Meek and Mild (33 page)

Fannie poured the coffee, but she had already dismissed the idea of drinking any.

“She’s right,” Fannie said. “I never saw her slow down a day with any of the boys.”

“She’s not as young this time around,” Lizzie said. “She won’t listen to any of us. You must come and talk sense into her.”

“What makes you think she would pay heed to me?” Fannie’s stomach clenched.

“You’re her only daughter.”

“She couldn’t be any more fond of you if she had birthed you. You are a true daughter.” Fannie had heard Martha say this dozens of times since Abe married Lizzie.

“It’s not the same.” Lizzie leaned across the table and put a hand on Fannie’s arm. “Outside of church, you haven’t seen her for weeks. Elam comes to suppers without you. You don’t bring Sadie for strudel in the mornings. Martha’s heart is heavy for you.”

Fannie’s throat thickened.

“Why don’t you come?” Lizzie said softly. “You have always been close. She’s your
mamm
.”

Escalating giggles outside the back door made Fannie turn her head. She was grateful for a fleeting excuse to glance away from Lizzie. Any month now Lizzie would break the news that Thomas was going to become a big brother, and Fannie wouldn’t be able to look her brother’s wife in the eye any more than she could look at her mother.

She moved to the sink and dumped her untouched coffee. “I’ll try to go.”

“Don’t wait too long.”

“I won’t.” Fannie gripped the edge of the sink in determination to believe her own words.

Lizzie stood. “I’d better get Thomas home for his nap. I could drop you off on my way.”

“No,” Fannie said. She gave a smile she did not mean. “There’s no need to trouble yourself. I will come.”

Fannie walked outside with Lizzie. Sadie protested being separated from Thomas so soon, and Fannie took her daughter’s hand as a reminder of the behavior she expected. The girl’s shoulders slumped but her objections ceased, and they watched Lizzie put Thomas in the buggy and signal the horse into motion.

“Can I stay outside to play?” Sadie asked.

Fannie inhaled and sighed. “Yes, I suppose so.”

“Will you play with me?”

“I don’t feel very playful just now.”

“Then watch me play. Please?”

Fannie glanced toward an outdoor chair Elam had made for her during the summer she was expecting Sadie.

“All right,” she said, “for a little while.”

Sadie tumbled into the grass again. Fannie sat in the chair and lifted her face to the sun. In mid-September, the days were still full of summer but with the edge shaved off the heat.

“
Mamm
, you’re not watching!”

Sadie’s thin voice scolded, and Fannie opened her eyes. She would have anyway, because behind closed eyelids she saw her mother, heavy with child and refusing to slow down. Lizzie had put the image in the place where Fannie closed off her pain. If she could not retreat there, then where?

Sadie squealed and began to run along the side of the house. Fannie gasped and popped out of her chair.

Clara was walking toward them—with her small brown suitcase. Sadie took it from her, gripping the handle with both hands and leaning to one side to keep the bag from dragging in the dirt. In a moment, Clara’s arms were around Fannie, and Fannie resolved that on this visit her cousin would not find her in the bed—or anywhere—unable to get up and make a meal.

Clara could not have ridden the milk wagon. The time wasn’t right.

“You didn’t walk, did you?” Fannie said.

Clara hesitated and then smiled. “Andrew Raber left me at the top of the lane. He’ll be back Friday.”

Six days together. Something soothed and brightened within Fannie. The smile creeping across her face took her by surprise.

“Andrew Raber,” Fannie murmured. “He could have come down to the house for some refreshment.”

Clara’s face flushed.

“Sadie,” Fannie said, “take Clara’s bag to the spare bedroom. She’s going to stay awhile.”

“Good!” Sadie said. “She can visit my Sunday school class tomorrow.”

Sadie lugged the suitcase into the house.

“You should visit the class,” Fannie said. “Sadie loves it.”

“I know it’s a church Sunday for you,” Clara said, “but I thought I would pass a quiet Sabbath on my own.”

Fannie held the screen door open for Clara. “You haven’t been to church here since we were little. You might enjoy the changes. The new hymns have lovely four-part harmonies, and the stanzas are much shorter than you’re used to.”

Clara did not respond as she pulled a chair away from the table to sit down.

“I have a feeling we have a great deal to catch up on,” Fannie said. “Your letters have not said much.”

“Let me settle in,” Clara said. “And Sadie will want some attention.”

“Have you brought her any new stories?” Fannie took a plate of cookies from a cupboard and set it on the table.

Clara nodded. “I can’t stop myself from writing them.”

“And why should you?”

Clara sucked in her breath but said nothing.

“Sadie is going to insist you visit the class,” Fannie said. “She’ll pester you all night.”

One side of Clara’s mouth turned up. “I admit I’m curious what it would be like to see what a teacher does with a class of children talking about Bible stories.”

“Then come to church. The Sunday school class is right after the shared meal, before everyone goes home.”

“Maybe just for the class,” Clara said.

“We won’t bite.”

“It might…complicate things.”

Fannie munched a cookie. The class was a start. Clara could see for herself how well she would fit in with the Maryland church. Maybe on her next visit, she would come to worship.

Clara walked to the Maple Glen Meetinghouse the next afternoon, carefully calculating her arrival to coincide with the close of the meal. As soon as the last of the food was stowed away, Fannie had explained, classes for children met around the tables on one side of the meetinghouse, while adults quietly continued their visiting on the other side. Clara stepped inside the building—identical to the meetinghouses where she was accustomed to worship—and looked around.

“There’s my cousin Clara.” Sadie’s voice rang out, and she wiggled off the bench where she sat with a cluster of little girls. Some were even younger than Sadie, but others were older.

The teacher followed Sadie toward Clara. “I’m Ellen Benton. I’m so glad you could visit our class.”

“I won’t be any disturbance,” Clara said. “I only wanted to see what it is like.”

Ellen grinned. “You help make my job quite pleasant.”

“Me?”

“Your stories, silly,” Sadie said. “I showed her the scrapbook.”

“Oh!”

“The girls love them,” Ellen said. “They bring the Bible to life in just the right ways. And what an inspiration! I’ve even begun to try my hand at it, although I have not the skill you have. We teach the boys separately from the girls, of course, but even the boys’ teachers enjoy your stories.”

Clara did not know what to say. She knew Sadie went to Sunday school, but it never crossed her mind that Sadie—or Fannie—would share Clara’s stories with anyone else. Surely the teachers had their own plans or instructions from the ministers.

“We tell the stories so the children can understand them,” Ellen said. “Then we work on learning High German so they can learn to read the Bible for themselves someday. The little ones practice picking out letters.”

“I’ll just have a seat over here and watch,” Clara said.

“Wouldn’t you like to tell a story?” Ellen said. “I was planning on Daniel and the lions’ den.”

Clara had first told a story to Priscilla, then to two girls, then to four. Thirteen heads now bobbed around the table. Daniel and the lions’ den was one of the stories in the scrapbook. Clara had written and rewritten the words a half-dozen times before she was satisfied. The taste of them saturated her tongue.

“
O taste and see that the Lord is good
.”

“Thank you for asking,” Clara said, “but I’ll watch and listen and learn right along with the girls.”

She sat down on a bench a few feet away, where she could hear and see clearly. A moment later Fannie slid in next to her.

“Next time visit church,” Fannie said. “You’ll see.”

“See what?” Clara said.

“You’ll see.”

I
want to go see
Grossmuder
!”

Clara watched Sadie’s bare foot lift and stomp, though her slight weight made little sound on the polished wood floor.

“We’ll have to go another day,” Fannie said, her eyes fixed on the mending in her lap.

“You always say that, but we never go. Isn’t that a lie?”

Fannie looked up now. “Sadie Esh, you mind your tongue.”

“Sorry,” Sadie muttered. “But I still want to go see
Grossmuder
.”

“Let me take her,” Clara said. “I’ve been here three days and haven’t seen my favorite aunt.”

Fannie poked a needle through a seam in one of Elam’s shirts.

“I know it’s not a good time for you to go.” Clara chose her words with care. Sadie was standing right there. “But I want to see Martha anyway. Sadie may as well come with me.”

Fannie didn’t look up. “All right.”

Sadie shot out the front door. Clara nearly had to trot to keep up with her. Martha had strudel ready, as she had for as long as Clara could remember. When she was Sadie’s age, she relished a visit to Martha’s kitchen as much as Sadie did now.

“Where are my uncles?” Sadie swiped crumbs off her lips with the back of one hand.

“Doing barn chores,” Martha said.

“I think they want some strudel,” Sadie said.

“I think you may be right.” Martha laid two pieces of strudel in a dish towel cut from a flour sack. Clara remembered when her aunt had stitched the blue-and-yellow border on it.

Sadie carried her offering carefully out the back door. Clara watched Martha’s movements around the kitchen as she wrapped the remaining strudel in a flour sack and tucked it away in a cupboard. Her rosy complexion was absent, and she occasionally flinched with the movement of her left leg. They moved into the front room.

“I am so glad you came.” Martha finally allowed herself to sit. “When we heard about the kinds of sermons your ministers have been preaching, we wondered what would happen. For a few days, it was like what happened to your mother all over again.”

“What do you mean?” Clara leaned forward in her chair.

“You were little—about Thomas’s age—when Bishop Yoder first became stern about the ban. Catherine and I were determined to see each other. She didn’t vote for the
meidung
, you know.”

“But it was a unanimous vote.”

“Not exactly.” Martha put a hand on her back and winced.

“Are you all right?” Clara thought Martha looked inordinately tired even for a woman with child.

“I’ll be all right.” Martha blew breath slowly. “Catherine was close to her time. I was her sister. Of course she wanted me to come. As soon as the message arrived that she was laboring, I went.”

Clara swallowed. She had been too little to remember the night her mother birthed a baby who never drew breath.

“She held my hand the whole time.” Martha’s gaze found a distant point out the window. “The baby took too long. Catherine was exhausted, but she never let go of my hand. Not until…”

Clara’s breath stilled against her will. She knew the story. Martha had told it more than once. Catherine bled too much too fast. The baby was gone and then Catherine as well. That was the moment when her grip on Martha’s hand slackened. Story and vague memories of a toddler swirled in Clara’s mind, leaving her once again uncertain of the difference between what she remembered from that day and the bits of information she had acquired over the years.

Martha’s breathing sounded heavy to Clara.

“Are you sure you feel all right?” she asked.

“Perfectly fit. I’m just having a baby, and I miss my sister at a time like this.” Martha sighed. “And my daughter.”

They dawdled through lunch, which Clara insisted on helping to prepare. The three Hostetler sons still living on their parents’ farm alternated between teasing and adoring Sadie. When the meal was over, Sadie announced she was going to help wash dishes and pushed a kitchen chair up to the sink. Clara and Martha worked on either side of the girl, both encouraging and inspecting her efforts.