. As the bread and wine were served, guilt pinged Andrew. This was a solemn ritual that occurred only twice a year, yet his mind was fixed on the procedure that would follow. He could read nothing on the faces of the three ministers. When his turn came, Andrew knelt to eat the bread and drink the wine and prayed that Christ’s love would find a home in his heart. Though the congregation took communion seriously, it seemed to Andrew that the stillness and attentiveness around him was due to more than the somber service.

  Finally the ministers returned to their bench in the front, facing the congregation. On the preacher’s table were three hymnals. Each one showed the tattered wear of decades of service to the congregation. All were tied with identical string, making it impossible to discern which one held a slip of paper with a verse written on it.

  Joseph Yoder was first to select a hymnal. Noah laid a hand on one of the remaining two and then changed his mind and picked up the other. Mose’s task was simple. He had only to lift the last hymnal from the table.

  Andrew still saw nothing in their expressions. No eagerness. No anxiety. The work of a bishop was consuming. Andrew did not envy any of them the task. Gottes wille. God would choose the next bishop.

  One by one the ministers began untying the strings. Then together they flipped the pages of the hymnals in search of the slip of paper. Joseph reached the end of his hymnal and began shuffling pages in the other direction, consternation creeping across his face.

  Andrew’s heart rate kicked up, and involuntarily he peeled himself away from the back of the bench.

  Noah was slower, more methodical. But he found no paper, either. The brothers maintained solemn expressions but audibly shifted their weight on the bench.

  Andrew watched Mose Beachy’s face and saw the instant Mose moved his eyes to the spot where his wife sat with their daughters.

  A fraction of a second later, Lucy Beachy failed to contain the cry rising through her throat.

  The lot had fallen to her mild-mannered, peace-loving husband. Mose laid the hymnal open across his knees and lifted the slip of paper tucked against the binding at the center of the volume.

  Andrew gripped the back of the bench in front of him. Mose stood up beside the preacher’s table.

  “God has chosen me for your new bishop.”

  Seventeen days.

  For seventeen days the district buzzed with speculation. Everywhere Clara turned—in Niverton or Springs for the shops, walking through the farms as harvesting teams rolled from one to the other, visiting neighbors on the Sabbath between services or after the worship services—conversation turned to how Mose Beachy would be a different sort of bishop than Moses Yoder had been.

  Reports circulated that Bishop Yoder was not as ill as he had been, but he still did not leave his farm. His sons and grandsons were bringing in his harvest. His wife, accounts said, would not allow him to return to church before he was fully recovered.

  “I’m not sure he will recover,” Andrew said when Clara recounted a conversation.

  “Are you a doctor now?” Clara teased.

  Andrew polished a headlight on the Model T. “Mrs. Yoder was right to make him step down.”

  “That’s what you think happened?”

  Andrew shrugged.

  “How is it you’re not working the harvest today?”

  “Mose is generous with his thresher. He’s loaned it out. When he gets it back, we’ll help John Stutzman for the next few days, and then it’s my turn.”

  “That’s just like Mose. What would everyone do without his thresher?”

  “He’s skilled enough with the machinery to keep it operating.”

  “Like you.” Clara met Andrew’s eyes and smiled.

  “Shall we go for a ride?” Andrew’s eyes twinkled.

  Clara grinned. “Are you feeling more daring now that Mose Beachy is bishop?”

  He tilted his head and opened the door for her. “She’s running beautifully these days.”

  “Is Jurgen Hansen still offering to buy?”

  “Every time I see him—which is not as often now that she’s fixed up.”

  They drove into the sunshine, still warm enough to keep the top down. Clara wondered whether being inside a car with the top up would feel much different than riding enclosed in a buggy. For now she closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the diamond tufted upholstery, relishing the breeze prickling her face as the car rumbled along a back road that had become Andrew’s favorite.

  She sat up abruptly. “What was that noise?”

  “The knocking?” Andrew said. “She just needs a slight adjustment.” He pulled over, and they stepped out into a vibrant medley of autumn hues.

  “It’s glorious here,” Clara said, stretching out her arms and spinning in a slow circle. “They’re the same trees any of the farms around here have, but somehow I never notice them at home.”

  “No fields to interrupt them.” Andrew took a wrench out of a small toolbox he kept in the automobile now and opened the hood. “No one pays attention to this road. The Amish don’t come out here.”

  “Do you really think Mose will change things?” Clara said.

  “If he doesn’t, things will change themselves.” Andrew leaned over the engine and made a quick adjustment before handing the tool to Clara.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  He grinned. “Think of me while you hold it.”

  Clara thought of Andrew most of the time, but she couldn’t say so aloud. He would only propose again, and she had no answer for him—at least not the one he wanted. Her aunt’s pale face drifted into her mind, brooding in shadow. Clara wondered again whether the midwife was watching Martha closely enough. She pushed away the thought of what might happen to Martha or the baby—or Fannie, who would never forgive herself for not reconciling with her mother if the worst came to be. Clara squeezed her eyes closed, trying to picture Martha, rosy and healthy, with a baby in her arms and swathed in lemony dawn light. But the colors collided. Rather than airy and illuminating, they were gray and dense and spinning in a certainty Clara wanted to scream against. If loss struck the Hostetler house, Clara was not certain she could ever bring herself to consider marriage again. She could never be as brave as Martha.

  Clara blew out her breath.

  “What’s wrong?” Andrew said, taking the wrench.

  “I need to visit Fannie again.”

  “We could take the car.”

  “Perhaps that is too daring—at least until we know what Mose would say.”

  “There is nothing in Ordnung about automobiles,” he reminded her.

  Whatever adjustment Andrew made cured the rattle. He needed both hands to drive, but Clara slipped a palm into the crook of his elbow.

  Later, she wandered home drenched in contentment. The sight of a visiting buggy parked along the fence piqued her curiosity. Striding up the lane, she realized the horse belonged to the Schrocks. Inside the house, Clara found Rhoda setting a plate of cookies on the dining room table, where the Schrocks and her father sat. Hannah and Priscilla snatched cookies and scampered out of the room, tugging Mari by the hands.

  “The Schrocks ha
ve some news,” Hiram said. “Since we’re their closest neighbors, they have come to us first.”

  Rhoda’s jaw was set and her eyes more interested in the stitching of the tablecloth than her guests’ faces.

  “Is everything all right?” Clara said.

  Caleb Schrock cleared his throat. “We’ve decided to join the Marylanders.”

  Heat raced through Clara’s chest. “That is news.”

  “It seems that it is partly because of you.” Rhoda’s voice snapped.

  “Me?” Clara fingered a kapp string.

  “I explained how you comforted Priscilla with a Bible story,” Mattie Schrock said.

  Clara felt her skull squeezing. “She was frightened.”

  “You gave her a new attitude about her chore to feed the pigs. We can’t believe the difference. I was wrong when I said you shouldn’t be telling Bible stories to someone else’s child.”

  Clara looked into her neighbor’s eyes and found there assurance that she had said nothing about the other stories, or the fact that Rhoda’s daughter was part of the group who heard them.

  “Of course we read the Bible in our family devotions,” Caleb said. “I try to explain things in a way the children can understand, but they need to hear more.”

  “We’ve talked about this a great deal,” Mattie said. “This is not a hasty decision. A farm came up for sale in Maryland a few weeks ago, and recently we decided to buy it. We just signed the papers.”

  “But there is a Marylander church in Springs,” Clara said. “Why do you not join that congregation?” Although the Pennsylvania district primarily was Old Order, there were Marylanders on this side of the border. Selling one farm and moving to another only a few miles away seemed like an extreme measure to Clara.

  “We’re moving for the children,” Caleb said. “If we live in the Conservative Amish Mennonite district, it will be less confusing for them as they grow up.”

  “When?” Clara asked, a knot forming in her throat.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “We think the Sunday school in the Amish Mennonite Church will be good for Priscilla,” Mattie said. “She can go to Sunday school with your Sadie now.”