Running Around (and Such) (12 page)

“So … the cow reached back and tugged at your
shtrubbles
with her tongue, thinking it was hay, right?” he asked.

Mandy squealed, holding her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide. Jason guffawed loudly. Mam threw back her head and laughed with Dat.

“Ewww!” Emma said. But she started laughing with everyone else.

The whole table was in such an uproar, Lizzie started laughing as well, because there was nothing to do if everyone else thought it was so funny.

“That will teach you to comb your hair before you go out in the morning!” Dat sputtered, wiping his eyes.

“Oh, my, Lizzie!” Mam gasped.

“Your hair does look a lot like hay!” Jason said. “It always does.”

The morning sun shone through the kitchen windows, casting a soft, yellow glow into the kitchen. Lizzie smiled. Everyone thought she was hilarious, and she felt the glow from Dat’s eyes. She was so thankful for Mam’s health, for Dat’s laughter, for this old house which they were continuing to clean up, for Mandy, for dear, proper Emma, and for Jason’s curls.

She smiled straight into Jason’s eyes and said, “Just be glad my hair doesn’t look like yours. Then the cow would probably have eaten my whole head!”

Jason punched Lizzie’s arm as Mandy slapped the table and laughed again.

“Alright,” Dat said. “Enough now.”

Dat was like that, Lizzie thought happily. He was so full of fun and jokes, and then he would remember that he shouldn’t be too silly and he would say something serious. But family was such a grand thing, Lizzie thought. Cows and old farmhouse or not, having family around her was one thing that was utterly safe and dependable. Together, she believed they could conquer any troubles they would meet.

Even if life handed them disappointments, like Mam’s pneumonia and moving here to the old farm, their loyalty to each other would see them through. Mam would correct her if she said that, insisting that God would stand beside them, which Lizzie knew was true. But the thing was, God seemed so undependable to her. Family you could see and actually touch. God was so far away. He just seemed a bit harder to figure out.

E
MMA WAS THE FIRST
one to go away to work as a
maud
and stay all week. The man who came to the door looked a bit weary and very anxious to have one of the girls come to help his wife with a new baby and all that goes with it. The family had also just started milking cows, so the man would need help with the milking in the morning and evening, too.

Lizzie held her breath, desperately hoping that Emma would offer to go, and, of course, she did. Emma sat at the table crocheting a blue and white afghan, the crochet hook flashing in the gas lamplight. She looked perfectly calm and poised, her cheeks flushed to a delicate shade of pink.

She looked up and smiled. “Yes, I can come. Monday morning will be fine.”

Lizzie actually felt her chest deflating as she let out a whoosh of air. Bless Emma’s heart. Lizzie felt like jumping up and down with relief, but she stood quietly beside the refrigerator, chewing her thumbnail to the quick.

How did Emma do it? How did she manage to always do what Mam wanted? It had been that way forever, it seemed to Lizzie. It happened even on days when they were little and some celebrating seemed in order—like the first day of summer after school was out for the year. Early one spring morning, Emma had come running down the stairs, shouting for Lizzie. Sure enough, she had something bossy to say. Emma told Lizzie loudly that as soon as Mam was done washing, they had to help mow the yard, trim around the existing flower beds, and make new ones.

Lizzie hadn’t felt like working in the yard that day any more then than she did now. Emma just upset her, always spoiling a perfect day, telling her what she had to do. So she didn’t turn around. She acted as if she hadn’t heard Emma and kept her back turned.

“Lizzie!” Emma voice rose. Lizzie could tell she was angry at her. Good for her. Emma could go mow the yard with Mam and she’d stay in the barn with Dat and the horses.

“Lizzie!” Emma yelled louder.

Dat stopped combing Dolly’s mane. He did not look very happy as he spun Lizzie around. “Lizzie, answer your sister when she calls you,” he said.

Lizzie looked at the floor, pushing a piece of black leather with one toe as Emma stomped into the barn.

“Dat, you have to make Lizzie listen to me. She’s just mad because she has to work. I already swept the floor for Mam and she didn’t do a thing,” Emma said.

“Lizzie, now go on, and don’t be so stubborn,” Dat said, giving her a shove. He looked frustrated as he turned back to brush Dolly.

“I don’t want to, and I’m not …” Lizzie retorted.

Dat turned very suddenly and loomed over Lizzie. “Don’t say it, Lizzie, or I’m going to have to find my paddle. You go right now and be nice. I’m busy here, and Mam needs you to help her. Now go.”

Lizzie had burst into howls of rage and disappointment. First of all, Emma was bossy, and now Dat was on Emma’s side and was being so unkind. She wailed her way out the door and plopped down hard on the porch step, refusing to budge while she cried loud howls of self-pity.

“Lizzie, if you don’t shut up right this minute—oh!” Emma stood by helplessly. When she simply couldn’t take Lizzie’s crying one more second, she stomped off to the little shed and found the push mower.

Lizzie stopped crying as she watched Emma mow. It looked like fun, and it made the lawn look nice and even in size and color. She sniffed and wiped her eyes and watched Emma some more.  

Lizzie wished she were back in school. School was much more fun than this. Emma would boss her around all summer. Mandy was too little to be much fun, but Lizzie guessed if Emma was going to be so grown-up all the time, sweeping floors and mowing yard, Mandy would have to be her playmate. Even Dat was unkind to her today.

Tears welled up in her eyes, because it all hurt dreadfully. She turned away so Emma couldn’t see and ran to the tool shed. She found Mam’s trimming shears and hurried over to the flower bed farthest away from Emma.

She clipped halfheartedly at the edge of the flower bed. A fat brown earthworm wriggled in the grass, and Lizzie clipped him in two pieces. It served the slimy old worm right—he had no business crawling over the grass where she was supposed to trim.

Mam came over and sat down beside Lizzie. The two parts of the earthworm were wriggling furiously, and Mam could see Lizzie’s swollen eyes and tear-stained face.

“What’s wrong with the worm, Lizzie?” she asked.

“I cut him in half.”

“On purpose?” Mam asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Lizzie, why were you crying?” she asked.

“Mam, I– I—” and Lizzie burst into a fresh wave of weeping. “It’s always the same. Emma is so good and I am so bad. She always makes me do things I don’t want to do, because she likes to sweep and do things like that. And she makes me so mad I could … I could kick her. And you like her a lot better than you like me. Dat does, too.”

Years later, Lizzie sometimes still fought back those feelings of being second best. That evening after the man came looking for a
maud
, Lizzie slipped over to Emma’s room and sat down beside her on her bed. She cleared her throat nervously before she said, “Emma?”

Emma looked up from the Bible she was reading and asked serenely, “Hmm?”

“Emma, don’t you…? I mean, don’t you mind going so far away to those strange people and staying for an entire week?” Lizzie’s voice rose to a hysterical yelp.

“I don’t know. I’m not exactly looking forward to it, but I feel like it’s my duty to go if Mam and Dat think I should.”

She closed her Bible and put it carefully in her nightstand drawer, taking out her diary and pen.

Lizzie couldn’t believe it. How could she? How could she be so deep-down and honest-to-goodness obedient to Mam’s wishes?

“Emma, aren’t you one bit angry?” Lizzie asked, watching as Emma opened her diary.

Emma thought, chewing on the tip of her pen.

“No, I guess not. I mean, what good would it do? I have to go and, like Mam said, it will be a good experience, learning to work for other people.”

Lizzie took a deep breath, leaned back, and gazed at the ceiling.

“Well, I’m not ever going to do it.”

Emma glanced at her sharply. “You shouldn’t say that.”

“Well, I just did say it. I’m not going to stay for a week, ever. I couldn’t take it. Emma, ewww! Are you actually going to get up in the morning and milk? I guarantee you have to get up at 4:30, if not earlier.”

Emma didn’t answer. She was writing in her neat, slanted handwriting. “Can I read your diary?” Lizzie asked, leaning over to see what she had written.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

Lizzie yawned sleepily, got up, stretched, and said, “Okay. G’night, Emma.”

“G’night. Don’t worry too much about being a
maud
. You’ll be all right when the time comes for you to go.”

That was nice of Emma to place so much trust in me, Lizzie thought as she walked down the darkened hall to her room. But she need not worry, because I’m not going. Mam and Dat can’t make me.

She guessed she would have to start saying an extra prayer in the evening. Maybe that was why so many scary things happened to Lizzie, because Emma knelt beside her bed faithfully to say her little German prayer, and Lizzie hopped into bed and said it under the warm quilts. And often Lizzie didn’t really say her prayers right. She felt silly, or sometimes she felt like God didn’t hear her say them. How could he hear it if she just thought her prayer? And yet she felt silly to say it out loud.

When they were small and Mam helped them say their prayers, she didn’t feel silly. Praying had felt just right, because God heard Mam—Lizzie was positive of that. He heard Emma, too, because Emma was a good girl. She was always straightening up the living room or sweeping the kitchen floor, and she loved to wash dishes. Lizzie just didn’t feel comfortable with God yet.

The next day, an ordinary-looking postcard arrived in the mail. Mam read the card out loud from her place at the kitchen table. The card came from a Mrs. Mary Beiler whose town Lizzie didn’t even recognize. Lizzie sat on the bench along the wall, eating a piece of apple crumb pie with milk before she went to feed the horses and help with the milking. She was perfectly relaxed since she had resolved not to go work as a
maud
.

“So… Mrs. Beiler needs you to help with the fall housecleaning. They just moved, and the house is small, but in need of a good cleaning,” Mam said, smiling at Lizzie.

Lizzie blinked, chewing methodically. “Mmm. Mam, this apple pie is the best thing you ever made.”

“Didn’t you hear me?” Mam asked.

“What?”

“It’s your turn to be a real
maud
now.”

“That’s no problem, Mam. I’m not going.”

Mam’s mouth dropped open in surprise. What blatant form of rebellion was this? Her cheeks flushed, but she spoke quietly and patiently.

“Why aren’t you going?”

“I just decided when Emma went for a week that I could never do that. She’s so good, Mam. You know how it is with her. Same as it always was. So I made up my mind that she can be a
maud
, and I’ll stay here with you.”

Lizzie set down her glass of milk, wiped her mouth with a napkin, and got up to go do chores.

Mam cleared her throat.

“But, Lizzie, both you and Emma can be
mauds
. Mandy can help me here at home. It would certainly not be fair to make Emma work away while you do as you please.”

“I don’t do as I please. I work at home.” Lizzie pulled on her old sweater, preparing to go to the barn. She lifted her nose a few inches as if to remind Mam how pitiful she was, thinking that she would ever work away from home for an entire week.

The screen door was as far as she got.

“Lizzie Glick!” Mam said in a tone of voice that stopped Lizzie in her tracks. Just as luck would have it, Dat stepped up onto the porch at the exact same moment.

“Now what?” he asked, glancing at Lizzie and noticing Mam’s heightened color as well.

Lizzie stood stone-still, her shoulders erect, staring out across the brown fields that led to the creek. Mam explained about the postcard from Mrs. Beiler, and Lizzie’s arrogant assumption that Emma was the only one who would ever be a
maud
.

Dat sat down.

“Lizzie,” he said in a terrible voice.

She tasted defeat, a sickeningly sour, green-apple flavor that would not go away. They were actually going to make her go. Not just Mam, but Dat, too. Dat! Now he was on Mam’s side, and those two sticking together meant she had no more of a chance than a chicken feather in a hurricane.

“Let me tell you something, young lady. If you think you’re going to tell us what to do, you have another guess coming.”

Lizzie whirled around, the sour-tasting defeat bringing tears in its wake.

“I don’t want to go!” she cried.

“But you’re going,” Dat said softening his tone.

“Listen, Lizzie,” Mam broke in. “I know it seems cruel to you now, but you have to learn to have a job anyway, from now until you get married. That’s what Amish girls do. You may as well give in now, because you’re just making it hard on yourself and on us.”