They had said all that too fast and I’m writing it down as quick as I can. Now it gets quiet.
You know what? We’re all yappy poodles that nip at each other but never sink our teeth into any meaningful rap; that’s where it’s at. Maybe it’s because we hear enough sad stories from the down-and-out women who come in here that we’ve become like clams, man, so that none of that irritation will penetrate. Whooa! Deep Thought.
“Jesi, you started this,” Mama says, drumming her pen on the table. “If you’d be more cooperative—”
Uh-oh. This lecture has lasted a lifetime.
“Leave her be!” GG says in an exasperated tone. “As Jesi says, just go with the blow!”
I laugh for the first time today. “It’s go with the flow, GG, not blow!”
Mama laughs too. It’s easier to do when GB leaves the room.
I start fidgeting, my leg brace clanging against the chair leg, waiting for somebody to talk.
Mama gives me a flash of her overused irritated look because she hates me reminding her that I wear an ugly brace - which of course is why I do it. She stands up in a hurry, gathering up her papers and drinking down the rest of her wine. “Maybe finishing my chapter in the bedroom isn’t such a bad idea. Nor is taking a glass of wine up there with me.” She grins at both of us as she refills her glass. “I got her that time!” She walks out in her knee-high “kinky boots”, a lookalike to her heroine Cathy Gale in The Avengers. Lucky, lucky.
“And don’t forget to turn out your light!” I call out, mocking GB. Mama leaving her light on all night drives GB ape-shit.
And Mama has such a cool smile, when she wants to. Wish I’d gotten that from her but they tell me I have more of a solemn look like my great-aunt Opal. That’s kind of freaky. In that old picture, Opal looks about a hundred years old and she had about a hundred kids. And we know I ain’t never having kids.
GG and I sit there for a few minutes writing nothing. She has her hands in her lap and giving me her own cool smile; I guess that’s where Mama got hers, skipping generations (GB didn’t pass down a smile, that’s for damn sure). Like I said, GG is such a groovy great-granny.
I lean toward her and whisper, “Are you really telling it like it is?”
“I’m shocking myself!” GG says with a laugh. She leans in too, and whispers, “You may find a key under a china vase on a bedroom mantel right next to the wardrobe. Go find out for yourself. But you didn’t hear that from me.”
I probably shouldn’t write that down since GB will read this but what the hell. She won’t give GG a hard time about it, no matter how she puts on The Bitch. In this family, shit only rolls downhill.
“Are you reading what we write, GG?”
“Mercy, no,” GG answers. “My eyes are too weak to both read and write, so I save them to write. Besides, I love surprise endings!”
If GG’s story is as juicy as she claims, maybe sometime I’ll write some real happenings, man, like, The Truth, if nothing more than to entertain myself.
By the time my brother, Jesse, and I reached the farmyard I thought my heart was going to squeeze in two. Like an invisible clothes string wrapped there and its other end strung to my front door. The farther we plodded, the tighter the string became. I could barely breathe from the pull when Jesse at last heaved back on the reins between the dusty red barn and the weathered-gray backdoor of the farmhouse. Scattering chickens and dogs announced our arrival, cows and the horses made their replies, the screen door squeaked and slammed, and I simply tried to adjust myself into a presentable human for the onslaught of family fuss.
Edith came out drying her hands on her ever-present apron. “Why, Ruby, what on earth!” Although close to my age, I looked at her as being much older. Thanks to Jesse, her once-thin figure had thickened permanently in the middle from nine pregnancies, six of which produced large healthy boys. Her hair grayed like their back-door, but more than that it was those penetrating brown eyes that held ancient wisdom. She gave me a hasty hug, always in a hurry. “You’re as pretty as you ever were,” she said in her habit, scrutinizing my every inch, her eyes asking, Is everything all right? She patted my cheek with a callused palm.
Mama trailed behind, the arthritis in her hip causing a slight limp, her height shrinking, her back bending a bit more each time I saw her, like gravity was having more effect on her than years were.
“Ruby, honey, what is wrong?” Mama squeezed my arm, making sure I was alive. “Has one of the children taken ill?” She wiped her dish towel at a dirt smudge on my sleeve. “Did something catch fire in your kitchen?”
I didn’t know what to say and afraid to cry, I cast a helpless glance over to Jesse who was off to the barn lugging milk cans, and then I looked down at Edith. She continued to watch as if she were studying tea leaves in her tea cup. This was her nature until she knew what to do. She seemed to hone in on reading action, not words, a necessary skill for her boys’ storytelling of who was right or wrong. “Boys, say hello to Aunt Ruby and go back to your breakfast,” she said without wavering her study of me. The boys had swarmed to the screen door and jammed there. They disappeared one by one back to the kitchen.
Without so many faces staring at me, I breathed a little easier.
“Child, come in and eat.” Mama said firmly. One thing Mama knew for sure and that was that good food soothed the heart of everybody.
But I was humiliated enough with my story, let alone of my appearance. “Could I wash first?”
Besides, I needed more time to think of how to tell them. The dirt soaked in to sin and I suddenly felt unworthy of my Christian family. I knew very well how they believed that the woman’s place is in the home; I’d been fed that as a side plate to the good food.
I went up the backstairs and knocked on sister Opal’s door. She answered with a mouth in an o-shape of dismay but quickly recovered. “Ruby, your hair! My goodness, I haven’t seen you wear your hair down since we were in school. You look so young!”
“Yes, it is the latest fashion, along with wrinkled clothing,” I said dryly.
She smiled at that as if doing me a favor and returned to her mirror still holding her hair in place and finished pinning the complicated braided knot that only Opal could create. She topped it off with a comb trimmed in opal stones, a gift from Papa before his death. That same Christmas he’d given a similar comb to me with rubies, and one to Mama with her namesake of garnet stones, all to represent “Papa’s gems”.
She had dressed for an outing in a cool silk taffeta day-dress colored in light rose. What a lovely dress it was, with lace she’d sewn on the sleeves and around the neck, and long lace strips were sown in even intervals from the waist down to the hem. Longer than fashion to her ankles yet Opal was such an excellent seamstress, she could design dresses that could become the fashion if she’d wanted to. She knew how to distract from her own large bosom and thick waist.
As she rustled past to fetch me water for the basin, she left behind a scent of rose water. Without meaning to, she diminished me down to a lump of barn dirt brought in by the boots of the boys.
I worried needlessly about how to tell them of my participation in the ‘devil’s workers’, as our preacher called the suffragists. As I entered the kitchen hitching the too-long skirt of my sister’s loaned house dress, I saw there on the table in plain view a newspaper. On the front page was a picture of my group in the parade with me clearly recognizable. Worse, I looked angry, my mouth open, my sign lifted above my head, one knee lifted high showing my white petticoat and scuffed boot. Headline above the picture read, ‘Evolution: Girl, Government, or God?’, written by a Mr. Edrite Formen.
Jesse had brought this home without a word about it to me. I now understood what he meant by his “not even if you marched with the Confederates” statement. If only such unconditional love would be contagious with the women of this household.
The three female family members sat silently at the other end of the long wooden table, coffee cups in hand,
looking at me with shock, confusion, and yes, I believed with some awe.
I lowered myself heavily onto the first chair I came to and pulled the newspaper over to me with both hands as if the words weighed more than the paper they were written on. Resting my elbows on the table, I involuntarily brought my hands up to my forehead to shield the oncoming stares and began reading. Below the picture was a short paragraph describing the parade, its participants and its path. The text referenced editorials on page 6, one of those from a Mrs. Thomas Pickering. Cady’s letter! I couldn’t continue the day or any discussion without reading this. I read as hungrily as I ate; eggs, biscuits and coffee sliding into my peripheral view.
Cady’s letter had a precursory clause that stated the newspaper upheld the constitutional right to freedom of speech and thus published said article with the understanding that the opinions of the author were not those of the publisher.
Her letter assured the public that we were the same steadfast and dedicated wives and mothers of always, continuing to love our husbands, fathers and brothers, living and dying for our children. “We do not wish to be more, but simply do more,” she wrote. “An evolution of government is required. Enfranchisement of women is the next logical step in improving government thinking regarding domestic life. Our government must be brought up-to-date to harmonize with the present social conditions.” She went on to talk about reform required in laws for marital rights and the workforce, covering all our discussions during our secret teas. I was neither surprised nor alarmed until the end when she announced the July 18th Women’s Rights Convention. Robert would be sure to read this and would now know about it. And it being only two weeks away and I’m totally out of reach here at the farm, my lady friends would think I had deserted them when they needed me the most.
Waiting for Robert to cool down – or to tire of Bess’s inexperienced cooking – was going to be grueling.
I looked up at my family staring at me as if I were a stranger. I suppose I was one - they’d had no warning.
“You must read this to understand. Cady Pickering explained it better than I ever could.”
Opal forced a token smile. She stood up suddenly from the table. “I apologize, Ruby, but I must go. Jacob is due here soon and I’ve got to pick some garden goodies for a gift basket to his parents.”
“Jacob?”
“You’re not the only one with surprises. Jacob is my fiancée.” That explained her light rose dress and pink glow. Her rounded face reminded me of a cherub.
I glanced at Mama and Edith but they didn’t seem to show the same glow. Mama’s written notes to me referred to their neighbor – and now fiancée - as ‘Amish-Jacob-Penn’ as if all one name.
“Has he been courting you?” I asked.
“If you call courting wearing a path down between the back door and the orchard like you and Robert used to do, then the answer is yes. Is he still such a creature of habit?”
“Let’s just say, if I moved the furniture, he’d be lost.”
“Oh you girls. Shame on you Ruby for criticizing your husband!” Mama said, slowly lifting her heavy frame from her chair. She looked upset over this Jacob.
Opal glanced over and saw the same thing. She sat down and fiddled with an empty cup. “Jacob’s a decent man,” she said. “Recently, he came around offering to help Jesse. Jesse was short-handed with the dairy business growing like it is and gladly accepted. He worked for several hours a day for a week. Jesse then attempted to pay him a week’s wages, but Jacob would not accept payment. He asked that instead he be permitted to call on me and begin courting. Can you imagine?”
This isn’t the dark ages, my scowl told her.
Opal quickly added, “He’s very shy you see.”
“Let me understand this,” I said. “He worked into the good graces of Jesse in payment to court you? What about your good graces? What do you feel for Jacob?”
“I’m touched by this, Ruby. And naturally he would go to Jesse for permission. After all, Jesse is head of the household now that Papa is gone.” Her tone sounded defensive. “Furthermore, since we are not Amish, Jacob was concerned that Jesse would forbid it.
“He had great difficulty asking me to marry him, especially with German being his mother tongue. I didn’t think he would ever get the proposal out of his mouth. And do you know what he gave me with his proposal? A mantel clock!”
“Was this symbolic?” I asked. “Did he mean that time is quickly marching by on your way to being an old spinster?” I smiled but Opal was in no mood for humor.
“No, it’s Amish tradition. But time is marching by, Ruby. Is it not part of God’s plan that we marry and have children? And here I am twenty-five years old, for goodness sake. You were married at seventeen! And God will know me in that church as well, won’t he?”
It sounded odd to me. “What does Jacob’s family say about this? Does he have their blessing?”
“Yes. Of course they told Jacob that I must be baptized into the Amish faith and join their church. I am now reading the Ordnung, which is their written set of rules for daily living.”
Mama and Edith busied themselves with the dishes but I knew their volume was turned up. Now I understood why Mama looked so upset. Opal must leave our church. I’d miss Opal not sitting in our customary pew, but it would be harder for Mama not to have all of us there. Sometimes I thought Mama lived to go to church and was dying to rest in the church cemetery next to Papa. Eternally in her one church dress of dark green wool, its high collar pinned with her garnet brooch.
“Your heart matters here, too, you know,” I said.
Opal licked her lips and her misty blue eyes finally met mine. “What would you have me say? That I love him? Love, I believe, comes with time and ... and … children. Living with one another, learning one another. How do you know a man before marrying him? Our courting is no different than yours and look how well you faired.”
Who said, Silence is golden?
“You are right, Opal. I am in no position to question your decision. However, may I just say that a wife’s obligations are many. I admit I find these difficult at times. A man’s needs…”
Mama and Edith both turned and looked at me open-mouthed. I hesitated but if I was going to talk in front of a convention, I’d better start practicing now. In spite of my heated face, I continued. “… are often. And you worry when he is meeting his needs that conception will occur. And conception means childbirth. And childbirth could mean death, for you, for the baby. And it repeats itself. And sometimes, it seems…there is no end…” They all looked so shocked, I couldn’t go on.
“What hogwash, Ruby,” Opal said. “I only want the married life that you have and no more. Why isn’t that enough for you?”
“Look, little sister,” I said, sounding angrier than I intended. “I only wished to prepare you for the worst. I only wish you the best. There are some scary moments ahead of you that you should know about. It is no wonder women never speak of it.”
“I will not allow any more of that talk in here,” Edith said, her back to us. She was pumping water at the sink faster than normal, filling a large washtub stacked with fresh-picked green beans.
I was outnumbered. “Congratulations, Opal,” I conceded, trying to sound calm, although I trembled inside and wished to cry for some strange reason. “Can I help you with your wedding plans?”
Opal stood and shrugged her shoulders. “What little there is to do. Amish folks have a very simple ceremony at their homes, from what I understand. I should know more today. We’re going to his house to discuss the wedding with his parents.” Poor Opal had always talked about having a big church wedding, wearing her own wedding dress creation.
Mama began stacking jars into a large wicker basket. “I’ll go outside,” she announced to no one, “and have one of the boys help me start the fire to sterilize the canning jars.” She waddled away under the basket’s heavy load. Edith followed her and called out to one of the boys to come quickly and help gra
ndma with these jars.
The day’s work had begun, just like every other day I could remember. They would be grateful for the extra pair of hands. Yet I felt out of place drooping here in an oversized dress, like a half-sack of year-old apples that no one quite knew what to do with. I settled at the table and listened to the many sounds around me; the ticking grandfather clock coming from the front room, the dripping water from the sink pump behind me, the outside voices of boys, dogs, commands from Jesse. Keeping his boys busy doing their chores during the summer months was a challenge. At the core of it all hummed the softer resonance of Mama and Edith, tones of harmony that knew their parts by heart in working the summer-long task of food preservation.
Everything around me felt distant, like I wasn’t part of the living, but only a ghost wandering old places where I once belonged. My place was in my own home with my own chores – my garden, my children. How long must I wait before Robert called me back home?
I laid my head on the table at this juncture of my self-pity and that’s when I spotted the Annan Newspaper editorial by Mr. Edrite Formen, titled Evolution: Girl, Government, or God? It read:
4th of July. Celebration of our Independence. Independence that granted us freedom. Freedom of religion. Freedom of speech. Freedom from being subjects of a king, from monarchy, from burdening taxes to royalty. Celebration of the spirit of man. Of self-government. Celebrate the men, the real soldiers who fought for our liberty. This is a time to celebrate democracy as we know it: the best government, the best society in the world.
Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction Page 16
