by Linda Byler
Isaac was glad he had spoken. Sometimes schoolboys observed things from their lowly vantage point that adults like Sim would be wise to learn.
“You know if Barbara doesn’t watch it, that little Bennie is going to be a handful, the way no one makes him listen,” Isaac said.
Sim agreed.
Isaac was convinced Sim would make a great father. He was just humble enough, and agreeable, too. He took advice, and took it right. Yes, indeed, it would be a pure shame if Catherine and Sim never started dating.
On Friday, Ruthie stood by the blackboard, wringing her hands, her eyes clearly terrified as she lifted her head.
“I … h - h - h.”
She stopped, searched for Isaac, found his face, then his eyes.
Come on, Ruthie! You can do this! He didn’t say a word. His belief in her came from his eyes.
“H - hope m - m … my h …”
She stopped.
Isaac’s eyes never left her face.
He was aware of Hannah and Calvin beside him. They all waited and waited. Ruthie took a deep breath. He watched as she clasped and unclasped her hands. That day, she spoke two whole sentences, haltingly, with exhausting effort.
At third recess, Isaac left sledding and found her sitting the porch, her feet dangling down the side.
“Ruthie, why don’t we talk about your mam?” he asked.
“Who told you?”
“Teacher Catherine.”
“I told Hannah and Dora today. It feels good. It’s … everything feels easier now.”
Isaac grinned encouragingly. So she told him. The struggles at home, trying not to hate her mother, the relief now, knowing her problem may actually be physical.
The following Monday, Ruthie made real progress. Teacher Catherine was beside herself with excitement. The Christmas program was shaping into a good one, molded by days of practice, pleading, cajoling, praising, the teacher at the helm guiding her Christmas ship.
Isaac wondered if her energy and enthusiasm had all been because of Ruthie. He doubted it. Didn’t Sim have something to do with it when he came to pick Isaac up Friday afternoon? Late on purpose, then yet. Teacher Catherine was sweeping the snow from the porch, her cheeks red, her eyes sparkling as they exchanged greetings.
Well, Isaac was done. They could just keep up all this nonsense. He was out of it.
If Sim wanted to wait on God, he could. Hadn’t God always been slow? Look at Methuselah. He was 900 and some years old. Let Sim wait until they were both 60 and then they could go visit the eye doctor together. He was thoroughly tired of Sim’s ga-mach. (way of doing things)
Christmas was coming, and the program and the spring wagon were much more important, anyway.
Chapter Ten
RUTHIE STOOD BY THE blackboard now, the only sign of agitation her interlaced fingers, which she loosened, then hung her arms at her side for only a second before entwining her fingers again.
Endlessly, they had practiced sentences, words that began with the letter B, or H, or C, the hardest ones.
Hannah and Dora spent nights at her house, listening to her amazing stories of the past when her mother had been ill.
Ruthie no longer picked her face. Her eyes seemed quieter, somehow.
The parents had their invitations to the Christmas program, stamped holly with brilliant red berries on a gold card, inviting them to Hickory Grove School at 1:00 P.M. on Friday, December 23.
One more day to practice, then two other schools were coming to see their program on Thursday, a day before the real one, when all the parents would attend.
The plays were shaping up. Four white sheets hung from the wires suspended from hooks in the walls and on the ceilings. Bright tinsel was draped from the curtains.
The poster was magnificent. It was the finest piece of freehand art work Hickory Grove School had ever shown. Isaac knew that, but didn’t say so. It was bragging, which was wrong. It was a form of pride. He could be pleased with it, though; he just couldn’t say so. He told Calvin, however, who said he agreed 100 percent. It was a great poster.
Teacher Catherine drew camels and wise men on the blackboard, and the upper-grade boys helped color them with colored chalk.
Isaac had to bite back his observance of the similarities between these camels and Hannah’s horses on the poster. They looked exactly alike. The noses, especially.
Teacher Catherine’s apron, even her halsduch (cape) was covered in colored chalk dust, but her blue eyes radiated her enthusiasm. She talked nonstop, even chewing gum at recess, which was sort of unusual. Chewing gum wasn’t allowed in school.
Thursday morning, Isaac leaped out of bed, flicked the small blue lighter and lifted the glass lamp chimney on his kerosene lamp. The small flame traveled the length of the wick.
He yanked open his dresser drawer, hopped into his denim work trousers and shrugged into his blue shirt as shivers chased themselves across his cold shoulders.
It had to be zero degrees outside.
It was! The red mercury hovered at the zero, and if you stood on your toes and looked down, it was colder than zero degrees. No doubt Calvin would have the real temperature, though.
Isaac rushed through his chores. The minute he walked into the kitchen, Mam said he needed to shower before breakfast. His black Sunday pants and his green Christmas shirt were laid out. He was supposed to wear his good shoes, not his sneakers.
If Mam would give him time to catch his breath when he walked into the kitchen, it wouldn’t be so bad. But barking orders when you were cold and hungry and wanted to sit by the coal stove and think of fried mush and dippy eggs just didn’t work very well.
So Isaac grumbled under his breath, scalded himself in the shower and shivered into his Sunday clothes. He brushed his teeth, watching the blue foam from the Crest toothpaste splatter the mirror. His face looked pretty good this morning. He liked his green eyes. He thought they looked nice, but you couldn’t tell people that. Not even Calvin.
He bowed his head over his plate. He had to rearrange his thoughts away from the Christmas program to thank God for his breakfast before digging into a pile of stewed saltine crackers, fried mush and dippy eggs. Now he felt much better, fueled to meet the day. Mam’s eyes approved of his clean appearance, but nothing was said. It wasn’t Mam’s way.
“Did you get my name-exchange gift ready?” he asked Mam, as he bent to pull on his boots. His Sunday shoes were in his backpack, reminders of the importance of the day.
“Yes, indeed I did. Why would I wait till the day before the program?” she replied tartly.
Isaac laughed, knowing that was an insult. Mam prided herself on her good management.
The schoolhouse was fairly bursting at the seams, with Red Run and Oak Lane schools there at the same time. Teacher Catherine was flitting about, trying unsuccessfully to remain calm, unflappable.
Isaac could hardly wait to get started. This was Ruthie’s chance to prove herself, and the SOS group’s chance to savor their success. Isaac was confident, eager to get out there and show these schools what they had done.
The program went very well. The singing rose to the ceiling and swirled around the room, lighting on each pupil, bringing Christmas cheer to everyone.
Because the curtain divided the schoolroom, Isaac only became aware of Ruthie’s absence when the program was almost over.
What had happened? Why had she failed to appear?
After “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and the goodbye song were sung, the pupils of Hickory Grove rushed out the back door, one stream of exulting, yelling children, relieved to be free of restraint and tension.
Ruthie slunk along the side of the schoolhouse, her head bent, Hannah and Dora clustered around her. Isaac wasted no time.
“What happened, Ruthie?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Oh, boy.
There was nothing to say. Calvin and Michael’s disappointment hung over their shoulders, a cape of black defeat.
Well, at least we won’t expect her to say her poem tomorrow, Isaac thought. We failed. But it’s only a Christmas poem.
Mam says acceptance of failure is a virtue, which is sort of hard to fathom, but I know now what she means, he thought. To lose with grace and dignity.
“Ruthie, it’s okay,” he told her, his voice kind.
She nodded.
“You want to practice?”
She looked at him, her eyes pools of fear. The monster called “I can’t” had caught up with her.
The Hickory Grove pupils talked to some of the visiting school’s children, only the ones they knew, who attended the same church services. The teachers soon herded the children into waiting vans, whisking them off to their own schools, allowing Teacher Catherine time to clean and prepare the classroom for the most important event of the Christmas season.
No matter how careful they had been, the upper-graders had erased parts of the camels’ legs on the blackboard by leaning on the chalk tray in singing class. So Isaac and Calvin were put to work, filling in the erased spots.
Suddenly, Isaac was aware of Ruthie with a can of furniture polish and a dust cloth, viciously swiping desk tops, polishing them until they shone. In time to her ferocious swipes, she was singing, in jerks, but singing.
“I. Hope. My. Heart. Has. Heard.” And on and on.
Isaac jabbed an elbow into Calvin’s side, producing a puzzled expression and an “Ow!”
“Listen to Ruthie,” Isaac hissed.
They stopped their work, their ears straining to the sound. They both knew it was her Christmas poem. Isaac shrugged his shoulders, turned to the blackboard and continued fixing the camels’ legs. He was done with that SOS thing, same as he was done with Sim asking Catherine for a date. You could only do so much, and that was it. If Ruthie couldn’t do it, then that was that. If Sim wanted to be a bachelor, then that was that, too.
He had other things in life to enjoy. Like a pony spring wagon. Imagine!
He told Calvin he might be getting one, which was a great surprise to Calvin, since Isaac’s Christmas gifts usually amounted to less than half of his.
“What got into your dat?” he asked.
Isaac shrugged his shoulders, grinning happily.
At home, the house smelled of gingerbread, date and nut pudding, and chocolate, all mixed together in anticipation of Mam’s Christmas dinner.
Dat brought home a whole quart of oysters for oyster stew on Christmas Eve. It was a tradition, to open gifts the evening before Christmas, and then savor the rich stew Mam made with that expensive jar of oysters. They only had oysters at Christmas-time.
The stale bread was brought from their freezer at the neighbor’s garage and cut into cubes with the best bread knife to make roasht, that delicious holiday dish of bread cubes, celery, egg, and great chunks of turkey or chicken. Isaac was put to work chopping celery, the old wooden cutting board a sure prevention from cutting into Mam’s countertop. He looked up when Sim came into the kitchen, sitting down to unlace his boots, humming softly under his breath.
“What are you doing?” Isaac asked, scooping up a handful of chopped celery.
“Oh, I might go watch the hockey players on Abner Speicher’s pond for awhile.”
“Is the pond fit?” Mam asked quickly.
“Should be.”
“Not with 30 hockey players on it.”
They went through this same conversation every year. Ice on the pond was a subject of great controversy, according to Mam. Six inches was sufficient, she’d say, until all those people started skating on top of it. Then what? She’d move around the kitchen wagging her head, finally giving in and saying if someone fell through the ice they would never forget it, and don’t come crying to her, she’d tried to warn them.
“Wanna come along?” Sim asked Isaac.
Isaac jumped off his chair, raced around the kitchen searching for gloves, boots, and his coat, shouting his elation. Of course, he wanted to go!
He grabbed his hockey skates, clunked them into a corner of the kessle-haus (wash house) and raced back upstairs for an extra pair of socks.
His room was pitch-black. He groped on his night stand for his lighter, found it and flicked it on above his sock drawer. It took only a second until he located a pair of heavy wool socks and ran headlong down the stairs.
He didn’t even think of Teacher Catherine. He didn’t know girls came to these hockey games. He’d never been to one.
So when he saw Teacher Catherine sitting beside another girl he didn’t know, warming her hands by the fire, he felt shy, unable to look at her.
Teachers belonged in a classroom, not at a hockey game.
“Hello, Isaac.”
“Hello.”
Quickly, he ducked his head as the other girl stared at him, smiling. He turned his back and prepared to pull on his skates. The schoolboys weren’t allowed to play hockey with the big boys, but they had a small section of the pond roped off, and this was where Isaac was going as soon as he got his feet into his skates.
Sim’s voice made him very still.
“Hello, Catherine. Kate.” Sim nodded in the other girl’s direction.
Well, no use hanging around. Sim wasn’t going to do anything at all about having a date with Catherine anyway. So Isaac tiptoed on his skates through the snow, hit the ice and skated smoothly across the pond to Calvin and Michael.
What Isaac completely missed was the “King’s Florist” truck that had crept slowly down Traverse Hill earlier that day, looking for Hickory Grove School.
And the brown-clad driver who hopped out with a gigantic poinsettia in a lovely, woven basket trailing dark green ivy, with a Christmas card inserted on a plastic spike that said, “Merry Christmas, Catherine. A friend, Simon Stoltzfus.”
He never knew his teacher pulled out the plastic spike, tore at the card with trembling fingers, her face tense with unanswered questions.
He didn’t see her read the words for only a second, then fling the card to her desk, crumple into a second-grader’s desk and laugh and cry at the same time, then get up and whirl between the desks until her skirt billowed out, aflight with genuine happiness.
Isaac had been at home chopping celery.
Chapter Eleven
ISAAC WAS STIFF, SORE and extremely tired at 5:00 a.m. when his cheap, plastic alarm began its nerve-wracking little beeps. It was one of the dumbest alarm clocks anyone had ever invented for five dollars at Walmart. Mam could at least have picked a better color.
His hand groped for the too-small button that shut off the hysterical beeping, gave up and threw it against the wall. When he remembered this was the day of the Christmas program, he retrieved the still-beeping alarm clock and shut it off this time.
Why should he have noticed any heightened color in Teacher Catherine’s face? Or her extraordinary good humor, for that matter?
It was Christmas, after all. The program had gone well yesterday, and today was the season’s crowning glory, with parents, friends and relatives cramming into the schoolhouse, craning their necks to see better.
Mam had brushed his coat well and washed his green Christmas shirt and hung it by the coal stove in the kitchen to dry until morning. She had polished his Sunday shoes and hung out his black Sunday vest. He felt very fine, wearing all those Sunday clothes.
Calvin looked fancy, he thought, wearing a red shirt with a hint of plaid design in it. Michael wore a green shirt, with a swirl in the pattern of the fabric. Isaac’s was a plain, flat-out green. The girls wore red or green, but he couldn’t remember who wore what.
Teacher Catherine looked especially fine. She wore a festive red dress, her usual black apron, Sunday shoes, and a very new white covering that looked just a bit better than the ordinary ones she wore on weekdays.
Isaac guessed playing baseball was what really got those coverings wrinkled and brown, the way the covering strings flapped and fluttered behind those girls dashing to first base. When they went sled
ding, the coverings stayed in the cloakroom in a Tupperware container, the girls throwing head scarves of rainbow hues on their heads and tying them below their chins, jutting out their faces to secure them firmly.
Isaac had a small black plastic comb in his vest pocket, which he used repeatedly throughout the forenoon. He wanted to appear neat and orderly, showing his green eyes to their best advantage.
They exchanged their gifts in the forenoon since the program didn’t start until 1:00. Isaac had Henry’s name and was proud to see how pleased Henry looked to find two Lewis B. Miller books and a pair of heavy gloves in his package.
Hannah had Isaac’s name. He received a picture of howling wolves, an LED headlamp—he had three at home—and a package of Dentyne chewing gum. He was pleased. The howling wolves were cool. You could always chew gum or use another headlamp. Isaac thanked Hannah, and she ducked her head and wouldn’t answer. He should have been nicer about those horses on the poster.
Teacher Catherine presented each of the boys with a small cedar chest with horses decoupaged on the lid. It was one of the neatest things Isaac had ever owned. When he opened the lid, the contents took his breath away. It was full of root beer barrels! His absolute favorite! He thanked her fervently, and Teacher Catherine’s eyes twinkled at him. He thought her the most wonderful person he had ever met.
The big girls were each given a hand-carved, wooden mirror with a lovely, smooth, rounded handle. Ruthie said it was a hinna-gook schpickel. (mirror to look behind you.) Calvin and Michael said their sisters all had one on their dressers, and they worked great to get your fighter fish going crazy. That really got Isaac’s attention. A fighter fish? What was that?
Michael had a small aquarium in his room. It was rectangular, filled with smooth stones and plastic plants, but it contained only one grayish-red fighter fish. The reason they had to live alone was because they were so angry they killed any other fish that was in the aquarium. They swam around thinking they were the boss, always. But if you held up one of those hinna gook schpikla and the fish caught sight of himself, he instantly propelled himself into a frenzy, slamming against the side of the aquarium repeatedly.