Mennonites Don't Dance

by Darcie Friesen Hossack

  “Just wait here a minute until you see what I have,” their mother said, lifting the door to the summer kitchen’s root cellar and disappearing down under the floor.

  “Oh, Mom. Not marmalade,” Hayley said when a galvanized milk bucket filled with oranges and lemons was lifted up. “Nobody even likes it.”

  “Well, I like it. And your father likes it.” Their mother was still half buried in the cellar. “If you don’t, then go do something else.”

  “I can stay,” Joely said as her mother climbed out and lowered the trap door. She wished she could be more like Hayley who did as she pleased and was already half way to the house. “I’ve gotten used to the marmalade. I guess maybe it’s an acquired taste.”

  “Yes, well, we’re not making marmalade.”

  “But you told Hayley.” Joely pinched her eyebrows together but quickly smoothed them out when she reminded herself what long-term use of a scowl had done to her mother’s face.

  “Hayley assumed. It doesn’t matter, though. She’ll be ready another time for what I have in mind. Come on down here with me, I have something to show you.”

  Confused, Joely followed her mother into the root cellar where it was cool and pleasantly dry, a comfortable contrast to the steam upstairs.

  Even though they were underground and the cellar wasn’t more than eight feet along each wall, Joely felt able to breathe deeply for the first time since they’d started boiling jam.

  Around the walls of the cellar were wooden crates that contained what remained of last year’s potatoes and a few bearded carrots, no longer good for anything but the pigs.

  “Do you remember your grandmother very much?” her mother said.

  Joely hesitated, not sure what her grandmother had to do with anything in the root cellar.

  “I remember her a little. She was always busy.” She thought for a moment. “But I remember that she laughed a lot, too.”

  “She did, didn’t she?” Her mother grew silent, smiling to herself while Joely waited for her to get to her point. Finally, she said, “The busyness wasn’t always just with dishes or dusting. What I remember is that she was always quick to finish her work so she could do things she liked. I’ve been thinking of her lately. She kept secrets, you know. Sometimes she’d share them with me so I’d know something my brothers didn’t.”

  Joely’s mother stepped over to one side of the cellar where a row of shelves lined the wall. They were already beginning to fill up with the overflow of jars of jam and fruit preserves, the pickles from the first cucumbers. All the jars that wouldn’t fit in the pantry inside the house. As Joely watched, her mother looked up and down the rows like a librarian searching the spines of books, before she gripped a shelf with both of her hands. “Secrets,” she said again. “She gave me this one and I’ve kept it since your father bought this farm from my father.” With a little coaxing, the shelves swung outward like a door, revealing a second, smaller room behind. “This was Grandma’s special hiding place.”

  “For what?” Joely crowded behind her mother to see, feeling suddenly as though she’d been given the key to the Secret Garden from her favourite childhood book. As though everything outside it had somehow become less real. “Did Grandma hide things from Grandpa in here?” Joely felt her heart begin to quicken.

  “Secrets are not the same thing as hiding,” her mother said, taking Joely’s hand and leading her inside. She reached over her head and clicked on a bare light bulb that hung from the ceiling. “But, no, he didn’t know about this place. She never told anyone she found it, except for me. This is where your grandmother kept her dandelion wine. And,” she said with a pop of a laugh, “where she came to drink it.”

  “Grandma drank wine!”

  “Mm-hm. She taught me how to make it, too, and when she thought I was old enough, about your age, she let me try it.”

  Joely’s eyes grew wide. She could barely believe what she was hearing.

  “Did you like it?”

  “Not at first. Now, I guess you could say your old mom can be a bit of a lush when she wants to be.”

  Joely couldn’t help herself. She sounded like a goose as laughter forced its way out of her nose as though it was breaking through a barrier. Her mother was smiling and looked pleased with herself.

  “But you always do everything you’re supposed to,” Joely said after she stopped laughing. The were both quiet for a moment. “I always thought I was like you, but you’re like Hayley — ”

  Joely’s mother stopped her.

  “Both of my daughters are like me. Hayley has more of my adventurous side, although one of these days she might learn to be practical. And you — Well, here.” She bent down and picked up a pail and plopped it, full of dandelions, into Joely’s hands. “I think you’re old enough.”

  Joely looked around her, taking in the room full of old canning jars that were empty, but for one. She watched as her mother lifted the jar from its shelf. With her apron, she wiped away a covering of dust, revealing pale, amber liquid suspended above a film of silt.

  When Joely returned to the house her skin was smudged with yellow, hands sticky with milky resin from plucking dandelion heads off their stems. There was still work to do, adding sugar and lemons and checking on the mixture as it slowly fermented, but, for now, in the hidden pantry, there was a pail of dandelion blossoms steeping in hot water, waiting to be made into wine.

  “I was thinking,” Hayley said when she came downstairs and found Joely at the kitchen sink washing her hands. “Maybe we should take Mom into town for some girl time. We could have lunch at an actual restaurant instead of just having ham sandwiches between chores.”

  “She probably doesn’t have time,” Joely said, paying more attention to the warm water as it fell over her hands and arms.

  “Afterwards, we could go to the mall and help her find a new dress so she can throw out that frumpy thing she wears every day. Judy says you can only feel as good as you look.”

  Joely turned off the faucet and reached for a kitchen towel. Facing her sister she leaned against the counter and patted her skin dry. “Whatever you think. Just ask Mom and let me know what she says.”

  LOFT

  MOM DIDN’T KNOW I LEFT THE house that morning and followed her, walking on the grass to soften the sound of my footsteps. I hid behind an outbuilding. I hid behind an outbuilding when she approached the barn, squat and solid like a bread hutch. She drew her shoulders back, becoming a little taller before lifting the heavy metal latch with the heels of her hands. After she disappeared inside, I waited a few moments and slipped in after her.

  While she preferred to get to the hayloft the easier way, by the ladder in the winter chicken coop, I quietly climbed up through the trap door in the milk room, dust and straw sifting into my hair.

  “Elsie?” Mom called up the ladder to you. “Elsie, are you up there?”

  It wasn’t a real question. Not in the way other questions could be answered with yes or no. You didn’t say anything, just pulled yourself farther back between the two hay bales you’d wedged yourself into like bookends, as though your pages were coming loose.

  I hid where I could see you sitting with your knees to your chest, as close as you could come to a thick timber Dad had placed to support an unstable rafter above the wall ladder. I knew you would be there. A sister knows.

  “Elsie!” It wasn’t a question at all anymore. Mom had had enough. Aunt Frances was here to visit us for the weekend. She’d brought her daughters, our city cousins. The ones everyone said were so much more like Mom than we were, with their interest in malls and movies. Mom didn’t know what she was supposed to tell them about you, your recent behaviour, the way you kept disappearing. Whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be the truth.

  Mom was sure you were up in the hayloft and wouldn’t leave until she was satisfied. She had seen you steal leftover breakfast toast to feed to the mice, before leaving the house for the barn. But Aunt Frances was with her in the kitchen, sippin
g tea. She let you go so there wouldn’t be a scene. Would she have done the same, I wonder, if she’d known you overheard their conversation that morning?

  You knew that feeding the mice made Mom angry. She told you it was like burning money because they ate our grain. They could spread disease. It didn’t matter to her that the mice made you smile.

  I saw how patiently you sometimes crouched in the hayloft, coaxing a mouse to trust you by holding out a bit of bread. And I knew that once, when you found a mouse still alive, floating in a pail of Mom’s dirty kitchen grease, blowing feeble, oily bubbles, you fished it out and hit it on the head with a rock. You were more merciful than the rest of us.

  I remember the day Mom caught you doing the same to a kitten from the barn. The kitten was all bones and suffering. So sick its mother had stopped feeding it and moved it away from the others. You were quick. But Mom grabbed you by your shoulders and shook you.

  “What’s the matter with you?” She yelled and smacked you across the face. I think she surprised herself. After that she went inside the house and bawled. She called Grandma to ask what she should do with you. “I’m just not the right kind of mother for that girl,” she said. “She feeds the mice and kills my cats.” I guess Grandma didn’t have anything to say because nothing changed after that. Except you.

  You stopped hiding in the hayloft and started to read books in the kitchen where Mom could see you. You learned to like milky tea instead of the strong coffee you preferred but were too young to drink. You let Mom buy you shoes that couldn’t be worn in the barn. You stopped wanting to go to Bible College when you graduated in three more years and started talking about university, a degree that would free you from the farm that you loved. Give you a different future. The one Mom had once wanted for herself before she married Dad and went from being a farmer’s daughter to a farmer’s wife.

  Even though you became what she wanted, Mom didn’t trust the changes. She said that it wasn’t natural for a girl to turn into someone else overnight. She began to be afraid of what you might do.

  I should have told her that you had only changed for her sake. That it was just a garment you’d pulled on, and you were still you. I should have told her something to make her understand. But I didn’t. I was too afraid she’d know I was on your side. That she’d start to look at me the same way.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” Mom said when she appeared at the top of the hayloft ladder and saw you wedged in the hay.

  “I heard you,” you said quietly. You met her eyes and she thought it was a challenge. If only she had seen how meek you were, how you wanted to please her. Would it have changed what happened?

  I understood why you liked to go to the hayloft. The way, when you pressed yourself between the bales, it felt cool and still. You told me it made you feel preserved. Like a jar of apricots in the pantry.

  “I don’t want to come out just yet. I’m not done,” you said. You withdrew a little farther.

  “Done what, exactly?” Mom said. She was too far away to reach you and pull you out. Too afraid of you, of the height, to climb over top of the ladder. “Your cousins are here, Elsie, They’ve been asking about you. Don’t you want to come down and see them?” It was a stupid question and she knew it.

  “No,” you said, hoping to hide that you’d been crying.

  “Can I tell them where you are? Maybe they’ll want to crawl into some holes, too.”

  “NO!” You shouted, as though you were years younger than fourteen. You pulled yourself farther into the space.

  “Fine, then. Suit yourself. I’ll just tell them you’ve disappeared and that they can check the well to see if you’ve gone and jumped down it.” You were silent for a few seconds. I nearly came out from where I was watching. I was going to tell Mom not to worry, that I’d talk to you. We’d come in together when you were ready.

  I stopped when you said, “Go ahead.” It wasn’t a dare, but it must have sounded like one to her. “They’ll believe you.”

  I should have protected you. The same way I should have come out of my bedroom last night after I heard Aunt Frances tell you, “Just try being cheerful. For your mother’s sake.” I wish I had been standing there with you. I wish I had stepped between her and you and told her there was nothing wrong with you. That it was only Mom who thought there was. “You don’t know what your behaviour is doing to her poor soul,” she said. And I did nothing.

  You didn’t understand what she was asking. How could you? You felt invisible. You just wanted them to see you. Really see you.

  Frances was my favourite aunt until that moment. When you came into my room, having given up yours for her, I told you that I was going to start calling her Aunt Fanny, on account of her bigger-than-usual bum. You thought it was unworthy of me. But it made you laugh.

  “At least call her Aunt Franny,” Mom begged me the next morning. She was spreading jam on toast over lots of butter, the way I’d always liked. “She’d appreciate that. And she meant well, you know. Your sister needs someone to give her some good sense. God knows she won’t listen to me.”

  “I stopped liking jam a long time ago, you know,” I said. It was a lie. Although saying so made it true somehow. I haven’t eaten jam since.

  Mom took one more step up the ladder, as though she might climb over the top, after all.

  “You can’t stay in the barn all day,” she said. And when you didn’t reply, “Have it your way. There’s no need to do anything for me.” You decided to take her at her word rather than her meaning, even though she stayed on the ladder and waited for you to change your mind.

  Moments later, we heard our cousins laughing. Megan and Jane; too ignorant to know about anything that didn’t come from MuchMusic.

  You knew Jane was wearing a pair of pretty ballet-slipper shoes with silk embroidery on the toes. The ones Mom bought you. Mom gave them to Jane when she refused to wear a pair of rubber boots outside, yet complained that her own shoes would get wrecked.

  “Here,” Mom had said, making sure you saw her disappointment. “Elsie doesn’t appreciate them, anyway. Elsie doesn’t appreciate any of the nice things I give her.”

  You liked nice things. Especially the shoes. You didn’t wear them often, but when you did I saw the way you touched the silk threads and admired the tiny beads. After a few minutes, though, you’d slip them off, put on rubber boots, and go outside to do your chores.

  Once when Meagan and Jane came with Aunt Frances, Jane threw a whole bag full of her old clothes into the nuisance barrel on burning day. They were supposed to be hand-me-downs for you. You were excited about them, but Jane didn’t want you to have them, and the only thing she spared from the fire was a sweater. A birthday gift to her from Mom just a month before. Jane pretended she didn’t remember. She handed it to you, wrapped in a smoky paper-bag wad, and Mom made you thank her.

  “She’s probably up a tree somewhere,” one of the cousins said. Meagan, I think. Her voice was mocking and shrill. You would have heard her as clearly as I did through the knots and pocks in the floorboards.

  “Or in the henhouse with the other chickens.” There were peals of laughter.

  The cousins had branded you a chicken last winter when, during a game of sixty seconds in the closet, you wouldn’t go into the pickle pantry with our all-hands cousin, Andrew. The grown-ups were upstairs cracking nuts. Women in the kitchen, men in the living room. I was old enough to be with the women and saw that even after you told Mom what happened, she sent you back down. Scolded you and told you to start a new game.

  Afterwards you blamed yourself, wondering what you expected after agreeing to play when everyone there was related. Except Todd, our second cousin, who was adopted from some missionary country. He had so much acne that everyone called him Toad. But not you. No one went into the pantry with him even when they were supposed to. When he went in alone you opened the door and told him where to find the sweets Mom kept behind the pickled beets.

  Downstairs in the barn,
we all heard Megan — it was clearly her — say, “God, this place is so lame.” You looked at Mom to see what she would do, but she didn’t move. “There’s, like, cow shit everywhere. Good thing it matches these stupid shoes!”

  “I know. And I don’t care what Dad says, either,” said Jane. “I’m throwing out everything I’m wearing today after we get home.”

  “Maybe we should burn it.”

  They laughed.

  Mom looked at you, uncertain.

  “Okay, seriously,” said Meagan. “Do you think anyone’s even seen Elsie all day? I mean she could be dead for all anyone knows, and Aunt Amanda is just in denial or something.”

  “Yeah,” Jane cut in. “Maybe she’s hiding the body in the back of the henhouse so she can still visit it and pretend Elsie’s the kind of daughter she always wanted.”

  They didn’t know Mom could hear them. I don’t think it would have made any difference.

  “Did you see Elsie’s face when she heard her stupid mother say she’d be happier without her and always having to wonder what she’s going to do next? Aunt Amanda didn’t even know she was listening.”

  I saw you listening, Elsie. To Mom that morning from the top of the stairs. To Meagan and Jane in the barn. You didn’t know that I told Mom to go after you, told her that you had heard her say those things to Aunt Frances.

  “Oh, God,” Mom had said when I told her what you heard. “Do you think she’ll hurt herself or something?”

  “Elsie,” Mom said, clinging to the ladder. She was so quiet you could barely hear her. “You know I love you, don’t you? Even though you frustrate me sometimes, I love you.” She waited for you to answer. Maybe waiting to see whether Meagan and Jane had heard her, too.