Rebecca's Promise (8 page)

The snowfall had increased as Rebecca headed in from the barn. The dawn was now an early morning glow, making each flake visible right up to the front door. Stopping on the porch, she shook her coat backward from her shoulders to throw off some of the snow.

After stepping inside, she kept the front door open long enough to remove her coat and give it one last shake outside. She hung it in the utility closet, away from the other coats to give it time to dry.

“It’s really coming down,” her mother called from the kitchen.

“Yes,” Rebecca said, “the English sure were right this time.”

“They usually are in those matters.”

Rebecca poked her head into the kitchen. “Pancakes?” she asked, seeing her mother mixing batter.

“Yes.” Mattie smiled. “When I saw it was snowing, I decided this was the morning for pancakes. Lester will take the time to eat properly because he can’t get outside work done.”

“You want me to get the children up?” Rebecca asked.

“Sure,” her mother replied, as she piled golden pancakes on a plate. “Matthew should have been up already. School and all.”

“Who’s teaching this year? I can’t seem to remember,” Rebecca asked.

“Yost Byler’s Margaret, with her cousin Naomi,” her mother said dryly. “A little young, both of them, if you ask me. Inexperienced too. I guess we have to take what they give us.”

Rebecca nodded. She supposed by the time she had her own children, it would all have changed. For now she largely ignored the yearly search for parochial schoolteachers to staff the little schoolhouse in the valley just north of the town of Unity.

“We always had Emma,” she commented, nostalgia in her voice.

“Of that you can be thankful,” her mother replied. “A solid person Emma was. It did you school children good. Smart too. A little strange in some ways. Never being married like she was. Still good. Year after year, the same teacher. That’s the way it should be.”

“We all liked her,” Rebecca said, the inflection still in her voice.

“With good reason,” her mother agreed. “Not that everyone liked her, but most did. She really knew how to run a schoolhouse. Did twice the work as these youngsters do nowadays. She never asked for or needed another teacher—ran the whole twenty of you by herself.”

“Eight grades,” Rebecca added, vague numbers running through her head. “Now there are close to forty students here, aren’t there?”

“Something like that,” her mother said. “I suppose even Emma couldn’t have taken care of that many. She was good, though.”

“She always liked me,” Rebecca said quietly.

Mattie huffed. “A little bit of a teacher’s pet you were. I never saw that it did you harm.”

“Of course not,” Rebecca assured her. “Emma never showed favorites. I just knew.”

“Well, that was then. No sense going on about it now. Set the table and stop thinking about your school days,” her mother told her. “Being special can give you the
grohs kobb.
The past is the past.”

“Now, Mom. You’re making a big deal out of this.” Rebecca placed the first plate on the table.

Her mother sighed. “I just never wanted my children to be teacher’s pets. We are called to be ordinary people. That’s our faith. Secure in God’s love for all of us. Then in our love for each other. Being special makes for trouble I say.”

“She didn’t like everyone in school,” Rebecca said, thinking that was a good defense for Emma.

“That’s what I mean,” her mother said. “See where this leads?”

“She had a good reason,” Rebecca insisted, coming to the end of the table and the last place setting.

“That’s what they
all
think,” Mattie said. “Now start the eggs. Dad will be in any minute.”

Setting the heat on low, Mattie opened the oven door and carefully placed the platter of round golden pancakes inside to keep warm.

Rebecca wanted to continue the conversation and tell her mother that Emma
did
have reasons. Good reasons they were, she was certain, but that would require saying his name. Atlee. Then, with the name and her mother’s eyes upon her, might come questions.

Even if she tried to answer with her best explanations, there might come more questions after that, each more difficult to answer. So she simply set the egg pan on the stove and turned the gas burner to a medium flame lest the eggs burn when she dropped them in the pan. Reaching for the butter, she dabbed a large slab into the just warming pan. It slowly melted, sliding across the surface toward the lower left-hand corner, in the direction the kitchen floor slanted in this area.

Splitting the eggs expertly, she dropped them in, just in time to have them sizzle as they hit, their outer edges turning white in seconds.

“So, who were the children Emma didn’t like?” her mother asked from across the kitchen.

Rebecca’s face, flushed with the heat from the pan, kept its color, although she felt her strength draining away.
I can’t lie,
flew like a dagger through her mind.
I’ll just have to confess it later if I do, so I can’t. Better to stick with the truth.
“One of the boys,” she muttered, without turning around. She stabbed her spatula at one of the eggs, nearly splitting the yolk.

Her mother laughed. “That makes sense. Old Emma probably had it in for the male species. Never being married. Want and desire. It works that way sometimes.”

Rebecca would have spoken up in Emma’s defense even risking her own hurt, but she couldn’t.

Her mother laughed again. “Nobody could ever explain why Emma never married. She was good looking enough. Came from a good family. There really was no reason anyone could see. I suppose she had offers. At least you would think so.”

Rebecca paid total attention to the eggs in the pan, flipping the first one out and onto the waiting plate. It made a soft slapping sound on landing, its yolk gently vibrating as a properly done Amish fried egg should.

“There were rumors once,” her mother continued, “that she might have been seeing a Mennonite boy. Must have been when she was around eighteen. My! It’s been so long ago, I can’t remember exactly. No one could ever prove it. She was already a church member. Her dating a Mennonite would have caused terrible problems, which of course it should have. Maybe her heart was broken,” Mattie mused.

Rebecca found her voice. “You’re just imagining things, Mother. That’s just gossip.”

“Probably,” her mother allowed. “A person just thinks about it at times.”

“Emma was a good person,” Rebecca replied, bringing the last egg out of the pan.

The front door swung open, the noise and blast of cold air startling her. Her hand jerked and made the egg slip off the spatula and slide across the floor.

“Now you’ve made dog food out of a good egg,” her mother lamented. “We’re not like the English. They feed their pets out of cans.”

Rebecca drew in her breath sharply and knelt down on the floor to gather up the ruined egg. Getting to her feet again, she dumped it into the slop bucket. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Well, if you ever have a mind to marry that John, be more careful,” her mother said. “Young couples have a hard enough time. Starting up and all. Wasting even an egg can be hard.”

“I know,” Rebecca muttered, not because it was true, but because she wished she could tell her mother that a greater danger than broken eggs lay between her and a marriage to John.

She suddenly wanted to reach out, as if for air, to tell her mother real good and loud that she was engaged since yesterday to John, that the wedding was planned for next spring. To tell her about the wonderful time at the bridge yesterday. To tell her how John looked at her, how he had held her hand…but she could not.

Rebecca came out of her thoughts to find her mother staring at her. “Now, now, it wasn’t that bad. It’s an egg. I didn’t mean to be that hard on you,” her mother said. “I’m sure John will understand a broken egg now and then. He probably has enough money to cover that, but you certainly shouldn’t be thinking about that as a reason to be marrying him.”

“I wasn’t,” Rebecca said, returning to her troubled thoughts.

“Pancakes!” Lester’s voice boomed with good cheer at the kitchen door. Having put his chore coat and boots away in the basement, he had come up silently on them. “What a treat. Now if we just had maple syrup, things would be perfect.”

“We
have
maple syrup,” Mattie said, making a face at him. “You don’t think I would forget. I always keep some around for you.”

“Well, times are hard,” he grinned. “You never know.” Catching sight of Rebecca’s face, he paused. “What’s wrong with her?”

“You startled her when you came in. She just lost an egg to the dogs. I made things worse. Told her that John couldn’t afford a wife who lost too many eggs. What an awful thing to say to a young girl in love. I should have my mouth taped shut at times. Now come, Rebecca. It’s really nothing at all. It’s just an egg.”

Rebecca nodded numbly, as if it was the egg that troubled her.

“Ya,” Lester allowed, “one egg more or less. It won’t matter.”

“Why aren’t the children here?” Mattie asked. “Breakfast is ready.”

“I forgot to call them,” Rebecca said, sorry to have made yet another mistake.

“Well, that’s easy enough,” Lester said, moving toward the stair door quickly. He hollered up the stairs, a full bellow, full of hunger for pancakes, “Breakfast, children. Now!”

There was an instant response. The sound of covers being pulled from creaky beds and feet hitting the floor was followed a little later by a patter on the stairs. Each child slid into his or her seat, and the table was quickly lined with five sleepy-eyed children, hungry for the pancakes set before them.

“Let’s pray now before we all starve. Shall we?” Lester said, as the children bowed their heads in silence. Then after the “Amen,” there were no sounds except those made by a hungry family at the breakfast table.

Mattie brought up the first conversation, after pulling the last pancake onto her plate. She announced quite suddenly, “Aunt Leona is having her baby, probably next week. She’s asked for Rebecca to help out. What do you think, Lester?”

“When would she need to go?” Lester asked, turning options over in his mind.

“There’s a load coming through on the way to Milroy. Saturday, I think,” Mattie said. “That might be a good time to catch a ride.”

“Who’s going to Milroy?” Lester asked. “On Sunday, people were just here from there.”

“No, this is a load from Holmes County,” Mattie said. “They want to be here by Wednesday, then travel out on Saturday morning. Older people. They have relatives here and in Milroy.”

Lester nodded in understanding.

Rebecca finally found her voice, grasping the implications of her mother’s words. “But what about the chores around here? And I’d have to tell John. Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“That’s because I didn’t know. I only made my mind up this morning,” Mattie replied. “Leona has been after me about this, but I figured there would always be local help. Then I just got a letter from her on Saturday, saying that there have been two other births in the area, and two more are expected right soon. There does seem to be a real need. I’ll mail a letter this morning, telling her that you are coming, if that’s okay with you, Lester. I think it would be good for you to go, Rebecca. Matthew can take care of your chores. If not, I can fill in.”

“Fine with me,” Lester said, shrugging his shoulders. This was women’s business, and he would only get so involved, and this was his limit.

“Good, then it’s decided,” Mattie said. “You can tell John at a youth gathering this week, and I’m sure he’ll understand.”

“But…” Rebecca started to say something, but her mother interrupted.

“You’ll find a way. John will understand. It’s only for a week or so.”

Rebecca nodded, knowing John probably
would
understand, but what she really wished he would understand had nothing to do with Leona’s baby.

R
achel Byler stood by the kitchen window, washing the dishes. The suds rose on the water, stirred by her vigorous hand movements. And in her mind, thoughts were rising to the surface too, not yet forming a solid plan of action.