Home Is Where the Heart Is

by Linda Byler

  CHAPTER 24

  SEASONS CAME AND WENT. THEY PLANTED AND HARVESTED, LIVED IN the cold of winter and the warmth of summer. The turkey poults grew and were sold for a good profit. They were fed on corn raised in the fertile, rolling earth. The sheep multiplied and were shorn by the traveling Scottish sheepshearers, the wool sold for another fair amount of cash. The cattle grew fat and lazy. The yearling calves were hauled off to the livestock auction, resulting in a good check that came in the mail a week later.

  Hannah planted lilac bushes and forsythia in a long row along the north side of the yard. She planted tulips, irises, daffodils, climbing roses that made a bower along the porch posts on either side of the stone walkway. All spoke of her love of beauty, the appreciation of the finer things in life.

  She mowed and trimmed her yard. She fretted about moles and dandelions. She raked every wisp of hay from the driveway after Dave had hauled in the day’s work from the fields.

  The barn grew. Dave built an annex to the simple framed structure, then added a silo to house corn silage for fattening the steers in winter. He built another corn crib and an implement shed.

  Sarah and Samuel went to school when Sarah was seven and Samuel was almost six. Samuel brought home report cards that made Hannah proud. Sarah’s were wrinkled and torn, streaked with mud or food stains, peppered with Bs and Cs. Notes from frustrated teachers almost always fluttered to the ground from between the fold of the report card.

  Emma was born two years after Samuel, a winsome child with straight dark hair so much like her sister’s. When Rudy arrived, they had their hands full once more, his screams and wails echoing through the house until Hannah thought she would surely lose her sanity. Unprepared, with Rudy still screeching at the top of his lungs, Suvilla was born less than a year later.

  This was Hannah’s personal North Dakota. Here was her biggest challenge. So, she took the bit in her mouth and rose to meet it with the same determination that she did everything else.

  If loving Dave produced all of these little ones, then she guessed it was God’s will, finally absorbing some of that spirituality for herself. If the baby cried and she got precious little sleep, well, then, so be it. She rose at five o’clock and drank cup after cup of scalding black coffee and did loads of laundry she handfed through the wringer she turned herself. She built a roaring fire to heat the elsa kessle of cold water to boiling, adding lye soap and stirring the whole load with a stick, after she filled the gasoline engine and yanked it to life with its cord.

  She took pride in achieving the whitest whites, bed linens and underwear, socks and nighties as white as the pure winter snow. She washed diapers by the dozens, took pride in the way they hung straight, bringing them in to fold on the kitchen table and thinking how Abner Troyer’s wife, Lydia, asked how she got her diapers to look like new. Hannah had cast a disgusted look at the stained, yellow diaper in Lydia’s hand and told her flat out she didn’t use enough soap or wash them long enough. And, her hot water was not hot enough.

  Lydia pinned the diaper on her baby, blinked, and mumbled something about the soap she got from her mother-in-law. But Hannah knew better. Lydia was fat and lazy. She’d rather make doughnuts and eat them then do her washing. That’s what happens, Lydia, she thought and sniffed indignantly as she moved off.

  In some ways, Hannah remained the same, even as the years rolled by. She went to church faithfully, crowding into the buggy with her growing family every two weeks, except when one of the children became ill. She visited with the women of her church group, even laughed and smiled at the affairs of their community, the idle news and the gossip. But no matter how hard the young women tried to include her in their quiltings and Sunday evening suppers, she never went.

  Dave wanted to go sometimes and told Hannah so. “Then go,” she’d say. “Go ahead. I don’t care.” Sometimes he did, especially when the supper was held at the home of his favorite friend, Emanuel Stutzman.

  They were both sheep farmers. Both enjoyed prosperity after the years of the Great Depression. Both enjoyed cattle auctions and a good game of checkers. Hannah couldn’t stand Emanuel’s wife. Thin, simpering, and just plain dumb, she’d bet Sarah was smarter at seven years old. For one thing, whoever heard of a name like Fronie? Maybe it wasn’t her fault that her parents named her that, but she could come up with a more suitable nickname. If you didn’t have the blues when you met her, you would afterward, the way she complained about everything from her tail bone to her sore eyes, her grouchy baby and her husband’s foot odor. It was enough to make Hannah want to run out the door.

  Dave suggested that Hannah could help her, perhaps give her some kindhearted, understanding tips about all her troubles. “She needs a good kick on her bottom, that’s what,” Hannah snorted. “Maybe if she’d do her work and quit rubbing that Watkin’s salve over everything—her sore shoulder, her nostrils. You can smell the camphor before you see her!”

  Dave didn’t think it was funny. He told Hannah that her lack of compassion was frightening. He was afraid she’d have to pay for it someday, that God is not mocked.

  “I don’t pity people, no. The women especially. They need to get to work and quit their whining. Life is never easy. Get over it.” And she pounded her bread dough and set it to rise.

  Dave sat in the kitchen and watched his wife’s strong shoulders, her muscular arms, and he thought, no, sometimes marriage wasn’t easy. She made him angry with her refusal to socialize. He’d love to have a normal wife who would look forward to spending an evening giggling and talking, sharing recipes, trading fabric and buttons the way they did back home when he was a small boy. His mother loved a good game of Parcheesi and a round of Rook, becoming boisterous when they spent another evening with Roman Yoders.

  So, if he would give his life for his wife, loving her the way Christ loved the church, did that mean he would always have to stay home, with no social life at all? He told Hannah that they were still young and he didn’t want to stay at home all the time. This was after Emanuel told him to bring his family after the first snowfall. They would make homemade ice cream.

  If there was anything Dave loved, it was hand-churned peanut butter ice cream. Hannah listened from the armless rocker, peering up at him with bleary eyes that were swollen and sleep-deprived, the tip of a diaper strung with other laundry from a line above the stove tickling her head. Suvilla threw a stream of milk across her shoulder, then arched her back and howled like a hyena.

  She laid Suvilla calmly on the floor, stretched to her full height, looked Dave in the eye, and told him if he didn’t shut up about Emanuel Stutzman and his ice cream freezer, she’d leave him.

  “If you can’t see farther than your own nose, all right then, go!” Dave answered, so angry he couldn’t see straight.

  They didn’t go to the Stutzmans’. Hannah walked around the house thumping her heels, her chin in the air, and didn’t speak. That was fine with Dave, who had no intention of bringing any warmth to the arctic atmosphere pervading the house.

  Guilty about their own lack of forgiveness, they paid extra attention to the little ones, reading them stories and drawing pictures with them, without a word passing between Hannah and Dave.

  The snow fell, the wind blew, the temperature dropped to below zero. But Dave stayed in the barn, determined to worry Hannah. She’d feel sorry for being so bullheaded.

  Hannah clattered dishes and hoped Dave’s toes would freeze. It was time he stopped being so selfish. Couldn’t he see that she wasn’t getting her rest, with Suvilla awake every two hours and not settling down for another hour? No, of course he couldn’t. He was sound asleep, snoring like a truck without a muffler.

  How could he? And a whole new set of self-pitying feelings took hold of her.

  Who broke the silence then? They were never quite sure. They missed each other eventually, so one of them would comment on the weather, the sick ewe, the baby’s cough. And, if there was a response, they knew they were on the way out of the sil
ence, which was a huge relief. Laughter and conversation were restored and the good life resumed with stolen kisses and cuffs on the shoulder, fond, smoldering glances and little whirls of heady joy that neither one understood.

  From time to time, Dave stood his ground and thundered an obstinate refusal to Sarah’s incompetent plans. Things that made no sense. No, he would not build rabbit hutches on the north side of the barn, regardless of what she’d promised Sarah. Rabbits needed sunshine, especially morning sun.

  Sarah whined and begged and balled her little fists, pounding his pants leg, whereupon she got a few spanks from his enormous, calloused hand and was told to go sit on the couch until she straightened up.

  Hannah was furious but she was well-taught. For a mother to take the disobedient child’s part was calling for heartache and sorrow. To turn children against their father was a slippery slope leading to disrespect, which led to more blatant disobedience. So she said nothing, although she thought she’d die of heart failure right then and there from all the belligerence churning in her chest.

  He hadn’t even heard her out. Rabbits did well on the north side of a building in summer, when the nights were cool and they were shaded from the day’s heat. What did he know about rabbits? Probably nothing. She cried that evening when he told her she needed to speak with him about something like rabbit hutches before making any promises to Sarah. It wasn’t fair to their daughter to punish her for her reactions.

  Why did a husband’s words mean so much, though? When Dave said what he thought, the words were heavy and became uncomfortably embedded in her conscience and stuck in her thoughts regardless of how often she told herself she didn’t care what he thought. She cared an awful lot, no matter if she brushed it off or not. So, Sarah had no rabbits that summer.

  When Suvilla stopped her incessant crying, Hannah thanked God with a grateful heart. She resumed her work with her usual bursts of energy, painted the porch floor with gray enamel paint, so shiny it looked wet. Dave built a porch swing and added an extra two by four to the ceiling joist, hanging the swing with sturdy hooks.

  With the profusion of purple lilacs, the irises, and roses, Hannah’s porch swing was her evening paradise, a vacation from her hard work and the constant childcare that consumed each day. She would sit, idly pushing the swing with one foot, an arm slung across the back, listening to the sounds of the robins’ frenzied chirping as they settled themselves for the night.

  She always hoped that Dave would join her, and often he did. She loved these warm evenings when the children played in the yard and the swing would groan under his bulk. They would talk, share their day, and make future plans. Hannah would reach over to straighten his collar, to lift a piece of hay from his beard, hoping he would capture her hand and hold it.

  For Hannah did love her husband with an adoration that bordered on worship. Most of the time. But submitting to someone’s will other than her own was a monumental task, one that drained her energy, often taking away the sunshine from her existence.

  She wished someone would have told her the inordinate amount of giving up that was included in the headiness of romance. How many young girls were swept off their feet by the good looks of an ardent suitor, courted politely under the strict eyes of their parents, married in a godly ceremony that promised days of sunshine and rain? The minister could have included tornadoes and hurricanes and flash floods, in their case!

  But she knew she’d do it all over again. Have all these babies, work on the farm with Dave. It was the challenge of a lifetime and, increasingly, a deep contentment and peace she could never really figure out.

  She loved the farm and she loved Illinois.

  When church services were announced to be held at Dave King’s, Hannah felt the same lurch of excitement she always felt. Here were two weeks of rishting, preparation for services to be held in their home on a lovely Sunday in May. At least she hoped it would be lovely. Hannah had long planned the display of her flowers, her yard mowed, raked, and trimmed, flower beds without one weed, the soil hoed and loosened with fresh petunias planted in small clumps. The women would walk along the stone pathway to the house, thinking how Hannah was a talented frau, everything so neat and presentable, the growth of flowers amazing.

  She washed walls, yanked beds apart, and cleaned the frames and slats with strong-smelling soap. She poured baking soda on mattresses, wiped the steel bedspring coils, washed quilts and blankets, sheets and pillow cases, hanging them on her sturdy wash line. She thanked God for Dave’s clothesline poles, thinking she’d be able to hang a ton of clothes on those lines and the poles wouldn’t even bend.

  She polished windows with vinegar water and clean muslin cloths. She yanked dressers away from walls, upended chairs and small stands, threw articles of clothing from the drawers, and wiped them with the same odorous soap. Not a corner of a closet or drawer went uncleaned. Not a ladybug or a spider remained safe.

  Hannah cleaned all day every day and made cold sandwiches for Dave at lunch time. She slapped bean soup on the table for supper. The children were put to bed early so Hannah could collapse on the couch for a moment, her shoulders aching, her lower back on fire with pain.

  Dave told her he’d rub it with horse liniment, which brought a snort of mammoth proportions. Everyone stayed out of Hannah’s way, even the unruly Sarah, who took pity on Suvilla with her wet diaper and her runny nose, standing in the middle of the kitchen and howling to herself with her mother nowhere about when they got home from school.

  Sarah wiped Suvilla’s nose, laid her on the floor, and changed her diaper. Then she gave her saltine crackers to eat, all the while glaring at her mother for being so negligent.

  They had a colossal argument. Dave wanted to hold services in the house, spring weather being unpredictable the way it was. Hannah insisted on the barn. Why not? It would save him so much work not having to clear out the furniture before setting the long wooden benches in place.

  “All you have to do is spread clean straw, sweep cobwebs, and we’re ready. The weather is unseasonably warm, Dave.”

  “It is this week. It’s May, Hannah. Anything can happen, and usually does.”

  “I’ve never seen a pessimist like you.”

  “Why can’t you give up, Hannah?”

  “Because, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s warm enough to hold the service in the barn. The bays are almost empty. I can take the food and dishes out on Saturday and the house will stay untouched.”

  “What if it turns cold and rainy? No, we’re going to hold services in the house.”

  With that certain look—his nostrils slightly flared, his amber eyes wide, his temper like a boiling cauldron beneath his compressed lips—Hannah knew there would be no budging.

  She tried anyway. The children were in bed and they felt free to state their minds, which soon drifted from the subject at hand to other accusations, darts of demeaning epithets, genuine mud-slinging, resulting in Dave slamming the screen door, breaking the latch, and Hannah crying great bursts of tears, awash in self-pity and burning rebellion.

  Neither one admitted their lack of sleep the following morning. They spoke in clipped tones at the breakfast table, asking only what was absolutely necessary, a half-strangled reply from the other.

  She kept on cleaning, mowed the yard, washed the porch, and baked twenty-six snitz pies from the dried apples she’d stored in the pantry over winter. She mixed the peanut butter with molasses, made cup cheese from the crumbles she’d prepared beforehand, and opened ten quarts of sweet pickles and six quarts of spiced red beets.

  And still Dave did not give in. Church services would be held in the house. It was so completely against her wishes that it was like taking a mouthful of warmed, slimy cod liver oil.

  Grimly, she helped him move furniture. She couldn’t stand the sight of his unruly mop of hair. Every time she gave him a bowl haircut, he looked like a tulip bulb. She still hadn’t figured out why his face looked so out of proportion.

  W
hen had she ever thought this man handsome? Certainly not now as he tugged red-faced at yet another heavy piece of furniture that could have stayed exactly where it was if he’d listened to her.

  On Sunday morning the temperature on the John Deere thermometer tacked to the porch post had the mercury somewhere between 30 and 40 degrees. Hannah had tumbled out of bed at four o’clock, shivering, the floor cold to her bare feet.

  Wide-eyed and startled into speech, she told Dave perhaps they should start a fire in the living room. Before daylight, Hannah heard a roar, like distant rolling thunder, except there was no let up.

  From the porch, she saw the cold rain that slanted in from the east, driven by a stiff wind. The dawn was gray and eerie, the moaning of the wind like a correctional ghost admonishing her to be grateful for once in her life, for her husband’s good judgment.

  The irises hung their soggy heads in the driving rain. The roses lost their red petals in the harsh wind. The lilacs waved and nodded, thoroughly soaked and battered by the cold rain.

  Women scuttled up the stone walkway, their black bonnets pulled well past their faces, clutching babies and small baskets containing diapers and milk bottles, raisins and saltines for cranky little ones. Not one of them noticed the perfectly trimmed yard, the groomed flower beds, or the profusion of flowers planted according to Hannah’s exact specifications. Every one that stepped from the buggy into the lashing torrent had one objective and that was to get to the house as swiftly as possible.

  A warm fire burned in the cooking range, another one in the living room. Women held out their hands to the warmth, appreciating that the service would be held in the cozy house. Hannah smiled and nodded and kept her secret. No one would ever pry the fact out of her that she had tried to make the service be held in the barn.

  Unbelievable, this weather. It was May. But she seated the women, sat erect with Suvilla on her lap, her face carefully arranged to appear caring and friendly. She was more than glad she had listened to Dave.