by Sarah Vowell
I could have run to San and told on Shelly-Rebecca right then. He was painting in his room, something he hadn’t shown us. He never said not to disturb him while he was creating, but I felt it would be wrong. I didn’t want to end up in the closet. The best I could spit out was, “Nonsense, Shelly-Rebecca.”
She grabbed the carrot out of my hand like a child in an outburst. I reached out and took her cool, damp grip in mine. She withdrew. “It’s just Rebecca. And you’re just Lynn. You don’t have to go by the name he gave us. You don’t have to do anything someone tells you to do.”
“I’m Nora-Lynn now. I will miss you if you go. I’ll pray for you.” I let go of her hands and left the kitchen. I needed to change into my dress. San had requested a talk, my tenth, and I had to prepare. Knee high socks. Bowed boots. Paisley dress.
Shelly-Rebecca was gone a week later, back at her mother’s. A roof over her head, but no home like she had with us. After hitchhiking and panhandling for bus fare, she arrived back in her hometown. Her mother had moved her boyfriend into their house in Shelly-Rebecca’s absence, and now neither of them was all too happy to have a third mouth to feed. Shelly-Rebecca’s mother was so angered by that mouth she often slapped it, and her boyfriend, like a parrot, would repeat her actions. Shelly-Rebecca wrote us on fringed notebook paper to see if it would be okay if she returned. It had been my chore to walk down to the mailbox. I didn’t show the letter to the other girls. And I never could bring myself to reply in secret. It pained me to take the letter and toss it into the fire so it wouldn’t upset San. So it wouldn’t upset the other girls. It was hard enough for them when she left, I didn’t know what would happen if she was allowed back in.
Summer was a time for San to make money. He continued to work for the roads department whenever he could. With double shifts and overnights installing signs and highway dividers, he could save up enough not to have to work in the winter. He believed we shouldn’t be slaves to currency, that it dulls the senses and that when you make money, you only want more. “Isn’t it better to try to find ways to live outside of the greed that everyone falls prey to? It’s all bloodthirsty lust.” Whatever cash we took in, he handled—we never even saw it and we never needed it.
We lived modestly, growing most of our food and keeping chickens for eggs and meat. San’s dad had built a coop years before he died, and his mother, the mythical Ida-Renee, whose recipes, scripted on yellowed index cards, we followed, let it fall into disrepair before her own passing. When San came back into town and moved into the house he had inherited, he borrowed tools from the neighbors, a mile walk in either direction. The chicken coop was fixed up and painted a periwinkle blue. He turned over the soil and planted the garden. Anything we couldn’t eat in-season we froze or canned for those dinners huddled by the fire, wrapped in our jackets that absorbed the scent of cinnamon from Ida-Renee’s apple strudel that I loved to bake all autumn.
We would make our clothes, leaving most of the sewing to Ann-Eleanor, who once wanted to run away to New York and live on Seventh Avenue, where she said there was a big, red statue of a button and a needle. “It’s called the Garment District and all they do there is make clothes. The most beautiful things you ever saw!”
On our birthdays, we were allowed to pick out one present, which San would purchase for us. The girls would make each other something, fabricating a hair clip out of metal scraps in the garage or collaging melted wax from the colorful candles we burned to save money on the electric bill.
My sixteenth birthday came, and I thought San would let it pass by, since he had not called me for a talk in a while. He hadn’t had any of us come to his room. We didn’t know why, but sometimes we did hear him whimper late at night. Lara-Michelle thought he was keeping a puppy to surprise us with, especially since she heard a sound like whipping or swatting, like you’d have to do to house-train a dog. But no pet ever came. I thought he was just working on his painting, and if that’s the way he worked, we should let him be.
None of us had gotten to that twelfth meeting, where we would be approved for the ascension to the next level. I had asked San what that would entail, what rapture I would feel. He looked through to my insides, made them feel like they were going to come right out of the darkness of my body. What would they do in the light of day? San’s throaty croak unsettled me. “You will find out when you’re able to understand.” I chastised myself for not being ready.
For my gift, I asked to go to Millman’s Book Shop on the east side of town. I didn’t want anything to read, really, but I knew they had elegant stationery sets, some with glamorous women who looked like movie stars, and some embellished with sparkles and the Eiffel Tower. They even sold old-fashioned pen-and-ink sets, complete with squat, brown jugs of slick ink and midnight-black plumes.
San dropped me off and gave me thirty minutes to look around while he went to the post office. I was free to roam and picked out a set of notecards, blue-speckled with bursts of white. They reminded me of a hovering summer sky. It made me crave tomatoes eaten like apples.
Holding on to my gift, I wandered through the store, coiling around each aisle, stopping when something hit my eye. I approached the animal section, denoted by a mural of a jungle. The animals looked friendly, so as not to scare children. A thick, black-and-white spine adorned with birds picked up the gleam of the overhead lights. I pulled out the book, because it seemed like one of those teeming with glossy color photos that were so sharp you could remember them years later like you were actually in them. I was thinking of San and how I hadn’t seen his tattoo in a while. It was too cold for any flesh to be exposed, and I was afraid to ask him about it. Lara-Michelle claimed she’d spied him changing his shirt when he thought no one was looking, and it was all the way up on his shoulder next to a grouping of red marks. In the book, I looked up the cassowary.
I learned they were native to Australia, and that they were usually heavy—only the ostrich was heavier. On the middle toe of each of their feet grew a claw about four inches long. I tried to visualize that length. Looking at my hand, I thought maybe it was from the tip of my thumb to my wrist. The size of the cigarettes I pulled from my father’s slack mouth so he wouldn’t start another fire. The markers I used in third grade that smelled of cherries and grapes.
On a cassowary’s head grows a crest made of keratin, like our fingernails. Their eyes are yellow, and they’re big enough for a person to hop on one’s back and ride it like a carousel animal. They are so strong they can kill humans, and they have.
The bell from the shop’s front door trilled and I sensed it was San. He walked in without his coat, in a sweater I had knitted under the tutelage of Ann-Eleanor. Next to him was a girl, younger than me, but almost as tall as San. With his coat caped around her shoulders, she tried to settle the chattering of her teeth. Her cheeks had no meat on them. Her eyes were hungry, and I suddenly felt so blessed, as I had been like her only a little over a year before. San came over to me, and she followed, tripping over her mammoth feet.
San introduced her. “Nora-Lynn, this is Veronica. I thought maybe we could bring her home, get her a meal.”
“No, nuh-uh. I didn’t say I’d go to your house. We can get something to eat but I can’t go anywhere else.” Veronica seemed cornered, even out in the open. Her eyes could not settle on any one place, like she was always looking for something to come at her.
I wanted to stroke her hair, and I wanted to tell her how lucky she was to have found us. But I didn’t want to come on too strong. “Have you ever had quiche? I know it sounds fancy, but it’s really just eggs in a pie crust. I made a big one this morning with cheese and peppers and sweet potatoes. Come home with us and warm up and have a big piece. All of us girls will. And we won’t give any to San!” I laughed and San’s eyes lazed softly at me and Veronica. I guessed his cassowary tattoo had been burning when he saw Veronica. I could feel it too. She was a new sister to expand the family. Another person I could love and who could love me back. Maybe no
t even a sister. I felt miles above and years ahead. An aunt?
“What do you think Nora-Lynn? Does she look like a Veronica to you?”
I looked at her and bore the warmth of the summer I felt when I looked at my birthday notecards. “No, I think she seems like a Skye,” I said with pride, like a mother when she first sees her newborn.
Before she ate, Skye-Veronica needed to be cleaned. Ann-Eleanor lit the stove and tore fresh leaves of salad while San ran a bath. I brought our new girl into the bedroom and opened the wardrobe. Inside, there were laundered white gowns folded in a pile. She made sure the door was closed and found no lock. She undressed in front of me, accepting the soft, white dress and slipping it over her head as if a snake were trying to get back into its skin.
In the bathroom, San shut off the faucet. Skye-Veronica stood close to me. It felt like she was using me as a shield. I saw white in my periphery. I took San aside and said to him, as I got him near the door, “She’s scared. Let me help her.” He smiled at me and kissed the top of my head, matting down the bush of curls I had yet to ask Lara-Michelle to cut or style in the way I had seen Ida-Renee’s in the photos I had found in a keepsake trunk—slicked-up bun with two pieces of hair framing her face and curling under at her shoulders. As Skye-Veronica stepped into the bath, San pulled me out of the room for a moment, into the chamber of his bedroom. He pulled something out from under the bed. It was a canvas.
“I’m going to hang this. And when you’re done helping Skye-Veronica, you can see it.”
After I had made sure she washed her face and behind her ears, and after I had wrapped her in a large yellow towel and put a comb through her string hair, the other girls picked her up at San’s door and led her into the fire-warmed kitchen.
When we were alone, San turned me to the wall with the chairs and his parents’ pictures. Not right next to them but over to the right, nearer to his bed, was the painting San had just hung. It was a likeness of me so exact I thought it might be a photograph. I went closer and felt the bumps of the paint strokes and the roughness of the canvas beneath. It was really me, I thought, and San had made it.
Soon after, San called me for my last talk. I brought in the tea and sat below the painting of his mother. I had tried to wear my hair in a bun that day, like her, but it was too difficult to tame. From my seat, I saw my painting, but I didn’t want to stare. I knew it was there. The girls knew it was there. San leaned back in the tatty leather under the stern likeness of his father. I spoke first, giddy with anticipation of my soon-to-be transformation. “Oh, San, thank you for thinking I’m ready. I know I am and you won’t be disappointed.”
He got up and went over to the closet, “Your dress is getting threadbare. And I think it only proper you wear something new.” San pulled out a white-laced dress, cinched at the waist and flared out like a paper fan below it. A tag dangled from a seam. I gave him a questioning look and he nodded, so I got up to feel the dress. It was soft like a cloud and just about the prettiest thing I had ever seen. And it was mine.
“I want you to put this on. I’m taking you down to the pond. You will bathe in the waters there and I will bless you.” He patted my head as I breathed in the new smell of the white fabric. “I’ve seen how you’ve taken Skye-Veronica under your wing. You’ve shown her such kindness. More like a mother to her than a sister. And that’s all part of your potential. You have so much love.”
I felt the love, so hot, like a poison, make my limbs go numb. My fingers burned and I was afraid I would scorch the innocent dress. He left me to change, and I felt honored to have San’s room all to myself. The dress fit me well—it was a little short, but I was sure with Ann-Eleanor’s help I could take the hem down. I came out into the kitchen and all the girls fawned over me. I hugged each one before I joined San in the truck and headed over to Lynchfield Road, riding down bumpy streets. The potholes still hadn’t been filled from the winter’s icy reign.
It wasn’t warm enough to go in the pond, I thought, but San said that it was all part of the process. I just had to feel it was warm and it would be warm. We lingered around the edge of the water until I felt ready to go in. The sun was out, reflecting itself off my full skirt. My bare feet dipped in the water and the cold hurt like talons. But San was there next to me. He held my hand those first steps I took in. When I got used to the temperature, it was as if I could feel the pond heating up. I was thinking it, and then it was so.
San stopped me from going in further. “Nora-Lynn, as you are moving forward, ascending into a deeper understanding of the world and your place in it, I want you to recognize you will be a new person. This acts not as a baptism, but as a new birth.” He added I would be taking his name. That made me feel that I was truly his family. “And as a baby is born of its mother, with nothing but its purity, so will you be reborn.”
San assisted in unzipping the white dress. He folded it and placed it carefully on the sand. I shivered at the breeze on my belly and only wanted to face him, so he didn’t see the patch of hair on my back, as if a slight imperfection could dissolve love. I beckoned the sun to warm me and knew it would come, as I already felt the acute blister of acceptance.
He looked at me to continue. “You need to be unencumbered by anything the world puts on you.” I understood and took off my bra and my underwear. I walked deeper into the water, until it covered my chest, so I didn’t feel undressed. The cold battled me, and I was like a baby, no defenses against it. But I knew I just had to dive in and make the water warm around me. I smiled at San to let him know I was all right. He watched me, hands on his hips, his swath of sable hair vibrating in the wind. He kept his eyes on me, and I kept mine on his until I went under the surface.
It was dark. Everything was obscured. I grabbed sand and scrubbed my arms. The temperature of the water was insignificant. I thought of how I could touch a flame, extinguishing a candle between two fingers. I thought of my sisters. I thought of my love for San and how he had saved me. I would do anything for them, and that was all the warmth I needed.
Coming up through the water, grabbing onto a deep breath of air, I saw San. He had taken off his shirt and shoes and was bent over to one side pulling off his pants. He wore cotton boxer shorts that we had darned so much they looked like an injured soldier returning from battle, unable to fight any more. I stood where I was, my feet barely touching the ground, with the water covering my breasts. My frizzy hair was tamed by the murky pond. His cassowary was now close to his heart, where I hoped it would end up.
He removed his shorts and stood on the edge of the water. I had never seen a man naked before. My brothers, sure, but they were all boys. And my old neighbor Kyle, who I always forgot about. He would notice when I was home alone, which was often, and stand naked in his living room, whose full windows faced my childhood bedroom. He’d swivel his hips and look at me like I was a fried-chicken dinner.
San entered the pond. I swear the level of the water went higher, like he’d displaced it with his presence. I waited where I was. When he got to me, his arms surrounded my body, and he dwarfed me with his considerable presence. His smile was so clean and easy. Down under the water he brought me, and then we rocketed back up to the atmosphere. He let go of me. In his excitement, he flapped around like a fish victoriously getting free from a hook. I wanted to celebrate as much as San could, but I still felt like I was just a girl. I felt no transformation yet. I shyly looked down into my chest and wanted to pretzel my arms to cover my nipples, in case the water wouldn’t.
I saw a smear on my skin, deep, dark, almost-black blue, with dots of red. I thought it might be a pond creature, some sort of leech or lamprey that had attached itself to me. But it wasn’t alive. It was just paint or ink. My eyes met San’s chest, stubbly in places like maybe he had shaved it. His cassowary was fading, like it was melting away into the water. The tattoo’s ink sloughed off into the pond, mixing with the algae and the tadpoles and the bugs that carpeted the place. I hugged him, my arms barely fitting a
round the whole of his broad shoulders. I wrapped my legs around his waist and held on. I didn’t want him to see what I had just seen.
MIRIAM TOEWS
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Peace Shall Destroy Many
FROM Granta
In 1962, a young scholar from Saskatchewan by the name of Rudy Wiebe caused outrage and scandal in Mennonite communities throughout North America when he published his first novel, Peace Shall Destroy Many. The title, taken from a verse in the Book of Daniel, encapsulated the contention of the novel—that pacifism and nonconflict, core tenets of the Mennonite faith, may in fact be sources of violence and conflict, all the more damaging because unacknowledged or denied.
Although the book was published two years before I was born, I can remember my parents discussing it at the kitchen table, conspiratorially, as if the topic was in itself dangerous. My mother would later tell me that she had driven herself to the city, Winnipeg, the day it was made available in stores—it would never have been sold in my little conservative Mennonite town—to find out what all the fuss was about. By the time I was buying books myself, I had learned to think of this novelist named Rudy Wiebe as controversial and heroic, as an intellectual whose work was groundbreaking and revolutionary. These were exciting words to me.
All the fuss was about the challenging questions posed by the novel’s central character, Thom Wiens, an earnest young farmer living in a small isolated community in Saskatchewan (much like the community Rudy Wiebe grew up in). It is 1944, wartime, and the local men have either gone to conscientious objector work camps around Canada, or stayed behind to tend the crops and raise livestock. Wiens begins to wonder whether the Mennonite opposition to war may be self-serving. How can Mennonites stand aside while others are dying to protect the freedoms they enjoy? How can Mennonites justify selling their produce to the Canadian army, at a profit no less, and continue to preach peace and love for one’s enemies?