Jacob's Return (25 page)

Most of the treats got taken downstairs to the unheated summer kitchen to cool or be stored. Everything kept better down there and tomorrow was Christmas Eve anyway.

Priscilla arrived late, more than an hour after school should have been finished. “Down the snow flutters still,” she said as she came in. Once free of her heavy shoes, outer bonnet and cape, she went over to sit on the quilt with Aaron, took Daniel from his cradle and sat him in her lap facing everyone. “Sorry to be so late. Those kids! I worry so. None of the words they’ll remember, in the pageant tomorrow. Weeks, we’ve been practicing already.”

Rachel went to pour the water from the noodles into the zinc-lined sink. “You like teaching, don’t you, Pris?”

“Like nothing, ever. No insult meant, but I’m glad you left, Rache.” She slapped her forehead. “Oh, foolish me. I almost forgot to invite you already.”

“Invite me to what?”

Priscilla looked at her as if she were daft and Rachel wondered for a minute how she succeeded in teaching the children anything when she forgot so much. She grinned at the notion.

“To the pageant, of course. You’ll come? All of you and the twins?” Priscilla looked concerned. “It’s important to the children you should come.”

“Of course,” Rachel said and wondered if the new teacher was nervous about making mistakes in front of the old one.

But if Priscilla was nervous, it didn’t last long. She began to clap Daniel’s hands. “
Botsche, botsche, kuche. Der Baker hot gerufe
.”

The twins sang the English words, “Paddy, paddy the cakes,” and clapped with little Daniel.

* * * *

Christmas Eve dawned crisp and finger-cold. The pageant would begin promptly at two. Everyone in the Sauder house had been invited, and Rachel was especially surprised when Levi and Simon wanted to go. When they arrived, generations of families were pulling up in a line of buggies half a mile long.

Her classroom — Priscilla’s rather — looked beautiful and a smile filled Rachel’s heart.

Along one side, hooks with boys’ coats and black felt hats of every size, met a row of shawls and like-sized blue winter bonnets. For a minute, until her baby kicked, Rachel missed being a teacher. But placing her hand on her stomach, she knew she would not go back for anything.

Most of the visitors sat on benches placed in rows along the sides and back, of the one-room school. Some sat at their children’s desks, while the students were off preparing for the pageant.

Little Ruth Vost led Rachel to a chair in the front and center of the room. The twins came too; Aaron sat on the floor at her feet — Emma sat
on
her feet. Simon, Levi and Jacob stood in the back.

A cord was strung across the front of the room, and a sheet of muslin, with painted hills and blue skies, was folded over it to form a curtain. In the room’s side windows sat lit candles with evergreens around their bases.

When the visitors were all sitting, Priscilla turned down the lamps, the candles giving a soft glow to the overcast winter afternoon. Then she rang a bell and the room quieted.

Rachel’s good impression of the new teacher grew.

Elam Lapp stepped before the curtain and began by reading the Nativity in High German. Christmas Eve as it was meant to be.

When Elam finished, Lena, Hannah, Mary-Rose and Amanda, first graders wearing paper angel wings, stood, three on each side of him and sang, “
Ein Kindlein zart in der Krippen
,” Away in the Manger.

After the song, Priscilla came out. “What we wish to do today is called, “Cradle Rocking,” from a fourteenth century German Christmas custom I read about in a book Atlee lent me.” Pris smiled and nodded, and that’s when Rachel saw Atlee.

“This custom replaced Nativity plays after they were banned,” Priscilla said. “A cradle with a doll or baby, to symbolize the Holy Child, would be rocked while the congregation sang and prayed.” She took a breath and looked for her place on her script. How hard Pris must have worked to perfect her speaking for this occasion. “By the sixteenth century,” Pris continued, “This custom too was banned. But since our people have never allowed themselves to be stopped, it seemed right, as we celebrate Christ’s birth, to honor our Amish martyrs for not giving up.”

Pris blew out the candles.

One edge of the curtain was pulled back, where a single lantern revealed Daniel in his cradle. No wonder he and Priscilla were so comfortable with each other.

Behind the center of the curtain another light came on, outlining Mary and Joseph in shadow. An unseen hand rocked the Holy Child’s cradle while Daniel kicked and gurgled in glee.

Ida Lapp began to recite:

“Joseph, dearest Joseph mine,

Help me rock my baby fine!

What Gabriel foretold

Is now fulfilled,

Eia, Eia,

The Virgin bore a child

As the Father’s wisdom willed.

Eia, Eia.

Three wise men, judging by the shawls wrapped around Joseph, Jacob and Joshua Stutz, and by their camels — children on all-fours beside them — came from the opposite end of the room to recite:

“Out of the Orient they came a’riding

Three noble kings of humble heart and mild.

They came to see the Blessed Lord of Heaven

Descend to earth, to be a little child.

Precious gifts of gold and myrrh and incense,

Bringing God the gifts which God had made:

Low the kings in homage bowing,

At the feet of Mary laid.”

Then the angels returned to the center of the room and sang:

“To Christ our Lord we raise this song,

Hol-di-ah-di-ay.

Chimes are ringing, angels singing,

Hol-di-ah-di-ay.

Oh, look here! No, look there!

Angels’ choirs everywhere.”

Then the cast came from behind the curtain to end the program with, “
Still Nacht, Heilige Nacht
, Silent Night.”

Rachel was not sure she could hold back her tears. Nor was she certain who made her more proud, the schoolchildren for being so good, or Priscilla, herself, for becoming such a good teacher.

Rachel turned around to see if everyone else was as moved as she and saw many teary eyes just then.

“We have a special presentation we wish to make before we’re finished,” Priscilla said, and Rachel looked back to the front. “Elam, if you would....”

When the boy pulled back the curtain, a beautiful white quilt hanging on the wall behind Pris’s desk was revealed. The pupils names were embroidered in rainbow colors, surrounding a quilted school, flowers and trees, clouds, hills and valleys, even horses and buggies.

Priscilla surprised Rachel by taking her hand and urging her to stand. “Rachel, the children wish you to have this quilt, so you will remember them and to thank you for your patience and kindness in teaching them. Most of the girls stitched their own names. The boys’ mothers did theirs. Family names are grouped together. We worked evenings and took turns doing the quilting for the last two months to finish it.”

Rachel opened her arms to the pageant’s players who had been standing by and watching, and they came to her with hugs and kisses. Then she called the rest of the children from their desks. So many hugs, so much love, she was sobbing fit to start a Bible flood by the time she was done.

Simon came to stand by her, placing his hand at her back, looking as if he might be … happy. Rachel cried the more.

When her tears finally stopped, and the laughter at her weeping stopped, and Aaron was in Simon’s arms, Emma in hers, Rachel was able to speak. “Thank you, all of you, for such a very special gift, sewn and pieced together with love, I know.

“Christmas is the day when the inner light is shown on everyone and the true story of the Christ Child should be told. This afternoon has been one of the most beautiful tellings I have ever seen or heard. And the inner light in this room right now, is blinding.”

Everyone stood and clapped; some of the women had to stop to wipe their eyes.

Priscilla hugged her.

Daniel cried from the noise and Ruben came to take him from the cradle.

The noise grew as people began to leave.

“
Glick salich Grishtaag
, a most blessed Christmas,” people called as they left.

“
S’nehmlich zu dich
, the same to you.”

A dusting of snow made the evening magical.

Levi had left early; he was getting old and tired he’d told Jacob, but Rachel knew he could not deal with such emotion. So Jacob and the twins rode in the back of their buggy with her and Simon, and they sang carols all the way home.

After supper, Simon read the Nativity while they sat quietly in the best room before the fire. When the twins became sleepy, she and Jacob oversaw their leaving plates at their places at table so they would be found filled with candy, nuts and a toy or two.

Simon asked Rachel to stay downstairs when Jacob took the children upstairs, and Levi went to the
daudyhaus
. And when they were alone, he put his arms around her and held her close. And for the first time in years, Rachel was comfortable enough to let him.

“Rachel, it is Christmas,” he said. “Come with me. Come to our house and into our bed. Let me show you I have changed.”

Just then, Rachel believed him. But she’d believed before and been wrong. She wanted to make her marriage a normal one. She owed it to her husband, and to her child, to do so.

But she also owed her child protection.

She sighed and stepped back. “Simon, I am … uneasy. Not so much as I was. But for so long, I never knew what you would do, and it always seemed that … at night … I had more reason for fear. I do not think I am ready.”

“Ach, Rachel. For Christmas. Please? There would be no more wonderful a gift.”

She wavered, for a moment, then her heart began to race. “I am frightened, yet.” She touched his arm. “But I become less so each day. I see how different you have become. I see in your eyes kindness and understanding. I love how you care for Aaron. I know you are trying, Simon. Give me time. Please? Will you accept that if we continue in this way, after the baby is born, I will return to you and be your wife again?”

Could he? Would he? Like St. Joseph, accept a wife under such conditions? Could anyone change so much? And how dare she judge him when her sins loomed so greatly before her.

Simon sighed and kissed her forehead. “It is not the Christmas I would want, but it is a gift of sorts and I accept it. You have reason for the way you feel. I know that.”

“You do?”

“Ach, Rachel. I am not a stupid man. Just foolish sometimes. Headstrong. Driven by something I cannot name and it frightens me, perhaps as much as it frightens you. I get to blaming you, I think. Your father and I have talked. It helped me to see things more clearly.”

Rachel allowed herself to be taken into her husband’s arms. He bent his head slowly to kiss her goodnight. A lovely, soft kiss.

She might have fallen in love with him, if he’d acted like this beyond their wedding.

Upstairs, Jacob was sitting on the floor in the hall, his back against the wall, his knees bent, waiting for her. “I thought you might have gone with him,” he whispered.

Rachel ignored the agony in his voice. “I told him that after the baby was born, I would return to him.”

“It is best.”

“Yes.”

Jacob stood to face her. “A blessed Christmas, Rachel.”

“You too, Jacob.”

Their fingers touched, then dropped away, and as she went to her own room, Rachel wondered how her heart could be both healing, and breaking, at the same time.

* * * *

Christmas morning Jacob came in from shoveling his way to the barn to find Rachel filling the children’s plates with treats. She put a “
lumba bubba
,” a stuffed baby doll with prayer kapp, apron and cape, beside Emma’s plate and a stuffed, black lamb by Aaron’s.

“These the ones you made, Mudpie?” Jacob picked up the lamb and examined it. “They’re nice. I brought mine down earlier.” He retrieved a wooden cradle to fit the size she’d told him the doll would be, and a wooden marble chase game, from the inside bottom shelf of the jelly cupboard.

Levi came in yawning and put a tiny carved horse, brown with horsehair main, shiny harness and plaited tail in Aaron’s plate, and a white one, just as fancy, in Emma’s.

“They’ll like them, Datt. Thanks,” Jacob said. “Happy Christmas. Here, got you some pipe tobacco.”

“Thanks, son. Where’s Simon? Still milking?”

Jacob looked out the window. “He was right behind me when we finished. Here he comes. Oh no, what is he up to?”

Simon came in, his jacket bulging in way too many places. He wore such a sincere, happy smile, the likes of which Jacob never hoped to see. Aaron deserved the credit for coaxing Simon’s smile into place over the past months.

“I guess I can’t put these on the table,” Simon said, as the twins came running into the room.

“When did you wake up?” Jacob asked. “I didn’t hear you call Pa-pop? Look at you, no socks on your feet. It’s cold in here. Come on.”

“Wait,” Simon said. “I feel something warm.” He looked into his jacket. “Ach, what did you do?” Jacob and the twins stopped to watch.

With a groan and a wink, Simon pulled a tan pup from inside its cocoon, black-tipped tail wagging furiously, and handed it to Emma.

Her squeals were deafening.

Then a similar wiggling bundle, black with one white eye, stuck its face out for an inquisitive look. Simon knelt down before Aaron. “Take him. He’s yours.”

“Unkabear! A doggie!”

For a minute, the lump in Jacob’s throat threatened to choke him. Simon had never in his life showed this side of himself.

Despite the burden Jacob carried, he knew Christmas had never meant so much.

“One for each of you.” Simon petted Aaron’s puppy and smiled at his brother. “Both of them for your part of the house, Jacob.”