A Match for Addy

“And you don’t want them to do that?”

She dropped onto the grass, folding her long legs modestly under her skirt. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s...well, it’s embarrassing...telling everyone that I need help finding someone.” She tugged at a blade of grass, plucking first one and then another. “That, otherwise, I’ll be an old maid peeling potatoes in my mother’s kitchen when I’m sixty, with gray hairs on my chin.”

He chuckled. “Sounds pretty bad when you put it that way.”

She tugged at more blades of grass. “I figured you knew. Ellie does, for sure. Who knows who else does?”

“But you want to marry, don’t you?”

“I suppose, but I always thought I’d find my own husband. Or...” Her eyes glistened as if she might start to cry. “Or he’d find me.”

“Not everybody does it that way.” He sat down beside her in the grass. “Why do you think my father and mother sent me here? I could have found work as a hired man in our community. Or I could have gone on helping my father.”

“What does he do?”

“Makes sausage. Sells it to people.”

“Ach. Sausage. Everybody likes sausage.”

“And it’s good sausage.” He smiled at her. “So what I’m trying to say is that you aren’t alone. My mam and dat and Ellie’s parents think like your mother and father. They’re trying to do a good thing. Because they love us and want us to be happy.”

“I suppose, but...” She tossed the grass through the fence to a young alpaca. “What if I don’t like who Sara picks for me?”

“Then you say no. ‘Danke, Sara, but no.’ It’s easy.” He grinned. “I’ve been doing it for years.”

She turned to him with surprise. “You’ve turned down matches?”

“A handsome, hardworking man like me?” He winked. “I’ve escaped more pretty girls than you have fingers on both hands. If you think you’re hard to please, I’m impossible.”

“So we’re both being difficult,” Addy mused.

He plucked idly at the clover. “It seems that way.”

“My grossmama says that it’s pride that keeps me from finding a good marriage.” She looked at him. “Do you think it is?”

“Hochmut?” He thought for a moment. “I hope not,” he answered honestly. “I’d not want to think of myself as a prideful person. Hardheaded, maybe, but not full of a false sense of my own importance.”

“Goot,” Addy replied. “Because I wouldn’t want that, either.” She got to her feet and brushed off her skirts. “I have to go. My mother will wonder where I’ve gotten to. There’s bound to be cleaning up.”

He stood. “Should I come to help?”

She shook her head. “Women’s work, and not so hard as to break the rules of the Sabbath. Only dishes and food to clear away.”

Gideon stood there awhile, leaning on the fence after Addy left and unable to get what she’d said out of his mind. Could her grandmother be right? he wondered. Was his reluctance to choose a wife hochmut? He tried every day to live by the principles of his faith. Was it wrong to hope that there was someone waiting...someone he could love with all of his heart...someone special that he just hadn’t found yet?

Chapter Four

Addy arrived at Sara’s promptly at 8:00 a.m. Thursday morning, and by nine, she and Ellie had cleared away the breakfast dishes, picked crook-neck squash, eggplant and tomatoes from the garden, and swept the front and back porch. Now they were busily taping Sara’s parlor in preparation for painting the walls and trim. The previous day, Gideon had given the ceiling two coats of a soft white and carried in two gallons of pale blue, two brushes, two rollers and a shiny new paint tray.

Addy stood on a stepladder to tape off the white ceiling molding while Ellie applied the blue tape to the floor molding. Addy never ceased to be amazed at how quickly and efficiently the little woman worked. She put Addy in mind of a honeybee, laughing or singing instead of buzzing, but constantly in motion. Any preconceived notions Addy had had about a little person had been quickly replaced with respect. Not only did Ellie do her share of the housework—Addy also found she had to scramble just to keep pace. And Ellie was always good-natured and fun to be around.

Addy had lived in Seven Poplars all her life, and it was rare that she got to spend time with another Amish girl from far off. And although, from what Ellie said, life was much the same in her home community in Wisconsin, Addy found her stories of girlfriends and rejected suitors and new jokes fascinating.

She guessed that Ellie was a few years younger than she was, but like her, past the age that most Amish girls in Seven Poplars married. She supposed that it had to be difficult for a little person, even one as pretty and personable as Ellie, to find a husband. Not that Ellie seemed to mind. According to what Sara said, Ellie was one of her most difficult girls to match, more because she was picky than because she was a little person. Addy was dying to ask how many matches Ellie had turned down, but didn’t want to seem rude.

Addy slowly inched the roll of blue tape along the crown molding with one hand, smoothing it with the other. “Do you know the Zook boy Mary and Violet were talking about on Sunday? The one in Wisconsin?”

“Abram?” Ellie paused, a strip of blue tape suspended between her hands. “I don’t really know him, but Sara asked my mother if she thought I’d be interested. He’s a nice fellow, so I hear, a hard worker, but...” She grimaced. “Too much of him for me, my mam and dat said. Too much Abram altogether.”

“He’s a large man?”

“About the size of one of my father’s Percheron draft horses.” She giggled. “Or maybe the whole team.”

“Ellie,” Addy scolded, a little titillated by her new friend’s daring. “That isn’t kind. My dat says that a person is the way God made them, and we should accept them as they are.”

“Ya,” Ellie agreed. “But think about it. How foolish would we look together? Me little, Abram...well...Abram. If we sat on the porch swing and it didn’t break, it would be like a schoolyard seesaw. He’d sit down, and my end of the swing would fly up.” She chuckled and shook her head. “Ne, Addy. Better I be an old maid knitting baby bonnets for my sisters and mufflers for my brothers than be married to such as Abram.”

“I suppose.” No fat boy had ever asked to walk out with her. No boy, fat, skinny or in between, had even driven her home from a singing or a work frolic. The truth was that she’d passed her dating years watching other girls ride out with boys in their buggies, and play badminton with them on their front lawns.

Her one venture into the marriage market had been a near miss with the then-new preacher in Seven Poplars, Caleb Wittner. Her dat and mam had wanted her to marry him, and for a while, Caleb had come to several family dinners. But they’d never gotten past the considering-each-other part of dating. Caleb was a respectable enough man, but she hadn’t felt as if he were someone with whom she could spend the rest of her life. He seemed a little boring to her, with nothing to talk about but his woodworking. To her parents’ regret, she’d put an end to that courtship before it had even started. Which turned out to be just as well because he soon married her cousin Rebecca, and they were a perfect match.

Addy sighed. It would be nice to have someone she liked pursue her, even if she did later turn him down. But there always seemed to be more eligible young Amish women than suitors, which was why Sara’s matchmaking services were in such high demand.

She climbed down the ladder, moved it over a foot and climbed up it again. The smell of baking bread wafted in from the kitchen. Sara was a fantastic baker, and she preferred to make rye or whole-wheat loaves with yeast instead of the baking powder biscuits that Addy had grown up eating. Sara liked to get her baking out of the way early in the day, and Addy’s mouth watered at the thought of the midday meal they would be sitting down to in a few hours. Between the apple tarts, the lebkuchen, the fastnachts, the streusels and the shoofly pies that Sara whipped up in her kitchen, it was a wonder that she wasn’t as plump as Addy’s cousin Anna.

Thinking of Sara’s round face brought a question to mind. Addy glanced around to see that they were alone and lowered her voice. “Why is Sara’s skin darker than ours?” she asked Ellie.

Ellie shrugged. “I don’t know. Don’t you have anyone with dark skin in your community?”

“Ne.” Addy felt her face grow warm, and she was sorry she’d asked. Most Amish she knew were fair-skinned, with rosy cheeks and German features. Sara had curly, almost blue-black hair, but she didn’t look African-American. What was her family background? Mam had asked her this morning if she knew.

Ellie bent over and measured out another length of tape for the windowsill. “Not so unusual to have members with darker skin in other Amish settlements. I went to school with a girl who was very brown, but she was a foster child that a family in our church adopted. Louise, her name was. Very good at arithmetic. She won the prize every year at the end-of-school picnic.”

“I just wondered.” Addy turned back to her task. “It’s not important.”

“Not all people are alike,” Ellie said. “And a good thing, wouldn’t you agree?”

Addy nodded, liking the way Ellie looked at things. “Ya, a good thing.”

“What’s a good thing?” Gideon came into the parlor carrying a toolbox in one hand and a door latch in the other.

“Nothing,” Addy said quickly, concentrating on unrolling more tape.

Why did she always feel as if she was showing herself at her worst when Gideon popped up? She didn’t want him to think of her as nosy or disapproving of the good woman who paid their wages. She’d only asked because her mother’s question had made her curious.

Gideon stared at her, narrowing his gaze. “But the two of you were—”

“Is that latch for the closet door?” Ellie interrupted, thankfully coming to Addy’s recue.

“Ya, Peanut, what else would it be?” Gideon shot back.

Addy glanced at Ellie to see if his retort or the nickname would hurt her feelings, but Ellie only laughed.

“Hard to say what you might be up to, Long Legs.” Ellie winked at Addy. “All he could talk about this morning at breakfast was the Beachys’ singing. Asking who might be there and if I was going. His mind was on funning and not on his plate and he salted his coffee instead of his eggs.”

Gideon laughed and set down his toolbox by the closet door. “A little salt makes everything taste better, Short Stuff. And you never did tell me if you were going.”

“What did I tell you, Addy? You’d think he never got away from the farm. Poor, overworked Gideon. And maybe these Delaware girls won’t think you’re anything special, once you’re at the singing,” she teased, wagging a small finger at him. “I heard you sing at church on Sunday.” She crinkled up her nose. “You probably shouldn’t be the loudest.”

Gideon laughed and slapped his knee.

Addy pretended to concentrate on peeling back a little bit of the blue tape where she’d laid it crooked. She wondered why Gideon was so amused by everything Ellie said, even when she made jokes at his expense. She treated him like a pesky younger brother, and he seemed to love it. The thought that Gideon might be interested in Ellie gave her a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach, and she immediately felt guilty. What if they did like each other?

Maybe Ellie’s parents wouldn’t care if a poor hired hand courted her. Addy didn’t know how much Ellie’s family was offering to entice a husband, but if there was land or a nice dowry at stake, Gideon’s family might well overlook her size. Clearly, he didn’t mind.

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