How the Light Gets In

by Jolina Petersheim

  For the second time in one night, tears sprang to Ruth’s eyes. But these tears did not stem from loss, but because it so deeply touched her that her mother-in-law should care enough to put their burgeoning relationship on the line. Ruth’s life was bookended by widows: her mother and her mother-in-law, and yet seeing how differently the two women reacted to grief caused Ruth to know which path she wanted to take as her exhausted, fret-filled heart pursued its own healing.

  Ruth scooted over on the couch, recently draped with a set of Mabel’s doilies, which were cropping up around the house like daffodils in spring. She put an arm around her rounded shoulders. Mabel smiled and patted Ruth’s hand. “You’re sweet,” she said.

  Ruth laughed quietly. “No, I’m not . . . but I do appreciate how hard you’re trying to make my family feel safe and loved.”

  “Oh, you are loved!” Mabel cried. “Having you and the girls here—” Overcome, she stopped speaking and clutched a balled hand to her chest. “It’s done my heart good.”

  “It’s done all our hearts good to be here. You’re a wonderful grandmother, Mabel.”

  Mabel rested her head on her daughter-in-law’s shoulder. “And you’re a wonderful mamm.” She paused. “I promise I’ll stop trying to matchmake and just pray that God will send someone to you who can be the kind of husband and father my own son was.”

  Ruth didn’t say anything, only stared silently into the fire.

  Elam steered his wagon between the last row of bushes and the wall of the channel. As the wooden wheels creaked, the women lifted their kapped heads, straightened their backs, and began walking toward him with their portion of the dry harvest. They carried the heaped cranberries in straw baskets so identical, it appeared they must’ve gotten together to weave them, the same as they had gotten together to make apple pie filling and sauce.

  Ruth joined the women funneling down the rows. Her lower back ached; her fingers were stiff and stained the color of blood. And yet, when was the last time Ruth’s body tingled with the miraculous sensation that came from feeling the elements on her skin—the cold, the wind, the blinding glimmer of warm sun before it slipped behind a cloud and the cold returned—that was a not-so-subtle reminder that, out of all the generations who had worked this patch of ground, who had turned this oxygen into carbon dioxide, she was the one who was working the ground at that very moment; the one lucky enough to be alive? She couldn’t remember, and yet here she was, walking tall and empowered by the fact she’d helped contribute to the harvest.

  “You holding up all right?”

  Turning, Ruth saw Laurie. “Takes a while,” she said. “My basket’s not half-full.”

  “I know. This part’s no fun, but tonight will be.”

  “What’s tonight?”

  Laurie’s gray eyes shone. “The harvest party. Elam holds it every year in his barn.”

  “Your brother’s quite the social butterfly for claiming he’s a recluse.”

  “Not so much.” Laurie adjusted her basket. “My mamm’s the one who started it. She wanted to do something special, for the workers. After she died, Elam kept the tradition up.”

  “No doubt with a little encouragement from you.”

  Laurie laughed. “Just a little.”

  Ruth watched Elam, taking the baskets from the women and stacking them in the wagon so they lay smooth. One woman, named Amy Brunk, was curvy and dimpled with glossy black hair shining like a raven’s wing beneath her kapp. This wasn’t the first time Ruth had noticed Amy making an effort to talk to Elam, but he just took her basket and smiled the same as he did with everyone else. Ruth’s relief puzzled her, and she continued studying him to understand why. The muscles moving beneath Elam’s tanned forearms brought to mind the image of him bathing beneath the outdoor pump last night. Ruth’s cheeks grew hot. She looked over her shoulder and saw Laurie was still watching her and smiling. But her smile was not as generic as her brother’s. Ruth, feeling exposed, had to look away.

  The dry harvest, like the wet harvest, was an arduous project that exhausted body and mind alike. By dusk, Ruth alone stood at the threshold of the barn. It satisfied her, seeing the cool cement floor layered with the slatted boxes, which allowed the fruit to receive necessary ventilation before the workers returned to sort the berries early the next day.

  Laurie came and said, “You’d better go home and change if you’re coming back for the party!”

  Ruth turned. “What’re you wearing tonight?”

  “A little black version of this.”

  Ruth scanned Laurie’s cape dress. After a moment, she said, “Are you serious?”

  Laurie grinned. “Have you ever known me to be?”

  “Well, the only dress I packed I wore to the funeral. Vi spilled gravy on it.”

  “You’re not wearing a funeral dress to a party. That’s bad luck!”

  “Mennonites don’t believe in luck.”

  “No,” Laurie admitted. “But we do believe in common sense. You can borrow one of my cape dresses. I have twelve more just like this one. All in the latest colors and patterns, straight from Lancaster.” She paused dramatically. “One even shows my clavicles.”

  “Clavicles!” Ruth mock-gasped. “No wonder you and Tim have so many kids.”

  Laurie laughed. “What color you want? I have everything but red, yellow, and orange, and you probably shouldn’t wear those colors anyway, with your hair.”

  Ruth wasn’t sure how to respond. She didn’t want to hurt Laurie’s feelings—who’d made such an effort to welcome Ruth into the community—and yet she didn’t want to show up tonight looking like she was trying to fit in. Or, worse, that she was trying to make fun. But then Ruth thought of the fact that coming to the gathering in one of Laurie’s dresses was far better than showing up in jeans. “I’d love to borrow a dress,” Ruth said. “Any color’s fine.”

  Laurie’s smile widened. Leaning forward, she pinched the baggy material of Ruth’s sweatshirt. “I’ll have to tack it,” she said. “But it’ll work.”

  “Do you want me to come over to your house?”

  “I’ll come to you.” She winked. “It’ll give me a chance to escape.”

  Ruth followed Laurie up the farmhouse steps into the bedroom that, in another lifetime, had been Laurie’s but was now occupied by Ruth and her girls.

  Laurie had been ten when her mother became too ill to have visiting children underfoot. Ruth had been twelve when her own mother forbade her to have friends over after school. Laurie felt the loss of comradery all her life, which was why she was grateful to be surrounded by her children, whose messiness and noise protected her from the loneliness she’d always known. Ruth, on the other hand, didn’t feel this loss at first. But by sixth grade, the girls in her classroom had stopped inviting Ruth to birthday parties and sleepovers because they believed Ruth was the one who had chosen to remain aloof and not her mother, who was secretly embarrassed that she and her husband were the age of most of the children’s grandparents. However, now, Ruth and Laurie tromped upstairs, giddy women reliving the girlhood days they’d never gotten to experience.

  Ruth and Laurie entered the room. Laurie laid the dresses on the bed and looked around, inspecting the dried bouquet on the bureau and the hook rug on the floor like she hadn’t been up there in years. “Elam wanted to give us this house, after the babies started coming.” She patted her belly. “He said it didn’t make sense for us to stay in our little house while he stayed here.”

  “Why didn’t you take him up on it?”

  Laurie shuddered. “I don’t know how Elam even does it. It’s like, after Mamm died, all the good memories I have of this place were sucked into a black hole.”

  Looking down, Ruth fingered the hem of a dress. “I hope it’s not the same for my girls.”

  “It won’t be,” Laurie said. “Chandler’s death was awful, but it happened fast. My entire childhood, I knew one day my mom would be gone. And then, one day, she was.” As she spoke, Laurie calmly sprea
d out the skirts of her cape dresses so Ruth could inspect them. Despite the heaviness of their conversation, the gesture moved Ruth. Laurie was obviously proud of her creations while Ruth could barely see a variance in color or fabric.

  Laurie reached for the top one on the pile—a dark-blue wave splashed across the quilt—and picked it up. She held the material against Ruth’s face.

  “This would contrast your pretty green eyes.”

  Ruth had never known how to take a compliment. She asked, “Do you like clothing?”

  “I love it.” Laurie sighed. “I love clothing so much, it must be a sin.”

  Ruth laughed. But for once, Laurie’s mercurial expression remained somber.

  “Growing up,” she continued, “sewing was my creative outlet . . . my personal rebellion. It was like, if I could get away with an inch shorter hem or buttons instead of hooks and eyes, I could take control of the world. Or at least take control of my corner of it. For years I dreamed of leaving Wisconsin and studying fashion somewhere like Paris or New York.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Laurie’s smile returned. “Why do any of us forsake our dreams? I met Tim and fell in love, and suddenly the big city didn’t appeal as much as building a simple life, with him.”

  Laurie touched Ruth’s shoulder and directed her to the closet. There were only a few in the farmhouse. Elam had added them one winter when he’d tried sating his boredom by remodeling everything that could be nailed down. Ruth entered this tiny closet—so clearly constructed by a man who’d never known an Englisch woman’s fondness for shoes—and kept the door open so, by the lamplight on the nightstand, she could figure out how to fit the dress over her head. After a while, Ruth stepped out of the closet and self-consciously touched the wraparound skirt. “Don’t think I’m supposed to be exposed like this.”

  Laurie looked at her and laughed, as she expertly twisted her wrist to twine the side of her hair, which she set into place with a bobby pin. “Here,” she said, “let me help you out.”

  She stood before Ruth and helped tack in the waist and skirt. Ruth looked at Laurie’s lowered profile and tried to find a resemblance to her brother. They had the same high cheekbones, straight nose, and skin tone—slightly ruddy from summers spent outdoors.

  Ruth asked, “Did Elam have dreams?”

  Laurie frowned slightly, her pursed mouth lined with pins. She finished tacking Ruth’s dress and stood back—a hand on her belly—to admire her work. “All you need is a kapp.”

  Ruth thought Laurie might not respond to her question, which was fine, since she was writhing from the impulsiveness of having asked it. But then Laurie said, “Elam was grown by the time I was a teenager, and he was very private, even back then. I don’t really remember him being home all that much because he spent so much time in the old hunting cabin in the woods.”

  Ruth asked, “Did you ever go out there?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But Elam kept it locked.”

  “Midwestern man of mystery.”

  Laurie rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it. That mystery’s why he doesn’t have to flap his gums and still he’s got women falling at his feet.”

  “Why’d he never marry one of them . . . like that pretty, dark-haired woman?”

  “Amy Brunk?” Laurie laughed. “She’s been after him since she was in pigtails, but Elam’s never looked at her twice.”

  “Because he’s so shy?”

  “I thought it was that, at first. But then, when Amy started giving Elam such obvious clues even he could’ve figured them out, he never pursued her. It was like he was waiting for something, or someone.” Laurie looked at Ruth. Ruth’s face flushed and eyes burned with the intensity of that piercing, smoke-filled gaze. In this, Elam and Laurie were the same. “I know he’s my brother,” Laurie said. “But he’s also one of the best men I’ve ever known.”

  Candlelight flickered, throwing as much shadow as light across the walls and up into the eaves of the old timber-framed barn closest to Elam’s farmhouse. The eaves themselves were festooned with old starling nests, and a few of the dark-winged birds swooped and dived, searching for an escape and yet—in their panic—finding none. Tables, laden with food, had been set up along the left side of the barn, and the barn floor itself was circled with the benches that had been brought in from the church. A stack of worn hymnals teetered on one bench. The room smelled of cedar chips, beeswax, and bread. Ruth entered this setting and, as so often happened in the Driftless Valley Community, sensed that time was a sentient being who not only stood still, but politely stepped backward—so that she was no longer Ruth Neufeld, emptied widow and mother, but Ruth Galway, an idealistic young woman who believed in heroes and happy endings, and that the entire world could be transformed with one kind gesture, one positive thought.

  Ruth’s youthful idealism faltered as she received many curious looks from the Mennonite women and men, who’d mostly seen her in sweatshirts and jeans. Her clothing had set her apart over the past two days of communal labor, but what had set her apart even more was the language the community spoke—Pennsylvania Dutch—as they chattered and laughed between the rows of cranberry bushes: their comradery helping pass the time as they worked.

  The women hadn’t meant to exclude Ruth. They just didn’t know how to include her, and Ruth’s personality was such that she was not about to assert herself into a conversation, especially a conversation conducted in a language she did not speak.

  Ruth twirled her wedding ring with her thumb, a nervous habit she’d taken up over the past five years. Laurie was not here. After helping Ruth dress, Laurie had gone back to her house to feed her brood of children before she and Tim could slip away for the party, leaving their eldest—a quiet ten-year-old named David—in charge. Why had Ruth let Laurie talk her into wearing her dress? She feared her attempt to fit in only made her stand out more. Ruth turned toward the door, seeking an escape with as much urgency as the starlings swooping overhead. But then she saw Elam, standing at the threshold in a white collared shirt and black suspenders, his thick silver hair and tan skin burnished by the oil lamps sitting on benches flanking the door. For some reason, it startled Ruth to see him, though Elam belonged here far more than she.

  If a poll were taken, many in that barn would say Elam Albrecht preferred experiencing life from the sidelines of every main event: weddings, funerals, barn raisings, Ping-Pong tournaments. It didn’t matter what they did—or how often they teased him good-naturedly—he never truly took part. But this did not seem the case as he strode into the barn. He scanned the room until he saw Ruth, and there his eyes stopped. Ruth’s face burned, wondering if he perceived her cape dress as a slight against his heritage. But then he crossed the floor toward her. He smiled as he approached. “You look nice. Laurie put you up to it?”

  “How’d you know?”

  His smile widened. “I know my sister.”

  Not sure what to say, Ruth looked at the tables, where the women were slicing pies, cheese, bread, sweet rolls, and ham loaves slathered in pineapple gravy; digging spoons into corn casseroles, mashed potatoes, and green beans canned from the garden; unscrewing the lids on pickles, jams, relishes, chow-chows, and chutneys that opened with satisfying pops. All of it was either adorned or laced with cranberry, in conjunction with the harvest. In the corner, Ruth noticed massive turkeys, each browned and glistening with baste.

  “Cranberry ice cream, right?” Ruth said, glancing toward a man in a felt hat who was sitting on one of the benches, turning the crank of an old-fashioned ice-cream maker.

  Elam nodded. “You catch on quick.”

  Ruth smiled again and realized that—just like last night, during supper—she enjoyed just being near him, and she found herself wondering what the two of them looked like in comparison to the community. Anyone who did not know black heels, pearl earrings, and lipstick were not standard attire for a Mennonite woman might think she belonged.

  They might even think she belonged here, wi
th him.

  Ruth glanced to the side, suddenly self-conscious about more than her clothes. She took one small step away. Elam didn’t seem to notice as he clapped his hands. “Let’s take a moment for prayer,” he called, and, stunned, every man and woman grew still. Elam did not call them to prayer. Rarely did he speak. They amended their shock and bowed their heads for the silent grace as the birds swooped soundlessly overhead. Meanwhile, Ruth stayed by Elam’s side, hoping Chandler couldn’t see her attraction to another man and wondering why she cared.

  Ruth was sitting on a church bench in the barn, picking at the food on her plate, when Amy Brunk came and sat beside her. The women shook hands and introduced themselves, though they each knew who the other was. They turned back to their plates and to the pretense of eating. Ruth was dressed identically to Amy, except Amy’s cape dress was hunter green. Ruth watched her watching Elam and wondered how often Amy had caught her doing the same.

  Amy suddenly turned. “Do you plan on sending your older daughter to school?”

  Ruth could’ve never anticipated this question. “Here? To the community school?”

  Amy nodded. “I’m the teacher for first through eighth grade. Is your daughter in first?”

  “Sofie should be, but our life’s been so unsettled, lately I’ve just been teaching her at home. Or . . . I guess wherever we’ve been living at the time.” Ruth held tight to her plate. “But no, I don’t plan on sending Sofie to school here. Our stay’s only temporary.”

  “My apologies,” Amy said. “I heard you were joining the church.”

  Ruth tried to laugh. “The dress I borrowed from Laurie must be throwing people off.”

  Smiling, Amy patted her shoulder and stood. “Well, if you ever change your mind, let me know. I would be honored to teach your little girl.”

  Ruth watched Amy go back to the women. They were circled around one of the younger ones, who was seated and holding a newborn so bundled against the night air that he (or she, who could tell?) resembled a cocoon. To Ruth, the women appeared so cheerful and unsullied, though Ruth understood the rains of the world fell on the just and the unjust, and therefore most had been exposed to the same elements as she. But the difference was these women had a community of friends who could help shelter them from the coldness of that impartial rain, even if just by pressing a hand with their warm ones and murmuring, “I’ve been there too.”