The Outcast (5 page)

But not for long.

At his brother’s arrival, Judah stands. His features are awash with frustration as he asks, “Where is she?”

Shrugging off his jacket, Tobias hangs it on the back of the kitchen chair but keeps his hat on to further obscure his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Judah steps closer to his brother. “Yes, you do!” he hisses through his teeth. “Don’t you lie!”

Wiping Judah’s spittle from his face, Tobias says, “Would you please keep your voice down? You’re going to wake the entire
haus
.”

“Let’s go outside, then.”

Like a dog that feels secure on his own marked ground, Tobias moves closer to his brother and peers down with eyes that dare Judah to strike out the way his anger desires. “Rachel left the community,” Tobias says. “She came and told me at the hospital.”

“And who forced her to go?”

“No one. She just thought it was the best choice.”

“Best choice?” Judah’s face twists with a sneer. “Two days ago, you told me that Rachel would never leave her twin. Now you’re saying she thought that was the best choice? Bishops aren’t supposed to lie, Tobias, and this is the third lie you’ve told in the past five minutes.” Smiling without a trace of humor, Judah shakes his head. “Then again, I guess it’s fitting: you should be allowed to tell as many lies as you want, considering your life itself is one.”

Rachel

Ida Mae hops down out of the cab. I look over while freeing Eli from his car seat and stifle a gasp. This is the first time I’ve seen her outside the truck, and I never noticed that she was short. Her legs, squashed into Wranglers so tight they must be cutting off her circulation, are the same as a chicken’s: plump at the top but narrowing down to ankles that are as bony as mine. She wears mud-caked boots that lace up, and as she stalks off toward her Amish store, I see there’s a perfect worn circle on the backside of her jeans from where she keeps her tobacco tin.

After spreading a blanket on the truck seat and changing Eli’s diaper, I tug a knitted hat down over his ears and carry him across the gravel driveway toward the store.
Ida Mae comes out the green door of a tiny outbuilding attached to the main one and clomps down the three steps, waving a brass key in her hand.

“If you ever need in the store and I ain’t around, make sure you remember that I keep the key in the bathroom. I hang it on a little hook behind the curtain.” I nod, and she says, “Welp, c’mon. Don’t just stand there gawking at me, girl. Let’s go round to the front.”

I follow Ida Mae to the entrance of the square white building with a striped awning and green shutters with star cutouts. After using the porch steps to scrape mud from her boots, Ida Mae opens the glass storm door, wedges her key into the lock, and knocks open the door with a hip like a battering ram. A high-pitched bell tinkles above it.

She takes a step inside, then looks back over her shoulder. “Am I gonna hafta give you permission to breathe?”

I shake my head and enter the store right as Ida Mae flicks on the lights. It’s a small building—no bigger than most of the storage sheds Ida Mae has for sale outside—but every inch of space is organized in an attractive manner I would not have thought my new employer capable of. In the center of the store is a wooden shelving unit lined with a green gingham pattern. When Ida Mae sees me looking at it, she says, “That’s for the baked goods. I bring ’em in twice a week from Hostetler’s.”

“The bakery at Copper Creek?”

She nods. “I ain’t much of a baker myself. Don’t like such time-consuming things.”

An antique wrought-iron bed is in the far right corner of the room. It is heaped with quilts with hand-stitched nursery themes and tiny postage-stamp designs or the classic wedding-ring pattern that Amish and Mennonites like to give as housewarming gifts. I know Ida Mae must have gotten these quilts on commission from various communities because I could never imagine her hunched over “such time-consuming things” for hours and hours on end.

The shelves on the opposite wall are filled with jars of jewel-colored jams, honey with chunks of floating comb trapped inside like flies in amber, and sorghum as thick as tar. Hanging from wooden pegs are children’s Amish outfits, each complete with a boy’s suspenders or a little girl’s mini
kapp
. On a low table is a tiered arrangement of handcrafted soaps made from oatmeal, coconut oil, or cocoa powder. Each small square is tied up with brown burlap string and a cardboard tag reading,
Ida Mae’s Amish Country Store
.

“I tried that cocoa soap out once,” Ida Mae says. “But it tasted so good, I ’bout drowned in my bubble bath.”

I don’t know which causes me to laugh more: the thought of this loud-mouthed, quick-tempered woman in a gray army jacket and muddy boots taking a bubble bath, or the thought of her being such a glutton for chocolate that she would taste her own bathwater.

Regardless, the laughter takes hold of me and will not let go. Ida Mae is startled at first, for this is the most noise I’ve made yet; then she tosses her head back and laughs too.

When we have both regained our breath, Ida Mae elbows me lightly. “You didn’t know your boss was a comedian, didja?” I shake my head and she says, “Welp, Rachel-girl, get yourself prepared. There are plenty of sides to me nobody but my cats has seen.”

Ida Mae shows me the tiny back room where she keeps her containers for transporting baked goods; it will now serve as my “reflexology station.” She locks up the store and leads me to her house. Four soaring trees with knotty trunks and sweeping limbs overshadow the whitewashed dwelling with a steeply pitched roof, their leaves bathing the green tin in a tangy wash of orange and red. The small yard is enclosed by a white picket fence, and a long-haired calico with striking green eyes slinks along the fence top, mewing and arching its back in an attempt to get rubbed or attract a mate.

“Get down, you!” Ida Mae yells, swatting at the feline. But it’s obvious that Ida Mae’s bark is worse than her bite as she cradles the cat and runs rough fingers through its sleek coat. “This here’s Bathsheba,” Ida Mae says. “The last of Jezebel’s babies.”

My eyes widen at the choice of names. Depositing Bathsheba on the ground like she’s made from glass, Ida Mae straightens, claps her hands, and calls,
“Lay-dee!”
A shaggy creature gets up from where it was slumbering in the flower beds and waddles toward us. I’ve never seen an animal so
obese. Stopping in front of us, it collapses on its haunches and lifts a paw up to touch Ida Mae’s thigh.

“What
is
that?” I whisper, my voice muted by the hand over my nose.

Ida Mae hunkers over and runs two hands down the animal’s thick neck. “This here’s Lady, a golden retriever.”

Recoiling from the dog that’s decided to place her dirty paw on my dress, I say, “I’ve never seen a golden retriever so . . .”

“Fat?” Ida Mae suggests.

I nod. Ida Mae scratches the dog behind her ears. She drops to the ground and rolls onto her back. Ida Mae rubs her boot on the dog’s extended stomach, and Lady thumps her tail as drool oozes from either side of her mouth.

“Does she have a thyroid problem?” I ask, wondering if my mother has an herb we could use to fix the poor animal.

Ida Mae shakes her head. “No, ma’am. This dog here’s got a little carbo-hydrate problem. I’ve been feeding her my leftover baked goods since I opened. I think they’re starting to catch up with her.” Smacking her own backside, Ida Mae adds, “But then, I shouldn’t talk.”

Ida Mae steps over the obese animal—who’s still stretched on her back, hoping for another rub—and walks down the cracked sidewalk toward the house.

“How many cats do you have?” I glance at the line of beds under the porch and a tin nine-by-thirteen pan heaped with kibble. Having been raised on a farm, my
family’s always thought of cats as one step above mice, and that’s only because they kill them.

“Oh, I’d say ’bout fifteen or twenty, but a few of them are feral as mountain lions.” Ida Mae reaches out and touches Eli’s head, which I don’t like, since she has just been rubbing on Lady—a dog who does not live up to her name. “But don’t you worry, Rachel-girl, they don’t come in my house. I got a little shed for them out back.”

Ida Mae opens the door to her house and ushers me inside. The same as in the store, I am surprised by the organization and attractiveness of the modest dwelling. There’s a fireplace flanked by bookshelves. A quilt is draped over a threadbare couch, but neither are covered in the cat hair I had steeled myself to expect. The coffee table has the same crocheted doily beneath a glass bowl filled with dark molasses candy that my parents have on theirs. Really, the only difference between this house and my parents’ is the small TV and VCR combo stowed in a painted cupboard and the gas fireplace rather than wood.

Touching my elbow, Ida Mae says, “I’ll show you to you and Eli’s room.” She leads me through a narrow doorway and points to a blue room that has a lasso and a pair of rusty horseshoes hanging from nails embedded in the far left wall. A child’s red cowboy hat dangles from a chin strap looped over the top of the bunk bed; the blue and red comforter is splashed with a Western theme. The LEGO magazines on the low chest in the right corner of the room are yellowed and the pages are curled. The window ledge
is dotted with flies and speckled with dust. Looking closer, I see that
everything
is coated in dust, which seems strange compared to the cleanliness of the rest of the house.

Holding Eli tighter, for I can feel the shadow’s coolness passing over us again, I ask, “Ida Mae? Was this room your little boy’s?”

My employer looks at me with a mixture of annoyance and dismay. “No, it wasn’t,” she snaps, and then turns to leave. Before she does, she puts one hand on the doorframe and glances over her shoulder at the child in my arms. She opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again. “The bathroom’s in my bedroom if ya need it,” she says without meeting my eyes. “It’s the size of a closet, but it works.”

“That’s fine. I’m not used to anything fancy.”

“No,” Ida Mae says, “I don’t suppose you are.”

By four in the morning, after I have counted the whistles of a dozen trains blaring past Ida Mae’s house, I am resigned to the fact that sleep will not come. Lacing my arms, I pillow them behind my head and stare up at the ceiling, which is strewn with a constellation of glow-in-the-dark stars. “Who are you?” I whisper to the sleeping Ida Mae, whose snoring is as loud as she had claimed. “How’d you leave the church?”