by Linda Byler
They played tic-tac-toe on an old composition book and told some more stories. Lizzie told Debbie about the time Emma was riding Dolly and her hair caught in a tree branch, dragging her from the pony, where she hung until her hair ripped out.
Debbie didn’t believe it. She said Lizzie was telling her a “fib,” and Lizzie didn’t know what a fib was, but was afraid to tell Debbie, because she would think she was stupid. So she just said she was not telling a fib. Before she fell asleep, she wondered if a fib was a lie.
During the night, Lizzie opened one eye and checked the alarm clock beside the air mattress. Twelve o’clock. Everything was so quiet, you couldn’t hear any creaks, or breezes, or cars on the highway. That was because they were in a hay house inside a barn. It was a good feeling, all cozy and quiet, so Lizzie drifted off to sleep again.
Quite unexpectedly, she was jerked awake by Mandy sitting up and coughing terribly. Lizzie took a deep breath in alarm, and her throat felt like sandpaper. She tried to take another breath, but could do nothing but cough. She rolled off the air mattress and lay on her side, rasping and coughing. Debbie sat up, looking bewildered, rubbing a hand across her eyes, before she started sneezing uncontrollably, then she burst into terrified sobs.
“I feel horrible,” she choked.
“I can’t breathe,” Mandy whispered, her voice rising to a panic.
Lizzie was terrified. She had never felt so close to panic in her whole life. The air in the little house was so stifling, it felt as if someone was sitting on her chest. She rolled over and struggled to gain composure.
“We have to get out of here!” she said.
“Well, what is it? What’s wrong?” Debbie squeaked, her eyes shining white in the semi-darkness.
“I don’t know. I . . . I guess it’s the hay,” Lizzie said, then she started another coughing fit.
Debbie cried. Mandy sneezed and their pitcher of grape Kool-Aid dumped over. Pieces of hay swam in the sticky mess and the edge of the quilt was thrown across it and slowly turned lavender as it absorbed the sticky juice. The whole adventure had turned into a terrible nightmare, as they struggled to keep from coughing.
“I . . . I can’t make it!” Debbie gasped.
“The dust is so thick!” Mandy cried.
“Can we make it out through the tunnel?” Lizzie asked.
“No,” Debbie said weakly. “I feel like throwing up.”
Lizzie was stung into action, thinking about Debbie fainting or throwing up on the quilts. They already had a big mess with the spilled grape drink. She got up and tried to push a hay bale away so they could climb through, but was overtaken by a fit of coughing. She gasped, weakly trying to regain her breath.
It felt as if there was dust in her nose, mouth, and ears. Every time she took a small breath, it hurt her throat and chest. She must do something and do it soon. But if she pushed out one bale, what would keep the roof from collapsing? She would have to try. Carefully, clutching her flashlight, she shone its beam up and down the walls. If she could find a bale that didn’t have too much weight from the other bales, she could try and push it out.
Choosing one she thought would work, she shoved with all her strength. Nothing happened. Debbie and Mandy started coughing, ending in weak little gasps. Lizzie kicked against it with all her might. The bale stayed where it was.
“We have to crawl out, Debbie,” she said firmly.
“I ca-an’t,” Debbie wailed.
That left only one thing. Lizzie looked up, the beam of the flashlight playing across the roof of the hay house. She found a bale on the farthest corner, against the roof, and pushed against it with her waning strength. She kept pushing, grunting, and coughing, until it tumbled free, falling to the barn floor outside. A section of the roof caved in, loose hay and boards, creating twice as much dust. Lizzie sneezed and shook her head to clear it, then ran against another bale, pushing it to the barn floor. A large section of the roof collapsed, covering their table and all the leftover food with a thick layer of hay and boards.
Debbie screamed; Mandy cried out in alarm.
Lizzie kicked out another bale, and she could see the outline of the open barn door and the wonderful night sky, stars shimmering in the distance.
“Come on. Hurry up! Give me your hand!” Lizzie commanded. They scrambled to the opening, falling over boards, hay, and the table, and stepping into sticky grape drink. They piled out on the hard barn floor, still coughing, gasping great breaths of the cool night air.
“That was not one bit funny!” Mandy said softly, between gasps of air.
“What happened?” Debbie asked.
“I suppose it was too dusty,” Lizzie said.
They crept quietly down the barn stairs, creeping slowly into the kitchen. They tried to not wake Mam and Dat, because they didn’t get enough sleep with the twins. They turned the faucet at the sink open only halfway and drank glass after glass of cool water. It felt so good on their raw throats.
Quietly they tiptoed to Mandy’s room, tumbled into the bed sideways because there were three of them, and fell asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillow. All except Lizzie. She folded her hands across her chest and whispered a prayer: “Denky, Gute Mann,” meaning a simple thank you to the Good Man, which was a Dutch way of expressing God to little children. The Good Man had surely watched over them, because they could have suffocated.
In the morning, Dat explained to them about the lack of oxygen. That was what caused them to wake up, when the oxygen level became too low. Mam shook her head worriedly, saying that was the end of sleeping in the haymow. Debbie giggled when Lizzie said Dolly would have a treat in the coming winter: grape Kool-Aid hay with vanilla icing.
chapter 12
Building the House
The sawmill and pallet shop at the foot of the ridge hummed long hours, producing load after load of pallets. Dat said he was not used to making so much money—it worried him, kind of. Mam laughed happily, saying it was time to start building the house, because the twins were outgrowing their crib, and they certainly did not have room for another.
So they sat together, evening after evening, their heads bent over plans for their house. It would be built on top of the flat basement roof, with a porch out the front on top of the basement porch. They would need only a story and a half, meaning there would not be an upstairs with an attic. Only an upstairs with two dormers built out from the roof, allowing four upstairs bedrooms under the roof. The space between the rooms and the roof would be well insulated, too, being used as a cubbyhole space to store attic things.
The large kitchen along the side of the house toward the barn, and the living room along the front, in a big L shape, was the plan they finally agreed on. There was one small bedroom for the twins, and a large one for Mam and Dat. They would keep the washing machine in the basement, and would have two full bathrooms then, one downstairs and one upstairs. It would be a nice house, Lizzie was sure of that, because Dat was a good builder.
One day a huge orange lumber truck chugged its way up the drive to Lizzie’s house. They unloaded lots of lumber, some wide boards and some narrow ones. Before the day was over, Uncle Eli and his boys and Dat and some of his workers from the pallet shop were sawing and pounding nails.
Mam’s cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were sparkling with excitement. Emma was squeezing lemons on the lemon juicer while Mam took tray after tray of peanut butter cookies from the oven. The men would need refreshments, she told Lizzie, hurrying between oven and table.
Just as the sun was sliding below the mountain, the men put away their toolboxes and sat on the soft grass, pushing back their sweat-stained straw hats.
“Well, Melvin, looks like you got the hotel started,” laughed Uncle Eli.
“Oh, now, you know I’m not building a hotel,” Dat said, shaking his head, clearly flustered.
“Of course not,” Uncle Eli said. “You just need plenty of room for your second pair of twins.”
Everyone laughed, a
nd Dat looked a bit more flustered, then he laughed along with everyone else.
Mam called from the house and the men sat on lawn chairs on the porch after they had washed up in the laundry room. Mam served filled paper plates with large homemade rolls filled with tangy beef barbecue, ice-cold fresh-squeezed lemonade, potato chips, and peanut butter cookies. The men ate hungrily because it was so late.
Lizzie leaned against the block wall of the basement porch and watched the men eating. She had never seen any person take bites as huge as one of the pallet shop workers. She did not know his name, so she wondered vaguely if he was a giant. His hands were bigger than the paper plate he was holding, and his beef barbecue sandwich was gone in three bites. Three! Lizzie was fascinated. She wondered how many more sandwiches he would eat, watching carefully as he got up, helping himself to two more at one time.
Mam couldn’t afford to feed too many like him, Lizzie decided. They would spend all the money for the house on food if they didn’t watch it. She kept staring at the large man wolfing down his sandwiches until she felt an elbow jabbing her ribs. She turned to see Mandy watching her worriedly, motioning to her to come along.
Lizzie turned and followed her.
“Lizzie, you have to stop staring at that man,” Mandy whispered.
“Why?”
“Because.”
“Well, Mandy, I’ve never seen anyone eat so much.”
“He can’t help it.”
“Did you see him eat his first sandwich? Three bites! Three!” Lizzie hissed.
“You have to stop staring at him,” Mandy said.
“I can hardly help it.”
They wandered back to the porch, listening to the men’s conversation. Lizzie cast sidelong glances as the large man selected and downed five peanut butter cookies, with glass after glass of lemonade.
School had started, so Dat was under a lot of pressure to have the house “under roof,” as he said, before the snow flew. The girls went off to school every morning, while Mam cared for the twins and cooked meals for the men who helped Dat build the house. Emma was clearly under plenty of stress, too, coming home to a sink filled with dirty dishes, and the house strewn with toys, baby bottles, diapers, and loads of unfolded laundry on the kitchen table.
One evening, after Mam had a tableful of men to cook for, the house was such a mess that Emma burst into tears of frustration. She threw her lunchbox on the table, ran into her bedroom, threw herself on her bed, and cried.
Lizzie looked up from her after-school snack of cold leftover meat loaf with ketchup, chewing methodically.
“What’s wrong with Emma?” she asked.
“Close your mouth when it’s full of meat loaf, Lizzie. She’s just upset because everything is such a big mess. It’s no wonder. If you and Mandy would help more around the house, she wouldn’t feel quite so responsible. All you do when you come home from school is eat and read the comics in the paper. You’re lazy, Lizzie. You’re actually getting quite overweight and you are lazy.” Mam’s voice was red with frustration and anger, as her voice became louder.
The meat loaf that had been so delicious a moment earlier turned to sawdust and stuck in her throat. Lizzie was shocked. She felt hot all over, her face burning with humiliation.
“I don’t mean to be rude, Lizzie. I know I’m losing my temper. But you need to shape up, helping Emma and me more over this time. We’re building a house and this house is for you, too, so your duty is to help along with everyone else.”
Lizzie did not say one word. She couldn’t. She supposed what Mam had told her was true. She was fat and lazy. The truth hurt so badly, Lizzie felt like crawling under her bed and never coming out again. She would stay under her bed until she died and turned into one big dust ball; they would never know what had happened to her.
Well, she could change, she supposed. But first she could resent Mam for a while. She wasn’t going to eat or talk for a very long time. So long, in fact, that everyone became so worried they would crowd around her with ice cream and whoopie pies, begging her to eat. They would take her to a doctor and he would prescribe all kinds of good food.
She blinked her eyes rapidly to hold back hot, angry tears of shame and resentment. She got up, stalked into the bedroom where Emma still lay across the bed, yanked open her drawer, and got out a clean apron. She tossed her school apron aside, tied on an everyday one, and stalked back to the kitchen.
She started throwing dirty dishes out of the sink, slamming plates on the countertop as hard as she could. She would show Mam and Emma who could get work done around here. She held the bottle of dish detergent upside down and squeezed, producing mountains of white, frothy bubbles. The rinse water was foamy with soap when Mam came to the kitchen to heat water for formula.
“Lizzie, how many times do I have to tell you? Don’t use so much dish detergent!” she said.
Lizzie didn’t answer. She turned away from Mam, blindly looking for more utensils. Just go away, she thought. Go away and leave me alone.
“Lizzie?”
She didn’t answer. The twins were both crying so Mam knew there was no use trying now. Lizzie would just have to pout.
And pout she did. The only thing that took her mind off pitying herself was the pounding and sawing overhead. Their house was fast becoming a real house, yellow lumber being raised in walls, rising up from the roof of the basement home.
She finished drying every dish, slamming them into the cupboards, and wiping the countertop spotlessly.
Emma was folding laundry, her eyes red-rimmed from crying. Lizzie grabbed the broom and started sweeping long, furious strokes across the glossy hardwood floor of the living room. Jason’s farm animals were all strewn across the floor, mixed with sections of plastic fences. Lizzie just kept sweeping, pushing all his toys along into a big pile, catching stray diapers, bottle caps, dust, and wood chips. After she had everything in a huge pile, she started sifting through it, separating toys and dirt.
Emma kept folding laundry, casting furtive glances in Lizzie’s direction. Mam was in the bedroom, settling the twins for a much-needed nap, so Emma was watching, hoping Mam would not see what Lizzie was doing.
Lizzie was picking out the farm animals and throwing them in a container, dirt and all. After that, she got the dustpan, scooping up bottle caps, diapers, and all, dumping them into the wastebasket.
“Lizzie, you can’t throw diapers away!” Emma said, not being able to be quiet one moment longer.
Without a word, Lizzie fished around in the wastebasket, producing two diapers. She threw them on the clean laundry pile.
“Lizzie!” Emma grabbed them, flinging them toward Lizzie. She grabbed them and, without saying a word, marched into the bathroom and flung them into the clothes hamper.
Suddenly there was a horrible sound from the rooftop. It was like a shout, but it was mixed with a wailing sound. The thing that struck terror in Lizzie’s heart was the fact that it sounded like Dat.
Lizzie’s eyes opened wide and she stared at Emma. Emma stared back at Lizzie, then they dropped what they were holding and dashed to the doorway.
Lizzie’s heart was in her throat as they raced around the incline to the back of the house. There they found Dat kneeling beside the limp form of Jason, his face a reflection of shock and disbelief.
Emma reached them first, and she extended both arms to Dat, trying to take Jason from him. “What happened?”
Dat lifted tear-filled eyes, his mouth working to control his emotions. Uncle Eli and the boys crowded around, trying to see what had caused Dat to cry out like that.
“He fell. He fell backward, tripping over a two by four and fell. Straight down on his head,” Dat moaned.
Jason did not cry. He just lay in Dat’s arms, his face white and pallid, sweat oozing from his upper lip. Dat bent his face low, murmuring, calling his name, rubbing a hand across his cheek, trying in vain to rouse him.
“Should we call an ambulance?” Uncle Eli asked, trying to be
calm.
“I don’t know. Lizzie, get Mam.”
Lizzie threw a terrified glance at Jason’s still form, then she raced back to the house, bursting through the kitchen door, yelling for Mam.
Mam dropped to her knees beside Dat after she hurried out of the house behind Lizzie. She stroked Jason’s cheek, but let Dat hold him, asking questions rapidly. Yes, definitely, they must see a doctor immediately if he was not responding. She hurried to get cool water and a soft cloth, which she laid on his forehead.
Jason’s curly hair was soon wet from the cloth and his perspiration. His long lashes lay on his pale cheeks, his chest rising and falling. His pulse was good at the wrist, but he would not wake up.
Lizzie chewed her lip and wrung her hands. Now Jason was going to die; she just knew he was. Probably he would. Oh, horrible thought. She was sorry for everything she ever did wrong—thinking he was ugly when he was a baby, teasing him—and endless thoughts of bitter remorse flooded her head. How many times had she made Mandy take him to the bathroom when she was too lazy? Mam was so right. She was fat and lazy, just a miserable selfish person.
Just when Lizzie thought she could no longer endure the suspense of not knowing whether Jason would live or die, or if it was her fault, he jerked all over, quite violently. Lizzie muffled a scream, and Emma wrapped her arms tightly around her waist, questioning Mam with her eyes.
Mam’s cry was involuntary, as she reached for her son, gathering him close in loving arms. Tears ran freely down her cheeks, as Jason clung to her neck, crying great, rasping sobs.
Ivan and Ray turned away, because they were too big to cry, but Uncle Eli and Dat cried with Mam and Jason. Emma bent to touch his curly head, but she drew back in alarm. “Mam!” she gasped.
They all looked, shocked to see a huge purple, black, and blue lump swelling from the side of his head. Lizzie had never seen anything like it. The bruise was so big, Dat said he must definitely see a doctor, but Mam told him if a bruise or lump is on the outside, they should be fine. She would watch him and if he became nauseated and threw up she would take him to see a doctor.
