When Strawberries Bloom

by Linda Byler

  All the frustrations she had endured over the weekend, and especially this morning, hit her with the force of a cannon, leaving behind only blind, white anger. She marched back to his desk, grabbed his shoulder, and smacked his face as hard as she could. His head snapped back, and his expression changed to one of disbelief, then shame, as he lifted both hands to his face as if to ward off more blows.

  “There! That is something I will not tolerate. You boys have been trying me to the limit these past couple weeks, and you don’t even have enough respect to be ashamed of your misbehavior. I will not take it!” she said loudly, punctuating each word angrily.

  The classroom instantly quieted down. In fact, it was so quiet you could almost hear the creek rippling across the rocks in the schoolyard. Little Rachel, who was in first grade, started sobbing quietly into her handkerchief as she rolled her large eyes in Lizzie’s direction. The upper-graders all bent their heads, resuming their work with averted eyes.

  “So everyone can just straighten up, and I mean it,” she finished. She walked back to her desk, sitting in her chair with shaking knees as she absently toyed with her red pen.

  An aura of alarm hung over the classroom like an impending storm, and Lizzie swallowed down her own fear, after the realization of what she had just done settled into her conscience. Suddenly, she felt like a huge, green ogre, complete with horns, who had swung her club and terrorized innocent children.

  What had she done? What would the boy’s parents say? She was almost positive she was in trouble now. Oh, mercy. Well, it was all Stephen’s fault, really, if you thought about it. She had lost her temper because of trying to deal with him walking the Appalachian Trail. It was frustrating if your boyfriend just did what he wanted with no regard for your feelings whatsoever. It was all his fault. It was.

  The remainder of the day, everyone was quiet and well-behaved. They kept their distance, knowing that this was not a good day to go to their teacher’s desk to talk because she was in some vicious mood.

  Before she dismissed the pupils at the end of the day, she agonized between apologizing to Alvin or standing firm. He would go home and tell his parents, no doubt about that, but, oh, well, the damage was done now. The only way was to stand firm, she knew, as he had no business snapping that rubber band.

  When she got home that evening, she poured out her whole miserable day to Mam and Mandy. They listened attentively, and Mandy gasped when she told her about smacking Alvin across his face.

  “Mercy!” Mam said. “Lizzie!”

  “Do you think his parents will be upset with me, Mam?” Lizzie asked, fear wrapping its tentacles around her chest and squeezing.

  “It’s hard telling. I just don’t know how they’ll react to this. Why did you do it?” Mam asked.

  “Because! He made me so mad!”

  “You know it probably wasn’t for the best,” Mam said gently.

  Lizzie glared at Mam rebelliously, still determined in her heart that Stephen was to blame for her outburst. So she told Mam about his plans, and to her consternation, Mam burst out laughing.

  “It’s not funny!” Lizzie shouted, flouncing over to the kitchen counter and lifting the lid on a stainless steel pot. Sniffing, she said, “Mmmm, chicken and dumplings!”

  “Ach, Lizzie, now listen here,” Mam said.

  Lizzie returned the lid and watched Mam warily. If Mam said, “Now listen here,” she knew there was a stern lecture coming, whether she liked it or not. Mam’s serious lectures were like a dust storm in dry areas or a storm at sea. You just battened down the hatches, gritted your teeth, and hoped it wouldn’t get too fierce.

  “If you think for one minute that you’re going to marry Stephen and never learn to give up to him, you have another guess coming.”

  Well, the storm was a heavy one if she said “you have another guess coming.” That was her age-old tool used to drive a point home with all the force of a sledgehammer, wielded by a strong, muscular man.

  “Men are like that. They are allowed to do things, and it’s up to us weaker vessels to be submissive. That’s why we wear a covering—to show that God comes first, and we obey him, and then our husband comes next, and we obey him as well.”

  Lizzie snorted and stammered, her face turning red as she tried to express herself.

  “You mean … you mean, husbands can do exactly what they please, and we follow as meekly as half-dead sheep and adore the ground they walk on? No, I don’t believe that, Mam, not for one minute. If that’s the order of things, then I’m not getting married. Never. I’ll be an old maid and teach school till I’m so fat I can’t fit between the desks!”

  Mandy laughed gleefully, and Mam’s shoulders shook as she got up to check on the chicken and dumplings, bending to adjust the flame of the burner.

  “What does your Bible say, Lizzie? Read it,” she said.

  “No.”

  “All right. If you’re going to become rebellious, there’s no point in discussing it. Nine chances out of 10 you’ll have to learn the hard way anyhow,” Mam said forcefully, the color in her cheeks heightened.

  Lizzie watched Mam, knowing she had irked her. Good. If she wanted to become so high-minded about how a marriage should be, then she was not going to listen anyway. Her husband was not going to sit on his throne and touch her lowered head with his kingly scepter, while she bowed her head in total submission like some trembling servant who was grateful to breathe the same air as her beloved husband. The whole concept inflamed every fiber of her being.

  “All right, Mam, I’ll discuss it with you and try to listen to what you have to say, but you can’t tell me that the husband is to be a lordly person who rules over his lowly wife with absolute authority.”

  Mam remained quiet, thinking, while Lizzie and Mandy waited. “Ach well, Lizzie, you think too much. I don’t really know how to answer that. No, not really, in a sense, and yes, really, in another sense, I guess.”

  “You guess! You don’t even know?”

  Lizzie was appalled to think Mam had been married for 20 years, and she still didn’t know how it was supposed to be.

  “What I mean is—there is no black and white in marriage. Not really. The Bible has plenty of verses to ask us, no, tell us, to be submissive, a helpmeet to our husbands. Even in the Old Testament, Sarah called Abraham lord.”

  “That was in the Old Testament. They stoned people then. We don’t do that now, do we?” Lizzie broke in.

  “No. No, we don’t. But the Old Testament is filled with lessons and good examples for us to follow. All right, now, I want you and Mandy to read your Bible this evening and see what you can find about marriage. Then come show me, okay?” Mam said, smiling.

  She got up, asking Mandy to set the table. That officially brought the whole conversation to a close, leaving Lizzie seated high and dry in the middle of a frightening desert of constantly shifting question marks.

  Well, if she was lucky, Stephen would be bitten by a rattlesnake the first few miles of the Appalachian Trail. Not fatally, of course, but just enough to make him return back to where he belonged.

  She was also going to have to read her Bible tonight to prove to Mam, somehow, that total submission was absolutely not necessary, because that would be a sad way to live. Really, if that was the case, why did any girl in her right mind ever get married?

  They just didn’t think far enough ahead, that was all there was to it.

  Chapter 21

  “WIVES, SUBMIT YOURSELVES UNTO your own husbands, as unto the Lord.”

  There it was in black and white. Lizzie’s heart sank, and she swiped a finger nervously across her nose. Her hopes sank even further, like an anchor plunging to the sea floor as the rope unraveled, when she read the next verses.

  “For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.”

  Lizzie put
her finger on the verse where she had stopped reading and gazed unseeingly out her upstairs bedroom window. There was no getting around it, hardly. Mam was right. The whole idea of marriage and submission settled around her shoulders like a suffocating wool blanket. There was no possible way that Scripture could be true. In everything, it said. Not just some things, or most things. Everything. Every single thing. Well, what if the husband did something really dumb, like walk the Appalachian Trail, for instance, or if he turned nasty and hit his wife and yelled at her or beat the children, if there were any. Then what?

  She opened her mouth to yell for Mandy, but closed it again, deciding to read further.

  “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.”

  Yes! See? Lizzie pulled up her knees, laying the Bible aside as she wrapped her arms around her legs, happily smiling at herself in the mirror.

  There, that was the bottom line. If the husband loved his wife the way he was supposed to, he would give his life for her, or rather, to Lizzie’s way of thinking, give up his own will sometimes. Actually, come to think of it, if he loved her very much, he would do anything she asked of him, because he was giving up his own life for his wife.

  Lizzie continued reading the chapter and her spirits lifted considerably. When she reached the end of the chapter, her eyebrows were drawn down in confusion again.

  “Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself, and the wife see that she reverence her husband.”

  Well, that reverence word was a bit strong because it conjured up for Lizzie that kingly husband who sat on his throne, his scepter hovering over his trembling wife. But then, if he loved his wife as much as he loved himself, he would be very kind to her. He’d make her life easier if he could, like helping her with the hard work—gardening or mowing grass—and not go off hiking for three weeks. It would make it so much easier to submit to him if he acted half normal.

  Ah, well, Lizzie mused. I just don’t quite get it. Mam never said the husband was supposed to give his life for his wife. I bet she doesn’t even know that’s in the Bible. Maybe she just doesn’t really want to bother with that verse, knowing her husband didn’t always. If you were going to be honest about this, Dat didn’t give his life for Mam when they moved to Cameron County. He knew it was not what she wanted to do. But then Mam didn’t always reverence Dat either, and maybe that was because he didn’t deserve it.

  So this marriage thing wasn’t quite as hopeless or mysterious or depressing as Mam made it sound with her submission speech. The husband had to stay in his place, too. Lizzie closed her Bible and went downstairs to find Mam working on her cross-stitch quilt patch by the light of the softly hissing gas lamp. She sat in the chair across from her and said, “Mam, you were wrong.”

  Mam looked up, adjusted her glasses, and smiled at Lizzie.

  “About what?” she asked.

  “It’s not just the wife who has to be submissive. Didn’t you ever read that part about the husband giving his life for his wife, like Christ died for the church?”

  Mam put down her cross-stitch patch and sighed. She gazed absentmindedly at Lizzie as if she wasn’t really seeing her at all and sighed again. “Yes, Lizzie, I know it’s in there,” she said softly.

  “Well, then, if he stays in his place, what is there to submit to? Huh? Nothing, Mam.”

  Lizzie was elated, quite jubilant actually. She was immensely relieved to know that her husband couldn’t just go off and do exactly as he pleased whenever he felt like it. He had a responsibility to give his life to his beloved wife, who would obey him with sweet reverence like the Bible said.

  “I’m afraid it’s not that easy,” Mam said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, for one thing, we’re very human, and on the day we marry each other, we still have our own wills intact. Each of us has a pretty good idea of what we expect of our husband, and he has a pretty good idea of what he expects of his wife. Unfortunately, his wife is not always as he wants her to be, and vice versa. He is not all that she expects either. So we have troubles, trials, rainy days, whatever you want to call it, and it isn’t all roses. That’s why we have those verses in the Bible, something we can live towards, something we can hope to become, that perfect merging of two souls, two wills, two individuals who become one through marriage.”

  Lizzie frowned. “You sound exactly like a preacher. An English one.”

  Mam laughed. “Maybe I do, Lizzie, but I don’t want you filling your head with sweet visions of a perfect husband who gives his life for you. Because …” Mam leaned forward, a touch of, what was it—hardness? Bitterness? Honesty born of experience? “Very few men do give their lives for their wives,” she finished.

  Lizzie said nothing, and the pendulum on the living room wall clock rocked steadily back and forth, back and forth, as the gas light kept up its soft, hissing sound.

  “I think I’ll go to bed,” she said finally.

  “Good night,” Mam said, a touch of wistfulness in her voice.

  “Good night, Mam,” Lizzie said.

  Lizzie lay awake, an open book beside her, the kerosene lamp on her nightstand flickering in the night air. Her thoughts were rapidly spoiling her peace of mind, like Jason shooting his dart gun into her brain. Those annoying little plastic, yellow darts with orange, rubber suction cups at the end, that if they landed squarely, hung there, quivering, until you pulled them loose.

  So then, the truth of the matter was, men often did what they wanted, probably because they knew their wives were supposed to submit themselves and revere them. Boy, that just wasn’t right. The thought made her so angry she felt like throwing her pillow against the wall. She rolled onto her side. She didn’t know why that thought brought out so much rebellion and so many hateful thoughts.

  She wondered vaguely where love came in. Love was supposed to be the reason for getting married in the first place. Wasn’t that simply liking someone so much that you would do absolutely anything for them?

  So now if Stephen were her husband, and he would tell her that he was walking the Appalachian Trail for three weeks, then, if she loved him wholeheartedly, she would say, “Oh, of course, my darling husband! You deserve to enjoy yourself on a vacation away from me, and I hope you have a lovely time.”

  And he would be so grateful for her sweet nature, her love and support, that he would go hiking for three weeks, have a great time, and tell all his friends what a wonderful, kind, loving wife he had at home. Somewhere along the line she had to get rid of her anger against men being the stronger vessel, the head of the house, the boss, in plain words, the king, which only brought on a fresh case of rebellion within her.

  Oh, the whole mess was hopeless. Throwing off the covers, she stalked over to Mandy’s bedroom door, yanked it open, and stuck her head inside.

  “Are you still awake?”

  “Mm-hmm, what do you want?”

  Lizzie walked in and sat down on Mandy’s bed, as she scooted over to make room.

  “Oh, I can’t sleep. I’m thinking too much. Did you read your Bible about marriage like Mam told us to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, what did you think?”

  “That’s just how it is, Lizzie. It’s really quite simple. We both live for each other and not for ourselves, and it’ll go okay.”

  “It’s not that simple!” Lizzie exclaimed, appalled at the thought of entering marriage with that tiny amount of concern. “What if your husband would want to go on vacation for three weeks, and you thought it was a dumb idea? Huh? Then what?”

  Anger crossed Mandy’s features, and she said impatiently, “Well, if you’re in one of those moods, just go to bed. Go on. You’re just mad because Stephen is going hiking, and you are acting like one huge, overgrown baby, pitying yourself, determined to justify your own selfishness with those Bible verses. Now go to bed. I’m tired.”

  Mandy rolled over and pulled up the cov
ers, or tried to, but she couldn’t with Lizzie sitting on them. She lifted her head and glared at her. “Go!” she shouted.

  So Lizzie went.

  Back in bed she tossed and turned, thinking and rethinking what Mandy had said. She was clearly on Stephen’s side, so what was the use of talking to her? Selfish. So Mandy thought she was being selfish. Well, Mandy had better watch it. She just better watch who she called selfish. Lizzie could feel the heat rising in her cheeks as she thought about what Mandy had said about her justifying herself, and her rebellion. She was quite sure she meant that anyway.

  Oh, that Mandy. She may as well be a little bearded man living high in the Himalayan mountains, a small wrinkled philosopher around whom people gathered for words of wisdom. She knew Mandy could see right through her, and she was as exposed as if she were made of air with little banners blowing that said she was selfish, childish, and rebellious.

  She flipped onto her left side, reached out, and peered at the face of her alarm clock. Eleven-twenty-five. She groaned. It would soon be time to get up and she still hadn’t slept a wink. She’d have to resort to counting sheep, she supposed. It was an awful thing when you thought too much, planned too much, and worried far too much about the future.

  Oh, that’s right, she thought. I forgot to pray. I wrestle around with all my problems and forget to hand them to God. She wished it would be as easy as two hands reaching down through the ceiling to retrieve Lizzie’s bundle labeled “Troubles.” The minute the bundle was in God’s hands, it would be lifted up through the ceiling and gone out of sight, out of her mind, never to be seen again.

  Life, however, was not that easy. Real life, real problems. Dear God, you’re going to have to help me with this husband and wife thing. I will give up now and not be selfish. Help me, Lord, to be truly unselfish. Keep Stephen safe on the Appalachian Trail, and keep me safe from rebellion. Amen.

  She breathed deeply, relaxing, and even giggled to herself as she dared to hope—although she stopped short of asking God to let it happen—she just hoped a mountain lion would scare them so hysterically they’d come back home two weeks earlier than they had planned. Or a bobcat. The way they screamed, it would probably work even better.