The Amish Nanny (2 page)

R
ECEPTION FOLLOWING
P
LEASE
RSVP
BY
A
UGUST EIGHTH

So Lexie was finally to marry her one true love, James. Eyes filling with sudden tears, I held the invitation to my face. The paper felt cool against my skin. The ribbon was soft. The smell of the ink was faint but noticeable.

God's blessings on you both
.

Blinking away my tears, I looked up the highway in each direction. With not a buggy or car or truck in sight, I began crossing the hot pavement back toward the house, my bare feet sticky against the blacktop.

Though Lexie had been raised Mennonite, she seemed to do things pretty much the way any
Englischer
would—which meant as different from here as could be. No doubt her wedding would be nothing like the ones I was used to. For starters, couples in my community wouldn't send out paper invitations like this. Instead, following a formal announcement in church, know as a “publication,” guests would be invited verbally.

At least I was familiar with the term “RSVP” thanks to my cousin Ella, who had found out about Lexie's engagement a month ago and had chattered endlessly about
Englisch
wedding traditions ever since. The last time I saw Ella, she had pulled me aside to show me a magazine made especially for brides that she'd bought in town, one with photos of beautiful dresses and handsome grooms and elegant cakes. We had flipped through it together, Ella obviously enthralled with every page, though I wasn't sure what to think. All I knew was, Amish or
Englisch
, the sacredness of the commitment was what mattered. My sister was getting married, and more than anything, I wanted to be there with her when she did.

Reaching the other side of the road, I paused at the head of our driveway, looking again at the words on the invitation and doing the calculations in my head. August fifteenth was four weeks away, plenty of time to make some sort of travel arrangements. Plenty of time.

But who was I kidding? It would never happen.

In the field to my right, a hot breeze began to rustle the green, waist-high stalks of corn. Standing there, I watched the thick leaves as they fluttered and swayed, feeling on the inside much like those cornstalks, as if my very soul were rustling and shifting in response to some deep, internal force. I had no word for that force, though I tried several. Want? Need? Hope?

Desperation
, perhaps?

So much had changed in my life recently. So many things were so completely different than they had been before. Some days, I wasn't sure who I was or what was to become of me.

For one thing, there had been changes to my health. Thanks to a medical condition that caused a rare type of anemia, I had spent my life on our farm living under the constant hovering of my worried mother and quiet father, feeling too weak to do much more than get through each day as best I could. But recently we had learned more about my disorder and had taken the needed steps to correct it. Now, thankfully, I was no longer impaired to any real extent, my sick days all but gone.

There had also been big changes in my family. After years of silence, half-truths, and out-and-out lies, my parents and several other close relatives had sat down in April with Lexie and me and come clean about the circumstances of our births. Lexie had always known she was adopted, but I never knew I had been adopted as well, the two of us raised by different families at opposite ends of the country, completely unaware that the other even existed. All of that information had helped Lexie to find healing, but for me it had done the exact opposite, creating within me new questions and doubts and confusions about who I was and where I belonged.

Changes had even come to my relationships—well, one relationship in particular. Will Gundy. The handsome young widower with three small children. The man whose glance could set my hands sweating and my heart pounding. All my life I had dreamed of being a wife and mother, but because of my condition I wasn't sure those were roles I would ever have. Then, once I had come to understand my disorder better and how to manage it, I had begun to feel as if marriage might be a possibility for me after all. I started to dream—not just of marriage, but of marriage to
Will
. I knew how I felt about him, and I just knew I could be a loving wife to him and a kind mother to his children. I thought he had feelings for me as well, but then I learned through the Amish grapevine that he was courting Leah Fisher, the bishop's daughter.

If that was really true, then I had no doubt the battle was already lost. I was no match for Leah and never could be. For one thing, my looks were far too ordinary—flyaway blond hair, angled face, dull brown eyes—especially compared to Leah, who was a striking beauty. More than her glossy hair and red lips and sparkling green eyes, though, was the very vitality of her demeanor, the musical sound of her laughter, the way she flounced around and flirted with almost everyone she met. I couldn't compete with that, couldn't even try. Instead, I would quietly bow out. Will and Leah would marry.

And I would end up alone, after all.

Suddenly, a sob gurgled from my throat. Pressing a hand against my mouth, I held it there until the urge for tears had passed. In their wake I could feel a familiar, deep ache rising up inside of me, and I knew that eventually my heart would heal and my confusion would be sorted out, but what would remain was
this
, the ache of yearning that plagued my thoughts and fueled my dreams and sometimes threatened to suck the very breath from my lungs. I was twenty-four years old but, thanks to my medical condition, had done and seen less than most children half my age. Bottom line, I wanted to
live
, to
experience
, to
explore
. Yet here I remained, still on the farm, still utterly sheltered, still sitting on the sidelines of my own life, just as I had sat out nearly every softball and volleyball game throughout my school years.

I knew without asking that my parents would never allow me to go to Oregon for Lexie's wedding. Though I was certainly old enough to make such a decision for myself, the truth was that I lived under their authority. Yearnings or not, desperation or not, this decision was theirs to make, not mine.

Turning away from the cornfield, I looked toward the pasture to my left, where a cluster of Holstein cows was standing near the fence line, calmly chewing their cud. As I stood there watching them, one gazed up at me, still chewing, her moist brown eyes lazy and content.

Slowly, I began walking up the driveway toward the house, the invitations still clutched in my hand. As I went, images of my long-lost sister filled my mind. Lexie and I had only just found each other last spring. Before then I hadn't even known she existed. But now that I did know—now that I had met her and come to know her and learned to love her—I wanted more than anything to be at her side on her special day. But how could I ever make my parents understand that?

Blinking to ward off a fresh threat of tears, I spotted a morning glory vine trying to wind its way up a fence post. Sliding the invitations into the pocket of my apron, I went over to the fence, bent forward, and yanked the vine from the ground. Standing, I wrapped it up in my hand, letting the roots trail along behind me as I continued.

Ella was no doubt facing this same dilemma across town—or she would be, as soon as her invitation came. Like me, she had grown very close to Lexie, and I knew she would desperately want to go to the wedding, even though she couldn't afford it, not to mention that she was only sixteen. At least Ella was Mennonite, which meant that her mother, my Aunt Marta, might be more agreeable to the idea than mine would be. As a general rule, Mennonites traveled more than we did.

But the Amish traveled too, sometimes. Silas Yoder, a boy I went to school with, had been out to Oregon several times with a group and even once by himself. He was planning to go alone again in a month or so. I knew lots of people who had been to Florida. One young couple had gone to California on a wedding trip.

But then there was my family. Once they moved to Lancaster County from Indiana many years ago, they had never gone anywhere since.

The pines stirred ahead, the breeze high in their branches. Sweat trickled down the backs of my knees. The front door to the house fell shut, and in the distance I could see my
mamm
headed toward me. She'd been happier lately than I'd ever seen her, with a little bit of a bounce in her step. It seemed that almost everyone had benefitted from our family's truth-revealing session last April—everyone except me.

I stopped on the front lawn, in the shade of the pine trees, and she met me there. Without speaking I handed over her invitation. She opened it and read it slowly. Then she looked at me.

“I got one too,” I said. “So did
Mammi
, though I'm sure Lexie knows our grandmother wouldn't be up to making such a trip.”

Mamm
looked down at the envelopes still in my hand and then back up at my face again.

“You want to go,” she said, more of a statement than a question.

I nodded, knowing it didn't matter what I wanted. Still, I asked, “And you?”

She shook her head. “No. I need to take care of
Mammi
.”

Of course. And now here would come her reasons why I too had no choice but to stay home.

“It would be expensive,” she added. “For you to go.”

Expensive, yes. That was one reason, a legitimate one.

“Then again,” she continued, “
Mammi
could help out with the cost.”

I swallowed hard, my eyes wide. What was she saying? That she would actually consider it? My grandmother was occasionally a source of money, if the purpose for it was deemed worthy, but I couldn't imagine my mother allowing it in this case.

Her gaze drifted off to the pasture and she bit her lip. Without looking at me she added, “You could take the train.”

Gasping, I shook my head, not wanting her to say another word unless she really meant it, unless this was an actual possibility. I swallowed again and waited until she met my eyes with her own.

“I think it would be good for you, Ada.”

I took a step back, afraid I was dreaming, afraid she would change her mind before I could even respond.

“What about my teaching?” I whispered.

“School doesn't start till September. You would have time to get ready once you got back.”

“And a chaperone?” Before she could answer, I offered, “How about Silas Yoder? He'll be going to Oregon in August.”

She laughed. “Silas is younger than you are, Ada. No, we were thinking of the new couple in our district, Samuel and Lizzie. They are riding the train out to Montana to visit relatives of hers, and they agreed to make—”

“Wait. What? You talked to them?”

Mamm
grinned, and at that moment I realized this actually might happen, that it wasn't a dream, that she wasn't going to change her mind.

“They agreed to make their trip in August,” she continued, “so that it would coincide with the timing for Lexie's wedding. They will chaperone.”

Understanding suddenly flooded my brain. “You knew already.”

She nodded. “We've been talking about it for weeks, trying to decide how it could work. Marta would like to go but can't because of her patients. Your
daed
considered it, but he'll be too busy with the farm. And, like I said, I have to be here to care for
Mammi
. Given all of that, I think Sam and Liz are the perfect solution, even if they aren't quite going all the way to Oregon. You'll only be by yourselves for a day each way. Plenty of
youngie
travel, and we think it would be a good experience for you. For Ella and Zed too.”

I stood there, dumbfounded. Zed too? Zed was Ella's younger brother, and only thirteen. “He's so young.”

“Yes, but you aren't. Not anymore.”

I knew that, but was it possible she had begun to understand it as well?

“Marta checked the train schedule and talked to Lexie,”
Mamm
added. “She and James can pick up the three of you in Portland, no problem.”

She stopped talking, waiting for me to absorb all of the information.

“And you're thinking—really thinking—we can go?” I asked finally, my heart pounding so loudly I was certain she could hear it.

She reached for my hand then and gave it a squeeze. “You've been restless,
ya
?”

I nodded. More than restless. Desperately so. I thought I'd hidden it well, but obviously I hadn't, not completely.

“A trip would be good for you, Ada. Time with your cousins. And your sister. Then you'll come home. Teach. Join the church. Settle down.” She didn't say
Get married and have a family
, but of course that was what she wanted. She smiled again. “I think it's exactly what you need.” Gesturing toward the barn in the distance, she added, “Your father is waiting for me to help him clean the tanks, but maybe later we could go over to Marta's to discuss things further. I imagine Ella and Zed are going to be quite excited.”

My mother tried to release my hand but instead I squeezed it harder. Then, impulsively, I brought it to my face, pressing her palm against my cheek.