He had heard more, that masses of people were leaving the cities on foot, that fuel was growing increasingly scarce.
Jon had many stories, and dark news was all about. It feels as it did when that storm was gathering, like the clouds are fat and bulging and dark.
AT DINNER, MORE BEEF, and there were potatoes that had been brought by from the Sorensons, to whom we had given some cuts of steak. And greens, there were, and fresh milk from the morning. Though it had been cold outside the whole day long, all the bodies gathered and the warmth from the woodstove made the house feel welcoming.
Everyone was gathered around, and the table was cheery, and there was talk about our plans to go to the Stolfutzes’ for dinner the next day. There were important things to discuss, especially what sort of pies we should bring to their house tomorrow.
“So should it be apple, or should we make pumpkin pie?” asked Hannah. “I have the sugar and the cinnamon, and we’ve prepared the dough for the crusts, and we have plenty of both. Who says pumpkin?”
“Pumpkin,” Jacob said, “I want pumpkin!” Mike and Derek agreed.
Sadie piped up. “Remember that Mr. Stolfutz has a special favorite! He is always saying that he likes . . .” and her voice hitched. “Aaaa. Aaaa.”
And suddenly her body went taut and straight, like a plank laid across her chair. Like the legs of the steer, I thought. Just like the legs of the steer.
Another seizure, so like the throes of death. Her eyes rolled back, and she was choking, choking on the food that was still half chewed in her mouth. Before any of us could move toward her, she toppled off the chair and onto the floor, shaking like a drying sheet in the wind.
Dishes crashed all around, and there was uproar.
I rose quickly, and Hannah let out a cry, but Shauna was with her in a moment. She turned her, and cleared her air pipe, and then held her loosely, protecting her head from the hard tile floor.
Shauna asked if we had any medications we’d been giving her, and we did not. Her antiseizure medication had run out last week, and there was no doctor that could be called, not now.
As she bucked and convulsed, Shauna loosened the top buttons of Sadie’s blouse. “She has to breathe. She’ll be fine. It’ll be all right. She has to breathe.”
Her breathing was a gurgling, like thick soup on the stove. But she was breathing.
It could not have lasted more than a minute, but it seemed like it was forever. I knelt by her side, and Hannah by her other, and she began to calm, her body slowly stilling.
Her eyes came into focus, and she looked at me, finally seeing.
“I’m just like him, Dadi. He’s just like me.” Her voice was weak and faint.
That was all she said, and then she closed her eyes, her breathing easing.
Hannah and Shauna helped take her upstairs and to bed. Hannah stayed with her for a while, and Shauna came back downstairs. We talked for a while, about Sadie’s seizures, about the different medicines the doctors had given us.
Shauna seemed to know much about those things, and what she had to say was very reassuring. I found myself thankful that she was here with us.
I WENT TO SIT with Sadie for a little while, as it came time to sleep. She seemed very tired, but not unhappy. As she lay there in her nightdress, we did not speak, but simply sat with one another.
I held her shoulder, gently, and she looked off into the distance, playing with her hair. She teased it, and twisted it, and pulled at it softly.
She began to hum, a tune that I would wordlessly sing to her when she was a little girl. It was a lullaby, one I remember from a video I saw on rumspringa. I could not remember the name of the movie, or the name of the song, or even any of the words. But it was simple and beautiful, and so I would sing it to her before sleep. Never with words.
“I remember that tune, Dadi. I keep thinking about it. Did you never remember what it was called?”
I said that I never had.
“That’s okay,” she said. And she went back to humming it.
I listened, and we sat.
After a few minutes, she stopped.
“Dadi,” she said, her voice soft. Her eyes did not seek mine.
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you think I’m still sick? You know, that I’m crazy. That I still need the medicine and the doctors and everything?”
I told her I did not know, that I was not sure. And that I hoped she was better.
She looked up at me. “Do you think I’m—something else?”
I sighed, and asked her if she remembered what she had said after the seizure.
“No,” she said, and then paused. “No. I don’t. But I think it was something bad.” She looked down again, and again began to hum.
I asked her why she thought it was something bad.
There was a pause in her humming.
“I don’t know. But I felt suddenly frightened, and ashamed, like my heart was breaking. Like I’d done something horrible. I hadn’t. It wasn’t me, Dadi. It was someone else.”
I told her I did not know what she meant, and she nodded back.
“I don’t know what I mean either.” And she gave a little laugh.
After a while, her voice grew still, and her eyes closed, and the soft breath of sleep folded her up.
I sat with her for a very long while.
HANNAH IS NOT IN our bed now, but sleeps in the room with Sadie. It is partly because Shauna had suggested it, that it would be good to have someone there and listening to Sadie as she sleeps. Just to check, to be sure that she does not have another seizure.
But I know Hannah is also afraid that this could mean a return to how Sadie was for so long. The crying out. The pain. We had been blessed with this time, this respite, when she was not so broken of soul. I do not wish her to know that time again.
This is not my decision, I know, whether she suffers or not. That is in God’s hands. And I am thankful, thankful that she has been well these last weeks.
My prayers, this evening, are that in the grace of God’s Providence, he might spare her all of that pain. But what will come will come. It is God’s will, and our only task is to bear it with the grace His Son gives us.
I feel so tired.
October 22
Hard to write today. It is hard.
The news came with the sunrise, with Jon. I was checking on the meat in the drying houses, and saw him riding as if the devil himself was chasing him. He had ridden up fast, too fast, dangerously fast, at a wild gallop. He pulled Chestnut up abruptly, and the horse had clearly been driven hard.
He never came this early, never. Tears were streaming down his cold-burned cheeks, but it was not the cold that drew his tears.
He was crying as he told me, sitting there on his horse.
“Isaak Stolfutz is dead,” he said, choking out the words.
I felt my legs weaken, as if the tendons had been cut. Isaak? How? I started to speak, but he stammered out more.
“It is not just Isaak. And Jim. And Barbara. And . . .” His throat closed, and he could speak no more.