Running Around (and Such)

by Linda Byler

  How did Emma do it? How did she manage to always do what Mam wanted? It had been that way forever, it seemed to Lizzie. It happened even on days when they were little and some celebrating seemed in order—like the first day of summer after school was out for the year. Early one spring morning, Emma had come running down the stairs, shouting for Lizzie. Sure enough, she had something bossy to say. Emma told Lizzie loudly that as soon as Mam was done washing, they had to help mow the yard, trim around the existing flower beds, and make new ones.

  Lizzie hadn’t felt like working in the yard that day any more then than she did now. Emma just upset her, always spoiling a perfect day, telling her what she had to do. So she didn’t turn around. She acted as if she hadn’t heard Emma and kept her back turned.

  “Lizzie!” Emma voice rose. Lizzie could tell she was angry at her. Good for her. Emma could go mow the yard with Mam and she’d stay in the barn with Dat and the horses.

  “Lizzie!” Emma yelled louder.

  Dat stopped combing Dolly’s mane. He did not look very happy as he spun Lizzie around. “Lizzie, answer your sister when she calls you,” he said.

  Lizzie looked at the floor, pushing a piece of black leather with one toe as Emma stomped into the barn.

  “Dat, you have to make Lizzie listen to me. She’s just mad because she has to work. I already swept the floor for Mam and she didn’t do a thing,” Emma said.

  “Lizzie, now go on, and don’t be so stubborn,” Dat said, giving her a shove. He looked frustrated as he turned back to brush Dolly.

  “I don’t want to, and I’m not …” Lizzie retorted.

  Dat turned very suddenly and loomed over Lizzie. “Don’t say it, Lizzie, or I’m going to have to find my paddle. You go right now and be nice. I’m busy here, and Mam needs you to help her. Now go.”

  Lizzie had burst into howls of rage and disappointment. First of all, Emma was bossy, and now Dat was on Emma’s side and was being so unkind. She wailed her way out the door and plopped down hard on the porch step, refusing to budge while she cried loud howls of self-pity.

  “Lizzie, if you don’t shut up right this minute—oh!” Emma stood by helplessly. When she simply couldn’t take Lizzie’s crying one more second, she stomped off to the little shed and found the push mower.

  Lizzie stopped crying as she watched Emma mow. It looked like fun, and it made the lawn look nice and even in size and color. She sniffed and wiped her eyes and watched Emma some more.

  Lizzie wished she were back in school. School was much more fun than this. Emma would boss her around all summer. Mandy was too little to be much fun, but Lizzie guessed if Emma was going to be so grown-up all the time, sweeping floors and mowing yard, Mandy would have to be her playmate. Even Dat was unkind to her today.

  Tears welled up in her eyes, because it all hurt dreadfully. She turned away so Emma couldn’t see and ran to the tool shed. She found Mam’s trimming shears and hurried over to the flower bed farthest away from Emma.

  She clipped halfheartedly at the edge of the flower bed. A fat brown earthworm wriggled in the grass, and Lizzie clipped him in two pieces. It served the slimy old worm right—he had no business crawling over the grass where she was supposed to trim.

  Mam came over and sat down beside Lizzie. The two parts of the earthworm were wriggling furiously, and Mam could see Lizzie’s swollen eyes and tear-stained face.

  “What’s wrong with the worm, Lizzie?” she asked.

  “I cut him in half.”

  “On purpose?” Mam asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Lizzie, why were you crying?” she asked.

  “Mam, I– I—” and Lizzie burst into a fresh wave of weeping. “It’s always the same. Emma is so good and I am so bad. She always makes me do things I don’t want to do, because she likes to sweep and do things like that. And she makes me so mad I could … I could kick her. And you like her a lot better than you like me. Dat does, too.”

  Years later, Lizzie sometimes still fought back those feelings of being second best. That evening after the man came looking for a maud, Lizzie slipped over to Emma’s room and sat down beside her on her bed. She cleared her throat nervously before she said, “Emma?”

  Emma looked up from the Bible she was reading and asked serenely, “Hmm?”

  “Emma, don’t you…? I mean, don’t you mind going so far away to those strange people and staying for an entire week?” Lizzie’s voice rose to a hysterical yelp.

  “I don’t know. I’m not exactly looking forward to it, but I feel like it’s my duty to go if Mam and Dat think I should.”

  She closed her Bible and put it carefully in her nightstand drawer, taking out her diary and pen.

  Lizzie couldn’t believe it. How could she? How could she be so deep-down and honest-to-goodness obedient to Mam’s wishes?

  “Emma, aren’t you one bit angry?” Lizzie asked, watching as Emma opened her diary.

  Emma thought, chewing on the tip of her pen.

  “No, I guess not. I mean, what good would it do? I have to go and, like Mam said, it will be a good experience, learning to work for other people.”

  Lizzie took a deep breath, leaned back, and gazed at the ceiling.

  “Well, I’m not ever going to do it.”

  Emma glanced at her sharply. “You shouldn’t say that.”

  “Well, I just did say it. I’m not going to stay for a week, ever. I couldn’t take it. Emma, ewww! Are you actually going to get up in the morning and milk? I guarantee you have to get up at 4:30, if not earlier.”

  Emma didn’t answer. She was writing in her neat, slanted handwriting. “Can I read your diary?” Lizzie asked, leaning over to see what she had written.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  Lizzie yawned sleepily, got up, stretched, and said, “Okay. G’night, Emma.”

  “G’night. Don’t worry too much about being a maud. You’ll be all right when the time comes for you to go.”

  That was nice of Emma to place so much trust in me, Lizzie thought as she walked down the darkened hall to her room. But she need not worry, because I’m not going. Mam and Dat can’t make me.

  She guessed she would have to start saying an extra prayer in the evening. Maybe that was why so many scary things happened to Lizzie, because Emma knelt beside her bed faithfully to say her little German prayer, and Lizzie hopped into bed and said it under the warm quilts. And often Lizzie didn’t really say her prayers right. She felt silly, or sometimes she felt like God didn’t hear her say them. How could he hear it if she just thought her prayer? And yet she felt silly to say it out loud.

  When they were small and Mam helped them say their prayers, she didn’t feel silly. Praying had felt just right, because God heard Mam—Lizzie was positive of that. He heard Emma, too, because Emma was a good girl. She was always straightening up the living room or sweeping the kitchen floor, and she loved to wash dishes. Lizzie just didn’t feel comfortable with God yet.

  The next day, an ordinary-looking postcard arrived in the mail. Mam read the card out loud from her place at the kitchen table. The card came from a Mrs. Mary Beiler whose town Lizzie didn’t even recognize. Lizzie sat on the bench along the wall, eating a piece of apple crumb pie with milk before she went to feed the horses and help with the milking. She was perfectly relaxed since she had resolved not to go work as a maud.

  “So… Mrs. Beiler needs you to help with the fall housecleaning. They just moved, and the house is small, but in need of a good cleaning,” Mam said, smiling at Lizzie.

  Lizzie blinked, chewing methodically. “Mmm. Mam, this apple pie is the best thing you ever made.”

  “Didn’t you hear me?” Mam asked.

  “What?”

  “It’s your turn to be a real maud now.”

  “That’s no problem, Mam. I’m not going.”

  Mam’s mouth dropped open in surprise. What blatant form of rebellion was this? Her cheeks flushed,
but she spoke quietly and patiently.

  “Why aren’t you going?”

  “I just decided when Emma went for a week that I could never do that. She’s so good, Mam. You know how it is with her. Same as it always was. So I made up my mind that she can be a maud, and I’ll stay here with you.”

  Lizzie set down her glass of milk, wiped her mouth with a napkin, and got up to go do chores.

  Mam cleared her throat.

  “But, Lizzie, both you and Emma can be mauds. Mandy can help me here at home. It would certainly not be fair to make Emma work away while you do as you please.”

  “I don’t do as I please. I work at home.” Lizzie pulled on her old sweater, preparing to go to the barn. She lifted her nose a few inches as if to remind Mam how pitiful she was, thinking that she would ever work away from home for an entire week.

  The screen door was as far as she got.

  “Lizzie Glick!” Mam said in a tone of voice that stopped Lizzie in her tracks. Just as luck would have it, Dat stepped up onto the porch at the exact same moment.

  “Now what?” he asked, glancing at Lizzie and noticing Mam’s heightened color as well.

  Lizzie stood stone-still, her shoulders erect, staring out across the brown fields that led to the creek. Mam explained about the postcard from Mrs. Beiler, and Lizzie’s arrogant assumption that Emma was the only one who would ever be a maud.

  Dat sat down.

  “Lizzie,” he said in a terrible voice.

  She tasted defeat, a sickeningly sour, green-apple flavor that would not go away. They were actually going to make her go. Not just Mam, but Dat, too. Dat! Now he was on Mam’s side, and those two sticking together meant she had no more of a chance than a chicken feather in a hurricane.

  “Let me tell you something, young lady. If you think you’re going to tell us what to do, you have another guess coming.”

  Lizzie whirled around, the sour-tasting defeat bringing tears in its wake.

  “I don’t want to go!” she cried.

  “But you’re going,” Dat said softening his tone.

  “Listen, Lizzie,” Mam broke in. “I know it seems cruel to you now, but you have to learn to have a job anyway, from now until you get married. That’s what Amish girls do. You may as well give in now, because you’re just making it hard on yourself and on us.”

  “Emma’s different than me!” Lizzie wailed, sinking onto the wooden bench, putting her head in her hands.

  “That’s just an excuse, Lizzie. You can try and grow up and become a bit more like her. I know there’s a difference in your natures, but you can’t use that as a stepping-stone to just skip out of any situation you don’t want to be in,” Dat said.

  “I don’t want to wash other people’s dirty laundry and wipe their walls and eat with them and sleep in their beds!”

  Mam hid her smile but winked at Dat.

  “It’s not as bad as you think, Lizzie,” she said.

  Dat’s eyes shone, and he smiled at Mam. “Oh yes, I remember you hanging out wash at Aaron Kanagys. I thought you were the prettiest maud I ever saw!”

  “Ach, Melvin!” Mam smacked his arm playfully.

  That made Lizzie so mad, she literally saw red. How could they be so happy and tease each other when they should pity her? She got up, hurrying around the table in a desperate dash to the stairs, but her sweater button caught on a kitchen chair. She stopped to loosen it, and Dat caught her eye.

  “So Mam will write Mrs. Beiler and tell her you’ll be ready Monday morning?”

  “Well, I’m not going to write,” Lizzie snapped, turning on her heel and stomping up the steps as loudly as possible.

  “Let her go,” she heard Dat say, followed by a soft murmur from Mam. She paused at the top of the stairs as Dat said, “She’ll get over it.”

  Lizzie flung herself on her bed. Dat and Mam were cruel. They were mean. She wasn’t going to go.

  Chapter 17

  EMMA CAME HOME ON Saturday, telling all kinds of stories about her week, happier than Lizzie had ever seen her. She hugged the twins and fussed over Jason, telling Mam and Dat how good it was to come home. Lizzie began to suspect that working away couldn’t be that bad, or Emma would not be so happy.

  So when the driver stopped at the end of the sidewalk on Monday morning, Lizzie grabbed her suitcase and said good-bye to everyone without a trace of anger.

  Still, when the driver pulled up to a small white house on the left side of the road, with a huge red barn on the right side and maple trees in the front lawn, Lizzie nearly fainted with nervousness. One of the upstairs windows was flung open, and a slender young housewife looked down at her.

  “Well, good morning! You aren’t looking for work, are you?” Mary Beiler laughed.

  Lizzie looked up and smiled back. She’s pretty and neat and so much younger than I thought she’d be, Lizzie thought.

  After Mary paid the driver, Lizzie followed her into the kitchen where they sat at the table and talked awhile. She introduced her two young children, a dark-haired, brown-eyed boy named Abner and a sweet little girl named Rhoda.

  Lizzie could hardly keep from staring at Rhoda’s tiny pink dress. It was the cutest thing she had ever seen. She would make a dress exactly like that for her own little girl one day, she decided.

  That afternoon, Lizzie was introduced to the world of Mrs. Mary Beiler’s housecleaning expectations. Mary was extremely thorough, much more so than Mam or even Emma. Together they washed walls that were already clean, scrubbed drawers that were already spotless, and washed windows and screens that may have been only a bit dusty. Lizzie learned to use one kind of soap for the furniture and the woodwork, another kind for the walls, and yet another mixture for the linoleum on the floor.

  Every quilt, sheet, doily, and rug was whisked off to the kettle house and washed in the wringer washer. Lizzie didn’t mind doing the wash if it just meant running it from the wash tub, through the wringer, into the rinse tub, and through the wringer again. But more than that was plainly unnecessary, she thought, though Mam didn’t agree. Earlier that week, Mam had frowned when she saw how Lizzie had washed Dat’s socks.

  “Lizzie, you didn’t soak those socks in Clorox water, did you?” she asked.

  For one wild moment, Lizzie had a notion to lie and to just say, “Yes.” She knew she was supposed to, but she detested the smell of Clorox, and besides, Mam would never know. How could she tell?

  “No,” Lizzie said.

  “You know I don’t like yellow socks on the line, Lizzie. Next time you wash, remember to use Clorox.”

  Lizzie didn’t answer. She was too angry. What was the difference? A man’s socks were hidden the whole way under his shoes, which came clear up to above his ankles anyway. And his pant legs covered his shoes. Lizzie never saw one peep of Dat’s white socks, unless he was ready to take his bath or had just gotten up in the morning. Lizzie never, or hardly ever, saw Dat’s socks, so she was positive no one else did. What did it matter if they were soaked in Clorox or not? It was just a bad habit, soaking socks in that awful-smelling stuff.

  “Once I’m married, no one is going to tell me to soak my husband’s socks. If they aren’t white, he will just have to wear them that way.”

  She had thrown the socks in the washer.

  “And another thing, our farm is so old and ugly and sloppy, brown socks on the line would match it just fine,” she said, her head held high.

  Mam sighed.

  “Lizzie, you’re going to have to learn,” she said. Your attitude is not good, especially about the farm. We’ll get this place looking just fine in a few years, you watch.”

  “And in the meantime, we’ll be ashamed every time someone comes to visit,” Lizzie burst out.

  “Lizzie!” Mrs. Beiler called.

  Lizzie jumped.

  “What?”

  “Do they always call you Lizzie? Doesn’t anyone call you ‘Liz’ or ‘Elizabeth?’”

  “No.”

  “Well, you shou
ld be called Elizabeth. It’s prettier.

  “Come on down now. Dinner’s ready.”

  Lizzie was sincerely thankful that it was 12 o’clock and time for lunch. She was almost weak with hunger, since she had been too nervous to eat much breakfast that morning. As she went down the stairs, the delicious smells from the kitchen made her mouth water. Mary Beiler must be a good cook, she thought happily.

  “You can wash the children’s hands in the bathroom,” Mary said. “Abner, go with Liz. She’ll wash your ‘patties!’”

  Liz! Didn’t that sound classy! Imagine how nice it would be if everyone called her Liz! That would make it seem as if she was already 16 years old.

  She turned to Abner, smiling into his dark brown eyes.

  “Do you want me to wash your hands?”

  Abner placed his hand in hers, melting her heart with his liquid dark eyes.

  “Are you our maud?” he asked in his slow, proper speech.

  “Yes, I am this week.”

  “Are you going to sleep here?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Good,” he drawled, which warmed Lizzie all over again. She hoped with all her heart she could have a little boy that looked and talked like Abner some day.

  Lizzie had just sat down at the table when Mary’s husband, Jacob, walked into the kitchen. He was big and broad-shouldered with dark curly hair and a slow smile. A tall young man followed him into the kitchen, wearing a short-sleeved white shirt, his face tanned from the sun. Lizzie had never seen anyone whose hair was cut like this young man’s. Maybe it was a style she hadn’t seen yet because she wasn’t running around with the young people.

  When he took his place at the end of the table, Lizzie tried not to stare. Yet she had to look sometimes because he was the most handsome person she had ever seen.

  “Jacob, this is Lizzie Glick, our new maud. Daniel, Lizzie will be here this week,” Mary said.

  “Hello. So you come from way up at the other end of the county?” Jacob asked.

  “I guess,” Lizzie managed to croak.

  She glanced furtively at Daniel, but he was looking at his plate. He didn’t say anything at all, which Lizzie couldn’t understand, because surely he would not be embarrassed in front of her. She was only plain Lizzie, with brown hair and clothes that didn’t look half as neat as other people’s.