by Armin Wiebe
It is hard to talk with a man who is driving a Model T in the snow, for sure yet if you can feel that the man doesn’t want to talk about what is pressing heavy on your heart. Isn’t that what is most loose between people in this life, especially between a man and a woman? It is easier to be the still one. “Die Stillen im Land,” we used to call ourselves, we Mennists, so shtollt and fromm about our Wehrlosijchkeit, and when something needijch needed to be said, always some Model T noise made it hard to speak, so it was easier to be still and let things go by. But I needed to hear it from Obrum, so I waited till we got back to the yard. I stayed in the seat on the woman’s side until Obrum had choked off that clapperbox and all we could hear was the clittering snow underneath.
“So what gives with Blatz?” I said, sitting straight with my legs together.
“Where can he go to, such a man?” Obrum’s eyes looked wet, maybe from the cold air.
“But can’t he help shovel out the barn or something? Is he always going to be under the feet?”
“He can stay in the schpikja house and play piano when we move into the new house.”
“You promise me that?” I said. I didn’t know if I should be happy or sad about what he was telling me.
“Yes, Susch, I promise you that.” Then, as I reached for the handle to open the door, Obrum said, “Beethoven Blatz is like a mourning dove or a lily of the field. He doesn’t need much, only we have to coo back to him sometimes.” Then he gave me his schmuista Kehler look.
“Shuft!” I said, and I slammed that car door closed after me. Obrum snorted a laugh behind me, but it stopped short like a Model T motor not cranked hard enough to stay running.
So there I was, carrying a child in that vekjlämtet schpikja house, living with two men who each in their own way could make my heart tsitter and make me think I had febeizeled my brain. I hadn’t told Obrum about the baby even though he had prophesied it when he brought the rocking chair. Even after I myself knew for sure that it was true I didn’t want to tell him too soon like I had the first time and got myself into this cold soup in the first place. For sure, I said nothing to Beethoven Blatz, I mean, what would it have kammered him anyways? But how I wished the winter was over so that Obrum would get busy building that promised house so I could stop living with two men at the same time. But it was hardly Christmas yet.
Sometimes in the evening I set the lamp on the table and asked Obrum to say what kind of house he would build me. Would he build a house and barn together like my parents had? “Oh but no,” he said, “we’re not living in the Darp, we have our own life here.” And then on the back of an old calendar page he drew me a picture of the first floor that showed where the kitchen would be and the sitting room and the koma pantry for keeping food cool and the room for the cream separator and a room for washing and bathing, and he even drew a bathtub beside a nightpail. He also put on an ovenside porch where I could wash clothes with the washing machine he would get for me.
“Where will we sleep?” I asked.
“Oh, we will sleep upstairs.” And then he drew the upstairs floor, where he showed a big bedroom for us and two rooms for the children, one for the boys and one for the girls, and a place at the top of the stairs where a person could sit and watch through a see-out window what was going on over the section of prairie that his father had left him when his family moved away to Mexico.
“Will it be a four-sided square house?” I wanted to sound like I knew something about such things too.
“Well sure, except for the ovenside porch, that will be outside the square,” he said. And then he drew little boxes to show me where the sofa would be and the beds and the table and the wall with the cupboards that he would build in the kitchen. “And I will put in a sink that has a pipe so the dirty water can run out, so my little Susch doesn’t need to carry the drankahma outside anymore.”
“Well sure, that’s good, but where will you get the money to pay for all this? You only planted twenty acres wheat last summer and didn’t even plough any more.”
“Oh but Susch, don’t you remember last summer I carpentered in Gretna so I didn’t have time to break more land?”
“Yeah, and you only had money for the Model T and then you shustahed together this schpikja house that is so full of windholes that a person is vekjlämt all the time except when I am sitting almost on the stove.” I almost started to sipple right there at the table, and I didn’t like to do that in a house with two men in it.
“But Susch,” Obrum said, and he put his hand on my hand, “I have wood in Gretna that I won’t bring home till the snow is gone, but I paid money for it already from my wages last summer. And Ritz is building a new elevator after Christmas and I have hired on to work for him.”
“You’re going away and leaving me here all alone?”
“Blatz will be here.”
19
Susch
Darpslied Elders Villa
I remember the time Obrum went along with Tien’s brother, Tony, to work on that elevator in Gretna and he left the Model T at home. Tony had a Model A truck and they were going to bring some of Obrum’s building boards back with them at the end of the week. The snow already had almost all melted and I was outside hanging my wash on the line. Beethoven was playing piano, that tiresome starting and stopping with that same Sonata für Sonia music that he had been making all the winter through. Some days I almost a headache got from that clanging over and over, and for sure I didn’t believe that music had anything to do with me, even if he had scratched out Sonia and written in Susch.
Mostly, having Beethoven Blatz in the house was like having a cat or a dog; he was just there and he knew enough not to get under a woman’s feet. Feeding him was the same: I just had to leave a dish of something on the table and before I washed dishes at the end of the day, the food would be gone. And at night he stayed on his side of the double granary walls so I most of the time slept like a baby even when Obrum was working away.
But sometimes when I was pressing clothes or peeling potatoes, I would feel something like a spider crawl up my neck, and when I looked around I would see Beethoven schlikjing back into his piano room. Sometimes when he would sit down at the table to eat, I would catch him staring at me with such trüarijch eyes I was frightened he was going to cry, but then he would see that I had seen him and he would shudder his head like he was trying to come back from where he had been.
I still can see him, so dark and white at the same time, not like men who work outside and get their faces and necks burned dark reddish-brown from the sun, but then their bellies are white like dough in the pan ready for the oven. Beethoven’s face was white like dough, only at the same time it seemed dark like his eyebrows that grew closed across his nose, and then with his black beard that was growing wild like willows beside Mary’s Creek and with his hair that was getting long like Samson’s in the Bible, he could look grülijch scary when the lamplight was flickering. Then sometimes he would talk to me, tell me things about Russlaund and Sonia and the music and the orchestra, and as I listened to his High German talk mixed up with English and Flat German, the smell of hay in the barn on a stormy night tickled my nose and I got this hartsoft grülijch womanly feeling so strong I almost did what that woman in the Bible did to Samson. Isn’t it good that we don’t do everything done in the Bible? Ach heeat ekj sei, we people can ourselves figure out enough dummheit to do without that yet.
On this day Tien came on foot to visit me. I was outside hanging wash, almost crying with lonesomeness from living in this schpikja house with a piano Mensch while my man was gone from early Monday morning till Saturday faspa time. Then Tien stood on the other side of the line, her cheeks red from walking in the spring wind. She smiled and reached down to my basket, grabbed one end of the bedsheet, and helped me pin it to the line. For an eyeblink I felt guilty that I hadn’t stripped Beethoven’s bedding too, but I hadn’t been able to bring mys
elf to go into that room while Blatz was in there. But then Tien reached down and pulled the last pillowcase from the basket and grabbed a couple of clothespins from my apron and pinned up the last of my washing.
All this time she was nattering away about what was happening in the village and telling me things that were going on in my own family that I even hadn’t heard about yet, like Preacher Fuschtje Funk was by my parents’ place for faspa or supper at least once in a week and that my brother, Pete, had been telling the Darpsjunges that the preacher was trying to visit with his sister Liestje. Holem de gruel, I was thinking, and I didn’t know what to say, except that if Fuschtje Funk was looking to Liestje to be a sombre preacher’s wife, he maybe had on bigger blinders than an old horse. But because I was with Tien I started to laugh and she laughed with me, and I picked up the empty basket and started to walk away from the clothesline, but instead of leading Tien to the house, I walked toward the barn, because I didn’t want to be neighbouring with Tien in my kitchen while Beethoven was in the next room with his piano music. I wanted to tell her things I hadn’t told anybody yet, not even Obrum.
The Model T stood between the washline and the barn and, without thinking, I set the basket on the car roof, opened the door on the woman’s side, and climbed up into the seat. Tien opened the man’s door but instead of climbing up behind the steer, she reached past the steer and turned the key beside a round clock thing. “Tien, what do you?” I said.
Tien grabbed the schwengel that stuck up from the floor and pushed it back almost to the seat. “Hand brake on,” she said. She looked at me with schmuista eyes. “Sometimes it helps if a girl plays with her brothers.” Then she went to the front of the car.
This I wanted to see, so I climbed down and stepped around to where Tien was bent over, pulling a ring on a stiff wire. Then she took hold of the crank with her right hand and cranked it left half a turn. Then she took hold with her left hand. “Eins, zwei, drei,” she said, and she gave that crank a hartsoft right turn and let go so it hung down. The Model T sneezed and was quiet again. Tien cranked again. The Model T sneezed again and again and then clappered away all by itself.
“Let’s go,” Tien said, and we both hurried into the car, me on the woman’s side and Tien on the man’s side behind the steer, but not before I had grabbed the washbasket from the roof and shoved it into the back seat. “Pauss opp, Susch. You have to learn how to drive this car, so look what my feet are doing.”
So I watched how Tien stepped down on a pedal with her left foot and then she pushed that handbrake schwengel forward and then pulled down on another schwengel beside the steer. The Model T motor räzed louder and faster and the car started to drive frontwards, and she gripped the steer with both hands and I looked at her face to see if she would stick out her tongue between her lips, but she didn’t. Then we were going in a circle around the yard and she drove the Model T along the tracks that Obrum and his driving had made from the house to the creek to the end of his land. She then drove onto the road that wasn’t really a road yet then but where the road is now and she stepped on the pedal with her left foot again and pulled the handbrake schwengel backward to the middle so the car went faster, but not so fast as Obrum would go when it was dry.
“Pauss opp, there’s a puddle,” I said, and all of a sudden Tien steered sideways so fast that I thought we would tip over, but we didn’t and she drove that mud puddle around without getting a wheel wet with the water.
“This goes good, not?” Tien shouted to me and I smiled and nodded my chin up and down. Then she honked the blosdink horn and made me laugh. When we got to where the track joined up with the wider built-up road, Tien stopped the car and she slowly turned the car around so we could drive back.
But she didn’t go back, she just let the car idle so it seemed quiet enough to allow a person to talk. So I said to Tien, “Where from did Obrum get that wedding dress anyways?”
“Obah Meyall, he never told you that?” Tien looked at me with a face that made me feel like I was a child who had licked flypaper because it looked like syrup. I couldn’t even shake my head no. “From Gretna, he got it, for sure from Gretna. He never goes anywheres else.” Tien looked me in the eyes, wondering.
“Somebody had that dress on before me, not?” I said. “For sure, that wasn’t a new dress.”
“What matters it? It was clean. You looked beautiful in it. You had a happy wedding. You have a good man.”
“Did Obrum get mumps in Gretna too?” The words flew out before I could think, but it seemed weighty that I know this.
“Susch,” Tien said, just loud enough to hear over the motor noise. “My friend you are.” She looked me in the eyes and her eyes blinkered a little wet. “Yes, your Obrum had mumps in boarding school.”
My heart schtootst a little, but then in a mixed up way it felt lighter too. “Well,” I said, “if Obrum had mumps when he was already a man, it didn’t bother him nothing.” I put my hand on my belly and smiled at Tien like I was the happiest person in the world. “This baby is going to stay.”
“Huy yuy yuy,” Tien said. “Then I must learn you to drive this Model T. Here, come round and sit behind the steer.”
Well, learning to drive a car isn’t so schwierijch when a woman has learned to use a treadle sewing machine—using your feet for one thing while your hands do another thing or two comes easy to a woman—and besides, Tien had learned me to drive a bicycle when I was twelve even though my family didn’t get one until Pete worked out by a neighbour’s place and earned money to buy himself one. Yet there are women who never learned to drive a car or a bicycle and then when they are old in the Altenheim they can’t even steer their wheelchairs without crashing into walls and people. Now, I won’t say that I drove perfect that first time but I drove the car back to the yard without getting stuck and I stalled it only one time, and so Tien learned me to start it up with the crank, which was a little bit trickier than treadling a sewing machine but I didn’t break my arm, and off I drove again home. Only Tien hadn’t showed me yet how to stop the car and I drove through the washing on the line before I figured out how to use the brake. Lucky the sheets hadn’t frozen stiff so the Model T didn’t get feknutsched or scratched up even.
Tien and I laughered ourselves for a long time and for an eyeblink I saw my grandmother Glootje Susch sitting sidesaddle on the round hood of the Model T, looking in through the window at me with a schmuista look in her eyes. I made myself keep on laughing and I was afraid to look at Tien to see if she could see my grandmother too, but then Glootje Susch was gone and Tien was still laughing and I knew that she hadn’t seen her. I was afraid to say to her what I had just seen because maybe if I said something, the feeling I was having would go away. My whole body up and down and all the way through was quivering from feeling the baby and from driving the Model T and from seeing Grandmother Glootje Susch on the hood of the Model T. I was afraid to say words but I needed to bring something by to somebody so even as we were both still laughing, I reached out and took Tien around with my arms and pressed myself to her until I could hear our hearts bouncing together through our coats. I felt a little bit like I wanted to cry, but I didn’t want Tien to think something was loose with me and then at the same time I didn’t want to let her go because along with all the other feelings that were driving me through, I was all of a sudden full of yankering to play “Chopsticks” on that piano.
20
Susch
Darpslied Elders Villa
When a woman waits for a man, time can get long, even with a garden to plant and the chores to do. And some days the air in that schpikja house got so thick, I just had to go outside. But then the yard and garden felt closed in too, so I walked out onto the unploughed land to get away from what was pressing me from inside and out. I hadn’t yet told Obrum about the baby and I had hurry brought it by to Tien to say nothing about this, not even to her mother, or mine. Tien was good with keeping
secrets, even from me, I found out later.
At first I didn’t tell Obrum because I didn’t want to be too haustijch about it. Then I didn’t tell him because I wanted to tease him after he had been so sure of himself, bringing me the rocking chair and telling me I would have a baby. And then when he left me alone with Blatz, I figured I would see how smart this sommamolijch little man was, so I waited for him to see it himself. The trouble was, even though I felt the baby pressing inside and later the kicking, I wasn’t showing anything that I couldn’t easy hide with a dress. Even Obrum in the night when he was home didn’t catch on, but then it seems to me that when a man is with a woman in the bed he hardly notices much that isn’t fixed onto himself. So even if my man was hartsoft dringent in the bed, he saw nothing different with me. Later, I found out that some women just carry their babies different so they don’t show so much, which is good if you want to hide something, but not so good if you want to be comfortable, because I think to carry a baby pressing in is harder than to carry a baby pressing out for all the world to see.
So that, and Beethoven Blatz’s over and over again piano music, pushed me out to walk in the field. Now, a person would think that a farm girl wouldn’t see nothing new in a field, but I had grown up in the village and my life had mostly been in the barns and the garden. And besides, all the village fields were ploughed and the pastures grazed short around the cowpies. But Obrum’s land was unbroken prairie, and I hadn’t ever looked close at it. I started to see things I had never before seen. The first time I walked in our pasture, snow still lay in patches here and there like soap bubbles from wash water spilled in the grass, and all of a sudden I saw Grandmother Glootje Susch hucked down, pointing her finger right where Elsie Schemmel was starting to graze. I stepped closer. She was pointing at two fuzzy buds poking through a melted hole in the snow. Elsie saw them too so I hurry hitzed her away. Glootje Susch vanished when I bent to look, but I was used to her fading like fog as soon as I saw her. The white and brown buds were covered with fuzzes. At first I thought the buds were maybe a kind of mushroom because they seemed to grow from the ground without green leaves.
