The Thorn (13 page)

"I've been thinking," he said more softly. "This job you're dying to take ..."

She looked up, heart in her throat, and searched his eyes. "You don't mind, then ... if I start working?"

"Actually, I was thinking that if you're so eager to bring in some extra money, why not find a stay-at-home job? I've circled several options in the paper." He locked eyes with her.

"I guess you didn't hear me the other night."

Brandon turned to look out the window. "Hen ... honey, is this some sort of crisis you're having?"

Tears stung her eyes. "I know, I know ... I don't need to work, at least according to our budget." She paused and leaned down to get a pan out of the cupboard. "But I'd really like to take the job at the store. I want to do this."

"So much for submission," he shot back.

"Oh, now, that's not fair. You know I was never the most obedient Amish girl." She sighed, trying to think what she could say that might make sense to him. "But I do miss my Plain life, Brandon. Or parts of it."

He dug his hands into his pockets and jingled his coins.

"I love you ... this isn't anything about us, really." She hesitated. "Working at the Amish store really might be the answer for me." It was the best compromise she could think of.

But a craving for the peace of her former life wasn't the only impetus behind wanting to work at Rachel Glick's shop. Hen felt strongly that Mattie Sue needed more than a mere glimpse of the tranquility of Plain living she got during their infrequent visits to her parents' home.

Brandon picked up the paper again. "Hen, take a look. There are lots of terrific jobs listed here."

She held her breath, then said, "I told you what I'd like to do."

"And I'm not in favor of it." He gave her a sidewise glance. "You left the Amish for a reason."

She placed the lid gently on the pan and set the burner to medium. Turning to face him, she said as sweetly yet as firmly as she knew how, "Don't you care how I feel, Brandon?"

He chuckled. "How you feel?" He moved around the counter, coming to her, arms outstretched. "I married a girl who wanted my life. Mine, Hen. How could you have forgotten?"

She hadn't, but the memory of how easily she had cast aside all she had ever known pained her now. Every enticing aspect of the modern life she'd desired - a comfortable house, a beautiful car, pretty clothes - had come with her marriage to Brandon.

"I won't let you return to the very thing you despised." He slipped his arms around her waist and drew her near. "We'll have another baby - wouldn't you like that?" He leaned down, head tilted, his breath on her ear. "Wouldn't you?"

Hen didn't know if he was being tender or baiting her. "I'd love more children - you know that." She let him kiss her cheek. "But right now, I really want to work at Rachel's Fabrics."

Brandon pulled back, holding her at arm's length. "I've always liked your spunk," he said. "But tonight you're impossible!"

She cringed.

"I want you to let this job go, Hen." With that, he gradually released her and then left the kitchen for the downstairs family room.

Clenching her teeth, she stood next to the sink, her heart pounding in her ears. There were days - and nights, too - when she thought of nothing else but her former life. All the good aspects of it, and everything Mattie Sue was missing. Yet she also wanted to be a loving wife to Brandon. So she had seen the part-time job as something of an answer to her dilemma. Why can't it work?

Her husband had just forbidden her to take the job, and there was no getting him to surrender. Hen was stuck - either she obeyed him or she followed her heart ... and defied him.

Her breath caught in her throat as she rushed after Brandon, coming to a stop at the top of the stairs.

Mattie Sue's sweet voice rose from the family room. "Daddy, will you play a game with me?"

Hen sighed, refusing to create a scene. Besides, she was drained emotionally. Her throat ached with tears that threatened to come.

She made her way down the stairs as Brandon switched on the TV and sank into his favorite chair. Horror rose in her at the sight of Madonna prancing seductively on the screen in a revealing wedding gown of sorts, singing "Like a Virgin." Oh, dear Lord, no! It was all Hen could do not to speak her mind as she had in the past. She wanted to go over there and turn off the wickedness pouring into their house. Into our daughter's mind.

What she wouldn't give to unplug the "one-eyed monster," as Bishop Aaron Petersheim had sometimes referred to a television.

Clenching her jaw, Hen waited for the seemingly endless music video to finish. She looked at precious Mattie Sue, who was carrying her game to the sofa. Then, seeing Madonna on the screen, Mattie Sue dropped her game and broke out in song as she picked up Karen Perlis's Barbie doll from the sofa. Hen had never seen the matching Madonna bridal gown before, yet there it was on the shapely doll, and now, to her dismay, Mattie Sue began moving the doll around to the sensual rhythm of the song, keeping time with the worldly woman ... to Brandon's seeming amusement.

She bit her lip, deciding once more it was best not to speak her mind. Not now. Turning, Hen hurried back up to the kitchen, tears prickling behind her eyes. She thought of the psalm: I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes. She went to the cupboard and reached for three dinner plates with trembling hands and carried them to the breakfast nook.

"It's no big deal," her husband had insisted days before when they'd argued about MTV yet again. "Mattie doesn't know what she's singing, anyway - does she, Hen?"

"How can he abide this in our daughter?" she whispered now. "How?"

When she set down the third plate on her own cloth place mat, something snapped in her - everything converging in her at once. She'd experienced this sudden flash of rancorous emotion before, the night her father forbade her to marry Brandon. The bitter feelings had propelled her right out of the house, after the gas lamps were extinguished and her parents and Rose Ann had gone to bed. Hen had run straight to the phone shanty, dashing barefoot all the way, and phoned for Brandon to come and get her.

Looking down now at the dinner plates, she knew that if she followed her impulse this minute, she might not finish making supper tonight. She might also regret switching off the burner and heading like a hornet to Mattie's room. But at the moment, Hen didn't care about the consequences. She went to her daughter's closet and pulled down the little suitcase and started stuffing in her pajamas and a set of clean clothes. She felt an urgent need to save her little girl from MTV and all the other distressing things Brandon allowed into their home.

He doesn't know the first thing about holy living - or child rearing!

When Rose arrived home from her date close to eleven o'clock, she was shocked to see Hen's car parked near the woodshed. A strand of dread ran through her as Silas walked her to the back door.

Why's Hen here at this hour?

"Did ya have a nice time?" Silas paused near the step, his eyes crinkling as he looked at her.

"Ever so nice."

His face burst into the dearest smile. "You're very sweet, Rose."

She put her head down, the blood rushing to her cheeks. "Denki," she said quietly, hoping she was doing right by acknowledging his compliment.

Was he leading up to the courtship question? She certainly didn't think this was leading to his popping the question - not as proper as he was about everything else. Surely he would approach that like any other Amish young man, by shining his flashlight on her window and asking her to be his wife in the privacy of the house.

When she raised her head, he was still smiling. Then, tapping his straw hat rather comically, he said, "Gut Nacht, Rose Ann .. till next Sunday Singing. I hope you'll be there."

A whole week away. Though she felt quite ferhoodled, she thoroughly enjoyed this newfound giddiness. Silas waved fondly and she watched him hurry down the lane to the road, where he'd left the horse and buggy. Oh, to think Silas Good liked her ... and very much, too!

Maybe he's ready to get serious and settle down! she thought, not wanting to move from the spot.

Silas had just turned twenty-one, after all. Like her, he'd joined church several years earlier, so he didn't have to wait to be baptized to move ahead with marriage. She suddenly felt peculiar about rushing ahead in her thinking.

Turning toward the house, Rose's gaze fell on Hen's car again.

When she let herself into the house and tiptoed upstairs to her bedroom, she could not believe her eyes - Hen and little Mattie Sue were sound asleep in her bed. "Goodness' sakes," she whispered, baffled. "They're stayin' all night?"

Then, lest she awaken them, she carefully opened her drawer to find her nightgown and noticed the pile of quilting squares there on the dresser, the ones for the wall hanging Hen wanted to make for Mattie's room. Wondering why Hen had brought them, Rose carried her nightclothes downstairs to the room where her mother rested by day.

Hen and Mattie Sue ... here?

It didn't take long for her to surmise the possible cause as she lay on Mamm's daybed, covered by three layers of homemade quilts. Most likely Brandon had rejected the idea of his wife's working in the Amish community. But what could've possessed him to ask Hen - and Mattie Sue - to leave?

Rolling over, she didn't care to contemplate Hen's plight anymore. It blemished her wonderful-good evening with Silas. Oh, she wanted to hold this date near to her heart ... cherish their night under the white full moon, with the invisible nocturnal creatures humming their lovely song all around them.

Glory be, Rose thought, not one bit sleepy. 0 Lord, do I dare trust my heart?

Hen awakened early to the medley of frogs and birds. How long had it been since she'd really listened to the sounds of morning? Lying next to Mattie Sue, she looked affectionately at her little girl, all curled up in a soft bundle there in Rose's bed. The happy memories of growing up in this house came rushing back - of learning to cook with her mother and Mammi Sylvia, of helping to whitewash the fences with Rose, and of gathering eggs with her best friend, Arie, whenever she'd spent the night.

"Idle hands are the devil's workshop," her mother had often said. So Hen had kept busy from dawn to dusk, just as all the good folk of the church district did.

If any leisure time was left, it was spent walking in the meadow, visiting relatives, or going over to the little Quarryville library behind the police station to check out library books with Rose. Certainly there was no television or radio to lure them to sin.

Or MTV!

She lifted a strand of Mattie's pretty hair from her cheek, slipping it behind her tiny ear. "I want you to learn the Old Ways," she whispered. "My already too-fancy girl."

The thought of asking God to forgive her for deserting His ways crossed Hen's mind. She lay there, keenly aware of her sins against the Almighty One.

She let her eyes roam about the room where she and Rose had made up fanciful stories and said their prayers before falling asleep in this very bed. The place where she'd ultimately revealed the secret of her forbidden beau. "I really love Brandon," she remembered saying to her wide-eyed sister.

She and Rose Ann had been close from the day of Rose's birth, when her mother had asked Hen to help name the pretty little baby girl who'd arrived at the end of a whole string of brothers and one sister. At just five years old - close to Mattie's age - Hen had taken her baby sister in her arms and looked down at the tiny pink face. "She's a rosebud" was the first thing out of her mouth.

Delighted, Mamm had agreed the baby's name was to be Rose. Ann was added for her mother's sister Anna, although her mother had been concerned people might end up calling her Rosanna instead. Yet it was their mother who had begun referring to Rose as Rosie, dropping the middle name Ann altogether.

Hen shifted to face the windows, looking through the narrow space between the shade and the windowsill to the old oak tree, its branches nearly close enough to touch the house. Nature was on the very brink of turning to radiant autumn. The glory of fall. She brushed away a tear as she recalled her youthful love for that one beautiful and impulsive season.