Running Around (and Such) (13 page)

“Emma’s different than me!” Lizzie wailed, sinking onto the wooden bench, putting her head in her hands.

“That’s just an excuse, Lizzie. You can try and grow up and become a bit more like her. I know there’s a difference in your natures, but you can’t use that as a stepping-stone to just skip out of any situation you don’t want to be in,” Dat said.

“I don’t want to wash other people’s dirty laundry and wipe their walls and eat with them and sleep in their beds!”

Mam hid her smile but winked at Dat.

“It’s not as bad as you think, Lizzie,” she said.

Dat’s eyes shone, and he smiled at Mam. “Oh yes, I remember you hanging out wash at Aaron Kanagys. I thought you were the prettiest
maud
I ever saw!”

“Ach, Melvin!” Mam smacked his arm playfully.

That made Lizzie so mad, she literally saw red. How could they be so happy and tease each other when they should pity her? She got up, hurrying around the table in a desperate dash to the stairs, but her sweater button caught on a kitchen chair. She stopped to loosen it, and Dat caught her eye.

“So Mam will write Mrs. Beiler and tell her you’ll be ready Monday morning?”

“Well,
I’m
not going to write,” Lizzie snapped, turning on her heel and stomping up the steps as loudly as possible.

“Let her go,” she heard Dat say, followed by a soft murmur from Mam. She paused at the top of the stairs as Dat said, “She’ll get over it.”

Lizzie flung herself on her bed. Dat and Mam were cruel. They were mean. She wasn’t going to go.

E
MMA CAME HOME ON
Saturday, telling all kinds of stories about her week, happier than Lizzie had ever seen her. She hugged the twins and fussed over Jason, telling Mam and Dat how good it was to come home. Lizzie began to suspect that working away couldn’t be that bad, or Emma would not be so happy.

So when the driver stopped at the end of the sidewalk on Monday morning, Lizzie grabbed her suitcase and said good-bye to everyone without a trace of anger.

Still, when the driver pulled up to a small white house on the left side of the road, with a huge red barn on the right side and maple trees in the front lawn, Lizzie nearly fainted with nervousness. One of the upstairs windows was flung open, and a slender young housewife looked down at her.

“Well, good morning! You aren’t looking for work, are you?” Mary Beiler laughed.

Lizzie looked up and smiled back. She’s pretty and neat and so much younger than I thought she’d be, Lizzie thought.

After Mary paid the driver, Lizzie followed her into the kitchen where they sat at the table and talked awhile. She introduced her two young children, a dark-haired, brown-eyed boy named Abner and a sweet little girl named Rhoda.

Lizzie could hardly keep from staring at Rhoda’s tiny pink dress. It was the cutest thing she had ever seen. She would make a dress exactly like that for her own little girl one day, she decided.

That afternoon, Lizzie was introduced to the world of Mrs. Mary Beiler’s housecleaning expectations. Mary was extremely thorough, much more so than Mam or even Emma. Together they washed walls that were already clean, scrubbed drawers that were already spotless, and washed windows and screens that may have been only a bit dusty. Lizzie learned to use one kind of soap for the furniture and the woodwork, another kind for the walls, and yet another mixture for the linoleum on the floor.

Every quilt, sheet, doily, and rug was whisked off to the kettle house and washed in the wringer washer. Lizzie didn’t mind doing the wash if it just meant running it from the wash tub, through the wringer, into the rinse tub, and through the wringer again. But more than that was plainly unnecessary, she thought, though Mam didn’t agree. Earlier that week, Mam had frowned when she saw how Lizzie had washed Dat’s socks.

“Lizzie, you didn’t soak those socks in Clorox water, did you?” she asked.

For one wild moment, Lizzie had a notion to lie and to just say, “Yes.” She knew she was supposed to, but she detested the smell of Clorox, and besides, Mam would never know. How could she tell?

“No,” Lizzie said.

“You know I don’t like yellow socks on the line, Lizzie. Next time you wash, remember to use Clorox.”

Lizzie didn’t answer. She was too angry. What was the difference? A man’s socks were hidden the whole way under his shoes, which came clear up to above his ankles anyway. And his pant legs covered his shoes. Lizzie never saw one peep of Dat’s white socks, unless he was ready to take his bath or had just gotten up in the morning. Lizzie never, or hardly ever, saw Dat’s socks, so she was positive no one else did. What did it matter if they were soaked in Clorox or not? It was just a bad habit, soaking socks in that awful-smelling stuff.

“Once I’m married, no one is going to tell me to soak my husband’s socks. If they aren’t white, he will just have to wear them that way.”

She had thrown the socks in the washer.

“And another thing, our farm is so old and ugly and sloppy, brown socks on the line would match it just fine,” she said, her head held high.

Mam sighed.

“Lizzie, you’re going to have to learn,” she said. Your attitude is not good, especially about the farm. We’ll get this place looking just fine in a few years, you watch.”

“And in the meantime, we’ll be ashamed every time someone comes to visit,” Lizzie burst out.

“Lizzie!” Mrs. Beiler called.

Lizzie jumped.

“What?”

“Do they always call you Lizzie? Doesn’t anyone call you ‘Liz’ or ‘Elizabeth?’”

“No.”

“Well, you should be called Elizabeth. It’s prettier.

“Come on down now. Dinner’s ready.”

Lizzie was sincerely thankful that it was 12 o’clock and time for lunch. She was almost weak with hunger, since she had been too nervous to eat much breakfast that morning. As she went down the stairs, the delicious smells from the kitchen made her mouth water. Mary Beiler must be a good cook, she thought happily.

“You can wash the children’s hands in the bathroom,” Mary said. “Abner, go with Liz. She’ll wash your ‘patties!’”

Liz! Didn’t that sound classy! Imagine how nice it would be if everyone called her Liz! That would make it seem as if she was already 16 years old.

She turned to Abner, smiling into his dark brown eyes.

“Do you want me to wash your hands?”

Abner placed his hand in hers, melting her heart with his liquid dark eyes.

“Are you our
maud
?” he asked in his slow, proper speech.

“Yes, I am this week.”

“Are you going to sleep here?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Good,” he drawled, which warmed Lizzie all over again. She hoped with all her heart she could have a little boy that looked and talked like Abner some day.

Lizzie had just sat down at the table when Mary’s husband, Jacob, walked into the kitchen. He was big and broad-shouldered with dark curly hair and a slow smile. A tall young man followed him into the kitchen, wearing a short-sleeved white shirt, his face tanned from the sun. Lizzie had never seen anyone whose hair was cut like this young man’s. Maybe it was a style she hadn’t seen yet because she wasn’t running around with the young people.

When he took his place at the end of the table, Lizzie tried not to stare. Yet she had to look sometimes because he was the most handsome person she had ever seen.

“Jacob, this is Lizzie Glick, our new
maud
. Daniel, Lizzie will be here this week,” Mary said.

“Hello. So you come from way up at the other end of the county?” Jacob asked.

“I guess,” Lizzie managed to croak.

She glanced furtively at Daniel, but he was looking at his plate. He didn’t say anything at all, which Lizzie couldn’t understand, because surely he would not be embarrassed in front of her. She was only plain Lizzie, with brown hair and clothes that didn’t look half as neat as other people’s.

“Daniel is my brother,” Mary smiled. “He’s not quiet usually.”

“The cat got his tongue,” Jacob teased, and Daniel smiled back.

After they had bowed their heads in silent prayer, they passed dishes of hot, steaming food—fluffy mashed potatoes, thick beef gravy, and succulent young peas in a cream sauce. Applesauce and small red peppers stuffed with cabbage, crisp green pickles, and lots of bread, butter, and jelly completed the meal.

Lizzie tried desperately not to eat too much. She loved Mam’s food, but there was also something deliriously wonderful about eating in other people’s homes. But today Lizzie didn’t eat as much as she would have liked to, mostly because Daniel was sitting so close to her. He was very good-looking, Lizzie decided. She would never, ever have a chance of having him as a boyfriend, and for sure not as a husband. If neither Joe nor John was interested in her, than Daniel wouldn’t be either.

She wondered if he had a girlfriend at home. Probably. She would ask Mary if she had enough nerve.

“Does your dad milk cows on your farm?” Jacob asked. Startled, Lizzie dropped her spoon.

“He does now, yes, but I don’t know how long yet. They just die.”

The men laughed loudly. Oh, dear. Her cheeks felt hot and she blinked self-consciously. Why did she say that? They didn’t have to know about their old run-down farm and the fact that so far Dat was not very successful with the cows.

“Why are they dying?” Jacob asked, chuckling.

“I don’t know. The vet comes out quite often.”

Mary clucked sympathetically. “That can be hard on a pocketbook,” she said.

Lizzie had long wondered if Dat knew enough to be a good farmer. When Mandy was little, Dat was a harness-maker. When that business didn’t grow fast enough, he started building pallets. So what did he really know about how to run a dairy—with all its expensive equipment, plus animals. What if the crops didn’t grow? What if the cows didn’t make it?

Lizzie had always been a worrier, all the way back to when she was five and got Snowball the cat and was afraid she’d wander out onto the road and get killed. Lizzie would get up during the night to check that the kitten was still breathing. Now that Lizzie was bigger, she was worrying about bigger things.

Dat had bought their whole herd of 30 Holstein dairy cows from a dealer in Ohio, and they were trying to make a living by milking cows. It still seemed like a risky enterprise, one that often bothered Lizzie as she went about her work. Cows were living creatures who died or got sick, so it all seemed quite unpredictable. She had a hunch that Dat was not thinking carefully enough. He seemed quite positive that the milk would just keep flowing freely and the big stainless steel bulk tank in the milk house would be filled to capacity every time the milk truck rolled in the driveway.

It was the same way with planting corn and making hay. What if it didn’t rain? Sometimes it didn’t. Or what if it rained when they needed dry weather to cure the hay?

Lizzie took another bite of bread. It was Dat’s responsibility, not hers. Everything would be just fine. If only Dat had more experience.

Emma had often told Lizzie that if she prayed more, God could help her not worry so much. Lizzie wasn’t too sure he cared enough to quiet her fears. God wasn’t as real to her as he was to Emma.

Mary was slicing a chocolate cake and topping each piece with home-canned peaches. Lizzie desperately wanted a large piece of cake soaked with sweet peach juice like she ate at home, but she was too embarrassed to eat that much in front of Daniel. She wasn’t exactly thin, but she was trying. She certainly didn’t want it to look as if she overate.

Lizzie was relieved when the meal was finally over.

The rest of the day she housecleaned, ironed curtains, and did any job Mary assigned to her. By the end of the day, she was bone-tired and wished she could go home. She missed Mandy and Mam and Dat, their supper table in the old kitchen, and Jason talking with his mouth full. Everything about home seemed so dear and precious. A wave of homesickness enveloped her in a gray mist.

Finally, it was time for Lizzie to take a warm bath and get ready for bed. The bed in the guest room felt strange, so different from her own lumpy mattress with skinny Mandy beside her, reading as Lizzie fell asleep. The sheets were smooth and luxurious, the pillow twice as thick as her old pillow at home. She lay in the dark, thanking God for a room of her own, this nice soft pillow, and the cool sheets. Even if she had to be a
maud
, there were little things along the way to give thanks for.

Mary proved to be a good, kind person to work for. She was very fussy about the way things were to be done. But Lizzie didn’t mind. She just remembered to ask when she wasn’t sure how to do something. Mary always explained in detail how she wanted jobs to be handled.

The best day was when Mary sent her outside to rake leaves and mow the lawn for the last time before winter set in. Lizzie loved to work outside. She clipped dead plants, hoed flower beds, raked leaves, and pushed the Beilers’ new reel mower.

Abner ran alongside the lawn mower, asking a dozen questions whenever Lizzie stopped. She always took time to answer, loving the way he drawled out his words and rolled his brown eyes for emphasis as he talked.