Crossing Over by Ruth Irene Garrett Page B

English—some from foreign continents—to Kalona, and some people stayed. Kalona’s growth challenged its pastoral ambience, but the larger the town grew—to more than 2,000, by some estimates—the more determined it became to preserve its heritage.
    The town’s original motto speaks to its desire to meld tradition and progress: “Big enough to serve you, small enough to know you.”
    It was in this fish bowl that Ottie and I existed. Known by everyone. Watched by the English and Amish alike.
    We developed a system of glances that would let the other know we were thinking of them. Ottie, meanwhile, kept bringing gifts. Flowers sometimes, or chocolate truffles that he would cleverly share with the rest of the family.
    I continued baking him goodies.
    Ottie, formally separated from his wife for eight months now, had moved into a two-bedroom, gray bungalow on Kiwi Avenue off Highway 1. The house, which he rented for five hundred dollars a month, stood alone, surrounded by corn fields and a spotting of poplar and pine.
    He arranged to have me work for him weekends, tidying his house, dusting and cleaning, doing paperwork, and tending to the garden. A mountainous man with a cane doesn’t get around easily.
    He also hired my sister Bertha and several of my brothers to mow the lawn and paint the fence, although they were more my chaperones than Ottie’s employees.
    The best part of the arrangement was being paid a princely sum of five dollars an hour, ostensibly to be closer to Ottie. The worst part was the temptation.
    And this time, it was me who took the lead. In February 1996, I stopped to do some work at his house—and to secretly leave him a present. I had cooked a container of popcorn and included with it several Hershey’s Kisses. It was my unspoken way of hinting I wanted a kiss.
    The next weekend, Ottie asked me about the chocolate drops. When he saw my face flush, he knew.
    While Benedict shoveled snow out front, Ottie moved toward me, softly kissed my lips, and stood back, waiting for a reaction—one he would never see. Although my insides were instantly consumed by a fluttering giddiness, I was stiff as a board on the outside, and for him it must have been like kissing a rock. I didn’t move. I didn’t close my eyes. I didn’t even open my mouth.
    When you’ve never been kissed before, you don’t know how to react. You don’t know about tongues, and opened mouths, and sharing saliva. In my case, the only comparisons were the holy kisses among the men and women at church. The tight-lipped holy kisses.
    Nevertheless, the moment broke another barrier, and our complex series of clandestine signals grew by one. Added to the repertoire of knowing winks and smiles was a tug on the ear lobe. If either of us did it, it meant we wanted a kiss.
    We also began teasing each other behind my parents’ backs—and in the process threatening to have them, and others, discover us. Ottie would occasionally tweak my behind when he walked by, startling me enough to make me jump.
    I was just as game. Once, when my mother and father were in their bedroom, I walked up to him in the kitchen and planted a firm kiss on his cheek. He later told me: “All I could think about was Alvin coming around the corner and saying, ‘What’s this!’ And what would I do? I can’t run.”
    Another time, while we were eating dinner at my family’s house, I began massaging his foot with mine under the table. Ottie was at one end of the table and my father at the other and they were engaged in conversation. Ottie became so flustered that he began stammering. Later he would tell me: “Irene, that wasn’t funny!”
    But it was. For both of us.
    It was also exciting. And frightening again.
    I began praying more in private, occasionally in my closet. I had read that if one does that, God will reward you.
    Matthew 6:5–6: “And when thou