MENNONITES DON’T
DANCE
DARCIE FRIESEN
HOSSACK
© Darcie Friesen Hossack, 2010
All rights reserved
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Thistledown Press Ltd.
118 - 20th Street West
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7M 0W6
www.thistledownpress.com
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Hossack, Darcie, 1974–
Mennonites don’t dance / Darcie Hossack.
ISBN 978-1-897235-78-2 I.
Title.
PS8565.O756M45 2010 C813'.6 C2010-905538-1
Cover photograph, The Suicide, by Madalina Iordache-Levay
Cover and book design by Jackie Forrie
Printed and bound in Canada
Thistledown Press gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Saskatchewan Arts Board, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing program.
MENNONITES
DON’T
DANCE
To Dean,
for wearing an “I Love My Wife” T-shirt and meaning it
and Daphne,
for bringing the broom and dustpan.
CONTENTS
Luna
Ashes
Ice House
Little Lamb
Mennonites Don’t Dance
Dandelion Wine
Loft
Magpie
Undone Hero
Year of the Grasshopper
Poor Nella Pea
LUNA
IN THE WINTER THAT JONAH TURNED twelve, his favourite uncle died.
By all measures Elias Froese, a farmer who also built barns by trade, was a healthy, strong ox of a man. Tall, temperate. A Samson, people said. Jonah and his friends sometimes tried to perform chin-ups from his outstretched arms.
“The man’s not afraid of hard work, that’s certain,” other people said about Elias, usually to Jonah’s father, who quietly absorbed the compliment to his brother like a blow to his gut. When he got home, he’d put a hole in the wall, which Jonah patched from a bucket of plaster. Later though, his father might apologize.
“Your uncle’s a better man than me, son. No sense my feeling sore over what the Lord saw fit to make. There’s a lesson in that.”
Jonah didn’t know whether the lesson was supposed to be that God was unfair, or some people were meant to aspire to what others already came by naturally. Or, that one good man in a family could cancel out the bad in another.
It seemed to Jonah that the people from their village believed they were each somehow responsible for Elias being such a fine man. They congratulated themselves. But Jonah didn’t think it had anything to do with them. If so, his father, from the same village, would be the same kind of person. And his heart wouldn’t have hardened so completely after Elias died and and he no longer had his brother to compare himself to.
Years later, what people still remembered about Elias was that at the end of each day of work he would stand quietly, raise his hands up over his head and lift his face to the sky. The harder the job, the higher he’d lift his face. As though his sweat was being exchanged for jewels in his heavenly crown. Although many thought it an unnecessary display — too showy for their liking — very few spoke out against it. Some thought he had earned every ruby he could take from the hand of God, and hoped some would spill over onto them. Others would try to pay him a couple more pennies for his work than they’d agreed on, purchasing second-hand notice from heaven. Jonah knew that the extra money always ended up in the offering plate on Sunday.
When Elias became sick, people wondered what sins he might have committed and wished they had those pennies back in their own pockets. They began to ask among themselves whether Jonah’s father, with his grim posture in church, who had quietly suffered years of meagre crops even when those around his had thrived, had somehow done more than Elias to earn God’s favour. After all, Elias had been taken and Abram had not.
Elias’s illness started with an ache and a chill that seemed like the flu. Jonah noticed that his uncle’s breath smelled fecal. His face became ashen. It slackened like soft clay sliding off his bones. Within a week, he stopped work on the barn he was building for the Martins’ family. The Martins lived two miles to the south and were known, according to Jonah’s father — who had borrowed money from them once — as being unforgiving of debts.
Elias assured them he’d be back to work just as soon as he had his strength back. After a month passed, and another, even the old country doctor had to accept what no one in the community wanted to believe. It wouldn’t be long before Elias was in the ground, and it didn’t seem that God had any interest in dispensing a miracle.
Jonah saw that his uncle was alone in being at peace about his death. Elias told him that his days were measured out before the beginning of the world, and that would do just fine for him. As for the few earthly things he would leave behind, they were for Jonah.
“The house will be closed up and the crops will be your dad’s until your twentieth birthday. Then the land is yours. Just remember that it belongs to the Lord first, and it will always be blessed.”
When Elias finally died, those who knew him agreed it was a shame that such a big man should wither up like he had. The undertaker remarked that he had put Elias in a coffin that was two sizes smaller than if he’d simply fallen off a roof. He seemed to regret that Elias was denied the spectacle of an over-large coffin. As it was, when mourners came for a last look at his body, Elias appeared ordinary in a diminished sort of way. The same as anyone who had died that sort of death.
After the funeral, Jonah’s father appeared more angry at Mrs. Martins than sad about Elias. He said the woman had cornered him at the back of the church and made sure to complain that Elias could have at least finished their barn before he went and got sick. “Says it’s December and she has no place for her stinking cows except to rent stalls for the buggers in a neighbour’s barn. Had the nerve to suggest Elias hadn’t looked all that bad to her for the first few weeks and it might’ve done him some good to keep busy. Bloody coffin was right there and the woman still couldn’t hold her tongue.”
“She said that?” said Jonah’s mother, one of the few times Jonah heard her question his father.
“Well, she may as well have said it as much as thought it.”
Jonah felt sorry that the Martins were that sort of people when, to him, they showed every appearance of being just the opposite. He had a hard time imagining Mrs. Martins saying anything unkind. But he supposed that it meant she must be two-faced, which was the worst way to be.
After the funeral was the only time Jonah ever saw his father cry. When everyone else had left, he sat in a pew and bawled like a woman. His body, folded over his lap, shook so violently that Jonah thought the grief would unhook his father’s spine. Once his tears were wrung out, he drove them home in their rusted Ford pickup, cursing God in a continuous stream that Jonah and his mother didn’t dare interrupt. He swore and said that if God didn’t make exceptions for a man like his brother — a good man people loved — he himself was as good as dead. Like others, Jonah’s father believed that he lived on grace borrowed from Elias.
At home, he became quiet, his sil
ence a crust growing over a wound.
“That woman,” Jonah’s father finally said after three solid days of silence, the word woman spat out like a bitter taste. “How dare she talk to me like that? As though Elias deserved what he got because her rutting cattle have to shit in someone else’s barn for a season. I suppose she thinks it’s up to me now, but she’s got a long time to sit on her fat ass if she’s waiting for me to darken her doorstep.”
The next morning, an hour before the sun was up, Jonah woke to a single sharp blow to his bedroom door. He sat up straight and threw off his blanket.
“Let’s go,” his father said, striking the door hard a second time. Without opening it to ask where or why, Jonah piled on his clothes. He hurried outside and picked up a heavy metal box of tools that his father pointed to, lying on the frost-covered path in front of the house. They walked, crunching over gravel and snow, Jonah behind by a few steps as he struggled with the awkward weight of his burden and shifted it from hand to hand.
“Too much for you?” Jonah’s father said without looking back. It felt like an accusation, but Jonah reasoned that his father just needed time to come to terms with his loss. Before, when something had caused him to fall into one of his moods, he always struggled back to the surface for a while.
“I’m fine,” Jonah said, though his fingers were stiff and his lungs felt brittle with cold, making him desperate to stop and indulge in a fit of coughing.
“Good, because tomorrow you can get up early and do your chores before we go. Had to do the milking myself this morning.”
Jonah, to keep from falling farther behind, held his breath and ran to catch up, the toolbox throwing him off balance. He didn’t drop back again and they arrived at the Martins’ farm just as the sun was beginning to show. Mr. Martins was coming out of the house with a slop pail full of plate scrapings, grapefruit peels, and egg shells for his pigs. He stopped and considered Jonah and his father.
“Can’t say I know what’s brought you here, Abram,” he said. He gently set down the pail and the wire handle fell and chimed against the side. It felt to Jonah like an invitation to do the same, to put the toolbox by his feet, but he didn’t think he could let go. His fingers were stiff as though they had frozen around the handle.
“Come to do a bit of unfinished business, is all,” Jonah’s father said after a few moments, which, to Jonah, seemed eternal.
“Not your responsibility, as I see it, but you’re welcome if it’s what you want.” Mr. Martins looked from Jonah’s father to Jonah to the unfinished barn, its undressed frame salted with beads of snow.
For a week after that, except on Sunday, Jonah got up and was busy with the milking before his father’s feet hit the floor. It was still dark when he finished and even the cows seemed to know it was too early to protest with their usual fidgeting and swishes of their manure-crusted tails. When he was done, Jonah waited in the barn where it was warm enough to keep from shivering. As soon as he heard his father’s feet on the gravel outside, Jonah snatched up the toolbox — his father said he didn’t trust leaving it with the Martins — and was ready to walk.
Working together, Jonah and his father finished sooner than they expected, and Jonah felt satisfied to have completed his uncle’s work. Pleased, too, he had done something measurable to help his father and mother. The money from the job would be useful, he was sure. Maybe they’d even celebrate by killing a chicken for supper that night.
At the Martins’ door, Jonah stepped forward and knocked before retreating to stand just behind his father. Every day after they finished, Mrs. Martins had invited them in to warm up with a cup of coffee, a slice of fresh pie, or a share of whatever baking she had done during the afternoon. Every day Jonah’s father refused.
“I guess we’re done here,” Jonah’s father said when Mrs. Martins opened the door. Jonah could smell fresh bread and imagined eating it with a thick slab of butter and a spoonful of jam. He thought his father must be wrong about her and believed that this time, because they were finished, because she was so kind, his father would accept her invitation.
“Come on in,” said Mrs. Martins. “Get yourselves out of the cold.” She opened the door wider and warm, yeasty air flowed over Jonah’s face, leaving it moist, then colder than before.
“No, I don’t think so. We’ll just be on our way.” It had happened the same way each day, but Jonah still felt that this time would have to be different. Surely his father wouldn’t keep them standing in the cold while Mrs. Martins went inside for the money.
“At least come in while I fetch you your envelope,” she said. Jonah took an involuntary step towards her, but took it back when his father didn’t move.
“I won’t accept that,” Jonah’s father said. “It’s not rightfully mine. It belongs to Elias and he’s not here to take it.” He doffed his hat, a grey felt fedora, and turned round, leaving Jonah still looking at Mrs. Martins. He swallowed hard, as though a sharp stone had lodged in his throat. He was unable to tear his eyes from her until she reached back inside the house. Mrs. Martins opened the envelope and pressed a warm dollar into Jonah’s hand, squeezing it in both of hers, and closed the door.
“Miserable old sow’d be sure to remind me and everyone else about her bleedin’ barn until Kingdom come,” Jonah’s father said after they were half a mile down the road. “Didn’t deserve what we did for them.”
Jonah nodded as though he understood. A little while later, Jonah’s father took the toolbox from him and carried it the rest of the way. But without the weight he’d become accustomed to it was hard for Jonah to walk straight.
“You know that disease of your uncle’s runs in families,” Jonah’s father said as they walked. Ever since Elias died, he’d been unable to speak the disease’s name. As though it would invite the cancer in. “Means my number’s up next, and you should go ahead and plan to get done what you want to get done long before you’re my age. All a man can do is work hard enough, and take as little as he needs, so that the Old Bastard upstairs doesn’t take notice. Then just go on and die as well as you can.”
That night, Jonah didn’t sleep. He sat on his bed, uncomfortably awake, wrapped in a rough quilt that smelled of wet wool from his own cold sweat. He turned over in his mind what his father had said about hard work and reward, until he looked at it from all sides, until he believed it.
When Jonah finally lay down, he held his breath and stayed as still as he could. Thoughts of stuff going wrong inside him swooped down, veering away at the last second before he was able to catch and reason with them. He began to shiver. It wasn’t until morning, when the sun glared past the edges of the heavy brocade drapes over his window, that he thought of looking for an extra, dry blanket.
Jonah dressed before his parents were up. Although it was a warmer day than those before, Jonah ached from a chill that had seeped under his skin and into his bones. He felt starved, full of holes, but had no appetite. Without breakfast, he completed his morning chores. When finished, he set off to clean the old outhouse, a weather-worn shamble of sticks his mother had lately complained wasn’t fit to be used.
For an hour, Jonah scrubbed frozen fly specks from the walls and seat, swept up the bodies of insects that had died in the fall — the flies that spun on their backs until they finally succumbed, the moths that had shed the ability to eat along with their soft caterpillar bodies. He poured lye down the toilet hole and could have finished there; it would have been enough. If it were spring, he would have searched in the dark corners and between the boards for spiders — daddy-longlegs, mostly — even though they ate mosquitoes. He would have crushed them with his thumb, each one popping like a blister. Instead, he whisked away their crumbling webs and brushed them off onto his pants. By the last web, his hands were gloved in grimy spider silk.
When he was through, Jonah walked around the outhouse, and walked around it again, worrying tracks down to the frozen dirt under the snow. It was still filthy, he thought, disappointed in a way he c
ouldn’t understand. He crouched down on his heels, bowed his head under his hands and cringed at what he felt he needed to do. He thought about the boys his age that he knew were going pond skating that afternoon, maybe playing hockey if there were enough of them. For a moment, he closed his eyes and imagined the ice under his blades, the feeling of freedom. He shook his head, driving away the image.
With extra lumber that he and his father had gone back and hauled away after finishing the Martins’ barn — his father said it rightfully belonged to Elias and wouldn’t leave it there — Jonah began to work on building a new outhouse. He sawed and hammered wood together into a frame, sawdust and the occasional drop of blood staining the trampled snow under his feet. When the frame was up, he dressed it with plumb horizontal slats. On the inside he sanded any wood that might be touched when someone visited. He worked without rest, without water, his breath shallow and tight, as though sucking air through a paper straw. Finally, he picked up an axe and began to chop a new hole in the frozen ground. When it was deep enough, he pushed and dragged the new outhouse over top. Against the side he piled firewood, having heard that women, if there were men nearby when they came to do their business, preferred to maintain their dignity and instead carry off a few sticks for the stove. Although he couldn’t believe his mother really cared either way. She was too busy trying to anticipate her husband’s temper, aware of every time he looked her up and down and scowled, every time he fingered a piece of furniture and rubbed the dust between his fingers. Or sloshed stew back and forth in his bowl, trying to see whether there was anything worth eating underneath the watery surface.
Jonah stood and arched his back, muscles tightly bundled from bending over his work. In the time since he’d started, a storm front had pushed its way down from the north. Jonah could see it gaining on the horizon, feeding on the warmer air that had briefly settled over the prairie. And while he knew the storm could shift to the east and leave them be, it was a better bet to put on an extra layer of clothing and be ready for the cold.
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