The Shunning (2 page)
Tennyson—
In Memoriam
No living man can send me to the shades
Before my time; no man of woman born,
Coward or brave, can shun his destiny.
Homer—
Iliad
Table of Contents
I
f the truth be known, I was more conniving than all three of my brothers put together. Hardheaded, too.
All in all,
Dat
must’ve given me his “whatcha-do-today-you’ll-sleep-with-tonight” lecture every other day while I was growing up. But I wasn’t proud of it, and by the time I turned nineteen, I was ready to put my wicked ways behind me and walk the “straight and narrow.” So with a heart filled with good intentions, I had my kneeling baptism right after the two-hour Preaching on a bright September Sunday.
The barn was filled with my Amish kinfolk and friends that day three years ago when five girls and six boys were baptized. One of the girls was Mary Stoltzfus—as close as any real sister could be. She was only seventeen then, younger than most Plain girls receiving the ordinance, but as honest and sweet as they come. She saw no need in putting off what she’d always intended to do.
After the third hymn, there was the sound of sniffling. I, being the youngest member of my family and the only daughter, shouldn’t have been too surprised to find that it was Mamma.
When the deacon’s wife untied my
kapp
, some pigeons flapped their wings in the barn rafters overhead. I wondered if it might be some sort of sign.
Then it came time for the bishop’s familiar words: “Upon your faith, which you have confessed before God and these many witnesses, you are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.” He cupped his hands over my head as the deacon poured water from a tin cup. I remained motionless as the water ran down my hair and over my face.
After being greeted by the bishop, I was told to “rise up.” A Holy Kiss was given me by the deacon’s wife, and with renewed hope, I believed this public act of submission would turn me into an honest-to-goodness Amishwoman. Just like Mamma.
Dear
Mam.
Her hazel eyes held all the light of heaven. Heavenly hazel, I always called them. And they were, especially when she was in the midst of one of her hilarious stories. We’d be out snapping peas or husking corn, and in a blink, her stories would come rolling off her tongue.
They were always the same—no stretching the truth with Mam, as far as I could tell. She was a stickler for honesty; fairness, too, right down to the way she never overcharged tourists for the mouth-watering jellies and jams she loved to make. Her stories,
ach
, how she loved to tell them—for the telling’s sake. And the womenfolk—gathered for a quilting frolic or a canning bee—always hung on every word, no matter how often they were repeated.
There were stories from her childhood and after—how the horses ran off with her one day, how clumsy she was at needlework, and how it was raising three rambunctious boys, one after another. Soon her voice would grow soft as velvet and she’d say, “That was all back before little Katie came along”—as though my coming was a wondrous thing. And it seemed to me, listening to her weave her stories for all the rest of the women, that this must be how it’d be when the Lord God above welcomed you into His Kingdom. Mamma’s love was heavenly, all right. It just seemed to pour right out of her and into me.
Then long after the women had hitched their horses to the family buggies and headed home, I’d trudge out to the barn and sit in the hayloft, thinking. Thinking long and hard about the way Mamma always put things. There was probably nothing to ponder, really, about the way she spoke of me—at least that’s what Mary Stoltzfus always said. And she should know.
From my earliest memories, Mary was usually right. I was never one to lean hard on her opinion, though. Still, we did everything together. Even liked the same boys sometimes. She was very bright, got the highest marks through all eight grades at the one-room schoolhouse where all us Amish kids attended.
After eighth grade, Mary finished up with book learning and turned her attention toward becoming a wife and mother someday. Being older by two years, I had a head start on her. So we turned our backs on childhood, leaving it all behind—staying home with our mammas, making soap and cleaning house, tending charity gardens, and going to Singing every other Sunday night. Always together. That was how things had been with us, and I hoped always would be.
Mary and Katie.
Sometimes my brother Eli would tease us. “
Torment
is more like it,” Mary would say, which was the honest truth. Eli would be out in the barn scrubbing down the cows, getting ready for milking. Hollering to get our attention, he’d run the words together as if we shared a single name. “Mary ’n Katie, get yourselves in here and help! Mary ’n Katie!”
We never complained about it; people knew we weren’t just alike.
Jah
, we liked to wear our good purple dresses to suppers and Singing, but when it came right down to it, Mary and I were as different as a potato and a sugar pea.
Even Mamma said so. Thing is, she never put Mary in any of her storytelling. Guess you had to be family to hear your name mentioned in the stories Mam told, because family meant the world to her.
Still, no girl should have been made over the way Mamma carried on about me. Being Mam’s favorite was both a blessing and a curse, I decided.
In their younger years, my brothers—Elam, Eli, and Benjamin— were more ornery than all the wicked kings in the Bible combined—a regular trio of tricksters. Especially Eli and Benjamin. Elam got himself straightened out some last year around Thanksgiving, about the time he married Annie Fisher down Hickory Lane. The responsibilities of farming and caring for a wife, and a baby here before long, would settle most any fellow down.
If ever I had to pick a favorite brother, though, most likely Benjamin would’ve been it. Which isn’t saying much, except that he was the least of my troubles. He and that softhearted way he has about him sometimes.
Take last Sunday, for instance—the way he sat looking so forlorn at dinner after the Preaching, when Bishop Beiler and all five of his children came over to eat with us. The bishop had announced our upcoming wedding—his and mine—that day right after service. So now we were officially published. Our courting secret was out, and the People could start spreading the news in our church district, the way things had been done for three hundred years.
The rumors about all the celery Mamma and I had planted last May would stop. I’d be marrying John Beiler on Thursday, November twenty-first, and become stepmother to his five young children. And, jah, we’d have hundreds of celery sticks at my wedding feast—enough for two-hundred-some guests.
Days after the wedding was announced, Benjamin put on his softer face. Today, he’d even helped hoist me up to the attic to look for Mam’s wedding dress, which I just had to see for myself before I finished stitching up my own. Ben stayed there, hovering over me like I was a little child, while I pulled the long dress out of the big black trunk. Deep blue, with a white apron and cape for purity, the dress was as pretty as an Amish wedding dress could be.
Without warning, Ben’s words came at me—tumbled right out into the musty, cold air. “Didja ever think twice about marrying a widower with a ready-made family?”
I stared at him. “Well, Benjamin Lapp, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
He nodded his head in short little jerks. “It’s because of Daniel Fisher, ain’t?” His voice grew softer. “Because Daniel went and got himself drowned.”
The way he said it—gentle-like—made me want to cry. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was marrying John because Dan Fisher was dead— because there could never be another love for me like Dan. Still, I was stunned that Ben had brought it up.
Here was the brother who’d sat behind me in school, yanking my hair every chance he got, making me clean out the barn more times than I could count . . . and siding against me the night Dat caught me playing Daniel’s old guitar in the haymow.
But now Ben’s eyes were full of questions. He was worrying out loud about my future happiness, of all things.
I reached up and touched his ruddy face. “You don’t have to worry, brother,” I whispered. “Not one little bit.”
“Katie . . . for certain?” His voice echoed in the stillness.
I turned away and reached into the trunk, avoiding his gaze.
“John’s a
gut
man,” I said firmly. “He’ll make a right fine husband.”
I felt Ben’s eyes boring a hole into the back of my head, and for a long, awkward moment he was silent. Then he replied, “Jah, right fine he’ll be.”
The subject was dropped. My brother and everyone else would just have to keep their thoughts to themselves about me and the forty-year-old man I was soon to marry. I knew well and good that John Beiler had one important thing on his mind: He needed a mamma for his children. And I, having been blessed with lavish mother-love, was just the person to give it.
Respect for a husband, after all, was honorable. In time, perhaps something more would come of our union—John’s and mine. Perhaps even . . . love.
I could only hope and pray that my Dan had gone to his eternal reward, and that someday I’d be found worthy to join him there.
————
Thoughts of Dan and the streets of gold were still flitting through my mind long after Ben left. The attic was mighty cold now and I refolded Mamma’s dress, trying to find the spot where it had been packed away, when I stumbled upon a tiny rose-colored dress. A satin baby dress. In the middle of our family treasures was the loveliest infant gown I’d ever seen, all tucked away in tissue paper.
I removed the covering and began to stroke the fabric. Amish babies wore plain dresses in pale hues. Never patterns or plaids. And never, never satin. Where in all the world had Mamma gotten such a fancy thing?
Carefully, I inspected the bodice, letting my fingers linger on its creamy smoothness. Suddenly I felt like dancing. And—unruly idea that it was—I succumbed to the impulse. Stood right up and began twirling around the attic, a whisper of satin pressed against my cheek.
I was lost in a world of my vivid imagination—colorful silk, gleaming jewels, golden mirrors. Turning and swirling, I flew, light as a summer cloud, over the wooden floorboards. But with my dancing came the old struggles, my personal tug-of-war between plain and fancy. How I longed for beautiful things! Here I was twenty-two years old, published to marry the bishop—and fighting the same old battles.
In my frustration, I started humming a sad song—a tune Dan Fisher and I had made up on his guitar, the one Dat had forbidden me to play. The one I’d hidden away from his stern eyes all these years.
Time and again, I’d offered up my music and my tendency toward fancy things on the altar of repentance. Long and hard I prayed, but in spite of everything, I’d find myself sneaking glances in a hand mirror, asking myself:
How would my hair look without the bun or the ever-widening
middle part?
Sometimes, as a child, I would pull off my white organdy kapp and let the auburn locks fall free, down past my shoulders. It was most tempting when I was supposed to be dusting or cleaning the upstairs. At least the Lord God had done me a favor and put a right nice color in my hair—reddish brown hues—and when the sun from my window shone on it just right, there were streaks like golden ribbons in it. At times like these, I hated having to wrap my hair back up in a bun, hiding it away under my head covering.
And there was the problem of music—my special tunes. Some fast, some slow; all forbidden. My church taught that music was meant to come from hymnbooks for the purpose of worshiping God. Anything else was sinful.
I’d tried to follow the
Ordnung
, the unwritten rules of our church district. With every ounce of me, I’d tried to be a submissive young woman. Yet finding the fancy dress had stirred it all up again—my stubborn streak and the conflict with Dat over the music. Did I dare marry Bishop John with these sins gnawing away at my soul?
I glanced at the trunk where Mamma’s wedding dress lay. Thoughtfully, I went to it, touching the heavy fabric with one hand and holding the satin dress in the other—comparing the two. I’d heard there were modern brides, outsiders in the non-Amish
English
world, who wore such things as satin and lace and gauzy veils.
Mamma’s blue wedding dress was far from being truly beautiful, really. Except for its white cape and apron, it looked identical to her other church dresses. I held the dress up to me, tucking my chin over the high neckline, wondering what it would be like to try it on. But Mam had been much stockier than I when she married Dat. I knew I’d probably swim in it, so big it was.