Anna's Gift

“Beard,” Mae echoed, standing solemnly beside her newfound friend.

Samuel looked down at his blue hands and up at the two girls, and he began to laugh, too. Great belly laughs rolled up from the pit of his stomach. “We did spill the paint, didn’t we?” he managed to say as he looked around the room at the mess they’d made. “We spilled a lot of paint.”

“A lot,” Susanna agreed.

Mae stared at him with her mother’s bright blue eyes and clutched the older girl’s hand. The fearful expression in his daughter’s wide-eyed gaze made him want to gather her up in his arms and hug her, but in his state, that was out of the question. Two painted scarecrows in one house was enough; the hugs would have to wait until later.

“Susanna, could you go and see if your sister is hurt?” Samuel asked. His first instinct was to follow Anna to see for himself that she was okay and to assure her that she had no need to be embarrassed. Anyone could have an accident, and the wooden ladder had obviously seen better days. But he’d heard her run up the stairs, and it wouldn’t be seemly for him to intrude on her. With her mother out of the house, he had to show respect and maintain proper behavior. If he was going to court Anna, he was going to do it right and behave the way any man courting her would be expected to.

“Ya,” Susanna agreed. Still giggling, she trotted off with Mae glued to her skirts.

Turning in a circle, Samuel exhaled and wiped his hands on his pants. The way he’d been swimming in the paint, they were a total loss anyway. He rubbed a bruised elbow and the back of his head as he studied the floor, the wall, and the broken ladder. How, he wondered, had so much paint come from one gallon?

This was a fine barrel of pickles.

After putting it off for so long and practicing his proposal of marriage to Anna over and over in his head, it had gone all wrong. It couldn’t have gone worse. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but he certainly hadn’t thought the statement of his intentions would frighten her so badly that she’d fall off a ladder, or drop into his arms—although that had been a pleasant interlude. He didn’t know why sweet Anna had been so surprised, or why she’d run away from him. He hoped that it wasn’t because the idea of marrying him and instantly becoming the mother of five children was so preposterous.

Samuel picked up the paint can and set it upright—there couldn’t have been more than half a cup of paint left in the bottom. The room was a disaster. He decided he’d better get a start on cleaning it up before the paint began to dry. If he was lucky, maybe Anna would come down and join him and they could talk. He would need rags, a mop and maybe even a shovel to start wiping up the excess paint, but he didn’t have the faintest idea where to find them.

The first thing he needed to do, before he went looking for the supplies, was to take his shoes off so he didn’t track paint through the house. Setting the ladder upright, he sat down on the lower rung and began to unlace his brogans.

Samuel wondered if he’d gone about this all wrong. The custom was for the suitor to ask a go-between to talk to the girl’s family before a proposal of marriage was formally offered. But with Anna’s father dead and not a single brother, that left Hannah as the sole parent. Samuel supposed he could have approached Anna’s uncle by marriage, Reuben Coblentz, but that would have involved Reuben’s wife, Martha. Reuben didn’t scratch until Martha told him where he itched. Plus, Hannah and Martha didn’t always see eye to eye, and Hannah had made it clear that she didn’t care for her late husband’s sister interfering in her personal family matters.

That left speaking directly to Hannah before he approached Anna, but he’d decided against that because he was afraid that Hannah might have misconstrued his previous regular visits to the Yoder farm. There wasn’t any doubt in Samuel’s mind that most of the community thought that he was courting Hannah, or at least testing the waters. It could well be that Hannah thought so, too, and he didn’t want to make matters worse by embarrassing her, maybe even hurting her feelings. Samuel liked Hannah, and he always enjoyed her company, but there was no comparing the warm friendship that he felt for her to his keen attraction to Anna.

What Samuel and his late wife, Frieda, had had was a comfortable marriage, but his father and her family had arranged the match. Samuel had been willing because it seemed such a sensible arrangement. He thought Frieda would make a good wife, and he’d always been reluctant to go against his father’s wishes.

He’d been just nineteen to Frieda’s twenty-three when they wed. Everyone said that it was a good match, and he could remember the excitement of their wedding day. Neither of them had expected romance, but they’d come to respect and care for each other, and they both adored the children the Lord sent them.

When Frieda’s heart had failed and he’d lost her, he’d genuinely mourned her passing. But Frieda had been gone a long time, so long that he sometimes had trouble remembering her face. And he was lonely, not just for a helpmate, not just for a mother for his children, but for someone with whom he could open his heart.

If he was honest with himself, Samuel reckoned he’d been attracted to Anna for at least two years. Just seeing her across a room gave him a breathless, shivery thrill that he’d never experienced before. Oh, he wasn’t blind. He knew what the other young men in the community thought about Anna. She wasn’t small or trim, and she didn’t have delicate features. Some fellows went so far as to make fun of her size. Not where Anna could hear, of course, or him either. He would have never stood by and allowed such a fine woman to be insulted by foolish boys who couldn’t see how special she was.

In his heart, Samuel had always admired strong women. Other than Frieda, who’d been the exception, every girl he’d ever driven home from a singing or a young people’s gathering had been sturdy. His mother, his sisters and his aunts were all good cooks and mothers, and all of formidable size. Like Anna, they all had the gift of hospitality, of making people feel welcome in their homes. And regardless of what anyone else thought, he appreciated Anna Yoder for who she was. “Big women have big hearts,” his father always said, and Samuel agreed.

For longer than he wanted to admit, Samuel had been watching Anna and trying to convince himself that it was just his loneliness. After all, how fair was it for a man with five children and the responsibility of a large farm to propose marriage to a beautiful young woman like Anna? So he’d put off the decision to do anything about his feelings. As long as he didn’t speak up, he was free to imagine what it would be like having her in his house, sitting beside him at the kitchen table, or bringing him a cold glass of lemonade when he was hot and sweaty from working in the fields. Month after month, he’d waited for her to reach the age of twenty-one, but when she had, he still hadn’t found the nerve to ask.

What if she rejected him out of hand? So long as he didn’t speak up, he could keep on going to Hannah’s house, sitting at their table, savoring Anna’s hot cinnamon-raisin buns and chicken and dumplings. But once he brought up the subject, if Anna refused him, Hannah might have no choice but to discourage his visits.

He hoped he was a truly faithful man, a good father and a good farmer. He’d been blessed by beautiful children, caring parents and a loving family. The Lord had provided material goods, land of his own and a fine herd of dairy cows. He served on the school board and helped his neighbors. His life should have been full, but it wasn’t. He longed for Anna Yoder to be his wife.

It had taken his sister Louise to finally put an end to his hesitation. She’d brought Mae home, handed her over, and told him that it was time he found a new wife and a new mother for his children. He had to agree. It was past time. But now that he’d made up his mind and chosen the right woman, he’d made a mess of things.

What must Anna think of him? No wonder she was embarrassed. He’d had his arms around her, had her literally in his lap, and they’d both been doused in blue paint, like some sort of English clowns. He wanted to court her honorably, to give her the love and caring she deserved, and instead he’d made her look foolish.

In his stocking feet, Samuel stepped over a puddle of paint, taking in the room again.

After the mess he had made, it would serve him right if Anna never spoke to him again.

Anna stood in the shower in the big upstairs bathroom and scrubbed every inch of her skin. She knew that she should be downstairs cleaning up the terrible mess she’d made, but she couldn’t face Samuel. She’d probably have to hide from him for the rest of her life.

How could she have been so clumsy? Not only had she fallen off the ladder, but when Samuel had tried to catch her, they’d both gone down in a huge pool of blue paint.

She wished she could weep as her sisters did, as most girls did when something bad happened. But this was too awful for tears. Not only had she embarrassed herself and Samuel, but she’d probably ruined things between her mother and Samuel. She’d be the laughing stock of the community, and Samuel would probably never come to the Yoder farm again. And all because of her foolish daydreaming. What a silly girl she was, thinking Samuel had said he wanted to court her. She probably needed to clean out her ears. She had obviously misunderstood.

“Anna!” Susanna cracked the bathroom door. “You made a mess.”

“Go away,” Anna ordered.

“Samuel told me to come see if you were all right.”

“He didn’t leave yet?” her voice came out a little shrill.

“Nope. He told me to come see if you—”

“I’m fine,” Anna interrupted, hugging herself. Emotion caught in her throat at the sheer mention of Samuel’s name. “Just go away, please.”

The door opened wider, and her sister’s round face appeared. Anna could see her through the filmy, white shower curtain.

“Are you blue, Anna? Will the blue come off? Will you be blue on Sunday? At church?”

“Susanna! I’m in the shower.” Eli had promised to fix the lock on the door a few weeks ago when he’d put the doorway in between the room over the kitchen and the upstairs hallway in the main house, but he hadn’t gotten to it. She’d have to remind him because right now there was no privacy in the upstairs bathroom. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

“But Anna …”

“Anna,” repeated little Mae.

Susanna had brought Mae to the bathroom! Anna took a breath before she spoke; there was no need to take this out on Susanna. It was all her own fault. “Take Mae back downstairs to her father. See them out. And give them some biscuits!”

Without waiting for an answer, Anna turned the hot water knob all the way up and stood under the spray. Give Samuel biscuits? Had she really said such a thing? Was there no end to her foolishness? Samuel didn’t want her biscuits. After the way she’d embarrassed him, he’d probably never again eat anything she baked.

Anna could hear Susanna and little Mae chattering in the hall and she felt trapped. If Mae was still in the house, Samuel had to be. She couldn’t possibly get out, not with him still here.

“She has to go potty,” Susanna piped up over the drone of the shower. “Mae does. She has to go bad.”

Gritting her teeth, Anna peered around the shower curtain. The water was beginning to get cool anyway. They had a small hot water tank that ran on propane, but there wasn’t an endless supply of warm water. “All right. Just a minute. Close the door and let me get dried off.” She jumped out of the shower, grabbed a towel and wrapped it around herself. “All right, Susanna. Bring Mae in.”

Susanna pushed open the door. “There’s the potty, Mae.”

“Do you need help?” Anna asked the child. Mae shook her head.

Anna wrapped a second towel around her head. “When she’s done, wash her hands, then her face. Clean up her dress and bring her into the bedroom. We can fix her hair.” She smiled down at the little girl. “Would you like that? I never pull hair when I do braids. You can ask Susanna.”

“Anna does good hair braids,” Susanna agreed. “But I fink she needs a bath,” she told Anna. “She looks like a little piggy.”

A quick examination of the little girl convinced Anna that she wasn’t all that dirty, she’d just lost a battle with her breakfast. “We don’t have time for a bath. I’m sure Samuel needs to be on his way.”

Susanna wrinkled her nose as she looked at the little girl. “You spill your oatmeal this morning?”

“‘Frowed it. It was yuck,” Mae said from her perch.

Susanna’s eyes got big. “You throwed your oatmeal?”

“Ya. It was all burny.” She made a face. “It was lumpy an’ I ‘ frowed it.”

On her father as well, Anna realized, suddenly feeling sympathy for both father and daughter. “Well, don’t do that again,” she admonished gently, tightening the big towel around her. “It’s not polite to throw your breakfast. Big girls like Susanna never throw their oatmeal.”

“Ne,” Susanna echoed, helping the little girl rearrange her dress. “Never.” She turned to Anna. “Are you going to court Samuel?”

Anna gasped. “Susanna! What would make you ask such a thing?”

“Because Samuel said—”

“Were you listening in on our conversation, Susanna?” Anna’s eyes narrowed. “You know what Mam says about that.”

“Just a little. Samuel said he wants to court you.”

“Ne,” Anna corrected. “You heard wrong. Again. That’s exactly why Mam doesn’t want you listening in.”

That, and because Susanna repeated everything she heard, or thought she heard, to anyone who would listen. Obviously, she had misheard. They’d both heard wrong. That was why Anna had lost her balance and fallen off the ladder. She’d misunderstood what Samuel said. There was no way that he wanted to court her. No way at all. She was what she was, the Plain Yoder girl, the healthy girl—which was another way of saying fat. But was it really possible that they had both misheard?

More possible than Samuel wanting to court her!

Anna hurried out of the bathroom. “Bring her in as soon as I’m decent.”

She dashed down the hall to the large bedroom over the kitchen and quickly dressed in fresh underclothing, a shift, dress and cape. She combed her wet hair out, twisted it into a bun and pinned it up, covering it with a starched white kapp. A quick glance in the tiny mirror on the back of the door showed that every last tendril of red hair was tucked up properly.

The few moments alone gave her time to recover her composure, so that when the girls came in, she could turn her attention to Mae. Please let me get through this day, Lord, she prayed silently.

When Susanna and Mae came into the bedroom, Anna sat the child on a stool and quickly combed, parted and braided her thin blond hair. “There. That’s better.” She brushed a kiss on the crown of Mae’s head.

“She needs a kapp,” Susanna, ever observant, pointed out. “She’s a big girl.”

“Ya,” Mae agreed solemnly. “Wost my kapp.”

“Find me an old one of yours,” Anna asked Susanna. “It will be a little big, but we can pin it to fit.”

In minutes, Mae’s pigtails were neatly tucked inside a slightly wrinkled but white kapp, and she was grinning.

“Now you’re Plain,” Susanna said. “Like me.”

“Take her downstairs to her father,” Anna said. “Samuel will be wondering why we’ve kept her so long.”

“You coming, too?” Susanna asked.

Anna shook her head. “I’ll be along. I have to clean up the bathroom.” It wasn’t really a fib, because she did have to clean up the bathroom. But there was no possibility of her looking Samuel in the eye again today, maybe not for weeks. But she couldn’t help going to the top of the stairs and listening as Samuel said his goodbyes.

“Don’t worry, Samuel,” Susanna said cheerfully. “Anna wants to court you. It will just take time for her to get used to the idea.”

“Court you,” Mae echoed.

What Samuel said in reply, Anna couldn’t hear. She fled back to the safety of the bathroom and covered her ears with her hands. She should have known that her little sister would only make things worse. Once Susanna got something in her head, it was impossible to budge her from it. And now Samuel would be mortified by the idea that they all thought he wanted to court her instead of Mam.

Anna stayed in the bathroom for what seemed like an hour before she finally got the nerve to venture out. She might have stayed all morning, but she knew she had to clean up the paint before it dried on Mam’s floor. She would have to mop up everything and get ready to start painting again tomorrow, after she and Susanna went into town to get more paint. The trip itself would take three hours, beginning to end.

Anna wasn’t crazy about the idea of going to Dover alone in the buggy; she liked it better when Miriam or Mam drove. She didn’t mind taking the horse and carriage between farms in Seven Poplars, but all the traffic and noise of town made her uncomfortable.

By the time Anna got downstairs, she’d worked herself into a good worry. How was she going to get all the painting done, tend to the farm chores and clean the house from top to bottom, the way she’d hoped?

Calling for Susanna, Anna forced herself down the hall toward Grossmama’s bedroom. She pushed opened the door and stopped short, in utter shock. The ladder was gone. The bucket was gone, and every drop of paint had been scrubbed off the floor and woodwork. The room looked exactly as it had this morning, before she’d started—other than the splashes of blue paint on the wall and the strip she’d painted near the ceiling. Even her brushes had been washed clean and laid out on a folded copy of The Budget.

Anna was so surprised that she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She didn’t have to wonder who had done it. She knew. Susanna could never have cleaned up the mess, not in two days. Anna was still standing there staring when Susanna wandered in.

“I’m hungry,” she said. “I didn’t get my lunch.”

Anna sighed. “Ne. You didn’t, did you?” She glanced around the room again, trying to make certain that she hadn’t imagined that the paint was cleaned up. “Samuel did this?”

Susanna nodded smugly. “He got rags under the sink. Mam’s rags.”

“You mustn’t say anything to anyone about this,” Anna said. “Promise me that you won’t.” “About the spilled paint?”

“About the spilled paint, or that I fell off the ladder, or the mistake you made—” she glanced apprehensively at her sister “—about thinking Samuel wanted to court me.”

Susanna wrinkled her nose and shifted from one bare foot to another. “But it was funny, Anna. You fell on Samuel. He fell in the paint. It was funny.”

“I suppose we did look funny, but Samuel could have been hurt. I could have been hurt. So I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say one word about Samuel coming here today. Can you do that?”

Susanna scratched her chubby chin. “Remember when the cow sat on me?”

“Ya,” Anna agreed. “Last summer. And it wasn’t funny, because you could have been hurt.”

“It was just like that,” Susanna agreed. “A cow fell on me, and you fell on Samuel. And we both got smashed.” She shrugged and turned and went out of the room. “Just the same.”

Exactly, Anna thought, feeling waves of heat wash under her skin. And that’s how Samuel must have felt—like a heifer sat on him. Only, this cow had thrown her arms around his neck and exposed her bare legs up to her thighs like an English hoochy-koochy dancer.

If she lived to be a hundred, she’d never forgive herself. Never.

Chapter Three

The following morning proved cold and blustery, with a threat of snow. All through the morning milking, the feeding of the chickens and livestock and breaking the thin skim of ice off the water trough in the barnyard, Anna wrestled with her dread of venturing out on the roads. She needed to buy more paint, but she didn’t know if it was wise to travel in such bad weather. The blacktop would be slippery, and there was always the danger that the horse could slip and fall. And since she didn’t want to leave Susanna home alone, she’d have to take her, as well.

Anna considered calling a driver, but the money for the ride would go better into replacing the paint. If only she hadn’t been so clumsy and wasted what Mam had already purchased. She wondered if she could find some leftover lavender paint in the cellar. If there was any, maybe she could cover the blue splashes, and put the room back as it had been.

But the truth was, Grossmama would be angry if she found her new bedroom English purple, and Mam would be disappointed in Anna. Anna had caused the trouble, and it was her responsibility to fix it. Snow or no snow, she’d have to go and buy more blue paint.

What a noodlehead she’d been! Was she losing her hearing, that she’d imagined Samuel had said that he wanted to court her? She tried not to wonder how Susanna could have misheard, as well. It was funny, really, the whole misunderstanding. Years from now, she and her sisters would laugh over the whole incident. As for Samuel, Anna thought she’d just act normal around him, be pleasant, pretend the whole awful incident had never happened and not cause either of them any further embarrassment.

After the outside chores, Anna returned to the house, built up the fire in the wood cookstove, and mixed up a batch of buttermilk biscuits while the oven was heating. Once the biscuits were baking, she washed some dishes and put bacon on. “Do you want eggs?” she asked her sister.

“Ya,” Susanna nodded. “Sunshine up.” She finished setting the table and was pouring tomato juice in two glasses, when Flora, their Shetland sheepdog, began to bark. Instantly, Jeremiah, the terrier, added his excited yips and ran in circles.

“I wonder who’s here so early?” Anna turned the sizzling bacon and pulled the pan to a cooler area of the stove.

Susanna ran to the door. “Maybe it’s Mam and Grossmama.”

“Too early for them.” Thank goodness. Not that she wasn’t eager for Mam to get home. Her younger sisters had been away for nearly a year, with only short visits home, and she’d missed them terribly. But Grossmama would make a terrible fuss if her room wasn’t ready and the walls were still splashed with blue paint.

Susanna flung open the door to greet their visitor, and the terrier shot out onto the porch and bounced up and down with excitement, as if his legs were made of springs. Coming up the back steps was the very last person on earth Anna expected to see. It was Samuel, and he’d brought his three daughters: five-year-old Lori Ann, nine-year-old Naomi and Mae, all bundled up in quilted blue coats and black rain boots. They poured through the door Susanna held open for them. The two older girls carried paint rollers, and Samuel had a can of paint in each hand.

“It’s Samuel!” Susanna shouted above the terrier’s barking. “And Mae! And Naomi! And Lori Ann!”

Anna’s stomach flip-flopped as she forced a smile, wiping her hands nervously on her apron. “Samuel.” She looked to Naomi. “No school today?”

She pushed her round, wire-frame glasses back into place. “My tummy had a tickle this morning, but I’m better now.”

“I think we were missing our teacher,” Samuel explained. “I let her stay home. She never misses. Do I smell biscuits?” He grinned and held up the paint cans. “We didn’t mean to interrupt your breakfast, but I wanted to get an early start on those walls.”

Confused, Anna stared at him. “You wanted to get an early start? You bought paint?”

“Last night.” He smiled again, and mischief danced in his dark eyes as he set the cans on the floor. The girls added the rollers and brushes to the pile. “I just took my shirt along to the store, and they were able to match the color perfectly.”