The Amish Seamstress (16 page)

Eventually, I went back to my embroidery. I liked working alone, and yet it was comforting to have my great-aunt so close. I felt content for the first time in months—and it was no wonder. I'd made a new friend. I enjoyed spending time with her. I had time for my handwork—at least today. And I was intrigued by her boxes of documents.

Plus, it was good for me to see that Verna had a fulfilling life without a marriage and children, because the more I thought about it, the more I had to wonder if I might end up going down that same path. Until my feelings for Zed changed, I had never really longed for a husband or kids, at least not the way other girls my age did. I supposed that made sense, considering how much I liked order and calmness. I'd never done well with chaos. I was certain I wasn't made to be an Amish mother—at least not to a huge brood of children. Of course, Zed would make an excellent father. But he was Mennonite, which meant that the one man I did want to marry was not an option for me.

I sat back and sucked in a deep breath, confronting a hard truth I'd been ignoring for weeks. I was in love with a man who wasn't Amish.

I wanted to
stay
Amish—which meant I couldn't marry Zed. But if I couldn't marry him, then I didn't want to marry at all. Did that mean I was destined to be alone for the rest of my life?

If so, at least being around Verna had given me hope for a fulfilling existence outside of marriage, as she'd had. With that thought, I returned
to the task at hand and soon I was calmed by the rhythm of my needlework—stick, pull, stick, under, stick, over, pull.

Every once in a while Verna made a little noise in her sleep, but she didn't move an inch. She usually napped in the afternoon, not so early in the day, so after she'd been sleeping two hours, I decided to wake her up. There was a pot of soup for lunch, so first I went into the kitchen and put it on the stove.

Before it began to simmer, I returned to the living room and placed my hand on her shoulder. “
Aenti
Verna, it's almost time for lunch.”

She didn't stir.

“
Aenti
Verna,” I said again, growing a little alarmed. She was fine, right? Just a sound sleeper.

I shook her shoulder a little. She was still.

I touched her hand. It wasn't icy cold, but it wasn't warm, either. My stomach dropped. I watched for a breath. Nothing. I put my hand under Verna's nose. My heart dropped another notch.

Remember your training, remember your training
, I told myself as I gripped her wrist. Felt for a pulse. Nothing. I tried to think of what the next step should be, but my mind was a blank.

Stepping back, I drew in a ragged breath and then turned toward the door, walking quickly. By the time I reached the front porch, I was running. By the time I got across the alley and rushed through the vines, fighting them off as if they were trying to grab me, I was sobbing. I burst through the back door to Susie's shop, unable to speak.

I managed to catch my breath and explain what happened, but Susie didn't seem alarmed at all. “
Ach
, she's a heavy sleeper. And she has poor circulation. You probably just overreacted.”

“Would you check on her?” I took a deep breath as I dabbed at my tears.

“
Ya
. Watch the shop for me.”

I readily agreed. Thankfully, it was empty. I stayed, waiting for Susie and stumbling around the shop like a sleepwalker.

Verna was fine. Just fine. She was a heavy sleeper, like Susie said. That's all this was.

Feeling as if I were moving in slow motion, I forced myself to calm down and focus on the items around me. I stepped toward a collection of
faceless dolls that were for sale. Next to them was a rack of
kapps
. I wondered if
Englisch
people bought them. Not many Amish traded in Susie's shop.

I was examining a lace doily, still telling myself Verna was fine, when Susie returned to the shop and told me she was not.

“She's passed,” Susie whispered, her face as pale as I'd ever seen it. She moved to the counter and reached for the phone before meeting my eyes. Given my history, she probably expected me to become hysterical.

Instead I just grew numb.

Susie made a call, though whether it was to a friend or relative or the mortuary, I wasn't sure. My head was pounding too loud to hear.

After she hung up, she closed up the shop and we both headed back to the house, ducking low under the grape vines as we went. All I could think was that Verna had been dead even when I touched her cooling hand. How could she be so alive and present this morning and then gone, just like that?

“In a way, it's a relief, I guess,” Susie said as we reached the porch.

I froze.

At least she had the decency to blush a little at her own words. “I mean, not a relief that she's dead, just that she went in her sleep. You always wonder with old people if they'll get something painful and horrible and suffer through the end.”

“But she wasn't even sick,” I whispered.

Susie shrugged. “Apparently, something was wrong. She had lost a lot of weight recently.” She opened the door. “I hope I don't sound callous. I'm just being realistic.”

I didn't move.

“Come on in.”

I shook my head. “I'll wait here,” I said, not even sure who we were waiting for. She seemed to understand, because she reached out to give my hand a squeeze and then slipped inside without another word.

Standing there on the stoop, I thought of the other deaths in my life.

Phyllis, my favorite patient
.

Freddy, Zed's father
.

My grandfather, when I was just a kid
.

His loving wife, my grandmother Nettie, six months after him
.

I remembered again the morning
Mammi
Nettie passed.
Mamm
had seemed a little relieved, much the way Susie did now. Unlike Verna, my grandmother had suffered and my
mamm
had spent months and months caring for her in every possible way.

Maybe that's what Susie had been dreading. She was newly married, expecting a baby, and running her own shop. It would have been a hardship for her to care for Verna if she were too ill, and obviously I wouldn't have been much help if things had become really bad.

I shivered, even though the fall day had grown warmer.

A minute later Susie joined me on the porch, a bowl in her hands. “Why don't you eat some soup,” she said, thrusting it toward me.

I shook my head, my stomach roiling. “
Ach
, I'm sorry. I forgot all about it. Did it burn?”

“No, I smelled it cooking and turned off the fire in time.” Again, she pushed it toward me, but my hands remained at my sides.

“You eat it. But thanks anyway.”

She brought the bowl closer to her chest and then took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. “I made this soup from one of Verna's recipes.”

I shivered again.

Susie kept talking between bites. “She was always so good to me. When I was a girl, sometimes I'd go stay with her for weeks at a time in the summer.”

I nodded, feeling a little envious that the history they had shared was so much more extensive than Verna's and my own.

“She taught me so much, more than my own
mamm
did. All about gardening and canning. Cooking. Sewing and crocheting and knitting. She's the one who taught me to really enjoy handwork, to see it as a time to be quiet and contemplative.” Susie swallowed hard, adding, “She was really something.”

She set the spoon in the bowl, her face full of grief.

“I don't understand how she could be perfectly fine one day and then be dead the next,” I said. Or how she could be on the couch in the same room with me and just
die
like that. I shivered again.

“It's part of life, Izzy. You know that.”

I did. Maybe not as clearly as Susie did—maybe because she'd been through death more times before than I had—but all Amish children grew up knowing that death, of both people and animals, was to be expected. Still I shivered again.

“Are you cold?” Susie asked. “We should go back inside.”

I shook my head. “I really don't want to.”

“You can go on home. Carl said he would call the mortuary and then head here himself. They'll probably both arrive soon.”

“I'll wait.” I couldn't leave Susie all alone.

“Do you want me to call your
daed
?”

I shook my head again. “I'm fine. I promise. Once they get here, I can drive myself home.”

“If you say so.” Bowl in hand, Susie opened the screen door and stepped back inside. Here she was in a family way, the one who had taken Verna in, and she was doing fine. Why was I a basket case once again?

I leaned against the porch wall by the door, feeling the cool bricks against my back.

Susie returned a minute later. “She looks so peaceful.”

“Do you think she's in heaven?” I whispered. We weren't supposed to assume that's where everyone would go. That was up to God.

“She lived a more godly life than anyone I've ever known. Although maybe that's easier when one doesn't have a husband or kids.” She chuckled as if she'd made a joke and then patted her stomach. We stood in silence for a moment until a black hearse turned down the alley. The people from the mortuary had made it here first.

A wave of nausea overtook me. I knew I wasn't cut out to be a caretaker. Why had I given it another try? I needed to concentrate on sewing and handwork, which I had no choice but to do exclusively now that this job was at an end.

Susie hurried down the steps as two men, both dressed in suits, climbed from the hearse. She spoke to them, and then they unloaded a gurney from the back. I stepped to the side of the porch as they passed by. They nodded at me, in unison, both solemnly.

I meant to follow them into the house, but I couldn't. I stayed frozen in place until they came back out. It wasn't until they were at the back of
the hearse that my feet began to move, but by the time I reached the bottom step they had already slid Verna's body inside.

“
Danke
,” I whispered to her, knowing she wasn't there to hear. “For the companionship, even though it wasn't nearly long enough.”

Susie talked with the older of the two men while I hurried back into the house and collected my things, including the history books of Zed's I'd intended to read to Verna.

When I came back out, Susie was still talking, so I went to hitch up the buggy. A few minutes later, I stepped around to the front of the house as the second man climbed into the hearse and they drove away.

“Can I help you with anything?” I called out to Susie.

She shook her head. “I'll make a few phone calls. The community will take it from here.”

I hesitated, wishing her husband would hurry up and get home.

“You can go, Izzy,” she urged. “I'm okay. Really.”

I started to refuse but was saved by the clomping of a horse's hooves. Turning, I felt a rush of relief at the sight of Carl. Susie wouldn't be alone.

A few minutes later, as I turned my own buggy onto the highway, I thought of the boxes of papers that still waited to be searched over at Rod's farm. Somehow, the search seemed so much less important now that Verna wasn't a part of it. I began to cry again, great big tears that rolled off my chin.

Why hadn't God left me out of this one? There was no reason for me to get to know Verna so much better at the end of her life. I'd had my heart broken again, for nothing.

I planned to go home to my little room, open my Bible and journal, and never leave again.

N
INE

I
t was God's will.”
Mamm
stood under the clothesline with one of Stephen's shirts in her hand. Her face was dry, her expression matter-of-fact. I, however, had tears streaming down my cheeks as I clutched Zed's books, my handwork bag slung over my shoulder and my cape unfastened in the warm breeze of that mid-October day.