Linda Castillo - Breaking Silence

The contrasts between me and this girl are stark. Looking back, I don’t think I was ever as innocent. As I stand here and wait for her to recount a scene no child should ever have to endure, I feel guilty because I know I’m at least partly responsible for the death of her innocence. I don’t let that keep me from asking the questions that need to be asked.

“We were just sitting around the table, waiting for our scrapple,” she tells me. “We were hungry, waiting for Samuel to come in with Datt and Uncle Abel so we could say our before-meal prayer and eat.” She picks at a nail with intense concentration. “Then all of a sudden, Samuel came in, screaming. At first, I thought he was playacting, like he does sometimes. But Mamm got scared. She grabbed him and asked him what was wrong, and I knew something terrible had happened.”

“What happened next?” I ask, pressing her.

“We ran outside. I remember seeing that the barn door was open. Datt never left it open. He scolded us when we did. There was lantern light inside. We ran to the barn.”

“Why do you think the barn door was open?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you see anyone else?”

She shakes her head. “It was just us kids. And Mamm. ”

“Was anything out of place?” I ask.

“Not that I recall.”

“Did you see any vehicles? Or buggies?”

“No, but I wasn’t really looking or paying attention. We were just so scared.” She looks at me as if she’s somehow failed me, then shakes her head. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” I smile to reassure her. “You did good.”

I can tell by the way her eyes slide away from mine that she doesn’t believe me. She may be only fifteen years old, but she knows these are not idle questions.

I query Ike and Samuel, but aside from the barn door being left open, neither boy remembers seeing anything out of place. In the backwaters of my mind, I find myself thinking of Adam Slabaugh, the estranged uncle, and I can’t help but wonder if he wanted a relationship with his niece and his nephews badly enough to kill for it.

I spend the next ten minutes going through every detail of the morning again, step by terrible step. But the kids are unable to offer anything new. I’m in the process of tucking my notebook into my pocket when another line of questioning occurs to me. “Did your datt ever hire anyone to help him around the farm?”

Salome nods. “Once or twice. He preferred to do the work himself, but sometimes it was too much for him and he would hire someone, when he had money to pay or goods to trade.”

“Who did he hire?”

“I don’t know their names.” She lifts her shoulders. “Men or boys in need of work.”

“Were they Amish or English?”

“Amish, mostly. Except one time he hired an Englischer. ”

I look at the boys. “Do any of you remember the names of the people your datt hired?”

Two heads shake in unison.

I move on to my next question. “Did your parents keep money in the house?” It wouldn’t be the first time some day laborer decided stealing money was easier than working for it and turned on his employer.

The two boys defer to their older sister. “ Datt kept some paper bills in a canning jar in the basement,” she says.

I rise. “Can you show me?”

“Sure. I know exactly where it is.” She gets to her feet. “You think one of the workers came back to steal the money?”

“I think it’s worth checking.”

I feel the Amish women’s eyes burning into my back as Salome takes me to the mudroom. They don’t trust me; they want me to leave the children alone. I wish I could, but at the moment, these kids are my best source of information.

The mudroom is a large, drafty room with half a dozen windows and a plywood floor. A defunct potbellied stove squats in the corner, its door hanging open like a slack mouth. Behind it, an ancient hunting rifle with a glossy wood stock leans against the wall.

“It’s always cold in the mudroom,” Salome says with a shiver.

In the dim winter light creeping in from the windows, I see that her hair is very shiny. I’m so close, I can smell the clean scent of it, see the soft perfection of her skin. Lifting a lantern from the sill next to the door, she lights the wick. “It’s dark in the cellar. Watch your step.”

The door creaks when she opens it. The odors of damp earth and rotting wood fill my nostrils as we descend the steps. Cold and darkness embrace me like strong, icy hands. Holding the lantern in front of her, Salome leads me into the bowels of the house. The basement is divided into several rooms with low ceilings, which make me feel slightly claustrophobic.

“I heard the women talking,” she says as we enter the next room. “They said you used to be Amish. Is that true?”

I walk beside her, hoping I don’t trip over some unseen object. “A long time ago,” I reply.

I see curiosity in her eyes, the same kind of curiosity I felt when I was her age. The only difference is that hers is innocent; mine was not.

“Did you do something wrong?” she asks.

“I did a lot of things wrong.”

“Like what?”

I don’t have a canned answer ready for a question that’s so far-reaching, especially for an innocent. “It’s complicated,” I say, hedging.

She appears to struggle with her next question, but in the end curiosity wins. “I heard you disobeyed the Ordnung and that Bishop Troyer put you under the bann. ”

“I wasn’t baptized,” I tell her. “I decided to leave.”

“What did you do?”

“I made a lot of mistakes.”

“Oh.” She considers that for a moment. “Bishop Troyer is mean sometimes.”

“He’s a good bishop.”

She bites her lip, thinking. “Didn’t you miss your mamm and datt? Your sisters and brothers?”

I still miss them, a whisper inside me replies, but I don’t give it voice. “I missed them a lot.”

“If you missed them, why didn’t you confess your sins and stay? How could you leave them?”

How could I, indeed? It’s a question I’ve asked myself a thousand times over the years. My answer is always the same: “I didn’t have a choice.”

Her eyes flick to mine. In their depths I see the burn of curiosity. I can tell she wants to ask me about my transition from Amish to English. But Salome is too well mannered to pry any more deeply than she already has.

“I think about what it would be like sometimes,” she says after a moment.

“The grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence.”

Tossing me a sideways look, she laughs. “That’s a funny way to put it.”

Because I don’t want to encourage her one way or another, I say nothing.

Our feet are silent on the damp earthen floor as she takes me to a wall of shelving filled with dusty canning jars. Each is meticulously labeled: PEARS, APPLES, BEETS, GREEN BEANS, SAUSAGE, RHUBARB. I watch as she moves aside a jar and pulls one from the back. Unscrewing the lid, she peeks inside. “Oh no!”

“What is it?”

Eyes wide and searching, she shoves the open mason jar at me so I can look inside. “ Datt’ s money. It’s gone. Someone took it!”

I mentally kick myself for having let her pick up the jar. “Set it down, Salome. I’m going to take the jar and have it processed for prints.” Even in the dim light, I can see recent smudges in the dust. Fingerprints, maybe. Damn. Damn. Damn.

She looks distressed as she places the jar back on the shelf. “Who would do such a thing? How did they get down here in the cellar without us seeing them?”

“I don’t know.” I think about that a moment. “Do you know how much money was in there?”