Tears of the Silenced

by Misty Griffin

  Matty came up to me as Samantha and Brian drove away. “I wish you could stay here with us, but after breakfast I have to hitch up the horse and take you over to your new home with Jacob C.”

  I nodded, only half listening. My thoughts were far away. I worried for Samantha.

  We finished the morning work, and by 7:30, I was learning how to hitch a buggy. On the three-mile ride to my new home, Matty filled me in on the basics about my new family. Because Jacob was the name of the father, my middle initial would be J. My name was now Emma J Schrock. I repeated it to myself, trying to get used to the sound. Matty told me that Jacob C only had four children and, from what she had heard, they were probably not going to have any more. She went on to explain that they had a butchering business where the Englisch brought their chickens and other animals for slaughter. Jacob also had a machine repair business on the side, and their house was on top of the machine shop.

  As the buggy came off the paved road and down a dirt drive, I saw Phyllis, the Bishop’s wife, wave at me. I waved back and smiled. Jacob C’s place was the next farm over from the Bishop’s, and upon arrival, I was greeted by the entire Shrock family. Jacob was average height and build with dark, reddish-brown hair shot with a few flecks of gray. His wife Lillian was a quiet, somber woman of medium build. When she smiled, I was surprised to see a tooth missing in the middle of her bottom row of teeth. Of the children, Elam was the oldest and had just turned seventeen. After him was thirteen-year-old Ella, followed by ten-year-old Moses and seven-year-old Ida.

  I smiled at them as I stepped off the buggy. I was nervous and not comforted when Jacob just nodded to me before they all turned and walked back into the machine shop. On the way up the stairs, the two youngest came up on either side of me, smiling as if they would burst. I smiled back, happy that there would be some younger children in the house.

  “I can speak English like you,” Ida whispered as she grabbed my arm.

  “Me too,” chubby little Moses grabbed the other arm.

  “We will teach you how to speak Amish,” Ida said with a little skip.

  “Mom said we could, and that you would be our new sister.”

  I looked down at their excited faces and nodded enthusiastically.

  “That sounds great; I need all the help I can get.”

  Upstairs there was a large, open room and three small bedrooms lined up against the south wall. The curtains were the usual dark blue and went nicely with the light blue walls. On the north end of the large room was the kitchen. There was a large wood burning stove, a small sink with a drain and there was a red pump next to it. There was a dinner table and a counter-top against the wall and, around the corner, was the pantry where the food was stored. I stood there for a moment looking around, too petrified to move. I did not want a new family, but I was very grateful for this opportunity and vowed to myself to do my absolute best.

  “This way.” Lillian motioned me back to one of the small bedrooms. “This is the girls’ bedroom, and we squeezed in a small bed for you at the end of their bed. Here is a drawer and part of the closet where you can put your stuff.”

  I smiled at her. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

  She looked at me, nodded and walked out of the room.

  I stood for a moment looking out the bedroom window that overlooked the farm. It was beautiful and serene. I could see all the way over to the Bishop’s house from my vantage point. No one was screaming in pain here. But for some reason, I could not shake the desire to run without stopping. Run from what? I shrugged it off as nerves.

  “Well, all right.” Jacob stroked his beard. “We have a lot of work to do today. They dropped off one hundred chickens already; we better get butchering. After that, we have to get back to the fields and pick up the hay we already cut.” He turned to me. “You will follow Ella, but first you need to change.” He looked at my clothes. “Lillian has an old dress you can wear. She hemmed it up a little so it will be short enough.”

  I looked at Lillian, who came out of the middle bedroom with an old-looking, dark blue dress. I smiled happily as I took it from her. This was great. I would look just like everyone else. She followed me into the bedroom and stood there while I started to undress. She snorted as I pulled my dress over my head and she saw my half-slip and bra.

  “No.” She shook her head. “We do not wear half-slips under dresses, and we don’t wear these at all.” She pointed to my bra.

  I had noticed this but was half-hoping I would be able to keep mine.

  “I will get an under-dress.” She opened the door. “Put those things in the incinerator after you are done changing.”

  As she went out to get the under-dress, I opened the drawer where my things were and took out my other bra so I could do as she said.

  When Lillian returned, I slid the under-dress on and then the long, worn blue dress. Lastly, I pinned the matching apron around my waist. Even after I had put on so many clothes, I felt naked and self-conscious without my bra. Well, I thought, just something else I will have to get used to. As I walked out, Ella and Ida clapped when they saw my new outfit.

  “Mom says we will make your new clothes in the evenings,” Ella said, handing me a scarf to put on my head.

  I followed the women out to the slaughter house to help with the day’s work. Inside there were five large, stainless steel sinks with drains, and a garden hose was filling one of the sinks as we entered.

  “Elam chops off the chickens’ heads.” Ella pointed to the chopping block on the side of the slaughter house. “In the back room, Mom and Dad pull off the feathers and throw them in one of the sinks, and then after the menfolk leave, Mom and Ida and I scrape them, gut them and cut them up if that’s what the Englisch ordered.”

  “Okay.” I smiled. This was something I already knew how to do—not on such a large scale, but I could learn.

  The first chickens came flying in from the back, and Ella and I each grabbed one and, with our paring knives, began scraping the pin feathers out of the skin. This could take three to eight minutes, depending on how many feathers were stuck.

  “Be careful not to break the skin,” Ella motioned with her knife. “The customers want their chickens to look like they are from the town supermarkets, even if they bring them here when they are molting. The Englisch are really dumb sometimes.” She grinned and shook her head.

  We worked in silence much of the time, and I was happy the Schrock children had been allowed to stay home from school that day in order to meet me. Ida and Ella kept smiling at me as we worked, and I smiled back. They would make nice little sisters, I thought. My only wish was that Samantha could be there, but I blinked the thought away. Even though I felt tired and overwhelmed, I had to focus on my new life or I might mess everything up for her.

  Around eleven-thirty, Lillian went into the house to heat up lunch. At twelve precisely, I heard the menfolk talking as they came in from the field, and we, girls, quickly ran to set the table. For lunch, we had canned sausages and mashed potatoes. It was very good and satisfying after a long morning of work. Eating lunch was new for me, and I tried not to eat too much. After, the family talked in German, and I smiled as I tried to figure out what they were saying.

  After a few minutes, Jacob turned to me. “I am sorry, but we must speak Amish. We must not get the children used to speaking English in the home. It is against our church rules, and we will get in trouble if anyone hears us speaking too much English. You will have to learn Amish.”

  I smiled and pulled a small writing tablet from the pocket in the front of my dress. “I am going to learn ten words a day.” I pointed to the ten words I had already written down.

  Jacob shrugged. “It’s your responsibility. Honestly, I would not know how to learn another language,” His eyes widened as he scratched his chest-length beard. “Learning English was easy because it was used every day at school for eight years,
but I know I would not be able to learn another.”

  The next evening after supper, I practiced my ten words with Moses, Ida and Ella. I loved it when the children were home because they were so nonjudgmental and full of life. I sounded out the words. I repeated them over and over while the children laughed at my pronunciations.

  But I was sensing jealousy on Lillian’s part. That day, as we had been working together, had been awkward and tense. I had been warned to watch myself around their teenage son and Jacob. I felt as if I had to be on guard. I wished I was in my own tiny house somewhere, but I was an unmarried girl and it was not allowed.

  I tried to lose myself in the children’s playful banter as they pronounced each word in English then in Pennsylvania Dutch. The lantern light flickered in the cool September breeze. Jacob was reading the Die Blatt newspaper. He commented that rain would be coming soon and he needed all non-school people in the field the next day. Lillian, who was reading the family newsletter, said that we had to get the soap made, but Jacob shook his head, stating that the hay was more important. A half-an-hour later, we all retired for the night only to arise six-and-a-half hours later when the alarm clock jarred us awake at 4:30.

  We scurried about all week, trying to get all the work done. Every night, I practiced my ten words with the children, and throughout the day, I pulled the tablet from my pocket and repeated each one several times. By the end of the week, I could already say several words.

  That Friday, I accompanied the children to the one-room school house for German day. We had fun as we skipped through the woods over to the Hostetler farm where the school was located.

  It was good to be in the school with so many sweet and friendly children. I almost wished I could be with them every day. During the German lessons, I struggled along with the third graders as I tried to properly pronounce the words. The teacher was patient and, since I struggled the most, she spent time helping me get the basics of pronunciation. I was grateful for her kindness.

  The next day, Lillian started teaching me how to sew my dress for church. She had me choose between black or blue poplin. These were the two most prominent colors for church dresses, but black was the most practical since it was also worn to funerals, weddings and baptisms. I picked the black to prove myself a sensible girl.

  I was not unfamiliar with sewing, but I had to learn to sew according to our district’s Ordnung. The sleeves of the dress had to be very wide so as to not show the shape of the arm. The measurements for all hems were precise: sleeves had to be one-half inch wide; belts had to be one-and-a-half inches wide; dresses had to be four inches wide; apron belts had to be one-and-a-half inches wide; apron side hems had to be half an inch; apron hems an inch and a half. While I had followed a pattern at home, I never thought about tearing out a seam because it was off half an inch this way or that, but Lillian constantly hovered with a measuring stick and made me tear out a seam if it was off by more than a quarter of an inch.

  “What happens if it is a little off?” I asked, too tired to rip the seam of my dress belt.

  Lillian squinted as she read the measuring stick to see if I had folded the material properly. “Well, if you are a church member, you will be paid a visit by the Deacon, and if you do not correct your behavior, you will be placed in the Bann. If you are not a member, the person responsible for you could be put in the Bann.

  “Oh, okay,” I apologized. “I am sorry I am so frustrated.”

  “It takes time to learn how to eye these things,” Lilian encouraged, and I detected a softening in her voice. “My mother did the same with me. ”

  Although my relationship with Lillian was tense, I knew she was a kind woman. I felt at times that she really did want to take me in and mentor me, but her jealousy was keeping her from it. It was an uncomfortable situation, and I could not blame her. Jacob was not very kind to her, but he was kind to me and went out of his way to talk to me. Lillian worked hard and Jacob would still openly criticize her, sometimes to the point of tears. Jealousy can make the best of people unkind.

  That evening, Lillian had Ella and me bring the bathtub that was hanging on the side of the house into the side pantry. It was a short watering trough, but long enough for a person to sit down. At least I don’t have to freeze taking a bath outdoors, I thought as I helped Ella pour two tea kettles of hot water into the tub followed by two tea kettles of cold water and a piece of soap.

  “Is this enough soap?” I asked Ella, remembering how Brian and Mamma would make me put almost an entire bar’s worth of soap lather on my face and body and even then would call me dirty.

  “Oh, yes.” Ella took it from me and set it on the overturned bucket. “We only use soap if we are very dirty, like for our feet. Soap is expensive to make and prideful, so we don’t use it very much.”

  “Oh.” I shrugged my shoulders again in a sign of no contest.

  Having grown up with a solitary lifestyle like I had, you would not think there would be that much for me to learn in the Amish community, but it seemed there was truly a rule for everything.

  Baths went in order of age and gender, first the pre-pubescent girls and boys and then the unmarried girls and the mother, and then the teenage boys and father went last, all bathing in the same water.

  After the bath, everyone put on clean workday clothes. All clothes, including undergarments, were changed once a week. Each Amish person owned two sets of workday clothes. To change more often would be prideful and against the Ordnung.

  Since I did not have new workday clothes yet, I wore the same dress. Jacob grumbled at Lillian that she needed to be faster with the work and get my clothes made. Lillian bowed her head in obedience but sent a pouting look my way. I pretended not to notice, but I felt sorry for her.

  Silenced

  The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.

  —Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  The next week was much like the week before. Lillian and I worked until the children returned to school, and then Ella helped Lillian while I sewed my new clothes. In the middle of the week, I got a letter from Samantha, which I ripped open. To my disappointment, there was not much in the letter. It just said that everyone was well and they would make the trip to see me the first of November if the weather did not get too bad. What did I expect? The letter was censored by Mamma and Brian.

  On Sunday, we left for church early since it was the day the Ordnung was read and communion given to the members. Lillian told me I would come home with the children after one o’clock because only members could stay for the Ordnung reading, breaking of the bread, and foot washing. This sometimes did not end until six o’clock. There would also be no singing that night, as the day was just too long.

  Church started at eight and went on non-stop until one o’clock. It was a long day for me since I only understood a little of what was said, and I wasn’t as used to the long service as the others. I saw quite a few people sleeping and kept battling the urge to nod off myself. Instead, I wrote a poem in my head. It was something I enjoyed doing when I was bored; rhyming words was fun.

  At noon, we went to the basement in small groups to eat and then returned to our seats. After everyone had been to the basement, the Bishop said something in German, and all the non-baptized members stood up and filed out of the house. Some of the fathers came out to help the smaller children hitch up the buggies. Only very small babies were allowed to stay. All the other children had to go home with older siblings or cousins. Elam, Ella and I were responsible for the Bishop’s six children, as well as Moses and Ida.

  We decided to stay at the Bishop’s house with the children since it was larger, and we spent the afternoon playing board games and hide-and-go-seek. As I played with the children, I wondered how the members could sit in chu
rch for three or four more hours.

  That night, Lillian and Jacob talked in low tones while we milked, and afterward they sent us all to bed early.

  “I wonder what is wrong,” I whispered to Ella, who was sitting by the door trying to listen to what was being said. I crept over to her to listen, too, even though I could not understand the language. Ella gave me a guilty grin.

  “I am not supposed to listen. You won’t tell on me, will you?”

  “Of course not.” I gave her a quick hug. “We are sisters, and sisters don’t tattle on each other.”

  Ella smiled and nodded in agreement. “They are always like this when the members have to stay in after church,” she whispered. “It usually means that someone confessed to something bad and is being punished.”

  “Who was bad?” I asked with heightened curiosity.

  Ida shrugged and shook her head. “Alma M told me her dad was going to get in trouble today, and I was trying to hear why. A neighbor saw him doing something against the Ordnung, so he had to confess.”

  “I wonder what it was,” I said putting my ear closer to the door.

  Ella shrugged again. “I can’t hear anything.” She stood up. “We better get back in bed before Mom comes to see if we are sleeping. She would be really mad at me for disobeying her.”

  Weeks turned into months and soon snow flurries heralded the upcoming icy winter. By the first of November, I had already learned a lot of German words and was starting to piece together sentences. I was not quite an outsider anymore and was beginning to feel like one of the community. Samantha wrote: they would not be able to make it before spring. The winter snow in the Dakotas would make driving impossible.

  She wrote again in mid-November, and I was excited to find that she had managed to slip in a secret note, undetected. Our plan had been she would give Brian the letter to read as he would insist, then after he sealed it and put it in the truck to take into town the next day, she would unseal it and put it in an identical envelope and stamp with the real letter tucked inside the fake one. I quickly realized she had finally succeeded when I saw the letter was not paper thin. When I opened the letter, I quickly pulled out the middle sheet of paper and stuck it in my pocket. It was Amish custom that if an unmarried person received a letter from anyone other than a boyfriend or girlfriend, they must leave the letter on the kitchen table for the whole family to read.