When Strawberries Bloom

by Linda Byler

  Lizzie felt as if Rebecca had hit her in the stomach with a boxing glove. All the air surrounding her lungs pushed up against her throat, constricting it in an awful choking sensation. She leaned back, reaching for the support of the chair behind her, feeling as if the whole floor was somehow going completely crooked. She hadn’t expected this kind of news to hurt this much.

  “Lizzie, aren’t you happy for them? You look as if you’d seen a ghost!” Rebecca burst out.

  “Oh! Oh, no … No, of course I’m happy for Ruthie! It’s just such a total shock! I mean … I mean … I didn’t know Amos liked her,” she ended lamely.

  “They liked each other since they went to vocational class together,” Rebecca said, absolutely beaming. “It’s so-o cute!”

  “Oh, yes! Of course, I think so, too,” Lizzie said. She felt as dishonest and untruthful as she had ever been in her whole life. Only her pride kept her standing there, knuckles white against the dark wood of the chair, a false smile pasted on her face.

  The rest of the evening at the supper passed as if in a haze for Lizzie as she kept trying desperately to control her emotions. When Amos appeared in the kitchen door looking more handsome than ever in a sky-blue shirt, his black vest and pants setting off his very dark hair and skin, Lizzie almost burst into tears of frustration.

  She slowly put down her plate and calmly walked to the bathroom where she sat down on the side of the bathtub, held her head in her hands, and cried great tears of annoyance and bitter disappointment. Why? How could he act as if he liked her one weekend and the very next Sunday have a date with Ruthie? She sat up and sniffed, grabbing a tissue from the box on the sink and honking into it loudly. She dabbed viciously at her eyes, going to the mirror to see the damage her tears had done.

  Taking a deep breath, she braced her shoulders, pulled up her cape, and adjusted her covering. I don’t want him anyway. I hope he marries Ruthie and she gains 50 pounds the first year. I hope he dates her awhile, and then they break up because he wants me. I’m not going to congratulate her. I’m not even going to talk to her.

  No one will ever like me, she thought. First Joe and John, the handsome twins who were in her class at vocational school, who had paid much more attention to their pretty Mennonite classmates. Now Amos had picked Ruthie instead of her. I’m just fat and ugly. I have pimples.

  But really, what does Ruthie have that I don’t? She can’t drive a fast horse or swim. Lizzie’s thoughts collided against each other like bumper cars at an amusement park as she struggled with jealousy, self-pity, a low sense of self-worth, and, most of all, her first real disappointment in love.

  “Who’s in here?”

  A resounding knock on the bathroom door propelled Lizzie into action. Dabbing desperately at her eyes with a cold wash rag and answering in a muffled voice, she sprang to the door to unlock it.

  “You heard,” Emma said.

  She stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

  That was Lizzie’s undoing. All the pent-up frustration and bitter defeat emerged in one low sob which caught in her throat, bringing a real, little-girl hiccup with it.

  Emma put her arms around her, stroking her back, talking in soothing tones, for all the world as she had done so many years before in the privy at school when Lizzie had the blues because of a mournful song the pupils were singing. The thought hit Lizzie, and in the middle of her tears, her shoulders started shaking uncontrollably as she began to laugh hysterically.

  Emma stepped back, her eyes wide with concern. “You’re laughing and crying at the same time!”

  Lizzie blew her nose, sniffing, and smiling ruefully as she said, “Emma, this reminds me of us in first grade! Remember?”

  Emma laughed with Lizzie, saying, “I guess we’re still in first grade, as far as lessons in life go.”

  They sat side by side on the bathtub before Lizzie lifted her head and said, “Oh, well, I guess he wasn’t meant for me.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Why do you suppose I don’t have any luck with finding a husband? I don’t really, really think I’m so awful looking. I mean, there are girls homelier than me who have boyfriends, aren’t there?”

  “Of course, Lizzie. You know you’re even better looking than me.”

  “No, I’m not, Emma.”

  “Lizzie, please don’t think you’re ugly and worth nothing at all now. I knew you were going to do this. Listen. You know how Mam always says God knows best, and he already knows that somewhere there is a special young man for you. You just haven’t found him yet. Sometimes he takes a long winding road around to teach us valuable lessons on the way.”

  “Evidently you didn’t need any.”

  “Well …”

  “Emma, it’s always been like this. You don’t seem to need lessons in your life, hard ones like this, and I get one right after the other.”

  “Not everyone’s life is the same, Lizzie,” Emma said, smiling at her reassuringly.

  Lizzie sighed as she intently pleated her black apron across her knee. “Yeah, I guess, but I’ll tell you one thing. I’m glad getting to heaven doesn’t depend on luck, or I’d never make it. I hardly ever won in Chutes and Ladders even, because most times I landed on the square where you go down the longest chute.”

  Emma laughed. “You’ll land on the square that takes you right back up the longest ladder soon, Lizzie, just you watch!” Emma said, squeezing Lizzie’s hand affectionately. “Come on, you can go with Joshua and me to the singing.”

  Lizzie brightened noticeably. “All right, I will. Then no one will know where I am when I’m not around. Amos will think I walked home, and he’ll feel so guilty it isn’t e-e-even funny!”

  They muffled their giggles in their handkerchiefs as they heard another knock on the bathroom door.

  Chapter 4

  AFTER AMOS BEGAN DATING Ruthie, Lizzie threw herself into her much anticipated year of teaching school. She helped the parents clean the old red-brick schoolhouse, washing down the freshly painted plaster walls and rubbing the old windowpanes with a solution of soap and vinegar until they shone. The men dabbed fresh putty outside the windowpanes and put a new stovepipe in the well-worn wood furnace. They varnished the old school desks for the 20 pupils who would attend school that year. After the cleaning was done, the men poured fresh oil on the wooden floor, which the boards partly absorbed, making it an easier task to sweep the dust and dirt from it.

  There was just something about a freshly oiled floor, Lizzie thought, as she breathed in deeply after everyone else had gone home. It reminded her of her own Teacher Katie and her yellow apple, of a piece of fresh chalk in the blackboard tray, of clapping erasers in the sunshine while holding her head to the side as she squinted through the white dust at her friends who were doing the same thing. School was just a wonderful place to be, especially now since she was the teacher with so many new plans and ideas floating about in her head. She had a list of all her pupils. Some were Mennonite and some were Amish children, but to Lizzie there was no difference. She looked forward to having each one as her pupil.

  Sitting at her desk, she clasped her hands in front of her and took a deep breath of absolute delight. Imagine! This was her very own teacher’s desk with a wooden chair that had arms at the side and swiveled just like Teacher Katie’s chair. Lizzie reached down and lifted up a plastic bag from the floor which contained new bookends, a pretty apple mug for her pens, and a basket to hold papers that had been corrected. She arranged each item, stacking her teacher’s answer keys in sequence, starting with eighth grade on the left through third grade on the far right. First and second grades had workbooks with different answer books, so they went into her deep drawer on the left.

  She hung name charts on the wall, each one a covered wagon designed with each pupil’s name stenciled on it in black marker. Then she adjusted the A-B-C and 1-2-3 charts that the first-graders used and began taping name tags on each pupil’s desk. Eighth-graders in the big seats al
ong the back wall, followed by seats for the seventh-graders, and on down to the little first-graders at the front of the room whose desks seemed to be only knee-high.

  Lizzie smiled to herself as she pictured the incoming first-grade class. Those little Mennonite girls were so sweet in their flowered dresses, with pigtails and barrettes in their hair. She could hardly wait to be their teacher. She frowned a bit, thinking about the upper-grade boys. Only a few years ago she had been a pupil here, playing baseball with some of the boys who would now be her pupils this year. She hoped with all her heart that they would respect her enough to behave most of the time. They weren’t openly disobedient boys, just mischievous like all boys.

  After everything was in order she stepped back and looked at the classroom, smiling with satisfaction. It was old, no doubt about it, with mismatched desks and chairs, cracked plaster ceilings, and an old wood furnace, but it was sparkling clean with a freshly washed blackboard and long pieces of white chalk lying in the wooden tray waiting to be used. Carefully she took a piece of chalk and wrote, “Monday, August 25,” across the top of the board.

  Oh, my, she thought. That is the grandest thing, writing on a blackboard like a real honest-to-goodness teacher. She stepped back and admired the teacherly slant to her handwriting, which bolstered her courage to begin teaching. She may not be very good at finding a husband, but she sure could write like a teacher.

  Lizzie woke up early on the first day of school. She put on a forest-green dress, pinning the cape carefully into place, wetting her hair so she could roll it back neatly on either side of her head. When she finished combing her hair, she adjusted her black belt apron before turning around at least half a dozen times in front of the mirror to make sure everything was tucked, pinned, and pleated perfectly. Twenty pairs of eyes would be checking her out very closely, and she wanted to appear as neat and teacherly as possible.

  Lizzie choked on her pancake before giving up on eating breakfast. She just wasn’t hungry with all those butterflies in her stomach. Every time she thought of standing behind her desk to read the Bible story book, her stomach did a perfect flip-flop.

  Emma glanced at Lizzie’s uneaten food and raised her eyebrows.

  “Butterflies?” she asked.

  “Sort of,” Lizzie admitted, laughing.

  Mam put down her coffee cup.

  “You’ll do fine, Lizzie. You have more gumption when it comes to something like this than any of the other girls,” she said.

  That was all it took to calm Lizzie’s nerves. If Mam placed so much faith in Lizzie’s ability to face a classroom filled with eight grades, then Lizzie knew she could do her job well. She sighed, beaming at Mam, and then pulled up on the shoulders of her cape and went to the front window to watch for her driver.

  The driver was an older gentleman who made a good living as a driver for Amish people in the community. Lizzie knew him well so she didn’t mind sitting up front and chatting with him on the way to school. Jason sat in the back seat with a group of his friends as the van stopped at different Amish homes, picking up more of Lizzie’s students en route to the brick schoolhouse.

  There was a small group of Mennonite children on the playground when Lizzie arrived. As she unlocked the door she smiled at a few small children who stood in the background. Lizzie’s worries faded as the students entered the classroom. The children just took over, crowding around her desk, introducing themselves, oohing and aahing about the name charts on the walls, admiring the cup where her pens and pencils were kept, and finding the desks with their names written on the tags.

  Lizzie discovered to her delight that she could move quite unself-consciously about her classroom, the children’s unabashed happiness making her forget all about her shyness. It’s just like being at home, she thought happily. Oh, this will be so much fun. I’m going to teach school and never, ever get married.

  When she rang the hand bell, everyone went quickly to their seats—so quickly, in fact, that Lizzie almost burst out laughing. They were so eager to please her. Surely this wouldn’t last for long. Lizzie cleared her throat.

  “Good morning, boys and girls!”

  The whole classroom, except a few scared first-graders, answered, “Good morning, Teacher!”

  Lizzie bent her head and read the very first story in the Bible story book about creation and the Garden of Eden. After she finished, the children stood beside their desks, and they all said the Lord’s Prayer. Lizzie was desperately afraid she would forget a line, but she closed her eyes and concentrated, finding it harder to get through the prayer than she had thought.

  Next, the children all filed up to the blackboard behind her desk and stood hesitantly while Lizzie sorted them by height for singing class. Jason and the other upper-graders stood in a row along the blackboard, followed by a second row of fifth- and sixth-graders who were a bit smaller, and so on until the first-graders stood beside the second grade in the front row.

  “There, that looks pretty good,” Lizzie said. “Maybe … Jason, would you trade places with Robert?”

  She switched a few more children until the biggest children stood in the middle and the shortest stood on each side. Lizzie handed out the songbooks and picked the first song, an easy hymn that most children knew well, “Life’s Railway to Heaven.” After she started the song, they joined her, singing along as well as you could expect a group who wasn’t accustomed to singing together.

  Lizzie smiled at them reassuringly, noticing the one little first-grade girl looking a bit sad. If that little girl cries, I’m not going to sing one more song. I mean it, Lizzie thought, remembering the time she had been in first grade, so absolutely terrified about the stars falling that she could not wait to go home to Mam. But the little girl soldiered bravely on, trying her best to remain upbeat and positive, although the display of emotions on her small upturned face was heartbreaking. Lizzie couldn’t stand another minute of seeing that poor, brave, little girl putting forth so much effort to keep from crying, so she said, “All right, we’ll just sing two songs this morning because we only have a half-day today. It’s our very first day, of course.”

  As the pupils filed to their seats, she smiled at the frightened little girl who dipped her head shyly and scuttled to her seat.

  Lizzie asked the children to introduce themselves, saying their full names so she could begin to memorize who sat in which desk. The first-graders were Rosa, David, and Arlene, who whispered their names so quietly Lizzie could barely hear them.

  The remainder of the day flew by on wings. She barely had time to look at the clock. She helped the pupils with their books and workbooks, passing out clean new tablets, pencils, and erasers. She showed the first and second grade where the scissors was kept on a hook low on the wall. She told them they’d have lots of cutting and pasting to do, which brought a shy smile to Rosa’s face.

  What an adorable child, Lizzie thought. But I’m not allowed to have teacher’s pets. That doesn’t work at all.

  There were so many things to do, assigning the next day’s work, finding the proper pages for the lower grades, answering raised hands in between her other duties, that the clock showed eleven-thirty before she was finished.

  They had only half-days that first week, an old custom that allowed the children to go home and help their parents with the end of the summer’s harvest. So at noon Lizzie quickly told everyone to put their books away just as the school van driver pulled into the schoolyard. Oh, dear, we haven’t even swept or cleaned up a thing, she thought. Oh, well, it’s my first day. I’ll keep getting better, I hope.

  She told everyone they would learn their good-bye song the following day and tapped the bell to dismiss them. She was shocked to hear everyone shout, “Good-bye, Teacher! Good-bye. Good-bye!” as they scrambled for the front door. Lizzie tried to answer, but there was no use. They would never have heard her over the din, even if she had yelled at the top of her lungs. She would have to try and quiet down this enthusiastic parting. But then, m
aybe the children would be insulted and think she was some doddering old maid who lived a joyless existence. Quickly, she packed a few things in her book bag, locked the door, and climbed into the front seat of the school van.

  She sighed as the van pulled away from the school, and the driver smiled at her.

  “Big day?” he asked.

  Lizzie nodded.

  They talked most of the way home, and, as usual, Lizzie could hardly wait to get there because she was bursting with lots of things to tell Mam. Emma and Mandy were away working, she knew, but it was lunch-time, so Dat would be in the house.

  “How did it go, Lizzie?” he asked, as she hurried in the door.

  “Oh, good! Really good. Except a little, first-grade girl almost cried, and Dat, I mean it, they’re so loud after I dismiss them, it isn’t even normal. They yell good-bye with all their might.”

  Dat chuckled as he took a bite of homemade vegetable soup.

  “I guess they’re glad to be out of there,” he said.

  As he crumbled a handful of saltines into the soup, he started to blink his eyes rapidly. He bent his head to take off his glasses and rub his hands across both eyes as he continued to blink.

  “Can’t figure out what’s wrong with my eyes this morning. Everything seems a bit fuzzy, especially my one eye,” he said, as he put his glasses back on while blinking over and over.

  “Didn’t you sleep well?” Mam asked.

  “Just as good as usual,” Dat answered.

  “Which must be pretty good by the sounds of your snoring. I can hear you from my upstairs bedroom sometimes,” Lizzie said, laughing.

  “That’s Mam you hear!” Dat said.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Melvin. Who knows? We both snore.”

  Jason slid onto the bench beside Lizzie.

  “I’m starved!” he said.

  “Here. Take some vegetable soup,” Mam said, hovering over him, seeing that he had bread, cheese, and sweet bologna. Jason slapped bologna on a slice of bread, threw a piece of cheese on top, smashed the second piece of bread down on the cheese, and stuffed half of the dry sandwich into his mouth.