Read Landchester Amish Love: Ruth (Amish Romance) (Landchester Amish Love Series Book 2) Online
Authors: Esther Weaver
Landchester Amish Love: Ruth (Amish Romance) (Landchester Amish Love Series Book 2)
Ruth
(Landchester Amish Love Series, Book 2)
Esther Weaver
Copyright © Esther Weaver, 2016-. The right of Esther Weaver to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) 2000
This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
(Continued from
Sarah
)
Ruth sighed, idly rearranging the tools in front of her. She couldn’t put it off forever. She would have to start joining in with the
familye
business and making crafts for the Amish Crafts and Furniture shop eventually. And eventually, it seemed, had come a lot sooner than she’d thought it would.
It wasn’t that she didn’t know
how
, exactly. She’d spent hours with Sarah in here, learning how she did things. But Sarah was always the craftswoman, not Ruth, and in her heart Ruth had only ever joined in with her in order to spend more time with her
schweschder
. The actual making of the crafts was of little interest to her.
She picked up a half-finished Amish faceless doll from the workbench. Perhaps it would be easier if she started with this. Sarah had begun it, so maybe, Ruth thought, if she finished what Sarah had left undone, it would feel like she was still here, working with her
schweschder
, talking and laughing like they used to do.
Ruth sat with the doll, and began working. She pricked her finger, and let out a yelp, and threw it on the ground. She looked around, as though to check and make sure no one had seen her outburst. But of course, there was no one here. There would never be anyone here. She was stuck, doing these crafts alone, and that was all there was to it.
She laid her head in her hands. She wasn’t crying. This was too long-term a problem for her to cry about it every time it upset her. But she turned it all over in her head again.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t attractive. With her long, straight black hair, and her light grey eyes with just a touch of blue in them, Ruth had always felt rather well about her appearance. It never approached vanity, but she didn’t imagine herself so ugly that no
mann
would want to marry her, or have
kinder
with her.
And that was what she wanted, in the end. A
familye
. Or at least, failing that, something where she could be with other people. She was quiet, maybe, but it was only with being around others that she could be quiet without being subjected to the loneliness that sometimes quiet would bring. If she got into the
familye
business, she knew, it would only ever be afternoons like this that she would be given. She would be shut in a room with tasks to complete, with no conversation. Perhaps the things she made would reach others, and would bring them joy. But she’d never see it!
And yet, there weren’t other trades readily available. And even if there were, she didn’t want a trade. She imagined that by now she would be married, or at least engaged. She’d make a good
fraa
, she just knew it. She’d make a much better
fraa
and
maemm
than she would a doll maker, and it would make her happier.
So what was she doing, instead, here with a doll and an empty room, and nothing but her frustration to keep her company.
No, this wouldn’t do, Ruth thought. She was only just now beginning down this path, and it was already perfectly clear to her that it wouldn’t be good for her. And if other girls were able to find a
mann
then she should be able to do so, too.
The time had come to think – to really think about what it was that she was doing wrong. And it wasn’t a hard problem to find. Ruth loved people, this much was true. She loved, more than anything, to listen to them. But she didn’t much like talking. Anything she had to say was already known to her. She gained nothing by talking. The point of being around other people was to listen to them, and learn about what they thought or what they had to say.
And this had always been good, hadn’t it? Wasn’t it a virtue to listen and not talk? To be more interested in others than interested in others knowing about you? And yet, it had not served her well. She’d been in groups with boys, and group conversations. But since she never opened her mouth much, they never noticed her. It took someone taking an interest in her specifically for them to become her friend, and for them to hear what she had to say. And it hadn’t been boys that had done that, ever.
Really, it hadn’t been many people who had shown the initiative and sought Ruth out. It had really only been Katie, for the most part.
Katie! Well, that was the sort of person she should be, wasn’t it? If she wanted to be noticed, and she wanted boys to see her, and for her to catch their attention, then she should really be more like Katie. Katie could talk to anyone, and often did. Half the time Ruth didn’t know if Katie kept track of where conversations started. They always ended somewhere entirely different with her. But she made new friends like Sarah had made dolls: happily and easily.
The thought of her
schweschder
reminded Ruth of the doll she had been working on. She gingerly picked it up from the ground and looked at it. She must get better at speaking to people, rather than only always listening to them, or she must learn to be happy with dolls. It was one or the other, it seemed.
Staring at the doll, Ruth found she had no easy answer. Both seemed impossible tasks to her. But the thing about impossible tasks is that you find them less impossible when you begin trying to do them. So Ruth worked on the doll, and resolved to ask Sarah what she could do to begin to be more like her, and less like her reserved, attentive self.
As she worked on the doll, she pricked her finger again. This was not going to be easy.
That afternoon, while Ruth was still struggling with the doll, she heard a knock on the workshop door.
Had she been a person of greater acquaintance, she might have wondered who it was. But her
familye
was all out visiting Leah and George, who had just been married, and would need much advice in their life together, so there was only one person it could be.
“Come in, Katie!” Ruth called out without standing up.
She looked at the door and saw Katie’s face appear comically around it. Katie stuck out her tongue, when she saw Ruth was indeed looking at her, and Ruth laughed.
Which made her prick herself again.
“Ow!” she cried out, and Katie rushed to her, picking up her hand and rubbing it between her own hands.
“
Ach
, I didn’t know that making dolls was such a danger!” Katie said, and Ruth only opened her eyes wide in agreement.
Katie regarded her for a moment. She knew her friend, and knew her well.
“I was going to come visit you, I thought, and see how you were doing. But it doesn’t look like you need a visit.”
Ruth was concerned.
“
Nee,
Katie. I do need a visit. Very much! You don’t understand what today has been like.”
Katie gently neatened the hair that had come undone and now lay across Ruth’s forehead, a playful smile on her lips.
“And you don’t understand
me
,” she said. “You don’t need a visit; you need an escape.”
Ruth was relieved. She didn’t take much encouragement to leave the hated doll on the workbench, and follow Katie out to the fields.
They’d always gone walking just here. Since they were
kinder
, it had been their place. They had a route they took through the fields, and there was comfort in it always being just so and just the same. They wanted the seasons come and go together, and saw year over year how the farmers rotated their crops. They each had a season they liked best. Katie liked the summer, when all the crops were fully grown and out in the open.
But Ruth had always liked the winter. It was cold, and they had to bundle up if they wanted to go walking, and they couldn’t even go at all if the snow was too high. But Ruth had always liked the sense that the plants were all just hiding, waiting to come out. And it had always been a reminder to her, prone to negativity as she knew herself to be, that however impossible things looked, they were always just a few months from turning around. How bleak the winter must seem to a plant, who doesn’t know how the world will change!
Today, though, Ruth was not prone to the introspection that had led her to that preference. No, today Ruth was talking.
“And it’s not that I don’t appreciate that my
familye
even has a job for me. It’s just that I don’t like doing that. And I’ve prayed, and I’ve asked
Gott
to make me happier doing what I must do. I ask him to make me patient in the quiet and I try and look at it as a test or my own way of serving. But it doesn’t seem right, does it?”
Katie tried to answer her, and say something, but the question was rhetorical, and Ruth had already moved on by the time Katie had opened her mouth to speak.
“Whatever I do, I’m left with knowing that this is my life. Forever. Once I start this, I don’t think I’ll stop. If I haven’t found a
mann
already, and I haven’t been trapped in a room all day, doing useful little things that make me meet no one, then how will I now?”
Again, Katie wanted to answer. She wanted to offer some encouragement. But Ruth had been holding this in, and saving it up all day, and couldn’t be stopped.
“And if I don’t ever meet someone who might love me, what then? I’ll be old. I’ll grow old with no
familye
of my own, and no
bobbli
and I’ll have come and gone and the only thing I’ll have given the world is some crafts that I’m not even very
gut
at.”
She paused, but Katie didn’t take the bait. She knew that as soon as she tried to say something, Ruth would only start again. And she was right.
“The worst of it is, that I don’t even know if things will be different if I don’t start working this way. I’ve gotten this far, alone, not being able to find anyone. What if, even if I change, it’s too late? What if by now, all the men who would have loved me have already found another woman? What if all the chances I could have had, I wasted by not looking for them? What then?”
Katie had a stalk of wheat in her hand, and she fiddled with it idly while she half listened to Ruth talk. When it was clear Ruth had finally concluded her little rant, she found she could finally speak.
“You’re not very much yourself today, Ruth,” she said.
Ruth wasn’t sure whether to be stung by this or not. “Well, so what if I’m not? What has being myself gotten me this far?”
Katie didn’t know what to answer. So she tried to change the subject. “I hear the barn raising for Leah and George Miller is almost finished. They have their
haus
all finished, just about. You could go to the final day, for the finishing ceremony, couldn’t you?”
Ruth nodded. “
Jah,
I could go. But what
gut
will it do me if I go, and I’m just the same as always, and I only speak to you, or the other girls who say hello to me sometimes? Nothing will have changed.”
Katie sighed. She hadn’t meant for Ruth to circle back around this way.
“You know, Ruth, if you want my advice, you could be a little more positive. Positive and open. If you were a little more like that, you wouldn’t have to worry so much about finding a
mann
. One would have found you by now.”
Ruth knew Katie didn’t mean anything by this. She didn’t mean her words to be hurtful. She just said things sometimes like this when she was annoyed or upset. But it still stung Ruth a little bit. And she could see Katie realize that, and she could see that only grow her frustration with the conversation.
They were not yet half way through the walk they always made together. They had a good fair distance to go, and usually, they were happy to walk it together. They’d really only ever turned back early when one or the other of them was feeling unwell, or when the weather had taken a turn for the worse, and they found themselves both unable to continue.
But now, Katie stopped, and Ruth came to a stop a few steps ahead. There was a path here that would cut through to another path that would lead Katie back home, if she took it. Ruth put this all together in her head, and watched Katie put it together too.
“You know,” Katie said, “I think today I’d better help my
maemm
with the dinner. We’re celebrating as a
familye
, and there are going to be more of us than usual.”
Ruth wouldn’t respond. It hadn’t been worded as a question, but the way Katie said it sounded like she was asking permission to break with their own private tradition. And Ruth didn’t want Katie to feel as though that was anything other than abandonment.
But Katie wasn’t going to back down.
“And you ought to get back to making your dolls, anyway,” she said, and this time she meant it to be a little bit stinging.
Ruth watched her go, and then stood, looking around her. There hadn’t been a wind up when they had first gone out walking, but now the wheat in the fields was beginning to sway.
Perhaps it wasn’t summer or winter that was the best, Ruth thought, bitterly. Maybe it was late summer, early autumn. When everything is just about to die, or be killed, or be harvested.
This wasn’t very positive. This wasn’t very open.
Ruth sighed, and rebuked herself for the way things had gone with Katie, and began the long walk home.