Chapter 5
“That’s enough, all of you, I’m fine.
Really, I am.”
Bonnie used her braked rollator on one side and her mother’s hand on the other to heave herself to her feet.
Falling was awful.
But getting up was impossible without help.
She wavered on unsteady legs.
Her mom’s hand tightened on her bicep. “I’m okay, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
Mom didn’t let go.
“You’re shaking.”
“Legs just don’t want to cooperate.”
The muscles were too weak to allow Bonnie to use them to stand, and she didn’t have enough strength in her arms to push herself up.
It was incredibly frustrating.
“Give me a minute.”
Bonnie inhaled and straightened.
One step, two steps.
She stuck her hand on the desk, worked her way around it, and sank into the chair.
She shoved her loose bun back under her crooked prayer covering and straightened it.
Her back still ached from the jolt of the tile floor. Her head throbbed. Her right arm twinged where she’d flung it into the desk, flailing as she tried to right herself.
The three women gathered around her.
Mom brought her a washcloth for her head.
Frowning, Carol hovered to one side while Sophia set a glass of cold water in front of Bonnie.
“Really, stop staring at me like that.
Nothing’s hurt, except I think I sprained my dignity.”
“You know better than to back up in a rush.”
Mom pulled up Bonnie’s sleeve to inspect her arm.
She was fifty years old but looked much younger.
Only a few silver strands streaked her dark-brown hair.
A person had to study hard to spot age lines around her mouth and eyes.
More likely laugh lines. “You’re going to have a big bruise where your arm hit the desk. That hund doesn’t belong in here. It’s no wonder you tripped over him.”
“I didn’t trip, Mamm.”
For the third time.
Her mom didn’t listen, mostly because she was busy worrying that something would happen to her only daughter.
Losing Dad had worsened her tendency to cling to Bonnie, to treat her like she was still a child.
Not her disability.
Mom had never treated her as less than grown-up as the years passed—even when she didn’t act like it. “Don’t blame Slowpoke.”
“It’s better than blaming you, I reckon.”
Carol rolled her pale-blue eyes.
At twenty-four she was too old for eye-rolling, but sometimes she fell back into old habits.
“Or Elijah.
Why was it necessary for him to bring a hund into the store?”
“You know how folks have comfort animals—that’s not the right name.”
Bonnie racked her brain.
She snapped her fingers.
“Emotional support animals, that’s it.
I think Slowpoke is Elijah’s emotional support animal, if a Plain man could have such a thing.
He’s super shy. Slowpoke is his friend. He helps him with situations that make him uncomfortable.”
No doubt turning around to find Bonnie sprawled on the floor hadn’t done much for his comfort zone.
The memory of the horror on his face sent embarrassment cascading through her every time she replayed the scene in her head.
Falling to the floor like a clumsy oaf, Elijah’s dash to help her, and then Hannah, her mother, and, of course, Toby.
Not one but two Miller brothers had seen her flopping on the floor like a baby just learning to walk.
Sophia and Carol, she didn’t mind.
They’d seen her at her worst plenty of times, and her, them.
Might as well let the whole world see her lying there.
Or all of Lee’s Gulch at least.
Not Elijah, though.
Why? Now wasn’t the time to dwell on that question.
With a squeaky meow, Puff jumped into her lap.
She perused Bonnie like a doctor examining a patient.
Her heartbeat slowing, Bonnie stroked the cat’s long hair.
Her purr ramped up.
“Speaking of emotional support animals.”
She kissed Puff’s nose.
“You’re mine, aren’t you, kitty?”
“Are you sure you shouldn’t go to the clinic?”
Pushing her dark-blue-rimmed glasses up her nose, Mom muttered something else.
It sounded like “crazy hund”
and “what was he thinking.”
“We can all hear you, Mamm.
Stop muttering like a grumpy old woman, sei so gut.”
The please was an afterthought.
Bonnie almost said “grumpy old grandma.”
But Mom didn’t have any grandchildren, and at this rate, she never would.
This reality probably caused her heartache, but if it did, she never let on.
Just like she never admitted to feeling sad at not being able to have more children.
Just like she never uttered a word of self-pity or complaint about Dad’s sudden, inexplicable exit from their lives.
“God has a plan.
God will provide.
God can bring good from all things.”
Mom held her Scripture close.
She hadn’t even shed tears at the graveside service.
Only Bonnie knew when her mother cried.
Because lying awake late at night, staring up into the darkness, trying not to question God’s plan for two women now living alone, Bonnie couldn’t help but overhear her mother’s muffled sobs coming from the bedroom she’d shared with Dad for twenty-six years.
A “hmmphfft”
greeted the command.
Followed up by a “tsk-tsk.”
Mom opened a first aid kit and extracted a small tube of antibacterial ointment.
Despite her testy frown and irritation in her dark-brown eyes, she employed a gentle touch while bandaging the scratch on Bonnie’s wrist.
“You haven’t fallen in forever.
Dr.
Newcomb will be disappointed.”
Not just disappointed.
Every time Bonnie fell, she came a day closer to the next phase of her progression—the wheelchair.
Dr.
Newcomb would order tests to determine if there had been progression in her muscle weakness.
She would explain all the reasons why it was a good “option”
as she liked to call it.
Bonnie would stare at the floor and reject it as no option at all.
Mom would twist her hands in her lap and pretend not to fight tears.
Bonnie was no longer a child eager to get gold star stickers and lollipops after her doctors’ appointments.
“It doesn’t make me happy either, but it was a fluke accident.”
Not a sign that her muscle weakness had progressed.
Dr.
Newcomb would insist on more physical therapy as an alternative—for the time being.
Bonnie didn’t have time for that.
“No harm done. I’m fine.”
“You keep saying that, but you have a knot on your noggin, and you’ll probably have a bruise on your arm.
Not to mention you’re bleeding.”
With a plaintive meow, Puff nudged Bonnie’s hand.
Bonnie resumed petting her.
“A tiny little dab barely worth mentioning.”
Another disagreeing grunt.
“Elijah is a grown man.
He should be past his shyness by now.
No wonder he hasn’t married.”
Ouch.
Sometimes Mom didn’t think before she spoke.
“He’s my age, Mamm.
I haven’t married.”
Mom’s face flushed.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Or me.”
Sophia crossed her arms over her skinny chest.
“Maybe he hasn’t met the right woman.”
Her cornflower-blue eyes lit up in her pale face.
Sophia had always been a tiny girl.
Now she was a waif who looked no more than sixteen instead of her twenty-two years.
Her wheelchair dwarfed her as did her unruly blonde curls that required a massive time commitment to tame into a bun each morning.
Grinning, she cast a sly glance at Bonnie. “Until now.”
“Jah, because toppling over on the floor is the way to impress a man.”
Bonnie scoffed.
“He probably wonders how I manage to co-own a store.”
“We were all in school at the same time.”
Sophia’s tone was soft, remembering.
“Elijah might’ve been shy, but he was always nice.
He pushed my chair for me when I came back to school after the accident.”
If Sophia still had heartache for the changes in her life wrought by a moment of carelessness by her older brother that resulted in a runaway buggy rolling on its side and spilling her onto the highway, she didn’t show it.
“He pushed me out to the benches by the ball field and sat with me while the other kids played.
It was nice to not sit alone.”
“I remember him being nice too.”
Bonnie plucked a memory from a store of more painful ones that centered around learning the many ways she didn’t get to participate in recess activities.
“We played cornhole a few times after church.
His brother Declan dragged him over to the boards.
I don’t think he looked at me a single time.
He still has trouble looking at me. He had a hund then too, a shaggy gray one called Mutt.”
Mom tucked the first aid kit back on the shelf.
She dusted her hands off as if to say “done with that.”
“You know what Dat always said—”
“‘Hunde are better friends than most people.’”
They spoke the words in unison.
Bonnie waited for the tsunami of grief to drown her.
Instead, a gentle wave of sorrow lapped against her heart, making it ache rather than the fierce pain that had once threatened to drop her to her knees.
“You have your dat’s heart for animals.
You always did.”
Mom pulled out a chair from Bonnie’s worktable and plopped into it.
“People can be nice too, you know?”
“I know that.”
“Now who’s the grumpy old lady?”
“Am not.”
Lately it seemed as if they bickered like sisters more than like mother and daughter.
“Ach, I’m embarrassed.
Which makes me grumpy.”
“Why? Because you fell?”
Carol waved one of her crutches in the air.
She was tall and round to Sophia’s short and thin.
Her pale-blue eyes flashed with mock scorn.
A strand of her thin black hair had escaped her prayer covering.
“Do you know how many times I’ve fallen? Besides, people who don’t have SMA fall. Kids fall. Adults fall.”
“Jah, at least I don’t have to worry about that,”
Sophia said airily.
“I’m snug as a bug in my chair.”
“I think Gott wanted to take me down a peg or two.”
“Why? You’re not full of yourself, Dochder.”
Mom shook her finger at Bonnie.
“You’re one of the most humble people I know.”
“I’d just finished telling Elijah not to try to help me, that I could help myself just fine.”
“And then you fell.”
“Jah.
A big splat on the floor.”
Mom pressed her lips together.
She smiled.
Then she chuckled.
She snorted.
Then she let out a huge belly laugh.
Sophia and Carol giggled.
Then they laughed.
No one could hear Mom guffaw and not join her.
“It’s not funny.”
Bonnie couldn’t help herself.
She giggled.
The giggle turned into a laugh.
Tears gathered in her eyes and her nose ran.
“Okay, it’s a little funny.”
She gasped.
“Okay, a lot funny.”
Apparently Puff didn’t think so.
Either that or she’d determined her ministrations weren’t needed anymore.
She hopped from Bonnie’s lap and trotted from the office, tail and head held high.
Mom grabbed a tissue from a box on the worktable and wiped her nose.
She handed the box to Sophia, who took one and passed it to Carol.
“Pride does go before a fall, or so they say.”
“Whoever they are, they should know I’m doing my best to hold my own in this world.
I wasn’t trying to be prideful.”
“That’s the thing you’ll never understand.”
Mom tossed the tissue in the wastebasket.
She rose and picked up her canvas bag.
“Everyone knows that.
It’s obvious how hard you work.
The three of you started this business. You give people like yourselves a place to sell their wares and another way to earn their keep. Families are thankful for that. This store is a blessing for our special children.”
“People like yourselves.”
Mom didn’t mean it in a bad way.
Plain folks loved their children with physical and mental developmental disabilities with a fierceness that couldn’t be denied.
They treated them like the rest of their children.
They also made sure a family member would step in and take care of them, if need be, when they were gone.
Did Mom worry about what would happen to Bonnie if she suddenly died the way Dad had? Bonnie had aunts, uncles, and cousins who would step up if she didn’t marry.
I don’t need to be taken care of.
Pride goes before the fall.
When would she learn that?
Tucking the bag’s strap over her shoulder, Mom trotted to the door, then paused and turned.
“It’s too bad you won’t go to the singings.
I reckon you might see Elijah there.”
“I’m too old for singings.”
She’d gone a few times as a naive sixteen-year-old.
After being left behind to be driven home by one cousin or another after her friends hopped into buggies with this boy or that boy, she’d stopped going.
“And I reckon Elijah figures he is too.
Plus he’s too shy.
Plus what difference would it make?”
“Hmm.”
Mom was good at pretending she didn’t hear a question.
“You’re sure you don’t want to come home? Sophia and Carol can handle the store.
You should take a hot bath before your muscles get sore.”
“Absolutely,”
Carol chimed in.
Her crutches thumping on the tile floor, she followed Mom to the door.
“I need to get out there and take over.
Hannah’s bruder will be here to pick her up shortly.”
“I need to finish a few more animals before I go.
Margie wants them by the end of the week.”
Margie Joens owned a day care in town.
She was replacing her stuffed animals, worn by time and toddlers with tummy upsets and runny noses.
“Besides, Chet will be upset if he comes by and has no one to pick up.”
“Jah, he mentioned you were next on his schedule when he dropped us off.”
Sophia wheeled her chair around.
“He’s in fine form today.
He sang tunes from the musical Oklahoma all the way into town.”
Chet Danner was a retired language arts teacher who ran a taxi service for Plain folks “to make himself useful.”
His shiny white twelve-passenger van was equipped with a wheelchair lift.
“This morning it was songs he said were written by a man named Gershwin.”
Bonnie laughed at the memory.
Chet had an amazing baritone and a limitless supply of songs to go with it.
Some days he preferred to recite poetry, act out passages from Shakespeare’s plays, or tell stories from his days teaching school in Washington, D.C., Arlington, and Baltimore.
His passengers could expect a show with every ride.
“Yesterday he recited a poem called ‘Ozymandias’ and then explained what it meant.”
“Once a teacher, always a teacher.”
Mom’s tone said she approved.
“I’ll have supper ready when you get home.
I’m making sandwiches with the leftover pulled pork.”
“Sounds gut.”
Mealtime was the hardest.
Evenings the longest.
Dad’s absence left a gaping hole ripped in the fabric of their family.
In such a small family, silencing one person’s voice made a void that couldn’t be filled by reading, puzzles, sewing, or even working on the store’s books.
“Love you, Dochder.”
Those last words were uttered softly as she slipped out the room.
“Love you, Mamm.”
Sophia and Carol chorused the words with Bonnie.
Somehow her friends knew.
Plain folks didn’t proclaim their feelings.
They didn’t wear them on their arms like bracelets.
But since Dad’s death, Mom had taken to saying it whenever they parted. She felt the need. A person never knew when the last time would be. Had she said those words to Dad before she closed her eyes that last night?
Probably not.
Dad never said them to Bonnie.
Nor Bonnie to him.
They didn’t have to.
They’d simply known it.
Don’t think about it.
Bonnie put one hand on the rollator and her other one on the desk so she could hoist herself to her feet.
“I’d better get cracking.
I want to finish the lion and the panda bear before I leave.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
Sophia wheeled so she sat next to Bonnie.
“You seem kind of punk.”
“Punk?”
“Margie says that when the boplin don’t feel good, they feel punk.”
Sophia picked up a piece of black cotton cut in the shape of a panda leg.
Her expression absent, she rubbed her fingers over it.
“With you it’s more like sadness.
Are you still thinking about your dat?”
“Nee.
Well, jah, but not like before.”
Not like she was drowning in an ocean of salty tears.
Bonnie slid onto the chair and picked up her scissors.
She bent her head over a pattern of tissue she’d already affixed to a piece of white cotton material.
“You and Carol are both courting.
I’m older than both of you, yet I don’t see any mann or family in my future. I love the store, but I always hoped there’d be more.”
“You’re the smartest, the kindest, the funniest, the prettiest of all of us.”
Sophia ticked off the qualities on her fingers.
“You just have to open yourself up to the possibilities.
Be ready.
Gott brings good things to those who wait and those who love Him with all their hearts.”
Sophia could say that.
She and Matthew Schultz had been courting for more than a year.
The two had met when Matthew, who had a partial hearing impairment, came into the store to offer his leather goods for sale.
He lived south of Lee’s Gulch in another Gmay, which meant they hadn’t grown up together.
Amid a conversation interpreted by Matthew’s friend over purses, wallets, belts, key rings, and jewelry, something had clicked. Even though Matthew’s hearing aids gave him the ability to hear much of what was said, he still employed American Sign Language with his family and friends. Nowadays, Sophia was likely to use American Sign Language when she spoke without realizing she was doing it.
Bonnie raised her head.
She swiveled to observe her friend.
Sophia smiled, but sadness resided there as well.
“Your words are positive, but I see something else in your face.”
“Matthew wants to get married.”
“What? Why didn’t you say anything? That’s so wunderbarr.
That is such gut news.
I’m so happy for you.”
Except Sophia didn’t appear ecstatic.
“What’s the matter? Why aren’t you over the moon?”
“Because I haven’t said jah.
By marrying me, Matthew is resigning himself to never having kinner.”
She sniffed and swiped at her face.
“I’ve always known that, but I love him so much, I couldn’t bring myself to stop seeing him.
I feel so selfish.
If I say no, I’ll hurt him.
If I say jah, he’ll never be a daed. I don’t know what to do.”
“Ach, Sophia.
I’m such a selfish friend.”
Bonnie was so busy feeling sorry for herself, she didn’t see that it was her friend who felt “punk.”
She struggled to her feet and swept Sophia into a fierce hug.
“What does Matthew say about all this?”
“He says I’m being narrisch.
That he wouldn’t have asked me if he wasn’t willing to make that sacrifice.”
Sophia’s smile was watery.
“He has six older brieder and schweschdre.
He says we’ll never lack for kinner in our lives.
He also mentioned adoption.”
“See there.
He’s a smart man.”
“Do you really think an adoption agency will let a man with a hearing impairment and a woman who’s a paraplegic adopt a bopli?”
“You won’t know until you try, will you? Just be you and they won’t be able to resist.”
Never were truer words spoken.
Sophia was a bulldozer when she wanted something.
“Ach, now who’s being eternally optimistic?”
“Gott gave you Matthew.
Who are you to argue with Gott?”
Sophia’s hug was just as fierce.
She smelled of lavender and mint and friendship.
“Just between you and me, sometimes I ask myself where Gott was when my bruder drove onto the highway in front of a pickup truck.”
Bonnie leaned back to get a good view of Sophia’s face.
Her friend never referred to that day.
She always put on a happy face.
Maybe that was all it was.
A happy face. “He was there to make sure the ambulance came. He guided the doctors so they could save your life.”
“There were times when I wished He hadn’t, but now I think about all the things I would’ve missed.
Seeing my schweschdre and brieder get married and have boplin.
Opening this store with my best friends.
My first buggy ride with Matthew.
My first kiss. I’m content. Then every once in a while, I start wanting what I can’t have. Then I have to give myself a talking-to.”
Sophia grinned.
The happy face was back.
“Did Carol tell you Ryan Beachy came in the store yesterday to pick up a package for his mudder?”
“Nee.”
There was nothing unusual about that.
Ryan’s mother had purchased one of Bonnie’s teddy bears for her new grandbaby.
The Beachys belonged to the south Gmay as well.
“The baby was born last week.
It’s about time.”
“While he was here, he asked Carol if she wanted to go for a buggy ride.”
“Oh my! Wunderbarr!”
Joy bloomed in Bonnie.
God answered prayers.
Not always the way she wanted and always on His time, but when He did, it was worth the wait.
“She used to talk about running into him at keggers during her rumspringa.
I think she liked him even then.”
“She did.
She says there’s just something about him.
She’s happy but nervous.
I told her not to be nervous, to just be herself.”
“Is that what you did?”
“Of course not.
My armpits were wet.
Matthew could probably smell me.”
“He was too relieved you said jah to even notice.
I reckon I’d be nervous too.”
But mostly happy.
Not if Ryan asked her, of course.
Ryan was a nice man and a hard worker.
But she’d never thought of him like that.
“I can’t believe she didn’t tell me.”
“She didn’t get a chance, what with your big scene today.”
Bonnie faked a laugh.
“You’re so funny.
Big scene.
Let’s go tease her.”
Sophia wheeled her chair around.
“Giddyup, giddyup. Let’s!”
The stuffed animals could wait.