I remember the summer nights my roommates Hannah, Karen, Mari, and I draped our foreheads and necks with damp rags we’d cooled in a bucket in the springhouse. Beneath the white cotton sheets, our different-sized bellies bloomed before us like phases of the moon: waxing crescent, first quarter, waxing gibbous, full. In the darkness flecked with starshine that filtered through the curtained windows, we talked about the bonds we’d made before coming to Hopen Haus and those we’d severed by choosing to stay. Though I listened more than spoke, I knew that this crumbling, Civil War–era house had provided me with sisters and with the camaraderie for which I’d always longed.
Because of this, it was only natural that I would accept everything about the community so that they would, without question, fully accept me. I folded up the jeans, T-shirts, and sweatshirts I’d brought and started wearing tights and secondhand cape dresses printed with a smattering of pin-sized flowers. I parted my hair and twined the dark locks into a bun. I did not wear a kapp, since I was not baptized into the church.
During the bimonthly fellowship services—where the community sat in Hopen Haus’s dining room that was converted into a sanctuary, with two sets of long wooden benches on which the women sat on one side and the men on the other—I could not sing the hymns in the Ausbund or understand the recited text or sermons, which the bishop and deacons all read in German. So I stared at the heads of the women seated in front of me, and then stared at the heads who were behind me when we turned and knelt in front of the benches to pray. I wanted their kapp. I wanted that exquisite symbol of belonging, more than I wanted to know what that symbol actually meant. Also, I knew that casting off the apparel of my previous life would make it far easier to disappear.
Head midwife Fannie Graber accepted my interest in church baptism as she accepted everything else: without smiling or frowning. But somehow I knew that she was well pleased. Most of the Hopen Haus girls, upon delivery of their child, would begin itching to return to their former lifestyles, filled with the technology the community had shunned. Bishop Leon Yoder, however, took my baptism more seriously than Fannie did. After a week of discussion among the deacons, I was deemed suitable for baptism. But there was one stipulation: Fannie would first have to teach me the Mennonites’ core doctrine.
I was excited to hear this news. Nonetheless, I cannot say that, at this point, I truly understood the motivations of my heart. I just knew that I wanted my daughter to be born into the safety of a familye. Though I’d become an orphan by choice, I wanted my child never to suffer from the loneliness that I’d felt growing up. My proving period—a requirement before entering the Mennonite church—lasted until the week before my daughter was born, which was pretty lenient, considering that proving times can take up to three years.
The Hopen Haus girls and I would finish taking turns bathing our awkward, beautiful bodies in the vintage claw-foot tub that had been deemed too worldly, so its gilded feet had been hacked off and replaced with halved cinder blocks. Then we brushed each other’s hair, which clung to our skulls in long, damp skeins that pregnancy hormones had made thick and sleek. I watched the rest of them trundle off to bed with the languid strides and hooded eyes of adult children who rested in the fact that—for the time being, at least—they were cared for and loved.
Night after night, I would then pad downstairs in my braided hair and full-length gown I’d ordered from Lehman’s catalog. I would find Fannie Graber in the living room, rocking in a cane-backed chair so close to the open woodstove, I feared an ember would pop and she would get burned. Her arthritic fingers would be clutching a treat: a burlap bag of schnitzappels left over from a pie or two fragrant mugs of meadow tea, whose steam curled toward the rafters like smoke. She would pass me half of whatever she had, and the two of us would savor the rare quiet, interrupted solely by the crackling logs or the brays of the donkeys corralled in the barn.
I looked forward to those evenings more than anything all day. In Fannie’s presence, I was no longer cognizant of my faults, but confident and reassured. I felt much like I had felt when Thomas Fitzpatrick asked me to bear his child. My mother’s abandonment had skewed my perception to the point where I equated the interest and attention with love, and I would have done anything—said anything—to ensure that it continued. I am not saying that Thomas Fitzpatrick abused this power. Nor did Fannie.
She did not make me memorize passages from tattered books whose titles I could not pronounce. She did not make me repent of everything I had ever done before I could spotlessly join the church, and fearing our intimacy would wane if she knew the truth, I did not tell her. Instead, with the soft smile and faraway eyes of a wizened storyteller, she told me about the Mennonite church’s beliefs and practices, which had originated when Dutch Mennonite leaders met in Dordrecht, the Netherlands, on April 21, 1632.
The Dordrecht Confession of Faith stressed belief in Christ, the saved status of children, the importance of proclaiming God’s Word and “making disciples” (one of the reasons, Fannie confided, that she and Elmer had founded Hopen Haus), baptism of believers, absolute love, nonresistance rather than retaliation as one’s personal response to injustice and maltreatment, and the church as a nonhierarchical community.
Sometimes Fannie’s eyes would close even as her mouth continued speaking, and then her head would bob until her kapp strings draped her gently rising and falling chest. I often looked over and saw, by the firelight, the smile lines crinkling the skin around Fannie’s closed eyes; the coarse gray hair unraveling around her temples; the knots on the old, veined hands that had ushered so many children into the world without losing a single one.
I was in awe of this woman, and of her servant’s heart, which went above and beyond to reach out to me—a wayward orphan who had found a family where no one was her kin. In that moment, even more than my desire to escape my past, I knew that I would have happily given up my Englischer world just to step into that hallowed realm of Fannie Graber’s love.
Despite the idyllic nature of our community, even back then it was evident just how shorthanded the midwives were. Fannie and her younger sister, Charlotte—who wasn’t young at all, and so revealed just how old Fannie was—and Sadie Gingrich took care of two dozen women, who’d all give birth within the next thirty-three weeks. Because of this, we were often brought into the examining room in pairs. We were taught how to measure our womb’s growth and to watch our ankles and faces for signs of water retention, and encouraged to eat whole foods and exercise daily so our bodies would be prepared for labor—the most arduous task of our lives.
Although I did learn more about holistic remedies for prenatal and postpartum care—blessed thistle herb, raspberry leaf tea, evening primrose oil—this was my second child. What I had not learned in my first year of graduate school, I had learned from my previous birth.
Thus, my clipped answers to Fannie’s questions during class revealed both my medical background and my mounting boredom.
One morning at breakfast, Charlotte told me I was exempt from that afternoon’s class and that my next prenatal appointment would be scheduled alone. Maybe it was the awkward silence as Fannie examined me, or the weight of secrets that I could no longer shoulder along with the increasing weight of my womb. But just as I had once confided in Thom, I threw caution to the wind and told Fannie the truth. I told her no specifics, only that I had kidnapped the very child I was about to birth. She—whose rheumy eyes had seen just about everything and could imagine the rest—did not falter. She just nodded, snapped off one glove that clung to the swollen knuckles of her right hand, and reached across the table to help me sit up.
“Beth,” she said, “Hopen Haus has its name for a reason. It was founded so that you and others like you can find hope to begin again.” She paused. “Now if you’d taken a child off the street, it would be another matter entirely. But the fact that the child’s inside your womb makes me think an intelligent girl like you must’ve had a reason to run.”
“They
didn’t want her,” I whispered. “They decided they didn’t want her anymore, and I . . .” I touched the stunning sphere housing my unseen baby, who was already in the transverse position in preparation to descend. Tears dripped on the sheet spooled around the lower half of my body, as in horror I imagined what could have been done. “And you see, I wanted her so badly . . .”
Fannie went over to the standing basin she called a weschbohl. She scrubbed her hands and forearms with a nail brush lathered with the harsh lye soap we used on our clothes. Looking over her shoulder, she smiled, though her eyes remained opaque. “For the sake of yourself and the child,” she said, “you can’t live in fear. . . .You must let yourself live.”
After this conversation, I was excused from laundry duty and asked to assist Fannie in standard checkups. I tried to explain that a majority of my learning had been acquired through bioethics classes and not through firsthand experience, but she did not seem concerned. She did not seem concerned about anything, really. And I would have doubted Fannie’s ability to manage Hopen Haus if I hadn’t seen, beneath her dimpled smile and kind blue eyes, a woman who—like some New Testament miracle—could feed a houseful of pregnant women with venison and a few loaves of bread.
Amelia, 2014
I’m on my way to the springhouse for ham and cheese when that guy named Wilbur Byler comes charging out of the springhouse, his head down and gorilla hands balled at his sides. For some reason I freak out and hide behind a tree. I peek around it like a little kid and watch Wilbur dart across the yard faster than you’d think he could, judging by his appearance, which isn’t helped at all by his grungy, bad-fitting clothes. He’s almost to the fence that goes around Hopen Haus when he stops and turns, looking around the yard. Apparently not seeing anything worth his time, Wilbur opens the gate and jerks the bill of his baseball cap low over his eyes.
I keep standing there, barely breathing, and don’t even know why I feel so scared. Soon I hear Wilbur’s diesel passenger van start up, and I step out from behind the tree and push on the springhouse door. Wilbur didn’t latch it, and it creaks as it opens, reminding me of every horror movie I’ve ever seen. And there have been a bunch. It’s hard to see through the gloominess, since there are only two tiny windows, and they’re covered with wooden blinds. My sweat turns cold and I start shivering. Is my body scrambling to keep up with the temperature change, or is there something creepy in here that I can’t see?
Mold, sucking up the muddy water pooling on the dirt floor, runs along the bottom half of the white stone walls. Huge hams and slabs of mystery meat are hooked to the rafters holding up the roof. Big wooden barrels with lids store apples with labels like Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, McIntosh, and Granny Smith. Next to the apple barrels are tightly sealed ceramic crocks that hold rounds of cheese wrapped in wax paper. Shiny metal pitchers filled with buttermilk are dulled with cold. Another crock holds the goat cheese that Uriah pasteurizes on the stove all the time. I can’t even stand to sniff the stuff without barfing.
Never a fan of the dark, I use the crock closest to the entrance to prop open the springhouse door. I walk back inside and stare up at the ceiling. The hams are still out of reach, even when I stand on my tippy toes. Somehow, when Lydie told me to “fetch the ham and cheese,” I’d imagined my world back home: this gigantic, stainless-steel refrigerator with a deli section of sandwich stuff kept under plastic. Not this eerie cave where anything might be hiding.
I go over to the nearest apple barrel, thinking of using it like a step stool so I can pull down the ham. Taking hold of the top, I begin to drag it. From behind the barrel, someone stands up. I scream bloody murder and scramble backward.
“Be quiet!” Uriah yells.
I gasp, hands on knees as I catch my breath. Then I yell back, “You’re the one yelling! What’s going on, Uriah? What just happened with you and Wilbur?”
He shrugs. “I was supposed to go on a drive with him and help him load furniture, and . . . now I’m not.”
“You go driving with him often?”
“Sometimes,” he says. “If Wilbur needs help loading a piece of furniture that the Mennonites sell to the Englisch.”
I think of Lydie’s question about how it felt to be Englisch and ask, “You like it here?”
Tucking the tail of his shirt into his pants, Uriah leans against an apple barrel. “Did you know there used to be two hundred and fifty people living on this farm?” he asks, and I shake my head. “Back then,” he says, “I didn’t have to work so hard. This place wasn’t so run-down. It was really—I don’t know—nice.” Uriah cocks his head at me. “What about you?”
I look past him, out through the open doorway, to the light. Suddenly not liking how the tables have turned, I say, “I’m just here to—to find out some things before I make a decision.”
Uriah takes off his straw hat again and plucks at the strands. “What kind of decision?”
I cup a hand over my stomach. Closing my eyes, my pulse thumps in my ears. I remember that awful night, during supper, when I told my parents about my pregnancy, and my mom told me she could fix it—like this baby was just another one of my mistakes.
I say, swallowing hard, “I left because I wasn’t sure I wanted to—keep an appointment.”
Uriah says, “And you’re here to see if you do?”
I nod. My eyes sting.
“What if you don’t find what you’re looking for?”
I look over at the spring in the dirt floor, bubbling up from some unseen place. What courage those pioneers must have had, to settle here trusting that the spring would never run dry. “Guess if I don’t get my answer,” I say, “then that will be an answer in itself.” I walk out of the springhouse. Despite last week’s rain, dust swirls around my feet.
10
Beth, 1996
The September morning I was baptized into the Old Order Mennonite church, fog swaddled the valley below Hopen Haus like cotton bunting. The trees had turned since the premature frost. Their branches now resembled paintbrushes whose tassels had been dipped in pots of yellow, red, and gold. I had asked to be baptized in the wash-out creek running down the mountain behind Jonah and Miriam Fisher’s haus. Submersion seemed more definite than standard sprinkling, and I hoped that when Bishop Yoder drew me out of the water, the part of my spirit that had dried up after my mother’s departure would be replenished and whole.
I walked through the woods, flanked by the rest of the community, on a pathway that had been made by wild turkeys scratching the decaying foliage with their claws. I looked down and touched the fabric of the cape dress Fannie had stitched in hours she did not have to spare. Tears blurred my steps. It was the first cape dress I’d worn that had not been passed down from other women in the Dry Hollow Community. This, and the delicate kapp that I would don after my baptism, were the first articles of clothing someone had made for me with their own two hands.
During the past twenty-two weeks, ensconced in Fannie Graber’s unconditional love, I learned that I had been trying to patch my mother’s absence with things and with people who were never meant to fill me up. Ernest Looper had let me down by not keeping in touch when I purposely walked out of his life, humiliation curling my shoulders and my stomach concealing our unborn son. Although I never should have pursued Thomas Fitzpatrick’s affections, he had let me down by agreeing that destroying his child was the best possible choice, therefore toppling off a pedestal I should have never placed him on. I had tried to fill my mother’s void by gathering proof of my intelligence: being valedictorian of my high school class—granted, we only had a hundred students—pursuing a master’s degree right after my bachelor’s, and planning on acquiring a PhD right after that. And yet it had all failed me. Every single person and thing.
I knew better than to place Fannie Graber in a limelight whose malignant power was as transmuting as a black hole. However, plodding toward the creek, I did pray to the Savior Fannie Graber spoke of so intimately. I prayed that he would fo
rgive my sins and wash me in the water, making me clean, so that the donning of my new name, Rhoda Mummau, and kapp would not be the only alterations. That the submersion would be a sign that I was leaving the bitterness toward my mother behind and could now be the kind of mother for which I’d always longed.
I stepped closer to the creek. Swollen from the previous night’s rain, the water rose over its embankment, the chocolate froth polishing the tips of the community’s shoes. The men, women, and children harmonized a cappella hymns led by Abner Zook, whose baritone was as commanding as his brow. Fannie and I approached the creek edge hand in hand. The sodden ground was surely placing her back in jeopardy; it had just begun to heal since the last time it gave out. But I knew Fannie wanted to lead me down to the water so that, through her uneven stance and arthritic hand, I could find the strength to stand on my own two feet.
Bishop Yoder, who was already in the creek, assisted Fannie as she minced down the muddy embankment. Her nostrils pinched and lips whitened as the water lapped up to her breastbone. The water was direct mountain runoff and therefore colder than it would have been cradled for hours against the earth. Bishop Yoder did not offer me his hand, but waded back toward the center of the creek and waited for me to follow.
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