“Wear the blue!” my sister insisted.
“Sarah, your sister is old enough to make her own decisions.” Doubtless Mrs. Parsall was thinking the same thing I was: the blue would make me more of a target at night. The brown would blend right in. “But maybe she will let you braid her hair.”
“I think that’s a fine compromise,” I said, fastening the brown dress shut.
Sarah grinned and drew me down onto the bed. She tugged off my cap and began loosening the pins that held it in place. I stared down at the floor, resigned, as my hair tumbled over my shoulders. It hung now almost to my waist. It wasn’t thick and lustrous like some of the other girls, but fine and straight, easy to braid and pin up. Flyaways occasionally escaped, despite my best efforts, but it was easier to deal with than recalcitrant waves. My friend Hannah complained about hers requiring a headful of pins to look tidy. My hair, on the other hand, was like a good Plain girl: obedient.
Sarah brushed my hair, filling it with static. She hummed a hymn from the Ausbund, a song that we had sung that morning. I shut my eyes against it.
“Will Elijah be coming by to take you to the Singing?” Sarah asked, beginning the plaits tight against my scalp.
“I don’t think so. He’s had a very busy day,” I said. “I doubt that he will come, now that he is baptized and a full-grown man.”
Mrs. Parsall watched the twitch at the corner of my mouth. “He went through with it, then?”
“Yes.” I was mercifully able to lower my head and blink back tears as the braid became long and Sarah needed more room to work.
“It will be all right,” I heard her say. But it seemed strange to hear her soothing me, for something as silly and ephemeral as romance, in light of the losses she faced.
“I’m sure it will.” I bit my lip as Sarah finished the plait, pinning it around the circumference of my head.
“There you are.” Sarah sat back, glowing.
“You look beautiful,” Mrs. Parsall said.
I reached up and touched the braid. The back was a little uneven, but it felt tight as a halo. I had no mirror to inspect myself. My father had one for shaving, but to use one to admire oneself was shamelessly prideful. Even without the mirror, I could tell that Sarah had done a very good job with her little hands.
“Thank you,” I told my sister, twisting to kiss her cheek.
She smiled and bounced off the bed. “I’ll wait up for you.”
I winked at her. She always said that, but she always fell asleep. “I know you will.”
Sarah padded out of the room in her bare feet to find my mother. Sunday nights were their special time together. Mother was teaching her how to set sleeves in a dress, and I was certain that the treadle sewing machine would be thumping along in moments.
I stared out at the sun, drawing low on the horizon, stretching the shadows of trees across the fields. “I suppose that I should go, while there’s still light.”
Mrs. Parsall crooked her finger. “Come here.”
I came to sit beside her, next to the nest of yarn she was working with. Mrs. Parsall dragged her purse out from under the bed, and I thought she meant to use her cell phone again. Instead of the phone, she pulled out a compact with a hand mirror and a shiny tube of lipstick.
She turned the point of my chin toward her and dabbed at my face with the scented powder. I began to protest. “Mrs. Parsall . . .”
“Hush. I’m using a light hand. And I’m going to insist that you call me ‘Ginger’ from now on.”
I was never comfortable calling an adult by her first name before all this had happened, but the old rules seemed to be slipping away. “Okay . . . Ginger.”
The powder puff whisked across my face. “Stupid boy,” she muttered as she worked. “He doesn’t know his ass from a turnip.”
I grinned in spite of myself.
Mrs. Parsall—Ginger, I reminded myself—opened the lipstick, screwed up a pale pink color. “Like this,” she said, sticking her lips out in a pout. I mimicked her, and she swept the lipstick over my mouth.
“Close your eyes.” I felt the touch of the lipstick on my eyelids and my cheeks, then Ginger’s soft fingertips rubbing the pigment into my face.
“Stunning.” She handed me the compact to inspect myself.
I had never been called stunning before in my life.
As I gazed into the mirror, my lips parted in a small O of startlement. And it was not just because Plain people never complimented each other on appearance. I had not thought much of makeup before. Though Ginger told me that the women in magazines were covered in inches of the stuff, I honestly believed that they looked like that naturally. But she had worked magic, changed me from a bland Plain girl to . . . a pretty girl. The powder covered my freckles and the hint of sunburn, dimmed the shine of my oily skin. The soft pink was a sheer flush on my cheeks, contrasting with the gray of my eyes. And my mouth was all of a sudden dewy and luscious, as if I’d eaten fresh strawberries.
“Show Elijah that,” Ginger chortled. “You’ll have him wrapped around your little finger.”
She tucked the makeup into my pocket. I protested.
“It’s yours,” she said simply. “I have no need of it.”
“Thank you,” I said, almost afraid to touch my now-perfect face. I couldn’t resist plucking the compact out of my pocket for another look. I felt powerful, in some strange fashion.
“Be careful,” she said, severely.
I nodded. “I will.”
Ginger went back to her crocheting as I put my bonnet on, mindful not to disturb the braid. As I grabbed my Ausbund and left, I heard her counting: “. . . seventeen, eighteen . . . oh, crap.” She went back to the beginning to count the stitches in the row. “One, two, three . . .”
***
I stepped outside, feeling the warmth of the setting sun on my made-up face. The wind rustled through the grass as I walked down the dirt lane from our house to the field. I made sure to keep to the brightest areas, where the sun drove my shadow long behind me.
In the distance, I made out other dark spots on the horizon. A group of girls hung together like a gaggle of geese, with a handful of young men racing to catch up to them. A courting buggy bumped down a dirt road between the fields, carrying a couple to the white schoolhouse perched in the middle of a meadow. The site for the schoolhouse had been chosen because it was pretty much the geographic center of the community. No child had to walk or ride farther to the school than any other.
Young people were streaming into the building. I had gone to school there until I finished eighth grade, when education for Plain children stopped. The only requirements to be a teacher was that one be good with children and have completed the eighth grade herself. I had considered becoming a teacher, but I strongly suspected that the Elders deemed me too rebellious to teach children. I had asked on more than one occasion, and the answer was always that I should stay close to my parents and redouble my study of the Ausbund.
Inside the schoolhouse was a large room, big enough to accommodate all the students in the community. The teacher would give assignments to different grades and provide attention to each group in turns. For school, wooden desks would be assembled on the floor in neat rows, facing the blackboard.
But for the Singing, the desks were shoved to the back of the room and long wooden benches placed against the east and west walls in rows. The boys sat on one side of the classroom and the girls on the other, facing them. The room was already beginning to get crowded, as jockeying began for the front benches, where one could see and be seen the best by the opposite sex.
Ginger’s makeup had an effect, I noticed. One boy tripped over a bench looking at me. I looked away and covered my smile with my hand.
I took a seat in the back of the girls’ section next to Hannah’s younger sister, Leah, halfheartedly placing my Ausbund on my lap. I smiled at Leah.
“You look really pretty,” she said. “Are you doing something different with your hair?”
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”
I glanced at the sparkle on her earlobes. She was wearing earrings. They didn’t look to be pierced, which would be a major rebellion. But this was the place for small ones, like the little rhinestone daisies that shivered when her head turned.
“I like your earrings,” I told her.
Leah lifted her hand self-consciously to her ears and blushed. “Thanks.” She returned my smile before flicking a flirtatious glance at a boy leaning on the wall near the window.
My gaze roved over the throng as they began to take their seats. I knew everyone here in some fashion or another. There was no thrill of meeting anyone new at the Singing, unless someone’s distant relative had come to visit. The thrill, instead, was making eyes at your neighbor without adult supervision.
Hannah rushed inside in a flurry of skirts. Her face was flushed, and I saw that her hair had begun to creep free of its pins. She sat down beside me, her fingers pressed to the smile on her lips.
“I saw that you and Sam were baptized today . . .” I began.
“We’re getting married,” she blurted, grabbing my hands.
I was struck speechless. I knew that this would happen too, but not so soon. Plain engagements required no rings. Engagements were kept very private, until a month or two before the actual wedding, when they were announced to the larger community.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” She glowed.
“I’m happy for you both,” I said sincerely. I hugged her.
“You will be my attendant, ja?” she asked, eyes shining. Plain weddings usually had only one or two, dressed like the bride in a new blue or violet dress made for the occasion.
I could not say no. Hannah was my dear friend. “Of course.”
I listened as she talked of being married before winter and building a house on her parent’s property in spring, after the ground thawed. I nodded as she clutched my hands and chattered excitedly.
It felt as if she was living a life I was meant to live and had rejected. The world was moving on, without me.
My breath snagged in my throat when I saw a familiar lanky frame leaning on crutches. Elijah. His crutches thumped awkwardly on the scarred wooden floor. He wobbled a bit at the threshold.
Our eyes locked. He stared at me, startled, taking in my transformed appearance. I felt a sting of satisfaction at that. A grin spread across his face. I remembered that look. He seemed like the old Elijah then. Maybe things hadn’t changed that much.
I made to rise to greet him.
But then I saw that he wasn’t alone. Ruth was beside him, clucking over him and taking his crutches as he settled down on a bench in the first row.
Perhaps her solicitude was because she missed Joseph.
But if she missed Joseph as much as her tears had shown at church this morning, she had no business being at the Singing, a small voice in my head growled.
I sat back down, nodding stiffly at Elijah.
He nodded back, but his eyes didn’t move from my face.
The rustle of paper sounded in the schoolhouse like the flapping of bird wings. The youths brought their prayer books to their laps and turned to the page that one of the girls was marking on the blackboard. I primly flipped to the correct page and began to sing when the others started.
We sang without any musical accompaniment, without harmonizing. Our music does not sound like Outside music. We’re told that it has something of a singsong quality to Outside ears, that the Hochdeutsch is impossible to understand. But it is beautiful to experience. Everyone singing the same song at the same time—you can feel the vibration in your throat and in the air. It’s like being part of something much larger, part of a perfectly tuned whole. The song buzzes through your lungs, through you and the person next to you. It is the closest I’ve ever felt to God speaking to me or moving within me.
I was facing west, with the sun in my eyes. As it sank lower and lower on the horizon, the light grew more orange and luminous. I could see Elijah, his shadow driven before him, deep in the glare. As the peacefulness of the music settled into me, I wanted to believe that there was still some hope for us.
Ruth sat two rows ahead of me, twirling a tendril of blond hair around her finger. As she sang, I saw her lift her eyes to Elijah.
Perhaps she was too accustomed to male attention.
Perhaps he was encouraging her.
Perhaps she saw in Elijah what she missed in Joseph.
Whatever the reason, I wanted to see no more of it.
I slammed my Ausbund shut. Hannah turned to me, alarmed. But before she could ask me what was wrong, I stood up and strode briskly down the aisle and out through the open door, into the waning orange light. I could barely breathe as I fled down the steps, like something was stuck in my throat. I couldn’t tell what flavor it was; it tasted salty like tears, but it was sharp as broken glass.