The Outcast (11 page)

“Just leftovers,” I mumble, knowing this is Ida Mae’s end to a conversation I had only found the courage to begin.

At three in the morning, a train rattles past, its shrill whistle blows, and Eli awakens and begins to cry. Only this is not his normal cry, but a high-pitched gasp that sounds more animal than human. Clambering down the bunk bed ladder so fast a splinter spears my palm, I lean over Eli’s bed, which is hemmed in with blankets and pillows, and put a hand to his chest. Eli’s blue eyes are open wide and his face pinched as his tiny rib cage fights to draw in oxygen.

Whisking Eli’s sweaty body up from the bed so fast he startles and cries even louder, I sprint across the carpet and fling open the door to Ida Mae’s bedroom. It is as black as a cellar, so I flip on the lights and run back toward her tiny bathroom. Twisting on the faucets above the claw-foot tub, I blast hot water as fast as it will go and reach over with my foot to kick the bathroom door shut. I sit on the closed toilet seat with my infant gasping on my lap. It seems like his lips are turning blue even as his face is tomato-red.

Five seconds pass before the bathroom door smacks open and an irate Ida Mae is standing there with her wild hair askew and flannel nightgown twisted up around her knees. “What in the world!” she cries. “You got a mind to wake the dead as well as the living?” Then her groggy eyes seem to clear because she runs over to the basket where she keeps her towels and hands one to me. “Put this over your head,” she instructs. “And lean over that steam. If we can just get him to cough up that phlegm, he’ll be fine.”

“But what if he
can’t
?” I am surprised to hear my words are as high-pitched as Eli’s wheezing.

“He will, Rachel-girl.” Ida Mae puts a hand to my cheek, which I didn’t know until now was wet with tears. “He’s gotta.”

The whole night passes this way: Ida Mae cycling out wet towels that she drapes over my head so the bathtub’s hot steam will rise up and be trapped, helping free my son’s clogged lungs. When his coughing becomes violent, I jerk back the towel and stare down at Eli as he struggles to breathe.

Ida Mae asks, “Should we take him to the emergency room?”

I look up at her standing over my shoulder and see genuine fear in her eyes. “I don’t have insurance.”

“That don’t matter,” Ida Mae says. “Not when he’s bad as this.”

My
mamm
nursed Leah and me through numerous bouts of childhood illness without once having to take us to the
doktor
, but I don’t know the herbal remedies she used and would not have the supplies on hand even if I did.

I can feel my resolve weakening. I am about to have Ida Mae drive us to the closest hospital when Eli’s body stiffens, his breathing stops, and then his mouth projects a clump of mucus so small, it seems impossible it could have been enough to block his passageways.

But it was, for as soon as it passes, his rasping coughs return to wheezes and he’s breathing again.

I then start crying so hard that Eli does too. I press him against my shoulder and rub and rub his back, which feels so bony and vulnerable after he had to put up such a fight.

Ida Mae leans down to massage my shoulders with tough old hands, and if the situation weren’t so serious, I would smile at the image the three of us must make. “You did real good, Rachel-girl. Your baby boy’s gonna be just fine. Now y’all both just need some sleep.”

“Thanks,” I murmur in between sobs.

She pats my back. “Think nothing of it. Any woman with a momma heart woulda done the same.”

AMOS

Leah takes a seat at the long pine
disch
that had been a wedding gift from Tobias’s first wife’s parents and writes by the light of that oil lamp whose wick still needs trimmed. Last week, she wrote about the steady goings-on in their lives: what quilt patterns the women were making for the Fairview auction in the spring (wedding ring, spinning star, log cabin, compass, and postage stamp); how business in Copper Creek had picked up since Hostetler’s Bakery put an ad in the
Bargain Hunter
; that Matthew had lost his first tooth to his older brother, Reuben, who looped a piece of string around it and tied the string to the door,
which he then slammed with glee. Soon, though, Leah found that this piffle was not enough. The standard opening, “Greetings sent to you on the wings of love,” does not suffice for what is truly going on inside her heart, which has nothing to do with quilts, jams, or business dealings in Copper Creek. My daughter-in-law wants to reveal how she contemplated, just for an hour, leaving my son so she could rejoin her sister. She wishes she could tell Rachel that her husband forced her to choose, and although she knew it was wrong in the eyes of both God and man, she had to choose her twin. Their bond is impenetrable by distance or even death, and she cannot imagine a life apart from her. But over a month has passed, and she’s only now found the courage to commit this treasonous thought to paper.

Long after the pages blur in the flickering light, Leah sets down the pen and folds up the letter. She slips it into one of the business envelopes left over from Tobias’s days as the Copper Creek blacksmith and seals it with a quick swipe of her tongue. Leah dare not write Rachel’s address on the front in case one of the children or her husband stumbles upon the letter. Instead, she writes
Geld
and hopes the envelope’s label will discourage any interest from her children and husband.

Tonight, one week since her clandestine letter-writing began, Leah decides that she cannot risk having these letters scattered about until her and Rachel’s paths somehow cross. So she bundles them up with baling twine, spools a shawl around her shoulders, and carries them—barefoot
in the December cold—out beneath a navy sky thickened with stars. At first, Leah has no idea where to put the letters. She contemplates the barn, but fears that mice will get to the pages before she can devise a way to get them to Rachel. Then she remembers the birdhouse. It is for the purple martins—a white, multitiered structure that Tobias built far more intricately than their own dwelling. The only problem with the construction was that the children had wanted to peer down inside the birdhouse to see if any eggs were about to hatch. Accommodating only when it comes to his dead wife’s offspring, Tobias agreed. Instead of suspending the birdhouse on a standard twenty-foot pole, he kept it close to the ground, and he put a hinge on the roof so it could flip up to reveal the purple martin hatchlings. But in the past twelve seasons, not one purple martin has occupied the dwelling because it is so vulnerable to predators—children and cats alike. The beautiful birdhouse has just hunkered down beneath the sycamore, wilting in the elements.

Leah remembers all of this and, smiling, flits down the porch steps and across the yard. Lifting up the roof to the purple martin house like a benevolent giant, she places the bundled letters inside. She takes a step back and peers at the birdhouse from every angle, making sure the letters cannot be seen through the numerous outside holes. Reassured that they cannot, she scampers back to the farmhouse and into her marriage bed as quickly as she had left it, eager for Ida Mae Speck’s next visit to
Copper Creek, when Leah can retrieve the letters explaining her plans to her sister.

Ida Mae’s next visit to Copper Creek happens sooner than Leah could have anticipated. With Christmas just around the corner, Ida Mae has numerous orders for “Amish” wares: dollhouses and miniature furniture to fill them; quilted tea cozies, hot pads, and pillowcases; crocheted baby sweaters and bonnets in every spectrum of the pastel rainbow.
Englischer
tourists are even willing to pay twice as much for candles that supposedly last longer when made by Amish hands. To Rachel’s chagrin, Ida Mae forces her to ride along to Copper Creek by saying that she needs help loading the truck with these orders. But Rachel knows better. Living with Ida Mae for a month and a half has allowed Rachel to see through her employer’s many well-intentioned guises, and this is the worst of them all.

Ida Mae does not want Rachel running from her problems as she herself did twenty years ago, so she gives Rachel an ultimatum: face them head-on or lose her job. Of course, Ida Mae might have been kidding when she threatened this, but Rachel does not want to take the chance. As soon as Rachel transformed the little back room of the store into her reflexology office, word spread throughout Blackbrier about the soft-spoken Amish girl (Ida Mae was right:
Englischers
don’t know the difference between
Mennonites and Amish) who massages people’s feet for twenty-five dollars an hour. Rachel’s meager income tripled within the month. She is not about to let such a financial opportunity slip through her grasp, even with Ida Mae receiving 30 percent of her earnings, for Rachel knows another one might not present itself.

Job security is the only reason she is now riding along with Ida Mae, and it’s easy to see that Rachel is not enjoying the trip. During the past weeks, Rachel has forced herself to forget everything about Copper Creek: the events leading up to her banishment; the loss of her sister who lives only an hour away; how revolted Tobias’s face was when—on the day of my funeral—he reached out a welcoming hand, and then realized who he had extended it to; every scene between herself and Judah. Rachel tries to remember why she sent him away, knowing if he were here, she would be embracing a future with him rather than sifting through the past to find out where she went so wrong.

As the diesel truck swerves off the highway and begins switchbacking up the craggy mountainside, every memory comes rushing back, and with them, a pain of regret that causes tears to nip at Rachel’s eyes. The emotional change within the cab is like snow tumbling through a sunroof in the middle of July. But Ida Mae says nothing, just turns down the radio and covers Eli’s legs with a blanket when he kicks it from his car seat onto the floor.

“We’re stopping by Hostetler’s first,” Ida Mae says once the community’s buildings come into view.

Rachel nods but doesn’t say anything, as she fears she will be sick. It makes no sense how she could have lived in Copper Creek for so long, and had Tobias not forced her to leave that fall day they had their confrontation in the hospital, she would
still
be living in the very place where she had conceived a lifetime of guilt and one innocent child. If everything weren’t so complex, Rachel could almost envision walking up to the new Bishop King and thanking him for blackmailing her into leaving Copper Creek. This would never happen, of course, but the image still helps Rachel breathe easier as Ida Mae pulls the truck up outside the bakery and shifts into park.

“You staying?” Ida Mae asks, turning off the ignition.

Rachel shakes her head and somehow manages a smile. “No, I’ll go inside. It’ll be nice to see everyone again.”

Nodding, Ida Mae says, “That’s my girl,” and reaches over to pat Rachel’s knee. Ida Mae then hops out of the cab, slides two long containers from the covered truck bed, and swaggers up to the bakery door.

Cinching the blanket extra tight around her son so the cold air won’t induce another coughing spell like the ones he’s been battling on and off for weeks, Rachel steps out of the cab and cradles him against her bosom, staring at the line of quaint Copper Creek stores. It is amazing what comfort such a tiny child can bring. Rachel understands that without this child, her soul would have been shattered by the betrayal she’d so callously dealt, even as her life beneath her sister’s roof appeared the same as it had before. She is glad
her facade wasn’t allowed to continue; she is glad her sin was truly found out. Without it having bloomed inside her for the entire community to see, she would be hiding it to this very day—deep within the Pandora’s box of her chest—the same as Eli’s father is doing.

Rachel

I hoped the Hostetlers would treat me with the casual respect of a customer, but they stare right through Eli and me as if we are transparent. Ida Mae is too busy stacking pound and hummingbird cakes into plastic containers to notice their slight, and I am thankful. The two things I have learned about my employer over the past month and a half are that she is protective of those she loves and that she has no qualms about speaking her mind.

“There’s seventy here,” Ida Mae says, snapping the lids shut and wiping her brow. “I ordered eighty. Didn’t you get my fax?”

Lemuel nods, but his wife, Elvina, comes bustling around the counter and peers in at Ida Mae’s containers, which are already condensing with steam from the hot baked goods. I can see Elvina’s miserly mouth working as she counts everything again.

“What?” Ida Mae puts hands on her hips. “You think I’m gonna lie?”

I face the row of angel food cakes—plain, strawberry, lemon, and chocolate chip—to keep my smile from giving my amusement away. I had lived in Copper Creek for only a few weeks when I understood that no one dares cross Elvina Hostetler, not even her husband, who’s watching this interaction with an apologetic expression on his ancient face.