Tricia stood by the door. “Can I just peek up the stairwell?”
Somehow I refrained from groaning, and allowed her the peek. If it wasn’t enough, that was just too bad.
“How ‘bout some lemonade?” Ma said.
I glared at her. “I don’t have any.”
“Tea?”
“All out.”
Her eyes flickered. “Oh, well. Water will do. I suppose you do have
that
.”
“It’s okay,” Katherine said. “We can leave now.”
Ma looked at me, her patient face on.
“It’s fine.” I doubt I sounded too welcoming through my gritted teeth, but I tried.
Ma sat us around my kitchen table, bustling around to get glasses and fill them from the water pitcher in the fridge. I suppose she’d thought I’d act as hostess, but then, she did have her fantasies.
As she was setting down the last glass, Lucy came in and pulled a chair up to the table. “Got one of those for me, Ma?”
“Of course.” Ma filled another glass while Lucy wiped her forehead and smiled around the table.
“So,” she said.
I waited for more, then realized she hadn’t actually met the other women. I told everybody who was who, and let them carry on with more detailed introductions. After they’d played the Mennonite Game of seeing what mutual family, friends, and acquaintances they had, Tricia turned to me, her expression more relaxed than it had been earlier. “You have a lovely home.”
“Yes, you certainly do.” Katherine sounded genuine, if not as enthusiastic as Tricia.
“And you live here
alone
?” From the sound of Sarah’s voice I was back to being cool, forgiven for having a boyfriend.
“Yes. All by myself.” I took a sip of water and set down my glass, a lump forming in my throat. “Thanks. For the compliments about the house. I like it.”
Ma sat down with her own water and looked at me expectantly. I’m not sure exactly what she was expecting. I mean, she
knows
me.
But now that we were just sitting, I realized Katherine’s smile wasn’t quite as easy as it had been at Ma’s the other evening. And her eyes looked tired.
“Sorry to hear about the vandalism,” I finally said.
She glanced at me, then away. “Thank you. That was…disturbing.”
Sarah huffed. “It was awful. I mean, who would
do
something like that?”
I kept my eyes on Katherine. “You figure it was people who don’t like you being a woman minister?”
She gave a little laugh, without humor. “That’s the assumption.”
Tricia made a noise, but when I looked at her, she was studying the trim around the kitchen door.
“Oh, these
people
,” Lucy said. “What is the
matter
with them?”
Katherine smiled gently. “They’re just…”
“Behind the times.” Sarah shook her head, obviously disgusted.
Lucy leaned forward over the table. “It makes me want to scream. Don’t those people read their Bibles?”
Ma let out a laugh, and Katherine grinned at Lucy. “I sometimes think they read them too much.”
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean if you scour the Bible hard enough you’ll find something to back up whatever you want. Especially the New Testament. It’s filled with letters to specific churches. Corinth. Thessalonica. Collossae. And just like today, each church back then had its own issues.”
“Like women talking,” Lucy said.
“Exactly. People like to take the I Corinthians scripture literally that tells women to be silent in church—”
“—when Paul was speaking to one
specific
congregation.” Lucy’s eyes sparked. “The women there were probably just chatterboxes. Couldn’t be quiet.”
Katherine laughed. “That’s right. We all know women like that.”
I was searching my memory for the old days, when Ma used to take me to church and send me to Sunday School with Abe. “What about…isn’t there something that says women should have no authority over men?”
“Sure,” Katherine said. “In I Timothy.”
“And that women are supposed to submit to their husbands?”
Katherine grinned. “Ephesians 5. Colossians 3. I Peter 3.”
Lucy thumped the table with a finger. “But
Jesus
told us we were to sell all we have and give it to the poor. Do those people who insist on women’s submission do
that
? Or leave their families high and dry to go evangelize? If these people who discriminate against women want to take those anti-women Scriptures literally, they need to take
everything
literally. Including where Paul says there ‘is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female.’”
I licked my lips and looked around the table. Katherine was watching Lucy with an expression approaching amusement, while Tricia looked a bit like she feared for Lucy’s sanity. Sarah kept her eyes on Katherine, as if waiting for her response.
“I didn’t mean to start a riot,” I said.
Katherine laughed, and laid a hand on Lucy’s arm. “I’m impressed with your knowledge about this subject. How did you come to know all these details?”
“Well,” Lucy said, sitting back. “I
am
from Lancaster.”
Sarah let out a bark of harsh laughter. “And we all know what goes on out
there
.”
Katherine smiled, looking at Tricia, but received only a tightening of her lips in response.
Lucy relaxed into a sheepish grin. “It’s good you didn’t want to go to Lancaster to work.”
“I actually did make some inquiries last year,” Katherine said, “to see if we could get closer to Tricia’s family and…and Mom, but of course nothing came of them.”
“How come?” I remembered someone else mentioning Lancaster when we were at Ma’s the other evening for dinner. Something about Katherine getting nasty letters.
Lucy let out a huff of air. “Because last year their ministers voted against ordaining women. Of course all of those voting were
men
.”
“But the vote was about as close as it could get,” Katherine said. “They needed sixty-six percent in favor and they got sixty-five.”
Sarah growled, sounding remarkably like Queenie. “So one third of stodgy old men got to dictate the rules and keep the women out. Stupid.”
Ma clicked her tongue. “Don’t blame it all on the old people. There are lots of young conservatives, too.”
“And there was a church that already went against the vote,” Katherine said. “Ordained a woman anyway.”
“And are they still allowed in the conference?” I asked.
She held up her hands. “The jury’s still out.”
The door opened and Zach stuck his head into the kitchen. “The guys are done.”
Katherine and Tricia looked at each other and pushed their chairs out from the table, Sarah following.
“Thanks for the water,” Katherine said, her eyes sparkling. She looked much more alive than she had when we’d sat down. I guess a little controversy will do that for you.
Tricia nodded. “And for the tour.”
“Good to meet you all,” Lucy said. “I’m going to hang out here and make a phone call.”
The women said good-bye to Lucy and I herded them outside, where they met up with the guys, who had somehow managed to survive the bobcat/silo tour.
“Sorry it got a little heated in there,” Katherine said as she opened the van door for Ma.
“Well, it was Lucy more than you. And I started it all by asking about your office.”
We stopped talking and stood back as a big milk truck pulled into the drive. I held up a hand to wave to Doug, but realized he wasn’t driving. And there was a tiny little passenger riding shotgun.
I got to the side door as a woman hopped down. “Patty?”
“In the flesh.”
“Then that must be Iris. Doug told me all about you two.” I waggled my fingers at the little girl strapped into a car seat. Her shock of black hair stuck straight up, and she blinked her dark eyes sleepily at my fingers. “Just wake up?”
“Hard not to sleep in this big old rumbly truck,” Patty said, laughing. “Soothing, kinda.”
“So where’s Doug?”
“New Jersey. Had to take his daughter to a softball tournament. I said I’d fill in. It’s been a while since I’ve been behind the wheel. Gets old sitting in the office day after day. For Iris, too.” She stretched out her hands over the truck seat. “Want to come out, honeypie?”
Iris jiggled in her seat, reaching toward her mother. Patty climbed back in and undid the car seat’s buckle, sliding the girl toward her. She backed down from the truck. “Hold her a minute?”
“Uh…”
I looked down at my crutches, and Patty giggled. “Whoops, sorry. What happened?”
“Cow.”
“Oh, sure. Stepped on you?” She held Iris out toward Sarah. “Want to hold her?”
Sarah wrinkled her nose.
“Here, I’ll take the baby.” Katherine came up and took Iris from Patty. “How long have you had her?”
“Almost two months now. Seems like much longer.” The look she gave the girl was warm with affection. She reached behind the seat and pulled out a backpack. “I’ll put her in here.”
Katherine set Iris in the contraption, and Patty squatted down to get the straps over her shoulders. “This way she can see what I’m doing, and I don’t have to worry about her getting, um…” She glanced at my foot. “Stepped on.”
“I’m too big to put in a backpack,” I said.
Patty laughed, and Iris gurgled something in reply.
“So.” Patty stood up and turned around. “You have some visitors today?”
I introduced her to the group, everyone taking their turn to shake her hand. Everyone but Trevor, that is, who merely gave a jerk of his head. Iris peered at them over the top of Patty’s head.
I gestured toward the truck. “You folks want to see what she does?”
They all agreed, except for Ma, who elected to sit in the minivan and wait. The rest followed behind as Patty cut the cable tie on the hose door and put the scrap of plastic in her pocket.
I grunted. “Doug always leaves those for me to pick up.”
“Yeah,” Patty said. “He would.”
We all squeezed into the milkhouse, where she proceeded to take her samples of milk in little tubes, explaining that they would be used to test milkfat, and also to check for antibiotics, should her tank end up showing contamination. The cable tie she cut off the hose door was a safety precaution, so she’d know her load hadn’t been messed with in-between trips.
Alan and Sarah asked a lot of questions and seemed to be taking in the whole experience, exclaiming over the work and the fact that Patty was driving a truck, as if they couldn’t quite believe she was allowed to do it. Katherine and Tricia spent more time doing baby talk with Iris, while David and Trevor stood in the corner with their hands in their pockets.
“Whoa! Full up in the milkhouse.” Lucy appeared in the doorway.
I introduced her to Patty, and while they started out talking about the milk load, it soon merged into the trials and joys of single motherhood, and the rest of us eased our way back outside.
“Thanks for taking the time to show us around,” Alan said. “And for loaning us Zach, and letting us see how your milk gets collected. We appreciate it. You women are all amazing. And the teen-agers, too, of couse.”
I laughed. “That we are. Come back when I’m out of this—” I tapped my cast with a crutch—“and I’ll give you a fuller tour. Amaze you some more.”
He smiled. “We just might take you up on that.”
Ma held out her arms and I leaned into the van the best I could, giving her a one-armed hug while trying to keep my crutches from going out from under me.
“Let me know if you need anything.” Her breath tickled my ear.
“I will.”
“Uh-huh. Like you let me know about your foot?”
I stepped back and tried to look contrite. It mustn’t have worked, because she was frowning as she eased back into the middle of the seat.
The rest of them followed, Alan and David shaking my hand, Katherine reaching for a hug, then appearing to think better of it and simply patting my arm, and Tricia giving a little wave from the other side of the van. Trevor got in without acknowledging me in any way.
Sarah held out her hand, and I braced myself for the grip of steel. “It’s so great that you run your own life. I mean, that’s so cool.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”
Katherine stopped to pet Queenie good-bye, and that got her a friendly nose in the crotch, making her jump.
“Sorry,” I said.
She laughed. “No problem. But that’ll teach me to get too close.” She brushed off her pants and slid into the van, easing the door shut beside her.
They left in a cloud of dust, Alan waving out his window as they drove away. I eased myself onto the grass beside the house and lay flat on my back. My armpits ached, my foot throbbed, and my shoulders were on fire. What I wouldn’t have given for one of Nick’s massages.
“Stella?”
I looked up at Patty, Iris’ eyes peeking out from behind her shoulder. Sucking sounds came from the backpack, and I could see that most of Iris’ hand had disappeared into her mouth.
Patty waved toward the tanker. “I’m all set. Doug should be back next time.”
I pushed myself up onto my elbows. “Thanks. Appreciate your coming by. And it was nice to meet Iris.”
She looked back over her shoulder. “Say bye-bye to Stella, Iris.”
The sucking sounds continued, and the girl didn’t even blink.
“Bye-bye, Iris.” I tried out a smile, but got nothing in return. Patty laughed and swung the backpack to the ground in a fluid movement, finally getting the girl to pull the fingers from her mouth.
Once Iris was strapped into her car seat and the backpack was stowed away, Patty climbed into the driver’s side, slamming the door behind her. She put the truck in gear and roared out the lane, sending a cloud of dust over me. I lifted a hand in farewell as I coughed, then fell back onto the grass, my neck protesting the weird position I’d been in.
I’d just begun to relax when yet another vehicle drove up, cracking the gravel. I repressed my desire to scream and opened my eyes.
Carla waved to me from the passenger seat of a shiny black Toyota Tundra. Her smile was contagious, and I found myself returning it until I realized whose truck she was in. Bryan walked purposefully around the front of the vehicle and put out a hand to help Carla down from her seat.