Called to Order (34 page)

Anna laughed, and Gracie began to quietly sing a church hymn. She had a beautiful voice, soft and angelic. It reminded her of the boys’ choir that usually came around during Christmas time. So smooth and powerful, almost childlike without a hint of the crispness that comes with age, it was innocent and indescribably enchanting.

“You have a beautiful voice.”

“What? Oh, I’m sorry. I sing when I work. Sometimes I don’t even realize I’m doing it. You can step down now.”

Anna stepped down and watched as Gracie began to unravel the fabric they’d purchased that morning. “I love music.”

“Me, too,” Gracie said as she made cuts of all different shapes.

Anna wanted to ask her to keep singing, but she seemed distracted with making her dress. After making a few more cuts, Gracie held up her work and smiled. She motioned Anna back to the stool and began singing again as she pinned different lengths of material around her. When she looked up at Anna as she sang, she smiled at her. Anna laughed rather than get upset. She was singing for her. She could see it in her eyes. That little shit was making herself a home in Anna’s head.

Once the bones of the dress had been pinned into place, Gracie announced she was running into town to visit the local library and collect a wedding present. Anna spent the afternoon chatting with Abilene as she sewed the dress. It was amazing to watch such a creation come from nothing but flat sheets of fabric and string. As she worked Anna asked questions about ingredients for certain dishes Adam enjoyed. Abilene seemed thrilled to share the secrets of her kitchen with her soon to be daughter-in-law. Anna wasn’t retaining much, but she wanted to learn. She wanted to be a good wife even if Adam claimed her cooking skills didn’t matter. The good thing was that Abilene constantly reassured that she would be more than happy to come and teach Anna how to cook once their house was finished.

“Think of it as a blessing that you never learned to cook in a modern kitchen,” she had said. “This way it will not seem like a sacrifice to use our primitive appliances. It will be the first you learn and all you ever know. For as much as I love to cook, I imagine if someone asked me to feed a family using a modern oven and stove I would be without a clue.”

“I never really used them. I was more a microwave kind of girl.”

“Microwave?”

“It’s a little box that heats food up with…I don’t really know what it uses. It’s electric, but…it’s probably better you don’t have things like that here. Now that I think about it, it probably isn’t good for you.”

“What can you cook in them?”

“Anything. Well, except metal. That will start a fire. But you can heat pizza, soup, melt cheese, defrost meat. You can boil a cup of water in three minutes.”

“Three minutes?” she repeated in an impressed voice. “It is no wonder you English are always inventing new technologies. You’re saving so much time by using microwaves you must have hours left to think of new things to invent.”

As much as they did things the hard way here on the farm, it still seemed so much simpler. All the extra time gained from timesaving devices back home seemed to only complicate matters more. Cars led to traffic. Cell phones led to more time wasted talking to friends. Computers led to a dependency that could be devastated by a virus, the kind a woman like Abilene would never understand. It always struck her as a trip back in time when she was on the farm, but with every passing day, their way of life seemed more right. Now she felt it wasn’t so much as if they were living in the past, she felt as if she was from some distant land in the future. If she tried to explain things like computer viruses to Adam’s mother she would assume she was talking about a robotic cold, which it kind of was. Anna came to the conclusion that in a comparison of the Amish and the English, it was the English who were weird. She suddenly felt very protective of the Amish and angry toward anyone who would think to disrespect their lifestyle.

She reached for Abilene’s hand. The woman stopped her sewing and looked at Anna curiously. Anna smiled. “Thank you for welcoming me into your family and allowing me to stay at your home.”

Abilene smiled and blinked several times. Anna’s words had obviously meant very much to her. “You are a lovely girl, Annalise. God could not have chosen better for my son. I must say you have given me a reason to smile, something I have not done in far too long.”

Anna didn’t want to destroy the moment, but she also realized this might be the last chance she had to speak to Adam’s mother alone before the wedding. “Abilene, I want you to know, whatever happens, I don’t hold Cain accountable for any wrong your people believe he has done to me. I think, for whatever reason this is happening, Cain is hurting. The only thing I feel for him is sympathy. If there was a way for me to make this better without hurting him or Adam, I would.”

Abilene sighed and turned to face her more. “It is an interesting experience, being the mother of twins. We do not have many twins in our species. You worry, as a mother, that you will love one child more than the other, that you may not have enough time or hands to meet each child’s needs. But once you get the hang of it, everything becomes natural. We never run out of love for our children. Each one gets our heart, they just each earn a different piece of it.

“For as much as my boys look alike, they are as different as night and day. I know you have already realized that Adam is a man of patience. Some say he took all of the patience God offered the two of them and left Cain with only intolerance. As their mother, I can assure you that is not true. Cain is strong. So strong he could tolerate almost anything if there is a good enough reason to. He also loves his family very much.

“I do not know why God has chosen to do this to my boys. My biggest fear is that they will never be friends again, but I also believe God only tests us in ways he has faith we can succeed. Cain is a good boy, and he will survive this. I’m just not sure what it will cost him.” She squeezed Anna’s hand lovingly. “Now, hand me that small tin there. I have a gift for you.”

Anna reached for the tin and watched quietly as Abilene opened the top. “A friend of mine told me you English brides have a tradition.” Anna watched as Abilene sifted through buttons, rattling the supply from one side of the tin to the other and tucking different ones into the crease of her fisted palm. When she seemed to have found the ones she was looking for, she shut the tin and passed it back to Anna.

“Now,” she said, opening her palm. “I am told you believe it is lucky to have something old, new, borrowed, and blue for your wedding day. Is that correct?”

Anna smiled. “Yes.”

Abilene placed a crude-looking ring on the table. The oval circle had a sort of thin metal latch in the center. “This was my grandmother’s. Amish are not supposed to wear buttons. They are proud. Most of our clothing has snaps and hooks, you have probably noticed. Well, my grandmother was a modern woman of her times. She was one of the first women to say enough with the tiny latches and eyes. This was her button. She brought it with her from Europe, and one day when I was just a girl, I watched her sew it brazenly onto the breast of her apron. It may not look like much now, but then it was considered quite decadent. She made quite a scene, her with her proud button.”

She placed a blue button on the table. It was small and simple and the color of a pearly robin’s egg. “This one is a lovely shade of blue, don’t you think?” Anna nodded, and Abilene placed a petite round ball with a hook on the table. It looked like a pearl. “This is what I wore the day I married Jonas. I cut it from my dress this morning. I will loan it to you, and it shall be something I let you borrow and some day you will let your and Adam’s daughter borrow it as well.”

Anna smiled. She would never describe buttons as proud, but she knew she would take great pride in wearing these buttons.

Abilene reached beneath her apron and pulled out the last button. It looked like a tiger’s eye, golden shafts of amber swirled with deep auburn waves. “This one, I bought in town today. It reminded me of your beautiful hair. It will be your ‘something new.’ Do you like them?”

Anna’s voice seemed to have dissolved into nothing more than soundless steam made up of tears. She pressed her lips together in a tight smile and nodded. “Thank you, Abilene. I love them.”

She smiled, pleasure transforming her youthful face into something breathtaking. “Will you give me a gift, Annalise?”

“What would you like?” At the moment, Anna was so moved she would have cut out her kidney for the woman.

“Will you call me mother or mom as the English say?” she then spread her fingers wide and quickly reassured, “If you do not wish to, it’s okay. I will not be offended.”

“I would like nothing more than to consider you my mother. Thank you, Mom.”

Chapter 24

Adam did not return until sometime in the middle of the night. Anna had a vague recollection of him waking her, saying he loved her and then falling right to sleep as he held her in his arms. When she woke up in the morning, he was already gone. There was a thick piece of parchment on his pillow with her name written across the top in thick, boxy ink. She smiled and opened the note.

My dearest Annalise,

Today when I first set eyes on you, it will be only moments before you become my bride. We will commit ourselves in front of God to love each other for all eawichkeit. As much as I hate to spend time away, I am granting you these moments to settle your mind. If you have any doubts, go to my father and he will deliver you wherever you wish to be. As I have promised you before, I will never leave you with regrets. Do not worry for me if you wish to leave. It will not take long for them to find me. I will go willingly into the light. For I have no need for this life if I am to survive it without your love.

I am spending the predawn hours completing an errand. I have a gift for you. If you must reach me for any reason before the ceremony, I will be at my sister, Larissa’s, saying my grace.

I will love you always, in this life and the next,

Adam

Anna held the slip of paper to her chest. “Silly Amish man. I’m not going anywhere.”

The morning passed at blurring speeds. Gracie helped her bathe and then instructed her to put on her chemise. They then carefully placed Adam’s belongings into wicker baskets that would be carried over to the new house.

“It can’t possibly be finished,” Anna had insisted.

“It is a house. It is your duty to make it a home,” Gracie replied.

Once most of the items were packed, Gracie then began brushing out Anna’s hair. She worked the strands into an intricate weave, small braids forming larger ones that wrapped and coiled every which way over the back of Anna’s head. By the time she was finished, voices began to travel from down stairs.

“Are guests here?”

“The women have been arriving since before dawn. With over two hundred mouths to feed, there is much to do,” Gracie explained.

“Two hundred?”

“Yes. It is a rare occurrence, a wedding between called mates.”

“Where will they all sit?”

Gracie laughed. “That is why it is always good to have the newlyweds’ house built before the ceremony. It is in your empty rooms that we shall test the men’s carpentry with the weight of two hundred Amish.”

“Will they fit?”

“There is not a bit of furniture aside from the bed Adam made you. There will be plenty of room.”

Bed. Anna had a sudden irrational fear coming from some old romance novel she read as a girl, taking place during the days of Henry VIII. “Um, Gracie…the bonding…that’s…private, right?”

Gracie stilled her braiding fingers for a moment as if trying to understand what she was asking. When she comprehended Anna’s fear, probably from snooping in her head, she burst into peals of laughter. “Goodness gracious, Annalise! No one wants to see that! Yes, it’s private.”

Anna gave a sigh of relief and then felt her cheeks burning from embarrassment. Of course it was private. These were Christians, for Pete’s sake.

There was a soft tap at the door, and Abilene entered, carrying a tray laden with delicious-smelling breads and sweets. She looked different. Rather than her normal colored smock and black apron, she wore a blue smock and a matching blue apron similar to the blue material they’d purchased the day before.

Anna reciprocated her smile and complimented, “You look pretty, Mom.”

“Thank you, Anna. Now, if I could just make it through the day without staining my apron it would be a blessing. Here, I brought you some breakfast.”

Gracie fastened the last pin to Anna’s hair, and they moved to the bed where Anna enjoyed two slices of the fattest French toast she had ever seen. When she couldn’t fit another bit into her belly, she sighed and wiped her mouth. She looked at Abilene and announced, “
This
is the first thing I want you to teach me how to cook!” As their laughter faded, Anna turned toward the window. It seemed to be vibrating, and there was some sort of rumbling like thunder approaching in the distance. “Is it supposed to rain?”

Gracie smiled and dashed to the window. “It’s time! They’re here!”

“Who’s here?” Anna asked as she moved from the bed to the window.

There, like a ribbon of black snaking up the valley over the dirt road, was an endless line of black horse-drawn carriages. The horses’ hooves kicked up clouds of dust that were only pressed back into the earth by the spindled wooden wheels rolling behind. The windowpanes rattled from the vibrations so much, Anna watched as microscopic crumbs of plaster bounced onto the sill.

As the parade climbed around the bend, there was a magnificent splash of azure. Like tiny, little soldiered dolls all marching in a line, over fifty women paraded beside the carriages in the same shade of blue Adam’s mother had donned. “Why is everyone wearing blue?”

“It is the color we wear for weddings,” Gracie explained. “Today is a celebration, and blue was once the brightest color we Amish were permitted to wear.”

Anna suffered a bizarre sensation of reality. This was her wedding day. She was marrying Adam. Her heart began to pound fast, and she found herself searching for a chair. “I’m getting married.”

Gracie smiled peacefully. Her expression told Anna she was in her head. Sometimes Anna thought Gracie could make more sense of her thoughts than she could herself. It was as if the old adage about being too close to the trees to see the forest was correct and applied to exactly how clearly Gracie’s gift allowed her to see.

The younger girl approached her slowly, still smiling serenely. She whispered, “It will be okay, Anna. You are simply overwhelmed, not frightened. Once you get dressed, your nerves will settle. Here, come, I will help you.”

Abilene quietly left the room and Gracie assisted Anna in removing her chemise. Obediently, because thinking at this point was too much for her stomach and nerves, Anna stepped into the full cotton undergarments Gracie held out. She stood like a child, arms raised, as Grace gathered a pale-blue shift over her head, feeding her hands through the sleeves. The plain gown fell into place. It was a boxy covering with a clean-cut neckline and large billowy sleeves.

Abilene returned, holding something in her hands and quietly waited as Gracie helped Anna into her apron. The material was so much more decadent than the coarser fabrics the other women typically wore. It was lighter than spiders’ webbing and beautifully stitched and shaped into something quite elegant. This would be her telling mark, the evidence that she was the bride. As the ties pulled toward her back and Gracie worked quietly knotting them into showy, perfect bows, Anna took a moment to admire the four buttons Abilene had lovingly sewn onto the band crossing her heart.

Gracie walked back to Anna’s front and smiled, pulling the garment just so until she was completely satisfied with how it laid. As her hand swept gently down the front of the shimmering white, Gracie gasped and stepped back. Anna stopped admiring her four proud buttons and looked to the younger girl. “What is it, Grace?”

“You’re…” she started with an odd expression on her face that Anna could not comprehend. “Your buttons are lovely.”

Anna was no fool. She knew whatever Gracie had wanted to say, she did not. As lovely as her buttons were, they were not what had made Gracie gasp. “Thank you.”

Before anything else on the subject could be said, Abilene stepped forward and placed a book in Anna’s hands. It looked like a Bible, but the words were written in something other than English. “This is the Bible we use. I know you do not understand the roots of German just yet, but share it with my son, and he will assist you in learning. When your children are born, it shall serve as a place to document their births.”

She then turned and plucked a small strip of lace from the dresser. She unfolded a delicate bonnet and expertly placed it over Anna’s hair. Hands clasped together in happy satisfaction, she sighed. “Lovely. Grace, go fetch the mirror so Anna can always remember how beautiful she was on her wedding day.”

“Mirror?” Anna had been on the farm quite some time by now and had yet to see her reflection in anything other than the glass of the windows. She had discovered that while the truck was still hidden away in the larger barn, she could check her appearance in the rear view mirrors there, but sometimes the day was just too busy to make it out that way by morning. And by the time it was afternoon, she lost interest in her reflection.

“I thought the Amish were not allowed to have mirrors,” Anna stated.

Abilene appeared confused. “What would give you that idea? Amish can have such things.”

“I haven’t seen one since I arrived.”

“Ah, well we have several, we just tuck them away. You see, they serve no purpose for our kind.”

“You don’t have a reflection?” Anna asked, surprised she hadn’t already asked about such things to Adam. It was a common known wives’ tale that vampires had no reflection. She just assumed that when he said he liked garlic that none of those other silly rumors were true.

“Do not worry, Anna, we have reflections,” Abilene chuckled as she gently patted her arm. “We just have a difficult time seeing them because of our eyes. Here, I’ll show you.”

Gracie returned, carrying a long mirror. Abilene stood in front of it and although her form was reflected in the glass, a starburst of white light shined over the reflection of her face, making it impossible to fully see. “See, dear, for some reason our eyes reflect like light and blot out our face.”

“So you never know what your face looks like?”

“We know enough. It is of no consequence to us, just something that has always been so. If you notice our children’s dolls are made without faces as well. We believe only God can create a face, so why should we expect to see ourselves in a man-made mirror?”

“Good point.” Anna caught her breath as Gracie turned the mirror in her direction. She looked…words failed her. Her hand slowly rose to a fine piece of hair that had somehow slipped from the bonnet and Gracie’s intricate braiding. Her breasts were fitted snugly behind each crossing panel of her apron, and her figure was undeniably female. Her hips flared beneath the gathered fabric, making her waist appear pinched and her curves full. Her bare feet fidgeted one over the other on the wide wood planks of the floor, her toes curling and hiding under themselves in humbled nakedness.

In a whisper that was nearly a breath she said, “This cannot be me.” She noticed her earlobes, plain and unadorned, the holes where jewels usually hung adding to her discomfort. “They will know I’m an outsider.”

“Of course they will,” Abilene comforted. “No other orders will be here. You are safe to be yourself today. We, along with every other member of our society, see you as a savior for one of our own and take great pride in the sacrifices you are committing to make for my son. You will be respected and embraced with nothing less than genuine affection and gratitude.”

There was a gentle knock at the door, and Jonas stepped in. “Abilene, my love, it is time for you to greet the guests.”

Abilene smiled. Her expression whenever Adam’s father was around was so purely loving it always took Anna’s breath away. “Of course, Jonas.” She dipped her head and obediently went to leave the room. Jonas caught her arm gently and whispered something into her ear. Abilene flushed a delicate shade of pink and, just after Jonas pressed a soft kiss into her neck, she left the room. Anna took a moment to hope that she and Adam would be equally as in love as his parents in another fifty or one hundred years.

Gracie squeezed Anna’s hand and followed. Jonas looked into Anna’s eyes and gestured toward the chair against the wall as if asking permission to sit a moment. Anna nodded and sat herself on the edge of the bed, waiting for the man to say his piece.