“So you girls know about the shock treatments. It’s what the doctors think is best for Mom, to help her get well again.”
“When is Mommy coming home?” Lena whispered.
“Soon. Another two or three weeks, maybe.”
Soon was a promise cheap as borscht. “Does it mean what I think? Shock, like in electricity?”
Dad winced. “It’s not so bad as it sounds.”
“How can they give Mommy electricity?” Lena wanted to know.
I gagged. It was all I could do not to throw up right then and there.
“It’s a special kind of medicine,” Dad said to Lena. Even his voice was shaking a little, his words stumbling all over each other. “They put wires on her forehead. Doctor Shroeder says the whole thing takes less than a minute. Then after, she sleeps for awhile.”
So, that meant she was awake when they did it?! Deevilschinda. So what if deevilschinda was a bad swear, it wasn’t as bad as what they were doing to Mom.
“Electricity works better than pills do for some people like Mom.”
“People like Mom?!” Beth slammed the frying pan back on the burner and gave the knob a hard twist. “You make it sound like she’s some kind of freak.”
“That’s not how I meant it and you know it.” Dad sounded tired. “I mean people like Mom who are depressed.”
“But it gives her headaches.” My voice came out barely above a whisper. How can something that gives you headaches be good for you!?
“Nah yo” Dad nodded. “There are side effects. That’s why she feels sore and sometimes has trouble remembering little things. But all that doesn’t last too long usually. And they give pain medicine to help with the headaches.”
Usually. Little things. Medicines.
They were giving my Mom shock treatments. Zapping her brain with electricity, zapping the depression right out of her.
What else was getting zapped out, I couldn’t help wonder. Zap. There goes the depression. Zap. There goes a little memory along with it. Not so important. She doesn’t need to know what day it is. Someone can tell her. Zap. Oops, there goes that memory of picking up the squished baby birds. For sure it was a bad one anyways. Zap. Zap. Zap. Hallowe’en’s gone. The piano recital, gone. Her kid’s name. Gone. No problem. She’ll remember her daughter tomorrow maybe. Or the next day. Or whenever.
Fuy. No wonder she slept all the time. No wonder no one wanted to tell me anything.
“The doctors know what’s best for Mom,” Dad insisted again. Only he said it like he was trying to convince himself. “We have to trust them.”
Beth poked away at the pancakes with a spatula. “We have to pray that the treatments will work, and Mom will get well. We have to trust in God to take care of her. Just like he’ll take care of Tommy, wherever he is.”
Since when did Beth give a care about what happened to Tommy? And what good would praying do? I’d prayed and I’d prayed, and this was God’s answer? If God didn’t care enough to help Mom, why would he look out for an old stray?
God was supposed to be all powerful. The Lord God Almighty, not? If He was all powerful then He meant for all this to happen.
I couldn’t imagine why. It didn’t matter anyways. There wasn’t a reason good enough for God to let them do things to my mother that made her forget her own kid! What greater purpose was there in that? Either God just didn’t care or–He wasn’t all powerful after all.
Maybe there was no God even.
This time the thought was there in my head before I could stop it. I held my breath, waiting to be struck by lightning. When I didn’t incinerate or anything, I let the thought creep back. Maybe there was no God. Or if there was, maybe He wasn’t the kind of God I thought He was. Maybe He wasn’t the kind of God I wanted to believe in.
Still nothing happened.
“I don’t believe in God,” I whispered.
Only I guess I whispered louder than I thought. Dad and Beth got these terrible hurt looks on their faces like I’d slapped them or something.
“What?” said Dad.
Outside the kitchen window the sun was shining the same as always. The robins were chirping the same as always. The leaves on the trees were fluttering in the breeze still. The world hadn’t changed.
But I had. I didn’t feel like a kid anymore.
That is so long ago it’s hardly true anymore. Mom sometimes said that to us kids, like if we were fighting about something that had happened maybe yesterday or last week.
I felt like the time when I was a kid was so long ago it was hardly true anymore, like I never even was a kid.
For sure I’d never be a kid again.
I licked my dry lips and said, as firmly as I could, “I don’t believe in God anymore.”
Beth sucked in her breath. Lena slid off Dad’s lap and stared at me, her eyes wide. Even I couldn’t quite believe what I’d said. For such a loud family, everyone was awful quiet all of a sudden.
“You don’t mean that,” Dad said.
“Yes, I do.” Maybe I did. I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I believed for sure anymore.
“Elsie, don’t. Don’t talk like that.”
“Fine then.” I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t anything. “But I’m not going to church anymore. You can ground me if you want. Makes me no never mind.”
I wasn’t going to Eden anymore either, but I didn’t say anything about that yet. “You can make me stay in my room forever if you want, but you can’t tell me what to think. No one can tell me what I should think, or what I should believe.”
It was true. Walking calmly up the stairs to my room, I knew it was true.
For once I wished I was wrong. More than anything, I wished someone would just tell me what to believe, and I’d believe it, and that would be that. Everything would be so easy if I could just believe like Beth believed or like Reverend Funk believed or like Dad, who believed after all, even if he didn’t go to church all the time.
Something told me I could ride my bike around the world with no hands and the chances of my wish being granted would still be nusht.
Auntie Nettie’s straw hat skipped along above the gooseberry bushes almost half a row ahead already. She was singing. Not quietly to herself. She was singing out loud, in German, so everyone in the garden and the farmyard and probably out in the fields and all the way to town yet could hear her.
The firm, striped green berries fell into my pail with a satisfying plop. Picking as fast as I could, there was still no way I could keep up with Auntie Nettie. She finished her side of the row and came around the end to work her way back on my side, still singing.
Beth and Taunte Tina were stripping chokecherries into pails at the other end of the yard. Beth was on a stepladder working up high while Taunte Tina was clearing the lower branches. Taunte Tina was too big to stand on a ladder.
Two rows over, Lena was helping Grandma pick raspberries. Grandma was picking, anyways. Lena was sitting in the dirt trying to feed one of Auntie Nettie’s farm cats. The cat’s face was smeared with squished raspberry.
Grandma and Taunte Tina started singing along.
“Und alles, alles, alles, war wieder gut.”
I got some of the last line, something about all was good. The old women laughed like they were little kids and started singing the whole thing all over again. I half-listened, the song and the sun warming me, picking gooseberries. I watched Lena play with the cat and wondered if Tommy was all right and tried not to think too much about Mom because when I did, I could feel the blood start to race through my body and pound in my head.
A robin, chirping like crazy, flew practically in front of my nose and landed on the scarecrow in the middle of the garden. Probably it was mad that we were cleaning out all the ripe berries.
“Don’t look at me,” I muttered to the robin. “I didn’t ask for this job.”
Only I was sort of glad Dad made me go with to pick berries at Auntie Nettie’s this morning. It was nice being out in the sunshine.
I started leaving a few ripe berries behind. Robins needed to eat, too, I figured. They had to fly all the way south for the winter, not?
One of the barn cats was slinking through the garden, its eye on the robin. Seeing it stalking that bird made me wonder if Tommy was going hungry, or if he would remember how to hunt still. No one was giving him shock treatments at least.
Then I stopped picking, because I was remembering something I’d read one time, about how some cats that are taken away from their homes find their way back again, even if home is miles and miles away. They’re just like birds that way, they carry around a compass inside them. Sometimes.
What if Tommy had run away from the farm to go back home? To our alley. The idea wouldn’t go away. I turned it over and over again in my head, and all the time I felt more and more sure that it was exactly what had happened. We didn’t need to search the whole countryside at all. If Tommy was trying to get home, and if his compass was working right, he’d be somewheres between Hopefield and the farm where Nickel Enns lived. Wherever that was. North of town. I was pretty sure Dad had said something about north of town.
I could sit around waiting for Tommy to find his way home, and maybe he would and maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe a coyote or a fox or an owl or a car or some farmer’s tractor would get him first. Or I could get on my bike and go find him myself, before anything bad happened.
“Nah meyahl. Weddings and good haying weather don’t come every day.”
I was thinking so hard to myself I didn’t notice Auntie Nettie come up. A few ripe berries tumbled from her fingers into the bucket. “We can make kressberren mouse enough for a thresher gang, not?”
She lifted her face to the sun. “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
Close by like this, Auntie Nettie smelled like sunshine and sweat and a bit like barn. A few stray hairs had pulled out of the bun at the back of her neck and stuck to her sweaty skin. Below her skirt, I could see the tops of her stockings rolled up and biting into her calves.
“Elsie doesn’t believe in God anymore,” Beth said drily. She was walking by carrying two full pails of choke-cherries into the house.
“Fuy.” Grandma frowned at me as she toddled past with her raspberries. “For sure you believe in God. You’ve believed in God all the way since you were just little.”
I knew enough not to argue with Grandma.
She nodded her head toward the chokecherry bushes. “To bring the ladder to the house needs someone with a young back. Hurry yourself up.”
Auntie Nettie took my half full pail of gooseberries from me and waited while I ran to fetch the stepladder.
“Is it right, what Beth says?” She was swaying beside me as I dragged the ladder to the house.
“I guess,” I shrugged. I didn’t really want to talk about it. Not believing in God was too new still to talk about yet. A big idea like that needed some time to try on and see how it fit.
“You guess? Nay, meyahl, you don’t guess about God. You know him, here.” She set the berry pails on the grass and put a hand over her heart. “And here.” Her hand swept across the sky and the prairie. “And here.” She bent down to grab a handful of black earth from the garden and held it to her nose, breathing deep before letting it sprinkle back to the ground.
“And here.” Auntie Nettie wrapped both arms around me, squeezing tight for a long time. When she let go she held my shoulders and looked me in the eye. “Or you don’t.”
I’d never heard anyone talk like that before about God, like He was part of everything. Not up in heaven looking down watching you all the time, but just–here.
Auntie Nettie’s eyes twinkled. “You are too much thinking all the time. Come eat.”
In no time the kitchen table was piled with plates of farmer sausage and bowls of varenika swimming in schmauntfat. There was cole slaw and fresh garden peas with baby carrots and homemade buns to fill in the gaps. And a fresh-baked saskatoon berry pie sitting on the counter making my mouth water with how good it smelled.
“Who will say the blessing?” asked Grandma Redekop.
Everyone folded their hands and bowed their heads. Everyone except me. While Uncle Abe said grace, I stared hard at my plate. At least he said a short one.
“Come Lord Jesus be our guest, and let this food to us be blest. Amen.”
Grandma must not have had her eyes closed either, because when Uncle Abe finished she wanted him to say it again. “I think not everybody was ready.” She was frowning so hard at me her eyebrows almost touched in the middle, just like Lena’s.
Only Uncle Abe was already spearing sausages onto his plate. “The Lord knows we’re all grateful, Mutta”
Lena was watching Uncle Abe reach for the bowl of vegetables. He winked at her. The corners of her mouth twitched. She already knew what was coming next, same as me.
“You know,” said Uncle Abe, “the cook who cooks carrots and peas in the same pot–”
“Is an unsanitary cook!” Lena shouted out the punch line, giggling. Everyone else groaned or shook their heads and ignored them.
Auntie Nettie slapped Uncle Abe on the shoulder. “All the time with that terrible joke. When will you be tired of it already?”
He pulled her toward him, wrapping both arms around her. “I’m not tired of you yet, am I?”
“Ach, du hundt” Auntie Nettie squirmed out of his arms.
Usually I liked watching everyone kibitzing and having themselves a good time. Only today it didn’t feel right that we could have such a good time without Mom. Not when she was having such a miserable time.
I filled my plate with varenika and vegetables. When the plate of farmer sausages got to me I took some of those, too. Far as I was concerned, all deals with God were off. If there was a God even.
What would Mom say when she came home and found out Tommy was gone? She’d be awful sad. Heartbroken even. What if she was so sad she ended up going back to Eden and they gave her more of those shock treatments?
I couldn’t let that happen.
Dad wasn’t going to do anything to get Tommy back. Beth didn’t care one iota about him. Lena was still too small yet. And I sure couldn’t count on God. So it was up to me. Besides which, it was mostly my fault Tommy was lost. Just like it was mostly my fault Mom was even in that place. Right now finding Tommy was the best way I could think of to make one thing right again at least.
Incredible Journey. That was the name of the book where I’d read about the cat and the two dogs finding their way home. Now I remembered. But I couldn’t remember for sure if it was one of the dogs who was the leader, or if it was the cat.
Beth jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow. “What happened to being a vegetarian?” She nodded at the sausage on my plate.
It was hard to ignore the smug look on her face, but I had more important things to think about than arguing with Beth.
“I gave it up,” I said. “You were right. It was dumb.”
That shut her up. She wasn’t expecting me to say she was right about something.
It wasn’t like I was completely stupid. I knew the chances of finding Tommy were slim and none. That didn’t make a diff. I had to try.
For once I wasn’t going to be such a chicken. For once I wasn’t going to just think about what I wanted to do, I was going do it.
When everyone was busy yakking in Plautdietsch and laughing all over themselves, I leaned toward my uncle. “Uncle Abe?” I asked. “Do you know where Nickel Enns lives?”
Anyways, like Auntie Nettie said already, weddings and good haying weather don’t come every day.
Dad came downstairs Sunday morning in slacks and a freshly pressed shirt yet, too. “I thought I’d go with to church. I’ll even take my girls out to the Harvester for dinner after.”
He didn’t fool me. He was only going to church because of what I’d said about not believing in God. Like he was going to be a good example or something. As if. All my plans were about to fly out the wind
ow if Dad made me go to church.
“I told you already, I’m not going,” I said.
Dad threw up his hands. “Have it your way. I’m tired of fighting with you. But if you’re not going to church you’re not going out to eat with us either.”
“No problem.” It never bothered me to get left behind. It would even be a good thing.
“Do you want some eggs or not?” Beth scowled at me as she hovered over my plate with the frying pan.
“Not. I’ll have cereal.” I was all out of kilter this morning. My nerves were on end waiting for everyone to leave so I could put my plan into action.
“Mom asked about you last night,” Beth nattered on. “Haven’t you been to see her?”
“I was there Thursday.” I wasn’t going back to that place. Not ever.
“You can stop by this afternoon then.”
“I’m going swimming this afternoon,” I lied. “Anyways, there are too many people there on Sundays.” I figured when everyone got back from dinner and found out I wasn’t home, they’d think I was at the pool. I had until faspa later this afternoon before anyone would realize I was gone. Hopefully I’d be back by then.
Beth shook her head. “You can’t spare an hour to visit your own mother?”
“Go jump in a lake.”
“Five minutes,” said Dad, talking through clenched teeth. “Can’t you two quit squabbling for five minutes?”
I shut my mouth, only because I didn’t want to say anything that would keep them home a minute longer than necessary.
As soon as they left, I filled an empty plastic milk jug with water and stuffed it into my pack with a couple of sandwiches, an apple, and some cookies. What else did I need? I put on a floppy hat, the one Mom used for gardening. Already I could tell today was going to be another scorcher.
Lastly, I rinsed out Tommy’s dish and filled it with fresh milk, just in case he maybe came back on his own while I was gone.
I didn’t have to worry about Grandma Redekop looking out her window. All the old folks were at church like most everyone else. It was a clean getaway.
Almost Eden Page 12
