CHAPTER 11
C HAPTER 11
I T WAS F RIDAY, THE LONG, TIRING WORKDAY SHE SO DISLIKED, BUT she didn’t sleep at all during the ride there. Her eyes were wide in the semi-dark of the fast-moving van, the usual annoying chatter from the other market girls only a distant hum.
She felt the hovering fear of allowing herself the smidgen of a dream, the vulnerability of hope. Ivan was everything she had ever wanted, but she could still feel the sting of being dropped like a piece of unwanted trash, the hurt and humiliation of texting him over and over with no reply.
He was a coward, he’d said, softly, and she had been too nervous in his presence to ask him what he meant by this, and he’d moved on to lighter subjects.
“How have you been?” he’d asked. “Haven’t seen you around.”
Her hands shook, her palms sweated, her heart beat so hard and fast she was actually afraid of fainting. She answered in quiet monotones.
She replayed every moment in her mind, cringing at how she’d acted around him. She would never have another chance at redeeming herself. Only once had she looked straight at him, and quickly away. That fine dark hair, cut so neatly, his dark eyes and perfectly arched eyebrows, the dark skin. His mouth sculpted to perfection, the white shirt and black vest setting off the sultry good looks. Her self-confidence had been completely obliterated, wiped away by remembered pain.
Frozen, she’d endured the evening, managing to eat only a few bites of the casserole, dropping the tongs in the salad.
There was one moment she returned to again and again in her mind. Their eyes had met as they flipped the pages of the hymnbook. His dark eyes were infused with a warm, gentle light. And hers had lingered a few seconds too long. They’d both smiled.
She sighed, leaning the side of her head against the van window. She must leave this, whatever it was. She must forge ahead, gather her self-confidence, that arrogant toss-her-head control over her life, and forget about him. That was the smart thing to do.
He’d asked her where she worked during the week, then laughed after she told him she did what all Amish girls did—worked at market, cleaned houses, gave most of her money to her parents.
“You sound a bit miffed,” he said, still smiling.
“Oh well, you know. It’s life. Doing what the forefathers did.”
He laughed again, and that was something, wasn’t it? She’d been witty, entertaining. She cringed again, though, thinking of her plain dress, that old navy blue church dress, as unappealing as an old rag, but whatever.
“You could train horses. I know some Amish folks who make good money doing that.”
“Yeah? I guess, I don’t know.”
“Girls are doing a lot with horses these days.”
“I don’t think I’d have the ability.”
“You certainly have the confidence.”
She had said nothing to this, thinking if he only knew.
T HE MARKET DAY moved on like an inching caterpillar, her eyes repeatedly turning to the large, round clock on the wall. She was tired, so terribly sleepy, having slept only a few hours.
“Who’d you have at the table?” her coworker Mellie Lantz asked, her small brown eyes like shiny raisins set in a bowl of milky oatmeal, her skin pockmarked with old acne scars. Her name was Malinda, which had soon been shortened to Mellie, matching her adorable personality. She was friendly, cheerful, always interested in others’ welfare, dating a fine young man who was quite taken with her, seeing past the physical flaws to the heart of gold beneath.
Margaret was used to being asked this during wedding season. Either a young man asked you to sit with him, or the bride and groom seated you together, which meant they thought you would be a good match. There was always a lot of curiosity about who was pairing up with whom.
“Ivan Stoltzfus,” she said quietly.
Mellie did a double take. “Oh really? Wow.”
Margaret nodded, gave her a sheepish grin.
“Well, good for you, Marge. A perfect fit. I bet you were a stunning couple.”
Genuine praise from a genuine person, but Margaret shrugged it off. “I think he’s a player, with those looks.”
Mellie nodded. “They often are, but he comes from a really nice family. His dad is at the Plain Homestead, that place for troubled people.”
“You mean, he’s there?” Margaret asked, taken aback.
“No, I mean, he’s like, a counselor or something.”
“Hm.”
“Yeah, his mom is a sweetheart. She works with my aunt.”
Margaret said nothing. Everyone was a sweetheart to Mellie. Margaret turned away and went to the cooler for sliced lettuce, fresh in her resolve to step away before she got hurt again. It was absolutely nothing to her whether his mother was nice or if she wasn’t.
She arrived home late, unable to sleep in the van, wide awake and stressed out from the wearying, churning kaleidoscope of thoughts in her head that had grown to monstrous proportions as the day wore on.
Worst-case scenarios played out in her head, creating a churning stomach, no appetite, and a dull thumping headache above one eye.
Her mother’s recliner thumped as she lowered the footrest, then came to the kitchen to greet her.
“How was your day?” she asked kindly.
“Long, hot, and stupid. Market.”
“ Ach , Margaret. You’re probably tired after the wedding.”
“Yeah. Well, I hate market. You know that.”
“Yes. It’s a shame. We keep hoping you’ll learn to like it.”
“Well, I won’t.”
Mary recognized that this was not the time to ask Margaret about her time at the table with Ivan Stoltzfus. Instead, she mentioned there was leftover lasagna and some raspberry tapioca if she was hungry.
“I’m going to bed,” Margaret replied curtly, leaving her mother to stand alone in the kitchen, doing a slow turn to watch her daughter go through the living room and up the staircase.
She sighed, looked out the window at the light in Steve’s office. Working late again. She went back to her recliner, picked up the book she was reading, before sending up the breath of a prayer.
He came through the door of the laundry room, whistling softly as he bent to wash his hands at the sink. She heard him opening cabinet doors, getting the jar of peanut butter, the graham crackers.
Oh, she could eat half a dozen slabs of them dipped in milk, but she felt across her rounded stomach with the palm of her hand and thought she had better not.
“Mary, put your book down and come have a snack,” Steve called.
“ Ach Steve, I shouldn’t.”
“Come on.”
So she did, sitting across from him at the oak table, straightening the place mat beneath the wooden tray holding salt and pepper shakers, a square of napkins, a small pewter pitcher of toothpicks.
This was their place, this kitchen table, a shrine to their connection. Here was where they talked, shared, laughed, cried, the hub of the family, creating a secure foundation for their sleeping children.
He handed her the jar of peanut butter, raised his eyebrows as she pushed it away.
“Fat, Steve. I feel fat. You know how I love lasagna and I ate too much supper.”
“You know I don’t mind if you gain weight or not. You’re still as beautiful as the day I met you. Eat.”
She broke a graham cracker in two, smiled at him.
“You spoil me.”
“I love spoiling you. You’re my wife.”
“And I don’t deserve it.”
“Margaret home?”
Mary nodded. “In a bad mood.”
“Why?”
“She doesn’t like market.”
“She doesn’t like housecleaning, either. She doesn’t like any job. She has to learn that life doesn’t hand you everything. It takes giving up your own will, learning to do what you don’t always like. It’s called growing into your role as a mature person.”
“I heartily agree, you know that. But it’s so hard for her.”
“You know, Mary. I’d say let her quit, but the next job is going to be the same. I wish she had a hobby, an interest in something other than rumschpringa .”
“But what? She shows no interest in anything.” Mary sighed, the weariness of constant concern for Margaret showing on her pretty face. “And she takes all her frustration out on me. Sometimes I don’t think she likes me at all.”
“We’ve been through this before. For some teens, it’s normal. Life kicks you around at that age sometimes, and you take it out on the ones you love most.”
“Huh.”
Disgruntled, tired of worry, tired of not eating graham crackers and peanut butter, she took herself off to bed, leaving Steve to drink the last of his milk and head to the shower.
U PSTAIRS , M ARGARET HASHED and rehashed her evening again, replaying his words, “See you around.” She convinced herself that was only a nice way of saying he didn’t care if he never saw her again.
He didn’t like strawberry blonds with freckles and blue eyes. Or maybe he didn’t like her because she had a mentally ill mother and was afraid she’d turn out to be the same. Yes, it was all her mother’s fault. Why couldn’t she be normal?
She finally fell into a troubled sleep, waking at two with her heart racing, her mind doing tricks of its own.
She felt as if she was losing control of her life, her own sense of hanging on to whatever a normal person hung on to. She shot out of bed, her breath coming in ragged heaves, and stood in the middle of her room with nowhere to go, no idea what was wrong or who to call. Gradually, she calmed herself by pacing her room, before falling into bed and covering her head with the quilt.
She was afraid, abandoned, condemned to suffer some unnamable punishment, caught like a rat in a trap. She must find courage, and no one must ever know what she had just experienced. The last thing she needed was rumors going around that she was mental like her mother.
She wasn’t. She couldn’t be. It was stress, leftover stress from the stupid market job and being at the table with Ivan. That’s all it was.
She rose at her leisure on Saturday morning. Elmer had told her to take the day off since he was training two new girls, which suited her just fine. She stretched, luxuriating in the sun beginning its golden light between the slats of her blinds, with absolutely no obligations at all. Perhaps she would sew a new dress or go shopping with Rebecca.
She rose slowly, grabbed her robe, and went downstairs, finding her mother at the stove, frying scrapple, slicing bread.
Rebecca looked up from placing knives and forks beside plates.
“You’re home?”
“I got the day off.”
Mary turned, her eyes wide. “You didn’t tell me.”
Margaret ignored her, turned to Rebecca. “What’re you doing today?”
“I dunno. Nothing special.”
Logan looked up from tying his shoes. “Yeah you are.”
“What?”
“You’re going to the horse sale in New Holland with me and Dat.”
“Who said?”
“Me.” Logan grinned.
Steve came in from the barn, where he was feeding the two driving horses, the twelve brown chickens in their run, and the two miniature ponies the boys drove around the place.
He spied Margaret. “You’re home?”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t quit. Elmer just gave me the day off.” She tried hard to hide the pleasure she felt in seeing her family glad to have her there on a Saturday morning.
The golden November sun highlighted her pale face as she sat at the breakfast table, and Mary noticed the dark circles beneath her eyes, the droop of her eyelids, the downturned mouth as she picked at her toast, moved a piece of egg from one side of her plate to the other. A stab of concern waved across her features.
Steve asked Margaret if she wanted to go to the horse sale.
Margaret looked up. “Who, me?”
“Yes, you.”
“What would I want there? I don’t even like horses.”
Mary opened her mouth, closed it again. Her eyebrows drew into a straight line as she lifted her coffee cup.
“You might actually enjoy it. Lots of guys.” Steve grinned.
Rebecca chimed in, “Yeah, Marge. Western guys, like rodeo people. They’re the real deal. I love watching them. They’re the best riders you will ever see.”
“They’re not really from the West,” Margaret scoffed.
“Some of them are.” But Rebecca’s voice was quiet, subdued, her sweet countenance having been swiped with the cold cloth of her sister’s superiority. Mary quickly tried to change the subject.
“Margaret, you haven’t eaten. Everything okay?”
“What? You afraid I’m anorexic or something? Maybe I’m just not hungry.”
Steve frowned. “That’s enough, Marge.”
She shrugged her shoulders, turned her face away.
Mary contemplated the power of one person to ruin the innocence of a happy Saturday morning breakfast.
But Margaret did decide to go to the horse sale, telling Rebecca she was curious now, which made her shine, jumping up and clapping her hands. She adored Margaret, loved to be responsible for her happiness, and while they were getting dressed, broaching the subject no one else had dared.
“Who did you take to the table?”
Margaret leaned over the bathroom sink, rolling her hair up as far as she possibly could, smoothing, combing, spritzing hairspray. She clipped a barrette in place, looked at Rebecca in the mirror, and said quietly, “Ivan.”
“ The Ivan?”
Margaret turned her head to the left, began to twist a thick wad of hair. “Yep.”
“Weren’t you nervous?”
Margaret clipped another barrette into place. “He’s stupid, I don’t want him.”
Rebecca gave her a long, level look. “Don’t tell lies.”
“Regardless of what you might think, I don’t lie. I just don’t want to get involved with him. Someone like him can have any girl he wants, and he didn’t treat me well. So, I’m moving on and never looking back.”
She placed her small white covering on her head, pinned it, and they went downstairs together. When she drew her coat over one shoulder, Mary turned and frowned.
“Must you wear that to the horse sale?”
Margaret snorted through her nose, a derisive sound showing the impatience she felt.
“Who cares, Mom? I can never do one thing right. You’re always on my case. Every single time I go anywhere, you find fault.”
“I don’t like that fur-lined hood. Why can’t you wear something decent?”
“Because I am not a member of the church, and I can do whatever I want. All the girls wear coats like this.”
“Not all of them,” Mary said quietly.
Margaret flounced off in a huff, Rebecca in her wake, casting a pitying look at her mother, who went back to the sink, the hot, sudsy dishwater offering a kind of solace.
Mary felt the looming demons of her past, the times when her own parents felt helpless and afraid of their headstrong daughter, the times she found her father repulsive, her mother weak and unassuming, sloppy and spineless, agreeing with him even when she was not fully convinced of his harsh ways. How long did the sins of the fathers reach down to the next generation? And the next? Oh, her poor parents would have a fit, seeing their modern, beautiful home, the lifestyle, the children’s clothes, the stretching of boundaries, until they no longer resembled the dress and lifestyles of old. Hadn’t her father’s rumbles warned her of this gradual, terrifying drift into the world? She thought of how her steadfast siblings retained the old ways, handing down the importance of ordnung , the stringent rules set in stone.
Well, her conscience had always been different. She was only being who God had made her to be. It had taken time, but she had found the deep inner peace which surpassed all understanding, and this not of herself, but through Christ Jesus, a relationship more precious than anything on earth.
She listened to the song in her heart as tears plunked into the dishwater.
“Alas, and did my Savior bleed
And did my Sovereign die.
Would He devote that sacred Head
For such a worm as I?”
She would have patience with Margaret, as Jesus had patience with her. But even as she resolved this, the fear of losing her rose within.
What if? What if Margaret chose to go out into the world and make a life for herself, away from everything she had ever known?
Mary’s spirit shrank within her.
But she found the silence of the house calming, found peace in the solitude as she plied the can of Pledge, the dust rag, and the Swiffer. She thanked God for His saving grace and asked Him to keep Margaret in the palm of His hand.
S TEVE FOUND SEATS high up in the bleachers. The place was so packed he was fortunate to find seats at all. Margaret wrinkled her nose, said the smell in there was disgusting, slouched in her seat, and got her phone out till Steve asked her to put it away out of respect for the surrounding Amish folk.
She sniffed and mumbled something under her breath, but obeyed, then told her brothers to sit down and behave. It was embarrassing being out with these little rowdies. She shouldn’t have come, she decided. It smelled bad, and she had yet to see any real Western cowboys.
The auctioneer got on the stand, lifted the microphone, and tested it, his florid red face beneath the white cowboy hat like a ripe plum, his western shirt straining at the pearl snaps.
He certainly wasn’t a real dyed-in-the-wool horseman. She became bored, yawned, looked around for distraction.
“Sit down!” she hissed to Christopher, who punched her in the arm, Logan glaring, taking his brother’s side.
The first horse was a skittish paint, his hipbones jutting, his ribs like bed slats, a wild look in his rolling eyes.
“Poor thing,” Margaret said, nudging Rebecca.
Rebecca nodded, shook her head.
“We need to buy him,” she hissed.
They both leaned over, tapped Steve’s knee. “Dat.”
He looked over, raised his eyebrows.
“Buy him,” Rebecca said, blushing a little at her own audacity.
Steve shook his head. “He’s headed for the kill pen.”
“That’s why we want him. The poor thing,” Margaret mouthed.
Steve looked at the wild-eyed creature, then back at the girls.
The auctioneer held the gavel high, his nasal voice pronouncing the final cost. Up flashed Steve’s card. The men taking bids yelled, which escalated the bidding to eight seventy, seventy-five, sold for eight-seventy-five.
Margaret was caught up in the excitement, high-fiving her sister, telling Steve they needed another one, for practicing.
They watched them go, one after another—prancing palominos, black horses, brown ones, and just about everything in between.
An Appaloosa went for over seven thousand dollars, setting the tone for the Morgans and Quarterhorses, a few Thoroughbreds, and then the driving horses began.
Bored, the girls pushed their way through the crowd to the food stand, where they stood in a long line. There were Amish men in tattered black hats, Mennonites in narrow-rimmed fedoras, and yes, leathery-skinned old cowboys wearing shapeless greasy hats, their worn boots hitting the floor hard, their tough, steely gazes labeling them as true ranchers.
Children dodged the crowd, running between startled bystanders, and old men sat on benches with canes propped in the palms of their hands as the thundering, microphone-enhanced yelling of the auctioneer rose and fell.
Sitting at a greasy booth with Cokes and fries, they ate in silence, the noise around them too clamorous for conversation.
A shadow crossed their table, stopped. They looked up.
“Imagine seeing you here,” Ivan Stoltzfus said above the din.
“Hi,” Margaret said quietly.
Rebecca looked up, puzzled.