Plain Truth

by Jodi Picoult

The swollen cows rolled their blue moon eyes in her direction, then turned away quickly, as if they knew better than to bear witness.

‘Is it possible that she was pregnant, Mr Fisher?’ The man’s face turned so red that Lizzie grew worried. ‘She isn’t even married.’ ‘It’s not a prerequisite, sir.’ Aaron Fisher stared at the detective coldly, clearly. ‘It is for us.’

Had this been any ordinary teen, Lizzie would have taken such behavior as an indication of guilt – but Katie Fisher was Amish, which required her to filter her thoughts. If you were Amish, you could grow up in Lancaster County without television news broadcasts and R-rated movies, without rape and wife-beating and murder. You could see a dead baby and be honestly, horribly shocked by the sight.

On the drive home, Leda explained that she had been Plain until she married Frank – who wasn’t Plain. By the rules of her religion, she was put under the bann – restricted from certain social contact with people who were still Amish. She could talk to Amish friends and family, but couldn’t eat at the same table with them. She could sit beside them on the bus, but not offer them a ride in her car. She could buy from them, but needed a third party – me – to transact the sale.

‘You’ll understand one day, Ellie. I’m not keeping my distance because it’s uncomfortable for me. I’m keeping my distance because it’s uncomfortable for them.’

‘Leda,’ Sarah whispered, ‘I don’t know how to move in this world.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ George sighed. ‘This one’s gonna go to trial.’

Leda knew how uncomfortable Sarah was riding in her car, but pressing circumstances called for compromises. Driving with someone under the bann was considerably less threatening than standing in court while one’s daughter was arraigned for murder, which Sarah was going to have to face next.

‘Do you understand these charges?’ She hadn’t understood the first sentence. But the man seemed to be waiting for an answer, and she had learned as a child that Englischers liked you to agree with them. ‘Yes.’

The judge impatiently rapped his fingers on the desk. ‘Is there any relative of Ms Fisher’s here today willing to take responsibility for her round the clock, who doesn’t have a problem with the church or her father?’

Ignoring everyone else, he went straight to Sarah and began to speak quietly but firmly to her in their language. Sarah bowed her head, a willow branch under a wind.

‘We get a lot of people coming through here who think they want to be Plain. As if that’s the answer to all the problems in their lives,’ Sarah scoffed.

‘If you aren’t Episcopalian or Catholic, what do you believe in?’ I shrugged. ‘Nothing.’ Sarah hugged the quilt to her chest, surprised by my answer. She didn’t say a word, but she didn’t have to: she was wondering how on earth I could possibly think that it was Katie who needed help.

Aaron looked down at the ground as he spoke gruffly. ‘Perhaps you would like to see the milking sometime.’ It was the closest he would come to an admission of gratitude.

I had never been a big fan of milk, but I figured that wasn’t the smartest thing to admit on a dairy farm.

‘If Katie stays at home today,’ he said, ‘if she acts sick and don’t show her face, people are going to talk. People are going to think she’s not coming because she’s got something to hide. It’ll go better for her, if she makes like it’s any other Sunday.’ Overcome with relief, Sarah nodded, only to stiffen as she heard Aaron speak quietly again. ‘But if she’s put under the bann, I’ll side with my church before I side with my child.’

‘Relax,’ Ellie muttered. ‘Rules were made to be broken.’ She looked up to find Katie staring at her solemnly. ‘Not here.’

He made jokes and teased her and acted so much like the brother she remembered that she wondered which personality of his was real now, and which was the act.

But what made Katie unable to look away was the absolute peace that washed over her when she met his gaze, as if this one Englischer had a soul that was Plain.

‘I don’t understand why the judge doesn’t just pick the person who’s telling the truth.’

‘It’s not our way to lie,’ she said stiffly. ‘It’s why a Plain person can stand up for himself in front of the congregation. It’s why defense attorneys don’t have a place in our world.’

A world that was crowded with people could still be a very lonely place.

‘That’s the other thing,’ Adam said, ignoring him and turning to Katie. ‘You don’t bother trying to convince the disbelievers, because they’ll never understand. On the other hand, if a person’s ever had a paranormal experience – well, they practically go out of their way to find someone like me, who wants to listen.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘We all have things that come back to haunt us. Some of us just see them more clearly than others.’

‘A telephone?’ Louise gasped, just as I left the room. ‘In the house?’

Although she was doing an admirable job of hiding her feelings, her eyes burned with shame that her friends had snubbed her own daughter. ‘We look alike. We pray alike. We live alike,’ she said. ‘But none of these things mean we all think alike.’

‘I’m not asking for an outlet in the house; or even for Internet access or a fax machine – both of which I use excessively before trial. But you must understand that it’s not fair to ask me to prepare in an Amish way, when the event I’m getting ready for is an English one.’

They murmured words of loss and sorrow, which sound the same in any language.

The bishop’s warm hands enveloped mine, and for a moment, I felt my whole self settle. ‘You have made adjustments for us, Miss Hathaway,’ Ephram said. ‘Did you think we would not make the same compromises for you?’

The thing was, most Plain folks never lifted their faces from the straight and narrow ground, to know that high above was the most wondrous tightrope you could ever have the chance to walk.

‘Well, you shouldn’t have grabbed at me,’ Ellie said a few minutes later, standing across from Katie’s brother in the hayloft of the barn. ‘It’s a good way to get yourself killed.’ ‘I’ve been away for a while, but you rarely find black belts wandering around Amish farms.’

‘I’m not Katie. I made a decision to leave the church, and once I made that decision, it led to other choices. I grew up Plain, Ms Hathaway, but I’ve thrown a punch. I’ve taken theology courses that question the Bible. I’ve owned a car. All things that I never would have believed I could do.’

Aaron loved his daughter; he wanted nothing more than to take her onto his lap like he had when she was just a little thing, and the world had been no bigger for her than the span of his own arms.

You’re a classic type-A perfectionist, and you’re unwilling to go out on a limb because it just might break underneath you.’

He had not said he loved her, but that did not matter. It was how he acted, how he treated her, that was a truer measure than any words he could say – deeds were the proof of affection for her people, not three little syllables that signified nothing.

Ellie squared her shoulders, ready to laugh this observation off, but found that no smart comment sprang to her lips. ‘Am I so easy to read?’ ‘No need,’ Coop murmured. ‘I already know you by heart.’

‘Only if you want to,’ Katie answered, deferring – as the Amish always did – to someone else’s opinion.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Stephen. Maybe they dress differently and pray more often than you do, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t hear you being an idiot.’

Then again, the silage fed to the herd all winter was just a step away from fermented corn mash. Maybe that’s why cows always looked so placid – they spent the winter drunk.

Sarah lifted her face from her mending. ‘Ellie’s done?’ Beaming, I nodded. ‘Want to see?’ Even Aaron put down the paper. ‘Of course,’ he joked. ‘This is the biggest event since Omar Lapp sold his twenty acres to that real estate developer from Harrisburg.’ He lowered his voice. ‘And just about as unlikely.’ But he was grinning, too,

‘I don’t think so much about where babies come from now,’ Katie murmured. ‘I wonder about where they go.’

How did one explain to an Amish girl that in a trial, it often came down to who had the best story? ‘It’s the way the legal system works in the English world,’ I said. ‘It’s part of the game.’ ‘Game,’ Katie said slowly, turning the word in her mouth until it softened. ‘Like football!’ She smiled up at me, remembering our earlier conversation. ‘A game with winning and losing, but you get paid for it.’ I felt sick to my stomach again. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Exactly.’

In the past five years, I had wanted a baby so much I ached. I would wake up sometimes beside Stephen and feel my arms throb, as if I had been holding a newborn weight the whole night. I would see an infant in a stroller and feel my whole body react; I would mark my monthly period on the calendar with the sense that my life was passing me by. I wanted to grow something under my heart. I wanted to breathe, to eat, to blossom for someone else.

Stephen and I fought about children approximately twice a year, as if reproduction were a volcano that erupted every now and then on the island we’d created for ourselves. Once, I actually wore him down. ‘All right,’ he’d said. ‘If it happens, it happens.’ I threw away my birth control pills for six consecutive months, but we didn’t manage to make a baby. It took me nearly half a year after that to understand why not: You can’t create life in a place that’s dying by degrees.

She glanced at my stomach, then away. ‘I’m happy for you, Ellie, I am. But that doesn’t make it hurt any less. And I keep telling myself that my Mam lost three babies, four if you count Hannah.’ She shrugged. ‘You can be happy for someone else’s good fortune, but that doesn’t mean you forget your own bad luck.’

His words barely registered. I was too busy considering how many times that day I would be called upon to tell a man the one thing he least expected to hear.

‘I’m not saying no. I’m just not saying yes, either. Coop, I just found out about this. I’m still seeing how the word mother fits. I can’t try on wife at the same time.’

‘There’s no way for me to make you understand what it means to be Plain, because most people can’t see past the buggies and the funny clothes to the beliefs that really identify the Amish. But a murder charge – well, it’s an English thing. In the Amish community there’s no murder or violence, because the Amish know from the time they’re babies that you turn the other cheek, like Christ did, rather than take vengeance into your own hands.’

Jacob leaned forward. ‘There’s this little acronym I was taught in grade school – it’s J-O-Y. It’s supposed to make Plain children remember that Jesus is first, Others come next, and You are last. The very first thing you learn as an Amish kid is that there’s always a higher authority to yield to – whether it’s your parents, the greater good of the community, or God.’

‘The Amish don’t want to be saints. They’re people, like anyone else. But the difference is that they try to lead a quiet, peaceful Christian life … when most of us’ – he looked pointedly at the prosecutor – ‘are already halfway down the road to hell.’

‘If you step out there, George is going to cut you to ribbons. We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t destroy the thread of the defense while he’s doing it. This is an English world, an English court, an English murder charge. You can’t win if you play by Amish rules.’