Lily slipped on her coat and ran to Papa’s shop. She filled her apron with shavings from the pile under the wood planer. Down in the basement, Papa scooped several handfuls of shavings from her apron and piled them on top of wood scraps he had arranged on the bottom of the heater. He took a match and lit a piece of wood shaving. Lily and Papa and Mama watched as the flame flickered slowly, slowly, then poof! A fire started. Papa added a few scoopfuls of coal and closed the little door to the heater. “There,” he said, satisfied. “If all goes according to plan, we should have hot water to wash the dishes by the time we’re done eating breakfast.”
“Can I wash dishes this morning all by myself?” Lily asked. She wanted to be the first one in the house to use the hot water.
Papa and Mama exchanged a look, then they both laughed. What was so funny?
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you volunteer to wash dishes,” Mama said.
The very second Papa finished the prayer that signaled breakfast was over, Lily grabbed her plate and hurried over to the sink. She knew Joseph had his eye on that hot water faucet and wanted to be the first to try it. He had been talking about it all during breakfast. She opened the faucet and soon steamy hot water came pouring out. This was fun! She added soap and watched it bubble up. A nice layer of suds emerged on the top of the water—she didn’t even have to swish her hands back and forth. Soon, the dishpan was full and she had to turn the water off. And then reality set in. The actual washing part was no different.
Lily looked at the mountain of dirty dishes and pans stacked on the counter. So that was why Papa and Mama had laughed. They knew that washing dishes was the same, no matter how the water had been heated. Her excitement about washing dishes fizzled out.
The next day was Sunday. Lily stood quietly next to Mama as the women visited with each other before church started. That’s what little girls did until they turned ten and could visit with their friends. Alice Raber, Beth’s mother, turned to Mama. “I read that story you wrote for that farm magazine. Jonas and I got a good laugh over it. Did it really happen that way?”
“Yes, it did,” Mama said, chuckling. “It was a pig chase I’ll never forget.”
Other women had read the story and told Mama they enjoyed it. Everyone thought it was funny—everyone except for Ida Kauffman. Ida lifted her chin and looked down her nose at Lily, standing next to Mama. “Now I see why Lily is the way she is. Der Appel rollt net weit vum Baum.” The apple will not roll far away from its tree.
How mean! How rude. Lily clenched her fists at her sides. Ida Kauffman was just like Effie. They both said hateful things. Lily thought about stepping on Ida’s foot, hard, but Mama put a firm hand on her shoulder. “Well, Ida,” Mama said in a sweet voice, “that pig chase story has provided us with money for hot water.”
Ida Kauffman was flustered; she was at a rare loss for words. The Kauffmans didn’t have hot water. Mama knew that! Lily could barely hold back a big grin. She did, she held back that smug grin, but just barely.
Mama’s Pig Story
On a hot summer afternoon in July, our neighbor came huffing and puffing up our driveway, shouting, “Rachel! Rachel Lapp! Your pig got loose!”
My husband, Daniel, and I had been married only a few months. My uncle had given us a feeder pig as a wedding present. If we could get this pig up to a certain weight by winter, we would be able to sell it for a profit. But this pig was a little too smart for us. He escaped on a regular basis and found his way over to our neighbor’s garden where he would root out carrots and potatoes, then roll in the soft, cool dirt.
Daniel tried all kinds of ways to keep that pig in his pen. Finally, he fenced the pen with chicken wire and put double latches on the gates. But obviously, that sneaky pig had found a way out of his pen and made his way into the neighbor’s garden.
Our neighbor was a bachelor and liked to keep to himself. He was also a rather portly fellow. Chasing our pig off his property had quickly grown tiresome. Our friendship with our neighbor was on thin ice because of that clever pig.
On that July day, when I heard the neighbor call my name, I dashed outside and ran to the garden. There was the pig, rolling in mud in the neighbor’s garden. Daniel was at work, so the task of retrieving the pig fell to me.
Most of you know that chasing a pig is no Sunday picnic. They are extremely difficult to catch. The neighbor quickly became winded and leaned against the fence to catch his breath. The pig darted and dashed all around the garden; I darted and dashed behind him. I was covered in mud, head to toe. But I refused to let that pig get the best of me. Finally, he paused by the zucchini plants to nibble some blossoms. I tiptoed up behind him and made a headlong dive. I caught him by the tail! He squealed and grunted as I slipped a rope around its neck. I had caught that smart pig all by myself! I couldn’t wait to tell Daniel what I had done today.
I apologized to the neighbor and promised that Daniel would repair the damage done to the garden. I walked home with the pig, pleased. We were both covered in mud. I was grinning ear to ear, the pig was complaining. He kept up a steady stream of squeals, grunts, and grumbles.
Then an odd feeling started in my stomach and traveled to my head. Our feeder pig didn’t have a tail. Sure enough, as I walked past the barn to the pigpen, there was our feeder pig, curled up in a corner of the pen, sound asleep.
I looked down at the pig by my side. “Oh my. You’re not my pig.”
He looked back up at me, as if to say, “That’s what I was trying to tell you!”
26
Holey Lily
Rain, rain, rain. It had rained so much the last few weeks that Lily had almost forgotten what a sunny day felt like. Today, though, the sun had broken through the lead gray clouds. Lily looked longingly out the schoolhouse window, eager to get outside and feel warm sunshine on her face.
“Put your books away for recess,” Teacher Rhoda said.
Lily shoved her books inside her desk and stood, waiting to be dismissed. During noon recess, the children had played an exciting game of Prisoners’ Base. Teacher Rhoda had rung the bell before they had time to finish and Lily couldn’t wait to continue the game.
Everyone grabbed their coats from the hooks at the back of the schoolroom and got their boots on. The playground was still a little muddy from the rain they’d had earlier in the week.
Lily slipped her foot into her boot, but something felt strange. She pulled the boot off and found her shoe was covered with mud. She turned the boot upside down and poured the mud out. She looked into her other boot. Same thing. Filled with mud.
Aaron Yoder was watching her. He nudged Sam Stoltzfus with his elbow and pointed to Lily. The two of them doubled over with laughter. Lily would have liked to throw handfuls of mud right at their goofy faces, but then she would be in trouble. She’d had enough trouble lately.
Lily took her boots into the schoolhouse and poured water into them to try to wash the mud out. She tried to dry the insides with paper towels but it didn’t work. Too soggy.
Teacher Rhoda helped her clean off her muddy shoe. “I think you should find something to play indoors until your boots have a chance to dry.”
Lily was so angry! Aaron was the worst human being on earth—as bad as Effie. And now he had ruined an all-too-rare sunny day of recess.
It started as a small loose thread on the elbow of Lily’s black sweater. It was just one thread, but she couldn’t leave it alone. During silent reading periods in school, she would hold her elbows and twirl that thread ever so slightly, between her thumb and finger. Twist and twirl, twist and twirl. She thought about knotting it and breaking it off, but never quite got around to it. Her hands just naturally went to that tiny, out-of-place piece of loose yarn.
A few days later, during lunch recess, Effie pointed at Lily’s elbow. “You have a great big hole!” Lily held out her arm to see what Effie was pointing to. She hadn’t realized that the yarn had been unraveling as she twisted the thread. Her elbow was now sticking out
of a gaping hole. Her beautiful sweater, new last Christmas!
Then Aaron noticed. He started chanting, “Holey Lily!” and Sam whooped with laughter. Soon half of the boys, along with Effie, were making fun of her sweater. That nickname worried her, too. Anytime Aaron gave someone a nickname, it stuck like flypaper.
When Lily got home from school, she showed Mama the hole in her sweater. She might have mentioned how annoying Effie was. And why did Effie have to point it out in front of everybody? Lily might have made the tiniest suggestion that Aaron Yoder should be sent to the moon.
Mama reserved judgment. She examined the sweater in the light by the window. “This hole reminds me of what happens when we don’t forgive someone. Choosing to think about or gossip about someone who offends us is like twisting that tiny thread around between our fingers. It won’t be long before that little thread causes a festering hole.”
Effie, she meant. And Aaron.
Mama took out her darning needle and threaded it with black yarn. “You know, Lily, friendships aren’t always easy, aren’t always perfect, aren’t always free from hurt. But it isn’t right to just ignore people or wish they would be sent off someplace far, far away. How we choose to handle those times when we’re wounded by a friend will make the difference between growing love or creating a hole.”
Then she handed Lily the needle and yarn. “It’s yours to fix.”
Lily stared at the needle. A hole in a sweater was much easier to fix than Aaron Yoder and Effie Kauffman.
27
Levi Up a Tree
It was a rainy, blustery day and the children had to play indoors at recess in the basement. Lily and her friends jumped rope but the boys couldn’t decide on anything. They were tossing around ideas. “If it wasn’t raining it would be good weather to fly a kite,” Levi said.
“But it is raining,” Aaron Yoder pointed out with a sneer. “Hey, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we build kites that we could fly once it stops raining?”
The boys rallied behind that idea. Ezra Yoder started to give out instructions. He took some of the kindling and made wooden strips. He told two boys to run upstairs to ask Teacher Rhoda for some plastic shopping bags and needle and thread.
“Hold on!” Levi said. “I don’t sew. That’s girl work.”
“Come on, Levi,” Ezra said. “We always sew our own kites at home.”
“Not me,” Levi said. He turned to his sister. “Hannah, we need you and the other girls to sew our kites.”
Hannah immediately dropped her end of the jump rope and it tangled up around Lily’s feet. She bent down to untangle it while the other girls hurried over to start sewing kites for the boys.
How ridiculous! Just because the boys snapped their fingers, the silly girls jumped. Lily was disappointed. She hated to sew by hand, and she especially did not want to sew for any boy. Maybe she would help Joseph. But no other boys, not even Cousin Levi.
But jumping rope alone wasn’t much fun. Finally, she moseyed over to where the girls were gathered. Ezra had tied kindling strips firmly together with baling twine and the girls set to work to try to sew the plastic bags over them. It was frustrating work for Lily. She tried to make the plastic bag taut around the tied kindling strips but it kept slipping out of place when she jabbed her needle into it. Even the older girls seemed to be having a hard time doing it, but they didn’t seem to mind like Lily did. They talked and giggled at dumb things the boys said. Lily was disgusted. She thought the boys should make their own stupid kites. They were the ones who wanted them in the first place.
When Teacher Rhoda rang the bell, Lily dropped the kite she had been working on, happy to go to her desk and face math. Even studying percentages in arithmetic was better than hand sewing a plastic bag.
The next day was perfect kite weather. The sun shone and the wind whipped through the trees. The boys were eager to try out their new kites. They spent the first recess putting finishing touches on them, including tails made from an old sheet. By lunchtime, they were ready to try them out.
“I have the best kite,” Levi said in his loud, look-at-me voice.
Aaron rolled his eyes. “We haven’t even tried them out yet. We won’t know who has the best until we see how they fly.”
The girls watched as the boys held their kites and started to run, then let them go. Most of them nosedived into the ground behind them instead of lifting in the air and flying like a kite was supposed to do. Levi’s kite, though, picked up the wind and started to drift higher and higher. Levi ran along under it, carefully releasing more and more string. The kite rose up and up, only to tangle in the branches of an oak tree at the edge of the school yard.
Levi ran to the tree, grabbed a low branch and hitched himself up on it. Then he started to climb, branch by branch.
Ezra cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted up to him. “Levi, you can’t get that kite down. It’s too high.”
Levi looked down at Ezra and the other children who were gathering at the base of the tree, watching him. “Maybe for you, but I can easily get to it. I’m the best tree climber in the school.”
Lily just knew this was a bad idea. She held her breath as she watched Levi climb higher and higher. He loved an audience and now he had one. He would never come down until he got that kite. All the other children stood with heads craned back, watching him with bated breath, waiting to see if he might fall. No one cared about the kites anymore. They wanted to see if Levi could climb to the top of the tree.
From the steps of the schoolhouse, Teacher Rhoda called out, “Levi! I want you to come down right away. That kite isn’t worth breaking your neck!”
But did Levi listen to her? No. He kept on climbing. The higher he climbed, the smaller the branches. Finally, Levi reached the top of the tree, close to the kite. It was caught on the tip of one of the branches. He inched his way out toward it. Nobody moved, nobody spoke, nobody breathed. Lily thought she heard a creaking sound. Levi reached his hand out to grab the kite and SNAP! The little branch he was hanging onto broke loose.
It seemed as if Levi fell in slow motion. His arms and legs flailed and he began to scream—a sound Lily would never forget. She squeezed her eyes shut and held her hands over her ears. She couldn’t bear to watch. Then there was an awful thud as he hit the ground—so awful that even her hands over her ears couldn’t muffle the sound. She opened her eyes to see Levi crumpled in a heap on the ground.
“He’s dead!” Effie screamed. Then Hannah started to wail and all the other girls started crying with her. Sympathy criers.
Teacher Rhoda ran over to Levi. He wasn’t moving. His eyes were closed. His legs were twisted at odd angles. Maybe Effie was right. He did seem surely dead. Teacher Rhoda looked up at Ezra. “Go to Ben Stoltzfus across the road and tell him we need to take Levi to the hospital right away.”
Ezra Yoder ran to get help. Teacher Rhoda sat on the ground and spoke in a gentle voice to Levi. Lily patted Hannah’s back. She didn’t know what to say or to do about poor, dead Levi. Then Levi started to moan, which was a great relief. He wasn’t quite as dead as everyone had thought.
Minutes that seemed like hours went by before Ezra returned with Ben Stoltzfus. “Try to hold still, Levi,” Ben said when Levi’s eyes flickered open. “I called one of your neighbors to bring your parents to school. They should be here soon.”
A big station wagon drove into the school yard and Uncle Elmer jumped out of the passenger side. Uncle Elmer ran over to Levi and asked him where it hurt.
“Everywhere,” Levi said to his father. “But my legs hurt the worst.”
“I think we need to call an ambulance. I don’t want to risk lifting you and hurting you even more.” Uncle Elmer went over to speak to Mr. Beal, the neighbor who’d driven the station wagon.
Mr. Beal drove Ben Stoltzfus to the phone shanty to call an ambulance while Uncle Elmer stayed with Levi.
Teacher Rhoda let the children stay outside until the ambulance came. Then she shooed every
one out of the way. Two men in uniforms gently slipped a stretcher under Levi and lifted him into the back of the ambulance. Uncle Elmer climbed in and they headed to the hospital.
The students couldn’t concentrate on their lessons for the rest of the day so Teacher Rhoda let everyone read silently at their desk. She seemed worried, too. Poor Levi.
Both of Levi’s legs had been broken, badly. He was in a wheelchair and wouldn’t be able to return to school for quite some time. Each evening, Teacher Rhoda packed up schoolwork and sent it home with Hannah so Levi could keep up.
Recess seemed strange without Levi and his endless bragging. Actually, it was nice! Whenever Lily thought about the difference Levi’s absence made on the school yard, she felt little pinches of guilt. She should be feeling sad for his broken legs, not glad he wasn’t at school. She should—but sometimes it was hard to tell your feelings to behave.
On Friday afternoon, Teacher Rhoda handed out blank sheets of sturdy paper. “I want each one of you to make a scrapbook sheet for Levi. You can draw pictures, write poems or riddles, stories, or anything you think he might enjoy seeing. Next week, we’ll walk over to visit him and bring him the scrapbook.”
Lily set right to work. She liked to draw flowers, but Levi was a boy. He wouldn’t appreciate her flowers. She thought of riddles, but he had heard most of them. Finally, she drew a few trees. At their base, she drew a little pile of logs with flames on them. Levi liked campfires.
When the students had finished, Teacher Rhoda made a cover to hold all the pages together, like a real book. On the front, she wrote “Get Well Soon” in her beautiful cursive handwriting.
On Monday afternoon, as soon as lunch was over, Teacher Rhoda announced that it was time to visit Levi. She asked Ezra Yoder to lead the way. She had the children walk single file behind Ezra, lined up by age, and then she followed at the end of the line. Lily thought it looked like the Canada geese in Uncle Elmer’s pond. They walked single file with the Papa Goose in front and the Mama Goose at the end and all the baby goslings safely in between. Lily felt like quacking loudly but with Effie right in front of her, she decided not to. She would be scolded for not acting ladylike.
A Big Year for Lily Page 12