by David Bergen
When Lily turned seventeen, she began sewing herself dresses with darts that were a little too severe and so showed off the body underneath the dress, and she wore colourful underwear that Marcie had given her, and when she went to town she wore flip-flops instead of runners and so her feet were revealed to the outside world, and she was aware of Johan Gerbrandt in the Kleefeld church, whom she’d recently observed at the youth gathering, and she had been told by the other girls that Johan had noticed her as well. So it was. She didn’t know what Johan Gerbrandt would make of her desires for reading. She knew that he drove a black Camaro. He had painted the chrome black as well, and he had removed the radio from the car. And she knew that he worked for his father on the farm, and that he was eager to marry. When she told her cousin Marcie about Johan, and about marriage, Marcie was horrified.
“You’re too young, Lily,” Marcie said. “You don’t even know him.”
“He’s a good man,” Lily said. “I’ve asked around. I’m of age.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“Some.”
“A tiny conversation isn’t enough to know the man you’ll spend the rest of your life with.”
“My parents know his parents,” Lily said.
“You’re so naive. How do you even know if he’s a good kisser?”
“Marcie. Shush.”
Marcie, thinking that she had to inform Lily, convinced Lily to try on her jeans and blouses and bathing suit in the privacy of her bedroom. And after some arguing back and forth, Lily acquiesced, for the world was a large place, and Marcie’s clothes were not her clothes. She was simply putting her toe into the water to test its temperature. Marcie had her try on her underwear as well, which was soft to the touch and revealing. In Marcie’s mirror Lily studied herself and found that she might be attractive. She put on makeup and earrings. This was to die for. And then she removed everything and erased the outside world. But not quite. For Marcie had encouraged her to take home a book a week. With great trepidation, Lily agreed. She read at night, by flashlight. The stories were often ghastly, full of horrible people who slept with strangers who were not their spouses and deceived each other and lived in sin. Lily would read a chapter, throw it aside, pray for forgiveness, and the following night pick it up again. She had not read fiction before and so believed that everything in the story was true. Marcie laughed at her. What nonsense. “Of course it’s not true. It’s a story.” Even so, Lily was not convinced, simply because the story had been so real. What followed were books that were no less ghastly, but invincibly compelling. Lily felt that she was making new friends, only these were friends who didn’t know that she, Lily, existed. She read a novel about a young man who kills an old lady with an axe. She read the whole novel in one night, not sleeping, aware that the story was about the soul, and how the soul might be saved.
The deacons were most fearful of books, specifically fiction, and if they had asked Lily, she would have agreed, for novels set forth her imagination and took her to places she had never experienced, and they offered characters and descriptions of characters, but of course it was Lily who painted the final image of those characters. The possibilities were endless. Lily twisted the words and gave them new meaning and she twisted the descriptions of characters and she embellished their lives and the meaning that might be made of those lives. For example, she read that the young man who kills the old woman with the axe was “well-built with beautiful dark eyes and dark brown hair.” But in her mind he was small and blond and dirty and not good-looking. He was Russian, and if he was Russian he must be blond, for her own descendants were Russian and blond, and her own descendants were stocky and they had rough faces and odd physical deformities. Like Frantz Gerbrandt, Johan’s older brother, who was ugly, and who was, according to legend, wild and untamable. And so she created images that weren’t at all faithful to the intent of the author. Did that matter? Not at all.
One day, in early fall, Marcie gave her a novel and told her that it was crazy and weird. She said there was a lot of sex in it, and she smiled.
Lily didn’t mind sex, but she thought that too much was made of it, and she thought that the word itself was vulgar. She preferred ‘having love,’ or ‘intercourse,’ which was like a conversation. She had liked the Russian story best of all, and this was because there had been spiritual love rather than sex. She didn’t say any of this to Marcie. She took the novel home and she read it through the night. She finished as the morning light was opening up the sky. She heard her father downstairs. She heard her mother’s voice. She got up. She had in her mind now images of children drowning, and women sucking on penises, and men wearing dresses. The world of the book had been so foreign, so opposite, that she had been absolutely repelled by it and at the same time absolutely drawn to it. That morning, she left the book on the floor beside her bed.
All that day she made jam with her mother. They picked strawberries and they hulled and washed the berries and then Lily crushed the berries by hand and boiled them with sugar and pectin and poured them into sealer jars and poured hot wax over the jam in order to seal the jars, and then they screwed on the lids and wiped the sticky jars with a hot soapy cloth and dried them, and set the jars in rows on the kitchen counter. Late afternoon, she came in with fresh baskets of strawberries and on the dining-room table she saw the book. It was lying face down on the oilcloth. Her heart went wild and she paused and then, uncertain of what would happen next, she entered the kitchen. Her mother was skimming the foam from a fresh batch of jam. Spooning it into a white bowl. Lily carried on. Her mother said nothing. At supper, the book had disappeared. And still, nothing was said. She washed the dishes after supper, and then took her baby sister, Karen, out into the yard. Karen was three, a miracle baby she was called, and everything that could be done for her was done with awe and love. It was still hot and so Lily sat in the shade on an old wooden chair and she watched Karen toddle circles around her, her brown fat ankles sticking out from her dress. Lily had sewn the dress for Karen earlier that summer, from leftover cloth that Lily had used for one of her own dresses. The colours were a pale yellow and off-white and there were pastel bouquets of flowers in the pattern.
Lily’s mind was scattered. She suspected that her father would open the book and study it. Her mother, she knew, would not touch it, and for this she was glad. Her mother was the harsher of the parents, more worried about the impressions of others, concerned about gossip and finger-pointing. Her father was more forgiving, in a rueful manner, but she also knew that her father couldn’t overlook this trespass.
Dusk came. She gathered up Karen and carried her inside and boiled water for a bath. She poured hot water into the metal tub that sat on the kitchen floor. She added cold water and tested it with her wrist. Then she undressed Karen and sat her down in the tub. She scrubbed her back and soaped her little feet. Karen giggled and pulled away. She washed Karen’s face and behind her ears. Karen fought. Lily persisted. Normally she would have made a game of this, the washing, the bath, the scrubbing, but on this evening she had no desire. When she had finished the bathing, she scooped Karen into a large blue towel and dried her. Carried her up to her bedroom and set her down and let her run naked around the room. It was too hot for pajamas. She considered the nakedness of childhood and she thought about the nakedness of adults, and she wished that she was once again a child. She tucked Karen into bed. They prayed together, Karen kneeling on the bed, Lily kneeling beside the bed. In the evening, in the night, holy Jesus keep us light. If we pass before we wake, we pray thee please our souls to take. When they were finished praying, she kissed Karen on the forehead and said goodnight.
Her parents were sitting at the dining-room table when she came down the stairs. Her Uncle Hans was there as well. The book was face up on the table. Lily paused in the doorway. Her father told her to sit with them. She did so. Her father pointed at the book and said, “What is this?”
“It i
s not mine,” she said.
“Where did you get it?”
She did not answer.
Her mother sighed.
Her father picked up the book and opened it and read. The passage he had chosen was sexual and frank. Lily wondered how he had found that passage. Had it just opened to that page? When he finally halted, he placed the book on the table and he said, “How can this be edifying?”
Lily shrugged. She had no answer, or no answer that would have satisfied him.
“Have there been other books?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Are you lying?” he asked.
She shook her head.
And then Uncle Hans spoke. His voice was softer than her father’s and he said her name, “Lily,” and then he said that ideas and images from the outside were forever dangerous, because those ideas worked from the outside to the inside and then back to the outside so that what were our thoughts now became our actions. “These are thoughts that seep into your soul,” he said. “And it is impossible to remove them. They are like ink stains. They sit inside you and cannot be scrubbed away.” He said that he would go outside and he would build a fire, and he wanted Lily to come out with the book, and together they would burn it.
“It’s not mine to burn,” she said.
“Whose then?”
She didn’t answer.
Her father and her uncle rose and left the room and this left her with her mother, whose face was hard. “Filth,” her mother said.
Was this true? Lily did not know. She wondered how it was possible to enjoy reading filth. For she had. And she hadn’t. And then she realized that her mother was not referring to the book, but to her, Lily. She was filth.
In time, Lily stood and picked up the book and walked outside. The sun was setting. The light was soft and the sky was grey blue and the clouds were few.
The fire was burning in a half-barrel close to the barn. She approached her uncle, who stood alone and who gestured at the fire. Lily stepped forward and dropped the book into the flames. It did not burn immediately, for it was tightly bound, and even when it did begin to burn, the interior pages remained untouched, and so her uncle took up an iron rod and prodded at the book and he opened it so that the fire might attack all of it. During that time no words were spoken. There was just the action of her uncle spearing at the pages, and turning them, and offering them to the fire. Then it was finished, and only ashes remained. Her uncle turned and walked back to the house. Lily remained. She closed her eyes and when she opened them she looked for a sign that might perhaps arrive in the physical world around her.
And here the clouds like many dark sheep gone astray, and here the orange sun burning the world, and here the hare that hides from the circling hawk, and here the stretched singing of water-logged frogs, and here the light, and here the dark.
At the age of nineteen, she married Johan Gerbrandt after a short courtship that consisted of him visiting her at her family house where they sat in the living room and snuck looks at each other while the parents talked, and of her family going to the Gerbrandt home for Sunday lunch where roast beef, mashed potatoes, corn, and Jell-O was served. On those Sundays at his house, after lunch, she walked with Johan out to the yard. This was their time alone together. They sat in his car with the doors open and he told her his vision for his life. He would work the farm and eventually inherit the egg quota. He had an older brother, Frantz, who had the rights to the quota, but Johan said that Frantz was living a sinful life in the city and so he had lost his rights to the farm.
Johan walked her through the barn where the layers were kept. He walked her through the cooler where the eggs were stored. She liked the smell in the refrigerator room. She thought that she wouldn’t mind working there. He showed her where he was building their house. The foundation had been poured. He said that they would marry when the house was finished. There would be three bedrooms for children, plus the master bedroom. He wanted four or five children, hopefully some sons to help him out on the farm. This was a confession that implied much of what he was dreaming of, in particular sex with Lily, and this being so, he turned red and looked away.
She said that she was looking forward to moving out of her parents’ home.
“Is that all?” he asked. “You’re using me to escape your family?”
“Oh, no.” She laughed. “I am ready.”
“I’ve watched you since you were fourteen,” he said. “I told my friends that you were mine.”
Okay. That was Johan, a very sure and certain man. He was big, and his hands were rough, and his beard, which was necessary for him to wear, was meagre and seemed to indicate a possible weakness. He wasn’t weak though, this she knew. He was morally strong. He was soft with her. He paid attention. He was ready. More ready than she. The fact was, she didn’t feel much about him physically, and when she did feel something it was often fear at what was to be. She couldn’t imagine having relations with him. This absolutely frightened her. She thought that she was too skinny, and that he wouldn’t like her body, and that she wouldn’t know what to do with his big body. She spoke about all of this with Marcie, who advised her to take care of herself. “He’ll be needy,” Marcie said. “He’ll have no idea what you want, and so you’ll have to tell him.”
“What do I tell him? I don’t even know what I want.”
“You want to feel safe, and you want pleasure,” Marcie said. And she told Lily what an orgasm was, and how to achieve it.
“I don’t know,” Lily said. “It seems so selfish. If Johan’s happy, I’ll be happy.”
“Don’t worry, he’ll be happy,” Marcie said.
On that first Sunday, at the Gerbrandt’s house, Lily had seen, as if in a singular vision, what her life would contain. And she was filled with happiness and immodesty. And she felt guilty for her happiness, and for feeling proud. On the eve of her wedding she slept in her single bed for the last time and as she dropped into her dream world she experienced the giddiness she had felt as a young girl when anticipating the slaughter of a hog.
They were married in the Grönland Church. Her Uncle Hans was the minister. There was no bridesmaid, and there was no best man, and so they stood alone, as a couple, in the front of the church. Johan couldn’t stop himself from grinning throughout the service, and this comforted Lily. She paid attention to Johan’s face and his smile and she tried not to lose sight of him throughout the afternoon. A meal was served in the church gymnasium: home-baked buns and bread, and butter with homemade strawberry jam, and farmer sausage, and coleslaw, and fruit punch that was served in plastic glasses, and there was a chiffon cake that she and Johan cut together, a cake that had been made by the women of the church. The children ran in circles while the men made speeches. There was no photographer, and so the only proof later of the wedding would be the witnesses, and the stories that might be told of the service, and the little bits of gossip, and the wedding dress that Lily had worn and which now hung in her closet in the master bedroom that she shared with Johan.
She discovered that she liked lying with Johan. She and Johan always had love in the evening right after supper, the dirty dishes abandoned on the dining-room table. They had love again, before bedtime, after the dishes were clean and the kitchen was put to rights. And they had love in the morning as well, after waking, and before Johan dressed for work and before Lily made his breakfast. Sometimes, during the day, he would appear in the dining room where she might be sitting at her sewing machine, and when she heard his heavy step, her body would rise up, for she knew what was to come. She followed him upstairs to the bedroom where he undressed and then lay on the bed and waited for her to undress and lie down beside him. He never attempted to unbutton her dress and remove it, or to kiss her before suggesting that they lie together, for this is what he called it, and though she was perhaps happy that he did not interfere in this way, she imagined
that a prelude to lying together, touching and kissing, might make it all even more enjoyable. When they had love during the day, when the sun was high in the sky and the light in the bedroom flattened the walls and the bed and the objects in the room, she undressed in the bathroom and removed her kerchief and let out her hair and came to him wrapped in a towel, and she climbed under the covers, and only then did she remove the towel. Sometimes, he took the time to pull back the covers and admire her body and to touch her, and to stroke her hair that fell below her waist. When he was done, he went to the washroom and returned to put on his clothes, and as he dressed he spoke to her of the farm and the chickens and he spoke of manure and the blend of the feed and sometimes he told her what he would like for supper, though this was rare, for he was usually happy with what she prepared for him.
She thought that she might want more from him. He was not rough with her, but neither was he tender, and she felt at times that he lay with her in the same way he ate. To fill a space inside of himself. In fact, there were times when she sat across from him and watched his face and she imagined his mouth between her legs, and thinking that thought she laughed inside. How strange. She thought of the books that she had read, and she thought of the passions that the female characters had experienced, and she realized that Marcie had been correct when she had said that novels were not true, that they were simply made-up stories about people who did not exist and who had never existed.
