All in good time, p.10
All in Good Time, page 10
When she wasn’t asked to be any young man’s girlfriend, she shrugged and threw herself into the farm work at home. She learned to ride, clinging to the horse’s back with her long, lithe form, no saddle necessary, and often, no bridle. Her brothers envied their father’s admiration of her, but admitted none of them came close to handling a horse the way Clara did.
So without a husband, she took cleaning jobs and saved every penny until she could buy horses of her own. Eventually, with the untimely death of both of her parents, she inherited the farm and turned it into her dream, raising fine horses, which was what she loved then, and still did.
The barn was efficient, with a wide cement walkway between a row of stalls, room to store hay and grain, and a small room for all the paraphernalia that went with raising good horses, including a desk with paperwork. She often sat at her desk and looked out the window at the view across the pasture dotted with grazing horses, and in those moments she felt like a queen.
The barn was warm, moist with the horses’ breath, the scent of stored hay and mixed oats and corn one she never tired of. She greeted each horse by name, then worked with the fiery sorrel mare in the gray cold of the winter day. Her fingers were stiff with the cold, her hands numb from the steady pull on the reins as she flew across the snowy back roads, her hooves making a steady thwock thwock in the wet snow.
Exhilaration flowed in her veins as the horse tore along, the snowy landscape a blur of white, the sky leaden and cold. This was her life, this was what she was born to do, and she planned to continue as long as the good Lord provided a sound mind and body.
Back in the barn, she checked on a chestnut mare, her black mane and tail glistening with frequent brushing. She was heavy with foal, her sides distended grotesquely. Clara had been watching her, fearful of a foal with enormous size, a difficult birth.
“Well, Lucky, you poor thing. You look miserable.”
She did, pacing relentlessly around and around her stall. She wasn’t due to foal for another few weeks, but Clara decided to clean her pen and spread a thick layer of fresh straw, just in case.
Her hands grasped the fork handle with ease, threw large amounts of manure on the wheelbarrow before wheeling it out to the wide doors along the back, where she dumped it on the ever-growing pile. Then she stood back to eye the alarming amount of manure, and thought a hired hand would come in real handy about now.
CHAPTER 8
BACK AT THE WHITE FARMHOUSE, ANDY AND MAY WERE SETtling in, becoming accustomed to the extra workload, that of milking cows twice a day. May was a proficient milker, impressing her admiring husband so that he grabbed her in the milkhouse and kissed her soundly, looked deep into her shining brown eyes, and told her he would never deserve her, even if he lived to be a hundred years old. And May would repeat the phrase to him, both of them profoundly pleased to find the same emotion in the other. Their love continued to grow month by month, although in the way of all human beings, it was not altogether perfect.
There was the ever-increasing problem called Kettie, the mother-in-law. Buxom, round as a biddy hen, and as excitable, she scurried around on small feet topped by swollen ankles and varicose veins, her pleated skirt much too short for a woman her size. She rarely wore stockings, her wide girth and excess poundage creating too much heat, so her feet would begin a slow burn inside her black shoes and stockings, creating a misery all its own.
Since moving into the small brick house with only one son left over, and he having plans to be married, she found herself often just rocking in her chair, thinking of her son and his wife situated in her house back on the farm. One such afternoon, she heaved herself out of the chair, pulled on a pair of rubber boots with breathless effort, poked her heavy arms into a coat, tied an itching wool scarf beneath her many chins, and ventured down the lane to the farm. When she arrived, she hesitated on the front porch before deciding it was not right to have to knock on her own front door, turned the knob, and let herself in with a resounding “Hallo-o-o!”
May was startled, to say the least, carefully laying little Fronie into her crib without waking her. She tiptoed out, closed the door softly, and peered around the door of the living room to find Kettie in the kitchen, her face the color of a ripe plum from the cold and the exertion of her walk to the farm.
“Oh, why hello, Mam,” May said pleasantly, pleased to use the proper phrase for her mother-in-law.
“There you are, May. Why, there’s Lizzie! Don’t you go to school?”
Lizzie shook her head. “Next year,” she announced proudly.
“Here, give me your coat and scarf,” May offered, trying to keep from watching the rivulets of dirty water from the rubber boots pool on the clean linoleum.
“Alright. Good! Oh my, I’m so ready for some company!”
All Kettie’s sentences needed an exclamation point at the end, the way she delivered her words in stentorian blasts, followed by bursts of raucous laughter, chirps and pouts and wiggling eyebrows. She was extremely opinionated, smart, aware of things around her. She read newspapers, books, and only sometimes her Bible.
May loved her, in the beginning, but as time went on, the love seemed harder to grasp, sliding like oil through her fingers, and was replaced by tolerance, then a weary kind of endurance. She did her best, always greeting her with kindness, listening to her colorful tirades with patience, marveling how this woman had ever raised a son like Andy.
She put the kettle on, knowing Kettie loved her strong coffee laced heavily with cream and sugar. The top of the cream, not the cream close to the milk, and brown sugar, not that white stuff. And she loved her pie. Any pie. She made custard pie like silk, a bubbly brown top, a crust that was so flaky it barely held together. She made pecan pie, and Montgomery pie, all the fruit pies, and green tomato pie well into the winter from her store of green tomatoes in the root cellar.
She thanked May for her cup of coffee and carefully added the required cream and sugar before sipping appreciatively. The she raised her eyebrows and asked for pie.
May smiled. “I do indeed have pie. I made fresh apple pie with crumb topping. Andy’s favorite.”
“Oh, did you really? You’re a good wife. You know, I feel sorry for young husbands whose wives do not bake pie. I hear more and more of my good friends saying how their boys do without pie since they’re married, and that’s a shame. Every man needs his pie. Why, look at Andy. He was raised on pie.”
“Yes, he was. He loves his pie.”
Pleasant, smiling, May tried to put the abrupt appearance and the lack of polite knocking out of her head. She fixed her own cup of coffee, gave Lizzie a small cup of spearmint tea, and brought out the pie.
Perfectly rounded, the crumbs a delectable mixture of flour, butter, brown sugar, and a small amount of chopped walnuts, it was a better pie than Kettie herself had ever accomplished. Expertly, she cut into the pie, took out a piece for herself, then raised her eyebrows as she tilted her head to the side, examining the bottom crust before shaking her head.
“The bottom isn’t quite done,” she said, chirping with her tongue as she held out a thumb and forefinger, only a hair apart. The sound with her tongue was an indication of how shaut (what a shame) it was the crust was underbaked.
May felt a flush of irritation but squelched it quickly as she watched Kettie use the side of her fork to cut a generous bite, chewing and nodding. May waited, eager to hear the praise she felt sure would come.
“Sugar. Needs sugar. What kind of apples did you use? These seem a bit firm, a bit tart. But otherwise, the pie is pretty good.”
After which she polished off not one piece, but three, still elaborating on the lack of sugar.
Kettie looked around the kitchen, the clock on the shelf, the gleaming countertop and stovetop, the bright throw rugs scattered about, and smiled.
“You sweep your floors every day, huh?”
May laughed. “Yes, but we have three children, you know.”
Kettie looked pointedly at May’s slim waistline.
“Fronie isn’t a baby anymore.”
May blushed painfully, avoiding Kettie’s direct gaze. How could she tell her mother-in-law about her conversations with Andy, the deeply intimate and personal conviction he had, not wanting her small body to be carrying babies every year, the way so many young women did, birthing up to a dozen children or more, all in the span of fifteen to twenty years? He cared so deeply, cherished his wife so sincerely.
Kettie went on. “Jonas’s Hannah, you know what happened there. They quit having babies and after a few years she ran off with the bread man. That was years ago. She should have been making her own bread, had no business spending good money on store-bought bread. That was her first mistake. Then, a few years went by with no babies—everyone thought she might have health problems. She had this flashy look about her. Well, look what happened. She spent too much money at the grocery store, too. She bought bananas in winter. So what does that tell you?” More clucking and eyebrow-raising.
May was at a loss for the proper response, so she shook her head somberly and said she was sorry to hear that.
“Well, yes,” Kettie said, breaking off a section of crust from the pie, casting a long gaze at the remaining half. “We women are to take the admonishing of the Lord, and the Bible clearly tells us we will be saved through childbearing. All the discomfort and pain is good for our souls.”
And so is the grace of our Lord Jesus, May thought, but she just nodded her outward assent and kept the peace. Immediately, Kettie was off on another ramble, this time the subject in question being Oba.
“Oh, he’s doing alright,” May said, cautious in her response.
“He needs a wife. But who would date a man like him? It’s a pity, the way he has only one leg.”
“Yes.”
“Did he ever learn to walk with the wooden one?”
“He’s working on it.”
Kettie nodded, then regaled May with the story of her cousin Ruth’s half brother’s condition, the years of pain and misery from a back injury before dying at the age of thirty-seven and a half. She thought Oba wouldn’t live to be an old man, either, the way he sat around and glared at the world.
“He needs good thoughts. I don’t think he’s born of the Spirit. You need to bring him to church.”
May nodded thoughtfully, glancing at the clock and thinking of her stack of ironing. Would these visits become a regular occurrence? Sitting in her small brick house, without sufficient duties to keep her occupied, would Kettie arrive on a daily basis?
That night she talked to Andy about it. It was the time of night when they shared their deepest concerns, after evening prayers, lying in bed, a small candle burning in its pewter holder giving off a soft, yellow glow. It was a time of sharing their hearts, two people given in holy matrimony, blessed by the God of Abraham and Isaac, a time May cherished with an almost fierce abandon.
She brought up the subject in painful, halting sentences and waited for his answer with a strangely heavy heart. When it came, she was plummeted into a long, dark tunnel of fear and betrayal. He spoke firmly, as if reprimanding her.
“May, my mother will never change. Her ways are a bit harsh, and as you well know, completely overdone, but you are married to her son and therefore she is your mother as well. So try to accept her. It’s the only way we can get along living here together. You know how much I love you and want only what is best for you, but I think my mother is part of the package.”
If he had reached out and slapped her, it might have been easier. What had she done wrong? She had not done anything against him or his mother but had merely questioned whether he thought she’d be visiting every day and whether that was really necessary.
His mother’s feelings were placed above her own. No, he did not lover her above all else. He loved his mother first.
So she cut off all conversation, turned her back, and snuffed out the candle, a move uncharacteristic of her soft, kind self. An unusually strong anger coursed through her body, so when she felt his large, calloused hand on her shoulder, she shrugged it off, plumped her pillow, thumping it a bit harder than was necessary.
“May?”
When the only sound was the wood falling in the grate of the living room stove, he repeated her name, tentatively.
Suddenly, she flipped on her back and said harshly, “So you love your mother more than you love me.”
“Of course not. I just want you two to get along with each other.”
She felt very much like Clara when she gave him no answer, but for one moment, it was a kind of liberty, a bit exhilarating, like a headlong slide down an icy hill with a runner sled.
“May?”
No answer.
“May? I love you. Please don’t be offended.”
But she was offended, and she wanted him to know he had hurt her deeply. But she decided to let him figure it out for himself and walked around the next day with an air of haughty pride, like an insulted princess, until he was miserable with the mistake he knew he had made but wasn’t sure how to go about fixing.
And May learned she did not always need to be a doormat, something everyone took for granted and no one appreciated fully. She learned the ways of a woman, the little wiles and bits of wisdom life requires when a well-meaning but very bumbling husband gets out of line.
It was a marriage, and a very good, solid one, but since a marriage is never perfect, neither was theirs. In the end, she told him how he had insulted her, and he apologized for his harsh tone and also reminded her of his patience and acceptance of Oba, the most impossible person he had ever encountered.
And May’s happiness retuned. She had begun to learn the need for good communication, and life moved on, the bump in the road navigated successfully.
SALLY TROYER WAS tall, slim, dark-haired, and dark-eyed. She had run her course of boyfriends and breakups and was bored with men and relationships. She was unaware of anyone living with Clara till she bumped into Oba in the kitchen. She took in the sight of his handsome face and astonishing blond hair and stopped short. Never given to social graces, she blurted out, “Who’re you?”
Oba gave a steady evaluation and said, “Santa Claus.”
“Very funny.”
“I’m Oba. Oba Miller.”
“You live here?”
“Of course I don’t. Would that be acceptable, an English man living with an Amish woman?”
“Oh, pooh.”
Sally waved him off and went to the barn to find Clara, who brought her back to the kitchen and introduced them properly. Oba said hello in an offhand way and Sally said something garbled before turning her back and asking Clara where her rags and scrub bucket were kept. Clearly, Sally was here for the cleaning, getting the job done as quickly as possible, and had no time for strange men seated in her way.
“Sally, why don’t you sit and have a cup of coffee with us?”
“I don’t drink coffee.”
“Tea then?”
She glanced uncomfortably at Oba before saying, “Alright.”
“Sugar?”
“Do you have honey?”
“Sure.”
And so the stilted conversation moved along by jerks and awkward stops. Sally was the kind of person who had no outside interests and pronounced her words with an irritating lilt, as if mocking the subject and the people she was talking to.
“Oba is here to learn how to use his wooden leg,” Clara said finally, trying to interest her in something.
Sally looked at Oba. “You have only one leg?”
“Afraid so.”
“That’s awful. What happened?”
“A wreck.”
“Clara, I need to get started immediately. I can’t sit here drinking this tea. I have a full day ahead.” She glanced toward Oba’s leg and shivered visibly, disgust written all over her face.
There was nothing to do about Sally and her total disregard of Oba except do her bidding, so Clara got up and gave her instructions for the upstairs bedrooms.
Coming back down, Clara flopped into a chair, grabbed her coffee cup, and took a large gulp, before banging it down in frustration.
Oba smiled at her. She did not return it.
“I told you I don’t want to meet someone.”
“That’s not why she’s here.”
“You know it is.”
Caught off guard by his total honesty, she went into a sulk, refusing to look at him as she grabbed the coffee cups and slammed them into the sink. She told him she was busy and went out to the barn, leaving him to strap on the leg and work on it himself.
Oh, she was plenty mad. She hated being caught out like that. Her pride was battered, ruined, actually. The worst part was the fact that Oba knew it. She could have shaken Sally. Talk about social graces. Huh. She had been prepared for a rocky start with Oba and Sally, with his handicap and all, but couldn’t Sally have at least acted interested? That was what was wrong with young girls in this day and age. Completely self-absorbed. She didn’t even ask what kind of wreck. And that look she gave Oba. What was she thinking?
So her mind roamed across the community, thinking of a plainer girl, someone with a bit of sweetness about her, but came up empty. She stood absentmindedly stroking the nose of the restless mare, ran her hands down the side of her face, and told her if she didn’t have this baby soon, she was going to be worn to a frazzle. Too many nights of having to get up and check on her.
She was startled when she heard the creak of hinges and noticed a stab of light when the barn door was opened from the outside. Her mouth flew open in astonishment when Oba made his halting way through the door, gripping the sides for support.
A hand to her mouth, she was rooted to the spot. He was breathing hard. She stepped forward to help him, but he held both hands up. She hurried to grab a stool, an old wooden one she would often use when she polished harnesses or saddles.
“Here. Sit.”
He did, gratefully. There was a light in his eyes, a flush on his face, and he looked at her with what could only be called a triumphant look.
