Chapter Seven
Grace
We pulled into the driveway of my family's home a few hours after leaving Chicago, and after I thanked my driver and paid him, I turned and took in the familiar sight of the white house set off away from the road. I'd changed into my Amish cotton dress at the last rest stop, but had waited to put on my kapp until I got out of the car. It felt stiff and confining, and I hated the way it covered my hair and made me look like every other woman in Corner Grove. But that was the point.
The neatly maintained yard and my mother's small vegetable garden were perfectly aligned with the laundry line Dat had strung off to one side. It was achingly empty on a day when it should have been full of bedding, clothing, and towels. To the left of the house was the barn where Dat kept the buggy and his farming equipment in addition to the hay that was harvested each fall and used to feed the three horses and two cows during the winter.
Off to the left of the barn was another, smaller barn where Blackie, and Belle, our buggy and plow horses, lived with Greta and Genevieve, the family milk cows. Dat had let Faith and me name the cows when he'd first bought them, and we'd settled on names that sounded glamorous. When the Bishop had frowned and told Dat that it wasn't proper for Amish girls to be thinking about such worldly things, Dat had simply nodded to acknowledge his brother's displeasure and then sat us down for a chat about worldly pursuits.
As I looked at the barn, I could hear Dat's deep voice asking Faith and me if we understood why the Bishop was unhappy with the choice of names. We'd both shook our heads and Dat had explained that if we were choosing the names as a way of honoring God our Father, then the names were an appropriate tribute, but if we were choosing them because we wanted the cows to become more glamorous and worldly, then there were going to be problems. Faith and I had giggled at Dat's reasoning, and quickly agreed that our cows' names were Godly names. Once we'd clarified our rationale, Dat had kissed our heads and sent us off to help Mamm in the garden.
The tears threatened to rise again as I thought about all the ways in which Mamm and Dat raised us to be good, Amish girls who also felt free to make our own choices. I took a deep breath and looked over to see Verity sitting on the steps holding a bowl of shelled peas in her lap.
I could see that her eyes were puffy and red, and as soon as she was close enough, she threw her arms around me and hugged me tightly.
"I'm so glad you're home, Grace," she said choking back a sob. "Danny doesn't know about Mamm and Dat yet. How are we going to tell him, Grace?"
"Shhh, shhh," I said patting her kapp-covered head. "We'll figure it all out and everything will be okay. I promise."
"Oh Grace!" she sobbed into my shoulder. "They're gone! How will we survive without them?"
I let her cry knowing that she had most likely been keeping all of this in since she'd learned the awful news this morning. I wrapped my arms tightly around my sister and rubbed her back through the rough, cotton dress she wore as she released her grief and anguish while fighting back my own. I was the oldest Miller daughter, and even though I'd chosen a life outside of the Amish community I'd grown up in, I still felt the weight of responsibility for my family. I would have to be strong for all of them as we found a way to make peace with this devastating loss.
"Verity," I said after her sobs had turned to sniffles. "Where are Faith, Hope, and Honor?"
"Faith and Hope are with their families at their own homes, but they said they'd be here tonight after supper," she said as her voice threatened to crack. "I don't know where Honor is. No one has seen her since this morning. I'm worried about her, Grace. When Jacob came to tell us what had happened, she didn't say a word. She just walked out the door and disappeared."
"She can't have gone far," I said feeling certain I knew where Honor was probably hiding out. "We'll find her. Now, what about Danny?"
"I've kept him busy all day, but he's been asking for Mamm since after dinner," she said. "I didn't know what to tell him, Grace. He's not going to understand this!"
"We'll help him, Verity," I said as I patted her cheek reassuringly. "He might not understand, but he'll be okay and he'll know he's safe and loved. We're all going to be okay."
"How do you know that?" she asked as her eyes filled with tears. "We don't have parents any longer. We're alone. We're orphans!"
"Verity, we still have each other," I said as I wrapped an arm around her shoulder and led her to the front steps. "And if we have that, we're all going to be fine. Why don't you get supper started, I'll come help you."
She nodded as she picked up the shelled peas and headed into the house. I stepped onto the porch and looked out over the yard taking it all in when I caught a glimpse of something moving in the loft over the barn. I set my case down and walked toward the barn. I quickly climbed the ladder to the loft and called out, "Honor, are you up here?"
I got no reply, but I heard movement on the other side of a large hay bale, so I walked around and found my youngest sister, barefoot and without a kapp, sitting on the floor with her knees pulled up to her chest. She didn't look up when I called her name, so I knelt next to her and put an arm around her shoulder. She shrugged it off without looking at me.
"Honor, it's okay to be mad," I said softly. "I'm mad, too. And sad."
She stared straight ahead as I shifted so that I was sitting cross-legged off to one side. My youngest sister was the most stubborn of the Miller clan, though Dat would have claimed that title belonged to me. She was a smaller, more compact version of all the sisters with the same wheat-blonde hair and pale blue eyes that we had all inherited from Mamm's side of the family. Only Daniel had inherited Dat's dark hair, but he had the same, pale-blue eyes as the rest of us, and when we were all together, it was easy to see the family resemblance.
"Are you okay?" I asked. I was certain I knew the answer to that question, but I wanted to give Honor a way start to talk about what she was feeling if she wanted to. She was the child who had always asked why, and had never accepted a simple answer for anything. She hated sitting still and as a result the frowning Bishop often sent her out of Sunday services.
It wasn't that Honor was opposed to the Amish way of life, she just didn't accept the simple answer of, "It's God's will," when it came to understanding why things happened. Now that she was seventeen, the answers she wanted were much more complex and while Mamm and Dat had tried their best to provide her with them, it became more apparent that Honor didn't quite fit into the Amish community. During my Christmas visit, Mamm had asked me if I would let Honor live with me during her rumspringa, and I'd agreed.
I rubbed my sister's arm as I watched her jaw clench and release, and I knew she was wrestling with whatever emotions were threatening to overwhelm her. I also knew better than to push her before she was ready.
"I'm going to go help Verity with dinner," I said softly. "We're going to break the news to Danny tonight, and I would like it if you could be there."
Her response was an almost imperceptible nod, and once I'd gotten that, I got up and climbed down the ladder and headed back toward the house. Halfway across the drive I turned and looked out over the fields that ringed our property and marveled at the precision with which Dat had planted the wheat. The amber stems rose out of the ground in a unified manner that made it look like the field was covered in a soft carpet. I pictured Dat behind the horses earlier this spring as he'd sown the seeds and knew that he always looked forward to this time of year when the breezes blew across the crops, causing them to bend and sway in nature's dance.
I wiped a lone tear from my cheek before grabbing my suitcase and heading into the house. The next few hours were going to be difficult, but once we'd broken the news to Daniel, we'd start to move forward.
#
"Gracie!" my brother signed as I entered the kitchen. "You're home, Gracie! Does Mamm know you were coming?"
"Well hello, Daniel," I said as I mustered a smile to match his as he wrapped his arms around me and rocked me back and forth. "I'm so happy to see you, little brother!"
My brother Daniel was the last child born in our family. I had just turned thirteen when Mamm announced she was pregnant again. She was quite a bit older than most Amish mothers at that point because she and Dat had married late and started their family when they were in their mid-twenties. With five girls, the community had teased Dat about his lack of an heir. He'd taken it in good stride, claiming that girls were all he'd ever need since they'd eventually get married and bring their husbands into the fold, but I knew they'd both longed for a son.
Everything went according to plan as Mamm's pregnancy progressed, and she occasionally visited the doctor in town just to make sure that nothing was wrong. The Amish believe in staying outside of the reach of English technology and prefer to rely on instinct and a deep faith in God for all things, so Mamm never had any tests done or thought about the possibility that something might go wrong. If anything was going to go wrong, then it was God's will.
When Mamm's time came, the midwife arrived and helped her deliver the newest addition to our family. There were shouts of joy as the midwife brought Daniel down to Dat.
It soon became obvious that there was something different about our new brother, but when we asked Mamm, she would only smile and say, "He is a special gift from God, and we will treat him just like we treat every one of you." We followed Mamm's lead and treated Daniel like one of us, but from the beginning he was challenged in ways that none of us had been. It took a long time to feed him his bottle because he had trouble swallowing and often would spit up much of what he'd eaten, and it took him longer to reach the milestones that Honor had reached because he didn't have the muscle control or strength she did.
"What's wrong with Daniel?" I asked Mamm one afternoon not long after his birth. We were we preparing pies for the church dinner, and Mamm rolled the crusts while I filled them. "Why does he seems so different from us?" Mamm simply replied that boys were different, but we knew better. He'd been a quiet baby who never cried or got fussy. Faith had once asked Mamm if it was normal for boy babies to be so silent, and Mamm had said, "I wouldn't know, but I thank God that he is so good natured and unfussy!"
As he grew, Danny continued to be the quiet one. He smiled and nodded at us all when we talked to him, but he never uttered a sound in return. By his first birthday, Mamm and Dat had grown worried about the fact that Danny wasn't yet talking, so they asked for permission to take him to see a specialist. The doctor performed a range of hearing tests on Danny and then pronounced him absolutely normal on every level. Mamm asked why he wasn't talking yet, but the doctor had no answer for her.
He suggested that there might be a wide range of causes, and said that further testing would be necessary to narrow down the reasons for Danny's silence. Mamm and Dat both said that no further testing was necessary, and that they would simply accept Danny's condition as God's will. The doctor argued that if the cause was physical, then maybe surgery or therapy could help Danny learn how to speak. My parents had calmly repeated their decision and then brought Danny home.
The next day, we all began learning sign language so that we could communicate with him. Mamm turned the learning into a game and Danny had taken to the lessons like a fish in water. For the rest of us, it was a struggle to balance lessons with our other responsibilities, but Dat reminded us that it was part of our duty to perform good works and if communicating with our younger brother wasn't something important to us, then we might want to reevaluate our commitment to God.
"Mamm didn't tell me you were coming," he signed as he pulled back and looked up at me.
"No, she doesn't know," I said shaking my head trying to swallow the lump that rose in my throat and threatened to choke me.
"We better tell her, don't you think?" Daniel signed as he took my hand and tugged me toward the front sitting room where Mamm usually sat at this time of day mending clothing or reading verses from her family Bible while Verity and Honor did the mending.
"Gracie! Gracie! Let's tell Mamm!" Daniel signed excitedly with one hand as he tugged on my arm with his other pulling me toward the front room. I looked down into his smiling face and, for a moment, felt completely helpless.
"Let's go help Verity by setting the table, okay?" I suggested, trying to distract him. If I could hold off the questions about Mamm and Dat until Faith and Hope arrived, then we could try and explain what had happened together. My main concern was making sure that Daniel knew he would always be loved and cared for.
"Okay, Gracie!" he signed cheerfully as he dropped my hand and headed for the kitchen to gather the plates and utensils. When I followed him, he held up the napkins and signed that he'd fold them in a special way for dinner.
"That would be nice, Danny," I said facing the empty room. I looked around and felt the enormity of Mamm's absence as I realized she'd never sit in her chair quilting or darning socks again. I bit my lip to hold back the tears as Verity called me over to the stove to help her prepare supper.
"Let me take my things upstairs out of the way, okay?" I said to her as we exchanged a look over Danny's head. She nodded and I grabbed my suitcase and slipped out of the room.
I quickly climbed the stairs and dropped my suitcase off in the bedroom I had once shared with Faith and Hope. There were three twin beds placed at different angles, each with a small, wooden desk that Dat had made positioned next to it. The desks were old and worn as many a homework assignment had been done while sitting at them. Mamm had made the quilts on each bed using the scraps of fabric each of us had liked best as the base. They were traditional flower garden quilts that had been on the beds as long as I could remember. Mine was blue, Faith's was purple, and Hope's was green. As I sat down on my bed and ran my hand over the complex pattern of fabric stitched together and sewn by hand by my mother, the tears began to flow.
I raised my hand to my mouth and held in the sobs that were forming in my chest. I couldn't break down now. There wasn't time for me to grieve; my family needed me and I had to step in and keep everything in order until we could figure out how to live without our parents.
"Grace!" Faith called from the living room. "Come down and help with dinner!"
"Coming!" I called as I stood up and looked around the room one more time. No matter how far I'd gone away from the farm, whenever I came home, I felt like a child again. Today my childhood was officially over. I nodded, smoothed my dress, wiped my eyes, and steeled myself for what was about to come.
"Gracie, it's good to see you," Hope said as she signed to Danny to get the glasses out and fill them up. "How was your trip down?"
"Good, it was good," I said as we exchanged silent looks of pain.
"It's good to have you home for a bit," Faith said as she stirred the vegetables cooking on the stove. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Verity bite her lip as she mixed peas into the salad she had fixed.
"It's good to be home," I said trying to keep things from going south before we ate. "Where are Jacob and Samuel?"
"Oh, they're taking care of some farm business," Hope said in a tone that was a little too bright. "We thought it would be nice to have a family dinner here with all of you."
A small sob escaped Verity's lips and I walked over and put my arm around her whispering encouraging words. Danny looked up from his place at the table and signed, "What's wrong with all of you? You seem very sad."
Hope and Faith shot me looks that told me it was time to break the news. I knew the task was going to fall to me, so I slid in next to Danny on the bench at the table and put my arm around him.
"Where's Honor?" I asked.
"Right here," Honor said as she opened the back door and walked into the kitchen, covered in straw and dirt.
"Okay, well, Danny, we are sad because we have to share some very sad news with you," I began. I had no plan for breaking this news to my fifteen-year-old brother, so I just plowed ahead hoping that my sisters would jump in when necessary. "Danny, Mamm and Dat were in an accident this morning."
"Are they okay?" he frantically signed. "Where are they?"
"No, Danny, they're not okay," I said as I felt the tears welling up again. "Danny, Mamm and Dat were badly hurt and they didn't make it."
"Didn't make it home?" he signed hopefully.
"No, they didn't survive," I said quietly. "Mamm and Dat are gone, Danny."
My brother dropped his head and sat silently staring at the table for a long time, while the rest of us stood utterly still. Suddenly, Danny brought his hands up to cover his face and then let loose a long, thin howl. My sisters and I looked at each other stunned. I squeezed his shoulder tightly as he turned and buried his face in my neck. He held out one hand and signed a single word over and over: "No."