The Amish Nanny (20 page)

Will hugged his grandmother, and then he lifted his daughter and spun her around.

“Christy Gundy,” he cried happily, “you are going to Europe! No one in this family has been there since 1877!”

She rolled her eyes, but once he set her back down and let her go she threw her arms around his waist and hugged him tightly. I could see in her closed eyes and scrunched forehead how very much she loved him. Just because she wasn't expressive with her words didn't mean the feelings weren't there, somewhere deep inside.

Then Christy followed Alice toward the door, a cloth bag over her shoulder and her coat in her other hand. After a quick goodbye to Will, I fell in behind. At the doorway I glanced back to see him still standing there. His face was solemn, but when he spotted me he grinned and waved. I smiled and waved in return before continuing on to the train.

We settled into our seats, with Christy and Alice side by side and me facing them. As we waited for the train to leave the station, Alice said when she was Christy's age she had ridden a train with her brother to visit their older sister in Maryland. Later, as a teenager, she had gone with another sister and her husband on a mission trip to Honduras.

Christy's eyes grew wide. “In Central America?”

“Yes. I was gone seven months.”

Christy was clearly impressed. And so was I.

Alice leaned back against the seat. “As the youngest of fifteen children, I was always tagging along with someone.” She turned her gaze out the window. “They have all passed away, though. Every single one of them except me.”

The train lurched a little and Christy held on to her armrest. When we started moving, Alice clapped her hands together, her moment of sorrow behind her, and we all smiled.

“Oh, girls!” she exclaimed. “Our adventure begins!”

Adventure, indeed. As the train continued to pick up its pace, I felt as if my very soul was rising up inside of me, breaking free from something, surging with strength for whatever lay ahead. Thinking back to the last time I was on a train, I remembered the prayer I'd uttered that one morning, asking God to bless me with even greater adventures ahead. Now here I was traveling to Europe! I knew there was no way that any of this could have happened unless He'd made it so.

The scenery zipping by outside the window mesmerized Christy, and when she wasn't being lulled by it, she was staring at our fellow passengers. A businessman spoke nonstop on his cell phone as he worked away on his laptop. A woman dressed in a short skirt and high heels sat across the aisle from us, her head back against the seat and her eyes closed. Christy stared at the woman, soaking in the scene, until Alice gently patted her great-granddaughter's knee and shook her head. Christy stopped.

A woman with an infant and a little boy sat a couple of rows ahead of us. The little boy kept turning around to stare at Christy. The mother seemed too tired to care. I smiled at the little boy, and he shyly hid his head for just a minute but then grinned, his eyes twinkling.

Three hours later, when the train pulled into New York's Penn Station, I was practically bouncing in my seat with excitement. I'd always wanted to see New York. When others bemoaned the crime and worldliness, I defended it for the museums and the architecture and the people. I knew there would be no museums for me this time—and maybe never—but I was excited to see the city life just the same.

Once we'd collected our bags, we followed the signs to the main lobby, grateful that Daniel had told us to get suitcases that had wheels on them. Each of us rolling a bag behind, we moved quickly up the wide hallways, but everyone else seemed to be walking even faster, streaming around us as if we were rocks in a river. People were in such a hurry that they scarcely even noticed our unusual garb, which came as a welcome relief, especially compared to my trip out West.

When we reached the lobby, it was easy to spot the big schedule board hanging from the ceiling at its center. The three of us made our way to it and then stood directly underneath, as instructed, to wait for the man who was to meet us there. I didn't know what he looked like, just that his name was George Mast, and that he would be escorting us to our hotel and would likely take us to dinner as well. Daniel would be joining up with us at some point later this evening.

As we waited for the man to show up, I asked Alice what she knew about him, and she explained that George was Daniel's partner in their new business venture.

“What kind of business?”

“Why, their tour company, of course. Didn't we tell you about that?”

I shook my head and then listened as she explained further. She said that Daniel and George had been working for months putting together a new tour company, one that would serve the needs of Plain travelers—Amish, Mennonite, Brethren, and more. Their main focus was going to Anabaptist heritage tours, primarily in Europe. In fact, that was how Daniel had first become involved with our property deed situation. He'd been in Langnau doing research on several potential tour stops when he was approached by the Wasserdorf Historical Society and asked to help with the hydro plant issue.

“I have the feeling that if we can wrap this legal stuff up in time that George and Daniel would like to practice a little of their tour-guiding on us afterward,” she added.

I smiled, thinking that we'd probably make quite an interesting sight as we trouped around: three Amish women and two Mennonite men, with an age span between youngest and oldest of more than sixty years.

Holding tightly to Alice's hand as we continued to wait, Christy asked her great-grandmother how we were going to recognize the man if we'd never met him before. Though George was a Mennonite, he wasn't Old Order, so we didn't even know what he'd be wearing.

“We don't have to recognize him, dear,” Alice replied brightly. “We're just going to wait right here until
he
finds
us
.”

Christy looked to me as if for confirmation, so I winked and said, “We're much easier to spot than your average tourist, don't you think?”

She giggled and looked away.

Ten minutes later, we were still standing there, waiting, when Christy began to get antsy.

“I'm tired,” she said.

“We all are,” Alice answered.

“And hungry.”

“We'll get dinner when we get to the hotel.” Alice pulled a bag of peanuts from her purse and handed them over. Christy took them from her sullenly, but at least she complained no further.

Finally, a man with a beard and no mustache emerged from the crowd and came toward us, a broad smile on his face.

“Hello!” His voice rang with enthusiasm. “Mrs. Beiler? Miss Rupp? Miss Gundy?”

He was George, no doubt. A man of about fifty, he had gray hair and a round belly, and he was dressed Plainly in suspenders, a plaid shirt, and black trousers. He held a coat over one hand and a satchel in the other, and I realized that the reason he was late was probably because he'd just come from a train himself.

We all shook hands and then he helped with our bags, leading us through the throngs of people not upstairs to the exit but instead down a side hallway, to the subway. After handing us tokens and showing us how to move through the turnstiles, George explained that we would be getting on here and going down to the financial district, which was close to the harbor. We'd spend the night at a hotel there and then board the ship in the morning.

We reached the area beside the tracks and waited for the subway to come. Nearby stood a man whose bare arms, neck, and even part of his face were covered with tattoos. With him was a woman who had tattooed arms as well, along with piercings all over her ears and nose. I had to force myself not to stare, but then I noticed Alice was staring too, not to mention Christy. It was practically impossible not to.

After a little wait we heard a distant rumble followed by the startling appearance of a sleek silver subway train that screeched to a stop in front of us. After a moment its doors slid open with a whoosh.

“This is us,” George said, moving us forward into the train. We all managed to make it on board with our bags intact, but just barely. We hadn't even been able to sit before the doors slid closed again and we were being propelled forward.

I glanced over at Alice, who was standing across from me, gripping a silver pole so tightly her knuckles were white. An orange plastic seat was open right behind her, so I caught her eye and motioned for her to take it. Once she did, Christy leapt forward and squeezed into the seat with her as well. That left me and George to wrangle all of our bags and make sure they didn't tip over and nick anyone in the shins, especially not the tattooed guy, who had pulled out a small knife and was using it to clean his fingernails.

At the next stop a woman in a very normal-looking business suit stepped aboard, but as soon as she settled across from me, I realized that the large purse she was carrying wasn't a purse at all. Instead, it had mesh windows on each end—and a little dog inside! I hoped Christy would notice it, but she was still focused on the couple with the piercings.

Fifteen minutes later, George announced that we were almost to our stop. The next time we came to a halt and the doors opened, the four of us were ready. As one, we got off, gripping our bags tightly and moving forward against the throng of people who were waiting to get on.

Leading the way through the crowd, George was clearly in his element, but I was worried for Alice, who seemed pale and shaken. Once the train had pulled away and the crowd of people had thinned out, I told George we needed a moment to regroup.

“Oh! Of course!” he said, glancing back at the three of us and realizing what was going on. Taking Alice by the arm, he led her over to a bench near the wall. It was filthy, but she gratefully plopped right down on it anyway, apologizing for the delay. Looking at her as she sat there resting, for a moment I was afraid she might not be up to the trip, physically speaking. But then I decided this was more about her being overwhelmed than being exhausted. To be honest, I had found my first-ever subway ride pretty overwhelming as well.

When Alice decided she was ready to continue, George led us to an elevator tucked in near the stairs, and though it was a tight squeeze, we all managed to fit inside. Once its doors opened again, we emerged at street level. We, who were used to a horizontal world, now found ourselves stepping out into a vertical one, an astonishing jumble of towering skyscrapers, flashing signs, and honking horns. This place was amazing—and about as different from our Lancaster County landscape as I could imagine.

“Now we'll walk to our hotel,” George announced, taking the handle of Alice's bag and once again leading the way.

“Will Daniel be there?” Christy asked, falling in step behind him.

“Not until later. He's doing research right now at the New York City Historical Society. He'll probably stay till they close.”

We continued walking, and after a few minutes Christy spoke again.

“How much farther is it?” she asked with a slight whine to her voice.

George said it was just a few blocks. But those blocks were long, and as we continued, Christy's steps seemed to grow shorter and shorter. I kept an eye on her, concerned for her health. Then I remembered her saying how much she hated to walk and realized she was just being lazy.

I felt a little nervous when George paused at a street corner, pulled a map from his pocket, and compared it with the signs overhead. But then, after craning his neck to look in several directions, he finally grinned and pointed off to our right. Sure enough, halfway up the block was a sign indicating
The Harbor Hotel
, though it was hard to imagine a harbor anywhere around here when all we could see were skyscrapers.

Alice and Christy and I were soon settled in our room, which was small but clean, with a large window, two medium-sized beds, and a tiny little bathroom. Alice still looked tired, so I insisted that she stretch out on the bed to relax. As she did, I went into the bathroom with my comb to tidy my hair. All the while Christy busied herself with flipping various light switches on and off before turning on the television and playing with the remote control. Just when I was starting to get a headache from the barrage of sound, Alice told her that was enough and made her turn it off.

In the quiet, I tried to remember what I'd heard about Christy's medical condition. I wasn't sure of the name, but it had something to do with her heart and was the same disorder that had caused her mother's death. Lydia had died because she hadn't even know she had the condition and had ignored numerous symptoms, including extremely high blood pressure during pregnancy. My aunt Marta had been Lydia's midwife, and despite Marta's many warnings on the subject, Lydia had never gone to her doctor to get checked out. Consequently, she'd ended up dying in childbirth. Christy, on the other hand, wouldn't share the same fate, simply because knowledge was power. Being fully aware of her condition meant Christy could safeguard her health in all of the ways that would prevent the same thing from ever happening to her.

Daniel still hadn't shown up by dinnertime, so when we met up with George in the lobby, he said we would have to eat without him. George took us to a little Italian restaurant down the street, and though I'd never had real Italian food before, I found it to be quite tasty. Christy was especially taken with an appetizer called “calamari,” though once George explained it was fried squid, she seemed to lose her appetite for it a bit.