Unbeknownst to her, while she and Joseph were not not looking at each other, Mrs. Fuhs had appeared on the porch behind her. Elizabeth Fuhs and her husband, Richard, had moved to Gasthof Village from Lancaster County just after she and Joseph married. Rebekah liked the older woman a great deal and trusted her judgment immensely.
“I have something for you, Rebekah dear.” Mrs. Fuhs pointed to a bucket near the stairs. “Raw milk. For the bopplin.”
“Raw?”
She nodded. “Ja. Freshly milked just moments ago.”
“Danki, Mrs. Fuhs.” She smiled. “I will ask Molly to make the bopplin a bottle when she has time. She is giving him some watermelon seed tea, now.”
“It is all we used to settle the bopplins in Lancaster County.” Her old eyes, gray with age, misted. It was well known among the families that comprised Gasthof Village that the reason the Fuhs’ relocated from Pennsylvania was due to a tragic buggy crash. One slippery road, a loose buggy wheel, and a skittish horse all conspired to claim the life of her only son and his young family. He was around about Rebekah’s age, and he and his wife had just welcomed a newborn bopplin sohn of their own. Rebekah could not begin to imagine the pain she suffered just waking up and getting on with life each day.
Mrs. Fuhs laid her gnarled hand on Rebekah’s shoulder. “Is your mater inside?”
“No, Grossmammi Fuhs.” Rebekah shook her head. “She is home. My fater is not well.”
“I see. I will pop in and check on her next.” She gave Rebekah’s shoulder a squeeze. “Goodbye, for now, sweet maedel.”
As soon as Mrs. Fuhs disappeared down the lane in her buggy, Heloise drove up. Rebekah still had not recovered her strength after losing so much blood during her delivery, even though she had been drinking rusty nail water two times per day, as instructed by the Englischer Dr. Williamson, and getting all the rest she could stand. Still, she found herself becoming exhausted by even the most menial of tasks, and the welcoming of guests and nodding and smiling proved to be the most menial and most exhausting of them all.
“Hallo Rebekah!” Heloise called as she marched up the front porch steps, with a beaming grin on her grossmammi face. “I had an epiphany. Is Joseph in the barn?”
“Hallo.” Rebekah nodded. “Ja, he is in the barn.”
“Joseph!” his mother called. “Komme mit mir! Quickly!”
Joseph and his little shadow, Thomas, dashed out of the barn. “Mater! Is all, okay?”
“Better than okay. You and Thomas go fetch a bucket of milk from Buttermilk.” She winked at Rebekah. “Then meet me in the kitchen. Today, the bopplin will eat well and be happy.”
Joseph did not meet his wife’s glance this time, though she looked at him with heavy eyes made heavier still by his retreat to the barn, to do as his mother instructed.
Joseph, I do. I do miss you so.
She cut off her thought.
I miss him. He obviously misses Katie.
She smiled up at Heloise. “Mrs. Fuhs brought some raw milk a moment ago. I have not tried it yet. Nobody knows, but I have been substituting with strained milk,” Rebekah confessed in quiet tones. “Mine still has yet come in enough to really be of use to feed a growing buwe. My milk does nothing for him except frustrate him all the more. And me, too.”
Failure.
“We are going to try something different,” Heloise said matter-of-factly. “Today, we will heat Buttermilk’s milk and let the bopplin try that in his bottle.”
Rebekah nodded and forced yet another smile. “What helped come up with that idea?”
“I was praying. For you, my son, and the bopplin.”
Rebekah’s gaze dropped from Heloise’s hopeful face. Instead, she studied her hands, which were knotted in her lap. “I am sure it will be just what the bopplin needs. Danki, Grossmammi Heloise.”
Joseph and Thomas finished their task quickly and strode up the steps with the sloshing milk bucket. “Here, give it to me.” Heloise took it into the house. Joseph just ducked his head and Thomas tucked his fiery ball of kitten into his front pouch pocket, yet again.
By the time Rebekah managed to get up and into the house and all the way through the kitchen, Buttermilk’s milk was already simmering on the stove. Joseph did not even look up when she sat down at their table.
He had finished the dining room chairs at some point in the last month, as evidenced by their sudden appearance at their dining table. He had said nothing of it to Rebekah, who still took most of her meals in her room, and Rebekah had said nothing of them being finished to him. The fact of the matter was they were beautifully done, all four of them.
When she went to pull hers up to the table, she noticed something on Thomas’s chair beside hers. She leaned to inspect it, but before she could get a good look, Heloise clapped her hands together. “Milk is done for the bopplin! Someone, quick, hand Grossmammi Heloise a bottle so she can feed her Lil’ Bit!”
Sure enough, Lil’ Bit took the warm milk hungrily from Grossmammi Heloise. He drank and drank and, for the first time, finished everything he was offered. When his bottle was empty and he had produced a glorious burp that impressed Thomas, he seemed almost satiated. Satiated, but not happy. Like her. His ever-present whimper was proof enough of that.
Heloise smiled at her daughter-in-law. “I hope this helps, Rebekah.”
Joseph, who had glanced at her gleefully when Lil’ Bit finished his bottle, had remembered himself and their silent truce. He pushed back from the table and left the dining room and disappeared into another part of the house. Sun, not content to be a pouch-cat, had disappeared somewhere in the house, too. Thomas, being the doting cat-dat that he was, had gone to find him.
Rebekah sat across from Heloise at the table and bounced Lil’ Bit in her arms. “I hope so too,” she said. “Danki for praying for me. And for praying for all of us. Gotte knows we all need it.”
“It is just temporary, Rebekah, until your milk comes in,” Heloise said in a bright, hopeful voice that was in fact too bright. Too hopeful.
“If it does.” She bit her tongue and didn’t say what else weighed down her heart. I am a failure. Failure as a wife. Failure as a mother. Everything is going so wrong. So wunderbaar wrong.
“It will. It just takes time for some maters.” Heloise reached across the table and patted her hand softly.
Rebekah pressed her lips into another meaningless smile, more exhausted now than ever before.
Chapter Ten
Answer me quickly, O Lord! My spirit fails! Hide not your face from me, lest I be like those who go down to the pit. Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul. – Psalm 143:7-8
“Each day is worse than the one before and nothing helps the bopplin. Nothing helps me, either!” Rebekah’s voice grew until it was almost a shout, but still, nobody listened. “Joseph has taken to sleeping in another room while I room in with the bopplin. Little Thomas stays over to help Joseph, but he does not smile anymore, and he never talks.”
Everyone sat at the dinner table in Joseph’s new chairs, smiling and laughing and passing the rolls. Nobody, especially not Joseph, made any sort of eye contact with her, nor did they pay any sort of attention to anything she said. They just continued talking amongst themselves as though she was not even there.
Rebekah shoved her chair back from the table and stood up. Behind her, the newly made chair toppled over with a clatter. “Everything hurts and I cannot breathe!”
Samuel, holding a half-eaten roll, laughed loudly as Thomas’s kitten dashed up his britches leg and came to a sudden rest on his shoulder, like a parrot in a picture book. He laughed until he choked on a bite of the roll.
Rebekah plucked up a pan of roasted Brussel sprouts and, tilting it slightly, gave them a fling. The little circular vegetables flew across the table, trailing their delicious butter sauce as they bounced across the dish of chicken, over the pies, and into the pitcher of tea. One hit Thomas on the hat, and another fell into Heloise’s lap. Lil’ Bit shrieked from his bopplin bucket on the floor.
“I am failing as a mother!” she shrieked.
Joseph, his mouth opened too wide to be real, laughed over her.
Rebekah bumped her weight against the table. The tea that filled the glass pitcher, complete with slices of lemons floating inside, sloshed mightily against the sides. A handful of drops spattered onto the tablecloth. “I am failing as a wife!”
A bite of chewed-up chicken fell out of Thomas’s mouth as he laughed along with the lot of them. Rebekah tore off her covering and tossed it onto the table. The strings fell into the tea. “I am failing as a sister, too!”
Still, nobody paid her tantrum any mind. Nobody even looked at her, or at her screaming, red-faced bopplin. Her blonde mane, shorter than last year, tumbled freely over her shoulders. She sucked in a breath, as deep as she could manage, and began to screech.
Rebekah woke, her ears ringing, in a cold, drenching sweat. She always awoke the same way when the same, haunting nightmare plagued her restless mind and kept her from experiencing any kind of restful sleep.
