Plain Truth

by Jodi Picoult

  Finally, it seemed as though not another person could have been squeezed inside. Ellie waited in the pointed silence for the service to begin. And waited. There was no hurry to start; apparently, she was the only one even remotely concerned by the fact that nothing was happening. She glanced around as a current of whispers volleyed: "You do it." "You ... no, you." Finally, an elderly man stood and announced a number. In unison, hundreds of books opened. Katie, who held the Ausband on her lap, moved it slightly so that Ellie could see the printed words of the hymnal.

  Ellie sighed. When in Rome--or so she had figured. No pun intended, but she didn't have a prayer of sight-reading a musical score that wasn't printed on the page. Only the lyrics were there, and she didn't know the tunes for Amish hymns. Actually, she didn't know the tunes for any hymns. One old man began singing in a slow, measured falsetto, and others picked up on his lead. Ellie noticed the ordained men--Bishop Ephram, and the two ministers, and another fellow she had not seen before--leaving their seats to go upstairs. Lucky bastards, she thought.

  She thought so, still, thirty minutes later when they finished the first hymn, sat in silence for several minutes, and then launched into the second hymn, the Loblied. Ellie closed her eyes, marveling at the stamina of these people who managed to remain upright on the backless benches. She could not recall the last time she attended a church service, but surely that one had finished long before these Amish preachers and the bishop came downstairs again to deliver the introductory sermon.

  "Liebe Bruder und Schwestern ..." Dear Brothers and Sisters.

  "Gelobet set Gott und der Vater unssers Herrn Jesu Christi ..." Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

  Ellie was nodding off when she felt Katie's soft explanation at her ear. "He's apologizing for his weakness as a preacher. He doesn't wish to take time away from the Brother who'll bring the main sermon."

  "If he's so bad at this," Ellie whispered back, "how come he's a preacher?"

  "He's not really bad. He's just showing how he's not proud."

  Ellie nodded, eyeing the older man in a new light. "Und wann dir einig sin lasset uns bede," he said, and as a unit, every single person in the room--except Ellie--fell to their knees.

  She glanced at Katie's bowed head, at the bowed heads of the ordained men and the sea of kapps and neatly trimmed hair, and very slowly she got down on the floor.

  In the middle of the night, Katie's room filled with light. With a rush of anticipation, she sat up in bed, then dressed quickly. Most of the boys kept high-powered flashlights in their courting buggies that they'd shine in a girl's window when they wanted her to sneak down to see them on a Saturday night. She wrapped a shawl around her shoulders --it was February, and freezing outside --and tiptoed down the stairs thinking of John Beiler's eyes, the same warm gold as the leaves on a beech tree in the autumn.

  She would scold him, she thought, for dragging her out on a night as cold as this one, but then she'd walk with him and maybe let her shoulder bump up against his now and then to know that she didn't mean it. Her best friend Mary Esch had already let Curly Joe Yoder kiss her on the cheek. She eased the side door open and stepped onto the landing. Katie's eyes were bright, her palms damp. She turned, a smile skimming her lips, and came face to face with her brother.

  "Jacob!" she gasped. "What are you doing here?" Immediately she glanced up at the window of her parents' bedroom. Being found with a beau would be bad enough; but if her father discovered Jacob back in his house, there was no telling what might happen. Putting a finger up to her lips, Jacob reached for his sister's hand and pulled her off the porch, running silently toward the creek.

  He stopped at the edge of the pond and used the sleeve of his down jacket to wipe the snow from the small bench there. Then, seeing Katie shiver, he took off the jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. They both stared at the black ice, smooth as silk, so clear that tangles of marshy grass could be seen frozen beneath it. "Have you been here yet today?" he asked.

  "What do you think?" She had come early this morning, to mark the five years that had passed. Katie held her hands up to her cheeks, blushing to realize that she'd been so full of herself she'd been thinking of John Beiler, when her thoughts should have centered on Hannah. "I can't believe you came here."

  He scowled at her. "I come every year. I just never called on you before."

  Stunned, Katie turned to him. "You come back? Every year?"

  "On the day she died." They both stared toward the pond again, watching the willow branches scratch its surface with each bite of the wind. "Mam? How's she?"

  "Same as every year. She got feeling a little grenklich, went to bed early."

  Jacob leaned back and stared at the sky, cracked open wide and carved with stars. "I used to hear her crying outside on the porch swing, underneath my window. And I'd think that if I hadn't been so chairminded, it wouldn't have happened."

  "Mam said it was the Lord's will. It would have happened whether or not you'd been off reading your books, instead of skating with us."

  "That's the only time, you know, I ever thought twice about wanting so badly to keep up my schooling. As if Hannah drowning was some kind of punishment for that."

  "Why would you be the one punished?" Katie swallowed hard. "I'm the one Mam told to watch her that day."

  "You were eleven. You couldn't have known what to do."

  Katie closed her eyes and heard the great groan that came from the ice so many years ago, the sound of tectonic plates shifting and deep monsters bellowing at trespass. She saw Hannah, so proud to have tied her skates all alone for the first time, taking off in a streak across the pond, silver blades winking from beneath her green skirts. Watch me, watch me! Hannah had cried, but Katie never heard, too busy daydreaming of the fancy, glittering costume of an Olympic figure skater that she had seen in the newspaper at the market checkout stand. There was a shriek and a crash. By the time Katie turned, Hannah was already sliding beneath the ice.

  "She was trying to hold on," Katie said softly. "I kept telling her to hold on, while I got a long branch the way Dat taught us to. But I couldn't reach the branch to break it off, and she kept crying, and every time I turned my back her mittens slipped a little more. And then she was gone. Just like that." She lifted her face to Jacob's, too embarrassed to admit to her brother that her thoughts on that day had been worldly, and just as worthy of censure as anything he had done. "She would be older now than I was when she died."

  "I miss her too, Katie."

  "It's not the same." Fighting tears, she looked into her lap. "First Hannah, and then you. How come the people I love the most keep leaving me?"

  Jacob's hand crept across the bench to cover hers, and Katie thought that for the first time in many months, she recognized her brother. She could look at him in his puffy red coat, with his clean-shaven face and his short copper hair, and see instead Jacob in his shirt and suspenders, his hat tossed aside, his head bent over a high school English textbook in the hayloft, trying to hide his wildest dreams. Then she felt a stirring in her chest, and her hair stood up on the back of her neck. Lifting her eyes to the pond, she saw a slight figure skimming over it, whistling across the ice and kicking up small clouds of snow. A skater, which would not have been remarkable, except for the fact that Katie could see the cornfield and the willow's greedy arms right through the girl's shawl and skirt and face.

  She did not believe in ghosts. She believed, like the rest of her people, that working hard in this life might send you to your greater reward --a sort of wait-and-hope-for-the-best policy that left no room for errant spirits and tortured souls. Heart pounding, Katie got to her feet and inched across the ice to the spot where Hannah was skating. Jacob yelled out, but she could barely hear him. She, who had been taught to believe that God would answer your prayers, realized that it was true: at this moment, both her brother and her sister had come back to her.

  She reached out and whispered, "Hannah?" But she was grabbing at
nothing, shivering when Hannah's transparent skirts swirled about her own booted feet.

  A strong arm yanked her off the ice to the safety of the pond's bank. "What the hell are you doing?" Jacob hissed. "Are you crazy?"

  "Don't you see it?" She prayed that he did, prayed that she wasn't losing her mind.

  "I don't see anything," Jacob said, squinting. "What?"

  On the pond, Hannah lifted her arms to the night sky. "Nothing," Katie said, her eyes shining. "It's nothing at all."

  To say that the service lasted forever would not be much of an exaggeration. Ellie was stunned by the behavior of the children, who--having sat through the reading of the Scripture and two hours of the main sermon--barely made a peep. A small bowl of crackers and a glass of water had been passed from room to room for the parents who had little ones curled beside them. Ellie occupied herself by counting the number of times the preacher lifted his white handkerchief and wiped at his brow. In the aisle in front of Ellie, another handkerchief served as entertainment for a little girl, as her big sister folded it into mice and rag dolls.

  She knew the service was drawing to a close because the general energy level in the room began to buzz again. The congregation rose for the benediction, and as the bishop mentioned Jesus's name, they all fell again to their knees, leaving Ellie standing alone and aware. Sitting down beside Katie again, she felt the girl suddenly go stiff as a board. "What is it?" she whispered, but Katie shook her head, tight-lipped.

  The deacon was speaking. Katie strained forward, listening, and then closed her eyes in relief. Several rows ahead, where Sarah was sitting, Ellie noticed her chin sag to her chest. Ellie put her hand on Katie's knee and traced a question mark. "There will be no members' meeting," Katie murmured, the words laced with joy. "No disciplining to be done."

  Ellie regarded her thoughtfully. She must have nine lives, to have escaped the English legal system and the punitive channels of her own people too. After another hymn came the dismissal, three and a half hours after the service had begun. Katie ran off to the kitchen to set tables for the snack, Ellie trying to follow and getting woefully tangled between the greetings of others. Someone pushed her to a table where the ordained men were eating, inviting her to sit down. "No," Ellie said, shaking her head. It was clear, even to her, that there was a pecking order, and that she shouldn't be eating first.

  "You are a visitor," Bishop Ephram said, gesturing to the bench.

  "I have to find Katie."

  She felt strong hands on her shoulders and looked up to find Aaron Fisher steering her back to the table. "It is an honor," he said, meeting her eye, and without a sound Ellie sank onto the bench.

  Graduation day at Perm State was like nothing Katie had ever seen -- a pageant of color, punctuated by silver flashes of cameras that instinctively made her start. When Jacob marched up to receive his diploma in his stately black cap and gown, she clapped louder than anyone else around her. She was proud of him --a curiously un-Amish feeling, but valid all the same in this Englischer collegiate world. Impressively, it had only taken him five years --including the one he spent mastering the high school subjects he'd never learned. And although Katie herself didn't see the purpose of going on past eighth grade with your schooling when you were going to grow up and manage a household anyway, she couldn't deny that Jacob needed this. She had lain on the floor of his apartment and listened to him read aloud from his books, and before she could catch herself she'd been swept away by Hamlet's doubts; by Holden Caulfield's vision of his sister on that merry-go-round; by Mr. Gatsby's lonely green light.

  Suddenly the graduates tossed their hats in the air, like starlings scattering from the trees when the hammers rang out at a barn raising. Katie smiled as Jacob hurried toward her. "You did wonderful gut," she said, and hugged him.

  "Thanks for coming." Lifting his head, Jacob suddenly called out a greeting to someone across the green. "There's someone I want you to meet."

  He drew her toward a man taller even than Jacob, wearing the same black robe, but with a blue sash over his shoulders. "Adam!"

  The man turned around and grinned. "Hey, that's Dr. Sinclair to you."

  He was a little older than Jacob, this she could see from the lines around his eyes, which made her think he laughed often, and well. He had hair the color of a honeycomb, and eyes that almost matched. But what made Katie unable to look away was the absolute peace that washed over her when she met his gaze, as if this one Englischer had a soul that was Plain.

  "Adam just got his Ph.D.," Jacob explained. "He's the one whose house I'm renting."

  Katie nodded. She knew that Jacob had moved out of undergraduate housing and into a small home in town, since he was staying on as a teaching assistant at Penn State. She knew that the man who owned the home was going away to do research. She knew there would be two weeks' time when they were roommates, before the owner left on his trip. But she had not known his name. She had not known that you could stand this far away from a person and still feel as if you were pressed up tight against him, fighting to take a breath.

  "Wie bist du heit," she said, and then blushed, flustered that she had greeted him in Dietsch.

  "You must be Katie," he answered. "Jacob's told me about you." And then he held out his hand, an invitation.

  Katie suddenly thought about Jacob's stories of Hamlet and Holden Caulfield and Mr. Gatsby, and with perfect clarity understood how these studies of emotional conundrums might be just as useful in real life as learning how to plant a vegetable garden, or hanging out the laundry. She wondered what this man had mastered, to earn his Ph.D. With great deliberation, Katie took Adam Sinclair's hand, and she smiled back.

  After arriving home and having lunch, Aaron and Sarah went off to do what most Amish did on Sunday afternoons: visit relatives and neighbors. Ellie, having unearthed an entire set of Laura Ingalls's Little House books, sat down to read. She was tired and irritable from the long morning, and the rhythmic clop of horses pulling buggies along the main road was beginning to bring on a migraine.

  Katie, who had been cleaning the dishes, came into the living room and curled up in the chair beside Ellie. Eyes closed, she began to hum softly.

  Ellie glared at her. "Do you mind?"

  "Mind what?"

  "Singing. While I'm reading."

  Katie scowled. "I'm not singing. If it's bothering you, go somewhere else."

  "I was here first," Ellie said, feeling like a seventh-grader. But she got to her feet and headed toward the door, only to find Katie following her. "For God's sake, you have the entire living room now!"

  "Can I ask you a question? Mam said you used to come visit Paradise in the summers, to stay on a farm like ours. Aunt Leda told her. Is it true?"

  "Yes," Ellie said slowly, wondering where this was leading. "Why?"

  Katie shrugged. "It's just that you don't seem to like it much. The farm, I mean."

  "I like the farm just fine. I'm just not accustomed to having to baby-sit my clients." At the wounded look that crossed Katie's face, Ellie sighed inwardly. "I'm sorry. That was uncalled-for."

  Katie looked up. "You don't like me."

  Ellie didn't know what to say to that. "I don't know you."

  "I don't know you, either." Katie scuffed the toe of her boot on the wooden floor. "On Sunday, we do things different here."

  "I'd noticed. No chores."

  "Well, we still have chores. But we also have time to relax." Katie looked up at her. "I thought that maybe, it being Sunday, you and I could do things different, too."

  Ellie felt something tighten inside her. Was Katie going to suggest they skip town? Go find a pack of cigarettes? Give each other a few hours of no-holds-barred privacy?

  "I was thinking that maybe we could be friends. Just for this afternoon. You could pretend that you met me coming to visit the farm you were at when you were a kid, instead of the way it really happened."

  Ellie put down her book. If she won Katie's friendship and got the girl to o
pen enough to spill out the truth, she might not need Coop to come evaluate her at all. "When I was a kid," Ellie said slowly, "I used to be able to skip stones farther than any of my cousins."

  A smile blossomed over Katie's face. "Think you still can?"

  They jostled through the door and struck out across the field. At the edge of the pond, Ellie reached for a smooth, flat rock and tossed it, counting as it bounced five times over the water. She wiggled her fingers. "Haven't lost the touch."

  Katie picked up her own stone. Four, five, six, seven skips. With a broad smile, she turned to Ellie. "Some touch," she teased.

  Ellie narrowed her eyes in concentration and tried again. A moment later, Katie did too. "Ha!" Ellie crowed. "I win!"

  "You do not!"

  "I beat you by a yard, fair and square!"

  "That's not what I saw," Katie protested.

  "Oh, right. And your eyewitness accounts these days are so accurate." When Katie stiffened beside her, Ellie sighed. "I'm sorry. It's hard for me to separate from why I'm really here."

  "You're supposed to be here because you believe me."

  "Not necessarily. A defense attorney is paid to make a jury believe whatever she says. Which may or may not be what her client has told her." At Katie's baffled expression, Ellie smiled. "It probably sounds very strange to you."

  "I don't understand why the judge doesn't just pick the person who's telling the truth."

  Reaching for a piece of timothy grass, Ellie set it between her teeth. "It's not quite as simple as that. It's about defending people's rights. And sometimes, even to a judge, things aren't black and white."

  "It is black and white, if you're Plain," Katie said. "If you follow the Ordnung, you are right. If you break the rules, you get shunned."

  "Well, in the English world, that's communism." Ellie hesitated. "What if you didn't do it? What if you were accused of breaking a rule, but you were perfectly innocent?"

  Katie blushed. "When there's a members' meeting for discipline, the accused member has a chance to tell his story too."