Women Talking

by Miriam Toews

  Greta has lifted her arms into the air.

  Agata sharpens her gaze (I see now that Salome has inherited this type of heat-seeking-missile gaze from her mother) and is very still.

  How early? Mariche asks, and the young women shrug.

  Which men? Mariche asks.

  One of them is Klaas, says Neitje. (Klaas Loewen is Mariche’s husband.)

  Mariche takes a slender chicken bone from her mouth and lays it next to her bowl, and makes the smallest of small sounds.

  Ona hands me a large roll of brown paper, the kind used to package cheese and meat. She tells me she has taken it from the summer kitchen.

  My mother, Monica, used to give me cheese packaging paper to draw on when I was young.

  Ona suggests that I use the packaging paper to make lists of the pros and cons for the women’s options. These need to be written on a large piece of paper. None of the women will be able to read what you write, says Ona, but we will keep it here in the hayloft as an artifact for others to discover.

  Autje and Neitje exchange glances. What is Ona talking about now? Why is she so strange? How can we prevent ourselves from becoming like her?

  Yes, a discovery, says Salome (in a rare tender moment of indulging her sister).

  Agata nods impatiently and moves her hands in rapid circles like a buggy wheel, meaning: Can we please proceed?

  Mejal finds nails in the tack room (she will use any opportunity to indulge in a quick haul from her cigarette) and a salt block to hammer the packaging paper to the wall.

  Ona suggests I write the first heading to read as follows: Staying and Fighting. Beneath that, I write a second sub-heading: Pros.

  At this, the women begin speaking over one another, and I have no choice but to politely, and with apologies, request that they take turns speaking so that I can understand what each one of them is saying and have several seconds to transcribe it onto the paper.

  PROS

  We won’t have to leave.

  We won’t have to pack.

  We won’t have to figure out where we’re going or experience the uncertainty of not knowing where we are going. (We don’t have a map of any place.)

  Salome scoffs at this last point, calling it absurd. The only certainty we’ll know is uncertainty, she says, regardless of where we are.

  Ona asserts: Other than the certainty of the power of love.

  Salome turns to face Ona directly. Keep inanities such as these to yourself, she pleads.

  Mejal defends Ona. Why couldn’t that be the case, that the only certainty is the power of love? she wonders.

  Because it’s meaningless! Salome shouts. Particularly in this fucking context!

  Agata sharply rebukes her daughters. Then, deflecting, she points to the younger women. Autje? Neitje? she says. Do you have something to add to the list?

  Salome is tearing off slivers of her fingernails with her teeth and eating them. Mejal grimaces in disgust as Salome spits out the nails.

  We won’t have to leave the people we love? says Neitje.

  Greta points out that the women could bring loved ones with them.

  Others question the practicality of this, and Ona mentions, gently, that several of the people we love are people we also fear.

  We could create the possibility of a new order right here, in a place that is familiar to us, Mariche adds.

  Not simply familiar, a place that is ours, corrects Salome.

  But if we leave it, asks Mejal, will it still be ours? Will we be able to come back?

  August did, says Salome. Ask him.

  There’s no time, says Ona. August, write the cons now please.

  I embrace Ona, in my mind, and she embraces me.

  CONS

  We won’t be forgiven.

  We don’t know how to fight. (Salome interrupts: I know how to fight. The others studiously ignore her.)

  We don’t want to fight.

  There is the risk that conditions will be worse after fighting than before.

  Ona raises her hand and asks if she may speak. (I wonder if she is doing this sarcastically, in response to my earlier comment to the women about speaking in turn.)

  Please, I say to her.

  Would it be beneficial, Ona asks, before we list the pros and cons of staying and fighting, to establish what exactly we are fighting for?

  Mariche quickly responds: It’s obvious: we’re fighting for our safety and for our freedom from attacks!

  Yes, Ona agrees, but what would that entail? Perhaps we need to create a manifesto or revolutionary statement—(Ona and I glance quickly at each other; I know that she is invoking my mother, who was forever, in fields and barns and by candlelight, working on versions of revolutionary statements. I look down and smile)—that describes the conditions of life in the colony that we would aspire to/require after winning the fight. Perhaps we need to know more specifically what we are fighting to achieve (not only what we are fighting to destroy), and what actions would be required for such achievement, even after the fight has been won, if it is won.

  When Ona speaks, says Mariche, it sounds like a stampede of yearlings in my head. There is not enough time left for this kind of discussion. She reminds the women that a certain number of the men are returning early to the colony.

  Agata agrees with Mariche, placating her. But she also reminds the women that their meetings and plans could be kept secret from the two or three men returning early, and that these men will only be at the colony briefly to pick up more animals to sell, and will quickly return to the city. Since Mariche’s husband, Klaas, is rumoured to be one of the men returning early, Agata reminds Mariche that she must “act natural,” as it were. (Agata has used a Low German expression for which there is no easy translation to English. It pertains to a type of fruit and to winter.)

  The others nod in solemn agreement.

  Agata continues, asking Ona to elaborate on her revolutionary statement.

  I notice that even Neitje and Autje, who are normally wary of Ona because Ona is thought to have lost her fear—which is akin, for colonists, to having lost one’s moral compass and been transformed into a demon—have turned their attention to her.

  It’s very simple, says Ona.

  She tosses off a few ideas: Men and women will make all decisions for the colony collectively. Women will be allowed to think. Girls will be taught to read and write. The schoolhouse must display a map of the world so that we can begin to understand our place in it. A new religion, extrapolated from the old but focused on love, will be created by the women of Molotschna.

  (I feel pain in my chest. Ona is repeating nearly verbatim one of the lessons my mother, Monica, gave to the girls in her secret schoolhouse. She is looking at me, trying to make eye contact, she is attempting to communicate something vital, something remembered, something lost.)

  Mariche creases her brow, dramatically.

  Ona continues: Our children will be safe.

  Greta has closed her eyes. She repeats the word “collectively,” as though it is the name of a new vegetable she is unfamiliar with.

  Mariche can contain herself no longer. She accuses Ona of being a dreamer.

  We are women without a voice, Ona states calmly. We are women out of time and place, without even the language of the country we reside in. We are Mennonites without a homeland. We have nothing to return to, and even the animals of Molotschna are safer in their homes than we women are. All we women have are our dreams—so of course we are dreamers.

  Mariche scoffs at this. Would you like to hear my dream? she asks, and before anyone can reply she begins to describe a dream in which people with Narfa are not put in charge of making revolutionary statements.

  Ona is smiling—not nervously but with genuine appreciation for Mariche’s humour.

  Ona and Salome’s younger sister Mina had a reputation in the colony as a perpetual smiler. She was Happy Mina. Ona is smiling like Mina now.

  (Even in death, Mina appeared to be smilin
g. At Mina’s funeral, Ona pulled Mina’s kerchief down an inch or two to reveal the rope marks on her neck. She said in a loud voice to the congregation that it wasn’t ammonia from cleaning the barn that had killed her, as Peters had said. Mina had been found hanging from a rafter in the yearling shed. Peters had interrupted Mina’s funeral service and asked Deacons Klippenstein and Unrau to take Ona home. The funeral was being held outside the church because the bodies of suicides are not permitted in the sanctuary. Mina’s body lay on a block of ice, in the sun. Mina sank lower and lower, towards the ground, slowly enclosed by a dark circle, wet earth. Ona ran away from the men. Peters prayed for Ona. The congregation bowed their heads.

  Neitje is Mina’s daughter, now in the care of Salome. Mina hanged herself after Neitje was attacked in her bedroom, her wrists rubbed raw with baler twine, her body smeared with blood and shit and semen. At first Peters told Mina it was Satan who was responsible for the attack, that it was punishment from God, that God was punishing the women for their sins. Then Peters told Mina she was making the attack up. He repeated the words “wild female imagination,” with forceful punctuation after each of the words to create three short sentences. Mina demanded to know which it was: Satan or her imagination. Mina clawed at Peters’ eyes. She removed her clothes and damaged her body with pinking shears. She went to the barn and hanged herself. Peters cut her down and told the colony she had inhaled too many ammonia fumes while cleaning the yearling shed. Agata Friesen, Mina’s mother, washed Mina’s body in her own tears. That is what the women of the colony say, and they were there.)

  Agata now indicates that she’s heard enough. She declares that the revolutionary statement Ona outlined earlier is sound, and can be added to in the course of time, and that it will stand as the manifesto boldly declaring what the women want to happen in the colony if they are to stay and fight.

  Greta has raised both arms in the air. She asks: What will happen if the men refuse to meet our demands?

  Ona responds: We will kill them.

  Autje and Neitje gasp, then smile tentatively.

  Mejal is so perturbed that she has taken out her rolling papers and tobacco in full view of the others.

  Agata stands up and puts her arms around Ona. No leibchen, she whispers, no. She explains to the others that Ona is joking.

  Salome shrugs. Maybe not.

  Agata pokes Salome in the shoulder, and says: We will find a road and we will travel.

  Greta nods slowly. Yes, but then what are you saying, Agata? That we will leave?

  A road is many things, Agata tells her.

  This type of “Friesen talk” (what Mariche characterizes as “coffeehousing,” although she has never been to a coffee house) exasperates the Loewens.

  Autje gingerly suggests that we now list the pros and cons for leaving, and the others agree.

  Autje and Neitje, I notice, have removed their kerchiefs and braided their long hair together, into one braid, so they are conjoined.

  LEAVING

  PROS

  We will be gone.

  We will be safe.

  Mariche interjects here. Perhaps not, she says, but the first is most definitely a fact, that if we leave we will be gone. She looks around at the group. Are we not under too much of a time restriction to state the obvious?

  Salome snaps back that not everything is to be interpreted literally. She adds to the list.

  We will not be asked to forgive the men, because we will not be here to hear the question.

  Yes, says Mariche, sarcastically—but according to Ona’s manifesto, new methods of forgiveness would be established and the men would not be allowed to force us to forgive, or force us to leave the colony if we don’t forgive, or threaten us with God’s refusal to forgive us if we don’t forgive the men. She reminds us that one of Ona’s earlier notions was that harm done to children, because of its abjectly depraved nature, should be in its own God-only forgiveness category, and that Ona seems to think she has the authority to create a new religion.

  Ona protests, quietly, that she doesn’t believe that at all. She doesn’t believe in authority, period, because authority makes people cruel.

  Salome interrupts: The people with authority or the people without?

  Mariche ignores Salome. How on earth can you not believe in authority? she asks Ona.

  How on earth can you believe in authority? says Ona.

  Greta and Agata, in unison, beg both women to be silent.

  We will see a little bit of the world? This “pro” is offered by Neitje Friesen.

  I observe that as the older women’s patience begins to unravel, the younger women are stepping with trepidation into the breach. They are still connected to each other with their hair. Once again, the lyrics of “California Dreamin’” come to mind and I hum, All the leaves are brown …

  A few of the women look at me, curious—especially Autje and Neitje. Perhaps they are wondering why I’m humming the song they heard on the census-taker’s radio. Had I been spying on them? I’d like to explain to them that I wasn’t spying, it was an accident, but I know I cannot.

  I request that we move on to the Cons of Leaving.

  Mariche reminds me that they, the women, will determine what happens in these meetings, not a “two-bit” failed farmer, a schinda who must resort to teaching.

  Greta erupts. Mariche! she shouts, standing up. Klaas is returning any minute and you are wasting time with your irritability! Klaas will return to your home for just long enough to take his animals in order to sell for bail money that will see the rapists return to Molotschna, and he will lay his hands on you and on the children, and you, as always, will say nothing to him but rather fire away at us all like a Gatling gun with your misdirected rage. What good does that do?

  The women are silent.

  I apologize for wrongly attempting to nudge the proceedings, as that is not my place.

  The women say nothing. Greta is heaving with each breath.

  Note: The word Mariche used to describe me, schinda, means “tanner,” a tanner of hides. In Russia, when Mennonites lived by the Black Sea with its mysterious underground river, men who were unable to make a living as farmers were forced to herd the cattle for the other Mennonites. If a cow died, the herdsman had to skin the animal and tan the hide. Schinda, therefore, means one not clever enough to know how to farm. It is the king of insults in Molotschna.

  Now Greta speaks, and she makes a radical statement. She says that she is no longer a Mennonite.

  Autje and Neitje, experts though they are at appearing indifferent, look up from the table, alarmed.

  Ona mentioned earlier that we women would have to ask ourselves who we were, Greta says. Well, she declares, I have told you who I am not.

  Agata is laughing. She claims that Greta has many times announced that she is no longer a Mennonite—and yet was born from Mennonites and continues to live as a Mennonite, with Mennonites, in a Mennonite colony, where she speaks the Mennonite language.

  Those things do not make me a Mennonite, Greta argues.

  Then what are the things that make you a Mennonite? Agata asks.

  Autje, in what I think must be an attempt to restore order, has piped up again, suggesting several Cons to Leaving.

  We don’t have a map, she says.

  But the other women ignore her, listening to Agata and Greta’s debate.

  Autje and Neitje sway back and forth, a tug of war with the braid that connects them, but gently. Autje continues: We don’t know where to go.

  Neitje laughs. She adds: We don’t even know where we are!

  The girls laugh together.

  At last Greta turns to them, hollering, Hush! And: Put your hair away.

  Miep, Salome’s little daughter, has climbed up the ladder to the loft and is calling out to her mother. Salome picks Miep up into her arms. Miep is crying. She is frightened. She has heard the women yelling. Miep asks Salome to change her diaper—but shyly, because she is three years old already.


  Agata explains to me softly that Miep had been out of diapers for nearly a year but had recently requested to wear them again.

  Salome is holding Miep and stroking her hair, whispering to her, kissing her. Ona puts her arm around Salome’s shoulders while her sister cradles Miep.

  Should we adjourn for the day? Agata suggests.

  Mejal nods but asks that at least one or two of the Cons of Leaving be written on the packaging paper so that the women and I will know where to start tomorrow—or later this evening, if it is possible to leave their homes.

  Salome stands up, holding Miep.

  None, she says. There are no Cons of Leaving.

  I imagine her leaving this very moment, becoming smaller and smaller as, with Miep in her arms, she walks across the soybean field, the coffee field, the cornfield, the sorghum, the crossing, the dry riverbed, the coulee, across the border, never once turning around for a last salty look.

  And the gates of hell shall not prevail against her.

  Please sit, says Agata, touching Salome’s arm.

  Salome obeys her mother. She sits, and glares into the middle distance.

  Now Nettie (Melvin) Gerbrandt has climbed the ladder to the loft and is presenting herself to the women. She apologizes for letting Miep out of her sight, for allowing Miep to run away to her mother, although she says all this without using words.

  Agata waves the apology away. Not to worry, she says kindly, and encourages Nettie to return to the other children, who have likely been left alone. Miep will stay with Salome for now.