The Mighty Queens of Freeville

by Amy Dickinson

  When I was a kid I’d climb on my bike at the first whiff of bar b que and show up at the pit, hanging around and listening to the men talk about chickens, their jobs, their wives and kids, and what needed to be done to the old building to get it through another winter. I liked listening to these men talk. I never saw my own father at church—or the pit. These men were his age, but they weren’t like him. They were gentle, witty, and tolerant, where my father was profane, sharp edged, unpredictable, and opinionated. I was drawn to their devotion, expressed as it was through the delights of slow-cooking poultry.

  The money raised would go back into the church, used to finance a new roof or for Sunday school materials, or put into a fund to send kids to Bible camp.

  Church has also always been where my musical family sings together. My mother and aunts, cousins, sisters, and I are all natural-born harmonizers with perfect pitch who might have made something of ourselves, musically, except for the fact that along with all of our talent and natural showoffiness also came a stifling lack of ambition.

  My sisters and I sang together in the youth choir, and a revolving chorus of my mother, aunts, and cousins sang in the adult choir. About twice a year—usually at Christmas and Easter—the church calendar brought all of us together in a case of harmonic convergence that sent shivers up my spine. Singing one of the grand old songs from the Methodist hymnal like “There Is a Balm in Gilead,” I could hear my mother, aunts, cousins, and sisters’ voices blending in such a perfect braid of sound that it took me outside of myself.

  It was the sound of my family’s gene pool choir that first brought me into the mysterious community of faith and casseroles and made a believer out of me. Surely God had put my family together in such a place and dressed us in red flammable polyester robes in order to sing “The Angel Rolled the Stone Away” with one beautifully blended and pitched celestial Broadway voice underneath Jesus’ year-book picture for a reason. He. She. Exists.

  For her Freeville baptism, I dressed Emily—just three months old—in a long white Victorian christening gown that Rachel had given us, and our little family stood before my ample extended family (my mother, sisters, aunts, and cousins in their usual pews) and the rest of the small congregation while the minister brought her into the fold with a dab of holy water, a smear of oil, and a lit candle passed over her head. The congregation was asked to renounce the dev il and then promised to be a witness to my child’s spiritual life.

  I looked out at the congregation from our place at the baptismal font and took solace in the fact that every last one of the people in the room had also faithfully borne witness to me. For better and worse, they abide.

  After the baptism, we posed in the snow in front of the church together. The painted plywood nativity scene left over from Christmas was still up, and we briefly placed our baby on the straw of the empty manger and stepped back to enjoy the scene. I remember looking down at her and hoping that she would be blessed with moments of grace. I wondered if she would somehow bear the spiritual imprint of the community of faith and casseroles into which she had arrived.

  As Emily grew I wanted her to understand and participate in the age-old rituals that had always given me so much comfort. Our lives, bifurcated as they were between city and country, were split spiritually too. In Washington we read from the poetic Book of Common Prayer and formally celebrated various feast days with special services and communion. The Episcopal service was beautiful, cerebral, and unchanging. The congregation was top-heavy with Washington luminaries—undersecretaries of state, Treasury Department officials, and other notables—including occasionally George and Barbara Bush and their Secret Service detail.

  In Freeville, the service was hung on to the foundation of the Methodist lectionary, but it seemed to vary dramatically from week to week, based on what was happening around town. The most popular portion of the Methodist service was “Joys and Concerns,” when any member of the congregation could stand up, speak his or her mind, and ask for prayers. Joys and Concerns would often gallop out of control, taking the worship service—and us—with it. The minister would dash up and down the aisle of the church like Phil Donohue, passing a microphone to congregants so they could have their say: “My mom’s back went out again so now she’s going to go to Syracuse for surgery.”

  “Donny’s boss says they’re doing another round of layoffs. We don’t know what’s going to happen yet.”

  “We’re leaving the day after Christmas to go down to Florida to see our folks. We’d like travel prayers.”

  “Dad’s pain is getting worse; they think it might be his kidneys this time.”

  “Oh, I don’t need the microphone. I’ll just yell. What I wanted to say is that the JV team is doing really well this year, but the varsity lost again on Friday. The defense just can’t get it together.”

  “I’m really happy to see Amy and Emily here again. I hardly recognized Emily, she’s getting so tall! I hope we’ll be seeing them in the choir while they’re here.”

  Joys and Concerns is like the world’s smallest radio station broadcasting the news of a very particular patch. Many of the headlines seem related to gallbladders, surgical procedures, and waiting on test results. Some of our news is sad and some is truly tragic, but the congregation also shares their triumphs—the new jobs, new grandchildren, or this year’s bumper crop of zucchini. Joys and Concerns is where the community announces what is important. Then they ask for prayers and receive them. It is the most honest, fair, and just exchange I have ever witnessed.

  Still smarting from my Peanut Jesus debacle, Emily and I packed the car and drove north, where we rejoined the Freeville United Methodist Church broadcast. We left our big city church, with its staff of well-trained clergy, its historical significance, large endowment, massive charity efforts, and Exorcist movie tie-in and came home to a place that doesn’t do communion very well but excels at community.

  On Christmas Eve, Emily worked with the hardworking luminary committee, setting up the luminaries that run the entire length of Main Street. These were made of chopped-off plastic gallon milk jugs, weighted with sand and with a candle placed inside. In the daylight, these jugs, placed three feet apart and nestled into snowbanks, looked like the grubby remnants of recycle day. But in the dark, glowing from their candles, they lit a runway leading directly into the United Methodist Church. Our Christmas Eve service, crowded with families and fussy babies, ended, as it always did, with the lights dimmed as we sang “Silent Night” by candlelight. Everything got quiet.

  We exited the church in silence, walking out onto Main Street. The luminaries were still flickering. Emily whispered, “Mom, check that out…”

  Across the street, positioned under the pavilion of the barbque pit, several members of the congregation had formed a living nativity scene. The three Wise Men wore bathrobes knotted at the waist and dish towels on their heads. Mary’s costume was a lovely royal blue; her hair was tied in a head scarf. She was gazing, lovingly, at a plastic doll positioned in the manger. Two painted plywood sheep grazed in the foreground.

  Until that moment I had never quite understood the purpose of a living Nativity, where the object isn’t to act out the Christmas story but to portray a fleshed-out but stationary tableau version of it. Looking at my neighbors dressed in their robes and dish towel headdresses I saw a life-size version of my cereal box crèche.

  “Mom, look—it’s Mr. and Mrs. Eggleston. What are they doing?” she whispered to me. I whispered in reply that they were going to stand there until midnight and that they were awaiting a Christmas miracle, just like all believers do on that night.

  “Do you believe in miracles?” I asked Emily.

  “Well, I did pray for something,” she said.

  I pictured her modest wish list for Santa Claus: it included ice skates, a sled, ski poles, and an elaborate American Girl doll play set, which I learned was out of stock when I had tried to order it—which was a good thing, because I couldn’t afford it anyway.


  “What did you pray for, honey?” I asked her. Please let it be a Monopoly game, knitting needles and yarn—and the Polly Pocket veterinary clinic, which I had purchased instead.

  “I prayed for snow.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s a nice thing to want on Christmas.” I reflexively looked toward the sky and watched the steam from my breath float upward in a column of condensation. A cloud was passing in front of the moon, but otherwise the night was clear and struck with thinking stars.

  I looked at Sue and Keith Eggleston, now dressed up as Mary and Joseph. I had known them both since high school. They were standing as stock still as the plywood sheep, trying to create a flesh-and-blood telling of an ancient story. A few cars driving down Main Street carrying last-minute shoppers home from Wal-Mart slowed to a crawl, their headlights sweeping across the scene.

  I thought about what Reverend Kenworthy had said about my ministry. Some people preach from the pulpit, moving people toward belief or action. Others, like our Freeville neighbors, minister by sharing their joys and concerns, by cooking and selling chickens, or by dressing in their bathrobes and standing in the cold while they demonstrate their faith to the community. All of us had something in common—the desire to show up, to be a witness to others, and to patiently await a miracle. I had introduced Emily to God. Eventually, she would see that when prayers go unanswered, you learn to change your prayers. She would learn that faith, like the seasons, comes and goes. I knew that I would return to Washington, go back into my classroom of little smart alecks, and try again.

  Emily and I stood with our family in a small arc outside the bar b que pit, quietly watching the Nativity scene as the first flakes of snow started to drift down through the inky blackness of Christmas Eve.

  SIX

  Livestock in the Kitchen

  The Many Uses of Cats

  I CAN’T CLAIM to have a “way” with animals, though they do seem to have their way with me. When I look into the eyes of just about any animal—wild, farm raised, or domesticated—what I see staring back is a creature that will find a way to win me over—and then trample my spirit beneath its paw, flipper, or hoof.

  My first grand devastation came in the form of a half ton of pure Holstein gristle. Her name was Shirley, and up to the day when we had to slaughter, butcher, and then eat her, she was a good cow. She was handsome and useful, and I, for one, loved her.

  Shirley lived out the last decade of her life on our crumbling dairy farm with a herd of fifty fellow Holsteins who, like she, had more or less run out of options. If cows got what they deserved in life, then they’d preen and lounge in fields of clover, delicately balancing frosted cocktails between their hooves and smoking scented hookahs while discussing their most recent sexual encounters with Bill, the stud-muffin bull.

  But life on our farm was not fair, and our small herd spent a goodly portion of their days huddled together in the barnyard, trying not to make eye contact with Bill the Bull, who glowered at them from his pen. Twice a day—at dawn and at dusk—they would stand shin deep in snow and mud, hanging patiently outside our broken-down barn, waiting for my father to bring them in and then relieve them of their milky burden.

  Unlike the other cows, Shirley had been granted a human name, though my father didn’t like to sentimentalize and name the livestock. Mainly he referred to our cows as “The Girls,” but sometimes he called them “Goddamn Filthy Bitches,” especially when one of them shifted her weight and threatened to crush him, or when she forgot where her assigned stanchion was, or when she gave him a little kick as he was trying to clean her teats.

  Like most farm kids I knew, I was ambivalent about the livestock. My siblings and I spent most of our time outside of school feeding, shoveling up after them, and chasing them out of my mother’s flower beds, where they headed every chance they got—because no amount of fencing could hold The Girls for long. Like Park Avenue debutantes, our Holsteins were high maintenance, moved in packs, and were immune to reasoning or punishment. Though we assumed that they were dumb as fence posts, they didn’t have to out-smart us—they merely wore us down with repetition. What ever they had done today, they would find a way to do again tomorrow.

  The line between beasts of burden and beloved pets sometimes blurred in ways that caused discomfort, especially during the slaughtering season, when Shirley or the sweet calf I had taken care of and secretly named Miranda were shipped off to the slaughter house, destined to land back in our freezer as dinner. Looking back, I’m embarrassed to say that even in the face of these losses, I never so much as flirted with vegetarianism. In fact, such was the pragmatic food ethic in our house hold that when Shirley landed in our freezer, her meat was packed in brown butcher paper that was labeled with the date of her demise, along with her name.

  11/06/72: Shirley.

  Livestock were the source of our livelihood, and yet they were so much trouble (what with their constant eating, excretion, and escaping) that sometimes I would fantasize that if only our farm didn’t have animals on it, then life would be just about perfect. I could definitely picture our family doing very well living on our hundred acres and enjoying an animal-free existence. There we are, gathered at the big dining room table, eating sharp cheese and pie and gazing out of gingham-curtained windows while my mother says, “More maple syrup, anyone?”

  But farms—especially dairy farms—have a tendency to attract animals, and wherever livestock and humans intersect, life can get messy, bloody, brutish, violent, and sad.

  With a series of unlucky parakeets at one end and the herd of put-upon bovines at the other, my family lived with, loved, despised, killed off, consumed, and cared about a fairly wide spectrum of the food chain, up to and including an alarmingly large alligator and a sprawling hive of persistently friendly honeybees. We were so surrounded by other species that we distinguished between “barn” and “house” animals. The cows, pigs, horse, chickens, geese, and one herd of scruffy cats stayed out. We also had cats, iguanas, a border collie, hamsters, turtles, and a formerly “baby” alligator that grew overly large living at one time or another inside the house. (Our house was also host to a gigantic colony of honeybees that established itself within the walls of my bedroom, coming and going as they needed, depending on the pollinating season.)

  It wasn’t until I was fully grown that I realized that sharing my childhood with animals had messed with not only portions of my childhood, but also with my tolerance for other, tidier ways of living. I was simply accustomed to dealing with food, fur, manure, and ornery animal-ness. Life without at least one other nonhuman species in it would always seem hollow, so I have found myself doomed to repeat this endless chaotic cycle of stewardship, love, and loss—and (of course!) I have been most drawn to that which I cannot control.

  Unfortunately but perhaps not surprisingly—given our retrospective mismatch—my husband was allergic to nearly everything associated with life as I was used to living it. He wasn’t merely allergic; he was allergic like a character in an antihistamine commercial. He was a projectile sneezer, a world-class wheezer, and a prodigious blooming rash and welt grower. A sniff of a buttercup, a bouquet of Queen Anne’s lace, or even looking at a picture of goldenrod in a magazine could send his mucus flowing. Dander from dogs, cats, or horses brought on fits of explosively propellant sneezing.

  I didn’t notice this affliction so much when we first met as pet-less young college students, but as soon as we settled into life as a couple, living together in a tiny basement apartment in New York City, I started agitating for an animal—an apartment-friendly cat, specifically—and his allergies became a nonnegotiable medical issue. All the same, despite this chronic condition, I still tried to talk him into getting a pet.

  We had just seen a commercial on television featuring cute-as-a-button kittens. One thing I always appreciated about my ex was his extreme susceptibility to cuteness. What I mean is that he had an abnormally elevated attraction to anything cute. Asian human babies and small
animals of all kinds seemed especially to affect him.

  The kittens on TV were tumbling over a big ball of yarn. “God—look at them! Don’t you think we should get a cat?” I implored. I’m not proud to say that I may have used a squeaky chew-toy voice that I employed from time to time—I was that desperate.

  “Sorry. Allergic, remember?” he said, pointing to his nose.

  “You know, they have shots for that. At first it’s weekly, but after a few months they taper off,” I offered.

  “Ooh.” He looked pained. “Don’t you think that hurts the cat?” he asked.

  I paused, one of those long pauses that you could probably drive a herd of cats through if you had a herd of cats, and I did not. I didn’t even have one.

  “Um, the shots are not for the cat. They’re for the human,” I said.

  His shock was total, absolute, and very not cute. He simply could not imagine a person enduring something painful—on purpose. (But he evidently could imagine a shot that would render a cat hypoallergenic.)

  I never brought it up again.

  When my husband and I broke up, people who knew me well mentioned two things as being possible bright spots on my otherwise blighted life: weight loss and pet acquisition. I experienced both. I lost the requisite twenty pounds of worry weight and soon thereafter gained twenty pounds in tabby cat.

  I met him right before Emily’s birthday. Lord forgive me, I loved and claimed him at first sight, even though he wasn’t technically “mine.” He was given to Emily by her godmother, Martha, who knew me well enough to know that this particular dude, this young prince among pets, would be the answer to what ailed me.

  “I’ve put him on hold so you can check him out before I give him to Emily,” she told me, and so I raced down to a pet store in Georgetown and asked the clerk to retrieve him. The clerk came back a couple of minutes later holding an adolescent orange tiger cat. “He’s pretty chill,” the clerk told me and set him down on the counter next to the cash register, whereupon the extremely large kitten lay down and stretched out, draping a paw roughly the size of a hockey puck into the register’s open cash drawer. I now realize that this was an omen. This particular cat would find a way to take my money.