When a police officer finally came from the city, he said, “I doubt those boys’ll be back, but let us know if you see them and we’ll bring them in.” He folded his notebook. “We’ll do what we can.”
The officer was right. The Heindricks boys never did return.
Except for the first days that followed her brother’s death, the whole year that Lizbeth was fourteen was a dark blur, like looking from a window of a train at night. All the pages of the calendar had been compressed to fit into a few small squares labelled Visit from Pastor Enns 8 pm. Viewing at church 7:30. Funeral 12 noon.
When it was over, Lizbeth couldn’t recall her brother’s funeral the way she knew it must have happened. In the few pictures, it was a clear spring day and someone had cut the grass around the church. The smell of green would have bled freshness from the tip of each broken blade. What she saw when she closed her eyes though, was not a clear bright sky, but a heavy grey wrapping of clouds.
Inside, on the men’s side of the church Lizbeth’s father and brothers sat, sorrow and acceptance scrawled in a collective expression. Across the aisle, Lizbeth was surrounded by her mother and sisters, as well as aunts and the women who made it their business, Sunday or not, to attend everything going on inside God’s house.
When her father and brothers carried John’s coffin outside to the cemetery that lay next to the church like a garden of stone, Lizbeth felt utterly alone. As John was lowered into the hole dug for him, Lizbeth clutched a bouquet of flowers that she was supposed to throw, along with her grief, into the grave before dirt was shovelled over the top. It was as though they were planting him in the ground so he’d be ready for the heavenly harvest to come.
They buried John without Lizbeth’s flowers, which were left where she stood, all torn petals and bruised stems. The mourners from the community, followed by Lizbeth’s family, gradually left the gravesite. Lizbeth was the last to walk away.
At home, Lizbeth’s mother and sisters quietly set out a light lunch for family that came from other villages and the Hutterite colony. As younger cousins played, looking nervously at one another, unsure of what was all right to say, Lizbeth’s aunts made their rounds, offering powdery-smelling embraces along with looks of sympathy that felt, to Lizbeth, as empty as wheat husks. Uncles sat in the living room cracking whole nuts, talking intermittently about the weather and God’s unknowable ways.
While everyone was busy, or simply not paying attention, Lizbeth saw her parents leave the house with a plate of food. She followed, hiding behind the skirt of a tree, as they walked up to the Heindricks’ house and knocked on the door.
At first, she couldn’t hear what they were saying, until Mr. and Mrs. Heindricks’ voices began to rise.
“Don’t need any of your pity here,” Mrs. Heindricks said, her voice pelting Lizbeth’s parents like sharp stones.
“In different ways, we’ve both lost sons,” Lizbeth’s father said. “The Lord calls his people to be compassionate and mourn with those who mourn. And to forgive.”
“Don’t need your forgiveness, either. If you want us to go, we told you our price,” Mr. Heindricks said and knocked twice on the siding of his house. The words hit her father as though he’d been spat on. Lizbeth waited for him, for her mother, to turn their backs and leave. To stay and shout. Just to do anything. But they lowered their voices until Lizbeth could no longer hear. Moments later, her father reached out and shook the other man’s hand.
When they finally walked away, Lizbeth stepped out to meet them.
“How could you talk to them after they — ” Lizbeth said, her voice brittle. “They aren’t even sorry.”
“Lizbeth,” her father said.
“When someone murders your son, you don’t pray for them. And you don’t take them a plate of food or buy their house.”
“Lizbeth, they didn’t take John’s life. Their boys did.”
“Yeah, well. They didn’t stop them, either,” Lizbeth said, her voice strengthening on a gust of anger. Before her parents could reply, she turned and walked away. As she did, she heard her father tell her mother to let her go, that she needed time. Lizbeth knew that there wasn’t enough time on God’s entire calendar for whatever it was they thought she needed. So she planted her grief like a seedling in the ground and watered it with anger. At times, she even spoke to it to help it grow.
Within a month, as Lizbeth watched from the kitchen window, her parents helped the Heindricks’ move out of the house next door. Before they drove away, her father handed them a thick envelope containing payment for their property. Enough for them to start a different life somewhere else where no one knew them. And once they were gone, Lizbeth’s family would never again have to have such close neighbours.
Afterwards, Lizbeth’s mother came inside and found her at the window. She stroked her hair gently. “Maybe you can help me with some cleaning next door. Your brothers are going to take down that fence later. We’ll have the house for storage and both gardens to plant next year.”
“You can’t make me go over there.” Lizbeth turned and looked at her mother to make sure she understood. “Not ever.”
A few weeks later, Lizbeth overheard one of her aunts talking to her mother. “When she’s a few years older and marries herself a good husband, has a house of her own to take care of, that’ll be what helps her. One of the Rempel boys, maybe. In church, before all this business with the neighbours, I thought I saw the youngest one looking her way.”
“I really don’t know,” Lizbeth’s mother said. “Maybe.”
Lizbeth could no longer think of Liam without seeing him soaked in her brother’s blood. She stopped speaking to him at school, and when they both started taking the bus to the high school in town, she spent the ride with her face hidden behind a textbook, studying. She found that if she kept her mind busy it was almost enough to keep her from thinking about what had happened. As long as she was working out math and science and history problems, she wouldn’t pull at the threads that dangled in her thoughts. If she hadn’t met with Liam that day, if she hadn’t walked off with her stolen rollkuchen, cancelling her prayers with sin, he would still be alive. Now there was no going back.
When Lizbeth was seventeen, after she’d been a bridesmaid in Matthew, Mary and Ruth’s weddings, she graduated from high school and took a filing job at the agriculture research station near the edge of town. Her father drove her in the mornings and picked her up after work, but when Lizbeth received her first paycheque, she found she had enough money left after taxes to rent a basement apartment. She’d be able to walk to work and back.
The apartment had one bedroom that was only inches bigger than the twin bed she took with her from her parents’ house. There was a sitting area outside the bedroom. And, in a corner next to the bathroom, a tiny kitchen, with a tiny countertop fridge and an enormous brown microwave arranged on a table against the back wall, next to a sink.
Lizbeth’s mother unpacked a box filled with a few plates and some cutlery. There was a medium-sized pot and a percolator, but Lizbeth had refused a mixing bowl and rolling pin. “How will you keep busy? There’s nothing to cook with.”
“It’ll be fine,” Lizbeth said, impatient for her mother to leave. “I’ll get lots of rest after work. And there’s a cafeteria there. I can buy a punch card.”
“Cafeteria food is not food,” her mother said and went to have a talk with the people who lived upstairs and owned the house.
“How would you know?” Lizbeth said after she was gone. She looked around at the few pieces of furniture that were now hers. Matthew had bought a large orange-and-brown chesterfield that morning from the trading post and donated it to the cause of giving Lizbeth something to sit on. All day her family had come and gone, bringing things and remarking on the impossibly small size of the space. It’s smaller than the summer kitchen! There isn’t enough room in that little fridge for a pail of eggs!
After everyone else drifted back to the farm, Lizbeth sat down on
her couch as though she’d never before in her life had the time. She tried to do nothing but bask in the empty hours until it was late enough to go to bed.
Soon she started to pick at balls of lint on the seat cushions until she had a fuzzy pile. She got up to drop them in the garbage and decided to measure the dimensions of her new home by counting how many steps it took to get from one end to the other, the same way her father used to guesstimate the length of things.
There were eighteen steps in one direction if she walked from the front wall straight into the tin shower that dripped one drop of water every three seconds. Twenty-one steps in the other direction, over top of the chesterfield to the door that led outside, to the cement doorwell that would collect dust and wind-blown newspapers if not faithfully swept. Approximately three hundred and seventy-eight square feet, less or more.
Although there were four sets of curtains hung in the apartment, there were only two windows — the one in the bedroom was so small and high that Lizbeth had to stand on her bed to peer out. There were four patterns of embossed wallpaper, two clashing colours of wall-to-wall carpeting that were laid with opposing naps. And a potted plant that was a housewarming gift from her sister-in-law, but wouldn’t survive the week without natural light.
Lizbeth’s landlords were an old Mennonite couple, which was the only way her parents had finally consented to the move. It seemed to help ease their concerns that the Giesbrechts, when they met them, smelled of liniment and had, against Lizbeth’s repeated objections, promised her parents they’d look after her like their own daughter.
“I’m trying to not feel like someone’s daughter for once,” Lizbeth had said to her mother.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” her mother said. “But you are my daughter and you can’t get away from that, no matter how far you go.”
“That’s not what I meant. And this is hardly far.” Lizbeth flung her arm in the general direction of home. “Fifteen minutes. Less if Dad or Matthew drives like they’re late for supper.”
Already, old Mrs. Giesbrecht had kept her word with an enormous crockery dish filled with farmer’s sausage and both Saskatoon berry and cottage cheese varenyky, covered in heavy cream gravy.
When she had brought it down, Lizbeth had thanked her, but after closing the door, she rolled her eyes and muttered to herself, “No wonder we’re all as fat as cheese.” She intended to make toast for supper and, in a few days, buy a salad cookbook. And then, who knew? Maybe she’d even buy a pair of slacks, if she could find a flattering pair.
As Lizbeth ran out of things in the apartment to count, she opened the fridge and reasoned that one more day of cream gravy wouldn’t make any difference. She took out the casserole dish, leaned against the table and began to fork up mouthfuls of cold varenyky, the congealed gravy coating her tongue with memories of home.
Lizbeth thought about her mother and felt a twinge of longing that she quickly swallowed down. But it kept rising to the surface and soon she thought of the smell of bread baking in the morning, her sisters in the kitchen, of John and his appetite, the way he used to eat a whole loaf, all by himself, every day. What had happened to all that extra bread? After John died, did their mother make less dough every day? Or did everyone take their share of what he’d left behind? An extra hundred pounds of flour a year. It had to go somewhere.
Lizbeth put her fork down, lowered her forehead slowly into her hands and sank into the one kitchen chair that she’d been able to fit into the apartment. Loneliness washed over her until she felt she would drown.
That night she lay in bed, tears wetting her hair, and wondered whether she’d ever stop being her dead brother’s sister.
On Sundays, Lizbeth went to church in town. Afterwards, she walked back to her apartment and waited for Matthew to pick her up and drive her to the farm for lunch. After a few months she began to make excuses. She didn’t tell her family that she’d met a young man, a lab assistant, at work, and on Sundays he picked her up outside the church, with a picnic of Chinese food in the back seat of his car, and took her for long drives in the country.
She felt sorry for lying to them, but when Lizbeth was with Ben she was able to pack everything he didn’t know about her into a box in her mind and set it aside. It was only later, when he dropped her off at home, that her thoughts wouldn’t stay tucked away.
On one Sunday drive, when they had parked to watch a storm approach on the horizon, Lizbeth slipped and told Ben that she’d like him to meet her family someday. Ben, in her imagination, stood between her and her family, both a fence and a bridge.
He was quiet for what seemed like a long time.
“I don’t think I want to,” he said.
“Oh — ”
“Wait,” he said, reaching across the seat and pressing a finger to her mouth. “The thing is, it only matters who you are to me. This person, right here, right now.” He placed two fingers lightly on her chest, above her heart. “Don’t you see? Meeting someone’s family always messes that up. I’d end up seeing you differently, through their eyes. And I don’t want that.”
Lizbeth looked down at her hands. She wasn’t sure what Ben meant. He had a way of making things sound too profound to argue with. The things her family talked about had always been so black and white, like the onionskin pages of her father’s Bible. Ever since the first time Ben talked to her on their lunch hour, it was as though everything she’d ever thought began to turn into shades of grey. They had long discussions about things like pollution, and the Prime Minister’s ignorance of the western provinces. But he was also sweet, and left notes, along with cold Jamaican beef patties wrapped in plastic, in the pocket of her sweater at work. Sometimes, he parked outside her apartment at night until she turned out her light. When she noticed him there she flicked her lights on and off and he answered with his headlights before driving away. It became their routine. And eventually, when Lizbeth went to bed at night, she was sometimes able to sleep without thinking of home.
“Hey, so, I think your landlady saw me parked outside your house last night,” Ben said one morning at work. He rolled his eyes and snorted softly, the same way he did when he talked about his supervisor, a middle-aged man whose unconvincing comb-over and big ears, watery eyes and drooping eyelids, made him look slow witted. Lizbeth didn’t think he was slow but kept the thought to herself.
“How do you know?” Lizbeth said, nearly dropping the files she was carrying. Suddenly she imagined what Mrs. Giesbrecht might think of her, a young woman who was followed home by a strange man. And although she tried to pretend that it didn’t matter, Lizbeth worried that Mrs. Giesbrecht might have already called her parents.
“The ol’ girl came out with her bloomers in a bunch and told me ‘Nice young men don’t park outside a young lady’s home.’” Ben imitated Mrs. Giesbrecht’s voice, high and scolding, making Lizbeth laugh a little.
“What did you say to her?”
Without looking to see whether they were alone, Ben reached out, tucked a stray twist of hair behind Lizbeth’s ear and softly kissed her cheek. “I told her I was just looking out for you.”
Lizbeth leaned towards his voice, letting herself fall into it.
The following Sunday, when Ben pulled up in front of the church, Lizbeth got into his car and didn’t say anything until he asked what was wrong.
For several minutes she didn’t tell him that her parents had called her the night before, asking questions about the young man in the car.
“He’s a friend from work,” she’d said to her mother, and again when her father got on the phone.
“What kind of friend is he? Do you know his parents? Are they Mennonite? Do they even go to church?”
“He’s a good friend. And no, I don’t know his parents. He isn’t Mennonite. And he doesn’t go to church, but he doesn’t mind if I do.”
“Doesn’t mind.” Her father’s voice cinched tight and Lizbeth could almost see the worried expression on his face. “What, exactly,
is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that maybe he will some day. Who knows? Aren’t we supposed to witness to unbelievers so they can become believers?”
After arguing, nothing was resolved except Lizbeth had promised she’d bring Ben out to meet them.
Now, in the car she said, “It’s my family. They know about us.” Her stomach knotted. “It’s been weeks since I’ve been home. It’s just that they’re worried about me. They don’t know you.”
“Well, it’s hardly a secret,” he said, as though it was a little absurd that she hadn’t told them before. “But I guess we’d better go out there and put them at ease.” He was smiling, but Lizbeth could see that the corners of his mouth were tense.
“Really? You’d do that? I know how you feel about — ”
Ben stopped her. “For you, anything,” he said, turning serious. He shifted the car into gear and they drove to her parents’ village in silence.
All through lunch Lizbeth was uncomfortably aware of everyone around the table, including Ben. Luke still lived at home and Matthew and his wife were there, too. She had never thought about it before, but next to her Sunday-groomed brothers, Ben looked sloppily put together in faded jeans and longish hair. He didn’t know not to talk about politics on Sunday, and was deliberately vague when asked personal questions about himself and how he and Lizbeth knew each other.
And then there was the food — pluma moos and zwieback, cold meats and potatoes fried in lard — which seemed so simple and farmsy next to the exotic things Ben had taught her to like. She offered a silent prayer of thanks that there were no chicken feet to go with the chicken soup, and that John wasn’t there to tease her with them.
“Lizzy, here, is a great girl, Mr. Klassen.” Ben spoke between polite bites of sausage. Lizbeth wished everyone would just stop talking. “She may not have told you, but she’s indispensable around the office.”
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