Anna's Gift (2 page)

Anna knew, of course, that Samuel Mast, probably the catch of the county, would never look at her. Anna considered herself sensible, dependable, hardworking and Plain. But among the pretty red-haired Yoder sisters, Anna stuck out like a plow horse in a field of pacers. A healthy mare, her Aunt Martha called her, but no amount of brushing her hair or pinching her cheeks could make her pretty. Her face was too round, her mouth too wide, and her nose was like a lump of biscuit dough.

Her mother had always told her that true beauty was in the heart and spirit, but everyone knew what boys liked. Men were attracted to cute girls and handsome women, and it was the slender
maedles
with good dowries who got the pick of the best husband material.

No, Anna wasn't foolish enough to consider ever marrying a man as fine and good-looking as Samuel, but it
didn't keep her from dreaming. And it didn't stop her from wishing that there was someone like him somewhere, who could see beneath her sturdy frame and Plain features, to appreciate her for who she was inside.

“Don't worry,” Aunt Martha always said. “Any woman works as hard as you do and cooks
hasen kucha
like yours, she'll find a man. Might be one not so easy on the eyes out West someplace, or a bucktoothed widower with a dozen sons and no daughters to help with the housework, but someone will have you.”

Anna knew she wanted a husband, babies and a home of her own, but she wondered if the price might be higher than she wanted to pay. She loved her mother and her sisters, and she loved living in Seven Poplars with all the neighbors and friends who were dear to her. She wasn't certain she would be willing to leave Delaware to marry, especially with the prospects Aunt Martha suggested would be available to her.

“Anna?”

“Ya?”
She glanced back at Samuel, feeling even more foolish. While she'd been dream-weaving, Samuel had been saying something to her. “I'm listening,” she said, which wasn't quite true.

“My Frieda is dead four years.”

Anna nodded, not certain where the conversation was going. “She is,” Anna agreed. “Four years.”

“And two months,” Samuel added. “Time I…made plans for my family.”

Suddenly realizing what he might be talking about, she grasped the ladder to keep it from swaying. “I'm sorry you missed Mam.” Her voice seemed too loud in the empty room. “I'm not sure when she'll be home. A few days. It depends on the weather and how Grossmama is feeling.”

“I…didn't come…didn't come to speak…to Hannah.” Each word seemed to come as a struggle.

She paused, resting her brush on the lip of the paint can, giving him her full attention. If he hadn't come to talk to Mam, why was he here? Was he sick? Was that why he looked so bad? “Do you need help with something? Charley should be back—”

“
Ne.
It's you, really, I want to talk to.”

“Me?” Her mouth gaped open and she snapped it shut. Her stomach turned over. “Something I can do for you?”

“
Ya.
I want…”

Anna shifted her weight and the wooden step under her left foot creaked. “You want…” she urged, trying to help.

“If you would…” He took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders.

He was a big man, so attractive, even with his scraggly hair and oatmeal on his clothes. He filled the doorway, and staring at him, Anna couldn't stop the fluttering in the pit of her stomach.
“Ya?”
she coaxed. “You want…”

“I want to court you, Anna,” Samuel blurted out. “I want that you should give me the honor to become my wife.”

Anna froze, unable to exhale. Surely he hadn't said what she
thought
he said. She blinked as black spots raced before her eyes. Abruptly, she felt her hands go numb. Her knees went weak and the ladder began to sway. An instant later, paint, ladder and Anna went flying.

“A
nna!” Samuel rushed forward in an attempt to catch her, and they went down together in a crash of wood, entwined arms and legs, and what seemed like gallons of blue paint. Samuel slid rather than fell to the floor and ended up with Anna in his lap, his arms securely around her middle. Somewhere in the jumble, the paint can hit the wall and bounced, spraying paint everywhere.

Samuel peered into Anna's startled face. Her eyes were wide, her mouth gaped, but the only sound she made was a small, “Oh, no.”

“Are you hurt?” he asked, letting go of her when he realized he still held his arms tightly around her. He tried to rise, slipped in the river of paint and sat down hard, a splat rising from around his britches. As they fell a second time, Anna's arms instinctively went around his neck, bringing her face only inches from his. She was so close, he could have kissed her full, rosy lips.

“Anna?” he said, out of breath. “Are you all right?”

She gave a gasp, wiggled out of his embrace and scrambled up, her back foot slipping. Throwing both arms out for balance, she caught herself before she went down again.

Samuel knew he had to say something. But what?

Anna sucked in a gulp of air, threw her apron up over her blue-streaked face and ran through the doorway, nearly running into Susanna and Mae, and out of the room.

“Anna,” he called, trying to get to his feet again, but having less luck than she had. “Come back. It's all right.” He dropped onto all fours and used his hands to push himself up. “It's only paint. Anna!”

But Anna was gone, and the only evidence that she'd been there was the warm feeling in his chest, and a trail of bright blue footprints across the wide, red floorboards.

“You spilled the paint.” Susanna began to giggle, then pointed at him. “And you have paint in your beard.”

“Beard,” Mae echoed, standing solemnly beside her newfound friend.

Samuel looked down at his blue hands and up at the two girls, and he began to laugh, too. Great belly laughs rolled up from the pit of his stomach. “We did spill the paint, didn't we?” he managed to say as he looked around the room at the mess they'd made. “We spilled
a lot
of paint.”

“A lot,” Susanna agreed.

Mae stared at him with her mother's bright blue eyes and clutched the older girl's hand. The fearful expression in his daughter's wide-eyed gaze made him want to gather her up in his arms and hug her, but in his state, that was out of the question. Two painted scarecrows in one house was enough; the hugs would have to wait until later.

“Susanna, could you go and see if your sister is hurt?” Samuel asked. His first instinct was to follow Anna to see for himself that she was okay and to assure her that she had no need to be embarrassed. Anyone could have
an accident, and the wooden ladder had obviously seen better days. But he'd heard her run up the stairs, and it wouldn't be seemly for him to intrude on her. With her mother out of the house, he had to show respect and maintain proper behavior. If he was going to court Anna, he was going to do it right and behave the way any man courting her would be expected to.

“Ya,”
Susanna agreed. Still giggling, she trotted off with Mae glued to her skirts.

Turning in a circle, Samuel exhaled and wiped his hands on his pants. The way he'd been swimming in the paint, they were a total loss anyway. He rubbed a bruised elbow and the back of his head as he studied the floor, the wall, and the broken ladder. How, he wondered, had so much paint come from one gallon?

This was a fine barrel of pickles.

After putting it off for so long and practicing his proposal of marriage to Anna over and over in his head, it had gone all wrong. It couldn't have gone worse. He didn't know what he'd expected, but he certainly hadn't thought the statement of his intentions would frighten her so badly that she'd fall off a ladder, or drop into his arms—although that had been a pleasant interlude. He didn't know why sweet Anna had been so surprised, or why she'd run away from him. He hoped that it wasn't because the idea of marrying him and instantly becoming the mother of five children was so preposterous.

Samuel picked up the paint can and set it upright—there couldn't have been more than half a cup of paint left in the bottom. The room was a disaster. He decided he'd better get a start on cleaning it up before the paint began to dry. If he was lucky, maybe Anna would come down and join him and they could talk. He would need rags, a mop and maybe even a shovel to start wiping up the
excess paint, but he didn't have the faintest idea where to find them.

The first thing he needed to do, before he went looking for the supplies, was to take his shoes off so he didn't track paint through the house. Setting the ladder upright, he sat down on the lower rung and began to unlace his brogans.

Samuel wondered if he'd gone about this all wrong. The custom was for the suitor to ask a go-between to talk to the girl's family before a proposal of marriage was formally offered. But with Anna's father dead and not a single brother, that left Hannah as the sole parent. Samuel supposed he could have approached Anna's uncle by marriage, Reuben Coblentz, but that would have involved Reuben's wife, Martha. Reuben didn't scratch until Martha told him where he itched. Plus, Hannah and Martha didn't always see eye to eye, and Hannah had made it clear that she didn't care for her late husband's sister interfering in her personal family matters.

That left speaking directly to Hannah before he approached Anna, but he'd decided against that because he was afraid that Hannah might have misconstrued his previous regular visits to the Yoder farm. There wasn't any doubt in Samuel's mind that most of the community thought that he was courting Hannah, or at least testing the waters. It could well be that Hannah thought so, too, and he didn't want to make matters worse by embarrassing her, maybe even hurting her feelings. Samuel liked Hannah, and he always enjoyed her company, but there was no comparing the warm friendship that he felt for her to his keen attraction to Anna.

What Samuel and his late wife, Frieda, had had was a comfortable marriage, but his father and her family had arranged the match. Samuel had been willing because it
seemed such a sensible arrangement. He thought Frieda would make a good wife, and he'd always been reluctant to go against his father's wishes.

He'd been just nineteen to Frieda's twenty-three when they wed. Everyone said that it was a good match, and he could remember the excitement of their wedding day. Neither of them had expected romance, but they'd come to respect and care for each other, and they both adored the children the Lord sent them.

When Frieda's heart had failed and he'd lost her, he'd genuinely mourned her passing. But Frieda had been gone a long time, so long that he sometimes had trouble remembering her face. And he was lonely, not just for a helpmate, not just for a mother for his children, but for someone with whom he could open his heart.

If he was honest with himself, Samuel reckoned he'd been attracted to Anna for at least two years. Just seeing her across a room gave him a breathless, shivery thrill that he'd never experienced before. Oh, he wasn't blind. He knew what the other young men in the community thought about Anna. She wasn't small or trim, and she didn't have delicate features. Some fellows went so far as to make fun of her size. Not where Anna could hear, of course, or him either. He would have never stood by and allowed such a fine woman to be insulted by foolish boys who couldn't see how special she was.

In his heart, Samuel had always admired strong women. Other than Frieda, who'd been the exception, every girl he'd ever driven home from a singing or a young people's gathering had been sturdy. His mother, his sisters and his aunts were all good cooks and mothers, and all of formidable size. Like Anna, they all had the gift of hospitality, of making people feel welcome in their homes. And regardless of what anyone else thought,
he appreciated Anna Yoder for who she was. “Big women have big hearts,” his father always said, and Samuel agreed.

For longer than he wanted to admit, Samuel had been watching Anna and trying to convince himself that it was just his loneliness. After all, how fair was it for a man with five children and the responsibility of a large farm to propose marriage to a beautiful young woman like Anna? So he'd put off the decision to do anything about his feelings. As long as he didn't speak up, he was free to imagine what it would be like having her in his house, sitting beside him at the kitchen table, or bringing him a cold glass of lemonade when he was hot and sweaty from working in the fields. Month after month, he'd waited for her to reach the age of twenty-one, but when she had, he still hadn't found the nerve to ask.

What if she rejected him out of hand? So long as he didn't speak up, he could keep on going to Hannah's house, sitting at their table, savoring Anna's hot cinnamon-raisin buns and chicken and dumplings. But once he brought up the subject, if Anna refused him, Hannah might have no choice but to discourage his visits.

He hoped he was a truly faithful man, a good father and a good farmer. He'd been blessed by beautiful children, caring parents and a loving family. The Lord had provided material goods, land of his own and a fine herd of dairy cows. He served on the school board and helped his neighbors. His life should have been full, but it wasn't. He longed for Anna Yoder to be his wife.

It had taken his sister Louise to finally put an end to his hesitation. She'd brought Mae home, handed her over, and told him that it was time he found a new wife and a new mother for his children. He had to agree. It was past
time. But now that he'd made up his mind and chosen the right woman, he'd made a mess of things.

What must Anna think of him? No wonder she was embarrassed. He'd had his arms around her, had her literally
in his lap,
and they'd both been doused in blue paint, like some sort of English clowns. He wanted to court her honorably, to give her the love and caring she deserved, and instead he'd made her look foolish.

In his stocking feet, Samuel stepped over a puddle of paint, taking in the room again.

After the mess he had made, it would serve him right if Anna never spoke to him again.

 

Anna stood in the shower in the big upstairs bathroom and scrubbed every inch of her skin. She knew that she should be downstairs cleaning up the terrible mess she'd made, but she couldn't face Samuel. She'd probably have to hide from him for the rest of her life.

How could she have been so clumsy? Not only had she fallen off the ladder, but when Samuel had tried to catch her, they'd both gone down in a huge pool of blue paint.

She wished she could weep as her sisters did, as most girls did when something bad happened. But this was too awful for tears. Not only had she embarrassed herself and Samuel, but she'd probably ruined things between her mother and Samuel. She'd be the laughing stock of the community, and Samuel would probably never come to the Yoder farm again. And all because of her foolish daydreaming. What a silly girl she was, thinking Samuel had said he wanted to court her. She probably needed to clean out her ears. She had obviously misunderstood.

“Anna!” Susanna cracked the bathroom door. “You made a mess.”

“Go away,” Anna ordered.

“Samuel told me to come see if you were all right.”

“He didn't leave yet?” her voice came out a little shrill.

“Nope. He told me to come see if you—”

“I'm fine,” Anna interrupted, hugging herself. Emotion caught in her throat at the sheer mention of Samuel's name. “Just go away, please.”

The door opened wider, and her sister's round face appeared. Anna could see her through the filmy, white shower curtain.

“Are you blue, Anna? Will the blue come off? Will you be blue on Sunday? At church?”

“Susanna! I'm in the shower.” Eli had promised to fix the lock on the door a few weeks ago when he'd put the doorway in between the room over the kitchen and the upstairs hallway in the main house, but he hadn't gotten to it. She'd have to remind him because right now there was no privacy in the upstairs bathroom. “I'll be out in a minute.”

“But Anna…”

“Anna,” repeated little Mae.

Susanna had brought Mae to the bathroom! Anna took a breath before she spoke; there was no need to take this out on Susanna. It was all her own fault. “Take Mae back downstairs to her father. See them out. And give them some biscuits!”

Without waiting for an answer, Anna turned the hot water knob all the way up and stood under the spray.
Give Samuel biscuits?
Had she really said such a thing? Was there no end to her foolishness? Samuel didn't want her biscuits. After the way she'd embarrassed him, he'd probably never again eat anything she baked.

Anna could hear Susanna and little Mae chattering in the hall and she felt trapped. If Mae was still in the house,
Samuel had to be. She couldn't possibly get out, not with him still here.

“She has to go potty,” Susanna piped up over the drone of the shower. “Mae does. She has to go bad.”

Gritting her teeth, Anna peered around the shower curtain. The water was beginning to get cool anyway. They had a small hot water tank that ran on propane, but there wasn't an endless supply of warm water. “All right. Just a minute. Close the door and let me get dried off.” She jumped out of the shower, grabbed a towel and wrapped it around herself. “All right, Susanna. Bring Mae in.”

Susanna pushed open the door. “There's the potty, Mae.”

“Do you need help?” Anna asked the child.

Mae shook her head.

Anna wrapped a second towel around her head. “When she's done, wash her hands, then her face. Clean up her dress and bring her into the bedroom. We can fix her hair.” She smiled down at the little girl. “Would you like that? I never pull hair when I do braids. You can ask Susanna.”