by Linda Byler
Hannah twisted a white sheet from the rinse water, her face grimacing in concentration, water sloshing down her dress front, the soggy garment now clinging to the womanly curves of her body. Going without an apron again. The Ordnung meant nothing to Hannah, of this Sarah was now convinced. The rules of the church were an unwelcome tether, a binding to authority that, to her, was unnecessary. A burden, a prickly collar she wore with disdain.
Suddenly irritated, Sarah called out, “Hannah, you’re wet. What if someone came to visit and there you were, half-dressed?”
Hannah lowered her eyes and turned away without answering. “Come,” Sarah said gently. “Put your apron on.”
“Why would I put an apron on? There’s no one coming to visit, and who cares?” Hannah spoke with resentment, her eyes black like coal.
“God cares,” her mother said, this time a bit firmly.
“Who says?”
Oh, the impudence of her own daughter! Sarah was dumbfounded and had no ready answer. To quote the Bible to her would only cause more irritation. She must speak to Mose. Turning, she went inside, hefting Baby Abigail on her shoulder, her smooth face now gray with a certain weariness she could not explain. She would not stand in the doorway trading barbed remarks with her eldest. Tears pricked her eyelashes and a lump of despair formed in her throat.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” The comfort of this Psalm spoke gently to her as she laid Abby in her box in the corner. Yes, she would not be fearful of the evil that would constantly waylay her daughter. With that attitude, she was an easy target for the devil and his wiles. She would trust her God and leave it to Him. He had created Hannah and would care for her. She would be a devout mother, praying constantly and giving all her cares to God alone.
Why, then, instead of peace, did Sarah experience foreboding? An ominous black cloud seemed to raise its head on the horizon, and the wealth of waving summer grasses suddenly turned harsh, as if they whispered of an impending doom.
Sarah shivered and turned away from the window. It was time to begin the day’s bread making. She lifted the lid of the agate kettle, where the sourdough starter was kept, took out a cupful, and replaced the lid before turning to the flour container, alarmed at the weight of it. So light. What would she do when the flour ran out? She knew they could not depend on the Jenkinses forever. Their assistance had been more than generous. How could they keep asking for more knowing there was no income?
The sun laid a square patch of heat and light on the oilcloth tabletop. Another sunny day. Every day the sun shone, the heat became more intense, the wind blew and blew and blew, unstoppable, never ceasing. Sarah wondered as she watched the tender green shoots of corn as the wind tossed about the leaves of the fledgling plant. The corn would need rain. The sun hiding behind gray clouds, raindrops beginning to fall, first a tiny, wet splash, then another, until the earth was moist and lovely. The rain smelled wonderful, an earthy aroma of moisture and promise and God’s goodness. But each day, that seemed a thing of the past.
Surely God would send rain. Surely.
Sarah kept a calendar of her days, marked them off with a large X across the square. She kept a careful account of the weather in her diary, writing each day’s work, the children’s growth, ordinary goings on with a family of five. At home, in Lancaster County, she had always recorded where church services had been held, who gave the sermon, and the number of visitors present.
Her whole being seemed to fold in on itself, until she felt as if her very breathing became constricted, so sharp were the pangs of her homesickness, her longing to see her mother, her sisters, her grandparents. To be among them, one of the Stoltzfuses, a happy, well-adjusted freundshaft, a group of people so near and dear she could feel their presence, here, today, in this crude house made of logs in the middle of this unbelievable prairie.
Unbelievable, yes, it was. Living in this treeless, mountainless land, without neighbors or any roads of significance, without an income or a church to rescue them from the raw poverty in which they lived. What was her duty?
Should she always be submissive, when she felt in her bones that there’d be no corn crop, no money, only debt to the Jenkinses? Should she always trust Mose? Yes, that was the right choice. The Bible clearly stated this truth, the ministers expounded the women’s path as followers of their husbands, calling him Lord, as Sarah had called Abraham and God had blessed him beyond all understanding.
So Sarah looked upon the stunted corn sprouts, watched sadly as the heat of the sun and the wind’s ceaseless pounding tormented the brave growth they had planted with their own hands.
Two weeks without rain, then three. A month passed, with the sun rising in unfettered glory each morning, a giant, orange ball of pulsing heat, surrounded by a brassy blue sky that contained only wispy plumes of thin white clouds that hurried by, as if they were ashamed to be seen on this otherwise perfect day.
In spite of the constant heat, the corn must have dug its roots deeper into the earth, finding enough moisture to keep growing. Mose exulted in every healthy cornstalk. He fashioned sturdy hoes from straight tree limbs and sharp rocks, sent Manny and Mary to the cornfield to hoe thistles and other weeds that threatened to choke the corn.
They became deeply tanned, their dark hair bleached to a lighter hue, yet they never complained of the backbreaking work, obeying their father without question. Sarah always walked out to the cornfield with a tin pail with a lid on it, to bring them a cool drink of well water.
Hannah refused to hoe corn, in spite of her father’s orders, or his threats. Mose and Sarah discussed this refusal and decided to leave it. As long as she performed her other duties, they saw no reason to bully her into submission. Her hatred would only intensify, they felt.
The sun shone on the little homestead, the rough-hewn log house and adjacent barn for which shed was perhaps a more fitting description. The buildings were not too far from being hovels, both for the human beings and their animals. The children played around these buildings, in chopped, scythed grass, trampled and dusty. A clothesline was strung between two sagging log poles, but it was serviceable, the clothes drying fast in the hot, dry wind.
Sarah still cooked outside on the fire surrounded by rocks taken from the creek bed, a tripod on each end, the blackened cast iron pot in between, the earth trampled around it by Sarah’s bare feet as she bent over her cooking. Little Eli played with sticks and bark, made grass huts, and generally ran wild, often with Mary by his side, if she wasn’t needed to watch Abby.
Their clothes became too small in time. Mary’s dresses were snug across her chest, tight beneath her arms, and much too short, but the one remaining tuck had been left out, so there was nothing to do but wear short dresses. Sarah patched trousers again and again, until the denim fabric ran. The boys lived with ragged edged holes in the knees of their pants; they were like open mouths to Hannah, shouting of their shameful poverty.
The corn turned color, slowly, into a dry, olive green, the leaves curled into harsh tubes that mocked the whole family, rattling in the wind, tossed and twisted piteously. Sarah’s gaze swept the endless blue sky. Mose returned to his headaches, gripping both sides as he swayed back and forth in abject misery.
Again, hunger became their constant companion. Too proud and too stubborn to ask for help, they survived on prairie hens, the few onions and scraggly carrots they pulled from the garden, the soil packed down, jagged with cracks where the dried earth had shrunken like a toothless old man.
One morning in July, Hannah ate one bite of prairie hen for her breakfast, laid down her fork, and announced in a tone as bitter as horseradish that she was riding into town to look for work.
Mose looked at his daughter, his eyes popped and snapped in the most uncharacteristic manner, and he told her she was doing no such thing as long as she was under his care.
Hannah shouted then, her voice raised so that the baby woke and began to cry. “Care! What ca
re? Every one of us is starving, our clothes are wearing out, and you say we’re under your care? I’m going, so don’t even try to stop me. I’ll get a job doing something, and I’ll return home every Saturday evening with whatever I’m paid. I am not going to the Jenkinses ever again, to beg!” The last word was a shriek laced with anger.
Mose’s eyes settled back into their sockets, and his heavy lids fell halfway and stopped. He spoke quietly, his words measured, his tone soothing.
“Well, my Hannah, if you feel the need to have more earthly goods than what the Lord has provided for us, then I suggest you take up the Bible and read about the lilies of the field, how Solomon in all his glory, a wealthy man, mind you, was not arrayed like one of these.”
“I don’t need earthly goods, Dat. We can’t eat lilies, and Solomon’s not here either. I’m hungry, that’s what. So I’m going to do something about it.”
“Which town, Hannah? Surely not to Dorchester?” Sarah asked.
“Of course not. To Pine. I’m going to Pine. But if I can’t find work there, I may have to go to Dorchester.”
“You may not have one of the horses,” Mose spoke with authority.
Hannah snorted. “What would I do with a horse? If I perish of hunger, it’ll just be me, you’ll still have your horse.”
Sarah gasped. “Won’t you reconsider, Hannah?” she asked.
“Why would I? We’re all going to starve out here on the prairie. We can’t eat grass. The corn is shriveling up in the heat, and we just sit here like ducks waiting to be shot.”
Manny’s eyes flashed. “Dat knows what he’s doing, Hannah. Why do you have to do something foolish?”
Mary and Eli began to cry in earnest, the usual breakfast harmony shattered by Hannah’s announcement. They were too young to understand Hannah’s undertaking, too young to know how their lives were rimmed with desperation. They only wanted Hannah to stay, to stop frightening her parents.
Mose spoke then, in tones dripping with patience and loving forbearance. “My Hannah.”
Before he got any further, she shot up out of her chair, launched by her complete disdain of him. “Stop calling me that! I am not your Hannah. You don’t own me the way you own Mam. You own her only because she allows it. Let me tell you, when I come back, you’ll be in debt, trying to pay me back for providing for your family, a job you aren’t able to do.”
Before she left, she tied on a clean gray apron on top of her ill-fitting faded blue dress. Barefoot, her clean covering patched where the straight pins had torn the fabric, her face was like stone, hard with resolve, compacted with bitterness.
Sarah tried to hold her, grabbed at her arm, and tried to draw her into an embrace. But Hannah would have none of it, shrugging free of her mother’s pitiful attempts at restraint.
Sarah began to weep, softly. “Just be careful, Hannah. Be wise. Don’t let anyone persuade you to do wrong. Men are not always trustworthy. Here, take this.”
She pressed a cold, gleaming half dollar into the palm of Hannah’s hand, her fingers grappling for a hold on her beloved daughter’s hand. “Please, please be careful. Remember that you were raised Amish. You cannot go out into the world without conscience. Keep your way of dress. Let no man seduce you. Take your small prayer book, the German one, the one Mommy Detweiler gave you last year. Was it just last year?”
Sarah took a deep, ragged breath, wiped her eyes with her apron, her voice trembling when she told her not to allow anyone to give her a ride.
“Hannah, we are Amish. We are not of the world. We are forbidden to ride in cars. We must always bow our heads and pray before and after meals. Your head must be covered with your prayer covering. Remember the Lord Jesus, who died for you. When you feel the need to be baptized …” Here Sarah’s voice dwindled to a whisper, then stopped.
“Then what, Mam? Huh? Then what?”
“Don’t, Hannah.” But she raised her eyes level with her sixteen year old daughter, saw the hard, unwavering truth in her dark, fiery eyes, shrank from it and tried to erase it by lifting a hand as if to ward off a blow.
“You expect me to travel a thousand miles back home to become a member of the Amish church? You know it’s not possible. I won’t spend the rest of my days alone because my Father chose to leave the only way of life I had ever known.”
“We didn’t leave a way of life, Hannah. We are still Amish, born and raised, keeping the faith.”
“And how will I? How will I ever marry or have children of my own, with not one other Amish in these woebegone parts? Huh?”
Sarah began weeping softly again, a torn handkerchief held to her face, shaking her head from side to side, as if that move alone could dislodge this hard truth. Hadn’t it hung between mother and daughter long enough? A gossamer veil, mocking their camaraderie, blown against one or the other repeatedly, an annoyance that couldn’t be denied.
Here is where Sarah was torn. To be blindly submissive to a husband who had just not taken his children into consideration when he thought of making this move.
Had it been the correct way? Already she understood the way of a woman. Hannah was grown, and longed for the companionship that Sarah had also longed for and had found in good, gentle Mose.
But here was her own daughter, flesh of her flesh, heart of her heart. The urge to hold her was so strong it felt as if her arms were made of iron, too heavy to hang from her shoulders. She lifted tormented eyes to her daughter’s.
“Hannah, I can’t promise you that your life will be easy, if you choose to do this. Just make sure that you pray every morning and every evening. A young girl needs guidance from a personal relationship with Christ. Mitt unser Herren Jesu Christus, Hannah. Oh, that we could both be seated on the bench in a house in Lancaster, listening to our beloved Enos Lapp. Sometimes it feels as if I’ll just break in two with homesickness, missing the ones I love.”
Hannah’s hard brown eyes misted over, like polished coal. She turned her back, her shoulders squared, before facing her mother.
“Here comes Dat, so I’ll say this quickly. Don’t worry about me. I’ll make it on my own. And I’ll pray, whenever I think about it.”
There was no embrace, only the sight of her thin form in the faded blue dress, her covering strings slapping in the wind, walking away from the log house with the ring of stones and the smoke wafting away from it.
Sarah lifted a hand, lowered it. A fierce, possessive pride gripped her soul. She wanted to shout words of encouragement, knowing her daughter was capable of anything. Anything. She was young and beautiful and talented, smart as a whip and not afraid to speak her mind.
Sarah swiped at her streaming eyes, the vision of Hannah becoming a blur among the waving prairie grass. But there was a consolation now: her trust in Hannah she could acknowledge in secret. No one needed to know.
And when Mose mourned his daughter’s absence, Sarah lifted devout eyes that effectively curtained the small spark of pride she tended well.
CHAPTER 9
The day was hot, so by midmorning, Hannah was wiping her face with a corner of her apron.
She was following the road to the town of Pine, consisting of a small group of crude buildings with a cattle auction, a feed store, a gas station, and, if she remembered correctly, a large general store and a café. Maybe more, she wasn’t sure. She’d only been there once.
She gripped a small black valise that contained a change of clothes, her prayer book, a comb, and a toothbrush. The half dollar was in her pocket, a deep patch of fabric sewn to the front of her skirt. She had used a safety pin to secure the top of the pocket, so she wouldn’t lose the most precious of all her meager possessions.
The road stretched before her, perfectly straight, on level ground, disappearing into a V on the horizon. Sometimes, grass grew along the middle; only the sides of the road were bare, gray, and dusty, the grass parched and brown. Heat shimmered across the plains, the light white hot against her eyes. She squinted, then closed her eyes for a moment and s
tumbled on a tuft of grass before opening them.
The light was unbearably bright. Or hadn’t she slept much? Probably not, the way she’d tried to untangle everything during the night. She could see no way out of her family’s desperate poverty, as long as Mose kept up that childish, undying optimism. It was almost pitiful, the way he assured himself constantly that God would send a miracle, a gift, and save them all. No matter that the hot winds blew and shriveled the corn, or that they were all skinny and hungry, every prairie hen shot to death for miles around.
And still he prayed.
You had to admire a man like that, she supposed. Admire him for his determination, if nothing else. Pity for her mother was like a dagger, only for an instant, before she steeled herself against these unwanted loopholes of emotion. She couldn’t go all soft like this.
The soles of her feet were beginning to hurt. She was thirsty, but that couldn’t be helped. Like a camel, she’d drank her fill at breakfast, hoping it would last all day.
Who would hire her? They were in the throes of the Great Depression, whatever that was. She’d heard her father and Uncle Levi discussing the United States currency, the closing of well-established banks, the crash of the stock market. She didn’t actually know what the stock market was, but if it broke down, it must be important. She guessed that if wealthy people were in trouble, the poor would face some rough times, for sure. Well, it couldn’t get any worse than their plight, that was another thing sure.
Even if those calves grew, they couldn’t sell them. They were meant to be breeding stock, according to Hod. It could take five or ten years to build up a sizable herd. The corn was nothing but a loss. Which meant that someone had to get a job. Become gainfully employed. Do something that put a few dollars pure profit in your hand. Enough to buy flour and cornmeal and a bit of shortening.
Her mouth watered, thinking of biscuits and sausage gravy. Or fried mush and shoofly pie. When had she last eaten a piece of pie?