by Linda Byler
Suddenly, she could hear her grandmother’s voice in her mind. “Annie, can you get nothing right? Must you ruin everything you touch? Ach, your poor husband someday. What a mess, Annie. What a mess you are . . .”
Annie felt her stomach clench up, the way it always did when she remembered her grandmother. She took a deep breath and brought herself back to the present, back to the two needy children beside her. She held the two boys, told them they were very special to her, and that she would always be their real mother.
When Joel sat up and dug out his small, wrinkled handkerchief and wiped his eyes and nose, a shudder passed through him.
He looked up at Annie.
“Do you really mean that? You will always be right here?”
“Oh, I will. I love it here. I love your father and I love you.”
The two pairs of eyes turned to her were guileless, the innocent eyes of children who were hungry for love, hungry for assurance of a mother who would never leave them.
From the corner came Lydia’s disgusted voice.
“Well, it’s nice you like some of us, at least.”
“Come, Lydia. You know I have always loved you.” Then she smiled and said teasingly, “And I like you, even when you’re kind of a bossy little tattle tale.”
At that, Lydia couldn’t help but giggle a little, which got the rest of them laughing until their sides hurt.
Breakfast was two loaves of bread sliced and spread with peanut butter, laid in a wide soup plate with sugared coffee that was thick with cream poured over it. They all ate heartily of the good coffee soup, a staple in warm weather when the kitchen range would have to be fired too high to fry all that cornmeal mush. Sometimes Annie made oatmeal and they ate it with apple butter and biscuits, or a huge cast iron pan of fried potatoes, but only on mornings that were cool.
The happy chatter and clatter of spoons on granite plates reminded Annie how easily children forgave each other and moved on with their lives as if nothing had occurred. Dan praised the coffee soup, said the peanut butter really got a fellow going on these hot days. She smiled into his eyes and was rewarded with the tenderest look from his gentle countenance. For the hundredth time, she thought nothing could be impossible with Dan by her side.
Ida and Hannah, both eleven years old, were chosen to do dishes, while Ephraim, Lavina, and Emma were told to help their mother in the garden. Amos and Enos were expected to drive the horses, one to cultivate the cornfield, one to drive the wagon while Dan forked hay.
Suvilla was expected to start the washing. The water was already steaming in the iron kettle. Ida said she didn’t know why she couldn’t drive the horses. Hannah agreed, saying girls should be allowed to drive. In fact, she’d seen Emery Glick’s girls, Fronie and Sadie, drive the hay wagon just the day before. Amos narrowed his eyes and said girls washed dishes and boys drove wagons around. Ida’s eyes flashed fire as she sized up her stepbrother, but she kept quiet. Annie breathed easier when Hannah did the same.
Dan listened, smiled, then said probably girls were every bit as good at driving horses as boys, so if they washed the dishes real good for breakfast and dinner, he’d let them try this afternoon, seeing how he needed Amos and Enos to help him fork hay.
The girls looked on their father with an expression close to worship. Annie thanked him with her sweet smile.
Everyone was expected to work hard, right down to the two little Emmas and Hannah. They worked together as a team as the sun rose high over the gardens. The children were all suntanned, their muscles well developed, toughened by physical labor as well as vigorous play. They all knew the work came first, which could last most of the day. The smallest ones carried wooden bushel baskets by the wire handles and gathered the piles of weeds as the older children dug them out with hoes. Sometimes they sang or whistled, calling back and forth across the rows.
It was Hannah who found the first potato bugs. She alerted Ida, who knew exactly what to do, but she figured she’d better talk to her mother first. Annie and Suvilla were in the cellar, sweeping cobwebs and washing shelves that looked quite empty now. They would scour every inch before mixing powdered lime with water, then brushing it over the stone walls of the house’s foundation, creating a sparkling white disinfected area to store the summer’s bounty.
“Mam!”
“Yes?”
“Potato bugs! Millions of potato bugs!”
“Ach my. Wait, I’ll help you get kerosene.”
She found an old tin can, put on the shelf in the woodshed for this purpose, and poured some of the smelly fuel into it, then selected a short stick and handed it to her.
“There you go, Ida. Be careful to check the undersides of the leaves.”
Ida loved this chore, as did the other children.
“Potato bugs!”
“Let me! Let me!”
Everyone swarmed around Ida, eager for a turn at knocking the shiny purplish brown beetles into the kerosene can until they died, which was not long at all. But Ida pushed her way through to the potato plants and began to whack them quite efficiently into their oily demise, with many pairs of keen eyes observing every move she made.
“They’re dying,” Joel announced solemnly.
“They are supposed to do that,” Lydia told him, her nose in the air, taut with her own superiority.
“I know,” Joel said.
Lydia, never able to let something go without having the last word, announced triumphantly, “You didn’t know till I told you.”
“I did. Kerosene kills anything.”
“Not everything.”
“Almost.”
John sat between two rows of beans, snapping a yellow wax bean before putting it in his mouth, his head turning first to Lydia, then to Joel as the exchange continued.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said loudly.
“What?”
“About kerosene.”
“What about it?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t either.”
Solemnly, the children continued picking up weeds, dragging the heavy wooden bushel basket between them. They did their job well, never complaining, only occasionally stopping for a drink of water. Now and then a conversation broke out, but the work always progressed steadily throughout
the forenoon.
At twelve o’clock, Annie washed her hands at the pump, laid out bread and butter and glasses of mint tea for a quick lunch. Dan had gone to help a neighbor with the birthing of a first-time heifer, so there was only a snack. The biggest meal of the day would be after the evening milking.
The afternoon wore on, with the children losing energy as the heat of the sun became almost unbearable. Ida had long ago found the last potato bug, so it was back to hoeing, which did not seem fair at all, the way the weeds were so thick it didn’t matter how hard she brought the hoe down, there were more weeds. The hotter it became, the more her temper flared.
“Dat said we could fork hay or drive horses. Instead we’re still stuck in this garden,” she fumed.
Suvilla was thinning corn, her hair blowing out and away from the kerchief around her head, her face almost the same color as the early cherry tomatoes. She slanted the irritable Ida a look. “What did you expect? Fathers never keep their promises.” She pushed her hair back, leaving streaks of sweat and dirt on her forehead. “I, for one, am never getting married.”
Ida stopped hoeing and drew down her eyebrows as she mulled over her sister’s words. Puzzled, she asked what she meant by that.
“Dat always promised me he’d take care of us, but he didn’t,” Suvilla said sullenly, just loud enough for Ida to hear.
“But he couldn’t help it that he died. He was in an accident.”
“He still died.”
“So?”
“So I’ll never get married.”
Ida considered this. “It’s not like most husbands die so early,” she ventured softly.
“Some do.”
“But we have a
new Dat, Suvilla. This one is much nicer. We have more to eat, and a bigger, better house. This Dat doesn’t raise his voice, or become angry or anything.”
“Not yet. He might, though.”
Ida leaned on her hoe, looking for all the world like a wise old woman with her head cocked to one side, nodding to herself.
“You know, it’s probably a good idea for you to stay single. If you did get married, your husband would have to live with you constantly worrying about him dying or getting mad. You’d both be miserable.”
“What do you know about marriage, Ida?” Suvilla barked.
“Enough to know you better stop feeling sorry for yourself unless you really do want to be a lonely old maid.”
There was a loud call from the barn.
“Suvilla, Ida, Hannah! Kommet!”
Ida took off in long-legged strides toward the barn, Hannah and the two Emmas toddling behind.
Suvilla’s brows lowered, her mouth set in a grim line, and she turned away. Slowly she gathered up the hoes and the bushel baskets, stacked everything in the woodshed, threw the weeds across the fence to the horses, and went to find her mother, who was just finishing up the whitewashing.
Annie took one look at Suvilla’s glowering face before setting down the galvanized bucket, placing one hand on a hip, and saying, “What?”
Suvilla brushed past and went into the house, slamming the screen door behind her.
Chapter Eight
THERE WERE TIMES THAT SUMMER THAT Annie was so weary, so bone tired, she felt as if every muscle was protesting against one more step. Yes, it was the physical labor, but more than that it was the constant bickering, the competition between the children for her attention and love, that wore her out. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t convince them that there was enough love to go around. Sometimes she thought maybe there wasn’t actually enough love in her heart. When she lost her patience and snapped at one of the children, or struggled to feel the same way about Dan’s little ones as she did about hers, she shuddered to think maybe she was as coldhearted as her unfeeling grandmother.
Every night she set the large round tub on the back porch for the children to wash their feet before bed. Such a long row of sun-browned and calloused feet that had dashed across grass and stones and plowed soil. She helped the little ones scrub and tried to remember to give each child a word of attention, something to let them know she was here, she was their mother, and she loved them all the same.
She tried, but had to admit, there was a difference, in spite of her best efforts. Lavina and Hannah had taken to eyeing her with dark baleful glances, which she ignored at first, but then catalogued as another form of rebellion. She knew she was not enough. There simply was not time to draw out each child and give them the attention—that delicate balance of loving care and discipline—that they needed.
After all the children were upstairs in bed, Annie and Dan retreated to the swing on the front porch. They rocked gently and the swing creaked and groaned from the rusty hooks in the ceiling. Crickets chirped lazily from their hiding place beneath the boxwoods; a procrastinating robin chirped loudly to its mate from the maple branch above them. A cow lowed softly, the sound of her hooves in the barnyard like suction cups, the mud drawing down on each heavy split hoof.
“Barnyard still wet?” Annie asked softly.
“Yes. Guess I’ll have to clean it up. We are just blessed with plenty of rain this summer.”
Annie laid her head on Dan’s solid shoulder and placed a hand on his knee, something she would never have done with her first husband. He had so often carried resentment like a prickly armor, a porcupine of separation. Dan was, well, he was welcoming. His wide chest and shoulders were a haven for her weariness and concerns at the end of the day.
Now, when his arms went around her, drawing her against him, he bent to place a kiss on the top of her head.
“My precious little wife,” he said, chuckling in the depth of his chest.
Annie closed her eyes and rested in his love.
“Dan, I’m sorry to come to you every evening with my concerns, but do you think Lavina and Hannah have a . . . have a problem with me?”
For a long moment Dan was quiet, the rise and fall of his chest the only sound. He sighed, cleared his throat, then drew a hand from her waist to her shoulder, where he began a gentle massage.
“Annie my love, I would never hurt your feelings if I could help it, you know that. But I think those two girls were hit very hard by the death of their mother. It wasn’t just her passing. They spent a lot of time with her when she was struggling. So to grow up with a . . . a loss of love and attention, then to have to see their mother’s passing . . . I always imagine them like leaking little boats pushed out to sea. It’s hard for them. And . . . .”
He paused, drew a deep breath.
“I think maybe Ida is causing some jealousy. What do you think?”
Annie held very still. Ida. The one whose boundless energy and high spirits had often carried her through her darkest hours. She was blessed with a sunny disposition and a never-ending flow of good humor, finding ways of fun and delight where many children would have overlooked it. She loved Ida fiercely. It came so naturally. She had always hoped never to favor one above the other, but no one would disagree that Ida was a special girl.
Now, she thought of all the times she and Ida laughed together, sharing a moment of levity amidst the chores, while Lavina and Hannah looked on from a distance. Of course they would want that same kind of connection with her.
Silently, she began to weep.
“I’m so dumb,” she said softly.
His arms tightened. “No, no, dear heart. No, you are not. You have your hands full, and I could be a help to you by mentioning only what I have observed. You know we will both always be drawn to our own children, the ones we raised as babies. We saw them being born, we cherished their tiny faces, the way all parents do.
“But we have to keep trying to do the best we can. I noticed Suvilla is having problems, but to tell you the truth, Annie, I feel totally useless in helping her. She hardly says two words to me, and I can’t think of anything to say to her. So now look who’s dumb.”
“Suvilla? I had no idea. Oh my word, Dan. It has nothing to do with you, at all. She’s just at the age where she has no confidence, where everything looks scary and unsure. She’ll be joining the rumschpringa in a few months, and that is a frightening time for many of us.”
“But she doesn’t like me.”
“She will, once her life is more settled.”
A comfortable silence fell between them, as they gently pushed back and forth on the old wooden swing. The crickets chirped continuously, the half-moon hung above them to the east, bathing the farm in its soft glow.
“Annie?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll work this all out in time, won’t we?”
“Of course. I love how easily I can talk to you about anything. If we can continue to do that, I see no reason why things can’t be normal soon enough. Christmas. I’ll give it till Christmas,” Annie laughed, trying to feel as confident and she made herself sound.
“Can you imagine all the gifts? And all the Christmas dinners we’ll have to go to? This one at home, my family on both sides, and your family on both sides. That’s five Christmas dinners, Annie.”
“What fun!” she answered.
“Now you sound like Ida.”
She laughed.
Dan shook his head, looking sober again.
“Lavina is so much like her mother, I’m afraid. Just full of . . . well, whatever it was that drove her to be so miserable at times.”
“Oh, but I’m so glad you’ve made me aware of it.”
Dan yawned, stretched. Annie gave an answering yawn, and together they made their way into the house, and to the bed that was a haven for their weary selves.
They did not kneel by the side of their bed to pray, having done that with the fourteen children arou
nd the kitchen table. Sixteen people, on their knees, heads bent in various degrees of holiness, the gas light hissing softly as Dan’s voice rose and fell, reading from the German book the prayer that sustained his faith.
After breakfast the next morning, Dan announced he and Annie would be going to the small town of Intercourse, the name implying the hub of a wheel, where many roads met, and that Ida and Lavina could ride along. Ida raised both arms and cavorted around the kitchen shouting her glee, while Lavina, intimidated by this display of excitement, watched with hooded eyes.
They took the spring wagon, sitting in the open air, the sun already hot on their backs, the open view around them an endless source of entertainment for Ida, who gave a loud opinion on all her observations. They had gone less than half a mile before she said Henry Miller’s heifers had parasites.
Dan burst into a loud guffaw of laughter, his head thrown back as he slapped his knee.
“Whatever do you mean?” Annie gasped, appalled.
“Their coats are shaggy and they have ribs that show.”
Dan nodded, then slanted Annie a look.
“You’re probably right, Ida,” he said.
Then it was, “Why do we have to wear a bonnet? They’re so hot and I can’t see a thing.”
Lavina listened, said nothing.
“You saw Henry Miller’s heifers.”
“Keep your bonnet on. We don’t go anywhere without them, you know that.”
“I would change that rule if I was the bishop. Why doesn’t he change it? He doesn’t have to wear a bonnet.”
The thought of old Joas Stoltzfus wearing a bonnet, his white beard tucked beneath the strings, was more than Dan could picture in his mind without the benefit of a good laugh.
Annie smiled, but said sternly, “Ida, shame on you for talking that way.”
When they reached the town of Intercourse, they turned off to the left and pulled up beside a few more teams tied to the hitching rack in the back of Zimmerman’s Grocery and Hardware. Dan leaped off the wagon and tied the sorrel horse securely to the hitching post before turning to extend a hand to Annie. The girls clambered down by themselves, then stood brushing the fronts of their dresses and aprons for any stray horse hairs before following their parents into the store.