The Amish Nanny (26 page)

Despite having spent the past week doing almost nothing while onboard the ship, every single one of us was extremely tired. After checking into the hotel, we spent a quiet afternoon and evening resting, strolling, chatting quietly in the lobby, and sharing dinner at a small bistro.

Our hotel room had two double beds, each with two comforters on it. By eight forty-five Alice and Christy were both exhausted and changing into their nightgowns. As Christy knelt beside her bed to say her prayers, Morgan turned her head away.

After the little girl had finished, Alice told me her stomach was upset and she wondered if I could check at the hotel desk for a roll of antacid tablets. Morgan said she'd go with me and off we went. As we walked down the hall, I addressed the subject of prayer, saying all Amish children were taught to pray from a very young age.

“I can't remember a time when I didn't pray,” I added. “It teaches us to depend on God and to thank Him every day for all He provides.”

Morgan glanced at me a little furtively, but she didn't respond.

Confused, my face grew warm. “Would you rather I didn't speak about our ways?” I asked.

“Oh, no. It's okay. I find it interesting…” Her voice trailed off.

After a moment I apologized. “As you've probably already realized, there's an inner teacher in me that occasionally runs amok. At least that what my cousin Zed calls her.”

Morgan laughed. “Your inner teacher? I like that.”

“Yes, well, you don't even want to know what happened the last time she came out,” I said, surprising myself by bringing it up. Morgan pressed me for details, and I found myself telling her all about the couple in the restaurant on the train back from Oregon, and how the wife kept telling her husband all sorts of ridiculous stuff about that well-known time in every young Amish person's life known as their “ringalinga.”

“Their what?”

“The word she was searching for was
rumspringa
, though now that I think about it, I kind of like ringalinga instead.”

“It does have a nice ring to it. Or rather, a nice ringalinga.” We both laughed. “So what did you do?”

We searched the shelves of toiletries by the front desk as I continued with the story. By the time I'd found a roll of antacids and paid for them, Morgan was nearly doubled over with laughter.

“So is this trip
your
ringalinga, Ada?”

“Sure is,” I replied. Lowering my voice to a whisper, I added, “But as soon as I can get myself pregnant and land me husband, I'm outta here!”

Blushing furiously, I clamped my hand over my mouth, shocked by the audacity of my own joke. Morgan thought it was the funniest thing I'd said yet, and soon we both had our hands over our mouths, trying to contain the volume of our laughter.

By the time we got back to the room, we had managed to calm down, which was a good thing because Alice and Christy were both sound asleep in their bed. After changing into my nightgown, I got into the other bed, but Morgan surprised me by wrapping up in a comforter and settling down on the floor. I told her we could share, but she insisted she was fine where she was.

I thought she'd gone to sleep when she said softly, “Ada, may I ask you a question?”

“
Ya
.”

“Would you leave if you could?”

“Leave?”

“Your church.”

“Oh, I can. No one would stop me.”

“You wouldn't be shunned?”

“No. Not unless I had joined the church first and then decided to leave.”

“But Daniel said you wouldn't be treated the same by your family.”

I didn't answer her for a moment. “That's true, to an extent. It wouldn't be the same. But I don't want to leave.” Most of the time, anyway.

“Even though you can't go to college? Or fly in airplanes? Or have a professional job?”

At the moment, Morgan wasn't going to college. Or flying in an airplane. Or working as a professional. I quietly pointed this out.

She didn't seem amused. “But I can do all those things if I want to. No one's going to tell me I can't. And I already graduated from college.”

“Our church has its reasons,” I answered, resisting the urge to let my inner teacher come out yet again. “It works for us.”

A moment later she said, “Why did your aunt move to Switzerland?”

Turning, I peered over at the other bed, just to make sure Christy was still asleep. Watching the steady rise and fall of her chest, I took a deep breath and tried to decide how to answer.

I could have said something vague, but I felt compelled to be more honest. Maybe it was that I knew she wasn't going to judge me. Maybe I wanted to shock her a little, to show her I was more than she thought. “She's actually my birth mother,” I whispered after turning back around. “She moved to Switzerland once I was born.”

Morgan's head popped up, her chestnut hair falling around her face. “You're kidding.”

“Nope.” Keeping my voice low, I told her about Lexie arriving last spring and how her search for her birth family led her to me. I told her about Giselle moving to Switzerland all those years ago and how Zed had tracked her down. By the end of the tale, Morgan was sitting on my bed.

“Do Daniel and George know all of this?”

I said they didn't. “But I wasn't lying when I told them she was my aunt—legally she is.” I had to explain that twice, how
Mamm
, Giselle's sister, and
Daed
had adopted me.

“Why didn't you tell Daniel?” Morgan asked. “I think he would understand. He's geeky, that's for sure, but he seems pretty thoughtful. Besides, I think he really cares for you.”

I blushed. He was, indeed, quite thoughtful, but after a whole week together on ship, I still wasn't sure how I felt about him.

“Ada?” She was smiling and up on her knees now.

I shook my head. “Why would he care for me?”

“Why
wouldn't
he care for you? You're sweet, clever, easy to be with—not to mention totally DDG.”

“DDG?”

“Drop-dead gorgeous, girlfriend.”

A sharp laugh burst from my throat. I quickly covered my mouth, and both of us looked over to make sure I hadn't woken Alice or Christy.

“Don't say that, Morgan,” I scolded in a whisper. “It's not nice to lie. I know very well how…unattractive I am.”

She stared at me for a long moment. “Unattractive.”

“Yes.” Did she have to rub it in?

“Are the Amish allowed to use mirrors, Ada?”

“Mirrors? Of course—”

“Then are you just stupid?”

First she agreed that I was unattractive, and now she was insulting my intelligence? Before I could figure out how to reply, she was gripping me by the wrists and forcing me to look her in the eyes.

“You…are…drop…dead…gorgeous,” she said. “Maybe not in a fashion model way, but in like a…” She searched for the right word. “Like in a pure way. Angelic. When people look at you, they see a beautiful face, a woman who seems delicate on the outside but is really tough and strong and brave on the inside.”

Her speech over, Morgan surprised me by releasing my wrists, sliding back down to the floor, and wrapping herself in her comforter again. I was still sitting there, speechless, when she spoke one more time.

“It's been a long time since a guy looked at me the way Daniel looks at you, Ada. If I were you, I wouldn't take that for granted.”

T
he next morning, as we waited in the train station in Le Havre, we were amused by the reactions of the French people hurrying past us. Morgan, Christy, and I sat side by side on the wooden bench. People would turn their heads a second time to get a better view.

“I take it there aren't any Amish in Europe?” Morgan asked.

“No,” Daniel answered. “There are Mennonite but not any Old Order. We're going to draw quite a bit of attention everywhere we go.”

The next woman to pass us turned on her high heels and stared, stepping back toward us, her mouth wide open.

“What's the matter?” Morgan called out. “Haven't you ever seen an Amish girl on her ringalinga?”

The woman gasped and then hurried on as Morgan and I both burst out laughing. My friend had more of a sense of humor than I'd thought. I was going to miss her.

George smiled at the exchange, but Alice stared straight ahead, her face solemn. Our way was to simply ignore stares and go about our business. Something I hadn't done.

As we boarded the train, it worked out that Daniel, Morgan, Christy, and I shared four seats together. Alice went on with George in seats kitty-corner from us. She kept an eye on us though, glancing our way every few minutes. She wasn't as relaxed as she'd been the evening before.

The train pulled away from the station in the late morning, and office buildings and shops gave way to apartment buildings and houses, alleys, and narrow cobblestone streets. We left the city, and the French countryside rolled out on either side of us, dotted with Jersey cows.

Christy pointed to a stone house. It looked ancient. A moment later there were more, and then we were passing behind a village, catching a glimpse of the road down the middle of it between the houses. Except for the asphalt, the scene could have been from the 1870s when my relatives were leaving Switzerland. They probably took the train to Le Havre. Of course, the shipyard wouldn't have been as busy, but the harbor would have been there even way back then.

The train stopped at Gare St. Lazare, one of the Paris stations, where we boarded the Métro to Gare de l'Est to catch the train to Basel. Morgan said she would come back to Paris, maybe on her way home. She definitely wanted to go to some museums. I would have enjoyed a chance to go exploring there as well, but I knew Alice and the others had no desire to see Paris at all.

In eastern France Daniel said there was an Anabaptist farm close by that had been confiscated by the Swiss government in the early seventeen hundreds. The current owner was fascinated by the history of his property and hoped they would include it on the tour. Daniel had visited the site last summer, but he and George didn't want to take time to visit it now. They wanted to go on to Amielbach. Perhaps, they said, we could stop on the way back.

We were going to spend the night in Basel, so we all disembarked with Morgan, happy to stretch our legs and have the opportunity to eat somewhere other than on the train. It had been a long day and was well past dinnertime. Morgan called her father on the cell phone she'd purchased the day before and then said he would arrive shortly. He was coming straight from work, even though it was a Saturday. I said I'd wait with her while the others went to the bistro.

“He's always late,” Morgan said.

“He's probably stuck in traffic,” I said, having no idea what traffic was like on a weekend day in Basel, Switzerland. I thought of my own
daed
, who was never late and hardly ever stuck in traffic, except maybe in a line of buggies on the way to church.

“May I ask you a question?” Morgan turned toward me. “What would you miss the most if you left?”

“Besides my family? Mutual aid.”

“Mutual what?”

“Helping each other. When a barn burns down, everyone comes together to rebuild it. If someone's sick, everyone pitches in with meals and to do chores. If someone dies, everyone else helps out.”

“So it's like you're never really alone?”

I smiled. “
Ya
, you could say that. Or maybe that we're never isolated.”

“You know what's really cool?”

I shook my head, hoping she wasn't going to bring up the subject of Daniel again.

“That you and Christy and Alice all get along so well.”

I cocked my head. “What do you mean?”

“You make it look so normal hanging out with someone so much older—and younger—than you. You seem to really enjoy them.”