“Go on! Try them on.” I wore socks and boots sometimes in the winter, but even then they sometimes felt like an unnecessary and bothersome addition to my own trusty feet. But these were different than anything I’d ever worn, and there was something exciting about putting them on. I could almost imagine I was someone else, another girl from another time and place. I stood up and took a few experimental steps. They felt springy and cushiony under my feet. I could get used to them, I thought.
“Okay, this is way too much stuff,” she said, and we both looked at the pile of things that covered half of the couch. We looked at each other and started laughing, and then we couldn’t stop. We laughed until we were bent double, imagining me in the woods with a pack twice my size strapped to my back. I laughed until tears streamed from my eyes, and at the feeling of those tears, I started to cry again.
“I feel like I’m going crazy,” I said. Amber stopped laughing then, and she looked at me with a mixture of pity and something that might have been envy.
“Ami girl, you’re goin’ somewhere, but crazy ain’t it. You are gettin’ out of this place! You might find out crazy is where you been all along.” I was about to ask her what she meant by that, but there was a knock at the door.
“It’s me.” I recognized David’s voice. Amber opened the door for her brother, and he stepped inside. He looked big and out of place inside the tiny trailer, but he didn’t seem to notice. He looked at me, then at the pile on the couch, then raised his eyebrows and turned to Amber.
“I know, I know!” she said. “I already know. I’ll get it down to a reasonable-sized pack before tonight. How does it look at the house?”
“I told them I’d send Ami back over there. The girls are fussing and cooing over him, and I think Solomon’s too busy playing king of the castle to think anything, but Ruth is getting antsy.”
Back to the house, I thought. Zeke Johnson and Papa and Ruth were still there, probably talking about me and what a fine wife I would make. I’d managed to block all that out for these few minutes, and now it came down on me like a load of rocks on my head. How could I go anywhere? What was I thinking? I was a wicked, selfish girl to even think of running! This might be my only chance to fulfill the role that God had planned for me. But even as the thought entered my mind, my heart pushed it away. There had to be another way. This couldn’t be my only choice, could it? For just a second, I tried to imagine Zeke Johnson’s arms holding me, his face coming close to kiss me. I felt like I was going to be sick.
“Ami, are you hearing me? Are you okay? You look a little green. Here, sit down.” I saw a worried look pass between the two of them as Amber went to pour me a glass of water from the pitcher she kept on the counter. I sat, and David knelt in front of me.
“I know this is a shock to you, Ami. And I know that Amber and me, we’re outsiders in this family. But the two of us, and Billie and Rachel and Jacob, too, we’ve always thought of you like our own little girl. The only daughter any of us would ever be able to have. We’ve tried not to lay that on you too heavy because we figured you had enough on your shoulders without having to carry all of us, too, but I want you to know it now. And we’ve all talked about it so many times, that we didn’t think it was right what they did. We wondered if we should tell you, but it never seemed like the right time. And then when we heard Solomon and Ruth talking about this Johnson fella, we knew we’d waited too late. But we all agreed that we wouldn’t let them do it to you. We couldn’t, not like this.”
I didn’t understand what he meant, but just then Amber shot him a look and started hustling me out the door.
“Okay, Ami, this is real important and it won’t be easy, but you have got to go in there and act normal. Whatever that means when your own people are trying to breed you like you’re a Jersey cow. Just … just go in there and act like you have been. I don’t imagine you were the life of the party in there, were you?” I shook my head and looked at the floor.
“You were doing just fine,” said David. “A proper girl shouldn’t know how to act anything but shy in a situation like this! Just keep right on like you were, acting bashful, speaking when spoken to or asked a question. Then as soon as you’re able, ask to be excused. Go to your room just like you was going to bed. Gather up what you can’t stand to leave behind, but you can’t take much.”
I nodded my head. “Just some clothes, I guess. My knife. And my crank flashlight.” And my little mirror, I thought but didn’t say. And the one picture I had of my mother. But Amber was shaking her head.
“No clothes. You just leave them god-awful gunny sacks right in the drawer. I’ve got what you’ll need. You go on, now. Back up to the house before they come looking for you. Lord knows the last thing we need is for them to come pokin’ around in here!” And before I could argue, she had hustled me out the door and shut it behind me. It felt strange to be alone so suddenly after the confusion of things and talk inside that tiny trailer. The sun was just starting to set, and I looked up at the ribbons of pink clouds that seemed to glow all across the sky. It helped me calm down, looking up like that. Lord help me, I said inside my head. I didn’t know if it was a prayer or just habit that made me say it.
Four
I can’t really tell you how I got through the rest of that night before I excused myself and pretended to go to bed. It’s all just a blur of feeling scared and ashamed. I was scared of being stopped and ashamed of wanting to go. I was afraid of going and ashamed of my own fear. I didn’t know what to think or what to say, so I just followed David’s advice and put on the bashful act. It wasn’t much of an act, really. Who wouldn’t feel bashful in the face of a stranger your family has brought in to see if he can make you pregnant as soon as possible? I kept my eyes on the floor and mumbled answers when I had to. I avoided the warning looks from Papa and the worried ones from Ruth. I let my aunts and uncles steer the conversation away from me again and again and wondered how Papa couldn’t see what they were doing. And finally, thankfully, there was a general movement toward bed, and I escaped to my safe little room.
As soon as I was inside, I leaned back against the door and looked around. This room had been mine since I was born, and now I had to choose just a handful of things to take with me. What if I never slept in my bed again? What if everything I had to leave behind was left forever? No, I told myself. No. I wasn’t leaving forever. I was going to find my mother, and she would help me. She would know what to do. I had to believe that. Maybe she would even come back with me. I could tell her that the C-PAF men had never come looking for her, that it was safe to come home now. Didn’t she miss her family? Didn’t she miss me?
So I told myself I would be back, and I looked around for what I could not leave behind. I saw the rows of pretty stones lined up across the windowsills, my treasures found on walks in the woods. I saw my shelf of Little House on the Prairie books—the only books I had ever been allowed to read besides the Bible and a raggedy old set of encyclopedias. I grabbed my favorite, On the Banks of Plum Creek, and laid it on my bed. It was a comfort to think of Laura and the rest of the Ingallses, that traveling family, traveling with me. They would keep me company.