J. Wachowski - In Plain View

“True. The experiences of the early teen years fundamentally affect the possibilities of a person’s future. The life that looks like happiness takes on a certain shape.”

I shook off my unease. “Sounds like living in the Amish community stunts your growth.”

She stopped walking. “Don’t play ignorant with me, Ms. O’Hara. Obviously, we benefit by the choices available to us. Although, personally I can’t say I’m happier, or even more useful to the world because of them.” She pointed a scolding finger my way, although if Ainsley had the shot framed correctly, it would look as if she were pointing to the viewer. “Can you?”

As soon as we stopped, the camera drew a crowd. I felt my hackles rise again. I was monitoring the audio levels, watching the cables that tethered Ainsley to me and trying to maintain eye contact with the doctor while she lectured me. It was hard to get a good look at the people around us. Last night’s adventure had me paranoid. I could swear someone was following us. Following me.

“This is it.” The doctor stopped in front of a padlocked set of metal doors. She looked around at the people who had stopped to watch. “I’ll be signing autographs in my office later, for anyone interested.”

I heard a few chuckles. Her comments had the desired effect. The crowd moved on. Dr. Graham jangled a ring of keys, searching for the right one.

“Come on, Doctor, as a woman, would you choose that environment?”

“I agree, it’s a sexist, masculine hierarchy. But that exists everywhere. My chosen career environment for example.” She popped the lock off the cabinet. “And yours perhaps?”

“Perhaps.”

“Amish women work the system, just like you and I. Many find balance-mates, family who appreciate them, rewarding kinds of work that they enjoy. Is it really that different?”

Academic arguments only go so far with me. “Rachel had to stop attending school after eighth grade,” I said. “She told us how she enjoyed the museums and the airport and the library and the movies. It seems as if she wanted-wants-a bigger world.”

“Sadly, she can’t have both. To accept an outsider’s offer of marriage and live in this world, she’d have to leave everything behind, her father, her home, the only life she’s ever known.” The doctor glanced at her watch. “On the other hand, accepting her community’s rule means giving up the wider world forever.”

“A devil’s bargain.”

She frowned. “Only if you think in terms of this life and not the afterlife the Amish believe in. Any Amish girl has been raised to consider the eternity after death as her highest priority.”

“Eighth grade.” I frowned, too. My dad died the summer after eighth grade.

“A very formative time,” the good doctor said. “I really must say goodbye.”

“One more question? About the bann, how does it work? What does it do to you?”

She sighed. It wasn’t an easy question. “ Bann is the term for prescribed shunning. Sometimes it is done as a punishment, for a term of days, to remind the one who has broken the rules what it would feel like to be left out of heaven. When the time ends the person is welcomed back into the community. Under the bann the person shunned may not speak to or eat with anyone in good standing in the church. They must sleep in a separate space, like a cot in the barn or the basement, and no one can accept money or work done of their hands. It is a state of almost complete isolation. Every schoolchild knows how it works. And how it feels. ‘You are not one of us. You can’t play. We don’t want you.’”

“Does it work? Does it really make someone change?” Ainsley chipped in.

She nodded seriously. No question was too stupid when it came to the boy. “Human beings are social animals. It’s not simply a question of wanting company, we need it. The same way we need food, water and rest.”

“People die if they don’t get food and water.”

“Exactly.”

“Tom Jost didn’t die of shunning.”

“There are stages. Like the stages of malnutrition. You don’t fall over from missing one meal, even a small amount can keep you going for a very long while. Since we are of a religious bent today, think of the monks who choose to go into retreat. They often describe a God so personal, he’s capable of conversations, touch, even sharing a meal. Not to mention the tendency to anthropomorphize their pets, the birds they feed, even the plants around them.”

Rachel had said Tom was always sneaking off to talk with the animals. Poor lonely kid.

“You’re saying, where there’s no human contact, we work to create it.”

“Exactly. People will go to great lengths to make those connections. Without them, it gets harder and harder to interact ‘normally.’” She put the little quotes around the word with her fingers. “That is, in a way which is predictable and compatible with the people around you.”

Only psychologists have to define normal.

“Believing the people around you would never respond, that you would always be an unwelcome outsider?” She grimaced and her whole body tightened with a suppressed shudder. “That would be like living death.”

Her words conjured the image of Tom standing on the pile of boxes, knowing he was being watched. The cold of that thought was enough to stop my breath.

His father, his work, his girl…how many times had Tom died inside, before he finally surrendered to the dark?

“I’m sorry.” The doctor jingled her keys like an alarm bell. “I’ll be late for my next appointment.”

“Right, right. Thank you. College, shut us down.”

Ainsley and I broke down the equipment enough to make the transport back to the truck easier.

I popped my head around the door to say goodbye and thanks again. “What is this room?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“Just a storage locker for my office.”

“What have you got there? What are those?” I pointed to a plastic bucket that held a few opened foil-blister packs like the ones I’d seen in my sister’s emergency kit, the kit Jenny had dragged out of the garage to bandage me after my fall.

“These?” The doctor held up several of the small boxes, she had obviously come to retrieve. “Medical samples provided by the pharmaceutical companies. You really shouldn’t be in here, Ms. O’Hara.”

“Sorry.” I said thanks again-despite the cold prickles her words gave me.

What was my sister doing with a bucket full of medical samples normally kept under lock and key?

11:59:32 a.m.

Back in the truck, work was the best way to improve my mood.

“Make yourself useful, College. Figure out how to get me another Amish interview and the all-doughnut lunch is yours.”

“Amish on-camera interview? No way.”

“‘No’ doesn’t get the job done.” Another hidden downside to training newbies-every once in a while, I sounded like my mother. “I worked the story over hard Saturday night. We still need meat on Tom Jost. Somebody who can explain him, build us a little sympathy.”

The shots from the sesquicentennial gave us visuals, but I needed audio. Walking, talking Amish, not just wide shots of guys in beards and hats. I wanted to understand how the Amish felt, what they thought about Tom and Rachel and all of us Englischers.

That was part of the piece I was thinking of spinning out-the blessing and danger of perspective. We know ourselves better when we look from the outside. Unfortunately, as Tom discovered, the view is not always all that flattering.

“Won’t Dr. Graham’s interview build sympathy?”

“No. She comes across as an outsider, an expert.” Empathy was the missing element. “The problem we have here is that people revere firemen. Fireman does something weird-like kill himself in Amish clothes-people are so pissed that their hero isn’t perfect, the tendency is to swing the other way and vilify him. Tom Jost, evil-weirdo, would be easy. We could stop today.”