The Outcast (12 page)

From the corner of my eye, I watch Elvina fold her arms. Their fleshiness strains against the material of her sleeves. “I just counted up seventy-three,” she says, one eyebrow raised.

“So?” Ida Mae retorts. “That still ain’t eighty.”

“Perhaps the others are in the back,” Lemuel says.

Elvina rolls her eyes. “Those are for the tea shoppe, Lemuel.”

“We could make some more before Claudette comes this afternoon.”

“We’ll do no such thing.” Wheeling back toward Ida Mae, Elvina says, “This is what happens when you don’t send us the fax the night before.”

“No,” Ida Mae says, “this is what happens when you run your business like a circus show.”

Elvina Hostetler’s nostrils flare; her mouth tightens into a hard little knot. “If you want your seven other pound cakes,
you
can wait. Not the tea shoppe.”

“If you want to keep my business, you’d better learn how to treat your customers.”

With this, Ida Mae jerks up the two plastic containers
bowing beneath the weight of fifty pound cakes and twenty-three hummingbird and starts heading toward the door. “Wait!” I call. “Let me put Eli in the truck, and I’ll help you!”

But Ida Mae is so infuriated that her burden seems to weigh nothing. Holding the awkward tubs at chest height, she stalks down the cement handicap ramp, across the gravel, and tosses the containers in the back of the truck before I can even get out of the store.

Over the roar of the truck engine, Ida Mae yells, “You coming?”

I scramble into the passenger’s side. Eli isn’t even strapped in when Ida Mae shifts into reverse and guns it out of the bakery. “That woman makes me so mad, I could spit!” she fumes.

“Have you two always been at each other like this?”

“Me and Elvina?” Ida Mae asks.

I nod.

“Yeah. She’s jealous.”

“Of you? Why?”

Pinning her eyes on me, Ida Mae says, “Believe it or not, Rachel-girl, back when I was skinny as a whip like you, I had my share of admirers.” She pulls into Mast’s Cannery and shuts off the truck. “I guess Elvina thinks that since I’m a divorced woman, I’m after anything in suspenders . . . including her husband.”

“Lemuel?” I ask.

Ida Mae pockets the keys. “I know,” she answers, shuddering. “What makes her think I’d want a piece of that?”

My heartbeat reverberating in my ears, I take Eli from his car seat and carry him up the tree-lined pathway to Verna King’s house. I have no idea why six horses and buggies are waiting in front of the barn, so I am grateful when Ida Mae opens the storm door and steps inside first. Her unique appearance and personality are a diversion until I gather my bearings and glance around. At least ten Plain women are circled in front of the
kochoffe
, the position of their bodies mimicking the unfinished compass quilt draping their laps. One hundred unadorned fingers move deftly over the vibrant fabric they are hemming in with thread as ten mouths, equally unadorned, zigzag so fast over the Pennsylvania Dutch language, it is difficult even for me—a native speaker—to understand.

Then the casual banter is broken apart by one high-pitched gasp, and I know that I have been spotted. Turning toward the source of the exclamation, I see my sister, whom I yearn to run to and throw my arms around, yet at the sight of all these Copper Creek women, my feet have forgotten how to move. I remain paralyzed by the door as Leah comes across the kitchen with her arms outstretched. I am amazed by the straightness of her spine and the blossoms in her cheeks. I feel a pang, wondering if the reason my sister is now thriving is because I am no longer here.

“Rachel!” Leah embraces Eli between our bodies. He awakens and tilts his head up to first peer at me and then
at my sister. Frightened by our identical appearance, he burrows his head in the cleft of my bosom and begins to cry.

She laughs at this, and then clasps my shoulders. “How
are
you?”

My head swims as I stare into Leah’s warm blue eyes. From her elated expression, you would never guess that I have been removed from Copper Creek, that this child in my arms is proof of my dalliance with sin. No, Leah embraces me like the father in Scripture embraced his prodigal son: without one word of complaint or censure, as if nothing I had done in my past were ever wrong. I wish I was so forgiving of the events that have transpired. But I am not. I am as filled with hatred toward myself as I am filled with hatred toward her husband, Bishop Tobias King, who has forced me away from this one person, other than my son, whom I love more than life. I know Tobias’s reasons for doing so, and I do not question them, but I
do
question what he must have told Leah for her to act in such a nonchalant manner. I have not returned to Copper Creek after a trip to another Mennonite community; I have not been gone for a few days or a few weeks, but for a month and a half. How can my sister smile at me like this? How can her eyes reflect only joy despite mine being filled with sorrow? Is she glad that I am gone from her life, that her life can now continue on its standard course in a way it never has before?

“Rachel?” At the sound of her voice, I refocus on my
sister’s face, which is erased of its winsome smile. “Rachel, do you need to sit down?”

When I cannot answer, Leah guides me into a kitchen chair, sits in the one next to it, and takes my hand in hers. I look over at my twin, who is exuding such strength and confidence, and I realize that the two of us have switched places—the comforter being comforted—that with my banishment from Copper Creek, the tables have finally turned.

An hour later, Ida Mae settles commission accounts and opens new ones for Christmas wares. Verna King uses this diverting activity to speak with me about her younger son, Judah.

“Have you heard from him?” she asks. The intensity in her eyes contradicts the relaxation of her smile. “Have you heard from Judah?”

All chatter ceases. Clutching needles and dark spools of thread, the women turn toward me with tilted ears, dogs hungry for the meat of my reply.

“No,” I say. “Have you?”

Verna shakes her head. “Ach, no. Judah left a letter saying he was going to leave; that is all.”

“Maybe he went to stay with his
freindschaft
in Lancaster?”

“I’ve contacted the Kings and the Fishers. They’ve heard nothing.”

The older woman traces the quilt pattern in her lap, but I can see from her trembling mouth and fingers that Verna King is about to cry.

Leah stands and passes her sleeping child to me. “Who wants some
fastnachts
?” she asks, dispelling the tension with the prospect of sweets.

As my sister takes requests and goes into her mother-in-law’s kitchen to fill them, Ida Mae comes over carrying three large garbage bags stuffed with quilts and a spiral notebook full of commission information balanced on top. “You ready?” she asks. I nod and give Jonathan to his
grossmammi
.

Verna leans forward and whispers, “I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable just then.”

“It’s fine,” I say. “I’m sure you’re not the only one who thought Judah was with me.”

To my surprise, Verna reaches out and clasps my wrist. “If you hear from him,” she says, “please . . . let me know.”

I tell her I will. But I don’t tell her that after the way Judah and I parted, I have a feeling she has a far better chance of hearing from him than I.

“You’re leaving?” My sister’s panicked voice echoes across the lawn. “But I haven’t gotten to . . . to give you the letter!”

“Mail it to me or something, Leah,” I call, without
turning around. “I’ve got to go. I don’t belong here. Not anymore.”

“That can change.”

I wait until Ida Mae has climbed inside the truck cab before shifting Eli to my hip and looking back. “I saw how the women in there looked at me. How Elvina and Lemuel at the bakery wouldn’t. I don’t think changing this situation is possible.”

Leah says, “Maybe it’d be easier if I just told you.”

“Told me what?”

“What was in my letter.” Smiling, she links her arm with mine. “I want to move
Mammi
and
Dawdy
into the
dawdi haus
on our land, and then you and Eli could live here . . . with them.”

“That place hasn’t been lived in since
Grossdawdy
Fisher died. Anyway, I could
not
live with
Dawdy
. I don’t have the patience for him that you do.”

“It’d take work, I know that,” she says, leading me down the sidewalk. “But just think: if you lived here with them, you and I could be
nochberen
.”

“That would be the only benefit,” I drawl. At Leah’s horrified face, for she has a different relationship with our
dawdy
and cannot begin to imagine mine, I change the subject. “You really think
Mamm
and
Dawdy
would just give up the
bauerei
?”

My sister stops walking. The tree branches overhanging the path cast a lattice of shadows across her face. “They’re losing it anyway, Rachel,” she says. “
Dawdy
’s not making
the sales he used to, and
Mammi
’s arthritis is getting so bad, she has to turn new reflexology patients away.”

“How come they didn’t tell me when they were down?”

Leah shrugs. “Maybe they didn’t want you to worry? Maybe they were ashamed? A developer’s made them a good offer, and they’re going to accept.
Dawdy
’s horses and tools will be auctioned off at New Holland next week.”

My mind reels with the weight of this news. For years after the Lancaster County area had exploded with expansion and our neighbors had cashed in on their properties and moved farther south, my parents continued turning down offer after offer. How bad must their finances be if they’re now allowing our yellow house on Hilltop Road and the land surrounding it to be transformed into another cookie-cutter subdivision?

“You and Tobias are going up for the auction, I guess?”

Leah nods.

The impromptu timing of everything is the only reason I find the courage to say, “You think he’d let me ride along?”

“I—I don’t know.” Leah looks at the cracks fissuring the sidewalk. “But I promise I’ll ask.”

“I know you will.” I reach out and give my sister a hug. With our bodies pressed so close and Eli on my hip, I can feel how our stomachs—both changed since the birth of our sons—touch each other like two halves of one whole.

“It was awful good to see you,” Leah says, her voice catching. “I’ve missed you terribly.”

“I’ve missed you too,” I whisper into her hair, and then
turn and head down the sidewalk before she can see the remorse in my eyes.

AMOS