The Redemption of Sarah Cain (15 page)
As a child, Sarah had learned through one life experience after another that she was not an adaptable person.
‘‘Why do you
get so upset over the slightest change in plans?’’
Ivy would often sneer when Sarah was young.
Once again, she was merely tolerating an unwelcome alteration in her life. Seven days was positively all she could manage— the limit to which her disposition could endure, considering the peculiar situation.
Standing at the bureau that had once been Ivy’s, Sarah looked over every inch of the room again, completely amazed that anyone could live this way. There was nothing lovely here. Nothing of consequence about the arrangement of furniture or the choice thereof. As far as she was concerned, the room was hardly an extension of someone’s personality. For she knew—
had
known—Ivy to be an outgoing person, even fun-loving. How was any of that reflected in her selection of woods or bed coverings? And those hideous green shades—where had Ivy found such things?
Uneasy about sleeping here at all, Sarah entertained the notion of slipping out of the house, escaping to a more refined environment during the night.
‘‘Everything’s just fine now. Aunt Sarah is here. . . .’’
Lydia’s comment at supper still rang in her memory. Why the girl was so resolute, she did not know. Though Lydia was the very likeness of her mother, she possessed nothing of Ivy’s temperament. Strangely enough, in many ways, Ivy’s eldest reminded Sarah of herself. Painfully so.
Delaying the inevitable moment when she must slip into Ivy’s bed, pull the handmade spread over her own body, and force herself to drift off to sleep in this drafty old farmhouse of her sister’s choosing, she intentionally turned away from the bed, toward one of four unadorned dormer windows, and peered out.
The half-moon was a white cradle in the sky, shimmering against a black-ink firmament. Silvery stars scattered out across the vastness of space, winking earnestly down at her.
It was then she remembered the way the sky had
felt
dusky— weighty, in space and time—the horrendous moments following the disaster at Stonington Elementary. She recalled with surprise that she had actually looked up at the eerie gray expanse of space, when she might better have hung her head and stared down at the snow-buried earth.
Unable to ponder sleep just now, Sarah trudged back to the small chair near the bed and sat stiffly until she felt her bones push hard against the cane. Then, turning out the light, she headed back to stand in the window, delighting in the darkness.
Sunday night, January 23
On nights like this, I can’t help but think about Grandpa
Cain, wishing he and I could go walking together along the beach.
Like when I was a little girl. I’d like to know what he would say
about things. Would he have agreed with Mamma—entrusting us
children to the care of an unbeliever? Really makes me wonder
how Aunt Sarah turned out the way she did, having such a
thoughtful, loving father like Grandpa was. Seems to me a lot of
him somehow got missed getting passed along to her.
I need to be talking things over with Fannie. If it wasn’t for
her and the rest of the People, I s’pose I’d be floundering like
some fish struggling to live on the Rhode Island shoreline.
I can’t help thinking that Aunt Sarah seemed to perk up her
ears, maybe too much, over Susie Lapp stopping in sometime this
week. She can’t pull the wool over my eyes. I’m perty sure she
has something up her sleeve about that.
Lord, please lead me beside your still waters . . . calm my
troubled soul.
S
arah stood at the side of Ivy’s pitiful bed, staring down. Mentally, she compared it to her own magnificent bedstead, nearly three thousand miles away. A startling thought seized her: On which side of the bed had her sister breathed her last? She had no way of knowing and wouldn’t inquire of Lydia. Her niece—
all
the children—were struggling with their great loss, she knew.
She would literally grit her teeth and hope the bed linens were indeed fresh.
As a youngster, she was often glad she had never had to share a room with her teenage sister. Ivy’s idea of orderliness was a far cry from her own.
There had been one occasion, when the house seemed to overflow with company, that their mother had planned for the two of them to sleep in the same bed in Ivy’s room . . .
‘‘Do we
have
to?’’ Ivy whined.
‘‘I don’t have cooties,’’ Sarah had spoken up.
‘‘I’ll draw a line down the middle, and you better not cross it—not even with your bony knees,’’ Ivy insisted
after
Mother left the room to entertain the visitors. ‘‘I hate this as much as you do.’’
‘‘Couldn’t possibly,’’ Sarah retaliated. She felt quite rejected. ‘‘Am I such a horrid little sister?’’
‘‘When it comes to certain things, you are.’’
Unwilling to hear a recital of her faults, she did not risk the question. ‘‘So . . . I’m not perfect, and we both know it. Let’s drop it there.’’
‘‘Being blunt doesn’t become you, Sarah Cain.’’
She recoiled at the sound of her own name. ‘‘I hate the way you say that.’’
‘‘I hate the way you
look
at me!’’
Sarah fought back tears. ‘‘Why can’t you be more like . . . like—’’
‘‘Like who?’’
‘‘Never mind.’’ She bit her tongue. Their peace-loving father would be altogether displeased if he had any notion what she was thinking—bringing him into their spat.
‘‘I’m telling Mother,’’ Ivy said. ‘‘She’ll have to make a pallet for you on the floor, because you’re not getting anywhere
near
my bed.’’
Sarah glared at the bed with built-in bookshelf at the head. Sleeping all night long in the same space with Ivy was the last thing
she
wanted, too!
Poking her head into the hallway, she checked to see that her sister was out of sight. Then she went to the bed and knelt down as if to pray but clenched her tiny fists and pounded the spread. ‘‘Please, God, can’t you make Ivy nicer to me?’’
No more fighting over territorial matters. Ivy was dead. And, surprisingly, she had handed her own flesh and blood over to Sarah, for goodness’ sake! No lines drawn in the sand here. All decision-making had been delegated to Ivy’s ‘‘horrid little sister.’’ And to think, now Sarah would have preferred otherwise.
She sat on the bed, testing its firmness. Perhaps God had answered her prayer, after all, making Ivy
nicer
. What lyricist wrote, ‘‘Only the good die young’’?
A ridiculous commentary, she decided. Yet the memory of Ivy’s numerous letters—penned in rather amiable tones on occasion— came back to taunt her. Something
had
changed Ivy’s perspective on life. Something . . . Yet Sarah knew not what it could have been.
The patter of feet on stairs awakened Sarah. She sat up in bed, disoriented for a moment, squinting at the murky room. Glancing at her clock radio, Sarah saw that it was only fourthirty. The middle of the night.
What was happening in the house this early?
She donned her robe, then opened the door leading to the hallway, cocked her head, and listened. More whispering and scurrying, followed by a rumbling sound.
Unmistakably, the sound of an old washing machine drumbeat its way up the stairs to her ears. Recalling that the day was Monday, she wondered why neither Lydia nor Anna Mae had mentioned anything to her last night prior to their interminable evening prayers, through which she had suffered, remaining seated on the sofa while the children knelt.
The clunking and thumping continued, and she wished now that she had allowed herself more time to wind down last evening, gone to sleep sooner. Due to frustration and her overactive mind, she’d had little more than four hours’ rest, if that.
‘‘I’m sorry, Aunt Sarah. We forgot to tell you we wash our clothes and hang them out
every
Monday morning long before dawn,’’ Lydia informed her when Sarah had located the origin of the laundry noise and activity—in the dank cellar. ‘‘It’s our way.’’
Lydia, who seemed overly zealous about explaining, went on to say that after the clothes were hung out to dry, they still had many chores to do in the barn, ‘‘and we milk three cows twice a day.’’ The girl stopped to catch her breath. ‘‘Prob’ly doesn’t sound like much work to you, but we do it all by hand. Saves on machinery expense, and Dat always said it was gut for his children to keep their hands and minds busy.’’
‘‘Why must you get up so early to do laundry?’’ she asked, regarding her energetic niece through a haze of fatigue.
Anna Mae flashed her green eyes. ‘‘It would never do for us to wait till the sun comes up to hang the clothes on the line.’’
Sarah nodded, wondering. Since the family had indulged themselves with electricity, unlike other Plain sects, why in the world didn’t they own a clothes dryer? She attempted to remain tactful, however, and did not probe the reasoning behind whatever mandate this action represented. ‘‘Well, since I’m up, I might as well help.’’
‘‘Many hands make light work,’’ Lydia said softly, handing her a large homespun bag of clothespins. ‘‘Just make sure you hang similar things together on the line.’’ The girl motioned for Anna Mae to demonstrate. ‘‘It’s much more orderly to hang all the boys’ trousers in a row, and all the girls’ aprons, and so on.’’
Sarah was dumbfounded. ‘‘You’re required to do this a specific way?’’
‘‘Ach, no! Nobody says we
have
to.’’ Lydia tossed the damp laundry into a heavy-duty wicker basket. ‘‘It’s just the way the People have been doin’ it for over three hundred years.’’
‘‘Does anyone ever think to change . . . or do things differently?’’ she ventured.
Anna Mae piped up, ‘‘The folks who do usually end up leavin’ the community.’’ The younger girl pursed her lips as if sorry she’d spoken at all.
‘‘Old Order Amish shun those who’re itchin’ to change too much,’’ Lydia explained on the way outside.
Sarah had only heard of shunning by way of Ivy’s letters. Her sister hadn’t explained much regarding the practice, but Sarah did remember—a couple of years back—that Ivy had mentioned several folks who were ‘‘under the ban’’ in another area of Lancaster County, as she recalled.