Plain Truth

“Why?”

Jacob looked at the jury. “I truly believed I would be Plain my whole life, but then I discovered something that meant just as much to me as my faith, if not more.”

“What was that?”

“Learning. The Amish don’t believe in schooling past eighth grade. It goes against the Ordnung, the rules of the church.”

“There are rules?”

“Yes. It’s what most people associate with the Amish-the fact that you can’t drive cars, or use tractors. The way you dress. The lack of electricity and telephones. All the things that make you recognizable as a group. When you’re baptized, you vow to live by these conditions.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I was working as a carpenter’s apprentice, building bookshelves for a high school English teacher over in Gap. He caught me leafing through his books, and let me take some home. He planted the thought in my mind that I might want to further my studies. I hid my books for as long as I could from my family, but eventually, when I knew I would be applying to college, I realized that I could no longer be Plain.”

“At that point, what happened?”

“The Amish church gave me a choice: Give up on college, or leave the faith.”

“That sounds harsh.”

“It’s not,” Jacob said. “At any point-today, even-if I went back and confessed in front of the congregation, I’d be accepted back with open arms.”

“But you can’t erase the things you’ve learned at college, can you?”

“That’s not the point. It’s that I’d agree to yield to a set of circumstances chosen by the group, instead of trailblazing my own.”

“What do you do today, Jacob?”

“I’m getting my master’s degree in English at Pe

“Your parents must be quite proud of you,” Ellie said.

Jacob smiled faintly. “I don’t know about that. You see, what commands praise in the English world is very different from what commands praise in the Plain world. In fact, you don’t want to command praise if you’re Plain. You want to blend in, to live a good Christian life without calling attention to yourself. So, no, Ms. Hathaway, I wouldn’t say my parents are proud of me. They’re confused by the choice I’ve made.”

“Do you still see them?”

Jacob glanced at his sister. “I saw my parents for the first time in six years just the other night. I went back to their farm even though my father had disowned me after I was excommunicated.”

Ellie raised her brows. “If you leave the Amish church, you can’t stay in touch with those who are Amish?”

“No, that’s the exception rather than the rule. Sure, having someone around who’s excommunicated can make things uncomfortable for everyone else, especially if you all live in the same house, because of the Meidung-shu

“So a husband would have to shun his wife? A mother would have to shun her child?”

“Technically, yes. But then again, when I was Plain, I knew of a husband who owned a car and was put under the ba

“Then why did your father disown you?” Ellie asked.

“I’ve thought a lot about that, Ms. Hathaway. I’d have to say that he was doing it out of a sense of personal failure, as if it were his fault that I didn’t want to follow in his footsteps. And I think he was terrified that if Katie continued to be exposed to me on a regular basis, I’d somehow corrupt her by introducing her to the English world.”

“Tell us about your relationship with your sister.”

Jacob gri

“Were you close?”

“Very. When you’re Amish, family is everything. You’re not only together at every meal-you’re working side-by-side to make a living.” He smiled at Katie. “You come to know someone awfully well when you get up with them at four-thirty every morning to shovel cow manure.”

“I’m sure you do,” Ellie agreed. “Were you two the only children?”

Jacob looked into his lap. “For a while, we had a little sister. Ha

“That must have been hard for all of you.”

“Very,” Jacob agreed. “Katie and I were minding her at the time, so we always felt the blame fell on our shoulders. If anything, that brought us even closer.”

Ellie nodded in sympathy. “What happened after you were excommunicated?”

“It was like losing a sister all over again,” Jacob said. “One day Katie was there to talk to, and the next she was completely beyond my reach. Those first few weeks at school, I missed the farm and my parents and my horse and courting buggy, but most of all, I missed Katie. Whenever anything had happened to me in the past, she was the one I’d share it with. And suddenly I was in a new world full of strange sights and sounds and customs, and I couldn’t tell her about it.”

“What did you do?”

“Something very un-Amish: I fought back. I contacted my aunt, who’d left the church when she married a Me

“Are you telling me that she sneaked out of the house, lied to her father, and traveled hundreds of miles to stay with you in a college dormitory?”

Jacob nodded. “Yes.”

“Come on now,” Ellie scoffed. “Going to college is forbidden by the church-but behavior like Katie’s is condoned?”

“At the time, she wasn’t baptized yet-so she wasn’t breaking any of the rules by eating with me, socializing with me, driving in my car. She was just staying co

“When she came to State College for these visits, did she become-” Ellie smiled at the jury. “Well, for lack of a better term-a party animal?”

“Far from it. First off, she felt like she stood out like a sore thumb. She wanted to hole up in my apartment and have me read to her from the books I was studying. I could tell she was uncomfortable dressed Plain around all the college students, so one of the first things I did was buy her some ordinary English clothing. Jeans, a couple of shirts. Things like that.”

“But didn’t you say that dressing a certain way is one of the rules of the church?”

“Yes. But, again, Katie hadn’t been baptized Amish yet, so she wasn’t breaking any rules. There’s a certain level of experimentation that Plain folks expect from their children before they settle down to take the baptismal vow. A taste of what’s out there. Teenagers who’ve been brought up Amish will dress in jeans, or hang out at a mall, go to a movie-maybe even drink a few beers.”

“Amish teens do this?”

Jacob nodded. “When you’re about fifteen or sixteen and you come into your ru