The Amish Seamstress (46 page)

I didn't want to speak aloud for fear Giselle would stop talking and pull back into her shell, so I just smiled and shook my head as she went on.

“I was only six or seven when she died, but I remember her so well. After her funeral, I asked my father if I could have her entire collection. Even then, I think I knew I was meant for a life that would involve cloth goods and creativity. Just like her.”

A bubble popped on the milk's surface, so I removed the pan from the heat, gave the milk a stir, and poured it into the two cups.

“He was such a mean man, you know. Instead of explaining anything, he just said, ‘Sure, Giselle, you can have every single item that's left' and then he brought me straight over to her house. Despite my grief over her death, I had never been so thrilled, and I can remember racing up the steps, through the front door, and down the hall toward the fabric storage room. Then I came around the corner and just froze.”

Swallowing hard, I stirred honey into our cups as I waited for her to continue.

“The room was completely empty. Turns out, one of his sisters and her husband had gone in there three days before—the very day Judith died—and thrown everything out. They'd done it at the request of the bishop, who had been struggling with her and her fancy fabrics for years. Like I said, he'd tolerated it when she was alive, but once she was gone, he declared that was to be the end of that.”

“Oh, Giselle,” I whispered, picking up our cups and carrying them over to the table. I set one in front of her, and she put the vase aside and took up the cup as I lowered myself onto the chair across from her.

“Anyway, that day at her house, all I could do was stare in shock at the stripped-out room. Once my father caught up to me and saw the look on my face, he just laughed. Out loud. Can you imagine? Here I am all of six years old, my heart utterly broken, and my
daed
thinks it's funny.”

“I'm so sorry,” I said, swallowing back the lump in my throat. I couldn't imagine anyone behaving that way to a child, but especially not the child's father.

“At first I refused to believe what I was seeing. I insisted on pulling open every drawer, every cabinet, but to no avail. Finally, between a big chest of drawers and a wall, I spotted the one item they had missed. It was a remnant of velvet, made of silk, and so luminous that it practically glowed. I
wouldn't have her magical roomful of fabrics and trims, but at least I had that one piece to remember her by.”

I set down my cup and closed my eyes, so very sad for her. No wonder she had reacted the way she did when that remnant turned up again all these years later.

“My father didn't seem to care that I had found something and wanted to keep it for myself. I took the remnant home and put it away. But for weeks, whenever I would miss
Mammi
Judith, I would take it back out and hold it to my face and just inhale. It smelled of that room, of threads and lace and sewing machine grease and the work of my grandmother's hands. I should have known he couldn't let me have that. Once he realized how important it was to me, he took it away. He grabbed it out of my hands and said I was sinning in my adoration, that I was turning it into an idol.”

She took a sip of her milk and then set her cup back down.

“I was devastated, of course, but my hope was that he would give it back to me once he calmed down. A few days later, he seemed to be in one of his rare good moods, so I summoned up the nerve to ask him about it over the breakfast table. I thought he would tell me sure, I could have it back. Instead he said, ‘Too late. I burned it with yesterday's trash.'”

Later, as I tossed and turned in my bed, trying to get to sleep, Giselle's sad story kept rolling around in my mind. We had talked for another hour, connecting on a level that probably neither of us was used to. I had asked more about her
daed
, about what she thought had made him the way he was, especially if his own mother had been such a kind and loving woman. Giselle wasn't sure, though she said she'd always suspected it had something to do with his father's tragic death and the ways his life had fallen apart in the wake of that.

Apparently, when Malachi was only ten years old, he had witnessed his
daed
get caught up in a threshing machine and crushed to death. Not only did he suffer the trauma of seeing that, but soon after he and his mother and siblings were forced to move out of their home and into much smaller quarters elsewhere. And though the Amish community helped to support them financially, this had been during the Great Depression,
when everyone—even the Amish—was feeling the loss of income caused by reduced sales.

Thus, from the time he was about eleven years old, Malachi had had no choice but to work practically around the clock to help support his family. According to Giselle, between witnessing his father's accident and being forced afterward to spend years in grueling labor, he had grown up to become a bitter man. Until his death in his forties—ironically, in a farming accident himself—Malachi had spent much of his adult life lashing out at others, trying to relieve his misery by causing pain to those around him.

I thought her explanation made sense, and I found myself feeling sorry for the man—or at least for the boy he had been before his life underwent such a dramatic change.

Giselle went on to reveal to me the story behind the coverlet as well. She said it was Klara who had come through with that information. That afternoon while I'd been out back doing laundry, Giselle had talked to Frannie at length about both the velvet and the coverlet, trying to figure out why Malachi had hung onto them. Klara had come down for some ice, overheard Giselle and Frannie talking, and joined in, asking them to describe little blanket. Once they did, she volunteered what she knew, that it had been her father's when he was just a boy. He had kept it tucked away and so Frannie had never noticed it, but Klara did because she had run across it once in the bottom of a trunk, when she was just a teen, and had taken it out and laundered it, meaning to use it on her bed. When her father saw what she'd done, he'd been livid, insisting that she fold it up and put it back where she found it, hissing that it hadn't been used as a bedspread since he was a child—and that it never would again.

Just as the velvet was a memento of his beloved mother, we decided the coverlet had more than likely been a memento as well—one of his life prior to the day his father died and his happy boyhood world changed forever.

The next morning, Klara agreed again to sit with Frannie so Giselle and I could go with Zed to the historical society. I would have thought she was just being gracious, except I had a feeling that mostly what she wanted was to keep Gisele out of the house as much as possible.

When we got there, we followed Zed straight to the library, where he logged into a computer.

He seemed to know what he was doing, and it wasn't long until he said, “There's no chapbook credited to an Abigail Bontrager in the collection.”

My heart sank, though I didn't know why I should be surprised. Verna had warned me from the very beginning that the only copies likely to have survived were ones kept in the family.

Next he tried Konenquas's name. She showed up in several articles, listed as one of the Conestoga killed by the Paxton Boys. But that was it.

Then Zed searched the family history log for Vogel, which was Abigail's maiden name, and Bontrager, which was her married name, just to see if anything popped up that we didn't already have. Nothing new, just that Bernard and Veronika Vogel had come over on the
Virtuous Grace
and settled in Manor Township.

“What about the census records?” I knew they were a good source of information.

“Yeah, I already looked for those online, but the furthest back I could find was 1790.”

“They weren't in there?”

“No, the records are spotty, and I couldn't find either the Vogels or the Bontragers. Actually, let me ask…”

His voice trailed off as he stepped to the help desk and spoke to the librarian. After a moment, I followed along so I could hear.

“Some of those have been reconstructed through tax records,” the man was saying. “Let me log you on again through a database we have access to. I think you'll find what you need.”

With a few clicks, he pulled up what looked like photographed documents and said, “Here you go.”

Zed took over as the man walked away, and after less than a minute, he managed to find a Vogel in the 1709 census. He clicked on the image to enlarge it.

“I see it. Bernard Vogel. That's him.” My eyes skimmed the listing until Zed scrolled down a bit.

He pointed. “Look, here's Bontrager too. Gorg and Abigail. Looks like by 1790, they had one, two, three…six children.”

I explained to Zed that I had already learned that from the chart in Verna's Bible. “I descended from their eldest child, a daughter named Helen.”

“Oh, yeah. There she is. Helen.” He studied the listing for a moment. “Wait a minute. This shows her as being born in May 1764.”

“So?”

“That means Abigail would have been pregnant with her at the time of the massacre.” He counted the months backward, doing the math. “About four months pregnant, to be exact. I don't know if that's significant, but she and her husband traveled all the way to North Carolina less than a month later. Does that seem odd to you, that a woman five months pregnant would leave her home to go with her husband several states away?”

“Not necessarily. Women had babies on the Oregon Trail, didn't they? Back then, people did what they had to, you know?”

With a shrug he moved on, but the thought stayed in my mind. I doubted the pregnancy would have stopped them from going, but what if it was more than that? What if, I wondered, the pregnancy was part of the reason they left in the first place? I posed that thought to Zed.

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know. Like maybe Gorg couldn't bear the thought of his wife and future firstborn child living around here with all that mess going on. She was friends with an Indian woman, after all. Good friends. Who's to say they didn't threaten her because of that friendship?”

“They? You mean the Paxton Boys?”

“
Ya
. Maybe Gorg was afraid with all the mob mentality happening, that once the Paxton Boys finished killing the Indians, they were going to come after people like Abigail next, friends of the Indians. Do you know if the Paxton Boys attacked any settlers who were pro-Indian? Or just the Indians themselves?”

He shook his head. “Just the Indians themselves.”

I thought about that for a moment.

“Besides,” he said, “don't forget that within a year of the massacre, Gorg and Abigail became
supporters
of the Paxton Boys. I can't imagine they would do that if they'd ever felt threatened by them.”

I had a feeling he was right.

We were interrupted by the librarian, who brought us a printout of the passenger list for the
Virtuous Grace
. I had seen it before, of course, but I'd never had a copy of my own, and when the man handed it to me, I felt a strange thrill. It was such a link to my past, a memento of my very own ancestors—and Zed's.

Together, we searched for their names, Hubert Lantz and Bernard Vogel, and then I held the list close and smiled as Zed patted my back.

“Feel free to print out copies of the census too,” the librarian said. “You can pay before you leave.” He nodded toward the list in my hand. “But that one's on the house.”

Clearly seeing an Amish girl so happy had touched him.

When Zed dropped us off, we found Ella sitting with Frannie. She was telling her about the Home Place and the bakery, about Luke, about Rosalee. Frannie seemed to drift in and out as she listened.

“And when the baby comes,” Ella said, “We'll—”

Frannie's eyes flew open. “Ella, are you with child?”

“
Ya
. You didn't notice?”

Frannie shook her head slowly, her features radiating pure joy as she took in Ella's ample figure. “No, I suppose I did not. But I can see it now. I'm so glad you told me.”

The women hugged. As Ella pulled back, Frannie began to cough—and then she couldn't seem to stop.

“Izzy!” Ella called out.

“I'm here.” I hung my cape on a peg. “Raise her bed.”

Ella stared at the buttons as I crossed the room, Giselle right behind me. Frannie began to make choking sounds. I rushed to the bed, reaching around Ella to grab the control. I pressed the “up” button with one hand and placed the other on Frannie's shoulder as I did to keep her stable.

She stopped coughing. I picked up the glass of water and placed the straw in her mouth. She took a drink and swallowed.

“Is she all right?” Ella asked. She looked terrified and guilty, as if it had been all her fault.

“
Ya
,” I answered. I hoped so. I put the glass down. I retrieved the stethoscope from where I'd been keeping it on the bookcase and listened
to Frannie's lungs again. The rattle was back. I decided to call Marta. I wanted a second opinion.