The Amish Seamstress (31 page)

My eyes widened. Zed's accident had been one of the great traumas of my life. It had happened more than three years ago when I was caring for Freddy in his last days and Zed and I were first growing close. I was in the cottage with Freddy, waiting for Zed to get home on the bus. Then I heard tires screeching outside, followed by a thick, sickening thud, the sound of the impact.

Somehow, I knew in that moment it was Zed. Leaving Freddy alone, I dashed out of the house and to the road. Sure enough, there he was, sprawled out on the pavement, the car stopped, the distraught driver climbing from his seat.

I reached Zed first, fearing the worst, and pulled his head onto my lap—an action that I later learned could have been as fatal to someone with a head and neck injury as the impact itself. I thanked the Lord every day that it hadn't been.

Sitting here now, it was as though I were reliving that moment. I gripped the edge of the table with both hands, remembering. In the hospital, I'd acted brave for Zed's sake, even though I'd been so afraid.

Do not fear
, was what Jesus had said over and over.

But I did fear. I feared like I had never feared before. I feared I would lose the kindest, sweetest, smartest, funniest friend I'd ever had. I feared that this young man who was so full of
life
would die.

“Do not be afraid,” I whispered.
But how?

“Izzy?” Ella was back in her chair, leaning forward, her hands flat on the table in front of her.

“You're right,” I said, stunned. “I don't know why I didn't think of this before. Phyllis's death was so random, just like Zed's accident was so random.” I looked at her, my eyes wide. “I know I'm a worrier by nature, but this has to be when things took a turn for me. I see it now. This isn't just a phobia of death. It's a lack of faith, of trust.”

“A spiritual issue.”

“Yes, that more than anything else. But whose faith doesn't waver when something terrible that like just happens out of the blue?”

Ella took a deep breath, thought for a moment, and then met my eyes. “Honestly? I think you may have forgotten that our Father is in charge, and that nothing is ‘out of the blue' in His eyes. To God, nothing is random.” She went on to recite a verse from the Psalms, though in a different translation than the one I knew. “‘Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.'”

I took it in, knowing that verse would become my comfort from now on.

“God may not have caused Zed's accident,” Ella continued. “But He definitely knew it was going to happen long before it did.”

I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, letting that truth soak into my very core. Of course. God knew. God was in control. God was never taken by surprise. Already I felt better, just having come to that understanding. Opening my eyes, I gave her a smile.

“So will you take the job?” she asked. “With
Mammi
?”

I nodded, still apprehensive but not nearly as much as before. “I will.”

Ella's face lit up. “I'm going to go call Mom right now.”

I sat at the table, thinking through my discovery—thanks to Ella—and feeling as if a million pounds had been lifted from my shoulders. I prayed to God for forgiveness, and for restoration to my hurting, sinful soul.

S
EVENTEEN

W
hen Ella returned, we started preparing dinner, a new baked chicken dish using fancy ingredients, such as rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, crushed tomatoes, shallots, and basil. Ella came up with the most amazing recipes.

As she positioned the chicken to cut it into pieces, she said, “I was thinking that maybe I should fill you in with some…uh…lesser known details about our family. Just so you know what the dynamics are. You will be there in the thick of things, after all.”

I was pretty sure Zed had already told me every one of his family's secrets, but I wanted to hear what she had to say, so I didn't tell her that.

“I'm sure you already know most of this from Zed, but just in case he left anything out…” Her voice trailed off for a moment, and then she said, “Would you chop the shallots?”

“Of course.” She had brought in two big ones from the root cellar. I scooped them up and carried them to the cutting board.

“Anyway,” she continued, “with
Mammi
doing so poorly, my mom has sent word to various family members to come home—while they still can, if you know what I mean.”

I nodded. In other words,
before Frannie dies
. I swallowed hard.

“We don't know yet who is and who isn't going to show up, but if everyone does, things might get a little…weird around there, at least at first.”

Weird? “Who might be coming?” I asked as I retrieved a knife from the drawer.

“I'm sure Lexie will fly in, both to see
Mammi
and also to help out my mother with her practice to free up her time a little.”

“She did that when your father was dying too. I remember.”

“Oh, that's right. So you already know her.”

“Kind of. We didn't spend much time together, but she seemed nice, and really smart and competent. I know your mom depended on her.” I began to peel the shallots and then asked, “Who else?”

Ella gave me a glance, her expression unreadable. “My aunt Giselle from Switzerland. I'll believe it when I see it, but Mom seems to think she might actually come.”

I pulled the last of the brown skin off the first shallot.

“If Giselle does come, it'll be the first time in, like, almost thirty years.” She paused as she did the math. “Yeah, twenty-eight years. Giselle left home twenty-eight years ago and hasn't been back since.”

“Wow,” I whispered. The thought saddened me. “Poor Frannie. I'm sure she has missed her. Is Giselle the oldest of her children?”

Ella shook her head. “She's the middle child. Aunt Klara is the oldest, and my mom's the youngest.”

Knife in hand, I sliced the shallot in half lengthwise, revealing the translucent whitish pink onion inside.

“Lexie says the story of our family sounds worse than a country music song.” Ella told me with a laugh. “And she's right. It does.”

I smiled, careful to keep my eyes on the small vegetable in front of me as I held it steady with one hand and began to chop it into narrow slices with the other.

Ella launched into her story, beginning more than forty years ago when Frannie lived here in Indiana with her husband, Malachi, and their three daughters, Klara, Giselle, and Marta. Ella said theirs was not a happy home, that Malachi was a terrible husband and father who abused his family both verbally and physically.

“Things were different back then,” she added. “People kept stuff like that secret. The church tended to look the other way. The victims were made to feel as though it was somehow their fault.”

I nodded, thinking of a situation of abuse a few years ago in my district back home, one that had been dealt with swiftly and thoroughly.

“Anyway, even as a child Giselle displayed incredible artistic ability, which she'd inherited from her mother and grandmother.”

I paused and looked over at her. “Really? Is Frannie artistic?”

Ella nodded, and I smiled, realizing that must be one of the things that drew me to the old woman in the first place, our kindred creative spirits.

“The problem was that Malachi refused to allow art of any kind to be created in his home. That was a rule Giselle frequently disobeyed, so she was often the target of his abuse.”

I paused, stunned at the very thought. I knew that making art could lead to various sins, such as pride or lust or the creation of graven images, but there were so many other ways that art could lead to good and godly joy, especially when reflecting the magnificence of God's creation. As long as one understood that and used their gifts appropriately, how could they be denied that right? For me, being forbidden to create would be like being forbidden to breathe.

I dabbed at my eyes with my sleeve, though I wasn't sure if I was crying from the onions or from Ella's story. Cupping my hand, I slid the chopped pieces of the first shallot out of the way and started in with the next as she continued. Ella explained that in the early '70s, when Giselle was about ten years old, Malachi was killed in a farming accident, dragged by his team when he failed to hitch it up properly. I felt bad to hear that but also relieved. At least the suffering he had caused for others had come to an end.

Ella stood straight for a moment, stretching her back. “After that,
Mammi
had to figure out some way to support herself and her girls, so a few months after he died, she moved them all to Lancaster County to live on her brother's farm and work for him as a housekeeper.”

I was aware of this part of the tale, how Frannie's brother was a widower by then, living on a farm that belonged to his late wife's family. Once he died, Frannie and the girls stayed on, renting the place for a few years
before eventually buying it. That was the farm where she lived still, only nowadays she stayed in the
daadi haus
and her daughter Klara and her husband lived in the main house.

“Once the girls were older,” Ella continued, “Klara joined the church and married Alexander Rupp, but Giselle followed a different path. During her time of
rumpsringa
, she got caught up in an affair with her boss, an
Englischer
named Burke Bauer, who had a wife and a kid of his own. Eventually, Giselle ended up getting pregnant by him.”

I knew this part of the story too, but I listened as Ella went on to explain, saying that Giselle had managed to keep the affair a secret until she was obviously showing, and even after that she refused to reveal the identity of the father. The one person who knew the truth about that was Alexander, and only because he had once spotted Giselle and Burke together, after hours, in Burke's office. Alexander had kept that knowledge to himself, thinking Giselle's affair was between her and God, but eventually, as she neared the end of her pregnancy and still refused to divulge the father's identity, he felt compelled to share it with Frannie.

Unfortunately, Giselle was so angry and defensive that when they confronted her about it, she went on the attack, denying that Burke was the father and making terrible insinuations about Alexander himself instead, even implying that
he
was the father. He denied it, of course, but though Frannie believed him, his own wife did not. Poor Klara, who had been raised by a cruel and evil man, had assumed the worst about her husband as well. It was all a big mess, and life on the farm was like living in a pressure cooker.

By the time the baby was born, Giselle hated both Alexander and Klara so much that in a final, horrific moment of spite, she named the child Alexandra. Of course, that act caused no end of grief for poor Alexander, who now not only had to defend himself and his conduct to his wife but also the church. Fortunately, he had involved the bishop from the beginning, so he was never formally accused or forced to confess a sin he did not commit.

“The story goes on from there,” Ella continued, waving her spoon in the air, “and the details aren't important, but basically Giselle and Burke ran away together, and they stayed gone for nearly a whole year. By the
time they broke up and she came back home again, she was pregnant once more. Can you imagine? She was still so young then, in her early twenties, I think, and now she was faced with being a single mother of a toddler
and
an infant.”

I shook my head, unable to fathom such a thing.

“To make matters worse, once the baby was born, Giselle ended up with severe postpartum depression. One day, just a few months later, when she was supposed to be watching little Alexandra—or Lexie, for short—Giselle fell asleep, and the child wandered outside and down to the creek. She fell in and would have drowned if not for my mother, who thought she saw something and went to check and ended up rescuing the child.”

I shuddered at the thought.

“The incident shocked everyone, but Giselle most of all. That night, she packed a bag and ran away, leaving both kids behind along with a note, asking Klara and Alexander to raise them as their own.”