by Sandra Hill
“You like making love with me?” He used a finger to twirl a strand of her hair into a tight curl.
“Oh, yeah!”
“Do you know your hair looks like polished mahogany in the sunlight?”
“Is that good?”
He repeated her words then and said, “Oh, yeah!”
They were smiling at each other, which didn’t go unnoticed by his frowning father when his mother announced, “Come, dish up.”
As they sat down along with all the others, John came up behind Caleb and whispered, loud enough for her to hear, “Just so you know, my aunt and your mother are discussing your hope chest. I didn’t know the Amish had hope chests, too. Guess yours will be a Cajun/Amish hope chest, huh?”
Caleb reached behind to swat at John, but he ducked away, laughing. Silence followed as they began to eat.
There was ham sliced off the bone, smoked sausage, potato and macaroni salads, homemade bread, apple butter, chow-chow, pickled beets, eggs, pigs’ feet, souse, spaetzle noodles with butter, and various desserts, including cold watermelon slices, huckleberry strudel, shoofly pie, and sinfully sweet whoopie pies, which were like glorified Oreos, except these were the size of small saucers and made of cake, not cookie. For beverages they were served lemonade and ice water “fresh from the spring.” A veritable Amish feast.
Which of course called for more people.
“Oh, my God!” Caleb swore, glancing over to the barn parking area. Pulling up were more than a dozen buggies containing men, women, and children. “This is so surreal. I feel as if I’ve landed in a slow-motion version of hell.”
This must be why there had been so much food already prepared. They’d been expecting company.
Caleb’s father went over to talk to the newcomers, gesticulating with his hands as he spoke, raising his voice, at one point wagging a forefinger. Claire wondered with hysterical irrelevance if one of them was a fornicator.
“Hardly,” Caleb responded.
She hadn’t realized that she’d spoken aloud.
Turning to stare at Caleb beside her on a bench, she asked, “Who are they?”
“My brothers and sisters.” He shook his head sadly. “Don’t expect a warm welcome.”
“Why not?”
“Everyone’s jockeying for position here, same as any other big family. They’re probably afraid Jonas or I will upset the balance somehow. Get something from Dat that they consider their entitlements. Plus, they take the shunning seriously.”
“Even if your father tells them it’s okay to talk to you?”
“Do you see Joseph giving me any warm hugs, or even a ‘How are you, Caleb?’”
He was right. Joseph was being downright rude. To all of them, but especially to Caleb.
The group was heading toward them now, the six men, including Caleb’s father in front, like a posse. All of them had long, straggly beards denoting their married state, unlike Jonas’s trimmed beard. They were dressed in traditional Amish clothes, wide-brimmed straw hats, homemade dark blue or black shirts with no pockets, and black broadcloth pants with flaps in front. Zippers were considered too modern. Behind came six women in dark blue cape dresses, which were supposed to be eight inches from the ground and covered with black aprons. On their feet were lace-up leather shoes, despite the hot weather. Their hair was parted down the middle and skinned back under prayer caps, which they wore even when sleeping. With the women and following them were several dozen babies and children and teenagers.
“When I left here, I had four brothers and three sisters. Now I have a menagerie,” Caleb said with a mixture of wonder and disgust.
So many people from these two people, Samuel and Rebekah. What a family tree!
It was odd, really, the way she and Caleb could look at things and see them in different ways because, while she thought his family made a lovely picture as they approached, Caleb murmured to her, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! My brothers and sisters must propagate like jackrabbits. They resemble a bunch of jabbering black crows.”
The men glared at Caleb, while the women shrank back with shyness, waiting for their men to give them permission to step forward.
“Caleb, ya remember Levi, dontcha? He was twenty-three when ya left. That’s his wife, Sharon. They farm the old Beiler place north of here.”
With a sigh of resignation, Caleb stepped forward to stand beside his father. He reached out a hand. At first the stern-faced, forty-year-old Levi just stared at the hand, but then he shook it, though he didn’t speak. Nor did the other brothers, Aaron and Ezekiel, or “Zeke,” when they were introduced. Caleb’s sisters Katherine, Judith, and Miriam, or “Mimi,” just nodded quietly. The same for the brothers’ wives and children, two of whom were already married and had children of their own. Most of them were farmers or did work related to farming, like blacksmithing or buggy making.
They were an attractive family, all of them, but sort of homogeneous because of their clothing. Which was the point of one style and color of clothing, Claire supposed.
Tante Lulu and John were introduced then. Jonas already knew them all, of course, even though he’d been shunned, like Caleb.
Everyone sat down to eat again, more sawhorses and planks having been brought from the barn and more food spread out from the kitchen and baskets that had been brought by the visitors. The other family members did not sit with Caleb or Jonas, because apparently the shunning forbade eating at the same table. And none of them had spoken to them yet, either. An uncomfortable silence followed as the meal continued.
Till the ice was broken by . . . who else? Tante Lulu. She said, “I ain’t seen so much black and blue since Tee-John fell off a tupelo tree and practic’ly broke his tailbone.”
Everyone looked at her.
“He was skinny-dippin’ from a limb over Bayou Black when it broke and sent him flyin’. ’Member that, Tee-John? Ha, ha, ha! The nurse at the hospital took one gander at yer bruised hiney and said mebbe they oughta put a cast there.”
“Mais, oui! After that, I started flashin’ my ass, I mean, hiney, at the girls in my class at Our Lady of the Bayou School. That black-and-blue butt, she was lak a badge of honor, yes.”
“Sister Serenity soon put a stop ta that, though, bless her heart.”
“Tell me about it. She gave me a matchin’ color on my other cheek with that switch of hers. Talk about!”
Stone-cold silence continued.
“What?” Tante Lulu asked, looking right and left. “Did y’all suck on a bunch a lemons? Did we say sumpin’ wrong?”
“Maybe they don’t like you mentionin’ skinny-dippin’,” John said with a grin. It was obvious that the scamp could care less if they’d offended anyone.
“Don’t Amish kids go skinny-dippin’?”
“It’s the words butt, hiney, and ass that’ve thrown them for a loop,” Caleb drawled, then made a comical face at Levi’s sneering face.
“Well, mercy’s sake! Everybody’s got one.” Tante Lulu threw her hands up in the air with exasperation. “Though I lost mine about nineteen-eighty-two.”
A ripple of giggles erupted, then an outright hoot from Caleb’s father, followed by a wave of laughter. His mother had a hand over her mouth, hiding her amusement.
“God bless that old woman,” Caleb said to Claire.
“You should probably thank St. Jude, too,” Tante Lulu called down the table. She must have ears like an elephant.
Finally, it was all too much for Caleb. The poor man put his face in his hands. His shoulders were shaking. Claire feared he would have a breakdown in front of everyone. Did he really want to be seen crying like this?
“Caleb? Honey? Do you need a tissue?”
He raised his head, and she realized he wasn’t crying. He was laughing hysterically. Like a screwball.
And people say I’m crazy.
Chapter 11
The homecoming from hell . . .
“Take this church spread wit ya, Caleb. It alveese was yer favorite.”
Caleb stared at the plastic container his mother shoved in his hands as he prepared to leave. “Ah, Mam!” It was sad beyond belief that she didn’t know the Caleb he was now. He would no more eat that concoction of syrup, marshmallow, and peanut butter on a piece of no-fiber white bread than he would shoot up with sugar.
Still, he took the container from her and leaned down to give her a kiss on the top of her head. “Denki,” he said.
“You’re welcome.”
Everyone had left within the past fifteen minutes. All the family had gone in their buggies, including Dat, who was off to Bishop Lapp’s home; Jonas, with Lizzie, in his truck back to his business; and the Jinx folk back to the B & B. He was about to follow.
Claire had wanted to stay behind, but he wouldn’t let her. Clearly fuming over his shunning, she’d probably be giving Dat and Mam lectures on Indian family practices and how the Amish could learn a thing or two from them. Or else she’d have a slug fest with his father, despite her claims of being a pacifist.
Not one of his brothers and sisters, his nieces and nephews, had dared break the Bann today. It was ridiculous the way they’d had to communicate with hand signals for “Pass the bread” and “More lemonade?” and then “Your turn” at the outhouse. Aaron, his second oldest brother at forty-one, who’d always been a pole-up-the-ass jerk even when he was younger, probably broke a few Ordnung rules when he’d mouthed at Caleb, “Traitor,” but that was okay, because Caleb had mouthed back at him, “Asshole!,” causing Aaron’s eyes to about pop out of his sanctimonious head.
“What will happen next, Mam? Is this a one-day reprieve, and will we go back to the way things were? Will Jonas and I still be shunned?”
His mother took his hand and walked toward the Jeep with him. Her silence was answer enough.
Son of a bitch! Son of a fucking bitch! he railed inside, but he remained silent, too, just watching this older woman who was his mother, yet was not.
Had she shrunk? He didn’t recall her being this short or frail-looking. She was sixty-five, but sixty-five wasn’t that old today in the regular world. Yeah, he’d expected the gray hair, which had been mostly blonde the last time he’d seen her, but her back was slightly bowed from all those years of bending . . . over washtubs, gardens, quilting, and endless canning. And Dat . . . oh, how he had aged! Pure white hair and beard down to his belly, spindly legs and arms, eyes a bit rheumy, possibly with cataracts from the way he squinted sometimes. They’d all changed so much.
“You look so different now, son,” she said, as if reading his mind.
“Better or worse?”
“Different.”
That was a nonanswer if he ever heard one.
“You left a boy and returned a man. You left hurt and angry and returned hurt and hardened.”
He shrugged, not about to apologize for being hard. That’s how he’d survived. “We all change.” He forced himself to smile and squeezed her hand. “Even Dat.”
Dat had shocked them all today by welcoming him and Jonas to his table, by speaking to them when the Bann clearly forbade both. What does it mean?
“Jah, he shocked me, too.” Then she motioned for him to sit on a bench near the chicken coop. She had a tight hold on their linked fingers and wouldn’t let go, even as they sank down. “Did ya miss home, Caleb?”
The birds behind them squawked their opinion of these two humans sitting so close without feeding them. God, the place reeked of chicken shit and cow manure. How could he have forgotten how overpowering the outside smells were? And pee-you, but a couple of his brothers and nephews could use a stick of Right Guard. No electricity or plumbing. Stubborn mules for plowing. Putrid pigs to slaughter. No, he hadn’t missed this a bit . . . or at least not for more than a dozen years. “I missed you,” was all he would say. “And Dat, too, except I was mostly angry at him for not standing up for me. You backed him up, Mam. How could you do that?”
“With a broken heart and a bucket of tears. It is our way, son. Alveese has been.” Unspoken was “always will be.”
“What next?”
“Well, Dat is gonna talk ta the bishop and elders. If they did this vile thing, they will pay for it.”
That’s not what he meant. Oh, well! “In money? That’s all?”
“There will be church penalties, too. Maybe they will be barred from service for a time. And forced ta confess their sins before the congregation at Sunday meeting.”
“And that’s all? I get shunned for life because of an accident, and they get a smack on the hands?”
“The difference is in the confessing. Ya never would do yer kneeling. Ya wouldn’t bend ta the elders’ will.”
That’s for damn sure. “Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ve been away from the project too long as it is.” His cell phone had been ringing constantly the past hour. Ronnie with concerns about their safety and giving him the Jinx policy numbers for the insurance adjusters, which he’d already relayed to Famosa. Abbie with an update on her insurance situation. Mark with a preliminary list of damages.
His mother nodded, tears in her eyes.
“I don’t know when I’ll see you again . . . if I’ll see you again.” He waited for her to say something like, “Of course we will be together again,” but she didn’t. She couldn’t.
As if sensing his thoughts, she said, “Try to understand, Caleb. I would leave . . . maybe yer Dat would, too. We could go live Mennonite like Jonas. But I couldn’t bear the shunnin’. Not bein’ able to talk to my children and grandchildren. Not bein’ able to eat wit’ them at my table.”
But what about me? What about Jonas? Are we disposable and the rest of them aren’t? How fair is that? He said none of that, even though he felt as if a KA-BAR knife had been stuck in his heart. It was hopeless to expect anything more, he realized, but that’s just what he’d done. Fool, fool, fool! When Dat and Mam had talked to him today, he’d foolishly hoped that their shunning of him and Jonas was over. Now he just leaned down and kissed his mother’s cheek. “Good-bye, Mam,” he said, and he meant just that, with finality.
As he backed the Jeep down the drive, he noticed his mother sitting in the same spot, tears streaming down her face.
Hopeless.
Sometimes only a brother’s shoulder would do . . .
Despite the need to get back to work, Caleb stopped at Jonas’s home first.
Before he’d even turned the ignition off, Jonas was out on the porch. “Welcome, brother, welcome,” he said, motioning for him to come up the steps. Then he surprised the hell out of him by pulling him into a big hug and refusing to let go—or maybe it was Caleb who was holding fast.
“What a day! What a day!” Jonas said against his ear.
Caleb couldn’t speak over the lump in his throat, knowing that Jonas suffered just as much as he did. He understood, without words. Finally, he drew away and noticed the wetness in Jonas’s eyes, probably matching his own. “You know what really sucks, Jonas?”
He had to give Jonas credit for not flinching at the word suck or asking what it meant. “What, Caleb? What . . . sucks?”
“They love the others more than they love us.”
“Ach, Caleb, that’s not true.”
“Yes, it is. Today they made a choice. Do they continue the Bann or shove it down the bishop’s throat? They chose the status quo.”
“You’re bein’ too harsh.”
“I wish! Mam said as much to me a few minutes ago. She and Dat would ignore the Bann, or leave the church, except for the pain of losing their other children and grandchildren.”
Jonas flinched.
“I’ll go even further than that. You know how some kids who’ve suffered child abuse from a father or male figure end up hating their mother when they grow up, for not stepping in and ending the cruelty? Well, I’m starting to feel that way about Mam.”
“Dat never abused us.”
“You don’t think the shunning is a form of abuse?”
Jonas looped an arm ov
er his shoulder, squeezing. “Well, at least we have each other now, jah?”
“Jah, mine Brudder,” Caleb said in an exaggerated Pennsylvania Dutch voice that made Jonas’s lips turn up with humor.
“Come meet the rest of your family, brother. My children.”
Soon Jonas’s kids, initially shy of Caleb, were crawling all over him, asking question after question, while Lizzie and Jonas watched, beaming with pleasure.
“Have ya ever been in an airplane?”
“Have ya ever jumped out of an airplane?”
“Do ya know the president of the United States?”
“Can ya go fly fishin’ with us?”
“Where’s yer gun?”
“Why don’t ya have a gun?”
“How come ya don’t have kids?”
“Have you ever kill—”
“That will be enough,” Jonas said, cutting his son Noah off. “Caleb has ta go back ta work.”
“Will ya come back? I kin make ya some tasty gingersnaps.” Eight-year-old Fanny sat on his lap, arms wrapped around his neck, and refused to get off till he answered.
“You couldn’t keep me away, sweetie, and gingersnaps are my favorite,” he said, pushing some blonde hairs that had slipped out of her braids behind her ears. The girl was adorable.
“I have a snakeskin collection,” nine-year-old Noah told him.
What a thing to collect? Eew! “Hey, I happen to be personally acquainted with the biggest snake in these parts.” He extended his arms wide to illustrate. “His name is Sparky. I’ll bet we could find one of his shedded skins around the cavern somewhere.”
Noah stared at him as if he was some kind of god, or Santa Claus. “A snake with a name? A big snake?”
“Yep.” He ruffled Noah’s shaggy hair, which hung down past his ears. It looked as if his hair had been cut with a bowl over his head, bangs and all, like a Dutch boy.
Jonas’s kids dressed plain, but not as plain as the Amish. They wore colors and patterns and different styles. Some of the Mennonites also used electricity and drove cars.
“Why dontcha come back fer supper t’night?” Jonas suggested, walking him to the door.