For a moment, they stare at me as if I’m speaking in some language they don’t understand. Then Esther looks at her husband. “We could show her,” she says.
Impatience coils inside me. The Amish are a patriarchal society. The men make the rules and usually have the final say in matters. While most wives have a voice and their opinions are generally respected, they usually submit to their husbands’ wishes.
I direct my attention to Roy. “It’s important,” I tell him. “There might be something there that will help us find her.”
After a moment, he nods. “Show her the room.”
Esther rises and motions toward the hall. “Come this way.”
The steep, narrow stairs creak beneath our feet as I follow her to the second level of the house. Sadie’s room is at the end of the hall. It’s a small space with a twin bed, a night table, and a pine chest with four drawers. A white kapp and a black sweater hang from a single dowel on the wall above the bed. A window covered with gauzy curtains peers out over the front yard.
The room is cozy and neat. It might have been the bedroom of any typical Amish girl, but all semblances of plain end with the vast display of needlework. A green-and-white quilt utilizing several types of fabric that alter the texture in interesting ways covers the bed. Contrasting pillows, fabric layered with lace, and even a crocheted coverlet are piled against the headboard. The walls are white, but there’s nothing plain about them, because they’re plastered from floor to ceiling with fabric wall hangings. I see dark purple velvet layered with pink lace; red and purple fabrics sewn together with the avant-garde eye of an artisan—colors that are frowned upon by the Amish. Yet her parents allow her this small expression of individualism.
“Sadie loves to sew.” Esther says the words as if her daughter’s needlework requires justification. “She’s been doing the needlework since she was six years old.”
I can’t stop looking at the yards and yards of fabric, so painstakingly designed and sewn by the hands of a young girl with a passion her parents haven’t been able to eradicate or contain. In the back of my mind, I’m remembering my conversation with Sadie that day on the bridge. I’m drawn to all the things I shouldn’t be. Music and … art. I want to … read books and watch movies and see places I’ve never seen. I want to go to college and … I’m going to design clothes. I’m so good with the needle and thread.…
“She’s right,” I whisper.
Esther tilts her head. “What?”
“She’s very talented.”
Esther looks embarrassed as she crosses to the bed and picks up a pink-and-red pillow. “Perhaps we should not have allowed her so much individual expression.”
“Sometimes this kind of passion can’t be quelled.”
She looks unbearably sad, standing there holding the pillow. “We don’t approve of the colors. Sadie takes too much pride in her quilting. She’s willful. She can be disrespectful.” Yet she brings the pillow to her face and breathes in the scent of the daughter she misses so desperately.
The words, the reproach they contain, conjure an Amish proverb my mamm told me many times as a girl, especially when she was trying to get a recalcitrant me to do my chores. “Pride in your work puts joy in your day,” I whisper.
Tears spring into Esther’s eyes. She puts the pillow against her face as if to hide her tears and looks at me over the top of it. “She is a special girl with a good heart. A big heart.” She chokes out a laugh. “Perhaps too big.”
“I’ll do my best to find her.”
She sinks to her knees, as if her legs no longer have the strength to support her. Tears run unchecked down her cheeks as she lowers her face into her hands and begins to sob.
I give her shoulder a squeeze and then turn my attention to the room. There’s not much to search; the bedroom of a teenage Amish girl bears little resemblance to those of their English counterparts. I begin with the night table, finding a copy of Es Nei Teshtament, a Bible that’s written in both Pennsylvania Dutch and English. In the next drawer, I find a plain hairbrush and comb, a candle, a carved wooden bear.
Finding nothing of interest, I move on to the chest. The top drawer is filled with Walmart cotton bras and panties. There are also old-fashioned bloomers, a winter head covering in need of mending. I move to the next drawer and find several hand-sewn Amish dresses. In the bottom drawer, I find a pair of blue jeans tucked into the back, where no one would notice them unless she was looking.
Standing, I step back and look around, spot the sweater hanging on the dowel set into the wall. I check the pockets but come up empty-handed. I kneel and look beneath the bed, check the insides of the sneakers and leather shoes.