The Outcast Read online

  But now that a majority of the Dry Hollow Community has left—seeking promises of better jobs and fertile land—I still find myself crouching behind a list of rules no bishop is here to enforce. Perhaps we should have gone with the community as they wished, yet I couldn’t. And although the invitation remains open, I still can’t. Hopen Haus is not my life; it is the place where my life ended. Haunted by memories made stronger by the location in which they were formed, I cannot leave.

  Formerly Englisch, Alice does not understand this. She does not understand why we did not leave when most of the community did. She does not understand why I demand that our lives and the lives of the girls who come here remain Plain—though we enforce no dress code beyond modesty—nor does she understand my hesitance to ask the townspeople for help.

  I should not expect her to understand. Eighteen years ago, I helped birth Alice Rippentoe’s illegitimate child, Uriah: a long-limbed woodland creature whose stormy disposition belies the meaning of his name, “My light is Jehovah.”

  If Hopen Haus draws publicity and a real journalist digs deeply enough that the skeletons in my life are revealed, it will not dramatically change Alice’s life. But me? This life, ushering other mothers’ children into the world while never having a child to call my own . . . this is the only life I’ve got.

  Supper at Hopen Haus is a family affair. Everyone is required to attend, even if battling late-afternoon nausea that redefines morning sickness. I take my seat at the head of the two tables made uniform with mismatched cloths and watch the girls clamber over the benches at speeds proportional to their bellies’ sizes. Everyone quiets as I lower my head to signal the silent grace. Afterward, the girls begin to talk and greedily consume the meal: sautéed kale doused with vinegar, grummbeere supp, and radish sandwiches stuffed with crumbling portions of the goat cheese Uriah pasteurized before he went on a trip with Gerald Martin.

  My appetite has vanished. I have a difficult time being grateful for such meager fare. Hopen Haus is at its lowest occupancy since Fannie Graber founded it twenty-five years ago, yet we cannot take many more boarders without someone going hungry. I look down the table again, trying to imagine where these girls would live if we were forced to close our doors.

  Charlotte mistakes the reason for my sullen demeanor and reaches over to pat my hand. “Maybe they won’t use it,” she soothes, a natural grossmammi, even though she’s never been married nor had a child.

  She goes back to spooning her soup. I pull both hands below the table and curl them into a fist. To my right, Alice’s gaze brands my skin. When I meet it, she shifts away. Her guilty silence speaks volumes.

  “Oh, they’ll use it,” I say, watching as below her white kapp, the tips of Alice’s ears turn slowly red.

  Alice Rippentoe was baptized into Dry Hollow Community’s Old Order Mennonite church one year after I was. But differences of opinion, such as her wanting publicity for Hopen Haus and my despising it, have cropped up countless times since we became midwifery peers. I am grateful for that night, a few months before Alice’s arrival, when a slipped disk christened me as reluctant head midwife and gave my opinion more weight than hers.

  She darts her eyes to me again, their color like a thundercloud. “I didn’t know the news would pick the story up. Okay, Rhoda? I just thought that journalist from the Auberson—”

  “Well, they did,” I interrupt. “They picked the story up, and now they’ve got our pictures, too.” When I went outside to send the Channel 2 News team away, an attentive cameraman had taken my photo.

  Charlotte shakes her head, heavily buttering a piece of salt-rising brot and layering it with red-veined radishes. “Ach, such a shame,” she murmurs.

  Unlike orthodox Charlotte, who’s never once stepped foot outside Old Order Mennonite parameters in her fifty-seven years, I am upset not because I believe any captured image is idolatry, but because for the past nineteen years, I’ve been using this cloistered lifestyle to conceal my past. Now, with that one brilliant flash, everything I have worked so hard to keep in darkness may be revealed.

  “Can’t we just talk to them?” Alice asks. “Ask them not to air the story due to our religious beliefs?”

  I pull my fist from beneath the table and hammer it on the surface. “No!” Panic makes my voice louder than I intend. “Telling them we don’t want the story aired will make it seem like we’ve got something to hide, and they’ll come back here to find out what it is.”

  I shake my head. “No, all we can do now is wait . . . and hope it blows over.”

  A Note from the Author

  I was born on a hot August day in the heart of Amish country. My family moved to Tennessee when I was only three years old, but my childhood was filled with stories of Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors hiding TVs from bishops and concealing permed hair beneath kapps. However, this unique heritage did not interest me. Instead, I pouted as my mother divided my waist-length hair into plaits and then forced me to change from purple overalls into a jean skirt and sneakers in preparation for a visit to our Plain friends—knowing, even at the tender age of six, that this combination was a fashion faux pas. Playing hide-and-seek or kick the can with my Old Order Mennonite peers, however, I soon became grateful for that skirt, which helped me transition from Southern Englischer to intimate friend.

  Years passed. I knew my Mennonite playmates had traded braided pigtails for kapped buns, yet on a visit to the community, I rebelled against my mother’s instructions and arrived with unbound hair. During supper, which was eaten beneath a popping kerosene bulb, the hostess came and stood behind my portion of the bench. She slid out my blue satin ribbon and plaited my hair as I stared into my bowl of grummbeere supp accented with homemade brot.

  The winter of my seventeenth year, I returned to the community to visit a once-raucous playmate whose ill health had transformed her into a soft-spoken friend. The whites of her deep-brown eyes had yellowed from liver complications. Her family and my own gathered around her bed, which was heaped with spinning-star quilts, and sang hymns whose Pennsylvania Dutch words I did not know, but whose meaning struck my heart with such clarity, tears slid down my cheeks.

  One week later, I stood beside her grave, wearing a thick black headband to hide my newly pierced ears with the fake diamond studs that stabbed the tender skin of my neck, giving me a migraine further magnified by jaw-clenching grief. I remember how the somber community huddled around her family as if their physical presence could shield them, not only from the slashing wind and sleet, but from the reality that the body of their dochder and schweschder was about to be placed into the cold, hard ground.

  I left for college that summer, almost eighteen years to the day after I had been born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the first person in my immediate family to attempt a higher education. As I unpacked my flared Lucky jeans and beaded sweaters into wobbling dorm drawers, I thought I was leaving my Mennonite heritage along with a certain broad-shouldered, hazel-eyed man whose father had attended my father’s Mennonite high school.

  Three years, one death, and two lifetimes’ worth of tribulations later, I realized that I had not lost the precious attributes surrounding my Plain heritage so much as I had needed to go away in order to find myself.

  In the cool autumn of 2008, I married my broad-shouldered, hazel-eyed Dutchman, thus making my last name as difficult to spell as my first. I kept wearing my Lucky jeans and layering my wrists with jewelry, but I was also drawn to a simple life, reminiscent of the one I had once tried to flee. My husband and I purchased a forty-acre valley nestled at the base of softly rolling Tennessee mountains.

  Upon moving into the haus my husband built with determination and his own two hands, I began to write a fictionalized version of a story that had once been told to me—a story regarding the power of desire and the reverberating cost if that desire is left unchecked, a story that, shockingly enough, took place in an idyllic Old Order Mennonite community.

  In Nashville, I was introduced to
a genial, white-haired man who was as excited to hear my Dutchy last name as I had been to hear his. He had attended the same Mennonite high school as my father (and my husband’s father) and, as a literary agent, he was interested to read the portion of the story that I had completed.

  He read the first twenty-five thousand words while flying home from a book festival in Brazil and wanted to read more. I continued to write as my expectant belly continued to grow. Two months after the birth of our daughter, Tyndale House accepted the manuscript; they were as excited to promote my modern retelling of The Scarlet Letter as I had been to write it.

  And so, wearing Lucky jeans (the same pair, actually), chandelier earrings, and unkapped hair, I continue writing stories about the Pennsylvania Dutch heritage that once brought me acute embarrassment but has now become a creative outlet with no closing doors.

  Thank you for joining me on this journey.

  About the Author

  Jolina Petersheim holds degrees in English and communication arts from the University of the Cumberlands. Though The Outcast is her first novel, her writing has been featured in venues as varied as radio programs, nonfiction books, and numerous online and print publications. Her blog is syndicated with the Tennessean’s “On Nashville” blog roll, as well as being featured on other creative-writing sites. Jolina and her husband share the same unique Amish and Mennonite heritage that originated in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, but now live in the mountains of Tennessee with their young daughter. Follow Jolina and her blog at www.jolinapetersheim.com.

  Discussion Questions

  Why does Rachel agree to leave Copper Creek? Do you agree or disagree with her reasons? How do her feelings of guilt play into her decision? Have you ever been tempted to avoid an issue or a loved one because of something you’ve done? How did you resolve it—or is it something you still need to address?

  Although Leah and Rachel are identical twins, their personalities are starkly different. How do their personalities change as the story progresses? In what ways do they remain the same?

  Have you known any identical twins? Did the author’s portrayal ring true? Why or why not?

  Imagine that Judah King was the one who withdrew the sheet of paper from the Ausbund, declaring him the next bishop of Copper Creek. How might he have addressed Rachel’s sin, given the way he loved her?

  Do you believe that our deceased loved ones in heaven view the pain we go through on earth? Did you find Amos’s viewpoint believable? Why or why not?

  If you were in Tobias King’s place, would you have chosen to forsake your child or your pride? The choice may seem easy in theory, but if it involved confessing a shameful sin, would it be? What factors might influence your decision?

  If you were in Judah’s place, could you have forgiven Rachel and still built a life with her? If you were in Leah’s place, could you have forgiven your sister’s betrayal? Have you ever been faced with a heart-rending situation like this? If so, how did you handle it?

  What are some of the biblical allusions in The Outcast? What did they add to the story?

  Holistic and conventional medicine are compared and contrasted throughout The Outcast. In the end, do you feel one was more effective than the other? If so, why? Why is there a tension between the two approaches? Have you or your family encountered this tension?

  Ida Mae and Rachel were both rejected by the communities that once sheltered them. Compare their individual responses. It’s natural to want to turn around and reject others in the same way we’ve been rejected. How have you responded in the face of rejection?

  In the end, Leah and Tobias decide to leave Copper Creek because of the painful memories it holds. What’s the difference between forgiving and forgetting? Why is it sometimes difficult—maybe impossible—to forget a wrong, even when we’ve worked hard to forgive? Does true forgiveness have to include forgetting? Why or why not?

  Was it startling to learn that the Plain communities struggle with the same sins as the English? Why do you think these communities tend to be viewed in a utopian light?