The Lesson (27 page)

Getting her picture taken for the passport made her feel as exposed as if she had run through Main Street in her underwear. She waited at the post office until she was sure no one was around whom she might recognize. Then she quickly had her picture taken by the postal clerk. As soon as it was ready, she signed the application, stuck the money order in the envelope with the application, and handed it to the clerk without allowing herself a second thought. It was a weak moment, one she wasn’t proud of, but knowing it was a done deal gave her a feeling of satisfaction.

In the meantime, she had taken Erma Yutzy’s advice to heart. She tried to find ways to connect to each pupil, to look for that golden moment. Teaching had become strangely satisfying, though winning the affection of the pupils was proving to be harder than she had expected. Not with the little ones, like Barbara Jean, or the bright ones, like Danny
Riehl. But some of the older boys and girls were harder to convince, like there was Jenny Yoder. Jenny remained cool and distant. A bright spot occurred today when Jenny started to notice the patterns in the leaf and connected it to math patterns. That was good. Very good.

But later in the day, she had asked Jenny and Anna Mae Glick if they might like to stay after school and help her set up the art project for the next day. She had hoped that if Anna Mae could get to know Jenny, she might start including her with the other girls. But Anna Mae wrinkled her nose and scrunched up her face so tightly that M.K. thought she might suddenly be in pain. “Danny likes me to walk home with him from school.” She swiftly made her escape without a word of farewell.

M.K. knew that wasn’t true. Danny usually burst out of the schoolhouse as soon as she rang the dismissal bell and disappeared into the cornfield before Anna Mae had time to gather her things.

Jenny watched Anna Mae flounce out of the schoolhouse. And then she said, almost in a whisper, “She acts like I’m invisible.”

“You’re not, you know,” M.K. pressed.

Jenny hesitated, her intense eyes searching M.K.’s face. “Not what?”

“Invisible.”

Jenny looked at M.K., then looked away, but not before M.K. saw the way her eyes narrowed and two lines formed between her thin little eyebrows. “Fern is expecting me.” She turned and hurried out the door.

M.K. could have kicked herself. Why did she always seem to say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing when she was around those Yoders? Just when they started to open up,
she had to say something that scared them off. A turtle in its shell.

Wouldn’t it be nice, Jenny thought as she walked to school, if you could shorten the bad days and save up the time to make a good day even longer? This morning, for example, she would like to swap out for two Christmas mornings.

She knew the entire day was headed in the wrong direction when she overcooked the scrambled eggs for breakfast. Fern had warned her to cook eggs slowly, but Chris was in a hurry, so Jenny turned up the flame on the stove. She burnt her finger on the hot pan handle and couldn’t find a bandage. Then the eggs ended up looking like rubber cement. They tasted worse. Chris didn’t complain, but Jenny was disappointed. Yesterday, Fern had given Jenny those brown eggs, still warm from Windmill Farm’s henhouse, and Jenny had wasted them. Eggs were precious.

Chris hurried off to work and Jenny got ready for school. She heard a knock at the door and ran to get it, thinking it was Chris. But no! Rodney Gladstone, that overeager real estate agent who was always dropping by, stood at the door with that greasy smile on his face. He held out a handful of mail to Jenny. Her mail. On top was a thin gray envelope with her mother’s familiar handwriting on it.

“I bumped into the mailman just a few minutes ago,” Rodney said, still smiling. “Thought I’d save you a trip.”

Jenny grabbed the mail from him and closed the door, but Rodney stuck the toe of his shoe in the threshold, leaving two inches of space to talk through. “I happened to be at the county clerk’s office. Happened to discover that the legal
owner of this house is a woman named Grace Mitchell. No one seems to know where she might be.”

Jenny squeezed the door harder on his foot.

“I happened to notice the letter you just received is from a Grace Mitchell.” Rodney’s voice rose a few notes from pain inflicted on his foot. “The return address says Marysville, Ohio.”

Jenny leaned against the door and pushed as hard as she could, and Rodney finally yelped. He pulled his foot out of the threshold and Jenny closed the door tight.

“Any chance that Grace Mitchell is the daughter of Colonel Mitchell?” Rodney called through the closed door. “Any chance Grace Mitchell is your mother?”

Jenny locked the door behind him. She tore open her mother’s letter:

Hi sugar! How ya doing? Listen, Jennygirl, I could sure use some extra cash right now. Would you believe they make us buy our own toothpaste here? I’ll bet Chris has some moola tucked away. Check under his mattress—that’s where he keeps it. SHHHHhhhhh! Just our secret, you and me. Thanks, babygirl! Never forget your mama loves you! XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Jenny folded the letter and put it in her pocket as she heard Rodney Gladstone’s car start up and drive down the driveway.

She had a very bad feeling about today. She often had bad feelings about days, especially Mondays, but this was different. This was worse.

M.K. had been certain Chris might drop by the schoolhouse or accept Fern’s standing invitation to come to dinner.
She thought she might bump into him somewhere. But she hadn’t seen him in nearly two weeks. Their friendship had been progressing, and then, boom, it just ended. M.K. wasn’t good at handling rejection. It had never happened to her.

It was a beautiful fall afternoon—slightly crisp, with the tangy smell of burning leaves in the air. Fern had planned to can garden-grown pumpkins all day, so M.K. was in no hurry to head home. No sir! Canning food in a steamy kitchen might be her least favorite activity. She took the long way and stopped at the cemetery where her mother and her brother, Menno, were buried. The tops of the trees swayed gently in the breeze. She walked up to her mother’s grave and dropped down to clear away the dandelions and brush a bit of moss off the gravestone. Her mother had been gone for most of M.K.’s life, and she couldn’t quite recall her like she wanted to. Sometimes, she thought she only remembered remembering her.

She closed her eyes, trying to think what life had been like before her mother died. The images were so mixed up they never made much sense. She remembered a time when her mother had lifted her into the air and laughed as they whirled breathlessly around the room. Her mother smelled like cookies. And she remembered her father coming into the room and wrapping his arms around the two of them. A sandwich hug, he called it, and his littlest girl was the filling.

That was it. That was about all she clearly remembered of her mother.

“Are you all right?”

M.K. lifted her face, and there stood Chris Yoder, his brow furrowed in concern.

“Are you all right?” he repeated.

She stumbled to her feet. “Where did you come from?”

“I was passing by and saw your red scooter by the fence, then I saw you drop like a stone—I thought maybe you’d . . . fainted or a crow was dive-bombing at you . . . something like that.”

“I’m fine,” she said, feeling oddly nervous, oddly pleased. Chris had been worried about her! She pointed to her mother’s grave. “I was just pulling weeds.”

Chris walked up to her and read the tombstone out loud. “Margaret Zook Lapp, beloved wife and mother.” When he read the date, his eyebrows lifted. “You must have been young when she died.”

She nodded. “Only five.”

He half smiled. His smile was soft. He inclined his head as if he was weighing how much to say. “You must miss her.”

Would she ever stop missing her mother? “I think about her every day. But you know what that’s like. Don’t you miss your folks?”

“Yeah, sure.” But Chris looked away when he spoke, and M.K. could tell that he was lying. Too late, she recalled how Jenny had evaded the question about her parents, or where she was from, just like Chris was doing.

But then he smiled at her and his eyes crinkled at the corners. A funny sensation flitted through her. She felt that peculiar moment of connection weave between them, as if they shared something. Then the moment passed. He was gazing deeply into her eyes with his bright spring-water blue ones and he began to have a mesmerizing effect on her, the same way he had in the barn on that rainy day. She couldn’t have moved away from him any more than the poles of two magnets could be pulled apart. “Are you coming from town?”

Chris nodded. “Your Uncle Hank needed a part for a buggy he’s working on.”

“You’re working as much for Uncle Hank’s buggy shop as you are for Dad’s orchards.”

“I don’t mind. I need the work.” Cayenne tossed her head and whinnied. Chris turned to look at her standing on the road, tied to a fence. “Your uncle is expecting me. I’d better get the part to him.” He turned to leave, then stopped. “Do you need a ride home?” A slight smirk covered his face. “Unless, I suppose, your boyfriend is coming to get you?” He started to walk toward the buggy.

What?
“Wait!” she called. “Who’s my boyfriend?” She hurried to catch up with him.

Chris didn’t answer. He helped M.K. into the buggy, tossed her scooter on the backseat, and climbed up beside her. He gave a quick “tch-tch” to the horse and a light touch on the reins and they were on their way home. He whooshed past a slow-moving car as if in a hurry to deliver M.K. as quickly as possible.

M.K. tried once again. “Why do you think I have a boyfriend? Because I don’t. I don’t know who told you otherwise, but I do not have a boyfriend.”

“I see.” He was trying not to grin, but she thought the news pleased him. She hoped so.

“Are you going to tell me who is spreading rumors about me?”

Chris remained quiet for a moment, then gave her a sideways glance.

Right
, M.K. thought. The information flowed only one way.

Fern had left Jenny in the kitchen at Windmill Farm, waiting for the oven buzzer to go off and remind her that the last few pies were done, while she took one pie over to a
sick neighbor. Jenny and Fern had made six pies this afternoon—three apple, three pumpkin—and the kitchen was filled with spicy cinnamon. Fern had showed her how to roll out dough and how to keep a bottom crust from getting soggy in the middle.

Jenny found a piece of paper and an envelope and sat at the kitchen table to write her mother a letter.

Dear Mom,

I met a nice lady who is teaching me how to bake. First she taught me to bake sourdough bread rolls. The first batch could have chipped a tooth, but by batch four, they were tasting pretty good. Now she’s teaching me to make pies. Here’s a secret: adding a teaspoon of vinegar into the crust helps to make it flaky. Did you know that?

Of course she didn’t. Her mother had never baked a piecrust in her life.

Jenny didn’t know what else to write. She didn’t want to sound too happy, and she didn’t want to seem as if Fern was replacing her role as a mother. Her mom could be touchy about that kind of thing. She had never wanted to hear about what Jenny had learned from Old Deborah either, and she always made fun of their Amish clothing. She used to whisper to Jenny, “As soon as I get out of here, I am giving you a makeover. The works!”