AMISH GIRL (exerpts)

This was the first time that Timmy had come into close proximity of real Amish people. He watched them with a genuine fascination. Mike, his best friend who was sitting by him on the Amtrak train to New York city elbowed his ribs several times to break his glare. “It’s not polite to stare you know.,” he told him.

They were going on a short vacation from Pittsburgh before school started. Timmy’s interest was not just in their ever famous outfit nor the unkempt beard of the man, no, His attentions were invariably focused on the teenage girl sitting with the man. She clutched the man’s biceps with such urgency as if letting go would cause her to fall out of the fast moving train. She occasionally cast a nervous glance at the other passengers in the coach as if to spot a demon among them. Her eyes were big and moist and pure white except for the unusually pitch ebony black iris that contrasted them. She had eye lashes that super models would kill to possess. It was obvious, by virtue of her religious associations, that she used no make-up whatsoever; but her lashes stood out stiff and long and perfectly separated as if she had spent hours brushing them and applying bottle after bottle of mascara.

She accidentally locked eyes with Timmy and then recoiled when she realized that she was under his scrutiny. The man, whom, Timmy assumed to be her father got up, probably to use the bathroom –a deduction that seemed reasonable at that time since he had siphoned three bottles of pineapple juice. The girl looked dejected. She resorted to bowing her head and staring at her fingers which she began to arduously twiddle. The self removal of the her father allowed Timmy to further his examination of the girl to parts of the body below the head, which was meticulously clothed in a flawless white bonnet. Her black frock was neatly pressed exhibiting only the minimal number of creases you’d expect from someone who’s been sitting on a train for at least four hours. She was slender and her skin ghostly pale. She looked back at Timmy again as if to make sure he wasn’t staring anymore so that she could stop twiddling. Timmy smiled. She just pursed the corner of her lips in a repressed imitation of a smile and then she bit her lower lip.

Hallelujah. She was responding to treatment, Timmy thought. That is the classic sign that she’s also checking you out. Biting the lower lip, that is. Mike taught him that. A smile of contentment brightened his face as he saw the girl smiling coyly at herself and twiddling her fingers more fervently in abashment.

“Good job, old boy,” Mike said.

“Huh,” Timmy responded, feigning ignorance.

“You must realize though that your chances of getting struck down by lightening twice tomorrow are higher than your chances of getting to be with her. Unfortunately, she seems your type though,” Mike continued, “she’s Amish and she won’t accept anything more than that. Capish?”

Timmy nodded in acknowledgement. Mike went further to inform him that the only way he could hope to gain access to her was to turn Amish.

“Forget everything you know, everything you’ve learnt after high school, your dreams of becoming an actuary, riding in a dark blue BMW, forget it all, then you can become Amish.”

Psychological reprogramming, faith amendments; these are no strangers to Timmy. He’d lived through a life in which he’d had to make a lot of compromises which his, as he calls it, chameleon-ness had seen him through. He’d been through three step-moms of various degrees of weirdness, the first of which thought that consuming any form of meat would damage the soul. He watched his weak-willed beer-guzzling rare-steak-chomping father wither away slowly through the years with Timmy’s siblings until the vegetarian witch left him when she caught him sneaking some burgers to the children’s room for what had been their secret midnight snack rendezvous for a couple of months. Timmy was the only one who never complained. The only one who never lost weight. The only one whose face bore any semblance of joy. He just simply adjusted.

The second was a conservative nudist. Whatever that means-anyway that’s what the children called her. She would walk about the house topless when there was very little or no risk of guests barging in on her. Timmy discovered her unusual disposition when he entered her room upon her request for him to get her a glass of water. He stopped short at the doorway when he saw her sitting at the computer desk with no blouse and no bra, but only wearing the skimpy shorts she used for working out. Timmy turned away quickly and apologized.

“Excuse me.”

“Don’t be embarrassed. I’m not. Come on in,” she said smiling and beckoning him.

In an instant Timmy’s shirt was soaked in his own perspiration. His abashment could not be concealed.

Gordon, Timmy’s younger brother wept the first time when she walked across the living room with her naked breasts dangling from her chest while they were watching cartoons. Melissa just ran into her room whenever the plus size model of a step-mom decided to exhibit her mammoth bosom, Gordon would just burry his head in his palms and Timmy would just go on with life as normal. His Wimpy father could not complain and the bitch wouldn’t desist. But fortunately, this would all end when the teenage boys in the neighborhood found out and started peeking at their window and taking pictures, which some of them posted on the internet. The look on Timmy’s father’s face was that of pain, anger and utter embarrassment when Frank, the office clown cum pervert showed some of the office folks and then later the man himself, the pictures of Simone, the step-mom, he’d stumbled upon online.

Timmy’s father would listen to no excuse. None of her heart-wrenching supplication would dent Timmy’s father’s resolve. He made her pack and leave that same night. The other kids had to go for therapy, but not Timmy. Timmy was normal. In fact, too normal. That’s what the therapist said. The current step-mom was not that bad. She in many ways was normal. However, the same can’t be said about her sister – a woman endowed with a generous amount of lush beard that would make even young men jealous. She occupied most of the couch when she sat down. The only problem with her was she insisted the kids kissed her on the lips.

“Hey kids, come give your auntie a kiss,” she would say.

Melissa and Gordon would occupy themselves with some fake chore or feign deafness. Timmy would go and deliver all three kisses one for himself and the other two on behalf of his siblings without even wincing. He would smile and say, “welcome.”

“I adjust,” he would always say when asked about how he is able to keep his calm under any foul condition. He considers himself the very perfection of evolution.

He wasn’t religious; his parents were atheist and thus he was by birth at odds with God. But he had no problem with God though. If he exists, it makes sense to forge some form of relationship with him if he doesn’t, how does it hurt anyway? After his mother passed away, Timmy held several short informal conferences with the parishioner two doors down until his father had a “talk” with the parishioner about his corrupting a young mind. That was during his middle school years. He was a college junior now and his own man.

Back on the train, he took out a pen from his breast pocket and a paper from his bag pack. He jotted down a few notes and bided his time. The Amish people were going to Albany, and so were he and Mike. They would have to take a different train from New York City and he knew exactly what to do.

The train rolled into penn station, Timmy woke Mike up and they got off; the Amish pair before them. Timmy told Mike his plan and all Mike could do was hold his hand over his mouth and shake his head. He managed to let a few words out five minutes later, “are you sure this is what you want?”

Timmy nodded. “I’ll know for sure after the interview,” he said smiling. He cautiously followed the Amish pair as they walked to a vending stand to get some bottled water. The girl turned around suddenly and saw Timmy. She furrowed her brows and clutched her father’s arm tightly. She’d been warned about the outside world. Was it that bad? She questioned herself. She’d learned about the sick people in the world whose souls needed redemption, but is this nice boy following her one of them? She turned back and quickened her pace forcing her father to comply. Timmy doubled up too. When they got to the stand Timmy turned to the father and said “hi,” offering his hand.

Twenty years later, Timmy is standing in a cornfield in Pennsylvania with the same Amish girl he’d seen on the train two decades ago. She was in the last few weeks of delivering their fifth child which they prayed would be a girl. Their four boys are driving the horse drawn carriage to their modest cabin home to deposit the first batch of the bumper harvest. He looks at her and smiles and steals a kiss while she wasn’t watching. She slaps him on his shoulder and bites her lower lip delivering that same coy smile that had changed Timmy’s life. Timmy smiles and shakes his head. After twenty years, she’s still feeling me, he thought. He draws in a deep breath and exhales with a sigh of contentment. The strong stench of the manure doesn’t bother him neither does the books deficient library he keeps at home nor the lack of modern music, nor movies nor computer games and actuarial science and the dark blue BMW with tinted windows are all vain desires of a past life. Nothing matters anymore.