As Jeremiah drives the buggy to the party tonight, I start making a plan. As much as I enjoy kissing and being kissed by Ezra, tonight I’m going to try to focus more on talking to him. I want to hear how he really feels about being Amish. And I want to hear his reaction to the news that I plan to go to church with my relatives tomorrow. I’ve already talked to my uncle, and after asking me a few basic questions, he agreed that I was ready. He seemed pleased.
The truth is, I feel like I’m really putting myself out here. It’s like I’m conforming to being Amish, and primarily because of Ezra. I mean, I could just be laying low at the dawdi house, waiting for my mom to get well. I could still be wearing my own clothes, doing my own thing, helping Mammi when she needs it, but taking it a whole lot easier than I have been at my aunt and uncle’s house this past week. I feel like I’m playing by the Amish rules in order to prove to myself—and maybe to Ezra too—that I can do this. But what if I’m doing it for nothing?
Still, I can’t believe that could be true. I believe that Ezra loves me. I believe we belong together. But after a hard week like this has been, I need to hear it from his mouth.
“This is the Schrock farm,” Jeremiah calls out as he turns into a driveway. “Where Jonah and Lydia live.”
As the buggy pulls up to a house that looks similar to my uncle and aunt’s house, Jonah and Lydia come out. I remember Jonah from last week, but not Lydia. “How old is Lydia?” I ask Jeremiah as they jog over to us.
“She is Rachel’s age.”
I peer curiously at his face, noticing how he seems to be watching Lydia with great interest. “She’s pretty, isn’t she?” I say quietly.
He smiles. Jonah climbs in front, sitting next to him, and Lydia sits in back with me. I tell her who I am, but she just nods.
“Ja. I know who you are.” She looks slightly disappointed. “Where is Rachel?”
“At home,” I tell her.
“I thought she was coming,” she says as the buggy starts moving. “Jonah told me she came last week.”
“Ja,” Jeremiah calls from the driver’s seat. “She did not want to come tonight.” He turns around to smile at Lydia. “But I am glad you came,” he tells her.
“Oh . . .” She giggles and gives me a funny look. “Rachel and I are both studying for baptism,” she confides to me.
“Are you and Rachel good friends?” I ask.
“Ja. We both want to be baptized in August.”
“That’s nice.”
“I hear that you and Ezra are . . . well . . .” She makes a perplexed frown. “Are you a couple?”
My cheeks warm as I nod. “Ja,” I say quietly.
She presses her lips tightly together, as if she’s uncertain about this. But then she reaches up and pokes her brother in the back. “Jonah, you should be talking to Rachel these days . . . ya know?”
He doesn’t respond.
“Jonah, can you hear me?”
“I hear ya, Lydia.”
“You told Daed you want to be baptized,” she says to him. “You should talk to Rachel about it, ya know?”
“Ja, ja.” Jonah elbows my cousin. “You too, Jeremiah,” he says in a joking manner. “You should be getting yourself ready to be baptized too. If you want to be talking to Lydia.” He laughs loudly like this is very funny.
I’m certainly no expert in such matters, but I’m beginning to see how courtship and baptism go hand in hand for Amish young people. I suppose it makes sense.
The gathering tonight is at a different barn. I don’t catch the name, but if I didn’t know it was a different barn, I doubt that I would’ve noticed much difference. The trampoline has been set up in this one too. According to Jeremiah, the trampoline travels around in the summertime. It seems like it would be work setting it up each time, but then these people seem to thrive on work.
To my relief Ezra is already here. I was secretly worried that he might not come tonight, but he comes directly to me and seems genuinely glad to see me. “I’ve missed you,” I tell him.
He grasps my hands, pulling me close to him. “I missed you too.”
I can smell beer on his breath, but his eyes still seem clear. “I hoped that I’d see you sometime during the week,” I say as he starts walking me away from the barn.
“We’ve been putting up hay,” he says. “The heat made it come early this year. We hope to get another crop by August.”
“Oh.” I glance over my shoulder, back to where the others are gathered. “Where are we going?”
“Someplace we can be alone,” he says mysteriously.
Okay, as much as this idea appeals to part of me, it worries me too. I remember how far things have gone with us already, and I don’t want to get too carried away. He walks me alongside a creek until we come to a brushy clump of trees. There I can see something glowing in the dusky light. He pushes back the brush, and we enter a small clearing where there’s a battery-operated lantern next to a blanket that’s spread on the ground. There’s also a bucket of water with a number of beer cans floating in it. I suspect the water is to keep them cool.
“What’s going on here?” I ask. “Private party?”
“I made us a place to be alone,” he says innocently, pulling me close to him again and leaning in for a kiss.
As badly as I want to kiss him, I put up my hand between us like a stop sign. “Can we talk a little first?” I say somewhat timidly.
He looks surprised but then nods, tossing his hat aside as he sits down on the blanket. “Ja.”
I sit down across from him, studying his handsome face in the flickering lantern light. It would be so easy to forget my earlier plan and go straight to kissing. Except that I know where that could lead.
“What do you want to talk about?” he asks as he reaches for a beer, holding it out to me.
I consider saying no but don’t want him to think I’m a party pooper, so I take it and carefully pop it open. I will pretend to sip it while we’re talking. “This week has been really weird,” I tell him.
“Weird?” He looks confused. “What happened?”
I explain how I’m living with my aunt and uncle, how I’m working so hard, how I’m pretending to be Amish. “I even talked to my uncle about going to church,” I say. “I plan to go in the morning.”
Ezra frowns.
“What’s wrong with that?” I ask.
He shrugs, taking a big swig of beer.
“You see,” I say slowly, “I’m wondering what it would be like to really be Amish. I want to find out more about it.”
“Why?” he demands.
Feeling confused, I look down at my lap. “Why not?” I ask quietly.
“You don’t want to be Amish,” he says gruffly.
“Why?” I look back at him.
“Because it’s too hard.”
“Too hard?”
“Ja. For an English girl.” He shakes his head. “It is too hard.”
“I’ve been doing it all week,” I point out.
“No, you are playing at being Amish. You are not really Amish.”
“But I could be Amish,” I argue.
With a beer in his hand, he points at me. “You want an Amish husband telling you what you can and cannot do?”
I make a half smile. “That depends on what he’s telling me to do.”
He starts to grin. “Ja, that is different, Shannon.”
I shrug. “If it was the right husband, I might not mind being told what to do,” I say honestly.
“I cannot believe that,” he says sternly. “You have had freedom. You have lived in the English world. You do not know what you are asking for.”
“You honestly think I couldn’t fit in here?” I demand.
“I think you would be crazy to want to fit in here.” He takes a long swig of beer, finishing it off, then crunches the can in his fist and tosses it aside. “I don’t even want to fit in here.”
“You don’t?”
“I told you already.” He reaches for another can. “I have my doubts about committing to the church.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Why?” he echoes in a slightly hopeless tone.
“Do you doubt God?”
He shrugs, taking another long sip.
“I do believe in God,” I tell him.
“Ja . . . that is good. But do you believe in the Ordnung?”
I pretend to take a sip.
“You do not even know what is in the Ordnung, do you?” he challenges me.
“You’re right. I don’t. But my uncle could teach me.”
“But could he make you understand it?” Ezra sticks his thumb under one of his suspender straps. “Could he make you understand why it is sin for us to wear a different kind of suspender than these? Or why we must rely on a horse and buggy instead of a car? Or why we cut our hay by hand instead of using a machine? Can he make you understand and accept all those things, Shannon?”
“No, I didn’t think so. I have lived here all my life and I do not understand.”
“But there are things about this life that I really like,” I say. “Things that I think I am beginning to understand.”
“That’s because you haven’t been here long enough.”
“You make it sound like you hate it here,” I say quietly.
“Sometimes I do hate it here.”
“Then why don’t you leave?” I ask.
He finishes that can of beer now, crunches the can, and tosses it aside. “Sometimes I think about it.”
I study him. “You’d leave your family and friends and your home?”
“I might.” He reaches for another can.
“But you’d be shunned.”
He nods.
“Where would you go? What would you do?”
He shrugs as he takes another long swig.
I’m feeling lost now, like everything I’ve been dreaming of and working for has been ripped out of my hands. “Ezra,” I say quietly. “I thought you said that you loved me.” He looks into my eyes, but already his eyes are starting to look blurry again, similar to last week.
“I do love you.”
“I love you too,” I whisper.
He leans forward, and grasping the back of my head in his hand, he pulls me toward him for a kiss . . . then another. After several, I pull myself away, struggling to catch my breath.
“Don’t you think we could be happy together?” I ask him. “You and me . . . living here? Wouldn’t it be a good life?”
He throws back his head and laughs. I feel as if I’ve been slapped.
In the same instant, I jump to my feet. “Fine.” I toss my full beer can down to his refuse pile. “Go ahead and laugh! I can see I’ve been a complete fool.” I turn and push my way out of the thicket and start to run. Tears are streaming down my cheeks, and I feel stupid and sentimental and just plain foolish. I half expect him to follow me, but I don’t hear footsteps. So I stop running and just keep walking. But after a while, I realize that I don’t know where I am. The sky is black since the moon hasn’t risen, and all around me, everything looks dark. I can see lights in the distance, but they seem too far away to be the barn where the party is located.
I stop walking and listen, hoping I’ll hear the sounds of voices and be able to follow my ears, but all I hear are crickets and frogs. Now I’m starting to get scared. Why did I run off like that? And why didn’t Ezra follow me? I consider making an attempt to retrace my steps, but my pride won’t let me. Instead I sit down in the grass, which smells faintly of cows, and then I lie down on my back and I cry . . . and cry . . . and cry.
I can’t remember ever feeling this kind of hurt before. Even when my dad died, although it was horrible and sad and confusing, it didn’t seem to hurt like this does. Maybe it’s because I know my dad didn’t intentionally abandon me. He never meant to hurt me. But this feels like Ezra has willfully driven a knife right through my soul. Like I’ve been cut to the core and am bleeding to death. And it feels like he doesn’t even care.
After a while, though I have no idea how long, I figure I should get up and get moving. I should find the barn and find my cousin, but I have no idea which way to go. So I just sit here feeling emotionally drained and mortally wounded and unbearably sad. A part of me says I should be scared out here alone in the dark. Maybe there are wild animals about—I have no idea if that’s true or not, but even if there was a pack of hungry wolves prowling, I’m not sure that I really care. Let them tear me apart. It can’t hurt as badly as it hurts to know that Ezra doesn’t care.
As I’m sitting there I can see a light moving side to side, as if someone is walking with a lantern. I remember how my cousin found me last Saturday and assume it’s him again—Jeremiah coming to rescue me. I hop to my feet and run through the grass toward him. But when I get close enough to see his face, I realize that it’s Ezra.
“Shannon!” he cries out as he runs toward me, swooping me into his arms. “Where have you been?” He hugs me close to him. “I’m sorry, Shannon. I’m sorry.”
I’m crying again. The more I cry, the tighter he holds on to me, telling me over and over that he’s sorry.
“I’m sorry too,” I say. “I expected too much from you. It wasn’t fair.”
“It’s just that I don’t know anymore.” He lets me go now, stepping back to look at me in the lantern light. “I know I need to make some decisions. But I don’t know what I want.”
I look down at the ground, feeling my heart tumbling to the dirt.
“I mean what I want for my life,” he says suddenly. “I want you, Shannon. I know that.”
I look up, feeling hopeful again. “You do?”
He gathers me into his arms. “Ja. I do.” He leans down and kisses me. The smell of beer is even stronger than before, but I decide I don’t care. All I care about is that he wants me. He still loves me. I know he does. “Here.” He hands me the lantern, then scoops me up into his arms as if I’m a child. With me giggling, he proceeds to carry me.
“Where are we going?” I ask between giggles.
“You’ll see,” he says. Before long, we’re back in the thicket, and the blanket and bucket are still in place. “Here you go.” He sets me down on the blanket, falling over on top of me, making us both laugh. Then he is kissing me again—with more passion than ever—and I start to feel nervous again. “Wait!” I say firmly, pushing him off of me.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Jeremiah is going to be worried,” I say as I sit up. “I should get back.”
“No.” He reaches for me again. “You just got here. You can’t leave.”
I place both my hands on his cheeks and kiss him again. “I wish we could stay like this forever,” I tell him. “And maybe someday we will. But not tonight, Ezra. My aunt and uncle will be worried if I don’t come home with Jeremiah tonight.”
“I can take you home.”
“Not without telling Jeremiah first,” I say as I stand up. “Do you want my uncle coming out to search for me?”
I can see the concern in his eyes as he stands. “You’re probably right.”
I hold the lantern for him as he gathers up his “camp,” and then we walk back to the barn, which thanks to the bonfire is clearly visible. I can see Ezra weaving left and right as he walks, and sometimes he stumbles. I notice that his bucket is empty too. Did he really drink all those beers? And if he did, wasn’t it partially my fault? After all, I was the one who ran away from him, leaving him alone like that.
It looks as if the party’s starting to break up when we get to the barn. Already some buggies have left, and I discover my cousin and his friends have been searching for me. Although they seem relieved to see me, they are also aggravated at me for worrying them. Naturally, they tease me without mercy as we ride home. I pretend to ignore their nasty little jabs, but it bugs me that they assume I’ve been doing something “shameful” when I actually spent most of the evening feeling brokenhearted and lost, sobbing by myself in a cow pasture. Oh well, let them think what they like. I know what I was and was not doing.
It’s weird—just when I think I’m getting a grasp on what it means to be Amish, I witness a whole different side to these people. Although they are definitely different from the English in many highly visible ways, beneath the surface they are very much the same. Perhaps that’s simply because we are all human. And all flawed.