“The one with the yellow spot on its head can’t walk. There, by the Wyandotte mama.” Another rustle of movement. “I’ll bury them,
Mamm.”
“Don’t be long bringing in the eggs. I want to speak to you.”
After I’d done my sad duty, I comforted myself watching the rest of the chicks tumble over each other, nip food away from their companions, and collapse in happy abandon for a nap under their mamas’ wings, which kept them warm on this sullen day in the hind part of April. The chicks could not know what had happened to the others, and their innocence was a joy in itself. But how fair was it that they’d only escaped because they met a standard they didn’t even know existed?
The chicken barn was sectioned off from the field horses’ stalls and the neat area where the buggies and tack were stored. That part belonged to
Dat and the boys. This part belonged in name to Mamm, and in reality to me. It was dry, cozy, and safe, and on rainy days the birds made themselves comfortable in the deep bedding of wood shavings or perched on the hay bales stacked along the wall. For me, it felt peaceful and industrious at the same time, as the hens got on with the business of laying, raising chicks, and eating. Once I’d collected the eggs, I walked slowly across the yard, drying now as spring advanced, to the kitchen door.
What did
Mamm want to speak to me about? We talked all day long. As the second eldest girl in the family, and since graduating from eighth grade three summers ago, I was her biggest help. That had been my older sister Hannah’s place, but no longer. During her season of Rumspringa, of running around, last year, Hannah had said in her letters that sher le thhelp. Thad fallen in love with life in Council Bluffs and would wait a little longer to come back to Mitternacht. Why wouldn’t she? She could stay out all night if she wanted. Talk to a boy without a dozen relatives leaping to conclusions and then into wedding plans. Learn how to drive a car like the
Englisch
, and even go to high school.
That was all well and good—for her. But she shouldn’t wait too long to decide whether she was coming back. My father had taken to falling into silence whenever her name was mentioned, and that was not so good. The thought of having to treat my own sister as
Englisch
made my skin go cold and coiled a sick knot of apprehension in my stomach. What crazy girl would sacrifice her family and her church just to stay out late and drive a car?
I ran warm water into the sink and began to wash the eggs while
Mamm put a couple more sticks of wood in the stove and sliced into the pile of scrubbed potatoes on the counter. Dat and the boys were out planting, now that winter had released its iron grip on the ground and the days were long enough, and they’d be hungry as bears when they came in.
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
On the rug my grandmother had braided as a bride when she’d come to Mitternacht, baby Miriam kicked her legs with great energy, and Mamm glanced at her to make sure she wasn’t going anywhere. At this rate, she’d roll over and start crawling, without any of the in-between. My mother seemed to be taking an awfully long time to reply.
Oh, dear.
I ran the last several hours through my head, and when nothing popped up that would rate a talking-to, I ran through yesterday, too. I’d dropped an egg on the way out of the barn, but the birds had eaten it so fast there couldn’t have been any evidence left to tell the tale.
This silence couldn’t have anything to do with marriage and new farms, could it? I was only sixteen. I hadn’t even gone
on
Rumspringa
yet, like several of my friends had. Didn’t even know if I wanted to. Then what—
“Gabriel Langford helped your father and brothers with the planting yesterday,” she began with a “this isn’t important but I thought I’d pass it on” kind of tone.
“That was kind of him,” I said, “though I’m sure he has plenty to do in Joshua Hodder’s fields.”
“He does. Which is why it meant something,
Sophia, for him to finish there and then do nearly a full day’s work here.”
“Why would he do that? Does
Joshua think that if he works him to death, he’ll be less likely to want to join church?”
“That boy’s capacity for work puts even your father to shame,”
Mamm said. “Not to mention his willingness to try his hand at anything, from planting to construction.”
“Have the men got a competition going to see who can wear him out first?” I was only half joking. My friends and I complained to each other that even if Gabriel Langford was the one we most wanted to bump into, with him nto, wit it was the least likely to happen. He worked from dawn till dark, and when he wasn’t working, he was taking
Deitsch
lessons with Bishop Stolz, and when he wasn’t doing that, he was in meeting. Head bowed, glossy black hair combed, clothes spotless, he occupied his bench in a way that made heads turn.
Well, the heads of all the girls in my
buddy bunch, anyway. I never would have believed it would be so hard to keep one’s gaze facing front and not let it slide to the men’s side of the house during worship. To ignore those long-lashed eyes and beautiful cheekbones turned up toward the preacher. To pretend not to see the sunlight make its way through a curtain or a window and light up that skin. A blemish would never dare appear on his face. What an awful thought.
Some of the boys—cornfed nobodies who had the mistaken idea they were somebody—had tried to pick a fight with him when he first came last winter, calling him “Gabrielle” and telling people he wrote poetry. That had lasted about five minutes. The boys said that Adam
Hertzfeld had broken his collarbone falling out of the haymow, but his sister Katie, my best friend, told me the truth. After that no one accused anyone of writing poetry. Those boys kept their mouths shut and tried to look friendly when Joshua hired Gabriel out to their fathers’ farms.
“There’s no competition that I know of.” My mother gave me a look. “A hard worker he might be, but he’s still
Englisch
and no daughter of ours will be thinking thoughts about him.”
She’d brought him up, not me. “I’m not thinking thoughts.” Was that a lie? Just in case, I sent up a breath of a prayer for forgiveness. “I just wondered if he planned to
join church. Have you heard anything?”
“I haven’t heard a word about his plans, nor do I want to,”
Mamm said with disregard for the life of any
Englisch
, which from her tone of voice, had nothing to do with hers, now or in the hereafter. Even though the alfalfa Gabriel had put in our fields would go to feed our cows and make the milk we sold to the cooperative every week. “Plans are nothing. When he actually kneels in front of the bishop and the church and gives his life to God, then his plans will have some substance. In the meantime, you’re not to behave as if he’s plain. No talking with him among the
Youngie
after Singing, no accepting a ride on a rainy day, nothing. Understood?”
“Can I say
guder mariye
if I pass him on the road?”
Narrow eyes examined my face to see if I was talking back. Maybe I was. Or maybe I honestly wanted to know. The words had just popped out and it was too late to unsay them.
“Just good morning,” Mamm said at last, evidently not finding what she was looking for. “Nothing more than you would say to any
Englisch
in town. A plain woman is always modest and polite, especially to people outside the church.”
I don’t think my lips moved in unison with hers, but they could have. I’d heard thosd hearde words approximately ten thousand, five hundred and eighty times during the course of my life.
“And why are we discussing Gabriel Langford anyway?” Mamm asked. “I wanted to talk about something else.”
Thank goodness
. “What?”
“After meeting on Sunday, David
Fischer asked your father for permission to walk out with you. What do you think about that?”
I dropped an egg into the soapy water and heard the sickening sound of a crack. “Me?!”
“Sophia Brucker, watch yourself!”
“Sorry.” I pulled the plug and let the broken yolk wash down the drain, then picked the shell fragments out of the trap. “Are you sure? David
Fischer? This isn’t Dat’s idea of a joke, is it? Who asks the parents’ permission anymore?”
Mamm
allowed herself a smile. “When it comes to the subject of courtship, your father does not make jokes. Just ask me. And there’s nothing wrong with asking his permission. I think it was a fine way to show respect and have everything above board. After all, it’s David. Why should that surprise you?”
My mouth opened and closed like a fish on a riverbank.
Surprised
didn’t even begin to cover it.
Astonished
might be a start. Me and David? That was crazy. We’d known each other since we were babies and I thought of him as another of my brothers—when I thought of him at all. There was no room in my brain for David when Gabriel haunted it. Oh, if only he were plain! Every girl in Mitternacht over the age of twelve would give her eyeteeth to walk out with him.
“Gabriel has to be planning to join
church,” Katie had said after that very same meeting. No wonder I hadn’t seen David, if he’d been lying in wait for Dat by the hitching rail in the Millers’ lane. “No one would devote so much of himself to work and worship if he didn’t.”
I couldn’t think of any other reason, either. Converts were rare in
Mitternacht, and as for good-looking single male converts . . . well, there had never been one in
my
lifetime. But even if that was God’s will for Gabriel, I didn’t dare let hope blossom in my chest and warm me with possibility. The simple fact was that there were lots more girls in our district than ordinary brown-haired, gray-eyed me. Girls like merry, laughing Katie or Ellie Stolz, whose parents had left her a bed-and-breakfast when they died, even though her aunt ran it. Or Rebecca Hodder, who was tall, beautiful, and eighteen and lived right there where Gabriel was boarding. The fact that she had run through every boy under twenty-one within a twelve-mile radius just made it seem more inevitable that she’d settle on him . . . when he joined church.
“
Sophia? I asked you what you thought of David Fischer.”
What
did
I think? With Gabriel in the neighborhood, did anyone think about David? “I . . . I don’t know.”
“Well, if he offered you a ride home from
Singing, would you go?”
I stopped pretending to clean the sink and turned away to dry my hands on a dishtowel. “I don’t know.”
“Sophia.”
“I’m telling true,
Mamm. I don’t know what I’d say. I—I’ve never thought of David like that. He might as well be my brother.”
“He is your b
rother in God.” She took the towel from me and dried her own hands. “He’s worth ten of Gabriel Langford.”
How fair was this? “You just finished saying what a hard worker Gabriel is. You don’t really know him.”
“My point exactly. None of us know him, except maybe Joshua Hodder.
Ja
, he is a hard worker and seems to be committed to the church, but I’ve seen it before. People get romantical notions about plain living—until they actually have to do it. Then they’re running for their hair dryers and radios.”
“He’s been here since November and hasn’t run yet.”
“Maybe not, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Meantime, aren’t you going to ask me what else your father said to David?”
I could see where this was going. “What did he say?”
“He said it was up to you. That you were old enough to make up your own mind.” Again the narrow look, but it held no displeasure this time. Instead, I saw concern in my mother’s face. “Is it too soon,
liewi
? Would you rather Dat told the boys to go away and come again in a year?”