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I am flying. I’m weightless, so high above the Earth that it feels as though I’m not moving at all. Although I know that I am, and moving fast too, forward; the wind blasting me in the face like it’s trying to push me backward.
But it hasn’t got a chance.
I’m too strong, too powerful, too strongly rooted in my natural place in the order of things. I cut through the atmosphere without even trying. I stretch my arms out to my sides and feel the bracing air around me, lifting me up, holding me aloft.
But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength, I recall from Isaiah 40:31. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
I know I’m free of the Earth’s grip on me, that terrible terrestrial grip that holds all living things bound to it. Even birds cannot escape the planet’s tyranny. But I am no bird, for as Luke 12:7 reminds me, But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.
So I fly untethered, unafraid.
The Earth is far below me now, farther than before, it seems to me. The greens of the forests and patchwork-quilt of the farmlands are surreal and beautiful under a thin layer of cloud.
Let’s take another swoop down there, I think to myself, so casual in my mastery of the skies. I imagine buzzing over the tops of the tallest eastern red cedars, punching through fluffy white clouds, only to be lost in their gray silence before bursting out the other side. I imagine swooping low, looping up in a wide arc, perhaps to dip down again at my leisure.
Why not? I’m free, I’m finally and truly free; as free as a bird.
Even more free.
So I turn to let my body sink into a quick and smooth decent, to gather enough speed for a mighty swing back up.
But I can’t.
I roll at this lofty, airy plateau, but I do not descend. Slightly troubled, I point my head down and try again, but I know I’m not moving downward. I can feel the wind still pushing ahead of me, and not from underneath me, as it should be doing.
No, I think to myself. Something’s wrong, something’s terribly wrong.
I try again, but I only wind up doing an awkward circle in the sky, a clumsy summersault. Now my heart beats a bit faster, the air thinner in my lungs, wind pushing against me from the sides as I try to fly downward toward the Earth. But there’s an invisible force pushing up against me, resisting my attempts to revisit my former home. And no matter how much strength I exert, no matter how cleverly I try to twist my body and aim myself in that direction, I am powerless.
I think to speed ahead, perhaps gather enough momentum that I can cut downward, using more force than whatever it is that wants to refuse me. But I cannot fly forward now either. I am inert, floating, unable to move forward or down, as though I were simply treading water, barely able to keep my head above the surface.
But there is no surface. There is no under, nor any over. There is simply sky all around me, and I’m stuck in it. I flap my arms and kick my feet, but now I’m just hovering miles above the Earth. I look down and the landscape seems even further away, more blurred, the ocean coming into view. I look around, noticing that the sky above me is getting darker, clouds seeming to sink past me.
Sink past me? I think to myself. No, that can’t be right.
Then I feel the air, no gusting against my back. I notice a strand of my hair, having wriggled free of my bonnet; and it quivers in a straight line, pointing down my cheek and past my chin.
Down toward the ground.
I flail, arms and legs passive and pointless as my body rolls slowly, clouds shooting past me even faster now.
I realize that I’m falling, just as though I were falling to the ground. But I’m not. I’m falling up, into the sky.
I can’t go back now, I realize. I’m not welcome there anymore, if I ever was. There’s no place for me there now, if indeed there ever was a place for me. It’s not my home anymore.
It never was.
My heart jumps a bit, panic settling in as I fall faster. The Earth below me swirls with cloud current, the darkness of space reaching up around it. It’s incredibly cold now, the air much too thin to breathe. I struggle to pull some life-giving oxygen out of the thin gasses around me, but my body aches and my blood tingles in my veins.
I fall faster, struggling to breath, freezing cold as the darkness of space envelops me and the Earth slips away from below.
Why are you frightened? a voice says to me in the cavern of my own heart, you know where you’re going, and you know Who awaits you. Rejoice!
And I want to, for I do know where I am going and Who awaits me. I close my eyes and open my heart and let myself abandon the doubt and fear that have plagued me throughout my short life.
That’s all over now, I tell myself.
But it’s not over. The fear and doubt remain, getting even worse as the pressure of space presses against my chest, my head, squeezing me tighter.
I just keep falling, up into the vacuum of space.
I’m not delivered into the hands of the Lord, nor to the loving arms of my Mamm and Daed and little sister.
I just keep falling.
Then the pressure becomes too much. I can feel the bones of my skull bending as my ribs collapse, puncturing my useless lungs. I can hear my skull start to crack as it implodes, my body still tumbling out into the inky blackness of space. With a hideous crunch, my skull caves in, all my senses are reduced to a low hum, a dim light, then they are switched off completely, leaving my body to drift in space for eternity, forever without a home.
***
My eyes shoot open, light pouring in, burning. My head jerks from side to side, my skin is coated with a clammy film, hair clinging to the sides of my face. My heart is racing, lungs raw, hands trembling.
I have the natural inclination to rise, but my body is shod with pain, every muscle aching, nearly locked with a kind of pain I’ve never known. I can’t tell what hurts more, my throbbing head or my spasm-frozen spine, the muscles along the backs of my legs, the mangled tendons of both arms. But their combined effort freezes my attempt to sit up and I must ease back slowly, painfully, even these few inches. The bed creaks under me, old metal rusted by years of hard living.
I look around and recognize nothing. The place smells of damp, of rot, of oaky tobacco smoke. My eyes strain to focus on the shack around me, a single large room subdivided into separate rooms by flimsy, pressboard walls.
One corner is the kitchen, with a pig-iron wood stove and metal tub for washing.
And there’s a woman, staring solemnly at me. My focus blurs and strains to refocus again, this time finding her face with greater effort, but still not recognizing her even as she walks slowly toward me. She wipes her hands on her filthy, threadbare dress.
“You okay, honey?” she asks, low and steady and gentle, careful not to startle me.
I don’t answer.
Two younger people enter from the single door,, looking at me with surprise, their freckled faces identical under their flaming red hair. I have to use all my strength of reason to convince myself that they’re not a single creature with two heads.
“She finally awake?” one says. But the other grimaces at him. The three slowly approach the bed, an awkward silence overtaking us all.
What happened? I have to ask myself, and I’m instantly frustrated by my lack of a response. What happened? I think again, but the question only swirls around like a thinning stream pulled down a bottomless pit.
I realize that I’m wearing somebody else’s clothes, a decrepit old cotton pullover like the one this woman in front of me is wearing. Although how I can be certain that they aren’t my clothes, I can’t be sure.
“What’s yer name, sweetie?” the woman asks me.
I think about it, my brain aching. I have no answer, so I can only shake my head.
The woman cracks an uncomfortable smile, raising her hand modestly to her chest. “I’m sorry, where are my manners? Been so long since we’ve had ... company. I’m Miriam Krebbs, these are my boys, Stanley and Stonewall Krebbs.” She looks at them, her smile almost quivering on her face. “Boys?”
They turn to me and bow their heads humbly, muttering, “Welcome, Miss.” With their bony limbs and narrow chests, I take them to be about twelve years old.
But ... how do I know that?
Okay, I hear a voice in my head say, at least I know who I’m not, and that’s a member of this family.
I shake my head and look up her. “What happened?”
She looks at me with a new gravity, her sweet supplication melting away to reveal her hard-won wrinkles. “Found you washed up on the banks of the river, my husband brought you here, we been nursin’ you back to health.” She pauses before adding, “Well, s’much nursin’ as you’d have. Mostly you just been sleepin’. Now, who are you, darlin’?”
I let the question ring out in the back of my head and heart and soul, but for the life of me, and the chilling creep of the grave, I cannot answer. I shake my head.
Miriam asks, “Can you talk, honey?”
I think, wondering why on Earth I couldn’t. I clear my throat, and it’s much drier and in more pain that I’ve ever known it. I try to say, “Yes, of course I can,” but manage only a few grumbled, scratchy sounds. But I nod, and point to my throat, and she smiles and nods in return.
“I see,” Miriam says, turning to her various pots and pans. “I’ll get some hot broth on for ya, be just the thing. Tea’n honey too. Ain’t got much, but we do got that.”
Stanley and Stonewall can’t take their eyes off me, and I try to shrink back under the wool bedcover, but there’s really nowhere I can go. I still don’t know where I am; I don’t even know who.
The front door swings open with a force that makes the walls of the shack tremble. And they’re not alone. The man who I instantly take as the family patriarch walks in, all energy focusing instantly on him. But he’s glaring directly at me, and he doesn’t seem happy.
“Why didn’t you tell me she was up?”
Miriam rushes to him, but stops short of his arms. “She just woke up. I was gonna send the boys to fetch yer.”
He’s tall, with an aging face and a long, graying red beard. He glares at me, a speckled hound dog of some kind poking its head in behind his leg. It barks, a yowling that only ratchets up the tension before the man kicks it back with his leg and slams the door closed between them.
Then he turns on me. “Well well well,” he says with a low, steady grown, “sleeping beauty awakens.” His voice sends a chill up my spine, especially in concert with what he’s saying. But he doesn’t seem interested in addressing me properly.
At least, not yet.
He says to his wife, “She say anything?”
Miriam shakes her head. “Says she don’t know nothin’, Lester—”
He turns to glare at her with a sharp snap of his head. “I told yer not to use my first name!” After a skeptical moment, he says, “Ya didn’t tell her yers?”
Miriam seems to be squirming, then she turns back to her stove. “I got a broth goin’.”
“You did.”
“I didn’t know—”
“I told you—”
“Else I didn’t remember, ‘kay? She was just woke up, I thought it might help her know’d who she was.”
He shakes his head, releasing a long, tired breath that wreaks of liquor.
Wait, how do I know about liquor, or what it smells like? Who am I?
Not knowing is frightening me to my core. I’ve never felt so isolated. Yet I get the feeling that isolation is a way of life for me, that whoever I am, I am a lone soul, drifting without company and without refuge.
But how did I wind up here?
Washed up on the river, she’d said, like some girl Moses.
Wait, I have to ask myself, who’s Moses?
Moses, I answer instantly, delivered the Hebrews from bondage in Egypt.
But ... how do I know that?
Now the man steps nearer to me, turning his head as if to get a closer look at my face, my body, my very soul. He says, “You okay?”
I hurt all over. I’m terrified, confused, and completely clueless about who or where I am. I can only shake my head. He says, “Well, my name’s Lester, as you know. Keep it under yer hat.”
He turns and joins his wife in the kitchen. They share a few mean, muttered words, and then he shoots me another stare before crossing the shack to the door and stepping back out, slamming the door behind his exit.
Miriam tries to smile, breaking an awkward chuckle. “Don’t mind him,” she says, “he ... was anxious to know if you woke up.” I try to nod, but I don’t really mean it and it’s too physically painful anyway.
I can only turn my head and fall back to sleep, wondering what I’ll find the next time I wake up.
If I manage to wake up at all.
***
I’m in and out of consciousness for over what feels like the next several days, although it could be a week or more for all I really know. But my strength slowly returns, until when I am awake, I can stay focused for more than just a few minutes at a time. That’s when I’m more lucid, more eager to talk to Miriam and Stanley and Stonewall.
They’re not so eager to talk to me.
I notice an old doll sitting in the corner of the shack, rotting away, its button eyes staring, mouth forever sewn shut.
For a moment, I think it’s a sign, that it’s me, a preview of what I am to become; just some festering old thing, once vibrant and now soiled and saturated and withered and eaten away by time and neglect.
I say, “That the dog’s toy?”
Miriam looks over, then shakes her head. “Is now, since ... since last years anyway.” But there’s something very familiar about her sense of misery, her lingering air of loss.
Whose toy was it before it was the dog’s? I wonder. A girl’s doll?
But I can put the sad story together. I know how it is to lose a little girl in the family. I’ve seen the same air of misery before, on a woman whose happiness had been robbed from her in the same way.
But ... who? I have to ask myself. Somebody close to me, somebody ...
I ask Miriam for an extra blanket when I’m hit with a case of the chills, and during the heat of midday, which worries me. And they don’t have any extra blankets.
I notice Stonewall, the submissive of the twins, standing looking at me in my bed. I feel a bit uncomfortable about it, but I am wearing a dress under the sheets, and there’s just the one big room for me to lay in, so it’s really not untoward.
But it’s less than ideal. Still, I have to make do with what I’ve got.
“Hi,” I say. “You’re Stonewall, right?” He nods. “That’s a nice name; very strong, manly. You and your brother really help a lot around here, don’t you?”
He nods again, his face and body are otherwise completely motionless. I say, “Hey, you don’t have to be nervous or anything. I’m ... I’m just wondering if you couldn’t get me a drink of water?”
The boy stands there, staring at me, then turns and bolts off into the corner of the shack he shares with Stanley.
And though God doesn’t seem very interesting in reaching out to me directly, I’m still able to talk to Him, whenever and where ever I like, though from the confines of this little shack, I do all my praying silently.
Dear Lord:
I know you can hear me, I know you’re listening, and that you love me very much. How it is that I know these things, I can’t explain; and that’s only part of what I cannot explain. Won’t you take the time to tell me what these things are, what they mean, what I mean? How can I know you when I don’t even know myself? And how can that be? Surely, I have a past, I’m a person just like everyone else.
Am I not?
And who is this person, that I am and that I’ve been? So strange not to know, Lord, such a cold kind of loneliness to not even have one’s self for company! What am I doing here? Nothing wicked, I can’t imagine. I know that I’m a good person, at least I feel that I am. I can’t believe I’d be doing something so horrible that You’d tear my whole life away from me and leave me with nothing, clinging to life on a rock on the banks of some shallow river.
Or, like Moses, do you intend other things for me, greater things? Am I central to some grand design which I cannot comprehend? If so, how can I achieve the things You want me to achieve if I don’t know what they are?
And will I survive the learning of it?
I know you do not seek my suffering, that cruelty is not your method. But Lord, is it cruel to tear me into shreds, cast those separated parts far from one another, so that I cannot feel whole, so that one part of me cannot even recognize the other?
I do not doubt you, great and powerful Lord God, but I do doubt myself. How can I do otherwise? And if I cannot rely upon my own integrity, how can anyone else? How can I win the trust of these mountain folk and not engender their anger or vengeance?
And will you leave me here with them forever? Is this who I am? Is this where I belong?
I will go where ever you lead, Lord. But I do need a sign, a pillar of smoke by day, of fire by night, or just the twinkling of a star, to show me the way. I know you will lead me, and I hope you know that I will follow. I give you my word.
Amen.
Meanwhile, the days roll on and the Krebbs family tend to their chores, which include all manner of repair work on the shack (the boys’ work) and constant cleaning and sweeping, among Miriam’s various duties. I try to stand up, and finally manage to get on my feet and start hobbling around the shack. My body feels like it is getting better quickly, legs becoming more flexible, less sodden with numbness or stabbed by bolts of pain.
The hound dog spends more time with me, a speckled beast with hellish breath but an angelic disposition. It lops up to me when it can, stealing a pet or two. Well, not really stealing, because I’m happy to give them away. The creature seems so starved for affection, so ready to receive those little scratches on the head. Its eyes dip closed in joy, ears sinking as I scratch the crevices.
But once the dog catches sight of its stern master, Lester Krebbs himself, he runs off whining. Lester enters from the corner of the room he keeps for himself and Miriam. He stares me down, but I can’t do much more than sit meekly and not antagonize him.
And my mind is still blurry, filled with many more questions than answers. As I practice walking around the little shack the next day, I ask Miriam, “So, you found me in the river?”
“That’s right, honey.”
“But ... where was I before that?” Miriam just shakes her head, returning her attention to the pots she’s scrubbing. “How long have you been here ... living here, I mean?”
“Long enough. And hopin’ to stay a might longer too.” She glares at me with that sad, solemn determination which I don’t understand. I don’t have any intention of running her out of her own house.
“Here,” I say, “lemme help—”
“No, yer just get cher legs back,” she says, waving me away from the kitchen corner. “Wish I knew what to call yer,” she says, her graying brown hair falling over her face.
“Wishing? I’ve been praying for it, praying for God to restore me.” I have to pause, then chuckle to myself. “Me ... whoever that is.”
Miriam turns from the pans. “You know who God is?”
“Of course,” I say with a simple shrug, although it all beguiles me as much as it must do her. “I know Moses, and Elijah, and of course Jesus—”
“You know Jesus—”
“Yes, I love Jesus, he’s my Lord and savior.”
“But ... how can you know Jesus when you don’t even know yerself? It don’t make sense.”
I give it some thought and I have to admit that very little makes much sense to me these days. But I can only look into my heart and find whatever truth is cradled there, and that truth is that there is a God, that the king I serve is Jesus.
I say, “It’s strange, Miriam, because ... I know just about everything else ... that I can think of, anyway. I know what a chair is, I know back pain is, what teenage boys are, cooking pots. None of these things are alien to me at all; certainly not God or Jesus. But ... the rest of it, it’s just kind of ... kind of like a bad dream, but one you can’t remember; but you can’t escape it either.”
Miriam looks at me deeply, her pale brown eyes searching my own. I don’t know what she’s looking for there. My sanity? I silently speculate. Her redemption?
Miriam slowly stands up and crosses to a rickety little door in a corner of the central room of the shack. The boys stand there, looking at her with worried faces as she pulls the door open. “You two run along now,” she says, “go fetch yer pappy.”
They nod, Stanley leading Stonewall out of the room.
Miriam turns slowly back to me, her face a mask of dread as she reaches into the closet and pulls out a dress that looks very familiar to me; gray and plain, a poorly cleaned white apron and bonnet.
“You recognize these, honey?”
I do, but I can hardly say from where. They’re my clothes, I know that much without too much thought, but I have to second-guess myself still. Wait a minute ... these are my clothes?!
“Yes, I ... where did you—?”
“You were wearing them when we found you, sweetie.” Miriam brings the dress over to me. I touch the fabric, light for the summer, tattered and torn in and then poorly repaired by caring hands.
I nod, clutching the dress.
These are mine, I know it. And these are the clothes of an Amish girl, because I am Amish!
“I’m Amish,” I say, relieved and excited. Miriam doesn’t seem to share my joy. “I’m Amish and ... ” I search the corners of my memory, the hazy hallways becoming clear. I see a dense cluster of woods, rifle shots ringing out.
My body spasms, quickly nauseous, and I feel my knees buckling. “Oh, honey,” Miriam says as she takes the dress and leads me to hobble to the bed and lay down. “It’s all too much, isn’t it? I’m sorry, honey ... so sorry.”
Why, sorry? is all I can wonder, but when the door swings open and Lester stomps in, glaring and pointing at me, I can only begin to guess.
“What in tarnation are you doin’, woman?”
Miriam cowers, but stands her ground. “It’s time, Lester, I swear it’s time. Any longer and it’ll be too late!”
Wait, I think to myself, too late for what?
“Anyway,” Miriam says, “it’s a good thing if she knows, ‘cause then we’ll know for sure too, won’t we?” Lester stares her down, then turns his wordless attention to me, holding his terse breath behind his clenched teeth.
“She figure it out yet?”
Miriam shakes her head. “She’s close though, Lester, real close.”
“Figure it—?” I hear the fear cracking in my voice, but I’m beyond caring what these people think. It’s what I need to know that’s driving me now. “If you know something you’re not telling me—”
“I don’t think yer in any position to make demands of us,” Lester snaps, real anger in his tone. “I could cut cher throat right now, wouldn’t nobody be the wiser!”
Fear shoots through me, released from every gland, seeping up from every pour.
“But ... why?”
A long, heated silence passes as Lester stares at the Amish dress in his wife’s hands, then back at me. He grabs the dress and throws it across the room. It lands half on the bed, half on the floor.
Then Lester says, “Why don’t you tell me?”
