Her New Amish Family. Carrie Lighte

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СКАЧАТЬ was so lost in thought that when he arrived at his shop, he was startled to find three Englisch women standing on the doorstep, peeking through the window into the store. In his experience, the Englisch customers tended to be more impatient than the Amish. It seemed to him Englischers were often in a rush and they expected others to be in a rush, too, whereas Seth felt if he couldn’t do a job both quickly and well, he’d rather do it well than quickly.

      “We were afraid you were closed for the day!” one of them said.

      “Neh, just for the first ten minutes,” Seth replied with a grin as he keyed into the shop. He found humor often kept him from becoming too stressed and his customers appreciated it, too. Especially the Englisch ones, who often seemed taken aback initially, as if they were under the impression the Amish were humorless dullards. But they usually ended up smiling back.

      Sure enough, the women giggled as Seth held the door open for them. Soon after, a few more customers trickled in. Seth noticed one of them discreetly lifting a cell phone and he knew he was being photographed. He had half a mind to post a sign forbidding cell phones and cameras in the store, but he decided if people weren’t going to voluntarily respect his beliefs and privacy, it was useless to try to make them do so.

      By the end of the day he was relieved to walk home and when he went through the door, the boys bounded into the kitchen to greet him as they usually did.

      “Guess what, Daed,” Tanner said. “Trina taught us an Englisch song.”

      “And we had lots and lots of vegetation for dinner,” Timothy claimed.

      “You mean vegetables,” Seth corrected him.

      “Neh, it was vegetation.”

      Just then Trina entered the room and said above the boys’ heads, “Hungerich bucks need a lot of vegetation to stay strong.”

      Ah, so that was it. Seth had to smile. He and Martha had a difficult time getting the boys to eat any vegetables except potatoes and corn. If Trina had been able to get the boys to eat more greens by appealing to their interest in animals, that was terrific. But he drew the line at teaching them Englisch songs.

      “Buwe, please go into the other room while I talk to Trina,” he said. After they scampered away, he asked Trina how her day went.

      “It was gut,” she said. He noticed she was using Deitsch words more frequently already. “The buwe picked up the sticks in the front yard and half the sticks on the west side of the house, too. They sure have a lot of energy.”

      Seth nodded before getting to the point. “They said you taught them an Englisch song. May I hear it?”

      He saw a look of confusion pass over Trina’s face before her cheeks broke into a blush. He regretted embarrassing her, but he had to be sure the boys weren’t being taught songs about superheroes or other ideas that were contrary to Amish beliefs.

      “It’s more like a poem than a song. At least it was the way I presented it,” she said and her usually mellifluous voice was marked with defiance.

      “All the same, I’d like to hear it.”

      Trina exhaled audibly and then began, “One, two, buckle my shoe...” She continued reciting the verse until she got to the number ten, at which point she said, “That’s as high as we went. I was trying to teach them how to count while they were doing yard work.”

      “I see,” Seth said. He’d been taught that same verse as a child and he felt as foolish as he’d obviously made Trina feel. Still, he wasn’t sorry he asked her to tell him how the song went. “We didn’t have time this morning to discuss what kinds of activities are appropriate for Amish kinner, so I just wanted to be sure—”

      “There you are, Seth,” Martha interrupted from the doorway. “It smells like supper is about ready, isn’t it, Trina?”

      Trina peeked inside the oven. “Jah, it’s bubbling,” she confirmed, removing the pan from the rack and setting the chicken-and-cheese casserole on a hot pad on the table. “You should let it cool a bit before you eat it. And don’t forget the asparagus. It’s steaming on the back burner.”

      “I thought you were going to stay for supper. You know we made plenty,” Martha said.

      So much for demonstrating hospitality; Seth knew he was the reason Trina changed her mind about supping with them. “Jah¸ you should stay,” he echoed.

      “Denki, but I need to be on my way. I’ll arrive a few minutes early tomorrow, Seth, so we’ll have plenty of time to review your list of restrictions about the kinner with me.”

      “There’s no list,” he mumbled feebly, but Trina didn’t seem to hear as she zipped her jacket. Unfortunately, Martha was listening intently, and from the look on her face, Seth was going to get an earful about his attitude tonight after the boys were in bed.

      * * *

      Completely humiliated, Trina slinked home. After spending most of the morning and afternoon outside with the boys, her appetite was raging in a way she hadn’t experienced since before her mother took ill. But there’d been no way she was going to sit down at a table with that smug, controlling Seth Helmuth. She respected that Amish people abided by their church’s Ordnung, and without knowing what it said herself, it was possible she might have accidentally violated one of its precepts. But she’d felt like a criminal when Seth demanded she recite the song like that. She hoped he felt utterly ridiculous when he heard how it went!

      In the kitchen, she removed her jacket and hung it on the peg beside the door. Almost immediately she took it back down and put it on again. It was freezing in there. Now she was cold as well as hungry. How was she going to go grocery shopping? The stores within walking distance closed by the time Seth returned home and she didn’t have a car. What was she going to subsist on? Water and Willow Creek’s superior fresh air?

      She went into the parlor and lit a fire in the woodstove. Then she looked around for her handbag, which contained half a packet of crackers with peanut butter she’d bought at the train station. When she found it, she gobbled a cracker and then brought the rest into the kitchen where she put the kettle on to fix a cup of the tea Martha had left for her. Once the water came to a boil, Trina filled a mug, put the crackers on a plate and sat down next to the woodstove.

      Even with her jacket on and the warm cup in her hands, she was shivering, so she retrieved the quilt from her bed and wrapped herself in it before returning to her chair. The silence was punctuated only by the ticking clock and Trina understood why her mother had felt like time stood still in Willow Creek. Trina had only been there two days and it already seemed like a lifetime. It was enough to make her want to pack her bags right then.

      Of course, Trina’s mother had had a far more significant reason to leave Willow Creek behind: Abe Kauffman. But as miserable as her mother’s life with Abe had been, she’d rarely spoken against him in detail. Patience had only described how, after her own mother died, her father changed.

      “Mind you, he never lifted a hand against me,” she told Trina. “But he wouldn’t lift a hand toward me, either. Not to help me, not to embrace me. He hardly spoke a word to me. It was as if I didn’t exist—as if I had died when my mother did. All that existed was his bottle of beer. So, in a way, I felt as if he’d СКАЧАТЬ