Little Amish Matchmaker (8 page)

“Mam, what do you think of trying to help someone overcome stuttering?”

Mam looked up from the
Blackboard Bulletin
she was reading.

“Why?”

“You know Ruthie? Lloyd’s Ruthie?”

Mam nodded.

“She just can’t say her poem this year.” He described in vivid detail Ruthie’s nervousness, her unwillingness to talk to her mother.

Mam shook her head.

“Well, Isaac, I don’t want you to think this is looking down on someone, but Ruthie probably doesn’t have much of a home life. Her mother and, well … she has reason to be nervous.”

“So what could we do? Is it true that you can help someone stop stuttering, stammering, whatever you want to call it, by speaking slowly?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“How could we do it?”

“Why don’t you start a support group? Sort of a system where all her friends work with her? Ask Teacher Catherine to help you.”

Isaac thought that sounded just wonderful. He pitied Ruthie and told Mam so.

Mam said she was glad Isaac had a soft heart. It spoke well for his character.

Isaac usually fell asleep soon after his head touched his pillow, having to get up at 5:00, the way he did.

Tonight, however, was different. He was thinking.

Ruthie could just give up her poem. But he knew for himself, he would be ashamed to be without that solo piece of poetry, everyone expecting it the way they did.

She was about as decent as any girl could be. For one thing, she could draw stuff other than hearts and flowers. She had drawn most of the figures skating on the pond, some of them looking real. And she liked dogs. She had an English Setter of her own named Shelby. That was sort of cool. Shelby. It had a nice ring to it.

He also liked the way her freckles were spattered across her nose, sort of like God put sprinkles on the icing of a cupcake. If he had to pick any girl as his wife, it would have to be Ruthie. He didn’t know when he’d heard her sniff last. Or blow her nose.

The next day at first recess, Isaac approached her, after talking to Calvin and Michael.

“How would you like to be helped with your problem of stammering?” he blurted.

“You mean stuttering?” Ruthie asked. Her eyes were watchful.

“Yeah.”

“Who would help me? Who would even know how?”

“Me. Me and Calvin and Michael and Hannah and Dora.”

“You would?” She sounded surprised and a little pleased.

“Sure.”

“When?”

“Every lunch hour, ’til the program.”

“Give up sledding?” She asked, considering.

“Mm-hm.”

“Ar-aright.” Ruthie’s eyes shone.

So that was how it started. They called themselves the SOS group. Support Our Stutterer.

Ruthie giggled, twisting her apron. Isaac began by having her read long sentences from a book, anything, as long as she spoke. She could speak perfectly as long as she read from a book, but when she was placed on the stage in front of the blackboard, she could not face anyone and speak a word without stumbling horribly.

When she felt the constriction in her throat begin, they asked her to stop. At first, she was close to tears. She grabbed a corner of her black apron and twisted it, then released it, clearing her throat, blinking her eyes, doing anything she possibly could to avoid eye contact or holding still.

Isaac took charge. Barking instructions, pacing, his voice carrying well, he asked her to look at him. If she wasn’t comfortable looking at him, she could look at Hannah.

She shook her head.

So Isaac met her eyes, told her to watch his face, and repeat this sentence.

She got nowhere, her mouth twisting, her throat swelling with the effort of making just one coherent sound. After that, they stopped.

“Okay, Ruthie, let’s start by saying sentences while you are sitting with us.”

Patiently, they started over. If she read from a book, she was fine, but when she faced anyone, the words stayed in her throat as if someone had closed a gate.

It was time for the bell.

Isaac’s shoulders slumped. Michael walked wearily to his desk, Calvin rolled his eyes in Isaac’s direction and even Hannah lost a bit of her swagger. They could not accomplish this in nine days. It was hopeless.

Isaac hung around the schoolyard until the last pupils had pushed their way home on their scooters, then returned and entered the classroom.

Catherine was surprised to see him.

“Yes, Isaac?”

“Sorry to bother you, but is there nothing we can do for Ruthie? Do you know of anyone who has overcome this problem? Any books we can read?”

Catherine said nothing, just looked at Isaac without seeing him. Finally she sighed.

“Isaac, can I trust you to keep this bit of information to yourself?”

He nodded.

“Ruthie has a sad life now that her mother is … well, she’s in the hospital for … help. She has problems with her thinking. They just found out a few weeks ago that she may have either a tumor on her brain or Alzheimer’s.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s when your brain is diseased, in a way, and you no longer function normally.”

“Oh.”

“I think Ruthie is very afraid. She’s trying to go about her life as if nothing is wrong, hoping none of her classmates find out. She carries a deep sense of shame. Her mother has always been … an excitable woman, to put it mildly, and those children have suffered seriously, in ways you can’t imagine. So … perhaps, Isaac, you could reach her? Maybe if she found out ….”

Catherine’s voice drifted off.

“You mean if I told her that I know about her mother and tell her it’s all right, stuff like that happens to people all the time, she’d loosen up?”

Catherine nodded.

Isaac pushed himself home, flinging his leg energetically, happy with this bit of information. Teacher Catherine was the best, most beautiful, sweetest person he had ever met. She treated him as her best buddy, letting him in on that secret, doing it in a way that didn’t make Ruthie’s mother appear mean, just pitiful. Now he believed Ruthie might be able to overcome her crippling stutter, if he did this right.

At home, he grabbed two chocolate chip cookies and ran out the door to find Sim. It was very important that Sim knew about this, especially about Catherine being so wise and pretty, and if he didn’t get around to asking her for a date soon, it would be forever too late, the opportunity evaporated like mist from the pond. It was time Sim straightened himself up.

He found Sim loading manure in the heifer barn. The acrid odor met his nostrils before he saw Sim, but he was used to the raw stench of fresh manure, so he climbed the gate and walked over to him.

Hatless, his everyday shirt sleeves rolled up above the elbow and his shoulders bulging beneath the seams of his shirt, Sim was forking great quantities of the sodden stuff with each forkful. He stopped, ran the back of his hand along his forehead, stuck his pitchfork into the remaining manure and smiled at Isaac. “What’s up?”

“Hey, you know Lloyd’s Ruthie? The girl that stutters? She can’t talk one tiny bit. And you know what?” He related the entire afternoon’s visit with his teacher, watching Sim’s face, emphasizing Catherine’s part.

Sim didn’t show any emotion, just scratched a forearm and looked out the door at the snowy landscape.

“And, you know, Sim, if you don’t make yourself do it, she’s not going to wait around much longer. You need to ask her for a date. Get going once!”

Isaac was surprised at Sim’s reaction. Sim looked as if he was going to cry. When he spoke, it was quietly, seriously, almost like a preacher in church.

“All right, little brother. I hear you. And I wish I could tell you okay, I’ll ask her. At your age I probably would have. A schoolboy hasn’t seen much of life, of love or loss. It’s not as simple as you think. And, Isaac, a lot of children your age would not talk the way you do. You’re too smart. You see, God comes first. If I pray to him first, ask him for his blessing in my life, then maybe, just maybe, someday, he will allow me to have her. But I have to wait. Wait on his answer.”

Isaac snorted loudly, scaring the heifers in the corner watching the pair of Belgians hitched to the manure spreader with frightened eyes.

“Well, and just how does God go about speaking to you? You a prophet, or what? Catherine likes you. You’re too dumb to see it.”

With that, Isaac climbed back over the fence, popping the last of the chocolate chip cookies into his mouth, and let Sim finish cleaning the heifer barn by himself. If he got out of there fast enough, Sim might not remember the chicken house needed to be cleaned.

Just his luck, he ran into Dat.

“Hi, Isaac! Home from school so soon? How was your day?”

“School.”

“That’s not much of an answer,” Dat said, smiling broadly.

“Same thing. It was just school.”

“Christmas program ready yet?”

“Yup.”

“Good! I’m looking forward to it.”

Isaac smiled at Dat and was rewarded by the warm kindness in his eyes, the same as always.

Dat was like a rock-solid house you could go into and never be afraid of anything or anyone. He was always the same, sometimes busier than others, more preoccupied, but never angry or hateful or rude.

Now he looked at Isaac with a shrewd expression.

“So, do you think a boy like you should be getting a pony spring wagon if he forgets to scrape the chicken house?”

He looked up sharply and found Dat’s smile.

“How would you like to drive Ginger to school every day?”

A new spring wagon for ponies! It was hard to grasp.

“You better get busy, Isaac.”

Dat reached out, lifted Isaac’s torn straw hat and plopped it back down, a gesture of affection.

While Isaac cleaned and scraped, shooing chickens away, he kept repeating, “Wow! Wow!”

I
SAAC FAIRLY FLEW TO
school, the thought of the new spring wagon goading him on, his energy buzzing and humming.

The sky looked dark and heavy enough to fall right down on his head. Big piles of iron-gray clouds were flattening themselves into the fish-bone shape Mam always spoke of. She said if gray clouds looked like a fish skeleton, gray and flat and straight, there was a wet air from the east, and a rain or snowstorm was approaching.

Dat clucked over the morning paper. “There’s another big one coming.”

“
Ach, du lieva
!” (Oh, my goodness.) Mam set down her cup of coffee, broke another glazed doughnut in half and took a generous bite, hungrily. And she just had breakfast. “You mean we’ll have two storms before Christmas?”

“I would say so. Whatever you do, Isaac, if it gets to
rissling
(ice coming down), wait at school until someone comes to get you. Your scooter isn’t safe on the road in those conditions.”

Dat was very serious, so Isaac sat up and listened.

At school, he told Calvin about the approaching storm, Calvin nodding and saying already there was a winter storm watch for Lancaster, Berks and Dauphin Counties.

It was dark in the schoolhouse. Teacher Catherine got a lighter out of her desk and lit the propane gas lamp, its warm glow and soft hissing sound wrapping the pupils in homey, familiar light.

It was the only light they were used to at home. A propane tank was set in a pretty oak cabinet, sometimes painted black or off-white or red, depending on the housewife’s preference, with a long pipe attached to the head where two mantles were tied. When a tiny flame was held to the mantles, a bright light burst forth, illuminating a whole room easily. It was the best alternative to electricity.

Mam said years ago they didn’t have propane lamps. They used naptha gas in a lamp hung from the ceiling. They were right dangerous, in her opinion, but back then you never thought about it. You could burn kerosene in the same lamp, except you had to heat the head with a torch, or use the little cup that was provided for a shot of lighter fluid, ignite it, and then a small, steadily burning blue flame heated the mantles until you could turn the lamp on, which was even more dangerous and time-consuming. So they had come a long way.

Dat shook his head about the fast moving solar and battery operations that were creeping into homes nowadays. Some of the more liberal households no longer used propane lamps, but a 12-volt battery in the oak cabinet attached to a bulb on a real electric lamp that was converted to battery use.

You had to wonder where it would all end, Dat said, stroking his beard and looking very wise. It was important to keep the old traditions, he said. They meant a lot.

Sim said change would come, though, it always had. Look at the milking machines and bulk tanks. Propane gas stoves and refrigerators. Some change was good. Dat agreed, but admonished Sim to be
trick-havich
(hold back) and it would never spite him, reaping the benefits in later years.

As Isaac settled into his desk, he shivered. Normally, the classroom was warm, but the farthest corners were cold this morning. He gazed out the window as Teacher Catherine read the Bible, waiting for those first icy snowflakes to ping against the east side of the schoolhouse. He glanced at Ruthie, appalled to find her blinking, her eyes bright with unshed tears. As he watched, her brown eyes overflowed, the tears leaving wet streaks through her freckles.