Almost Eden (4 page)

W
hen I was five years old a crusade came to Hopefield. The evangelist thundering from our church pulpit put the fear of the Lord into me. That night I knelt beside my mother and asked God to forgive my sins. I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my savior and was born again.

I don’t remember what sort of sins I’d committed when I was five. Probably I fought with Beth. Probably it wasn’t any different back when I was five than it is now.

All I remember is being terrified that I was going to burn in hell for eternity.

Anyways, that time when I was five didn’t really count, because after you repent and are saved you’re supposed to get baptized, to let other people know you’re serious about it. Beth says people can only get baptized in a Mennonite church if they’re old enough to understand what it all means, like to be a Christian and become a
church member and everything. It’s because Mennonites are Anabaptists. It’s a big deal. In the olden days, the first Anabaptists were burned at the stake and everything.

Beth took baptism classes and got baptized last year and has been a royal pain in the behind ever since. Excuse me, but it’s true. First she gave her testimony in church, all about the day Jesus saved her. Then on baptism Sunday, she stepped into the pool that was up high behind the choir pews. Usually it was hidden behind a panel of some kind. But on baptism Sundays the panel came off and there was the pool with Reverend Funk, all in white, standing in water up to his waist. The pool was really more like a big tub, but a mural on the wall behind was supposed to make it look like the reverend was standing in a river. It all looked pretty fake, if you ask me.

The baptism candidates–that’s what they’re called–they wore white robes. A floodlight shone on the pool and the congregation sang, “Shall We Gather at the River.”

Even though the mural and everything seemed fake, when everyone started singing, it was hard not to get all choked up and shivery. You really felt religious then. You almost wanted to be up there getting baptized yourself so you would maybe always have that kind of feeling.

When Beth was in the water Reverend Funk put one hand on her back. With his other hand he held her hands folded over her chest. He said, “Do you confess your sins and accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”

And Beth said “I do.”

It was like she was marrying God.

The reverend dunked her backwards into the water and pulled her up again. She climbed soaking wet out of the pool with her gown clinging to her so there wasn’t much left to the imagination, that was for sure.

“Did you get water up your nose?” I asked Beth later. I always got water up my nose when I got dunked backwards.

“Do you have to act so infantile?” she said.

I didn’t think that was such a Christian thing to say.

At the MB church they dunked you all the way under. My friend Heather told me that at the Bergthaler Mennonite church where she went, they only sprinkled water over your head. It made me wonder how they baptized people at the five other Mennonite churches in town.

We’d gone to the MB for as long as I could remember, at least Mom, Beth, Lena, and I had. We always sat in the back pew, because sometimes Dad would sneak in after the service had started already and sit with us. I liked it when Dad came to church because he gave us Life Savers when Reverend Funk got too long winded, which was pretty much every Sunday.

Besides Sunday School and church service on Sundays, I went to Pioneer Girls on Wednesday evenings and junior choir practice Friday nights. Soon I’d be old enough to start Young People’s on Sunday nights, too.

Mom told me once that we went to the MB because they had a service in English and not just German. And because Reverend Thiessen who used to be the reverend
there was the only one who would marry them after Dad joined the Air Force when Canada went to war against Hitler. See, if you belong to the Mennonite church you’re not supposed to fight or kill other people, no matter what. Mennonites are pacifists. They believe Christians are supposed to follow Christ’s example and turn the other cheek, love their enemies, and do good to those who hate them. They’re supposed to be peacemakers, not soldiers.

I’m not much of a peacemaker, but then just because our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents were Mennonites, doesn’t mean that I’m a Mennonite. No one is really a Mennonite until they are baptized. That’s
what schnoddanaze
Beth says. It doesn’t matter how much
kielke
or
plumen mouse
you eat.

“Even Mennonites can’t agree on what being a Mennonite means,” my mom says.

One of the main reasons Mennonites came to Canada was to get away from the fighting in Russia, and because in Canada they wouldn’t have to join the army. It was the same reason they’d moved to Russia in the first place, because Catherine the Great promised pretty much the same thing about a hundred years earlier yet.

Mennonites always wandered around a lot, I guess. They wanted to stay separate from the rest of the world.

Anyways, my dad says there wasn’t really any place in the world you could go to get away from war anymore.

Even right now here in Canada we’re smack in between the United States and the Soviets. Who knows when the
Cold War might warm up and one of them will launch a missile over the north pole and it could come flying over our heads or maybe go off course and
KABOOM!
That would be the end of that because a nuclear bomb incinerates everything. Most of the time I tried not to think about it but sometimes at night it was hard not to.

My dad didn’t kill anyone in the war. He joined the ground crew and learned to be a mechanic that fixed plane engines. But then he never left Canada even because he got sick with rheumatic fever and the Air Force sent him home.

The Bergthaler Mennonite Church where my dad was baptized when he was a teenager said working on the engines so the planes could go off and kill people was the same as killing people. They said he should have done alternative service, like in the forestry camps or the coal mines.

“Where is the difference?” my dad asked. Didn’t the army use coal? Didn’t soldiers keep the country safe so Mennonites could plant trees and go to church? Didn’t Mennonites all the time join up as medics who fixed up the soldiers so they could fight another day?

But the church said that if Isaak Redekop–that’s my dad–wanted to marry Esther Hiebert–that’s my mom–in their church, he would have to get up in front of the congregation and confess his sin and ask for forgiveness.

“
Vite dee
,” my dad said. Which in Plautdietsch means “know yourself,” but which really means “mind your own beeswax,” only not so polite.

So Mom and Dad got married in the MB instead. Reverend Thiessen didn’t see things the same way, I guess. Good thing there are seven Mennonite churches in Hopefield or maybe my parents wouldn’t have found one to marry them and then I wouldn’t be here.

Anyways, I’m not five anymore. I don’t think that being scared to death of hell is a good reason to believe in heaven. But even now I’ve turned twelve already, I don’t understand it all. Like why does God let people in poor countries starve or let people blow each other up in wars or make floods that drown all the crops?

Or take my mother away.

This wasn’t the first time Mom had been gone. It wasn’t the second time either. Maybe it was the third or fourth time. I don’t know for sure. I tried not to remember about those times.

How many more times was God going to take her away? Maybe I was doing something wrong. Maybe God was punishing me for my sins–for how I made a stink when Dad said the pajama party was canceled instead of right away honoring my father and mother like it says in the ten commandments.

Mom had been gone two days. So far I’d let Lena get sunburned, walked in on Beth, lied to my best friend, fought with my sisters, knocked the Reverend’s wife over, and totally humiliated my father. Probably I’d set some kind of new record. No wonder Mom had to get away from here; I wanted to get away from me, too.

For sure there were a lot of weeds growing in my garden.

A knock on the door woke me up. The light in the room told me I’d slept away the afternoon, and my stomach told me I’d missed
faspa
yet, too. Dad came in and sat on the edge of my bed.

“How would you like a job painting?” he said. Just like that. Out of the blue.

I rubbed my eyes and sat up. “Huh? Me?”

Dad looked a bit desperate. “I’ll hire you to paint the garage.”

Mornings only, he said. I’d still have to take Lena to the pool with me in the afternoons. But he’d pay me, a dollar an hour, to scrape, sand, prime, and paint the siding and trim on the garage.

Probably I looked as confused as I felt.

“Things can’t go on like this all summer or you girls will end up killing each other,” Dad said. “Or someone else.”

All summer? Did he think Mom might be away all summer?

“Actually,” he admitted, “it was Nettie’s idea. She thought you needed a project to keep you busy. There’s some chocolate cake in the kitchen that she sent home for you, too.”

Good ol’ Auntie Nettie.

I decided to take the job. It would be one way I could make it up to Mom, to surprise her when she came home. And it would show Dad
and
God that I was really trying to be a good daughter and a good Christian. Plus I could use the money to buy myself a new bike and I’d get a really great tan and Beth wouldn’t be able to tell me what to do because I’d be the boss.

I also decided to pray to God for twenty-one days, like Daniel. Then maybe I’d understand Him better. It wouldn’t be hard to stay away from wine, since I didn’t drink it anyways. If Beth’s cooking didn’t improve, giving up meat wouldn’t be a great hardship either. Not eating any bread might be a problem, but I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

Twenty-one days was three weeks. Lots of time for God to make my mother well again. Summer holidays would be more than half over already.

I wondered if I would have a vision.