Lizzie's Carefree Years

by Linda Byler

  Dat had spent many hours setting up the equipment for the old shop, and now Lizzie felt sorry for him, starting all over again for the new one. He looked tired, staying in the shop till late hours every evening.

  Mam was tired, too, and upset more often. The twins did not sleep well at night, because they were teething, so Mam had double duty—caring for them at night and cooking and baking big meals for hungry men during the day. She spoke often of how nice it would be if Emma was out of school so she could help. But every day they trudged to school, feeling sorry for Mam and Dat.

  Lizzie was walking behind Edna and Emma, thinking how life just wasn’t always good. Just when everything was going really well, the pallet shop had burned. Mam was tired and grouchy, making Lizzie much more aware of all the work to do around the house.

  This winter was not fun, so far. The air was cold, but there had been very little snow. They couldn’t go sled riding and it wasn’t cold enough to go skating. It was just one boring day after another—going to school, doing lessons, coming home, and working nonstop. Lizzie wished it would start to snow and keep on snowing for a few days, then blow as hard as was possible, or something exciting.

  Well, not really. The fire had been enough excitement of that sort, but that was not “fun” exciting. Another thing that bothered Lizzie a lot was this thing of growing up. The older you became, the more responsibility was yours—fold laundry, sweep the living room, do dishes—there was no end. And those twins; they were a mess. Often Mandy and Lizzie were not allowed to do one fun thing unless they put them to sleep. So they would give them their bottle, rocking, rocking, rocking, until Lizzie thought she would get sick from sheer boredom.

  About the time one would nod off, the other one started crying, waking the sleeping one. So she never changed her mind too much about babies. They were a bother. They kept you from doing everything you wanted to do. She hoped sincerely they would never have any more babies. Six children were enough.

  By the time they reached school, her hands were numb with cold, she was in a depressed state of mind, and she had only one sandwich in her lunch. The only bright spot of the day was how thickly she had spread mayonnaise on the one lone sandwich.

  chapter 15

  Double Happiness

  Dat had a new spring in his step this morning, because they had received a letter stating that Doddy and Mommy Glick, Uncle James, and some of the aunts and other relatives were coming on Saturday. They had already helped rebuild the pallet shop, but they wanted to help Dat with the new diesels. Doddy Glick was very good at that sort of thing.

  But the best news of all—Marvin and Elsie were coming along. Lizzie and Emma were very happy to think of seeing them again.

  “Emma, I bet you anything I’ll be ashamed of Marvin,” Lizzie said, as they washed dishes together.

  “I know what you mean. He’ll soon be fifteen!” Emma said. She threw a fork back into the dishwater. “That isn’t clean.”

  Lizzie washed it again, chattering on happily about the upcoming event. “I hope Mommy Glick brings a chocolate cake with caramel icing,” she said.

  “Mmm!” Emma agreed.

  “It seems long till Saturday!”

  Mam said from the pantry, “Oh, no, it doesn’t. You know how particular Mommy Glick is. We have some corners to scrub before they get here.”

  “Like what?”

  “This pantry, for one thing. We had so much food given to us over the fire, I don’t know how in the world to organize this mess in here. Some of these jars of canned food need to be carried to the basement and—”

  “I’ll do it!” Lizzie broke in.

  “What? Are you sick? Oh, my goodness, Lizzie offers to do something!” Emma gasped, clapping a hand to her forehead in mock disbelief.

  Mam’s laugh rang out from the pantry. “Emma!” she said, good-naturedly.

  “I will; I’ll organize the pantry,” Lizzie said. She set to work immediately. First, she carried the extra boards for the table and set them in the middle of the kitchen. She gathered up bags and boxes of canned goods, blue granite canners, stainless steel buckets, old plastic containers, empty quart jars, containers of flour and sugar, oatmeal, and noodles. There was seemingly no end.

  Mam told her to get a bucket, helping her fill it with hot water and a good brand of lemon-scented soap, and Lizzie began. It was actually fun, because the pantry was, as Mam had said, a mess.

  She scrubbed and scoured the shelves and the walls. She clenched her tongue between her teeth, her hair became quite scraggly, and the hairpins in the back of her head loosened, causing her covering to slip to the side. She got scouring powder from beneath the sink in the kitchen cupboards, bustling back to the pantry and scrubbing black marks with a vengeance.

  She did not see Emma hide her giggles, or Mam raising her eyebrows behind Lizzie’s back. She was seriously cleaning. It was amazing what a difference she could make in this pantry.

  Lizzie stored the blue granite canners on the top shelf, along with the jar lids and other canning items. They would not be needed till summer. Mam helped her dispose of old things like bread crumbs gone bad, some questionable bread flour, a cracked plastic container, and a bag of sunflower seeds that Mam laughingly told her must have come from the Civil War.

  Lizzie loved Mam when she became a bit silly. They separated the donated canned goods, laughing about some of the odd-looking contents in the jars. Mandy helped carry tray after tray of canned items to the basement, where Mam put it in the proper space.

  After everything was finished, the pantry did not look like the same place. Lizzie’s heart swelled with happiness when Mam praised her efforts sincerely.

  “It was fun!” she said.

  “I can’t figure out what crawled over you!” Emma said, using a favorite phrase of the family.

  “Maybe Mommy Glick!” Lizzie responded.

  When Doddy Glicks arrived very early on Saturday morning, they told Mommy Glick what Lizzie had done. She threw up her hands and laughed, examining the pantry thoroughly. Sure enough, she had brought a chocolate cake with caramel frosting and a large yellow bowl of cornstarch pudding. She brought two mince pies for Dat, and oatmeal cookies.

  Marvin had grown at least six inches. The girls were actually too shy to say hello to him, because he looked almost like a sixteen-year-old boy who was allowed to “run around” with the youth. Elsie didn’t look much different, although she had grown as well.

  “Your house is so nice!” Elsie said, smiling and touching the woodwork.

  “We really like it,” Emma beamed.

  While Mommy Glick and Mam got coffee break ready, Dat, Doddy, and Marvin visited, while Uncle James took a tour of their barn. Elsie exclaimed about their rooms, the twins, and how much everyone had grown. They talked about school and how different their Mennonite school was compared to the one here in Jefferson County. They were having another big Christmas program.

  Lizzie became a bit wistful about that. She so loved their Christmas programs when she was in first and second grade, with lots of plays and different parts. She felt almost jealous of Elsie’s school, but she didn’t say anything, mostly because that would not be polite.

  They were sitting in the basement when Marvin joined them. “Hey, what are you doing?” he said, grinning.

  “Marvin!” Lizzie said.

  “It’s good to see my nieces,” he said, smiling a genuinely broad grin.

  “You seem so big and old!” Emma said.

  “I am!”

  The girls giggled.

  “Hey, you know what? On the way up here, over here, or wherever you live way out here in the mountains, you know what I saw? An upside-down tractor and trailer!”

  “Not upside-down. Just lying on its side!” Elsie corrected him.

  “It was upside-down, Elsie. I can still see all four wheels sticking up!”

  “Marvin, it wasn’t,” Elsie said quite severely.

  Emma and Lizzie stole sideways glances at ea
ch other, hiding their grins. They were still the same Marvin and Elsie—that was one thing sure.

  “Anyway, a tractor and trailer has eighteen wheels, not four,” Marvin corrected himself. “But what I can’t figure out, how could he get himself in that position if there was no snow or ice? Do you suppose the driver fell asleep? He could have had a heart attack and fallen over dead in his truck.”

  “Marvin, you don’t have to know,” Elsie said.

  “I know. But still . . . that was something to see! Whose ping-pong table?” he said, all in the same breath.

  “Ours,” Lizzie said proudly.

  “Can you play?”

  “Sure!”

  They had just started playing, Lizzie realizing she had a formidable opponent, when Mam called them for coffee break. Marvin was fast and accurate and had accumulated five points to Lizzie’s two.

  They raced up the stairs, helping themselves to hot chocolate and a handful of oatmeal and molasses cookies. There were also bought doughnuts from the bakery in Marion. Mam had bought them the previous day, saying she was just so sick and tired of baking. These doughnuts were lighter than homemade ones. It seemed you could eat three and still hadn’t started. But Lizzie didn’t take three. That was because she had learned to watch what she ate. Emma had helped her to understand that you couldn’t go through life eating anything and everything you wanted. So she carefully selected one sugared doughnut and one oatmeal cookie. That was all.

  Doddy Glick teased the girls, telling them it looked as if they had plenty to eat here in Jefferson County. “You need to be out baling hay and milking cows on a farm. That would get rid of some of your ‘shpeck!’” That meant it would help them lose weight. But he was not unkind, having a twinkle in his eye when he said it. Lizzie tried to stand up straight, pulling in her stomach after he said that, but only for a while. She forgot about everything except the joy of being with Marvin and Elsie once again.

  Marvin had to go with the men to the pallet shop after break, so the girls played ping-pong a while before they sat on the old sofa and chairs in the basement and talked.

  They had plenty to talk about, living so far apart. Elsie told them about the teacher they had, who smacked the children’s hands with a ruler if they whispered. One little boy quickly pulled his hand away and the ruler came down on his desk, breaking into three pieces.

  Emma put her hands to her mouth and squealed, her eyes opened wide. Mandy giggled, and Lizzie said, “Hah-ah, Elsie! Then what did she do?”

  “She got really upset then,” Elsie said, taking a deep breath and launching into her story. They listened with rapt attention as Elsie related other stories of misconduct and punishments that occurred over the course of the school year.

  They talked about their school, and swimming in the river. Elsie shivered, saying she couldn’t see how they could like swimming in that awful river.

  Suddenly they heard a great commotion upstairs. Mam was actually shouting, saying, “Oh, my word! This is just no sense! What are you doing here?”

  There was such a loud fuss—men’s voices mixed with women’s laughter—that Lizzie and Emma just looked at each other. It sounded a lot like Doddy Miller and Aunt Vera!

  They slid off the couch together and took the stairs two at a time, throwing the door open and standing together, peering out.

  “There they are! Just like two rabbits! Come on out. Hello, hello,” and Aunt Vera hurried over to shake their hands quite rapidly. “My, how you’ve grown! You girls are growing faster than a cornstalk in July. Do you help your mom good? Sure you do. Lizzie, I declare you’re bigger than Emma. Yessir, you are. Stand here once.” She pushed them together, back to back, triumphantly announcing, “See there? What did I say? Now, Mousie, you better let Emma catch up.” She laughed at herself, before saying, “Remember, Mousie? You were so little we had to shake the blankets out to find you. Yes, we did. Didn’t we, Dat?” she said, turning to Doddy Miller.

  Doddy Miller came over, leaning on his cane. He had aged alarmingly. His smile and handshake were feeble, and his hands shook all the time, even if he wasn’t shaking hands.

  “Yes, Vera, she was tiny. Hard to believe. My, how you’ve grown. And there’s Mandy.”

  They all turned to see Mandy and Elsie in the doorway, shyly peeking out at all the commotion.

  “Now whose girl is this?” Vera asked, turning to Elsie.

  Mommy Glick was smiling, saying, “That’s our youngest.”

  “Really? You still have one that small? Well, I’ll be. She looks like you, doesn’t she now? Where are these twins? You know, we haven’t seen them yet. I told Homer that’s enough of that stuff, right now. We’re going to go see these twins. Then when we heard about this pallet shop burning, we just came as soon as it suited. This is our busy time at the lumberyard. Firewood and coal. Yessir, Homer lives over there. Never at home. Sometimes I take supper over, sometimes Leroy does. Always something. Always something. Now, where are these twins?”

  Mommy Glick was laughing openly, and Mam laughed with her. Aunt Vera was so fussy, but a real delight, talking and laughing nonstop. When she spied the twins, she threw both hands in the air and shrieked.

  The twins were sitting side by side on the sofa, propped up with pillows. They were wearing freshly laundered pale blue dresses, and their blue eyes were lined with heavy black lashes. Their dark hair was thick and glossy, just as soft and silky as a bird’s wing. KatieAnn had a small white pacifier in her mouth, and Susan was playing with a string of beads.

  “Awww, Annie!” For once in her life, Aunt Vera was completely speechless. It was of short duration, though, as she soon regained her speech.

  “Now I have never in all my life seen anything so cute! Are you sure they’re real? Didn’t you get them mixed up at the hospital? ’Course . . .” she paused. “I’d say they look a little bit like Emma did. That hair! It’s so thick. And shiny. I can’t get over this. I better sit down—I’ll have a heart attack, next thing I know.”

  Uncle Homer smiled his slow, quiet smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners, shaking his head in disbelief as he said, “Isn’t that something?” That’s all he said.

  Lizzie’s head was whirling. This was actually the biggest surprise, to have Doddy Miller and Uncle Homers coming when Doddy Glicks were here. Mam was so flushed and excited, assuring them there was more than enough food to go around for dinner. They had come all the way from Ohio and were staying till Tuesday, which thrilled Emma and Lizzie.

  Aunt Vera picked up Susan, holding her while she rocked back and forth quite furiously. Susan looked a bit bewildered, but she did not cry, actually enjoying her frantic ride. Vera had only two children, so she wasn’t as used to babies as Mommy Glick was. But it was Vera who watched the twins while Mam and Mommy Glick finished preparing dinner.

  Doddy Miller had brought Swiss cheese and Trail bologna, which was always a specialty from Ohio. He also had a fresh bag of round pink candies that tasted exactly like Pepto-Bismol. He always gave these to the girls, and they always thanked him, but never really ate any of them. They just didn’t taste good, although they never told him.

  Uncle Homers had brought plenty of food as well. Lizzie thought of her well-organized pantry, hoping sincerely Mam didn’t throw everything in there any old way.

  Lizzie discovered the fact that Doddy Miller was planning on staying a while. He might even stay permanently, because he loved the mountains here in Jefferson County, and since Mommy Miller had passed away, he had no real reason to stay in Ohio. Lizzie was worried about him, though. He was so very much older looking, much weaker in his legs, thinner, and so much more feeble.

  He was on heart medication, Aunt Vera assured Mam, but there was no doubt about it; he was losing out.

  Mam’s eyes filled with tears as she watched her father leaning heavily on his cane to sit in the living room. But she controlled her emotions, turning to Mommy Glick and smiling.

  “Well, since we’re all here together like thi
s, we’ll just add more water to the soup, throw everything together, and have a good meal.”

  But Lizzie knew Mam would have plenty of good food for everyone. She always made more than enough when company came, so Lizzie figured there was no need to put water in the soup. They probably weren’t planning on having soup to begin with.

  When the men returned at lunchtime, the table was spread almost the entire length of the kitchen. Heaping platters of fried chicken, mashed potatoes with browned butter running down the sides, noodles, filling, and homemade baked beans with plenty of onion and bacon filled the table. There were also small glass dishes of coleslaw and red beet eggs, and, of course, those horrible little olive green saccharin pickles. Lizzie couldn’t understand why Mam had to ruin a perfectly good company meal with those pickles.

  Mam had made homemade dinner rolls, too. Instead of putting the bread dough in ordinary bread pans after it had risen, she oiled her hands well, pinching off small pieces of dough and shaping them into a round ball. She plopped them into square cake pans, adding more oil on the bottom of the pans first. Then she slid the pans back on the countertop and let them rise again, before baking them until they were golden brown and greasy looking on the top.

  When they were cool, Mam could break them apart into individual rolls, although they looked like a bumpy cake when they were taken out of the oven. They were the best thing ever. You took a roll and broke it in half, spreading butter thickly on one side, and strawberry jam on top. They were so warm and soft, the bread melted in your mouth, leaving a sweet, buttery aftertaste because of the jam.

  Lizzie ate two, but she could easily have eaten three or four. She hoped there would be a few left over, to eat in her lunchbox at school. But, of course, there were none left after the meal, which kind of upset Lizzie, because it would take her a long time to persuade Mam to bake them again.

  Aunt Vera could hardly finish her dinner; she was talking so much. Doddy Glick laughed and laughed at her. He just couldn’t help it, Lizzie thought. It was such an entertaining meal, listening to Vera banter with Doddy. They were both smart, and loved to tell interesting stories.