The Homestead

by Linda Byler

  She looked down at her mother from her seat on the horse in the half-light of dawn, when everything was still and as pristine as an angel’s wing.

  “Are you sure you’ll be all right, Mam? You have enough to eat, enough to get by ‘til Saturday?”

  “Oh, yes, Hannah. With the prairie hens Manny shoots, I feel sure we’ll have enough.”

  “Then I’ll be off. Good-bye, Mam.”

  Sarah touched her daughter’s knee, gave it a little tap of affection, and let her eyes tell Hannah how much she cared. She raised a hand, stepped back, and said, “Bye.”

  The day was sharp and cool, the prairie appearing like a dark ocean, the tips of grass waving like ripples of a current in a vast body of water. The sky was gray, tinged with the color of ice, the sun’s advance below the horizon bringing a soft shade of pink, like a bunny’s ear.

  Hannah always thought the velvet pink of a rabbit’s ear was the loveliest color she had ever seen. Someday, she might have a dress of that shade, if she worked hard enough.

  Her cousin Samuel had a whole pile of rabbit hutches on the east side of their barn. He raised them to see at Easter, but since the Depression, no one wanted to waste their money on things that weren’t necessary; a rabbit wasn’t something you absolutely had to have. Someday, though, she would own a pale pink dress and a row of rabbit hutches painted white. She would clean the cages every day, give the rabbits fresh hay and cool water, get them out of their hutches and let them nibble on green grass and hop around on their long hind legs before replacing them in their cages. Perhaps rabbits couldn’t survive the cold Dakota winters. Well, she’d put the hutches into the barn for the winter.

  She wondered if Samuel’s family lived in the same state of poverty as her family did. It probably was hard times to Samuel, but she’d bet their living conditions would be a rare luxury to them. To Mam anyway.

  Her thoughts rambled along in the past, remembering times when she would have never imagined having the responsibilities that were on her shoulders now. They were like a hard, wooden yoke chafing her neck and bowing her into submission, she guessed. But she wasn’t beaten yet.

  The sun burst on the horizon, painting the sky in crimson, orange, and yellow. The sun’s rays rode on the birdsong that came alive as the morning progressed. Chirps and liquid trills, short light chants, and shrill whistles, all the merry sounds from numerous birds flitting among the grass and racing across the sky in showers of dark-colored winged acrobats—but Hannah missed them completely, immersed as she was in her own thoughts.

  When the town of Pine came into view, she slid off Pete’s back, ashamed to be seen riding into people’s scrutiny of the Amish girl who was forbidden to ride in cars. How many people in the town knew about her, now that the garrulous Bess had her in her teeth? She’d shake her like a dog, leaving her to pick up the pieces by herself, no doubt.

  Well, in this town, her father did not follow her. She was her own person. She squared her shoulders and walked with her head up, leading the horse through the back lot in the small fenced-in area behind it, as Harry had instructed her. She made sure the stable was accessible, that there was water in the trough, and then removed the bridle, petting good old Pete with love and affection. She removed her trousers as quickly as possible and hung them on a nail beside the bridle. Taking a deep breath, she began her day in the other world, the realm of life that was lived among auseriche leit. Outside people. People of the world.

  Doris greeted her, dark circles under her eyes and a tired, half-lidded expression. The kitchen was a mess! Harry’s relatives had been here, Doris explained. They were quite the company, she said, leaving her with a mountain of dishes and never offering to help with them.

  Hannah eyed the sink, laughed, and said that the mountain was still there all right, which made Doris smile. She kept smiling as Hannah emptied the sink, banging pots and pans, scraping dried food off casseroles and cast-iron pans, water splashing out of the sink and dribbling down the front of the cabinet, and soapsuds as high as her elbows. Her shoulders erect and her head bent forward, Hannah threw herself into a frenzied attack on the towers of dishes. In no time at all, the pile was gone—washed, rinsed, dried, and stacked neatly in the cupboards. The electric stove shone like a mirror.

  Doris sat in her rocking chair, her feet propped on an upholstered footstool. She wore a clean yellow housedress covered with a sunny print of daisies. She had a simple crocheted afghan over her lap, the radio on the small dark table beside her spilling the morning news, an electric fan whirring from the opposite side.

  Hannah remained in awe of electricity and its amazing ability to be carried on a wire stretched between poles for hundreds of miles, a substance you couldn’t see contained in one wire. It sizzled into homes, turning them into well-lit dwellings with hot and cold water coming from a spigot by the mere turning of a handle, keeping refrigerators ice cold, and stoves red hot. A man’s voice came from a wooden box called a radio, and a telephone on the wall transmitted your own voice to someone else through a wire, allowing you to hear the other person’s voice as well.

  She figured there had to be some smart people in this world, much smarter than herself, but that was all right. Being Amish, she’d never have a need for electricity. It was amazing, nevertheless, and she planned on enjoying every luxury as long as she was here in Pine working for the Rochers.

  She told Doris her dress was lovely, like a field of flowers on a sunny day, which made Doris smile again, reaching up to fix her hair so that it fell just so over her ears.

  “Now, what do you have for me to do today?” Hannah asked.

  “Why don’t we take this week to do all the housecleaning here in the house?” Doris replied, anxiously searching Hannah’s face for signs of disapproval.

  “Sure. That would be great. You just want me to do it the way I was taught by my mother?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m sure the way you clean will be fine. I just have one request, and that is that you use the Murphy’s oil soap for the furniture and floors.”

  “Right. Okay. I’ll get started then.”

  Hannah turned on her heel and went up the stairs. Doris heard scraping and banging, bumps and footsteps, before Hannah ran down the stairs with an armload of sheets, quilts, and curtains. She carried them to the laundry room behind the kitchen, a sunny little alcove containing the wringer washer and rinsing tubs, a shelf with powdered soap, vinegar, bluing, and cakes of lye soap. Other shelves held cardboard boxes and the remains of geraniums planted in coffee cans that had died years ago. The shelves were littered with dead flies and bees, the windows were hazy with grease and dust, their curtains hanging haphazardly on bent rods and a film of spider webs like lace over everything.

  Neglect, is what it is, thought Hannah. Here was a woman without enough spirit to even attempt to keep things up. Harry should take his wife home to the East if he took the teachings of the Bible seriously enough to give his life for his wife, as Christ loved the church. Or something like that.

  That was her whole grievance with Dat. All of his pious show, his holiness, didn’t amount to a hill of beans with her the way he brought Mam out here to live without a plan, and now look at all of us. Living like poor squatters, starving, corn dying in the field. Anger brought rebellion to the storm of her thoughts, stuffing quilts through the wringer with a vengeance.

  Before lunchtime the clothesline was pegged full of flapping quilts, curtains, and sheets. Hannah was upstairs wiping down walls, polishing windows, and washing floors when she noticed her arms becoming weak. Dark spots floated in front of her eyes and the room began to tilt and spin. Quickly, she sat on the edge of the bed, then realized how hungry she was.

  Should she ask Doris for lunch? Make it herself? Either way, she had to eat or she’d fall over in a faint. So she made her way down the stairs and found the kitchen empty. There was a note telling her that Doris went to her doctor’s appointment and to help herself to food in the refrigerator.

  She
ate cold fried chicken, like a dog, she thought wryly, tearing at the tender meat that fell away from the bones. She ate mouthfuls of sweet pudding, slabs of cheese, crackers, and a dish of cold oatmeal. Because she was alone, she could lower her head and shovel the food into her mouth, acting like the starving person she was.

  The nausea that rose up immediately after the gorging of food surprised her, and when she miserably retched up all of her lunch soon after, she wiped her mouth, sat down against the wall in the bathroom off the kitchen, and cried. She cried because she loathed herself for eating like a pig. She cried for the state of poverty her whole family was in. She cried mostly for being in this dingy, dusty little town, living with people she barely knew. And she cried because she was so angry at her father.

  Why couldn’t Dat go out and get a job? He was the one who was shirking his duty, going through life shining with religion, without seeing to the basic needs of his family.

  And then she was done. She wiped her eyes, straightened her shoulders, and checked her appearance in the small cracked mirror on the medicine cabinet, just like the one they used to have at home.

  She went back to work after slowly eating a slice of buttered bread and honey and was still cleaning when Doris returned. She wondered vaguely whether Harry had accompanied her to the doctor’s office and who would have watched the store while he was gone.

  Hannah cleaned all afternoon, then brought in the sweet smelling quilts and sheets, while Doris ironed the curtains with an electric iron that stayed hot. She never had to heat it the way they heated their sadirons over the fire at home.

  The evening meal was reheated leftovers and Hannah ate slowly, savoring each bite of the delicious scalloped potatoes and corn and applesauce. She had a large slice of spice cake and more of the pudding. She felt full and satisfied. Her spirits lifted as she washed dishes and offered to help stock shelves in the store.

  It was a joy and a pleasure to work in the unorganized, dusty store. She filled a bucket with soapy water and started in the back, where the sewing supplies and fabrics were kept, removing everything off the shelves, scrubbing, dusting, and rearranging.

  Finally, she realized she was weary. Bone tired. Her shoulders ached, her lower back hurt, and her feet felt like lumps of iron. She pitched the dirty water out the back door, wrung out the rag with her hands, and called it a day.

  She tumbled into her bed after washing up in the bathroom and fell asleep without remembering to pray. She slept a deep and restful sleep so that when she awoke, she was surprised to find herself disoriented, not realizing where she was.

  The night of rest had done wonders for her outlook, and she thoroughly enjoyed her time finishing the upstairs cleaning. Doris said at lunchtime that she could have a break to eat her soup and bread and then sit down with her for a talk.

  The kitchen tidied, the afternoon sun shone through the back windows as the fan whirred by her chair. Hannah appreciated the homey atmosphere, the way the chairs were situated side by side with the sofa along the opposite wall, the patterned rug in between. The rose-patterned wallpaper was in soft pink and a mellow green, which was duplicated in the pillows on each end of the couch.

  The wide door between the kitchen and seating area allowed the sunny light to shine through, leaving a glow in a room that would have appeared darker without it.

  At first, seated beside Doris, Hannah felt self-conscious, but only for a short time. The way Doris asked questions and the kindness with which she accepted Hannah’s answers was encouraging. Often, Doris would shake her head and murmur an expression of pity or disbelief, but always politely, never making Hannah feel like the oddity she knew she was.

  “So,” Doris continued, “that covering on your head symbolizes submission to God first, then your husband. But you aren’t married, so why do you wear it?”

  Again, Hannah reminded her that there wasn’t always a clear reason. It was a rule, called the Ordnung; it was part of their belief, the way they were born and raised into their culture. The head covering on girls likely portrayed their recognition of God, their obedience to the Ordnung, and their obedience to the verse in the Bible about women having their heads covered.

  “But I cut my hair short without guilt, knowing that same verse says that if a woman’s head is uncovered, let it be shorn. So how can that be?” Doris asked.

  Hannah smiled, then laughed. “Well, to put it the way I see it, you were born to English parents …”

  Doris interrupted, “Not English.”

  “I don’t literally mean English people from England. We Amish call anyone who is not Plain, people like you and Harry, we call them English. Maybe that goes way back to the Mayflower and the Puritans, I don’t know.”

  “But you’re not Puritans or Quakers.”

  “No. We’re from Switzerland, from a group started by Jacob Ammann.”

  “Hmm. That’s interesting. But what I have a hard time with is why would your father have brought his family so far out here to this … “ Her voice trailed off, and she waved a disfigured hand weakly, then let it drop. “It’s just such a big land full of nothing. Nothing. Dust and dirt and poor people living on ugly ranches, scrabbling to make a living, raising horrible cattle, and riding around on horses, shooting each other.”

  Hannah threw back her head and laughed, the deep laugh that affected everyone who heard it. Doris smiled, put a hand to her mouth, then laughed out loud, a sound no one ever heard from her. “I’m serious. I hate it.”

  Hannah stopped laughing and thought a minute before replying, “I don’t hate this land. I rather like the emptiness of it, the wildness and the great big nothingness. I could live here for the rest of my life if our situation was different. We are dirt poor, which I’m sure you could tell when you drove me home.”

  Doris shook her head. “It’s just so sad. And your father is such a strict man. Does he really feel the way he spoke?”

  Hannah nodded. “Yes, he does, but he forced himself to take the food because he knows his family is starving.”

  “But he needs to change his mind. He needs to see that God is not so harsh and does not require such stringent rules.”

  Hannah nodded and again stayed quiet. So deeply were values ingrained in her conscience, she knew it was better not to speak too bitterly against her parents, no matter how often she rebelled. No, she did not believe such restrictions were required for herself or her mother, sisters, and brothers, and yet it seemed wrong to openly belittle her own father to a woman like Doris who was not born among the Amish.

  She didn’t know. She was only sixteen.

  “Tell me, Hannah, as a young girl who is very acceptable to young men, I would think, will you marry someone of another belief?”

  Hannah shook her head. “No, not if I obey my parents.”

  Doris looked bewildered, then shook her head. “But he brought you way out here! For what?”

  All Hannah could think of was the poor management, the loss of the farm, the public shaming of being excommunicated for the distilling of his grains, the long, arduous journey to a land of poverty, and near starvation. What kept her from being honest, from going against her father and belittling him to this woman the way she often did alone, in her thoughts?

  It would be so easy to abandon ship. To tell Doris how she actually felt. To convert to their faith and take off this covering that labeled her as odd and different. To wear sunny, daisy patterned dresses and cut her hair in a flattering style. Sometimes she hated her father and wanted to do something just like that to hurt him, to see him on his knees begging her to come home. So far, that kind of hardness was impossible for her to obtain, or to be comfortable with.

  CHAPTER 12

  Sarah stood in the doorway of the house, the hot summer sun searing the dry dust at her feet, the sky spreading before her pulsing with a brassy light, the heat baking even the clouds into obscurity. The wind was strong today, moaning about the tin roof, rattling loose edges, the grass rattling and brittle, bro
wned and bleached by the soaring temperatures and the constant hot wind.

  She squinted, trying to see where the corn had been, but was hardly able to see where Mose had tilled the soil. The prairie reclaimed the land quickly, as if the tilling and growth of foreign plants had been an affront to it, the grass having been there for many centuries.

  A calf bawled in the barnyard. Sarah turned to see Mose hoist an armload of hay across his crude fence, then stop to lift his soiled straw hat and wipe his brow. Manny was at work behind the barn using a scythe the Jenkinses had loaned them to cut grass for the winter’s supply of hay.

  Hod had insisted he’d come over with the tractor and the mower, but Mose would have none of it. He didn’t even own a pitchfork, a fact he hoped to keep hidden from his neighbor. Mose just did not like accepting charity from worldly people, although there had been a time, when Abigail was born, he had been appreciative. Enough was enough. With Hannah working in town, they had become self-sufficient once more.

  Sarah watched him taking turns with Manny at the scythe. It all seemed like such senseless hard work, with the horse standing in the shade of the barn. But if they had no mower, she guessed there was no alternative.

  A wail from the baby made her turn, pick her up, and croon and cuddle. She sat down in the armless rocker to feed her, and quickly became sleepy, dozing off, waking and dozing again.

  A cry from the barn woke her. Startled, she scrambled to close her dress front and hoist the baby to her shoulder for a quick burp, before going to the window. Oh, it was Hod and Abby!

  Exhilaration filled her, like a drink of cold, sweet peppermint tea. Here was company. A woman to talk to, share details of their lives. Oh, how she missed the camaraderie of other women!

  Abby sat on the spring wagon, her back straight as a stick, her green plaid sunbonnet tied so tightly below her chin, her face appeared pinched. Her dress was, or had been, a violet purple at one time, but had faded to a gray lavender, the row of purple buttons marching down the front like a colony of ants. Hod beside her, his Stetson pulled low, his clothes faded and worn, like Abby’s, his face creased with dozens of deep lines and crevices, chiseled and molded by years of extreme weather.