A Second Chance

by Linda Byler

  Edna felt downright pious this morning. Filled with a sense of accomplishment and righteousness. But not self-righteous, she hoped. She shouldn’t have been so judgmental about folks taking vacations. She bowed her head to pray for a better heart.

  As always, she watched mothers hand over griddlich, fussy babies to adoring fathers, caught the look of love and caring between the parents, and wondered for the thousandth time why no young man had ever chosen her.

  No matter how many times she assured herself that God saw the need for a maud in the community, it was still a Band-Aid over the wound that never quite healed.

  It hurt.

  There were single ladies who chose to be without a man, perfectly content to live their life alone, and they were the ones who had been asked by many young men. They could saunter down life’s path secure in the knowledge they were attractive to someone. They had been looked upon as desirable in some man’s eyes, even though they chose to stay single.

  But not Edna Miller. Not once.

  She shrugged her shoulders to relieve the stiffness in her back, as if to rid herself of the encroaching stabs of self-pity. No sense in it, she knew, but still. Sometimes it was downright hard.

  There was a resounding clunk, followed by the outraged wail of the small child who had been unruly and fell backward off the bench. A rustle as hands reached for the little one, the shrieks drowning out the voice of the minister for a short time. An older child made her way along the benches with a snack sent by the mother to console the little one.

  Young girls bent their heads and giggled, traded hard candies, and acted as if they couldn’t sit still for one second. Edna was momentarily annoyed, but then remembered her own youth.

  This was her church, her way of life, a dear place. She was seated among those she loved. She could not imagine anything other than the traditions with which she had been brought up. Looking around at all the dear faces, the elderly, the middle-aged, the pillars of trust and example, she felt a deep gratitude.

  Would she grow old, with snow-white hair, an increase in her already ample girth, her cape pinned only a bit haphazardly, a larger white covering, still alone, still making her own way financially? She pushed back the foreboding, the undisclosed, frightening future of being encumbered with health problems of her own, saddled with fading parents, unable to work.

  Well, only God knew, so there was no reason to live in a state of anxiety. She turned her head to the minister, her face a smooth mask of devout observance, glad to be able to conceal the inner workings of her mind.

  She wondered if most women really appreciated their husbands. She had seen plenty in her work as a maud. Appreciation for the husband’s paycheck was often sadly lacking, but then, she tried to be fair in all her judgment, so she smoothed over the outrage to understanding. For how could these women know, if they never had to make their own way? She pursed her lips, finding contentment with her calling, glad she could feel a sense of elevation.

  In the buggy with her parents, a warm lap robe tucked around her legs; she had a clear view of the road, the oncoming traffic, so she took it on herself to be her father’s eyes and ears.

  It was cold and windy, but clear and bright. Edna looked forward to being at Fannie’s house, warm and comfortable, with children dashing through the rooms in every stage of growth and development. Nine of them, cherubic, blond, and red-cheeked, flowing with good health and happiness, encouraged to speak their mind, every opinion considered carefully by loving parents, especially their father, Johnny Troyer, who had always been known as Chip.

  “Dat, there’s a tractor-trailer coming this way,” Edna offered.

  “As if old Dob would notice,” her father stated drily.

  “Well, you never know what might scare him in his old age.”

  “Now, Edna, you sit back and relax. I am perfectly capable of driving my own team.”

  Edna crossed her arms and thought, But for how long?

  As she had anticipated, a cloud of warm air scented with the rich smell of popcorn, coffee, and ham in the oven enveloped their chilled noses. Children flung themselves into her welcoming arms, shrieking her name.

  Fannie, flushed and bright-eyed, hurried to the door with an arm going around her mother’s rounded shoulders.

  “Well, hello! It is wonderful seeing you again. You’ve waited too long to come for a visit.”

  Edna smiled and nodded as she tugged at her bonnet strings.

  “Hello yourself, Fannie.”

  Chip greeted them from the laundry room door, where he stood buttoning his denim overcoat, a wide smile wrinkling his pleasant blue eyes.

  “Chip, how are you?” Mam responded.

  “Couldn’t be better. How are you, Mother?”

  “Oh, I’m good. Still able to do for Dat and myself, which is a blessing,” she answered, sliding the heavy woolen shawl off her shoulders, handing it to Fannie’s outstretched hand.

  “We have baby bunnies,” yelled Cindy, the rotund little four-year-old who spoke with a lisp, her straight blond hair tucked into her small black covering.

  “Seriously? We’ll have to go see them,” Edna responded.

  “Now? Can we go now?” five-year-old Delbert shouted, jumping up and down as if his legs were on springs.

  “Let Edna warm herself, Delbert. O.K.?”

  They moved to the warmth of the coal stove in the living room, holding out their hands to the cheery glow from the glass door. Edna rubbed her hands, shivered, then turned her back to the stove to chase away the goosebumps. Fannie drew up a glider rocker, helped her mother into it, then hurried away to bring a fleece throw to cover her legs.

  “Can’t have you catching a cold, Mam.”

  “Oh, this feels so good.”

  Her mother gazed up at her eldest daughter with the light of adoration in her eyes. Fannie returned the smile, patted her shoulder, asked whether she would like coffee or tea. Edna lifted the smallest child, a little boy of eighteen months, and asked what he received for Christmas. He looked into her face, thinking for a few moments before his face lit up and he wriggled himself out of her grasp, onto the floor, and toddled away to bring a stick horse wearing a bridle. He pressed a button, and the horse whinnied and made galloping sounds.

  “Horse!” he announced proudly. “A horse!”

  Dolls, doll beds, a distribution of puzzles and games, skates and trucks were all brought for Edna’s approval by a ring of eager, blond-haired, blue-eyed children who were all talking at once. Her father and Chip entered with gray mugs of steaming coffee and bowls of popcorn seasoned with brewer’s yeast and plenty of melted butter.

  Edna watched her sister upend the sugar pourer into her father’s coffee mug, hand him a bowl of popcorn along with the salt shaker, then watched the liberal scattering of salt into the already salted dish.

  Blood pressure, she thought. She opened her mouth to ask him to stop, then closed it, decided to stop being a worrywart.

  “You do make the best popcorn, Fannie,” he chortled, the glistening of melted butter on his well-rounded cheeks, already staining his white beard.

  “Nothing like popcorn on a cold Sunday afternoon, right, Dat?” Chip boomed.

  “Oh, absolutely. You didn’t grow this, did you?”

  Ach, Dat, Edna thought. You know he did. You know he gets top price for his six different varieties of popcorn. You just want to hear it again, the huge success old Chip has, selling the stuff to buyers who will, in turn, sell it to higher-up companies like Williams Sonoma. She’d seen the Amish popcorn in the Martha Stewart Living magazine, for an exorbitant price, too.

  Her mother beamed her approval from her rocker, a handful of popcorn thrown in her gaping mouth, half of it dribbling onto the fleece across her lap, a few kernels rolling onto the floor at her feet.

  Mam, one kernel at a time.

  Edna turned away, trying not to supervise her mother’s popcorn inhalation. She didn’t eat popcorn the way normal people enjoyed it. That mouth w
as like a vacuum, sucking up kernels on high speed, after which she’d sit and pick her teeth with a straight pin taken from her belt, complete with a few appreciative belches before hitching herself up and replacing the pin. Then she’d crack “old maids,” the unpopped kernels, with her teeth until the bowl was empty. That was when she’d hold the bowl out to Fannie with a compliment and request for a refill.

  Chip launched into a lively account of neighbor Myron’s frozen water pipes in his hog barn and the ensuing flood which turned into a sea of ice.

  “They were in Geauga for the weekend. I guess her brother got married that Thursday, the way I heard it.”

  “Geauga?” her mother asked, her words tangled around a mouthful of fresh popcorn. “I didn’t know she had freundshaft in Geauga.”

  “Yeah, a couple of brothers. They had to get the hogs into another barn. Couple broken legs, them fat things sliding all over the place. You know those hogs don’t have strong leg muscles to begin with, stuck in those feeder pens. You couldn’t pay me enough to raise them things,” Chip laughed, leaning back in his chair, plying a toothpick between his teeth.

  Irritation raked itself across Edna’s mind, but she caught herself just in time, shut her mouth after a deep breath.

  What was wrong with her today? Chip was the most likable of the two brothers-in-law, so why would his description of his neighbor’s hog barn bring on this narrow-eyed meanness?

  Her father laughed, his mouth open wide, with wet, chewed kernels strewn across his tongue.

  “Not much profit for those poor hog farmers. I saw in the Farm Journal that the prices hit the lowest mark in five and a half years.”

  Edna was relieved when it was time to see the bunnies. She helped the little ones bundle up, bending over to tug sturdy little Muck Boots on resisting feet, buttoning coats, tying scarves, and pulling little gray beanies onto tousled heads. There was relief in the fresh air, the lisping voice of four-year-old Cindy laughing at Delbert’s antics, and in holding mittened little hands as they slipped and slid to the barn.

  “You can’t put your hand in the cage,” Cindy warned.

  “She bites and scratches,” Delbert agreed, puffed up with his own wisdom.

  The bunnies truly were the most adorable creatures, mere ounces of fluff with almond-shaped eyes and velvety ears, their noses twitching.

  “Aww, they’re hardly even real. They look like stuffed animals,” Edna gushed, and was rewarded with avid agreement.

  “Dat said this one, over here, this white one?”

  “Yes?”

  “He said she’s going to have babies in a few weeks. You’ll have to come see them when they’re born. You will, right?”

  Edna nodded. “I will try!”

  But she knew she likely wouldn’t be able to since soon she’d be firmly entrenched in the Dave Chupp household, which held six boys and one girl under the age of ten. It certainly wasn’t her first time at the Chupp home, so she knew that the mother insisted on cloth diapers and Gerber plastic pull-ups, the elastic slightly acrid no matter how often they swirled around in steaming hot water with a cupful of cheap liquid detergent.

  Edna’s heart sank in spite of herself.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE SMELL OF UNWASHED CLOTHES, DIRTY DIAPER PAILS, AND SLOP buckets under the sink greeted Edna when she arrived at the Chupp home the following morning. She felt the rush of adrenaline as her eyes took in the unbelievable mountain of dirty dishes stacked any old way in the sink, all over the countertops, spilling onto the floor and scattered across the table. A very young child was crying inconsolably somewhere in the region of the bathroom, followed by gruff commands from none other than Dave Chupp himself, who made a wild-eyed appearance from the doorway.

  “Oh, it’s you. Well, praise the Lord!” he called out happily. “This mess is out of control.”

  Edna waved a hand as she set her duffel bag on a stack of newspapers.

  “It’s alright,” she trilled, a smile widening her tight features. “This is to be expected. We’ll have everything set right in a few days. No problem.”

  Dave raked a hand through his messy hair. Hasn’t showered in a while, now has he? Edna thought. But she kept her smile in place as she shook hands with the pale Emma sagging on the recliner, holding the newborn baby.

  Her dress was open, revealing a tattered slip, the baby wrapped in a blanket that must have been handed down seven times, the satin binding in loose slivers, the color somewhere between pink and green.

  Edna lifted the sleeping infant, turned him on his back, exclaimed at the thick thatch of dark brown hair, the button nose, saying he was the cutest one yet, the same thing she always said.

  She’d been here for every one. All seven of them.

  Emma smiled up at Edna. “You think so?”

  “Oh, definitely.”

  Emma fairly shone with pride. Dave emerged from the bathroom, a squalling one-year-old tucked beneath one arm, for all the world like a twenty-pound sack of sunflower seeds, crimped in the middle.

  “Sorry, Edna, there’s a messy diaper beside the commode. I don’t wash them out. I can change a baby, but that commode part, I don’t do.”

  “I’ll get it,” Edna chirped, and handed the baby back.

  She hurried to the bathroom, bent over the commode and thought, oh no. Her search for a bottle of toilet cleaner produced nothing, so she upended the green container of powdered Comet into the water, grabbed the stained toilet brush from its container in the corner, and proceeded to slosh it around as furiously as if she was killing a rodent, followed by a yank on the lever to flush. She bent to pick up the messy diaper, lifted it by two corners, and brought it up and down to rid it of its contents, flushed again, rinsed, wrung it out and looked around for a diaper pail. None at all. Only a heap of soiled diapers in the corner. Edna wished she could curl her fists and roar her frustrations, but she knew that was not what this situation required. It was their refusal to change that was the hardest to take. She could work her fingers raw, whip the place into shape, and without fail, a year or so later she’d come back, and everything would be a wreck again. If anything, this time it was even worse than before.

  She went to the built-on lean-to that served as a room for the rusting Maytag wringer washer, galvanized rinse tubs, and a green shelf (or one that had been green years ago) containing an odd assortment of mismatched Tingley rubbers, old green hunting boots, and children’s sneakers encrusted with last fall’s mud and manure. Puddles of melted snow contained flecks of straw and jagged mats of yet more manure like smashed stinkbugs. She surveyed broken plastic buckets, empty fly spray containers, bags of garden dust closed and clamped shut with wooden clothespins, trowels and graying cardboard strawberry boxes, a shoebox with black banana peels hanging over the side as if an octopus had somehow died in there. There was a torn halter hung from a broken shovel handle and various bits of blue baler twine scattered amid green tennis balls and worn-out baseball gloves.

  Edna stood, her hands on her hips, and let out a long slow expulsion of air before rocking on her heels. She wanted to bring in a contractor’s garbage bag, hang it from a doorknob, and throw everything into it, including the washing machine and wobbly rinse tubs. Then she would take a pressure washer to this disgusting lean-to and watch it turn to ice, like the neighbor Myron’s hog barn. If only she could.

  She found an unused five-gallon plastic bucket, peered inside, and recoiled. It was half full of rancid lard peppered with mouse droppings.

  Looks like cookies and cream ice cream, she thought sourly, before turning to a chipped granite dishpan containing only dust. She whacked it against the side of her leg to empty it.

  Good enough.

  She carried it to the bathroom, flung the diapers into it, and marched back out, then returned to start moving dishes out of the sink. Thank goodness for a large sink, and yes, plenty of Dawn dish detergent. She filled it, picked out all the plastic tumblers and coffee cups first, then the utensils, the dinn
er plates, various bowls and quart jars rimmed with applesauce or bits of deer meat.

  Children yelled, ran, screeched, and whined like little cars on a private interstate highway, the exhausted mother in their midst; her eyes closed, her face like a pale moon, and the baby asleep on her chest. Edna turned to start on the kitchen table, startled to find Dave Chupp stretched out on the couch, his work boots propped on a limp frayed pillow.

  Emma opened one eye and discovered Edna staring. “He’s tired,” she said apologetically. “Didn’t get much sleep.”

  Edna nodded, smiled, assured Emma she understood, though she didn’t. Was he really so tired that he couldn’t wash a few dishes? He thought he was worn out. Huh. What about Emma? Eight children in ten years.

  Outwardly, she remained the good and faithful maud, speaking only what was expected, working with flying hands, strong arms, and a kind expression she had mastered over the years. She had a highly polished veneer, beautiful to behold, but she was beginning to realize there was a knothole of bitterness underneath, weakening the structure of her life. She prayed to God on a daily basis, knowing the irritation could be mastered with His help, and yet, it always crept up.

  Did Emma know the day she was a blushing bride? Did she ever suspect her handsome groom would turn into . . . well . . . into that lump on the couch? Could anyone know, or did poverty and laziness simply creep up on a couple like the changing seasons, and suddenly they looked, and everything was rusty or loose or broken or filthy?

  Edna remembered both of them as single young people, clean, well-respected, soft-spoken. They always had a circle of friends, and they dated three years which was no longer than some other couples.