Chapter 16
After the class had snacks, Lilly turned the children loose for an early recess at ten thirty. She followed them, wrapping herself against the cold. she’d had to borrow another of Mrs. Wyse’s blouses. The cuffs were again too short, revealing the bandages on her arms, but there was nothing that she could do about it now.
She admonished the students not to get too wet while she anxiously looked up the icy road, praying and hoping that she might hear something of her mother soon. Then, almost like an apparition of her desires, a lone horse and rider came fast and free down the road to the school. Jacob jumped down, asking John Zook to mind the horse, and took Lilly’s arm.
“Can we talk inside?”
“Of course.”
Lilly hurried to keep up with his long strides as they entered the schoolhouse. Jacob pulled out a chair near the woodstove and asked her to sit down. He set a chair up across from hers and absently took one of her bandaged wrists in his hands.
“Is everything all right?” her voice trembled.
“Jah, I found your mamm in town. She’s home now. Mrs. Loftus is visiting with her; she said not to worry. She’ll stay the whole afternoon.”
“Ach, I’m sorry she has to do that. Maybe I could go home for just an hour or so.”
“Mrs. Loftus wants to do it. You concentrate on the program.” He stared down at her wrists and Lilly asked the question that she dreaded. “What was my mamm doing when you found her?”
“She wanted to—shop. I let her go. I tried to reason with her, and she just started getting upset. I thought it better to let her have her head and do what she wanted.”
Lilly nodded, drawing a deep breath. “I’m so sorry that you had to deal with her, Jacob, so embarrassed really. She just seems to want to fill up her life somehow—with things. I don’t expect you to understand.”
He stroked the bandages on her wrist. “Lilly, I do understand. Not why she is the way she is, but I have seen horses wild with fear and pain, beyond reason. I think your mamm’s in a lot of pain somewhere in her mind. It makes her do things, maybe say things that she doesn’t really mean.”
Lilly’s eyes filled with quick tears at his words. If only he knew how many times her mother’s words had lacerated her feelings, her heart. But perhaps it was true; perhaps, deep inside, her mamm didn’t always mean what she said.
Lilly realized that tears had spilled onto her cheeks and chin, and she tried to wipe them away. Jacob leaned close to her and she became confused by his nearness, the scent of his skin, and the enticing thickness of his eyelashes. “Lilly, don’t cry.”
She nodded, trying to swallow her tears, only to find that the movement brought her cheek brushing against the dark fall of his hair. Time seemed to stand still as she looked into his eyes. She recognized the kindness there, but also confusion, a searching that made her feel as though he tried to see inside her soul.
“Teacher!” Reuben Mast bawled, banging open the door. “I got a nosebleed from a snowball.”
Lilly jumped up and Jacob tipped backward with his weight on the rear legs of the chair so that she could rise and slide past him.
“Shh … Reuben. Stop crying.” She tilted his head and squeezed the small nose with her handkerchief.
“My mamm’s gonna tan my hide for getting blood on my shirt for the program!”
Jacob laughed. “I have a mamm like that. Come with me. I’ll ride you to my house on Thunder and let my mother get that stain out. No one will ever know the difference.”
Reuben stopped his crying. “I get to ride on Thunder? Really?”
“Sure, if you hang on—”
“I will. Ach, I will, Mr. Wyse.”
Jacob held up his hand. “And your teacher agrees?”
Lilly smiled. “Just be back in plenty of time for the program.”
“No problem, Miss Lapp.”
She walked out with them, Rueben still clasping her handkerchief to his nose. The other children grumbled in disappointment that it wasn’t one of them who got to sit in front of Jacob on the beautiful horse. “All right, children. That’s enough excitement for this morning. Let’s go back inside and run through everything one more time.” She ignored the collective groans of the students and gave one last backward glance to the now small image of horse and rider. She realized that Jacob Wyse would be a good father one day. She absorbed the thought with haste as she entered the school.
Jacob was true to his word and Reuben returned to class with his shirt clean and his hair slicked. The boy wriggled with suppressed excitement and Lilly knew he needed a chance to tell them all about the ride, but parents were beginning to slip in and deposit food items on the narrow benches along the walls of the school as was the custom each year. Christmas treats were a reward for the children’s performances, and the whole community enjoyed them as well.
Jacob came to stand near her desk and bent to whisper to her. “Lilly, there’s a mare that’s having a bit of trouble foaling. I plan to go check on her. Daed says he’ll stay with her so I’ll be back in plenty of time before the program starts.” He cleared his throat. “That will also give me the chance to get the horse and buggy so I can escort you home afterward, if you’d like.”
“I’d like that very much, and please, go and check on the mare, Jacob. And don’t worry about being late—my daed used to arrive at events by the skin of his teeth.”
He smiled. “Thanks.”
Lilly read to the children with soft authority, keeping their attention and hoping to calm them as the hour approached for the program. The room began to fill with the tantalizing scents of cinnamon bread pudding, ginger cookies, peach patty pies, and a delectable mix of other sweet scents. Soon it was time for the naerfich students to line up along the blackboard while mothers with infants took the available desks, leaving Lilly’s desk open until the bishop sat in her chair. Others began to crowd into the room, spilling out the back door and peering in through the windows. And though she spotted Seth Wyse standing outside with some other men, their breath making frosty puffs of air as they laughed and talked, she didn’t see Jacob or Samuel Wyse anywhere. Maybe the mare was having more trouble than they’d thought.
Deciding that she could still be missing him in a crowd, or that he’d possibly be late, she rose promptly at two o’clock to welcome the bishop and all the families. Then she slid onto a small bench up front, with her back to the crowd. She smiled in reassurance at Carrie Mast, the youngest student, as she came forward to recite a short poem. The little girl stood no taller than the chalk well of the blackboard, and Lilly had to urge her twice to focus before she began in a stuttering singsong voice.
“This Christmas Day is cold and wet,
But I know,
It’s the best one yet.
Because we’re here,
Just me and you—
And Jesus Christ for His birthday too.”
Although Carrie’s tiny voice hadn’t carried past the fourth row, the applause was deafening in response, and the child popped a thumb into her mouth to the delight of all. Next came Matthew Mast, and Lilly bit her lip as the boy took his time getting into position to recite the story of Christ’s birth from the gospel of Luke. It was unfortunate that, by the time he got to the angels and the shepherds, something in his little pug nose had begun to disturb him. So, two-thirds of the gospel message was delivered with one pudgy finger jammed in his nostril. While Lilly made desperate gestures to try and get him to stop, the crowd laughed outright and then grew solemn again as he ended his digging right before he finished the beautiful traditional passage.
Then Lilly rose and, as was customary, begged a concession of not speaking English for a few minutes. She asked the bishop to lead the children in singing “Silent Night” in German.
The bishop rose and began to sing off-key, yet in the proper monotone, as everyone struggled to keep up. There were no instruments, just as there were none at Meeting, but the sweetness of the children’s voices, rising in unity, made Lilly’s eyes fill with tears as they sang the traditional song.
Stille Nacht! Heil’ge Nacht!
Alles schlaft; einsam wacht …
When it ended, the bishop nodded to the crowd, encouraging them to sit down.
Lucy Stolis was next, her face pale and strained, her hands clutched in front of her when she began to tell a story she’d written about the class quilt. Lilly nodded at her with a bright smile, and the child’s voice gained confidence.
“This year’s theme for our class quilt was ‘Trees.’” She gestured with one thin arm to the quilt, and the crowd shifted to see it better. “To me, though, this quilt means a lot more than just what it looks like. Yes, it is made of stitches and cloth and color and time, but this year, doing my quilt square helped me feel better about losing my grossmud—I mean, my grandmother who died in the summertime of pneumonia. My grandma taught me how to stitch my first quilt square and always let me climb under the big quilt frame to catch the needles that fell through when the ladies were having a quilting. But my grandmother also loved to be outside. She loved the air and the flowers and the trees.” Here, an audible sniff or two came from the listeners as they remembered Grandmother Stolis. Lucy went on, smiling a little now. “I think my grandmother would have loved my quilt square because I made my tree show its roots, its beginnings. My grandmother was like those roots to me, strong and deep, and the most important part of the tree. By making this quilt, I learned that my grandmother will always be part of me.” Lucy bowed her head to signal that she was finished. There was a long pause before the community began to clap in earnest approval. The bishop blew his nose in a blue hankie and stood up to show his enthusiasm. Others stood to follow suit, not attempting to guard against vanity in the child’s clear-hearted and humble affirmation of her family’s history.
After that, the rest of the program followed in a blur. The Christmas program was one of the few times that Amish parents did not worry about vanity and made a visible fuss over their children’s performance and progress in school, and this year was no exception. Soon, the last child had finished and Lilly felt she could finally breathe. She rose to face the crowd and was surprised and touched when John Zook brought forward a bouquet of assorted fresh flowers for her from the class.
The bishop came to stand next to her and said, “I think we’d all like to thank Miss Lapp for the wunderbaar job she’s doing with our children.” He clapped. Lilly flushed as the applause continued from the crowd; the faces outside the windows smiling with good cheer.
Soon, everyone was jostling for the snacks. Lilly circulated first inside the schoolhouse and then out, all the while trying to keep a casual eye out for Jacob.
Seth came up to her and caught her hand. “That was great, Lilly. A lot of fun and a lot of hard work on your part, I can imagine. How are your arms?”
“Ach, fine. Danki.” The truth was, in the rush of the program she’d forgotten all about her scraped arms and even her fear over the events involving her mother that morning. Now she wondered whether she might ask Seth where his brother was without appearing too forward. But Seth seemed to read her mind.
“I don’t know where he is, Lilly,” he said low. “Honestly. I know he was going to come; the mare started to make progress and Daed’s not here, so they both must have stayed. I’m sorry. The program was wonderful, really.”
Lilly nodded, touched by the sincerity in his voice and his willingness to apologize for his brother. And his attentiveness provided a balm to her spirits that she couldn’t deny.
Lilly had just decided to go back into the schoolhouse when the sounds of a horse and buggy, moving fast, came to her. She, and everyone else, glanced at the passing buggy, wondering who had missed the program and who wasn’t even stopping now. Lilly’s heart fell when she recognized Jacob driving and Kate Zook as his passenger. The girl smiled and waved at the crowd, while Jacob stared straight ahead. The Zook farmhouse lay beyond the schoolhouse and he was obviously taking her home. Lilly ignored the murmured speculations around her from the groups of various families and went back inside. She accepted a plate from someone and ate without tasting a thing.