Dawdi was in such a gute mood, he’d been singing ever since they’d closed the center. “I’ll help someone in time of need, and sweep the floor with rapid speed.”
Her grandparents were the most wunderbarr people in the whole world.
The senior center was one big room with chairs and tables on one end and shelves and drawers and plenty of floor space on the other. The room was big enough for a wedding party or even a game of basketball, with shiny wood floors and a high ceiling. They could set up a king-size quilt on one end without any problem at all.
Mary Anne put the pins back in the drawer where they belonged, and stacked the squares of fabric on one of the shelves. It was only her first day of work at the senior center, but she had already started a quilting club, and she was going to organize a painting class, a gardening group, and a Dutch oven cooking class. She was getting very gute at that Dutch oven, and her boss, Charlene, told her she could teach any classes she wanted, as long as she was within budget.
Mary Anne didn’t mind a tight budget. It was the reason she’d gotten this job in the first place. No one else but a desperate Amish woman was willing to take a job as activities director for minimum wage. Some of the senior ladies in the group said they could donate fabric, and they’d voted to make a quilt for the children’s hospital in Milwaukee.
Working for minimum wage wasn’t going to get Mary Anne anywhere very quickly, but at least she would have some money coming in. If she sold one quilt every month and made a little money off her painted benches and chairs and milk cans, she might be able to save up enough to rent a small place of her own before winter came. She’d rather not be living in the woods come November. The nights were plenty chilly at the first of May. And under no circumstances were Mammi and Dawdi to be camping in the winter. None of the relatives would forgive Mary Anne if Mammi and Dawdi froze to death in the name of solidarity.
There had been eight ladies at the center today and three men, including Mammi and Dawdi. They’d never had an activities coordinator before, so the senior center for most of them was just a place to pass the time playing cards or visiting. Mary Anne was looking forward to bringing a little more creativity to their lives. She probably would have volunteered at the center for free if she didn’t need the money so badly. She couldn’t think of anything more fun than making quilts and painting pictures and helping others find and create beauty for themselves. It was going to be a gute job, working with people who appreciated her.
Alice Swanson, a white-haired grandmother of sixteen, was already one of Mary Anne’s favorite people, and they had only met today. Alice had a ready smile and a loud, boisterous laugh that told Mary Anne she wasn’t afraid of being noticed or heard. Mary Anne liked that Alice could just be who she was without apologizing to anybody.
Alice and Mammi seemed like best friends already. Mammi told Alice all about Mary Anne, and Alice gave Mary Anne a big hug when she found out she was living in a tent. Mary Anne wasn’t especially eager for everyone at the senior center to know her living situation, but Mammi didn’t think it was anything to be ashamed of. By the end of the day, everyone knew that Mary Anne was living in a tent and that she showered in a bathroom in the barn.
Judy and Dennis VanderSleet had been the only married couple at the center today. Judy drove to Green Bay every week to dance with the Tap Dancing Grannies, and Dennis liked to watch football on TV. Dennis was especially looking forward to the painting class because he’d once been a graphics designer. Margaret Baumann’s husband was in a care facility for Alzheimer’s, and she came to the senior center for a weekly break. Helen Jensen had lost her husband in the war over forty years ago and had never remarried. She had worked for the state and now lived with her only son and his family.
Mary Anne could barely contain her excitement. Besides Pammy, she hadn’t had much to do with Englischers before now, and the seniors at the center had all lived such interesting lives. Bob Hennig used to go salmon fishing in Alaska. For sure and certain he’d have some stories for Jethro. Jethro enjoyed a good fish story. She loved the way his eyes lit up whenever he talked about battling a certain trout that had gotten away. He still thought about that fish.
Charlene came out of her office jangling her keys. “Are you ready to go?”
Charlene lived on the east side of Shawano and was more than happy to drive Mary Anne and her grandparents to and from the center. It was probably her concession for not paying Mary Anne more money. Mary Anne was more than a little grateful for the ride. She’d pushed Jethro’s patience too far already. He wouldn’t be letting her use the buggy again.
Mammi and Dawdi followed Mary Anne out the door, and Charlene turned off the lights and locked up. They climbed into Charlene’s minivan and pulled out of the parking lot.
Charlene was older than some of the seniors who came to the center. She had told Mary Anne that volunteering there kept her young. A total of three people worked at the senior center—Mary Anne, Charlene, and Marco, who was the janitor and the building supervisor. Charlene ran the center, Marco scheduled special events, and Mary Anne was the only one who got paid. She was very grateful for the work.
Dawdi and Charlene struck up a conversation about the president of the United States. Mary Anne didn’t even know who it was. Not that she cared to, but she was constantly amazed at how much she didn’t know and how much she still had left to learn.
Charlene dropped them off at the house, and Mary Anne practically ran to the backyard. Lily and Sarah would be here at four to quilt, and she needed to get the fire going before they came. She’d found a recipe at the library for Dutch oven New England clam chowder, and she had to get it started before quilting time.
Mary Anne went around to the back of the house and came to a dead stop. Was she in the right yard?
She stared into the woods for a full minute, not believing what she was seeing—or rather, not believing what she wasn’t seeing.
Mammi gasped. “Ach du lieva.”
Mary Anne’s beautiful, butterfly-decorated tent was gone, as was Mammi and Dawdi’s tent and the fire pit. Moses’s tent had disappeared too. The canopy, the kitchen chairs, even the quilt were all missing. She stumbled slowly across the lawn and stopped directly on the spot where the front door of her tent used to be. Not a trace of the camp was left except for Mammi and Dawdi’s sleeping bags, which were neatly rolled and tied and standing on end next to each other like two fat badgers guarding the forest. The delightful quilt square she’d painted on the barn had been covered over with a flat, manure-brown paint, and the pansies she had planted around the perimeter of her tent had been trampled to bits.
She’d known Jethro was angry, but she’d had no idea he could be so spiteful.
An icy hand seized Mary Anne’s throat and squeezed until she couldn’t breathe. She was choking and suffocating and retching all at the same time. Where were her mobiles? What about her quilt and sewing machine, her potato chip collection, and the bench she’d been painting? How would she get anything back? She couldn’t make quilts without her machine, and she couldn’t buy more fabric without the quilt money.
The thought of starting over nearly buried her. She’d spent an hour setting up Jethro’s tent. She didn’t even want to think about the effort it had taken to drag her sewing machine or the fire pit into the woods. She’d taken so much joy in creating her mobiles and hanging them up. She’d never be able to replace her potato chip collection or the walking sticks or the pansies. She’d spent the last of Jethro’s two hundred dollars on those pansies. How would she eat? She certainly wouldn’t be allowed in the house to borrow back her utensils.
As she stood there in breathless shock, trembling like a match in the wind, she could sense Mammi and Dawdi behind her, stunned into silence by Jethro’s thorough purging of the campsite.
She was seconds away from breaking down, from falling on the ground, curling herself into a little ball, and weeping like a child. Out of the corner of her eye, she spied Jethro
tromping across the lawn, no doubt coming to exult in her pain. She drew a deep breath, bit down hard on her tongue, and squared her shoulders. He wouldn’t get the satisfaction of seeing her disintegrate like a delicate pansy, no matter how exhausting it was to hold back the tears. He would never know he had crushed her.
Mammi stepped forward and wrapped her arm around Mary Anne’s waist. “That boy deserves a gute spanking,” she said, growling her displeasure and blinking back moisture from her eyes.
Mary Anne’s heart swelled until she thought she might weep out of sheer gratitude. Mammi would always be on her side. She took great comfort in such fierce loyalty.
Jethro stopped at the edge of the woods, barely missing an already hopeless pansy with his boot. “I hope you’ve learned your lesson,” he said, in a voice so mild, Mary Anne might have thought he felt sorry for what he’d done, even though she knew better.
She had to wait a few seconds before responding, just to make sure she could speak without losing her composure. “And what lesson is that?”
“The lesson that it’s time to come home.”
“Why would I have learned that lesson?”
He lifted his hat and scrubbed his fingers through his hair. “Because you shouldn’t be living in a tent.”
Mary Anne was glad for the anger that welled up inside her. It kept her from bursting into tears. “For sure and certain it’s been wonderful embarrassing that you can’t control your fraa.”
He pressed his lips together, as if he was choosing his words carefully. “I don’t want to control you, but you need to understand how selfish you’re behaving. Your silly camping idea has hurt more people than just me. Fraaen in the district are discontented for no reason, and the husbands are fretful. Your selfishness has upset the applecart, and the elders aren’t happy about it.”
Mammi tightened her grip around Mary Anne’s waist but didn’t say anything. She was either lending her support or trying to hold Mary Anne back from giving Jethro a gute shove.
“I’m sorry the elders are upset, Jethro, but they shouldn’t blame you. You haven’t done anything wrong. It’s not your fault your wife is unrepentant.” She had found that if she took all the blame, he had fewer things to argue with her about.
“It’s not about what the elders think.”
“Then why did you say it was?”
He ran his fingers through his hair again and growled. “Surely you see how hard it is to make quilts in a tent. Your sewing machine is back where it’s always been, and I’ve set up the quilt in the living room so you can work on it, even though Willie Jay told me not to. It will get dirty sitting out here in the woods. Your cousins are invited to come in anytime they want to work on it.”
She longed to know about her walking sticks and the mobiles but didn’t want him to sense they meant anything to her.
Mammi was looking at Jethro as if he’d burned all her recipe books. “Where is my dog, young man? Is he running free in the woods somewhere?”
“I took him to Aden’s house, along with the tent you borrowed. Aden agreed to watch her until you came to fetch her.”
Mammi narrowed her eyes. “Does Aden know what you’ve done?”
Jethro didn’t seem to like Mammi’s accusation. He lifted his chin. “I didn’t explain myself. They’ll all know soon enough when Mary Anne moves back in and everything is set to rights.”
“I’m not moving back in.”
“You have to. There’s nothing left for you out here, and I’ve done up all the windows with dowels. You can’t get in.” Jethro came closer and dared to cup his hand around Mary Anne’s upper arm. Wasn’t he afraid it might get bitten off? “I know you’re mad, but in time you’ll come to see I did this because I love you.”
Mary Anne was fairly certain love had nothing to do with it.
“I did this for you, Mary Anne. You hate to camp. You cook your meals in a fire pit and then have to wash all the dishes with the hose. I love you too much to let you live in a tent, and I want to protect you from the gossips.”
He was just rejoicing in how kind and caring he thought he was. Mary Anne bit harder on her tongue.
He finally dropped his hand from her arm and gave her a kindly smile. “I do love you, Mary Anne, and I want both of us to work on the things you don’t like about our marriage. I can help you.” The corners of his mouth curled upward. “I’ll even try to be more exciting.” Poor Jethro. He still thought being boring was the reason she’d left him. “But we can’t work together if you’re living in a tent. That’s why I pulled up your camp. You have to come home.”
“You trampled my pansies.”
Jethro shook his head in resignation. “It was for your own good.”
Mary Anne clasped her hands together so Jethro wouldn’t see how badly they were shaking. “Do you honestly think I’d come home after what you’ve done? I’d rather sleep on the ground in the pouring rain.”
She saw pain in his eyes and something else—remorse perhaps. She was definitely imagining things. “Mary Anne, please come home.” He sounded so sincere.
She got even madder at him for making her feel sorry for him. “I’ll sleep in the barn.”
“The barn is locked.”
She folded her arms. If she didn’t end this conversation soon, Jethro was going to notice the shaking. “You’re going to milk the cow from now on?”
“I’ll unlock the barn and milk the cow every day if you come home.”
Mammi ignored Jethro. “You can stay at our house. You’d have a nice, comfortable bed and a toilet that flushes.”
“I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate it, Mammi,” Mary Anne said, “but I want my own space. Something to call my own.”
Jethro sighed. “You don’t have anything to call your own out here. Everything you’ve been using is borrowed from me or one of your cousins.”
“Not my frying pans.”
“Don’t forget about the dining set,” Mammi said. “That was a wedding present.”
Jethro reached out and took Mammi’s hand in his. Mammi scrunched her lips to one side of her mouth, but she didn’t pull away. “Anna, don’t you think it would be better if you and Felty went home? Felty is limping something wonderful, and I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re only making things worse.”
Dawdi seemed to be secretly laughing at a joke that only he found funny. “Worse for whom?”
Mary Anne struggled to keep her voice under control. “You can’t keep my sewing machine. My fater gave that to me when I got baptized.”
“You can use it if you come back home like a faithful, loving wife.”
Was this what happened when people got divorced? Did they start fighting over things that didn’t matter because their lives were falling apart? Mary Anne hadn’t felt this low in years, even though until this morning, she’d been living in a tent. She wanted to sit down on the damp ground and bawl her eyes out, but she’d prefer that Jethro not be here to see it.
She lifted her chin. “Then I will just have to borrow one.”
“We have a sewing machine at home,” Dawdi said. “You can still come live with us.”
Jethro frowned. “You don’t need to borrow a machine when you have a perfectly good one sitting in the spare bedroom.”
“In your house,” Mary Anne said.
Jethro gave her that pained look again. She ignored it. “You’re always welcome back into the house.”
“Ach, vell. Not really. You locked me out.”
She could have drawn a map of unhappiness on the lines of his face. “You know what I mean.”
“Ach. For sure and certain I do.”
She clamped her lips together to keep from saying anything that would prove her weakness. Jethro, I know you don’t want me using your stuff, but could I borrow some bolt cutters to cut that lock on the barn door? She was alone in the woods with her grandparents to take care of, and she had no idea what she was going to do about the bathroom situation. It should have be
en a small problem amid all the upset and anger, but Mary Anne was almost tempted to move back in with Jethro just for the luxury of using his toilet. Knowing there was a flushable toilet in the barn had made it easier for Mary Anne to move into the tent in the first place. What was she going to do now? Mammi and Dawdi wouldn’t survive without a toilet, and Mary Anne would die before she stooped to squatting in the woods.
“What happened here?”
Mary Anne looked up to see Cousin Sarah carrying Lily’s twins, Estee and Emily, with Lily and Aden Jr. and Pilot in tow. Mary Anne’s sister Mandy followed a few steps behind.
Lily’s eyes were as wide as saucers. “Your . . . your camp is gone.”
Mammi shot Jethro a look that could have killed every mosquito in Wisconsin. “Jethro took it down while Mary Anne was at her first day of work.”
Jethro’s eyes flared like a forest fire. “You all know it was for her own good.”
Sarah narrowed her eyes. “You’re slyer than a snake, Jethro Neuenschwander.”
The muscles of Jethro’s jaw twitched fiercely. “You should be ashamed that you’re encouraging Mary Anne to sin. You may not care about her soul, but I will fight tooth and nail before I see my fraa go to hell.”
Sarah snorted so loudly, the sound echoed up through the trees. “Unless you are the blessed Lord Himself, you have no right to pass judgment on who is going to hell and who isn’t.” She put the twins down, and they promptly ran to Jethro’s lawn and started chasing Pilot around. “I’m sorry, Mary Anne. Jethro and his bruder brought our canopy back and said you didn’t need it anymore. I should have been more suspicious.”
Jethro was going to lose a lot of hair if he kept scrubbing his fingers through it like that. “Doesn’t anybody else see that Mary Anne is breaking the commandments? No fraa should just move out on her husband.”
“Why?” Sarah said, taking a step closer to Jethro. She was almost six feet tall and could just about look him straight in the eye. She intimidated a lot of people. “Because you say so?”
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