Plain Proposal Page 3

  She sat quietly, listening to the family talk about their day. The oldest boy, Ben, told a story about running into someone named Big Jake in a place called Bird-In-Hand. “He ain’t ever gonna sell that cow now that everyone knows it birthed a calf with two heads.” Ben laughed, then squinted as he leaned forward a bit. “I heard he even took the animal to Ida King, and—”

  “Ben!” Rebecca sat taller in her chair and scowled at her oldest son. “We will not speak of such things at supper—or any time.” She turned to Shelby and spoke in a whisper. “Ida King practices powwowing.”

  Shelby laid a fork full of creamed celery on her plate. “What’s that?”

  Rebecca shook her head. “Her practices are not something the Lord would approve of.”

  “She’s like a witch doctor,” Miriam whispered to Shelby.

  “Enough.” Aaron didn’t look up as he spoke, but everyone adhered to his wishes and ate silently for a moment, then Elam commented that he saw a raccoon trying to climb the fence to his mother’s garden. Shelby had noticed the large garden on the side of the house when the van first pulled into the driveway.

  “I put a bowl of freshly cut vegetables right outside the fence for that fellow, hoping he wouldn’t get greedy,” Rebecca said with a laugh.

  The youngest boy—John—chuckled as he told a tale about chasing their rooster around the barn. Shelby saw the boy’s father grimace, but he didn’t say anything.

  “And what about you, Miriam?” Rebecca pinched a piece of bread and held it in her hand as she waited for her daughter to answer. “How was your time at the creek?”

  Shelby wondered what they did for fun here. She used to love to swim. She turned slightly toward her cousin and waited.

  “It was fine,” Miriam said.

  “She only goes there to see Saul Fisher.” Ben reached across his brother and pulled back a slice of bread. Shelby was sure this was the best bread she’d had in her life, warm and dripping with butter. She took another bite of her own slice as Ben went on. “But you’re wasting your time. I’ve heard it told that he ain’t gonna be baptized.”

  “You don’t know that, Ben.” Miriam’s tone was sharp as she frowned at her brother.

  Ben’s glare challenged her as he leaned forward in his chair. “That’s what folks are saying.”

  “No talk of rumors, Ben.” Once again Aaron didn’t look up from his plate, but the conversation ceased immediately, and Rebecca started to talk about a new schoolteacher named Sarah who would be taking over when school started up again in September. When she was done, she spoke directly to Shelby.

  “Will you be attending college next year, Shelby?”

  Shelby took a deep breath as she shifted her weight. That had certainly been the plan, until she learned that her parents used up her college fund fighting each other in their divorce. “No, ma’am. I’ll be getting a job when I go home.”

  Aaron lifted his head for the first time and looked directly at her. “Hard work is good for the soul. Too much schooling can turn a person from what is important—the love of the land and a hard day’s work.”

  “Aaron, now you know that the Englisch often send their children to college, and it’s not our place to judge.” Rebecca smiled at Shelby. “I’m sure you will find a gut job suited to you when you return, Shelby.”

  She doubted it. What kind of job can I get without a college degree? But she didn’t much care what kind of job she found. She was having trouble caring about much of anything. Over the past few months, she’d made sure that she wouldn’t feel much, and she was never going to forgive herself for the things she’d done. Things she knew God wouldn’t approve of. She used to care what God thought, but she’d stopped when she realized. . . God had given up on her.

  These strangers, with their odd clothes and strange lifestyle, seemed nice enough, but her parents were only further punishing her by sending her to this foreign place. Haven’t they hurt me enough?

  Miriam walked into her bedroom with her hair in a towel and dressed in her long white nightgown. Shelby was already tucked into bed with her head buried in a book.

  “What are you reading?” Miriam pulled the towel from her wet hair, then reached for a brush inside the top drawer of her nightstand. She sat on the edge of her bed and fought the tangles.

  “Your hair is so pretty.” Shelby looked up from her book, but Miriam noticed that she also had a pen in her hand, which she began to tap against the book. “Why do you keep it up underneath those caps?”

  Miriam continued to pull the brush through her hair as she spoke. “We believe a woman’s head should be covered, and we try not to show the length of our hair to a man until after we’re married.” She stopped brushing for a moment as she recalled past trips to the beach when most Amish girls shed their caps and pulled their hair into ponytails. “Some boys have seen our hair at the beach, though.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Shelby stopped tapping her pen and sat taller in the bed, then propped the pillow up behind her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that to sound—”

  “No, that’s okay. I’m sure our ways must seem strange to you.”

  Shelby closed the pink book in her lap and put the pen on the nightstand. “I’m sure everyone else seems strange to you too. Us ‘Englisch’ as I heard your mom say.”

  Miriam pushed her hair behind her ears and put the brush back in the top drawer, glad that a conversation was ensuing. “No. We have many Englisch friends, so we know how different things are outside of our community.”

  “How much school do you have left, or did you already graduate?”

  “I’m done with school. We only attend school through the eighth grade.” Miriam was surprised that Shelby didn’t seem to know anything about them. Miriam thought Shelby might have done a little research before she got here, but she didn’t fault her for that.

  Shelby leaned farther back against the pillow. She was wearing a long blue nightgown, and again Miriam thought about how that would please her mother. Maybe someone had told Shelby that it would be appreciated if she dressed conservatively.

  Her cousin began to kick her feet together beneath the covers. Miriam had noticed that Shelby was always fidgeting and couldn’t seem to be still. Even during supper, Shelby kept moving in her seat, pushing her food around, and she wiped her mouth a lot with her napkin. She must be nervous.

  “Will you leave here, since you’re eighteen? Or do you plan to stay here forever?” Something about the way Shelby said forever made it sound like a bad thing.

  “I would never leave here.” Miriam settled into her own bed and also kicked the covers to the bottom. “I plan to be baptized in the fall, and. . .” And marry Saul someday. She smiled as she thought about her future. “And someday I’ll get married and start a family of my own.”

  “Aren’t you curious, you know. . . about everything outside of here?”

  “No. I’m in my rumschpringe. That means that at sixteen, we get to experience the outside world, then choose if we want to stay here and be baptized as a member of the community, or leave.” Miriam fluffed her pillow as she spoke. “So I think I’ve seen enough of the Englisch world the past couple of years. It’s not for me.”

  Shelby twisted to face Miriam, then tapped a finger to her chin. “How many leave here?”

  “Hardly any. I mean, a few do. But most of us stay.” Miriam smiled slightly. “It’s all we know, but what we know is gut, and I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

  “Who is Saul?”

  Miriam sighed as she recalled the gentle way Saul brushed back a strand of her hair earlier that day, the feel of his touch. “A friend.” “You like him. I can tell.” Shelby smiled a bit.

  “Ya, I guess I do.” She reached over and turned the flame on the gas lantern up since nightfall was upon them, then she eased down in the bed and propped herself up on one elbow. “What about you? Do you have a boyfriend in Texas?”

  They both jumped when a gust of wind blew in through
the screen and caused the green blind to bounce against the open window.

  “I did. His name is Tommy.” She shuffled in her bed. “He broke up with me when my parents were—were going through their divorce. I had thought. . . well, I thought we might get married someday.”

  “I’m sorry.” Miriam had never had a real boyfriend. She’d been carted home by plenty of boys following Sunday singings since she’d turned sixteen, but her heart belonged to Saul. She knew she would wait for him.

  “It’s okay. I really don’t care.”

  Somehow Miriam didn’t think that to be true. “Was he your boyfriend for a long time?” Miriam wanted to ask if they had kissed, but she didn’t even know Shelby. That was something she might ask Leah or Hannah.

  “About six months. Until things got bad with my family.” She paused, then also propped herself up on one elbow and faced Miriam. They each strained to see each other over the nightstand in between them, so Miriam shifted upward a bit. Shelby did too. “Then he said I was sad all the time.”

  They were quiet for a while. “Are you still sad?” Miriam knew it was a dumb question. Of course she was sad. Her parents had recently divorced. “I mean, are you sad about him? Do you miss him?”

  “No.”

  Again Miriam suspected otherwise.

  “Did anyone tell you that breakfast is at four thirty?”

  Shelby bolted upward, and Miriam could tell she was straining to see past the lantern in between them. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No. We start our day early. The cows have to be milked, which Daed and the boys take care of. I usually go to the henhouse and collect eggs while Mamm gets breakfast started. Tomorrow is church service, so we will travel to the Dienner farm for that. We don’t work on Sundays, but during the week, Mamm and I start the day by weeding the garden before the heat of the day is on us. Then we do our baking, and. . .” Miriam didn’t want to overwhelm her cousin, so she trailed off with a sigh.

  “I guess that’s why everyone is already in bed, then.” Shelby glanced at the battery-operated clock on the nightstand. “At eight thirty.”

  “Ya. Early to bed, early to rise.” Miriam smiled, then turned the small fan on the nightstand toward Shelby. “Batteries. Sure saves us from the summer heat.”

  “It’s not so bad.”

  Miriam chuckled. “Wait until August.”

  They were quiet again for a while, then Miriam reached over to extinguish the lantern. “Guess we’d best sleep. Morning will be here soon enough.”

  Shelby sat up in the bed. “Do you mind if we leave that on for just a little while longer? Will it bother you, keep you from sleeping?”

  Miriam pulled back her hand. “No, I’ll just face toward the window. Just turn the knob to the left when you’re ready for sleep.”

  “Okay. Thanks. I like to write in my journal before I go to bed.” Shelby reached for the pen on the nightstand.

  “Do you do that every day?”

  “Most days.”

  Miriam noticed the tiny lock dangling from the side of the small book, and she wondered if Shelby locked it when she was done writing in it. Would Shelby ever share the contents with her like she assumed sisters would?

  “Good night, Shelby.”

  “Good night.”

  Miriam closed her eyes and said her nightly prayers. She wondered if Shelby prayed before sleep. Just in case she didn’t. . . Dear Lord, I sense sadness inside my cousin. Please wrap Your loving arms around her and guide her toward true peacefulness, the kind of peace and harmony that only comes from a true relationship with You. May her time here help to heal her heart. Aamen.

  Shelby stared at the page for a long while. Her cousin was snoring before Shelby wrote the first word. She sat thinking about her parents, images she wished she could erase from her mind. So much screaming. Especially when Shelby’s mother found out that her father had cheated on her. Shelby recalled that night with more detail than the other fights she’d seen her parents have. Her mother called her father names that she’d never heard spoken in her house. And from that moment, things went from bad to worse. And no one seemed to care how it was affecting her. It was as if the ground dropped from beneath her and she just kept falling, with no one to save her. She’d always relied on her father to protect her, to keep her safe—but he was the one who had pushed her into this dark place she couldn’t seem to escape. Her mother was too distraught to notice and focused much of her energy on how to get even with Shelby’s father. Then Tommy chose to break her heart in the midst of everything. “You’re sad all the time, Shelby,” he’d said. “I just can’t be around you like this anymore.”

  Shelby glanced around at her new accommodations for the next three months. She could run away, she supposed. But she didn’t have much money, so she wouldn’t get far. And she didn’t want to take up with the kind of people that she had in Texas, other lost souls like herself who eased their pain with alcohol and drugs. But what did she want?

  She put the pen to paper.

  Dear Diary,

  I’ve been shipped to Pennsylvania to live with my Amish cousins— people I don’t even know, who dress funny, don’t have electricity, and who get up at four thirty to start their day. They seem nice enough, but I don’t want to be here. The only family I have ever known sent me here against my will. If my parents love me, why don’t they want me with them? They only care about themselves. They have destroyed my life with their stupid decisions, and I’m the one who has to suffer along with them. If Tommy loved me, why did he break up with me? I know I’ve made some mistakes in my life, but I don’t think I deserve this.

  Or maybe I do. Maybe I’m being punished. I don’t know. I just know that I feel bad all the time. I want to be loved, but my heart is so empty, and my faith in life, in God, is gone. I don’t have anything to live for.

  3

  MIRIAM GENTLY NUDGED THE HUDDLED MASS UNDER the covers. “Shelby, breakfast is ready.” It was already after five o’clock, but her cousin probably felt like she’d just gone to sleep.

  “Already?” Shelby pulled the covers over her head. “It’s not even daylight.”

  “It will be worth it when you see the feast Mamm and I have made for breakfast. Mamm always makes overnight blueberry French toast on Sunday, and we cook bacon and sausage.”

  Shelby poked her head from beneath the covers. “Blueberry French toast?” Then she sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. “I love French toast.”

  “Ya, well. . . this is probably different from what you’re used to, but it’s a favorite around here.” Miriam started to make her bed as she spoke. “Mamm makes the toast the night before in a casserole. It’s got cream cheese, fresh blueberries, and all kinds of gut stuff. Then she refrigerates it so that on Sunday morning, she can just put it in the oven.”

  Shelby eased out of bed and also began straightening the covers on her bed. “Is there anything I should do while you are at church?”

  Miriam stopped smoothing the quilt, stood straight up, and faced her. “You don’t want to go to church with us?”

  Shelby turned to face her. “Should I?”

  “There are usually one or two Englisch folks there, friends or family of others in the community, so I don’t think you would feel out of place.” Miriam watched her cousin’s expression sour. “Did—did you attend church in your hometown?”

  “Not for. . . a while.”

  Miriam knew it was none of her business, so she didn’t press. “We don’t worship in churches. The gathering is always at someone’s house, or if the house isn’t big enough, we have the service in the barn. Today it’s at the Dienners’ home, and they have a large farmhouse, so it will be inside.”

  Shelby went back to making her bed and didn’t say anything, so Miriam did the same. When she was done, she turned to Shelby. “The church service is in High German, so you might not understand any of it, but other Englisch folks say they enjoy the sense of fellowship.”

  Shelby grimaced. “I d
on’t really have anything to wear.” She opened the smaller of her suitcases on the floor by her bed and pulled out a brush. “And I’m not on good terms with God right now.”

  Miriam watched her run the brush through her hair and knew it was not her place to minister to Shelby, but her cousin seemed so unhappy, and being in a place of worship with so many others might help. “There’s a wonderful offering of food following the church service.” She smiled teasingly at Shelby. “And we play volleyball and other games outside this time of year.”

  Shelby slowed the brush through her long hair and seemed to be considering the idea.

  “Better than staying here by yourself. You’ll meet lots of folks.” Miriam waited.

  “I still don’t have anything to wear.”

  “You can wear whatever you want. Did you bring a dress?”

  Shelby twisted her mouth to one side. “Yes. But it’s a short dress.”

  “How short?”

  Her cousin unzipped the other suitcase on the floor by the bed. She pulled out a floral print dress with tiny straps, which was, indeed, short. “Ya, maybe too short.” Miriam edged closer to where Shelby was squatting beside her suitcase. “What else do you have?”

  Shelby held up two pairs of pants. “Which ones?”

  Miriam studied the choices, then pointed to the pair of darker blue jeans. They were shorter than regular breeches, but not as faded as the longer pants Shelby was also considering. “What about those shorter pants, with maybe a nice blouse?”

  Shelby held up a short-sleeved yellow pullover shirt. There was no fancy lace or low neckline. A little bright, but conservative.

  “That will be just fine. I’ll let you dress while I go help Mamm finish up breakfast.”

  Her cousin nodded, and Miriam closed the bedroom door behind her. When she returned to the kitchen, everyone was seated but her mother, who was placing a pitcher of orange juice on the table.