Anna's Gift (13 page)

“You certainly can,” Anna promised. “But only if you are very good.”

Grossmama took a cart, as well. Anna had offered to push her in a wheelchair, but her grandmother had scoffed at riding in a moving chair. “They have motors,” she confided, “like cars. They run away with you.” So Grossmama pushed her own cart and happily loaded it with cinnamon, nutmeg, walnuts and oatmeal.

“That's too much,” Leah murmured in Anna's ear, but Anna only smiled. “We'll put some back later. Let her please herself. She seems to be having such a good time. And she'll get tired.”

Byler's store had begun on the back porch of a local farmhouse, when the founder had started going to the city to buy staples in large amounts for his big family. Like a weed patch, it had grown and grown, until it was now a large, modern business that specialized in discount groceries. The inventory included wood stoves and a wide array of kitchen items, as well as a produce and dairy section, a bakery and a deli. Best of all, Byler's sold fresh-dipped ice-cream cones at a very reasonable price.

Soon, as Anna had guessed, Lovina's steps grew slower. “I'm tired,” she said. “And I'm hungry. I want a submarine sandwich.”

“And—and we want i-i-ice c-cream,” Lori Ann reminded.

“I know just the place for you to eat your lunch,” Anna said. She guided the family back to the entrance lobby, where the store workers had placed long wooden picnic tables. She found a seat for Grossmama next to two elderly Mennonite ladies, gave her the oversized sandwich, napkins and her orange soda pop. “We'll be glad to sit here with you, if you want,” Anna offered.

“Ne, ne.”
Grossmama beamed, and Anna could tell that she was delighted to be sitting where she could stare to her heart's delight at all the folks coming and going.

Leah looked dubious. “You won't wander off, will you? Remember what happened when we took you to the hardware store in Ohio? You took the buggy and—”

“You hush that talk,” Grossmama said. “Jonas took me home. You never mind that. I want to eat my lunch in
quiet. You two finish your shopping and buy those children their ice cream.”

“Don't want ice-cream cone,” Mae said, stretching out her arms to Grossmama. “Want to stay
wiff
her.”

“You need to come with me, honey,” Anna said gently. “Grossmama wants to eat her lunch.”

“Ne!”
Mae stuck out her lip. “Stay
wiff
her!”

“Give the child here,” Grossmama said, scooting over on the picnic bench. “Martha can help me eat my submarine. She can sit right here.”

Anna looked at Leah. Their gazes locked and Leah nodded. “That will be fine,” she said, lifting Mae out of her cart.

“But if…” Anna began.

Leah smiled. “Grossmama will take good care of her,” she said.

“Stop your chattering, you two. Finish your shopping and let us eat,” Lovina said. Mae climbed up on the bench beside her, and Grossmama tore off a piece of sandwich and handed it to the child.

Leah motioned to the sliding door that led back inside the main shopping area. “She'll be fine. Grossmama is always better when she has something to do.”

Behind them, Anna heard a woman remark in a New York accent, “Look at that adorable little
Aim-ish
girl in the bonnet. Isn't she precious? Take our picture, Phil. I'm sure they won't mind.”

“No pictures!” Grossmama said. “You should be ashamed of yourself! Didn't your mother teach you better? And why are you coming to Byler's in your undershift?”

Inside, Anna turned back to intervene, only to see Grossmama had pulled Mae into her lap. Mae hid her face against Lovina, and Grossmama had thrown her
shawl over the girl's head. The two Mennonite women were laughing, and the Englisher lady in a very short skirt began to sputter. Before she could do more than utter a squeak, the man with her had grabbed her arm and pulled her back outside. Grossmama had picked up her sub and continued eating as though nothing had happened.

Leah dissolved into laughter. She and Anna laughed until tears ran down their faces, and Lori Ann was giggling, too. Finally, when Leah could speak again, she said, “You go on and finish the shopping. I was planning on standing here and watching them. Grossmama can't see me, but I can be sure she or Mae don't come to harm.”

“You don't mind?”

“
Ne.
Rebecca and I did it all the time. It hurts her feelings if she thinks you are treating her like a child.”

“I…want my ice-cream c-cone,” Lori Ann said. “I was g-good, Anna.”

“
Ya,
very good,” Anna agreed. Still smiling, she pushed the grocery cart away toward the ice-cream counter. “What kind shall we get?”

“Make mine butter pecan,” Leah called after them. “Two scoops.”

 

The rest of the day went as smooth for Anna as cake flour sliding through her fingers. Leah drove the horse and buggy from Byler's to the Yoder home without a mishap. Rebecca and Susanna came out to help unload their purchases, and Aunt Jezebel helped Grossmama into the house. She was tired and wanted her afternoon nap. Mae was sleepy, as well, and fell asleep in Anna's arms, somewhere between Mam's house and Samuel's.
She didn't wake when Anna laid her on the daybed in the kitchen, and covered her up with a soft throw.

“I—I have to g-gather the—the eggs,” Lori Ann said. “It's my job.”

Anna glanced at the time. Soon the boys would be home from school, and she wanted to get a start on supper. She hadn't had a minute alone with Leah, to tell her about the twins' bad behavior this morning, and she was still stinging from their taunts. She didn't doubt that she could manage these little girls if she and Samuel were to marry, but what if it was different with Rudy and Peter? What if they really didn't like her? Would it drive a wedge between Samuel and his sons?

She closed her eyes, said a quick but fervent prayer for guidance, and did what she did best—cooked. By the time Samuel and Naomi came in at 6:30, the kitchen smelled of hot biscuits, fried ham, hot applesauce and butter beans and dumplings.

Samuel walked past her, opened the oven door and grinned when he saw the bread pudding bubbling inside. “Anna, Anna,” he said in his big, deep voice. “You are wonderful. Here I am, thinking it was cold ham sandwiches and canned soup for us, and you've cooked up a feast.” Lori Ann ran to her father, and he popped a piece of biscuit into her mouth, picked her up and lifted her high in the air before giving her a hug.

Satisfaction filled Anna with a delicious warmth. “And how was the auction?” She didn't need to ask if Naomi had a good time. The girl's shining face told it all. “Good. Good,” Samuel said, grabbing a hot biscuit and tossing it from one big hand to another before taking a bite. “How was your day? You make out okay? Looks like you did. I haven't seen the kitchen this clean in ages.”

“We had a fine day, we girls.” She had no intention of
telling Samuel about the twins' rudeness. She'd decided that the boys were her problem to solve. “But I'd rather hear about the auction, than talk of shopping and cooking.”

“Wait until you see what I bought.”

“What is it?” Anna asked.

“I'm not telling,” he replied. “You'll see soon enough. It's a surprise.”

“Oh, a surprise?” Anna found herself truly curious.

“You'll see next week,” he said with a grin. “And by the way, the weatherman is calling for eight inches of snow next week.”

T
he following day, Anna rose early to start the fire in the wood-burning cook stove, to make morning biscuits, and found Grossmama already at the table drinking coffee. After greeting Lovina, Anna went to the gas stove, picked up the coffeepot and poured herself a cup. To her surprise, the coffee was excellent. “Did you make this?” she asked her grandmother.

Grossmama laughed and shook her head. “Jezzy doesn't let me use the gas stove. Thinks I'm not right in the head. She made the coffee.”

At the mention of her name, Aunt Jezebel came into the kitchen from the hallway, fully dressed but with her damp hair wrapped in a towel. “We got up first. First up makes the coffee,” her aunt explained.

“There!” Grossmama slapped a color brochure on the table. “I want you to see this.” She looked at Anna. “See.” She tapped the paper.

Anna picked up the brochure and examined it. The cover read “Maple Leaf Center. Join active seniors in your community for crafts, fellowship and education. Monday through Friday. Luncheon and transportation
provided.” Pictured was a one-story brick building with a red metal roof and window boxes full of flowers.

Puzzled, Anna glanced at Grossmama. “This is a place for older people to gather and visit?”

“Read it,” Lovina said impatiently.

Anna unfolded the colorful brochure and looked at the photos of a library, a dining room with smiling English people sitting at round tables, a table where two women were sitting and knitting and a line of people climbing into a large sightseeing bus.

“And on the back,” Grossmama insisted. “There's more on the back.”

The last picture was of a group of women sitting around a quilting stand piecing together a quilt. But one woman was braiding strips of cloth. In her lap lay the beginnings of a braided rug.

“They make rugs,” Grandmother said. “I want to go there. I want to ride in the red van. I make the best rugs. I can show those English women what they are doing wrong.”

“I tried to tell her that this Maple Leaf place was for Englishers,” Aunt Jezzy said, “but…” She spread her palms in a hopeless gesture.

“I want to go,” Grossmama repeated. “I want to go tomorrow. Today, I want to go home to my house. Jonas left the door open. The kitchen will get cold.”

“I tried to tell her that was Samuel's house she's thinking of, and Samuel's boy,” her aunt said. “But she never listens to me.”

Mam and Susanna walked into the kitchen. “Leah and Rebecca are still sleeping,” Anna's mother said. “Not that I blame them on such a cold, bleak day.”

“It's going to snow,” Grossmama announced. “I can always smell snow.” She glared at Hannah. “I'm going
home before it snows. Tell that Irwin boy to hitch up the horse.”

“You're right about the snow, Lovina,” Hannah said. “I turned on Jonas's radio to listen to the weather, and there was an announcement. Church will be canceled this Sunday if we get more than four inches.” She smiled at Grossmama. “I hope you enjoyed your trip to Byler's yesterday.”

“Martha and I had a submarine sandwich and we saw an Englisher woman in her shift.”

“What?” Mam asked.

“I'll explain later,” Anna promised.

“I'm going to ride in the red van,” Grossmama went on. “And you can't stop me. I'm going to make braided rugs, hundreds of them. I make the best.”

“Sister, let's get you dressed while Hannah and the girls make breakfast,” Aunt Jezebel said, taking Lovina's arm.

“I want eggs.” Grossmama pointed at Anna. “And you make them. Hannah is a terrible cook. Her eggs taste like cow pies.” She narrowed her eyes and peered around the room. “She's a thief, too. She sneaks into my room at night and takes my pocketbook.”

“Mam would never do such a thing,” Anna defended.

“Would too!” Grossmama said. “I had thirty-five dollars and now I have twenty-six dollars and fifteen cents.”

“You bought a submarine sandwich and mints yesterday,” Aunt Jezebel reminded her. “Hannah would never steal from you.”

“So you say.” Grossmama shuffled across the kitchen. “You're probably in it together, taking my money while I'm asleep.”

“That's not very kind of you, Lovina. And it's not kind of you to speak of Hannah's cooking that way, either.”

Grossmama thrust out her lower lip, but said no more.

“Anna will make your eggs just the way you like them,” Hannah promised.

“How do you stand it?” Anna asked, when her grandmother and aunt had gone back to their bedroom. “She's not mean to me. You should have seen her yesterday. She was so good with Samuel's Mae, and the child adores her.”

“Pray for her, Anna,” her mother said with a sigh. “She's confused and far from home. She's lost her husband, her only son, her brothers and two of her daughters. And thank the Good Lord that you weren't born with Lovina's disposition. I do, every day.”

 

By eleven o'clock that morning, heavy snow began to fall, large lacy flakes that tumbled and piled on the windowsills, and gathered in drifts around the porch. Anna and her sisters helped Irwin stable all the livestock in the barn, heaping their stalls high with bright straw and filling their water pails. It was cold, but not the usual bitter cold that came with heavy snowfalls in Delaware. And the wind, surprisingly, held little force; and the farm took on a wintery, white beauty, as snow covered the roofs and lawn and barnyard.

Anna kept busy, first with the outside chores and then in the house. Everyone was glad to gather around the table for a hearty dinner of beef stew and apple fritters. Grossmama continued to insist that she was going to Maple Leaf Center and to argue that she needed to go home before the storm got any worse. Mam had given all of them a look that told them to keep a sharp eye on their grandmother. They couldn't have her wandering out of the house in the middle of a snowstorm.

But in spite of all she did with her hands, Anna's mind
remained on Samuel and his children. She wondered how were they faring today. Had Samuel had time to prepare them a hot meal? Was Naomi able to manage both small sisters and still work her way through the inside chores? And then there were the tougher questions. Did Samuel really care for her, or was she—Anna—a poor substitute for the beautiful wife he'd loved and lost? And what was she going to do about the twins? Provided, of course, that she decided that she wanted Samuel to court her. She had to make up her mind about him before she could solve the other problems.

 

“Where's your husband, Anna?” Grossmama asked.

It was late in the afternoon. Mam and the girls were cleaning the upstairs, and Anna was just finishing up in the kitchen. It was still snowing, and Anna had paused, a dishcloth in her hand, to stare out the window. She'd thought Grossmama was napping. Obviously, not. “I don't have a husband,” she said. “I'm not married.”

“Well, don't wait too long. A big girl like you. Strong and sweet. You'll make some man a good wife, Anna. Don't be too fussy, like Jezzy. You wait too long, you'll wither on the vine.”

She turned toward her grandmother. “You think I'd make a good wife?” So what if Grossmama's memory failed her and she was sometimes confused? It would make Anna feel better to hear someone besides her mother say so. “You don't think I'm too…too Plain?”

“Too Plain to be a wife? No such thing! Potatoes. I like potatoes. I don't like rice.” Then Grossmama paused, as if deep in thought. “My nose was too long. I was too tall and skinny. Didn't make a bit of difference to Jonas's dat. He wasn't all that much to look at either.”

Anna nibbled on her lower lip. How could her grand
mother be so sensible one moment, and then so confused the next? As prickly as the old woman was, Anna still loved her and wished she could find some way to ease the tensions between Grossmama and Mam.

Lovina hobbled to the window, leaned on her cane and stared out. “Hope my geese are snug in their shed.” She glanced at Anna. “You need your own flock, girl, for when you marry. Every wife needs poultry. Whatever money comes from the ducks and geese and chickens, that's hers by right. Not the husband's. A woman needs her own money.” She sniffed. “Especially in this house, where they're all trying to steal every penny I've got.”

“You worry a lot about money, Grossmama,” Anna said, touching her grandmother's arm. “You don't have to. We'll take care of you. We want to take care of you.”

“Got to worry about money. Never enough. We lived on squirrels one winter when I was a girl. Did I tell you that?”

Anna nodded. “You did. Was that when you lived in the Kishacoquillas Valley?”

Lovina snorted. “Valley, nothing. We lived on the mountain. My dat was too poor to own bottomland. Rock and trees, that's what he tilled, rock and trees. Bears and wild things eating our livestock, and him with eighteen mouths to fill. I was the oldest girl. Many a day, I'd give my dinner to the little ones and go without. Never enough money. Got to get yourself a flock of geese, Anna. If you've got poultry, you'll always have a full purse.”

Anna wrapped her big hand around her grandmother's bony one and tried to imagine a tall, skinny girl in a
kapp
going hungry to feed her younger brothers and sisters. She looked around Mam's kitchen and thought how fortunate she'd been to be born here in Kent County, where there were no bears to steal the winter's meat and
no rocks to litter the fertile fields. Other than fasting days, Anna couldn't ever remember going hungry, and her heart went out to her brave and tough grandmother.

“I'll remember that, Grossmama,” she said. “And when spring comes, I promise I'll buy some baby goslings and start my own flock.”

“I'll show you how to collect the down,” Grossmama said. “But your Samuel can't have the money. It's yours, and that's all there is to it.”

“He isn't my Samuel,” Anna said softly.

Lovina snorted again. “Of course he is. He's your husband, isn't he? And a fine man, too, to give you all those beautiful children.”

“They are beautiful, but Rudy and Peter don't like me,” Anna admitted. “They don't want me to marry their father.”

“Not up to children,” her grandmother said. “Up to the Lord. He decides.”

“You really believe that?” She stroked Lovina's hand. “That God has a plan for each of us, even for me?”

“'Course He has a plan. For all of us. He wants me to go to that Maple Leaf in the red van. I'm going tomorrow, right after I go home to Martha and Jonas.”

 

There was no church service on Sunday. Out on the main roads, the big snowplows roared, but few cars and trucks passed the farm. By midmorning, the snowfall had trickled to tiny flakes, glittering like stars in the sunshine. Charley and Eli came up to the big house and got Irwin, and the three of them shoveled paths to the barn, chicken house and pigpen. They threw bales of hay down from the loft, and broke the ice in the water troughs, to see that all the animals had plenty to drink.

Anna was just sweeping snow off the porch when she
heard the sound of bells and looked up to see Samuel's Morgan horse come around the barn, pulling a beautiful, old-fashioned sleigh. Anna's eyes widened in astonishment. “Samuel,” she called to him. “Whatever are you driving?”

“Do you like it?” he asked. “This is the surprise I told you about.” He reined in Smoky, and Anna saw Mae's small face peering out from a mound of blankets in her father's lap.

Excitement made Anna giddy. The beautiful horse, the black-and-gold sleigh that looked like something out of a storybook, took her breath away. “You bought a sleigh,” she said. “I…I love it.”

“The man I bought it from said he had it for years, mostly collecting dust in his shed.” He grinned and offered his hand. “Climb up, Anna. I came to take you for a sleigh ride.”

“Me?”

His laughter rang out across the yard. “What other Anna could I be asking to ride with me on such a beautiful Sunday?”

“I…” She wanted to go. She'd never wanted anything so badly than to ride in that shining sleigh with Samuel behind a high-stepping horse. Samuel could have asked any of a dozen young women. He could have asked her sister, Leah, but he'd asked
her.

“I…I'll have to ask my mother,” she said.

“Ne.”
His smile lit up his whole face and his beautiful eyes sparkled. “Decide for yourself, Anna. You're a woman, full grown. Church has been cancelled, so that makes this a visiting Sunday. Come visit with me. I mean to check in on the old and sick, to be certain they have all they need.” He offered his hand again. “Come away with me, Anna Yoder. Or stand here and wish you had,” he
teased, pulling away his hand. “Who knows when there will be another snow like this?”

Anna took a deep breath and glanced at Charley, who was still digging a space around the chicken house door. “Should I go?” she asked.

“Ne,”
Samuel said again. “You must decide, Anna. Are we courting or not?”

“Courting is not a promise of marriage,” she answered.

“But few marriages go forward without it.”

She looked back toward the house and saw Aunt Jezebel's pale face staring out. If she didn't take this chance, she might end up like her aunt, and she didn't want that.

“All right,” she said, and put her hand into his. To her surprise, he leaped down out of the sleigh and helped her to climb in. She was afraid that her weight would be too much for him, but he lifted her in his strong arms, as though she were no bigger than Miriam. In two flicks of Smoky's tail, she was sitting in the deep seat, her legs and shoulders swathed in blankets.

Samuel climbed back up, picked up the leathers and shook them over the Morgan's back. With a jingle of bells, they were off across the barnyard, down the orchard lane and across the field, toward her Aunt Martha's house. Snow flew from the horse's hooves and the harness creaked. Snowflakes swirled through the air and landed on Anna's face.