Amish Jedi: In a City Far, Far Away

Episode 8.2 ~ SpongeBob SquarePants

A delicate hand touches my shoulder, I know it's Leah before I turn. She must see everything I'm feeling plastered across my face because she wraps me in her arms. "Want to talk about it?" she asks, still holding me. 

"I hate her."

"She's wrong, you know?"

Somehow Leah knows I mean Betty and not Sarah. I cling to her as if she's my sister, Miriam, and I've just had a really bad day at school. Or Maem. "You don't know that."

Leah releases me just enough so we can look at each other. "Your parents call you every day. Twice a day. And you call them too, those don't sound like people who want to get rid of their daughter."

"It's not up to them. The bishop makes the rules."

"Did he make a rule that they can't love you? Or have you live with them?" Leah is asking this time because she doesn't know. No one, unless you've been Amish, can really understand.

I shake my head. "I was never baptized Amish, so they don't have to shun me."

"You should call them. Ask them for yourself."

I nod, but the tears are starting to swirl so I don't risk a verbal response. I think my parents want me home. I think they would never shun me, baptized or not. But there is a part of me that wonders. They chose to return to the Amish when I was five. They chose to join the church knowing what it would mean. They chose to make me an Amish child and have more Amish children. I'd always gotten away with more than my sisters. Gramps snuck me to movies and got me books Amish kids weren't allowed to read. They let me keep the fandom-ness I'd had since I was practically born, but none of my sisters have ever been allowed to see Star Wars. 

The tears drip in earnest as my mind flits back to the few memories still stored in my mind from the English days. Daed, Maem, and I would sit on the couch in our tiny apartment that overlooked a shopping plaza and have movie marathons. We even found lightsabers at a thrift shop and would battle in the living room. Back then, I didn't understand their choice. Why up and leave our perfect life? But maybe life wasn't so ideal for them. They'd never be able to raise all of us girls out here in the English world the way they did back home. Besides, what would I have done without Grams and Gramps? 

"Hot chocolate?" Leah asks. "I've got cold pizza upstairs too." 

The thought of returning to Megs's alone, with only memories of what I can never have again to keep me company, sends a shiver down my spine. "Cold pizza sounds good."

I follow Leah up to the seventh floor. She doesn't complain about taking the stairs—I don't do elevators. When we reach her unit, she opens the windows and throws me an extra sweater, not bothering to take hers off. 

Leah's apartment is smaller than Megs's. Or maybe it just feels that way because all the wall space is covered in bookshelves that overflow with weathered hardbacks and peeling paperbacks. 

"Woah!"

Leah bites down on a smile. "My parents were Literature professors at NYU."

She disappears into a small kitchen, but larger than Megs's, behind a wall of books. I follow her.

She sets two plates with floral designs and the box of pizza on a small round table under the window. Flipping on the gas stove, she mixes milk, cocoa, sugar, and cinnamon in a pot. "My secret ingredient." 

I smirk. "Mine too, but you do it better than me." 

"It's all about the quality," she plops half a cinnamon stick into the pot after letting the other ingredients simmer, "and the feel..." Leah plucks the stick back out again, shuts the stove off, and serves two large mugs full.