Promise to Cherish (21 page)

Only her first night home and Christine’s mother had concocted a plan.

“Now, we are telling your father and Doris that you are going to be working out of state. You are home for a few days or a few weeks and then you’ll be away for several months. Like a nurse exchange program. They won’t know the difference.”

Christine gave up. More lies. She sat with tea at the kitchen table when her mother came over with her cup and handed Christine some official-looking papers in her hand.

“Here,” she said.

Christine took them and flipped through them. It was a two-page letter explaining the purpose and benefits of sending your daughter to a home for pregnant unwed girls. The name Stony Creek Ladies Home was in bold at the top. She glanced over them before looking back at her mother.

“Only a bus ride away, huh? Where do you even get this kind of information?” The weight of the two pages were heavy in her hands.

“If you look in the right places, you’ll find them. I think it sounds quite nice. It’s on a dairy farm where everyone works to keep the home running. Everyone has a job to do and they have nurses, doctors, and midwives there. You might enjoy it since you are a nurse. Did you see that you could learn to cook?” Her mother’s face was so full of hope Christine hated to disappoint her.

“I just don’t know,” she said. She flipped through the pages again. “I will read it over but I cannot promise you anything, Ma.”

It just didn’t feel right. For some reason she could not get Eli’s ridiculous offer out of her head.

“I want you to really consider what I’m telling you. You know I love you but I have to think about the whole family,” her mother began. “If you decide not to go to a home, you cannot just stay here. I cannot have our family gain a bad reputation, and it’s not what I want for you. After all of this is through, the child will be with a nice family and you can return to your real life. There aren’t enough people who know about this to make that impossible. You can work again or find a nice young man to settle down with. If you keep the baby—and I cannot understand how that would work—your life is over.”

Her mother looked away and blinked rapidly, clearly to keep tears away.

“I know with Jack I may have seemed brave and strong.” Her mother looked back and patted Christine’s hand. “But you don’t know how hard this is for me.”

Christine took her mother’s hand. “I’m so sorry, Ma.”

“I just love you and want what’s best, darling.” The two held hands across the table but only Margie wept. Christine wasn’t sure she had any more tears.

“I know you do.” She let go of her mother’s hands and looked at the Stony Creek letter again.

CHAPTER 17

T
he last week was the longest Eli had experienced. He said his good-byes to DeWayne and Freddy at the hospital, as their busses were not leaving until later. As he sat alone at the bus station, he looked out toward the road. Even though Christine had given back his bus information, she had read it. Would Christine come? His heart waffled between wanting her to come, since he wasn’t ready to let her go, and knowing that it would be easier for him to return without her.

He watched as several other C.O.’s stepped up onto the bus. They also still wore the hospital uniform, almost like soldiers who returned home wearing their uniforms. He knew his homecoming would be vastly different though. He just didn’t want to travel in his Amish clothing. He had gotten used to blending in with the non-Amish. For the first time in his life, he had learned that sometimes it was good to go unnoticed.

Eli heard a woman’s voice around the corner; she was talking to her children about being quiet on the bus. Several more people boarded. The bus driver came down from the bus and stood in the front. He looked at Eli. The man wore a nice smile and his eyebrows lifted when he spoke.

“Are ya comin’?”

“I’m waiting for someone,” he said.

“I can only give you another minute, son,” the driver said and then returned to the bus and sat down.

He looked up at the station clock. The second hand spun around. His shoulders got heavier with each passing moment. Though his life could get incredibly complicated if Christine did come home with him, and even though it might not have been a good idea for him to have even invited her, he wanted her to come. He had grown attached to her smile and kindness. She had great loyalty to her family and worked almost solely to serve them. He didn’t know how she’d gotten into trouble, but he trusted her in a way he’d never trusted another woman before. Her strong opinions and independent ways sometimes got on his nerves, but as soon as they were apart, he wanted to be with her.

“Eli.” A voice said behind him.

He turned. Like a dream, Christine stood there. She was bathed in the sun that snuck down between the building and the bus. She was wearing her hair back, like she had at the hospital, but fancier, somehow, and was wearing a beautiful yellow dress. Her lips were red and her cheeks pink. She was a vision of beauty.

“Help me with my trunk?” She shrugged her shoulders with a heavy sigh and a quiet smile. She held a bus ticket in her ivory crocheted-gloved hand. They didn’t speak a word when the driver helped them with her luggage and they stepped onto the bus. Even as they sat on the hard, uncomfortable bus seats they didn’t speak. Their arms touched lightly and after ten minutes of silence Christine spoke.

“Thank you, Eli.” She took his hand and looked up at him.

He only smiled at her, unable to find words to express himself. Eli squeezed her hand in return just before she removed
it and put it back in her lap, clasping her other hand. This reminded him that she wasn’t his and that her coming brought great responsibility to both him and his family. And his journey had just begun.

It didn’t take long before Poughkeepsie was in the distance behind them. Christine laid her head back on the bus seat in an effort to momentarily forget the hospital, forget Jack, and forget that she was still deciding on whether or not to go to one of the homes. She couldn’t run away from the baby growing daily below her heart. A baby she still thought of as a medical diagnosis. The letter from the
maternity home
was folded neatly in her purse. After days of considering and remaining undecided, leaving with Eli temporarily seemed like the best option. It would give her time to decide what to do without the pressure of her hometown staring at her soon-to-be-growing abdomen.

Christine exhaled.

“Are you okay?”

Christine was startled to hear Eli’s voice. She opened her eyes and looked right at him. He’d been so quiet since they sat on the bus, not having said more than, “This seat all right?”

“What?”

“You sighed and I was wondering if everything was okay.”

She only nodded. Nothing she could think to say sounded right.

Eli gave her his crooked smile and she smiled back but returned her gaze to the passing fields and occasional small town. She wasn’t sure how to answer him. No. Of course, everything was not okay. In a matter of a few weeks she had been found unconscious, fired from her job, realized she was pregnant, rejected by Jack, encouraged to go to a home by her mother, and then, at the last minute, decided to flee to an Amish community.
It was odd and peculiar how she had gotten to this point. She shifted in her seat before her backside became numb. The bus was all but comfortable. The seats were stiff and her ears rang from the loud engine.

She turned back to Eli. He was looking down at a periodical in his hands—some dreadful pulp magazine. She thought about Wally and how he and Eli had become friends over reading those stories. She surveyed the cover: a soldier on a horse, his spear aimed at some shirtless man wearing war paint. Why would anyone read such rubbish? Especially a pacifist. Her eyes journeyed to his chiseled face and she could tell he hadn’t shaved that morning. There was a subtle shade of blond covering his jawline. He swallowed and his Adam’s apple bobbed. Eli’s eyes peeked over at her and a smile crossed his lips.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stare.” She pushed her glasses up. “You actually like those magazines? I thought you read them only for the patients.”

He shrugged. “I guess it passes the time.”

“That cover looks awfully violent—I’m surprised your church lets you read fiction like that.”

Eli raised a single eyebrow. “Are you baiting me?”

“I’m just curious. Why is it okay to read that garbage when you don’t even believe in fighting?”

He looked away and inhaled. Christine had gotten to him. Though she hadn’t meant to start something, she wasn’t being very kind, challenging him the way she did. But it was a true curiosity. How could you stand up for what’s right without fighting for yourself? How did the Amish expect to keep their way of life in the changing modern world without defending themselves? He didn’t answer her but he didn’t continue reading the pulp fiction magazine either. He folded it and stuffed it into the small bag at his feet.

As the morning crossed into afternoon and neared supper
time they talked about everything impersonal. They talked about their patients, the weather, and where they had traveled to in their lives. Christine had learned that besides his CPS service, Eli had only been out of Delaware for funerals and weddings in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Ohio. She told him how her father had done door-to-door sales for years, then factory work until his previously injured knee had gotten so bad he couldn’t work.

“What will your family do now? Since you’re not . . . ?” His words faded off.

Christine swallowed before she answered. “Doris has a job that pays some and I think my ma will have to take on sewing or baking. She did this off and on when I was a child for extra money. I’m not sure how she’s going to explain it to her friends, but everyone knows my dad can’t get a job with his handicap.”

“What about your church?”

“What do you mean?”

“Won’t they help your parents? That’s what our church does. There’s a fund the Amish have for those situations, when there’s a family in need. We’ve helped pay for surgeries, build a new barn or house, or pay for travel when a church member needs to get across the country quickly for a family emergency. I’m surprised that your churches don’t do the same.”

“We support missionaries and send money to the hungry in Africa,” Christine responded.

“But what about church members who are hungry?”

He made a good point and left the question unanswered. She was nervous and excited to meet this Amish church he spoke of. Was it as quaint and magical as he made it sound?

“I think, for a city girl, you’ll enjoy the countryside. We don’t have the same conveniences, but we don’t need that much. We grow our food and try to be neighborly.”

“It’s not like I don’t know about gardens, Eli. My ma had a garden for most of my life.” She elbowed him.

He smiled at her out of the corner of his eye.

“You do have me curious though,” she said. “What about stores? Do you go to grocery stores?”

“There’s a small store a few miles away at Crossroads Corner. It doesn’t have much, but it’ll have some of the extras that we can’t grow, bake, or can.”

“And you ride a buggy out there?”

“
Drive
a buggy.” Eli winked.

Christine smiled. “No radios?”

He shook his head.

“No telephones?”

He shook his head and pursed his lips. “Just the one at our neighbor’s house.” Was he stifling laughter?

She paused for a moment when a thought occurred to her. Where would she get clothing as she grew out of her own wardrobe? Her hands rested on her lap, close to the babe that grew inside her. The urge to press her gloved hands against her abdomen rushed through her like water over a cliff. Still she fought it. What would she wear once she grew too large for her regular clothes? Her cinched-waist dresses and skirts were not going to last long in her condition.

“What about clothes?” Her voice was quiet.

Several slow beats passed and Eli moved his hand over hers. He met her eyes and his gentle smile was like a gift.

“We’ll figure it out.”

Would they? She’d seen pictures of Amish women. If those were the kind of dresses that they would want her to wear, she would be better off at a maternity home.

Christine continued to listen to Eli as he told her about his five brothers and two sisters, who were twins. His one brother was married and living with his parents because their house had burned down. They had a big dairy farm.

At some point, Christine slept on and off for several hours.
As the bus made stops and picked up and dropped off more passengers, she lost track of time. On several occasions she found her head resting comfortably on Eli’s arm. Even when she woke and realized where her head was she pretended to sleep longer, relishing in the simplicity and comfort of the moment. When his body stiffened only moments later she sat up. Roadside signs pronounced that Dover was just ahead. They were nearly there.

The sun was starting to set when the bus finally stopped in Dover. Eli got up and walked down the aisle; when she didn’t follow he stepped back and put his hand out to her. Their eyes met but no words were exchanged. Christine let go of his hand when she was safely on the concrete sidewalk at the bottom of the steep bus steps.