The Sacrifice

by Beverly Lewis

  Stopping, Leah realized she was shaking uncontrollably. I must surely despise Sadie, she thought, realizing it was true. She continued on, tearing the small pieces into even tinier ones. This is for Abram’s Leah . . . who surely I will be forevermore.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Before her baby brother awakened for the morning, Leah hurried to pen a note to Vera Mellinger in Millersburg, Ohio, hoping to get word of Mamma’s passing to her older sister. Halfway through the letter, after sharing the joyous news of tiny Abe’s birth and his good health in spite of the trauma, she noticed her jaw was clenched.

  Leaning back against the headboard of her bed, she deliberately tried to relax. Calm yourself, she thought, but doing so was a whole different matter. The horrid way she felt about Sadie after reading her letter yesterday, well, she’d just as soon let her older sister continue on in her ignorance, not knowing one speck about Mamma. But such an attitude was cruel, even spiteful, and she knew better than to harbor bitterness. So Leah made herself continue writing, ending with a plea for Vera to write back as soon as she could. Please tell me how to get word to my sister Sadie.

  She signed off the way Mamma had taught her and quickly wrote her full name. Sealing the envelope, she placed the stamp in the proper place and hurried downstairs to don her woolen cape and snow boots. At the mailbox in front of the house, she pushed the letter inside and looked about her, momentarily glad for the predawn darkness.

  The serenity soothed Leah, and she breathed in the icy air, relieved to have accomplished washing and drying the family’s laundry two days ago, on Monday’s washday. With Hannah and Lizzie’s help, she’d hung out the many baby items on the line, though it had been quite tedious in the wrenching cold. Miriam Peachey had come over, bringing a large pot of corn chowder, which everyone enjoyed at noon, especially Dat and Dawdi John. And she’d asked Aunt Lizzie to keep Mamma’s old knit scarf and mittens at her house—conceal them, really. Surely Dat would overlook Leah’s momentary boldness when he came around—years down the road—and realized how important it had been to hang on to at least one item of Mamma’s.

  I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help, she thought silently while trudging back to the house.

  She knew she must go talk with Dr. Schwartz sometime soon—possibly with Lorraine, too. They must be told that although she wished to keep her part-time job, she was needed nearly twenty-four hours a day here at home. The idea that maybe Mary Ruth might come and take care of Abe and Lydiann for several hours of a Saturday dropped into her mind. But then again, there was the problem of Dat’s determined stance— Mary Ruth was not at all welcome in the house. Nix that idea. She might ask Aunt Lizzie, though . . . see what ideas she might have.

  On the way around the back to the kitchen door, she happened to hear her aunt’s boots clumping down the snow-covered mule road. “Hullo, Leah!” Lizzie called.

  “ ’Mornin’, Aendi!” Leah called back, standing near the back stoop, waiting and shivering, too. What would we do without sweet Lizzie? Life would be ever so empty without Mamma’s sister near.

  Once she and Lizzie were back indoors, she opened the grate on the wood stove and they warmed their hands and feet together. Lizzie asked, “Are ya feelin’ all right, honey-girl?”

  Leah nodded. “I feel numb when I think of Mamma. But when I’m holding Abe and Lydiann, things tend to change in me . . . some.”

  “ ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.’ ” Lizzie put her arm around Leah.

  Ain’t that the truth. She thought again of Sadie’s revealing letter to Mamma.

  She sighed and went to the window near the long table. “I found something in Mamma’s drawer,” she began, “when I cleared out her personal things for Dat.”

  Lizzie came and sat at the head of the table, where Dat always sat at mealtime.

  “Seems to me Mamma may have hidden one of Sadie’s letters away on purpose.” She turned and looked at Lizzie. “What do ya make of that?”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess.”

  She felt the tightness in her chest, wondering if she ought to say what she’d read. Would that be as sinful as Mamma’s own disobedience? She didn’t know. “So then you must think Mamma disregarded the bishop . . . and Dat, too,” Leah said nearly in a whisper.

  “Honestly she didn’t much care for the do’s and don’ts of the Old Ways. She honored the Ordnung as best she could . . . walked a line, s’pose you could say. She read the Good Book from cover to cover nearly every year. She told me she’d shared some of these things with Sadie, Hannah, and Mary Ruth . . . and with you, most recently.”

  Leah clearly remembered the conversation. “But what ’bout Gelassenheit—submission to God and to the People? What was Mamma’s view on that?”

  Lizzie nodded her head. “Sadly that was the biggest issue—the push and pull of it all. Abram wanted to live by the letter of the law, following the bishop’s and the preachers’ every whim. This annoyed my sister no end. ’Tween you and me, I think when the end came, she was eager to go home to Glory.”

  “Not ’cause of Dat, I hope.”

  Lizzie paused a moment, then went on. “She simply yearned to see the Lord Jesus.”

  “ ‘Best to be in heaven’s lap than caught in the world’s grasp,’ ” Leah whispered.

  Lizzie patted the bench. “Come and sit. You have a big day ahead.”

  She smiled. “Every day’s thataway.”

  “You’re doin’ a wonderful-gut thing, Leah. Never forget,” Lizzie said.

  Abe’s cries were heard just then, so Leah quickly excused herself and ran upstairs to comfort her mamma’s precious boy.

  The first day of the new school semester, Mary Ruth followed a group of fancy students into Paradise High School. She was happy to ride the school bus with other Mennonite youth, glad she wasn’t the only conservative girl on board. Naturally she wasn’t nearly as Plain now as she had been, what with her floral-print dress, though long to her ankles.

  Thankfully Dottie Nolt had driven her to the school a week earlier, when she had enrolled for the remainder of the year and taken her placement tests. To her delight, she discovered she was ready for secondsemester tenth grade, even though she’d completed only eight years at the Georgetown School—staying home with Mamma for two years after that. All told, she was well on course to graduate by the time she was nineteen—a full year older than most high school graduates, but that didn’t bother her in the least. The main thing was to prepare herself for teacher’s college. And, here lately, she believed God was calling her to attend a Christian college someday. She was on her way!

  Busy hallways were disconcerting at first, and changing classrooms and having different teachers for each subject was also confusing. After a few days, though, she felt she would become accustomed to the schedule. Still, the sight of girls wearing knee-length wool skirts with bare legs clear down to the tops of their white ankle socks made Mary Ruth feel as if she were in a foreign land.

  Getting her locker open was another discouraging situation, but, in the end, the problem had its reward. An attractive boy with brown hair and green eyes noticed her plight and came over to help. “I’m Jimmy Kaiser,” he smiled. “You’re new, aren’t you?”

  She nodded, afraid she’d say jah and scare him off, which she certainly didn’t want to do, not with those big bright eyes looking right at her.

  “If you ever run into a snag with your combination lock, look me up,” Jimmy said, pointing toward his own locker. “I’m only five lockers down from yours on the other side of the hallway. Don’t be bashful, all right?”

  “Nice to meet you, Jimmy.”

  “Welcome to Paradise . . . High School, that is!” Grinning, he turned and hurried away.

  Well. She was entirely pleased with the first student she’d met. Pleased as punch, she thought. Does this mean I’m beginning to forget Elias? She wondered that plenty.

  Surely it was a good sign, her experienc
ing a slight flutter when a good-looking boy like Jimmy made the effort to cross the hall and make her feel welcome.

  Another surprise was the first reading assignment given in American literature class: her beloved Uncle Tom’s Cabin. She knew the book inside and out, perhaps better than the other students in the class because she identified in part with Eliza, the black slave girl, though Mary Ruth had never been abused physically. All the same, the book reopened certain sore spots for her, and she longed to see oppressed people released from spiritual bondage.

  That afternoon following school Mary Ruth slipped away to her lovely bedroom at the Nolts’ to do her homework, writing carefully the assigned essays and working the geometry problems. When she was finished, she knelt to pray, asking the Lord to help her forgive the brethren, especially Bishop Bontrager, who ruled with an iron hand, much the way Simon Legree did in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic novel. The man’s shunning of Sadie had altered her family members’ lives for the worst, she was sure. She also asked the Lord to forgive her for smooching so awful much with Elias, not having saved lip-kissing for her husband . . . and to guide her life as a Christian young woman.

  Following Elias’s death, she had initially decided to wear a black dress for a good long time, but recently she’d changed her mind and put aside her mourning clothes. Her newfound joy in the Lord Jesus had turned every part of her life around, including the slightest details. No longer did she part her hair down the middle; she simply brushed it straight back and gathered it into a higher bun, and, like Dottie, she wore the many-pleated formal head covering unique to Mennonite women, with the strings hanging loose and untied. Not quite as Plain, true, but nevertheless not worldly, either.

  Getting used to electricity and automobiles had been the easiest adjustment of all, though she knew she would gladly ride in Dat’s family carriage if invited.

  Perhaps Elias’s death had been God’s way of giving her a heavenly sign she was never intended to join the Amish church. Truth was, she enjoyed having modern conveniences at her fingertips, and what she was experiencing under Dan and Dottie’s roof—and in attending church with them—was pure freedom. For the first time in her life, she could breathe easily, free from bondage, ever ready to honor the Lord in everything she put her hand to do, all the days of her life.

  In due time, Leah received word back from Vera Mellinger that Sadie and Jonas no longer lived in Millersburg. Vera wrote that she hadn’t heard from them in “quite some time” and said she was “ever so sorry” to hear of Mamma’s passing.

  Passing. Why was it folk avoided the word death? Was it easier to think of a person going from one place to the next, moving forward as their soul surely did at the point of death, instead of lying still in a coffin? The Scriptures taught the passing of the soul from this life into eternity, from “death unto life.”

  She felt both sorry and thankful having read Vera’s letter, and she took it out to the barn, where Hannah and Dat were cleaning out the lower stable area. She regretted Sadie having no way of knowing their mother was dead, yet she was secretly relieved her sister wouldn’t be rushing home over the sad news—though Leah did wonder how such news would have affected Jonas if he had known of it. But no, she couldn’t let herself wonder about that. Too much time had flown to the wind.

  Outdoors, she found Hannah wearing old work boots, Leah’s own. When Dat was free enough, she handed Vera’s letter to him. He stood with his legs braced apart and read it quickly. “Well, if that ain’t a fine howdy-do,” he said, waving the note once he finished. “She runs off so we can never find her . . . even if it’s her own mamma who’s died.”

  Hannah blinked her eyes fast and Leah wondered if she was trying not to cry. But Hannah surprised her by saying, “You did the right thing, Leah, but maybe our shunned sister doesn’t wanna be found.”

  Dat nodded in agreement. “Long gone . . . she is.”

  “Should I write to Cousin Fannie next? See if she has any knowledge of our sister’s whereabouts?” She held her breath, unsure what Dat might say to do.

  Dat hung his head. “Where the Masts are concerned, we’re as gut as dead.”

  She took that as a no and accepted the letter back from Dat. Heading toward the house, she was eager to check on Lydiann, who was napping, and Abe, who was lying on a quilt spread out on the kitchen floor, the warmest room in the house. She almost wished Dat hadn’t sided with Hannah just now, saying Sadie was “long gone.” Had he given up on her ever repenting here in Gobbler’s Knob?

  Mamma’s prayers while she lived surely still follow my sister now, she thought.

  Abram had seen to it that his work boots were cleaned of caked-on mud and mule droppings before hitching up the horse to the sleigh. It might’ve been that he’d have made less a spectacle of himself had he simply gone walking to Daniel Nolt’s place, but now as Abram reined in his horse in the driveway of the fine house, he sat there, not sure what to do next.

  Just why he’d come, he wasn’t altogether certain. He knew it had to do with the short letter from Ohio that Leah’d had him read. Something mighty sorrowful about it, he’d decided, and it had prompted him out of his lethargy. Not that he had been digging in his heels about visiting Mary Ruth; no, he just felt it might be the right time to make an attempt to see how his daughter was doing these days.

  He got down from the sleigh and let the reins lie loose on the seat; the well-mannered horse would be fine here for a few minutes. Next thing he knew he was standing on the front porch of a stranger’s house.

  When Mary Ruth came to the door with a brighteyed youngster in her arms, he was taken aback and found himself sputtering a greeting. She was mighty kind and invited him inside—even brought him some hot black coffee on a fancy tray. They sat and talked in the front room, pretty Mary Ruth and himself, no doubt as foolish sounding as he felt.

  “I came to say I was wrong . . . and so were you, daughter,” he started the conversation. “But now . . . well, I want you to consider coming home. Wouldja think on that for ol’ Dat?”

  She was quiet, not responding right off the way she normally did, which surprised him. Instead, she stroked the boy’s dark hair, whispering something—he didn’t know what—in his tiny ear.

  “Your sisters—Leah and Hannah—would be downright happy. And . . . sorry to say, but you haven’t properly met your new baby brother, Abe.”

  “Named after you, Dat.” Her eyes seemed to light up at the mention of the baby.

  “Jah, Leah and . . .” He had to pause. The mere thought of Ida still choked his words.

  “Mamma and Leah’s choice for a name, then?” She was helping him along. Mary Ruth, ever dear; the daughter who had never lacked for a comment.

  He nodded, still composing himself.

  “I wished I might’ve comforted you, Dat, at Mamma’s funeral. . . . Still hurts to think on it.” She was silent for a moment; then she continued. “I just felt so far removed from my family. I wish things were better between us.”

  The punishment had been severe; he knew that. “I’d do plenty-a things different . . . now.”

  “I s’pose all of us would.” But in the end, she refused his invitation to move back home. “I’d be a terrible thorn in your flesh, Dat,” she admitted. “You see, I started high school—just yesterday, truth be told.”

  He hung his head. Things were spinning away from him. Nearly every day more things floated out of his reach. First Mary Ruth’s odd declaration of salvation, then Ida’s passing. He’d even received a fierce tonguelashing from his father-in-law, of all things. Just yesterday John had given him what for about running Mary Ruth off. To top it all off, John had outright declared he wanted to go back to Hickory Hollow to live with one of his “sensible” grown grandchildren, where he didn’t have to look at “the likes of you, Abram Ebersol, day in, day out.”

  Holding fast to the Old Ways was costing him dearly, but he felt toothless to change. With Ida dead and gone, it remained to be seen just how entrenc
hed he would become over time, unwilling to stand up to Preacher Yoder or the bishop, neither one. Ida had found her strength in the Lord, she’d always said. As for himself, he couldn’t see getting down on his knees and speaking words to the Almighty into the air. Lizzie, on the other hand, wasn’t afraid to say she set ample time aside each day to do so. “You oughta try it once,” she’d told him the day after Ida’s funeral, when she’d found him coughing and weeping beside the feed trough as if his life was over. She’d been awful bold and said right out, “Prayer will help ya, Abram. I know this to be true.”

  Stubborn as he was, he had not followed her suggestion and had no intention of talking to Creator-God that way. Honest to Pete, what was this old world coming to when a man was nagged on mercilessly by his deceased wife’s sister?

  “I love you, Dat.” Mary Ruth interrupted his musings. “I’ll come visit, all right?”

  “Jah, come see us. Hold your baby brother some, too.”

  When she reached for him, he didn’t hug her back, only grunted. Surely she’d understand it wasn’t in him today to be embracing her or anyone else. His heart felt more cold and deserted as each minute ticked by without his Ida.

  Be there, his darling had said on her deathbed. When the Lord calls you, be ready. Saint that she was . . . Ida had put up with him all these years.

  He said his good-byes to Mary Ruth and pressed his black hat down hard on his head. Leaning into the frosty evening, he made haste to return to Leah, Hannah, and his little ones.

  On the way, he recalled Ida’s funeral and burial service. So many people had come to bid a fond farewell. Even Dr. and Mrs. Schwartz and their elder son, Robert, had come to pay respect. They, along with other Englishers, including Henry and Lorraine’s neighbor, Mrs. Ferguson; Mrs. Kraybill, who’d taken Hannah and Mary Ruth to the Georgetown School in her car all those years; and Mrs. Esbenshade, a frequent customer of their roadside stand.