The Shunning (15 page)

“And with you, child.” Ella Mae’s tone—raspy as it was—had never sounded so sweet, so full of compassion, and Rebecca’s eyes welled with tears.

Before picking up the reins, Ella Mae turned to Rebecca and spoke once more. “
Wann du mich mohl brauchst, dan komm ich—
When you need me, I will come.”

Rebecca glanced down at the fine white linen envelope. “I know ya will,” she whispered, shivering against the cold . . . against the unknown. “I know.”

————

Katie finished up her chores in the barn, trying to shake off the nagging thoughts. Her gaze wandered to the hayloft high overhead, where Dan’s guitar lay hidden safely in its case. Forcing her eyes away, she headed toward the milk house, noticing her mamma waving to someone in a departing buggy.
Wonder who that could be?

John’s words tumbled over and over in her mind: “It is a redemptive thing,” he’d said about her confession. And it was, of course. Her act of confession assured her a good standing in the church. So she must obey the rules. Her future depended upon it.

Yet why did she feel stifled? Trapped? Her heart imprisoned along with the forbidden songs?

Hours before, she’d come clean, but her heart felt wicked still. Not at all the way she thought she would feel after baring her soul. What was keeping her from the straight and narrow? What more could she do?

Dan Fisher had spoken of this very thing once during a buggy ride home from a Singing a few days before his drowning. Katie had listened in confusion as he rattled on and on about something he’d found in Galatians, where the apostle Paul spoke about not building your faith on church rules, but on Christ. Dan had even read aloud the verses from chapter 5, and she remembered being surprised that he was carrying a paraphrased version of the New Testament around in his pocket. An odd thing for a baptized Amishman!

“The Ordnung can’t save us, Katie,” he’d said with a serious look in his eyes. “Our forefathers weren’t educated in the Scriptures . . . they didn’t study the Bible so they could teach it to the People. They made rules for the Old Order to follow. Man-made rules.”

Katie had heard about the four elderly bishops back in 1809, who’d issued a ruling about excommunicating members who failed to obey the Ordnung. But she was in love, and whatever Dan chose to believe about their Swiss ancestors was fine with her; she wasn’t going to argue with him. Besides, he’d probably gotten himself invited to a Mennonite Bible study or prayer meeting somewhere. The Mennonites were known for seeking out the truths of God’s Word, and many of them ended up becoming missionaries.

At the time, Katie figured Dan had encountered some Bible-thumpers, that was all. But she hoped he’d be careful about his affiliation with outsiders. Especially Mennonites. He could get himself shunned for such things as that!

Katie cringed. Die Meinding, the shunning, was a frightful thing. The word itself stirred powerful emotions among the People. Feelings of rejection, abandonment . . . fear.

She could remember her Mammi Essie telling about a man who had been shunned for using tractor power. None of the People could so much as speak to him or eat with him, lest they be shunned, too.

“It’s like a death in the family,” Essie had told her. And Katie, only a youngster at the time, had been sorry for the outcast man and his family.

But it wasn’t until she met his little daughter, Annie Mae, during a spelling bee at their one-room school, that Katie understood the depth of sadness involved. No one knew what to say to Annie Mae. They either said nothing at all or were extra nice, as if that could somehow make up for her father’s pain.

Even though the children were pretty much sheltered from church affairs, they could all see that after the shunning, Annie Mae was no longer the same. It was as if she’d been stripped bare, robbed of something precious. Katie had even been fearful that, unless Annie Mae’s father submitted to a kneeling confession and pleaded for forgiveness, his little girl might suffer for the rest of her life.

Along with all the other children in the Hickory Hollow church district, Katie had been taught never to deviate in the slightest from the Ordnung. Once you began to stray, you were on your way out the church door.

Well, nobody’ll ever hafta worry about me
, young Katie had thought after witnessing the plight of Annie Mae’s father. Never would she willfully disobey and disgrace her family and her church. Never would she step so far from the fold as to be shunned. . . .

————

Moments after Ella Mae Zook lifted the reins and drove her carriage toward the western horizon, now deepening to smoke gray, Rebecca stumbled into the house, her heart thumping hard against her rib cage. This letter in her hand, this stationery . . .

She clutched it to her, casting furtive glances about the kitchen to be sure she was alone. Alone, as Ella Mae had kindly suggested.

The room, strangely cold, fell silent. Rebecca reached for a butcher knife and sliced through the envelope, making a long, clean opening at the top. Fingers trembling, she reached inside to find a business-size letter folded in thirds. Slowly, she opened the page and read:

Dear Rebecca (the adoptive mother of my child),

I am sorry to say that neither my mother nor I took the time to
learn your last name that day in the Lancaster hospital twenty-two
years ago. Unfortunately, things were spinning out of my control
that June fifth morning.

Perhaps I seemed too young to be presenting you with my newborn
daughter. And yes, I was young. Irresponsible, as well, to
have conceived the tiny life. The guilt is long since gone, but the
grief for my lost child remains, forever imprinted on my heart.

It is with great apprehension that I contact you in this way. My
prayer is that you may understand my motive, for I must be honest
with you, Rebecca. The baby girl I gave to you has been living in
my heart all these years. Yes, I must speak the truth and say that
I am sorry I ever gave her away. Now more than ever, because,
you see, I am dying.

A number of specialists have suggested that I “get my house
in order” as I have only a few months to live. With this recent
news, you will understand why I am desperately longing to see
Katherine—if only once more—before I die.

Of course, it is very possible that you and your husband did not
choose to keep the name I gave my baby, and perhaps, wisely so.
However, I respectfully request your help in making a way for our
initial meeting—my daughter’s and mine. Since I am praying that
you will respond favorably to my plea, I am enclosing my address.

Thank you, Rebecca, for all you have done for Katherine, for
the years of love you and your husband have given her. Please be
assured that I have no plans to interfere in her life or yours in any
mean-spirited way. My search for my child is purely a love search.

                                            
May the Lord bless you always,
                                                
Laura Mayfield-Bennett

Halfway through the first paragraph, Rebecca had to sit down. “Oh my, no . . . no,” she muttered to herself. “This can’t be. It just can’t.”

She reread the letter several times, tears welling up when she came to the part about Laura’s sadness over losing her baby. The loss of a child—any child—whether to adoption or to death was a searing, life-altering experience, she knew. She
knew
.

Yet everything in her resisted the notion of arranging for the meeting of this—this
woman
with her precious Katie! She—Rebecca Lapp, not Laura Mayfield-Bennett—was Katie’s mother!

Still, hadn’t the young woman said she was dying? Dying! What age would she be? Late thirties? Maybe even younger. Rebecca had no idea, for there had never been any information exchanged between the two families. The adoption had never been finalized. The infant girl had needed a home; she and Samuel had just lost their tiny newborn. Heartsick and barren, Rebecca had accepted the baby as a gift from the hands of the heavenly Father.

God, in His great Providence, had put her and Samuel in the path of the pitifully sad teenager with auburn hair. And that teenager— Laura—had kissed her baby girl good-bye and placed her in Rebecca’s open arms. Who was to question the rightness, the legitimacy of such an act?

But in her heart, Rebecca knew that the identity of the infant she’d named Katie—and raised on a Pennsylvania farm in a sandstone house passed down from one generation of Lapps to the next—had never truly existed. Not really. Such a flimsy arrangement would never hold up in a modern court of law. No, if truth be told, Katherine Mayfield, the daughter of a fancy woman . . . Katherine, with English blood coursing through her veins . . . Katherine, with a bent for forbidden melodies and guitars—
she
was the girl who had lived here and grown up Amish all these years.

“And now her real mother wants her back,” Rebecca moaned, rocking back and forth. “She’ll probably come right back to Hickory Hollow . . . and take Katie away from me.”

She felt her heart skip a beat and the startling sensation caught her by surprise, taking her breath. With a great sigh, she stood up, crumpling the letter in her hand. “I won’t be writing back, Laura Mayfield-Bennett. I won’t!”

Without regard for Samuel’s interest in the matter, or asking his advice—without thinking any of that—Rebecca got to her feet, walked directly to the old woodstove, and fed the letter—envelope and all— into its blazing belly.

As if from a great distance, she heard the back door swing open and Katie come rushing inside. She did not look up, but stared at the fire as it licked up the remains of the secret past.

“Mamma?”

She recognized Katie’s voice and wondered how long she herself had been standing there, gazing into the red and orange flames.

“Mam, are ya all right?” Katie touched Rebecca’s arm and she straightened, calling up all the strength left in her.

Slowly, she turned to face her daughter. “Where’s Dat?”

“He’s on his way in. He and the boys are coming for supper soon.”

Rebecca went about fixing leftovers and forced a smile—a frozen mockery of a thing. Katie must not suspect that anything was wrong. She must never know that another woman, a complete stranger, had given birth to her. Or that this woman was even now dying of a terminal disease. Or that the letter—the one that might have opened the door to fancy dresses and mirrors and music—was shriveling in the heat of an Amish cookstove, only inches away.

Ten

T
he third Sunday in November was an off Sunday. Every other Lord’s Day, the Amish community had a day of rest. The time was to be spent quietly at home or, as was more often the case, visiting friends and relatives.

Katie and her family had planned a peaceful day together, tending only the necessary chores and, in general, enjoying one another’s company— the last such Sunday before her wedding day.

After lunch, Mary Stoltzfus stopped by with the finished wedding quilt, eyes shining as she greeted each member of the Lapp family. Eli seemed to pay more attention than usual when Mary walked through the kitchen and into the front room. This did not come as a surprise to Katie, for her dearest friend was glowing today.

Mary’s mother, Rachel, had often warned, “Perty is as perty does.” If the old adage was true, then Mary was the model, for she was as pretty inside as out.

Eli followed them into the front room and sat down on a straight-backed cane chair across from them, looking up occasionally from his crossword puzzle as they made over the quilt. Then Benjamin came in and suggested to his brother that they “take to visitin’.” But from the twinkle in Ben’s eyes, Katie suspected that they were on their way to see their girlfriends.

“So long,” Mamma called from her wooden rocker across from Dat, who was snoring softly in his matching chair. The boys waved but continued on through the kitchen to the utility room, making plans in low tones and laughing softly.

“Will your
Beau
be comin’ over after a bit?” Mary asked.

“Jah.” Katie couldn’t hide a blush. “John will be coming to take me with him to pay a visit to his preacher friend over in SummerHill. There’s been some trouble with a few boys at the Singings.”

“Really? What kind of trouble?”

“Oh, just boyish rowdiness, I guess. Some of them have been bringing fiddles and guitars—such like that.”

At the mention of guitars, Mary frowned slightly, and Katie wondered if she was going to ask if she’d gotten rid of hers yet. To fill the awkward silence, she spoke up quickly. “I heard they even had a portable CD player over there one night. Can you imagine that?”

“CD player? What’s that?”

“Oh, it’s some sort of machine that plays music on tiny little records.”

“Well, if that don’t beat all.”

“I tell you, Mary, things are changing mighty fast around here. I remember when we weren’t even allowed harmonicas at Singing.”