and would not be able to bring any harm to Mamma and Brian. The Amish did not usually allow their people to contact the police.
I would later learn that Brian and Mamma expected Samantha and me to fail at joining the Amish. They expected us to fail and to realize we could not survive without them.
A few days later, it was decided that Brian would drive us to the Amish community. The plan Brian had made with the Bishop was that Brian would bring Samantha and me to their church service once every two months. Then in September, I would move to the community. Samantha would follow a few months later. I was nervous about leaving Samantha on the mountain without me at first, but Samantha scolded me, saying, “If we don’t go along with the plan, we are not going to get out of here alive, ever.”
“All right,” I finally agreed. “But if you don’t show up when you are supposed to, rest assured this time I will go to the police and report them.”
Samantha agreed to this idea, and I believe Mamma and Brian were already thinking I might do such a thing; at least I hoped so.
When we first approached the Amish community after a long drive, I heard the clip-clop of a horse pulling a buggy. As we approached it from behind, Samantha grabbed my hand.
“That’s going to be us; can you believe it, Misty?” she whispered ecstatically.
I smiled at her, wondering if she had ever been this happy.
As we pulled in, Samantha and I brought our coverings forward so hardly a hair was showing. We straightened the new, dark blue dresses and black aprons that I had made for the occasion.
I opened the truck door so Samantha and I could hop out. We stood frozen for a second. A man with a long brown and gray beard wearing a large black hat waved us inside.
“Come in, come in. You must be Brian,” he said with a thick Pennsylvania Dutch accent.
“Yes, and you must be the Bishop,” Brian replied, pulling his hat down further as if to appear more Amish.
“Oh, no…” The man shook his head and smiled. “I am Uriah Hostetler, the minister, but we thought it best if you came here since our family has daughters close to the age of your daughters. The Bishop is a younger man and only has small children, so we thought you would all be more comfortable staying here for the night.”
I thought he seemed like a nice person as he guided us into the main area of the large farm house. I looked around and smiled. This house had centuries of tradition screaming from every beam. There were light blue walls and plain, dark blue curtains at the windows. In front of one of the windows was a large quilting frame, and not far from the quilting frame were two treadle sewing machines with small, unfinished clothes hanging from them.
As we stood in the middle of the room, the man yelled, “Alma, children, come here!”
Out of the kitchen and through the side door tumbled twelve children, ranging from nineteen to one-and-a-half years old. Samantha and I were in shock as they stood there looking at us. The mother seemed to be a kind lady with gray hair popping out from under her stiff white Kapp.
“Nice to meet you! Nice to meet you!” she said in the same heavy accent as her husband.
Samantha and I just stood there. We had been exposed to so few social interactions, we did not know what to do or say.
“Okay,” the mother turned to two of her teenage daughters, “Matty and Laura, you can help the girls take their things upstairs and then come back down to help with dinner. Uriah, you can take Brian to finish choring, Ja?” She turned back to her husband.
As Brian and the Hostetler menfolk went out choring, Samantha and I followed Matty and Laura upstairs, where there seemed to be an ocean of bedrooms.
“Hey, they are really nice, huh?” Samantha whispered in my ear.
I nodded, pleasantly surprised by the family’s welcoming manner.
Matty, who was nineteen, stopped at one of the doors. “This is my room. You will be sleeping with me,” she said pointing at me.
I smiled. They seemed a little awkward too, which was a relief.
“Matty and Edward are the only ones who have their own rooms,” Laura said, walking down the hall. “I share this room with Eliza, and Samantha can sleep with us in here.”
I smiled at Laura, who was intently studying my face whenever she thought I was not looking at her.
“Oh yes,” seventeen-year-old Laura continued, “you will be wearing some of our extra clothes to church so you blend in and look more like us.” She looked at our dresses and aprons.
I had noticed that, although to any outsider we would all look Amish, our clothes were very different. Among the Amish, there are many subgroups, and among the subgroups are even more subgroups, all with their own strictly enforced dress codes. Here, the girls’ clothes were much neater than ours, I thought, and instead of zippers, the girls over eleven years old wore straight pins all the way from their high collars to the apron belts at the waist. They did not have black aprons, either, but matching aprons.
I was very excited to wear clothes just like theirs, to finally belong to something.
“Let’s see,” Matty said, pulling me from my thoughts. She looked us over, trying to determine what family member’s clothes would fit us best. Cocking her head sideways, she looked at my short stature.
“You are just a couple of inches shorter than Eliza, so you should fit into her extra church dress and apron.” Matty walked to the closet in Laura and Eliza’s room and pulled out a dark gray dress and held it up to me. It nearly hit the floor, but they seemed to think it looked fine. She rummaged around, looking for Eliza’s old white organdy church apron that was saved for emergencies. Laura went to her side of the closet and pulled out one of her church dresses for Samantha. It was a nice teal color and seemed like it would fit Samantha quite well. Amish dresses are made with long belts and a lot of material in the front that you just pin under, so that if you gain weight you can simply unpin some extra folds of the material rather than spending money on making a whole new dress and aprons.
As we made our way downstairs, I heard chattering and small children laughing in the kitchen. Dishes were clanging as two small girls who could barely reach the table slammed metal plates and spoons on the table. There was no Mamma or Brian beating anyone; these children looked comfortable as they raced around the kitchen. They were obviously not deathly afraid of their mother who playfully swatted their behinds, hurrying them to get the dinner on the table.
We sat at the table in order of our ages. There were so many customs to learn, I thought, but one thing I did know was that Samantha and me would pass any behavior test with flying colors. We were both quite rigid and used to doing what we were told immediately. I had noticed that the mother had to yell several times for everyone else to get to the table, whereas Samantha and I sat down as soon as the words came out of her mouth. Oddly, she did not seem at all put out as the children sat down, one by one. The girls sat on the right of the table next to their mother, and the boys on the left with their father. The line tapered down until the oldest boy and oldest girl were sitting at the end opposite each other, and then there was Brian.
“Let us bow our heads for a moment of silent prayer,” Uriah said and we all bowed our heads. I opened my eyes and peeked around the room. The kerosene lamp in the middle of the table was casting a soft glow as it flickered in the late spring air. I could hear the horses nickering to each other in the barn, and as I looked around I saw one of the little boys staring at me. I smiled and he grinned back. He was cute, his grin missing a few teeth. I can do this. These are nice people. And this is the only way to avoid going to hell.
After dinner, Samantha and I helped clean the kitchen while the men and boys sat on the long benches at the table. The boys played a game of checkers while Brian and Uriah talked and stroked their long beards. Brian was copying Uriah’s movements. He was actually a pretty good actor and could appear kind and sincere on a whim. But if you knew him and could look into his dark and evil