Ella Finds Love Again (28 page)

The hardest thing to bear was that now she would surely lose the girls. When that realization struck her on Thursday, she gathered Mary and Sarah on the couch along with baby Barbara and hugged them all hard. Mary and Sarah stared at Ella, puzzled by her sudden show of affection. Ella did well to hide the tears gathering in her heart.

Shortly after ten o’clock that morning, the girls were on the couch with Mary pretending to read to Sarah. Ella smiled at Mary’s inventiveness in coming up with words that matched the pictures on the pages. She looked up suddenly from her quilting when the sound of a buggy could be heard coming up the drive. She knew at once that it was Robert. It was all she could do not to race outside and meet him at the top of the basement steps. Such a display would be inappropriate and out of character, so she merely headed to the door to open it.

“Robert’s come for his lesson,” she told the girls.

Mary and Sarah both looked at her with blank faces.

“Robert?” Mary asked.

“Yes,” Ella said. “Do you remember? The man I’m teaching German.”

Mary’s face brightened. “Oh now I remember!” she said. Sarah nodded.

Ella waited, her heart racing. She felt like a house with all the windows and doors open to bring in the summer breeze.

“Hello!” she said as she opened the door for him.

“Good morning,” he said, tilting his head slightly. “What is the lovely Amish maiden up to this morning? Does she have time for a reforming
Englisha
like me?”

“Perhaps,” she said, laughing, joy flooding her heart.

“Then may I come inside?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Oh, yah! Do come in,” she said stepping back. “I’m afraid the house is in a mess.”

“Hah,” he said with a broad smile. “That’s something I’ve noticed about Amish women. You always think the house is a mess, when actually you could eat off the floor with a spoon.”

“Oh? And do you see a lot of Amish women?” she asked primly, shutting the door behind him and not daring to look into his face.

“A few,” he said. “Being the house guest of a bishop does result in a few supper invitations. But I can’t say they’re without intent. I think I am a little of a novelty.”

“Yah, indeed you are.” Surely he meant
married
women were fixing these meals for him.

“So you’re busy,” he said. “So many things to do—the quilting, the children, the house, the renters upstairs. A busy, busy woman, and now German lessons to teach.”

“Is there something wrong with being busy?”

“No, not at all. In fact, I like it. It’s one of the reasons I’m joining the Amish. I like their hard work, honest toil,
and
their solid womenfolk.”

“You make us sound like rather joyless creatures.”

“Not at all. What more could a man wish for?”

“Yah,” she said. “Tell me, what could he wish for?”

“Well,” Robert said, spreading his arms, “the Amish man has the world by the tail. He works, he has children—lots of them—and he loves his wife. That’s enough I think. More than enough, wouldn’t you say?”

“I don’t know.” She turned away so he couldn’t see her face. “I haven’t been married.”

“Which is a good thing,” he said with a sweet smile. “I mean, it gives you something to look forward to.”

“Perhaps we should start the lesson,” she said, keeping her eyes on the kitchen table. “I am, as you said, busy.”

“That’s another thing about Amish women—or perhaps you, Ella. At first you’re warm and welcoming, and the next minute it’s down to business. You women change like the weather.”

“Perhaps marriage settles us down,” she said, surprised at his frank appraisal of her. Is that what he thought? “I’m not used to such a frank discussion of a girl’s temperament, and that right in front of her.”

He laughed, a heartfelt bellow that echoed through the basement. “My, my, this is interesting. Perhaps I need more than German lessons from you. Perhaps lessons in Amish women. Shall I take notes?”

“Is that what I am to you—a dispenser of Amish information—and emotions? Perhaps just an experiment, the results of which you can store in that fancy college brain of yours? Robert, we Amish women—and men too for that matter—aren’t monkeys in a zoo to be observed.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Bishop Miller said I might run into this when he told me I could come here for lessons.”

“Run into
what
?” she asked, holding his gaze, her hands now inexplicably shaking.

“Well, you are a dating woman—or were. I’m not sure of your customs.”

“What do you mean
were
?”

“Your beloved—if that is what he is…isn’t he about to be excommunicated?”

“And how do you know this?”

“Bishop Miller told me, of course.”

“When did he tell you about Ivan possibly being excommunicated?”

He regarded her for a long moment.

“Tell me the truth,” she said.

“I don’t know what this is all about,” he said. “But I sense a trap under my foot.”

“And why should there be a trap under your foot?” she asked, feeling tears sting her eyes. “I’m sorry, I know it’s not your fault.”

“What makes you think…”

“Robert, answer the question.”

“Before I answer, let me say this,” he said, uneasily. “My mother told me about the kind of woman you are, Ella. But in person, it’s different. Even better. When I saw you that first day I was here, when you asked me to stay for dinner, I can’t explain how that felt, how at home it made me feel. All my life I’ve wanted that feeling, Ella. No, I’ve wanted more than just the feeling. I’ve wanted someone like you. Yet you were seeing someone. You told me so yourself. But you never said if you loved the man. I don’t know, perhaps you do. But where I come from, a man can tell how a woman feels about the man she’s seeing.

“Now, this man you were seeing is in a lot of trouble. And so I have to wonder that if that’s true, does it change anything between us? Would I have a chance with you, once I’m baptized and all that? Please, just consider it, Ella. I’m not trying to pull any tricks. Really I’m not.”

Ella hardly knew how to react. She felt a familiar pain on the inside, but before she could answer his question, she had to know the answer to her question. “I want you to answer my question, Robert. When did Bishop Miller tell you Ivan might be excommunicated?”

He sighed. “One of the first nights I came. We talked about Amish life, and naturally he asked me why I was interested in becoming Amish. I told him that I was attracted to the life—and, forgive me, Ella—I confided in him that I was attracted to you too. As we talked, he told me about excommunication among the Amish. He told me there might soon be a case in point. He told me it involved you.”

Ella trembled with anger. “Robert, you have no idea what you’re involved in,” she cried, placing both hands on the kitchen table.

She caught sight of the girls watching the two of them.

She calmed her voice and said, “Please just go back to the big wide world where you came from, Robert. You are a babe lost in the woods. You will get over this, but it will not be here among us. Please leave, Robert. Leave now.”

“But I love you,” he said, his hand touching her arm.

“Don’t,” she said, pulling back, her voice now cold. “It’s no use. Just go.”

“Was I out of place—with what I said about the two of us? Do you not speak of these things before baptism?”

“Robert, I’m seeing that it’s really true that we come from different worlds. Two worlds that can never be joined together.”

“Bishop Miller is allowing me to come over.”

She stared at him, refusing to answer. There were many things she was, but a betrayer of her people she was not. Never would a word cross her lips that this man from the
Englisha
could take back with him and shame her people.

“I will be baptized,” he said, his voice firm. “I start the class in the spring, and I will become part of your world. How can you hold it against me, the fact that I was born in what you call ‘the world’?”

“Robert,” she said hearing her voice choke. “I cannot tell you…what needs to be said, and you must not make me. You will soon see things happen here among us. Watch them carefully, and perhaps you will see it in time. I hope that you do, long before you are made bitter and hard. I pray you’re spared, because, yah, Robert, the truth is that I do love you, but it cannot be.”

“But why not?” he asked, gripping her arm until she pulled away in pain.

“It is just best that you do not ask…and that you do not come back here anymore.”

He paced the floor rapidly. “But surely there is hope for the two of us?”

“You will have to speak with
Da Hah
about that.”

“The Lord,” he said, as if this were part of his German lesson. “God, give me patience to understand these people,” he asked.

“It would be easier if you didn’t try.”

“I suppose it would be,” he said with a bitter taste in his mouth. She waited, saying nothing.

Finally Robert pulled his hat on top of his head and opened the front door. He disappeared up the basement steps.

She waited for the tears to come, but none did even as she listened to his buggy drive down the lane.

Thirty-five

W
ith a heavy heart Ella arose and got ready for church. This was the Sunday a decision would be made about Ivan’s future. After barely touching her breakfast, Ella hitched her horse to the buggy. She returned to the house to change into better clothes. In truth, she wanted desperately to crawl back under the covers and never come out again. But like a bad dream from which she couldn’t awaken, today and its events would have to be endured.

Church was to be held at Albert Stoll’s place, the announcement having been made two weeks in advance. Where the deed was done didn’t matter. One place would serve as well as another. She simply needed to know in which direction to drive, like the French prisoners she had studied in grade school who were led to the guillotine.

Ella left her house late on purpose. She didn’t want to face Joe and Ronda, so it was sometime after they left that Ella turned Moonbeam north at the end of her driveway and pulled out onto Chapman Road. Few buggies were on the road anymore, even when she approached the Stoll driveway. The long line of men and boys still stood in the barnyard, but already they were moving toward the house. Ella drove past the walks where the women were dropped off and parked beside the last buggy. Its owner had his horse unhitched and was pulling on the horse’s bridle, directing him toward the barn.

Ella’s cousin James appeared around the back of the buggy, along with a boy she didn’t know.

“Why are you so late?” he asked, as if the answer mattered.

“Just one of those mornings,” she said, trying to smile beneath her bonnet.

James shrugged and unhitched Ella’s horse and led him forward at a trot. His companion threw the tugs up over the horse.

“I’ll help you get the horse out after church.” James tossed the words over his shoulder as he headed toward the barn with Moonbeam.

Behind her, the line of black-suited men was already at the house door, with the young Bishop Miller in the lead. He was here on official business, his suit clean and brushed. Behind him followed the home bishop, Bishop Mast, walking with his head bowed. Behind him came the other ministers, and then the men forming a long line across the yard. They entered slowly, filing through the house and into the living room to sit on the benches, the ministers in front.

Ella was still in the washroom, her bonnet strings knotted, when she heard the women begin moving into the main part of the house. If she hadn’t been late, other women would have been around and noticed her plight. Someone would have helped her untangle the mess. With great frustration, Ella considered a quick jerk, which would have surely resulted in tearing the cloth.

Instead she tugged as hard as she could and finally moved the knot out past her chin where she could see it with her eyes turned painfully downward. A sharp tug and the tie loosened, the bonnet quickly joining the others on the stacked pile. The shawl went into another pile. She rushed into the kitchen. Faint smiles played on several of the young girls’ faces. They parted as a group, stepping back so she could at least get in line with the last of the girls her own age.

The ministry filed out at the start of the second line of the first song, Bishop Miller in the lead again. Ivan walked with them in his usual place. He might even sit on the minister’s bench for the entire service. There was little middle ground in this world. You were, and then you were not.

What would Robert think of this? Surely he wasn’t here—she had checked the row of unmarried boys. Hopefully he had taken her advice and returned to his own world.

The men’s benches squeaked as the second song started. A few of the boys’ chins went down on their palms, faces sleepy. They perked up when Bishop Miller’s black shoes appeared at the top of the stairs just before the next song was announced. What this early return meant was uncertain, but Ivan now brought up the rear of the line—out of place.

The change had already begun. He looked weary, his face lined with sadness.

Bishop Mast had the first sermon, and then Bishop Miller stood for the main sermon. Ella felt bitterness rising in her heart, but she had to give the man credit. On this day it must be hard to preach. Bishop Miller could have assigned the task to another minister, but he had chosen to shoulder the burden himself.

Ella had already decided to forgive the man. It was the way of her people. You laid your burden at the feet of
Da Hah
, allowing the pain to come, and then walked away from it. Vengeance belonged to Another, and you prayed that He would be merciful with His judgment, even as you yourself needed mercy.

This might have started with impure motives from the bishop—desiring to come between her and Ivan—but even Ivan had come to realize that he had done himself in. And now she could expect a visit from Bishop Miller sometime in the weeks ahead. The man had loved her, professed his great admiration for her, so perhaps he could be excused for using what means lay in his hands to win her heart.