Operation Bonnet

by Kimberly Stuart

  “May I help you?” She smiled at Friendly Greeter and said something in Pennsylvania Dutch or German or Pig Latin, none of which I spoke fluently. F. G. hobbled away but not before casting a disapproving glance in my direction.

  “I’m here to take Professor Moss’s place,” I said. “She’s very busy with her writing and teaching and brooding and asked if I might take over her research project with you all.” My thoughts flashed to when I’d pushed the fake Dear John note under Moss’s office door and spied on her through the window. Her face had fallen as she read it, so disappointed that the Schrock family had decided to take a break from their cooking sessions with her. God willed it, they’d said, which might have been a teeny bit of blasphemy on my part, but it was inarguable. Not a peep of protest from the professor, and on the Schrocks’ front porch I stood.

  “Yes, that will be fine,” the woman said. She held out her hand and offered a warm smile. “My name is Sarah Schrock. You met my mother-in-law, Mary Schrock. She is the one who talks to Professor Moss.”

  I nodded and kept smiling. Friendly Greeter was to be my primary source? I followed Sarah through a simply appointed living room and toward the back of the house. Not the sweet, plump gray-hair I’d pictured, Friendly Greeter was Granny Schrock. No worries, I told myself as we entered the kitchen. She’d warm up to me.

  Mary sat on a chair at a long wooden table, putting a metal potato peeler to a carrot with such vengeance, I cringed.

  Sarah pointed to an empty chair next to her mother-in-law and then left my side. Soon she had her back to me at the kitchen sink. Two young girls busied themselves around the large room, one sweeping, one leaning over the countertop, sleeves rolled up and kneading bread. Willowy and fair, the kneader looked up at me and smiled quickly before returning to her work.

  “You are the new professor?” Granny said, not looking up.

  “Yes, I am. I mean, no, I’m not a professor. But I’ll be pretending I am.” I took a breath. This woman was unraveling me, that’s what. “I’ll be taking Professor Moss’s place for a while. She says she’s sorry she’s too busy to come.”

  Granny pushed out a chair with her foot. “Sit.”

  I sat, tucking my feet under the chair.

  “Today we peel.” She passed me a peeler and a bowl of vegetables. “You watch.” She looked at me, eyes half-moons again, as if she, too, had read that online article about eye slits and interrogation. She placed her veiny hands deliberately, one holding the carrot, one gripping the peeler. “Start at top, peel to down. Straight line.” She moved the peeler downward at a pace better suited to microscopic surgery. Oh, glory, was she slow. I watched for the first three centimeters but darted my eyes over to the others in the room. I thought I heard a giggle, but no one met my gaze.

  “You are watching?” Granny said, rapping one bony knuckle on the table.

  I jumped and said, “Yes. Every move!”

  “Because,” she said, marking the s sound, “I do not teach a girl who will not listen. Ya, maed?”

  “Of course, Grandmother Mary,” Sarah answered. The other girls made mewling noises in agreement.

  “English girls do not learn to cook.” Granny resumed her peeling. “I have been told that they eat nothing but sugar and alcohol and bacon.” She looked at me with eyebrows arched but didn’t seem to want a response. Matt would be so pleased to hear this rumor. “But at this house, we eat all of God’s bounty. You need not much added if the ingredients are simple and good.”

  “Right,” I said, eyes glued on my first carrot. “Simple and good.”

  “This is the key to a good life, pleasing to God and His perfect will.” Granny settled back in her chair, and I thought I heard the kneader sigh. “Simple life, not burdened with too much. You English like too much of too much.” She pointed her peeler at me. “Too much money, too much houses, too much cars, too much fast running from place to place. Our people separated from this, thanks be to God. And look how happy we are.” She gestured to the other women. Sarah returned a dutiful smile and approached the table with a glass of water.

  “Would you like a slice of bread? The first two loaves are almost done.”

  Oh, the bread. I’d hoped she was going to ask. I’d eaten lunch, but not much of one because of nerves and because of the time it took to coax the hair into a bun. The smell of baking bread had enveloped me in the living room and tempted me from that moment onward.

  “Yes, I’d love some. Thank you.” I took a sip of water. “The smell is wonderful.”

  Sarah blushed slightly. “You are kind.”

  Granny Mary sniffed. “Man does not live on bread alone. And this bread is not the most impressive. My daughter Grace is excellent bread maker. She lives in Pennsylvania with her thirteen children.”

  I think I was supposed to be impressed with this obscene number because Mary prompted me.

  “Thirteen children, none of them dead.”

  “Oh, wow.” I said. “That’s really great.”

  Sarah bit her bottom lip and hustled over to the oven. I watched her slide two loaves out of jet-black baking pans, seeing from her ease how second nature the act was to her. I felt the kneading girl’s eyes on me and turned my head to meet her stare. She cocked her head and smiled slightly until the other girl poked her ankles with the broom to sweep below her feet. The girls laughed softly and exchanged what sounded like playful banter. I, for one, was feeling sorry for myself that a score of five on the AP Spanish exam was getting me nowhere.

  “Your name is what?” Mary pounded her fist once on the tabletop. I jumped. Table pounding seemed an excessive use of theatrics to get my attention, but no one else in the room skipped a beat.

  “My name is Nellie. Nellie Monroe.” As the words left my mouth, I wanted to groan at my own stupidity. What PI reveals her given name? I’d even decided beforehand to be known as Ruth Ford, my own little shout-out to Harrison and his work with the Amish. That Mary woman, though. I just couldn’t settle into myself with her around.

  “Look, Nellie Monroe.” Mary poked my cutting board with the end of her peeler. “You have peeled more carrots than the skinny professor did in all her time with me.”

  I let my eyes fall to the board, now laden with a pyramid of peeled carrots.

  Her eyes sparked, and I thought I saw remnants of a mischievous girl. “Next time, we chop.”

  She rose slowly from her chair.

  I followed suit and waited while Mary scrutinized my face. Finally she spoke.

  “Next week Tuesday. Do not be late.”

  I nodded. “Got it.” I took her hand and curtsied for emphasis. “Good-bye.”

  I could feel them watching me as I left, but I kept my bonnet up and strode right through the house to the front door. Amish 101, first session, and I was already skipping to the top of the class.

  11

  Better Left Unsaid

  Nona was naked when I got home. I’d called up the warning greeting, but she didn’t answer. With worry nudging my feet to climb the stairs even faster, I burst open the door to the attic and found her naked and dancing to Al Green.

  “Good gravy,” I said, one hand flying up to my face far too late. That kind of image sears within milliseconds. “Nona!” I shouted through my fingers. “Lots of flesh. Pale, fleshy flesh, Nona. Sorry. I’ll come back.” I turned back toward the door, but she called over the music.

  “Don’t be such a prude, Nellie Augusta Lourdes.” She must have turned down the volume because Al kept singing but more softly. “I couldn’t hear you over my music. Don’t you just love disco funk? Nellie, turn around, for Pete’s sake. I have my robe on.”

  I turned slowly, hand still over my face.

  Nona laughed. “Naked I came into the world, and naked I will return.” She shook her head at me. “You’re worse than Mrs. H. I
t’s not like you haven’t seen breasts before.”

  “I tend to keep my breasts to myself.”

  “That’ll change soon enough,” she said. The singsong voice was particularly disturbing—one should not discuss breasts in singsong.

  “Not likely,” I said, following her to the window chairs. “Unless you have plans for bringing back arranged marriages.” I twisted my body in the chair and draped my legs over one of its high arms. “I just got back from my first day on the job.”

  She sat primly down, all decorum now that she was clothed. “How was it?”

  I took a moment before answering. “Not exactly fast-paced, but not a disappointment either. I met some interesting people.”

  She nodded. Her eyes were clear and bright, no sign of the shadows that often clouded them. “Any of them men?”

  “Goodness.” I sounded huffy. “What’s with the man focus today? I’m trying to tell you about my first day of a career. Women’s rights, remember? Independence? Freedom from oppression? Shattering the glass ceiling?”

  “I’ve always thought that was a tragic metaphor.” Nona shook her head mournfully. “What a beautiful image, a ceiling made of glass! Why on earth would anyone like to break it?”

  “I think the idea is that equality in the workplace is really a mirage—”

  She interrupted me with a toss of her head. “Rubbish, and you know it. Who cares if you break through every ceiling in the world, glass and otherwise, if there’s no one on the other side to share it with?”

  I stared at her face, flushed with emotion, and couldn’t stop the smile. “Nona, I have to say. I love to see you fiery.” I pulled my legs down from the chair arm and leaned across the space between us. Gripping her soft hands in mine, I said, “You’re the best thing going in this house, you know that?”

  She looked at our hands, holding tightly to each other, and her eyes filled. She drew a shaky breath and said, “Sometimes it’s harder to know things are falling apart.” Her eyes found mine. “I know things are falling, Nellie. I wish it weren’t so, but I know it all the same.”

  I brushed tears from her face, right cheek first, left cheek, back and forth as she needed. For many slow minutes we sat together in the waning light of afternoon, I comforting my clear-eyed grandmother with nothing but silence and shared heartache.

  “I’m glad you had a good day, honey.” She patted my hand, tears still forging quiet rivers down the wrinkles in her cheeks.

  “Me too,” I said, lowering my forehead to touch hers. “I’m glad you had a good day too.”

  The next day was my day off from Tank’s, and I planned to bury myself in Amish reading. In addition to the doorstop Professor Moss gave me, I’d cleaned out the Casper Public Library. The librarian, Mrs. Fredricks, had long since stopped initiating small talk with me, the last straw being in fifth grade when I’d asked her fifteen consecutive questions she was unable to answer. She’d pursed her lips at the end of that interaction and hadn’t pried them open in my presence since.

  Even with her sourpuss attitude, however, Mrs. Fredricks knew the library’s collection better than any old broad there. She’d mutely pointed out every single book in the building having to do with the Amish, including a racy romance series with bonnets and suspenders flying all over the covers. I’d taken one of those for good measure, which had made Fredricks pinch all the blood out of both upper and lower lips.

  On my bedroom desk sat the bodice ripper, the book from Moss, a memoir from a woman who left the Amish, and two histories that looked dry enough to start fires. I’d also picked up an Amish cookbook in Git ’n’ Go, our local convenience store. A strange place to procure reading material, I admit, but I’d put it right on top of my bag of Twizzlers and heard from the cashier I was the first to buy a copy since she’d started working there two years ago.

  By nine, I was halfway through the bodice ripper when I heard a tentative knock on the door.

  “Come in,” I said, knowing it had to be my mother. Pop had been scared of my bedroom since I’d entered sixth grade. Mrs. H. was categorically opposed to my privacy and would never have knocked, and Nona preferred putting her nose right into the doorjamb and singing, “Yoo hoo! Party’s here!”

  Sure enough, Annette turned the knob and poked her head in. “Hello, dear,” she said, stepping gingerly over the threshold. She clicked over to me in red heels and pecked me on the top of the head. At least, I think she did as I heard the demure smack of lipsticked lips and smelled a waft of her perfume. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I hadn’t actually felt this traditional greeting since I was a bald baby, as the afro simply could not be penetrated by something that polite.

  “How are you?” I said. I turned around in my desk chair and watched her take an inventory of the room.

  She picked up a stuffed bear that was missing one eye. “Perhaps it’s time for a childhood intervention? This room could use a grown-up touch, don’t you think?”

  I shrugged. “I’ll get to it. Not at the top of my list, though.” A younger, less mature Nellie might have pointed out the lunacy of a mother entering her daughter’s bedroom once a quarter and dishing out tips on domesticity, but the more mature Nellie prevailed. “Where’s Pop?”

  She moved a pile of clothes to make room on my bed for her sculpted tush. “I believe he’s golfing with Tank. I’ve learned it’s best for me to steer clear of their boy outings.” She wrinkled her nose. “Even in their fifties, those two spend most of their time together discussing flatulence and football.”

  I caught my breath. Annette had said flatulence without blushing. This from the woman who’d told me women had babies through their earlobes and that’s why they wore earrings. “Mother, such language!”

  “Oh. Sorry,” she seemed genuinely surprised that I’d noticed. “I guess sometimes I forget I’m supposed to be maternal.” Her fingers smoothed the bear with one eye. “You’ve always been rather self-sufficient, you know.”

  I bit my lip, worried about her sad smile. Annette was supposed to be the unfeeling one in our family. Sad smiles would really mess up that balance. “I suppose I learned from you. Don’t strong women beget strong daughters?”

  She laughed. “Is that what I am? A strong woman?” She took a deep breath and held her chest high as she let her lungs release all the oxygen. She stared at my Law and Order poster but didn’t seem to see anything on it, which was a shame because Mariska Hargitay looks particularly intimidating. After a moment, she said, “What are we going to do about Nona?”

  I bristled. “Nothing. Everything, I mean, but just like we have been doing.”

  She turned to me. “She’s worse, Nellie.”

  “Of course she is,” I said. I stood and started folding the clothes on the floor, which should indicate how distressed I was. “You and Pop only come around every few months, which is an eternity when you’re eighty-two years old.”

  My mother’s spine stiffened. “Now, don’t make this about me.”

  “I’m not,” I said into a rumpled sweatshirt, not wanting to look her in the eye. “But you better not either. Don’t make this into something it’s not, just because you’re surprised every time you come home. I’m doing … we’re doing fine. Mrs. H. gives her all her medicines like clockwork. Either she or I is with Nona at all times, and we watch her way more closely and with more love than any ridiculous, life-depleting old people’s home would.” I stopped, out of breath. My scalp prickled with tiny beads of sweat.

  “Nellie.” She stood and came to me. She put one hand on my shoulder, which probably meant she wanted me to hug her. I stood still and waited.

  “Honey, she’s going to need help we can’t give her here.”

  “We’re her family.” My voice sounded small.

  “Yes.” She paused. “What’s that on your desk? Nellie, are you reading dime-store r
omances?” She started to giggle. “I’m sorry. I know this may not be the moment, but that book on your desk is the funniest—” She broke off into hard, almost painful fits of laughter.

  Watching her made my body relax. In fact, I started to laugh myself. “It’s kind of a long story.”

  “No, no,” she shook her head. “Please don’t explain it to me. I’m thrilled, really.” She laughed again, clutching her stomach. “You memorized a monologue from Othello when you were ten! Janice Thompkins used to make snide comments about.… But here you are, and it’s like … backwards maturation!”

  Now, honestly, it wasn’t that funny. If you’d walked into my bedroom at that moment, you would have thought that we were a few peas short of a casserole. Mother rolled around on my bed, gripping her skinny ribs, and I leaned on my wall for support. It occurred to me in those moments that parenting me must have presented its own challenges for Super Annette. I let her laugh, let her think I was into pretend literature, let us both postpone the reason for her quarterly visit. I handed her a tissue to wipe her eyes and knew some things could wait.

  12

  New and Improved

  Amos leaned against the counter and tipped back a can of Red Bull. I didn’t point it out, but he had no business ingesting more sugar.

  “Have you tried this Red Bull Energy Drink?” His eyes bulged. “It is the best way to work! I finished two frames yesterday morning.”

  “Yes, and such clean, straight lines.” The frame on the third hole looked like a four-year-old had held the nail gun.

  “Exactly, this is true.” He nodded, marveling at his own ability. He used his shirt to wipe beads of condensation off the bottom of the can. “And you like this new shirt, am I correct?”

  It was a short-sleeved button-down, and if I wasn’t mistaken, contained shoulder pads. “It’s very bright.” Neon green with splatter paint.