“We lived in the
middle of nowhere
and knew no one.”
The Dornn children at Dahl’s Farm. Back
Row, L to R: Phillip, Edwin, Alex. Front Row,
L to R: Carl, Ann-Marie, Rosie, Genie.
THE SUMMER OF 1969 was the loneliest summer of our lives. We lived in the middle of nowhere and knew no one. It rained all the time, and the flies and mosquitoes were intolerable. If we went outside to play, we were up to our elbows in muck. If we stayed in, with no television or toys to amuse us, the boys would wrestle or play tag, tearing the house apart. On the colony, we would have been to the Essenschul for breakfast, then off playing with our friends by 8:00 a.m., but the social and physical structure that had given order and purpose to our lives had been ripped out from under us.
In Fairholme, we had spent relatively little time with our siblings except for evening prayers and bedtime routines; our new circumstances brought us in much closer contact with each other, and that led to a lot of arguing as we worked to redefine our relationships. Mother found herself with a houseful of lively children who didn’t know what to do with themselves.
The shift in family dynamics placed a greater sense of responsibility on my shoulders and Rosie’s to help with the younger ones, do the dishes, and clean up after our brothers’ muddy outdoor exploits, for it did not occur to our Hutterite-minded mother that boys could wash their own boots.
Every morning, seven forlorn sets of eyes followed Father as he twisted and zigzagged his way down our soggy lane to go to work. He had found employment through the Holdeman, a conservative faction of Mennonites who had sometimes come to Fairholme for an evening of gospel singing as part of their outreach program. One of the Holdemen had told my dad about Pete Siemens, a wealthy grain farmer who owned a feed mill and a substantial land base in the Domain area, a small village thirty kilometers west of Winnipeg. Mr. Siemens had employed Hutterites before and found them hardworking and reliable. He hired Father for $1.50 an hour to assemble and service his farm machinery and to seed, thresh, and combine large fields of oats, barley, and wheat. Mr. Siemens was exacting, and Father put in long days doing field work. He missed his cattle, but he put that out of his mind as he toiled in the hot sun.
Mother, too, struggled in the heat—of our kitchen. There was no more running to the community kitchen for fresh, home-cooked meals or buns, pies, and cakes just out of the oven. In Fairholme the bell would ring at fifteen minutes past seven and eleven in the mornings, and fifteen minutes past five in the afternoon for what was known as “first call.” Those with very young children sped toward the kitchen, for it signaled that the meal was ready and they should come to fill their pails and dishes with a delicious variety of fresh food to take home. Older people had the option of having their food delivered to their homes instead of going to the Essenstuben. On the half hour, the bell would ring again and the rest of the community would stop what they were doing and head to the kitchen to eat.
Since the age of seventeen, Mother had followed the traditional pattern of work rotation on Hutterite colonies. That was the age when women stepped into their adult roles and were paired with other women between the ages of seventeen and forty-five to spend alternating weeks baking, washing dishes, or cooking. With up to one hundred community members to feed, good organization was important. The menu was set out in advance by the head cook, and the supplies were always on hand in the kitchen. If Mother had stayed at the colony, she would, at age forty-five, have been eased into retirement as the younger women took over, but now her retirement had been put off indefinitely.
She was an excellent cook and with the proper ingredients could replicate all the mouthwatering Hutterite meals our spoiled palates were used to, but we couldn’t afford the ducks for Sunday dinner or the thick cream for Schmond wacken dipping or the fresh strawberries so readily available on the colony. All Father could manage on his salary was food at bargain prices. A sympathetic Jewish grocer in Winnipeg who ran a small corner store agreed to sell him produce that had outlived its shelf life. The Manitoba Hutterites did much of their business with Jewish wholesalers, and Father knew this gentleman from seeing him in Fairholme. The grocer had struggled to compete with the bigger outlets, so sometimes when he was overwhelmed with produce, he had loaded up his truck and come to Fairholme and sold the entire contents to the colony manager.
We called him the frucht Jud, “fruit Jew.” Besides selling us outdated bread, meat, and vegetables, he sold us so many boxes of apples, oranges, bananas, and grapes in varying stages of decay that his image became synonymous with fruit. He was small and cheerful, with thick glasses that he didn’t seem to need because he was always peering over them to look down an aisle, or resting them on his forehead to read a label. My parents were grateful to him for his help, for they simply could not afford groceries from a regular store.
While my siblings and I worked on getting along, our burdened parents pursued a path of forgiveness. The unresolved years of pain that had expelled them from Fairholme hung like weights around their necks. As difficult as it was, they knew that before they could forge ahead with their new lives, they needed to forgive Jake Maendel. They rose early one morning and wrote him a letter, saying that as followers of Christ, they were required by His admonition to love one another. Father acknowledged that his anger often got the better of him during their arguments and apologized. When the letter was mailed, they both felt a measure of spiritual and emotional relief.
As difficult as letting go of the past was, getting a handle on the present also created some challenges. Mother was excited at the prospect of having her very own telephone. She didn’t have anyone to call, but that didn’t dampen her enthusiasm. An employee from Manitoba Telephone System arrived to install her phone to the party line, after which he told her cheerfully, “Mrs. Dornn, your ring is two long.”
“Too long?” Mother asked. “Please fix it!”
Mother couldn’t grasp that two sustained rings would mean she should answer the telephone, and she saw her hopes of owning her own phone slipping away like flour dust between her fingers. She wasn’t about to let him leave until the ring was the right length. The installer finally resorted to calling the operator and asked her to call us so Mother would understand what he meant. Even with the lesson, she sometimes confused our ring with the others on our party line, as we all did. Isolated and lonely, we were known to answer the phone before it stopped ringing, hoping it was for us. Sometimes we listened in on other people’s conversations just to hear what English people talked about, but we soon learned that sort of thing was not appreciated.
We slowly transitioned to life outside the colony. Though we continued to wear our Hutterite clothing, Mother allowed Rosie and me to abandon our Mützen. Mother removed her own polka-dotted Tiechel and, as a small symbol of liberation, replaced it with a plain black one for church, special outings, and each morning and evening when she knelt beside her bed to pray.
Despite the adjustments we were making, we stuck out like sore thumbs, even among the Holdeman people, who were a strict religious sect like the Hutterites. They lived in nearby Rosenort, a Mennonite enclave, and their members were deeply traditional, which appealed to my parents. They didn’t allow worldly intrusions such as televisions or radios in their homes, and they dressed in a very conservative manner. The men wore beards, but the women fashioned their kerchiefs into small black caps with an extravagant number of hairpins. For Mother, who was still learning to answer a telephone, learning to fasten the kerchief as they did was too complicated. She was not moved by convention and had not left the colony to learn a new way of tying her kerchief.
But I was, and this provoked the first of many of my attempts to conform to the standards of others as I embarked on a journey to reinvent myself. All the young Holdeman girls carried a carefully folded and beautifully embroidered handkerchief with them to church. I reasoned that if I could join the hankie crowd, then I would at least begin to fit in. Mother’s handkerchiefs were all industrial-strength nose blowers, and not a single one of them could be mistaken for dainty, even from a reasonable distance.
One day, when Dad stopped to fill the gas tank at the Co-op, I spotted a paper napkin that someone had dropped on the floor by the cash register. It was white with large, yellow daisies. We hadn’t used napkins on the colony, and I had never seen one like it, so when no one was looking, I grabbed it. Once home, I ironed the frayed edges on low, carefully folded it, and tucked it under my pillow. Sunday couldn’t come quickly enough, and when it finally did, I was the first one ready. The Holdeman women flowed into church in their smart dresses sewn from yards of pastel blue, green, and yellow cotton. I envied the way their skirts flared at the knee and their belts cinched their impossibly small waists.
Our family took up one whole pew, and it felt odd to have my parents sitting together and to be seated next to them or to hear the sound of small children in church. When it was time to pray, I placed my napkin on my seat like the rest of the young girls and knelt, peering over the back of the bench in front of me at a neat row of expertly stitched hankies. I envisioned the girls behind me gasping with delight when they saw the daisy pattern on mine. Instead, I heard the unmistakable sound of snickering.
“It’s a napkin,” one of the girls whispered to muffled laughter. My neck and cheeks flushed with embarrassment, and I could feel their eyes boring a hole into the back of my head. As soon as the prayer ended, I wadded my hankie into a ball, and when church was over, threw my key to acceptance in the garbage.
After church, we were often invited to some brave family’s home for the noon meal. Nine extra mouths to feed was no small undertaking, but the church people tried to make us welcome. Our family had never been to another household for dinner. When we visited another colony, the adults would often eat together in the host home, but we were sent to the Essenschul to eat with the children. Every grouping of four children received their own platter, so we never worried about taking too much or helping ourselves to another serving. If we ran out, we simply shouted for more, and the Essenschul Ankela would come running.
Here, in a Holdeman family’s home, the food was served in breakable glass bowls and fine china, and the amounts were so small compared to the generous quantities we were used to on the colony. The roast beef was no bigger than my father’s fist, and I wished Jesus could perform a miracle like he had with the five loaves and two fish in the Bible.
From across the table, one of my brothers grabbed a slice of meat with his hand instead of the serving fork, and another followed suit. I noticed the host family looking at them in a wide-eyed sort of way and remembered the story of an outsider who had come to the colony on business and was invited to eat with the men in the Essenstuben. Seated next to the Hutterite member he had been visiting, the businessman asked, “Please pass the buns.” He was bluntly informed, “We don’t pass around here. I’ll lean back, and you take a long-distance reach.” Our enthusiastic table manners and generous appetites, considered practical and healthy on the colony, were now a source of embarrassment.
Later, up in the girls’ room, as my sister and I struggled to get in a flow in the conversation, I spotted a tiny pink container near my foot. I had seen one just like it for ten cents at Kresge’s department store when I still lived on the colony, and I knew there was a plastic rain cap inside. Initially, I didn’t mean to take it with me, but when the time came to go home, I found myself in the truck, clutching it in my hand as I watched the scenery go by.
Alone in my room, I opened it. Sure enough, it had a clear, plastic rain cap inside. Wearing it even in the pouring rain seemed unwise in light of the fact that my brothers and sisters would laugh their heads off at me. First, I thought to myself, I would try to get myself a hairdo that would require protection so I could wear it with purpose. I painstakingly refolded it and put it back in the container.
That night I was hit by a powerful sense of guilt and couldn’t fall asleep. On the colony we were taught to abide by the Ten Commandments, and I knew perfectly well that stealing was a sin. Among baptized members it was even more serious. I remembered how Annie Stahl had to stand through the entire church service, her head bowed in humiliation, for stealing a bag of marshmallows from the Woolworth store.
I was beginning to understand how different our perspectives were from everyone else’s. For example, if Mother received unexpected visitors for Lunschen, she would go next door and help herself to one of the neighbors’ pies, but English people, we soon learned, considered our version of sharing, stealing. Annie had had a hankering for marshmallows and had taken a package with her to the back of the store to have with her coffee while she waited for her husband to unload some chickens in town. After paying for the coffee in the cafeteria, she spotted the chicken truck out front, with nowhere to park. She got caught when she made a dash for the door, not even attempting to hide the marshmallows.
I felt the flames of hell inching toward my bed, so I climbed out and went downstairs to my parents’ bedroom. Waking Mother, I made my confession. She sent me back to bed, saying we would resolve it in the morning. Relieved, I returned to my room and fell fast asleep.
The next morning the verdict seemed unnecessarily harsh. My parents informed me that after church the following Sunday, they would take me back to the family’s home, and I was to apologize and give back the rain cap. I was prepared to quietly give it back, as I would have in Fairholme. Instead, I was forced to apologize in front of the entire family, gathered around the dining room table. The embarrassment was too much, and I buried my face in my hands and cried. I missed everything about Fairholme. It seemed as if we had been gone forever.
My siblings and I finally persuaded Dad to take us for a visit one Sunday afternoon, and I felt the tension melt away from my body as we rounded the bend to the colony and pulled up to our old house. I ached to be inside and skate across the polished floors in my socks, to look through the glass of our windows, and to touch the cupboards and counters in our kitchen. I wanted to see my mother hunched over her sewing machine, buried in fabrics, and hear the sound of Father’s voice as he sang with us at night.
Oma’s face filled with joy when we unexpectedly walked through her front door. She fussed over us and began to prepare Lunschen just as Catherine appeared in the hallway, beckoning me to come with her. I jumped up and followed her next door to our old house, where her family now lived. We headed for her bedroom, which had so recently belonged to Rosie and me. Catherine slept with her sister, too, and occupied the same side of the bed as I had. It was covered in a thick feather comforter, just as mine had been, and I melted into her pillow. We had missed each other so much!
The table in our old kitchenette was cluttered with Fat Emma and coconut chocolate bars, and Paul Jr. gave me a big smile when I entered. “We knew the runaways would be back!” he said gleefully, rubbing his hands together. “How can you say something so foolish to an innocent child!” his wife, Katie, scolded. She was serving raspberry pie with homemade ice cream that she had just retrieved from the community kitchen, and it was disappearing as fast as she could dish it out. On the colony, Lunschen was a relaxed, lighthearted, and social time, and I preferred a good-natured ribbing to the awkward silences at mealtimes in English homes. “We stole your house,” Paul continued with a grin, “and we’re not giving it back!”
“Dad, stop,” Catherine jumped in, irritated.
A basket of fresh buns in the corner of the kitchenette made my mouth water, and I helped myself before being asked. Everything was at once so familiar, especially the teasing, and we sat and socialized just like we’d never been gone. After filling up, I ran over to Sandra’s house. I let myself in and shouted, “Is Sandra home?”
“Oh, Lord,” her sister Rita said wickedly. “It’s Ann-Marie!” She came around the corner to look. “What on earth are you doing here? I thought you ran away!” She sighed, hands on her hips.
“I want Sandra.” I squirmed.
“Come in. We want to look at you,” her sister Dora interjected. “We want to know if you look English already or if you’re still a beautiful Fairholmer.”
Sandra took my arm and pushed me outside. “Let’s go,” she instructed. We led each other to our favorite sand hill and began carving out bedrooms in the warm sand for our imaginary families, represented by hairpins, toothpicks, and safety pins we had snatched from our mothers’ glass containers long ago. The toothpicks were our fictional “children,” which we broke into different sizes according to the child’s age. The afternoon sun was suspended like a gleaming lantern above our heads as we played out scenes from our own lives, moving easily from one contrived family crisis to the next, until the supper bell rang and I went to eat at Oma’s house, wistfully watching Sandra run to the Essenschul with the other children.
We hardly ever saw Father anymore. He was gone most mornings before we awoke and arrived home late in the evenings after everyone was in bed. Mother craved adult companionship, and sometimes I would find her gazing longingly out our kitchen window, watching a single car drive past our lane until it was out of sight. What she would give to share a cup of coffee with Katie Hofer or to sit and fold clothes with Oma, who made every crease vanish and our underwear and towels look as if they had been ironed. A week earlier, Mother had learned of Jake’s reaction to her and Father’s letter. “I will never forgive them until they return to the colony,” he had said.
Mother thought about the dream she’d had after the letter had been sent. In the dream, she was looking out of the kitchen window and watching her brother Jake drive up in a pickup truck, with their brother Hons sitting beside him. Jake stepped out of the vehicle, carrying a large sheaf of wheat to present to her. The grain looked plump and golden, but she could tell that it came from one of Pete Siemens’s nearby fields, which had been ruined by an early frost. As tempting as the wheat looked, Mother knew the kernel was hollow.
I sensed her loneliness and started to wait up with her to keep her company. Every night, often until midnight, Mother stroked my hair and told me Bible stories of faith and perseverance while we sat by the picture window, looking out into the darkness. I could tell she was trying to shore up her own faith, and the stories were as much for her benefit as mine. On the colony, a family had no worries about food and shelter, paying the bills, or caring for children. In our new lives, far from the security of Fairholme, Mother had no idea how we would survive if something should happen to Father, or what we would do or where we would go. When we saw the headlights of our truck turning onto our deserted lane, we were both relieved, and I would rush upstairs to my bed before Dad was in the door.
Mother found an unlikely companion in an abandoned house behind ours. During the course of an innocent exploration, she found a radio. It was a large antique, but she managed to drag it home. Our new church didn’t permit radios any more than the old one, but she was quite sure God would forgive her if all she allowed herself were religious programs. The radio cut in and out until Alex, our eleven-year-old electrician, fixed the problem by placing a knife in a strategic spot in the back to stabilize the loose connection. The radio lifted Mother’s spirits and became a source of inspiration for her, but she hated having to hide it under a blanket when church members stopped in for a visit.
The long, lonely summer drew to a close, and the school year was about to begin. Our cousin in Deerboine, Katrina, and Dafit Wurtz’s daughter Katie, surprised us by mailing a package that contained two pairs of matching Fortrel dresses for Rosie and me. They covered our body from our necks to our ankles, but the few flourishes of lace and ribbon made us feel very English.
We had heard rumors that the teacher in Domain didn’t want us in her school because she didn’t think we would fit in, but the school board had advised her that she had no choice. Mr. Read, our nearest neighbor, who lived three miles away on impossible roads, turned out to be our “bus driver.” He was hired by the school board to transport us in his own car. Mr. Read was old. Bell’s palsy had left him with a lip that dangled loosely and that distorted his words when he spoke. On the colony, he would have had his meals brought to him three times a day, enjoyed long afternoon naps, and had his floors washed every Saturday. He certainly would not have been driving children to school on treacherous, muddy roads.
He met us at the end of our lane in a worn, four-door Pontiac Parisienne. We were the only ones on the “bus,” and my three brothers piled in the backseat. My sister and I stood outside and argued over who would get the window seat in the front because no one wanted to sit beside Mr. Read. We didn’t know what Bell’s palsy was, but it frightened us. Mr. Read waited patiently for us to work out our little problem. I managed the window seat that day, but only after we agreed to take turns.
As soon as we entered the school yard, I knew I was wearing the wrong thing. I was shocked by the outfits running around outside. Hot pants and ringlets covered the playground. One girl was wearing a red, satin minidress with a slit that revealed matching red shorts, and I liked it so much I wished someone would hit me over the head and put me out of my misery. I knew it was a sin to like an outfit that insufficient, but with no Sana Basel to prod me, my fears about Jüngste Tog had started to fade, although my parents were doing a good job of not letting us forget about hell and the hereafter during our nightly devotions. All the girls were wearing something up-to-date and shiny, and their hair was abounce with perfect curls. On the colony we got new outfits for weddings and Feiertog (religious holidays), not for school. School was just like every day, where you dressed for comfort, not to show off.
“You’re Hutterites!” said one of the hot pants, wrinkling her nose as if it offended her. She whispered something to two girls with ringlets standing behind her, and they all began to giggle. “Nice granny dress,” she scoffed. Tanya Radner, I would soon learn, was the teacher’s pet and top student in my grade. The school bell rang and off she dashed, arm and arm with the other girls.
Rosie was in grade four. My brother Alex and I were both in grade five because Alex had failed grade one on the colony. Actually, the colony teacher had failed everyone in first grade, and, typically, nobody thought to ask why. Edwin entered junior high that year, so he transferred onto a bus in Domain to go to Sanford. Five-year-old Eugenie and four-year-old Carl stayed home to keep Mother and her radio company.
Our fifth-grade teacher was Mrs. Erb. She wore nice clothes and sensible shoes and wasn’t as glamorous as Miss Pattimore, Phillip’s grade-three teacher who taught the primary grades downstairs. She was young and kind with the most amazing dark hair. Sometimes she startled us by wearing a wig. It was a lighter color and a different style than her own hair, and it gave her a whole new look, which I found fascinating. But more than attractive, Miss Pattimore made a concerted effort to help us fit in and wouldn’t tolerate other students sneering at us. Once a week, on Friday afternoons, she came upstairs and taught our grades French. It soon became my favorite subject. “I really like the Frenchman,” I once overheard Father telling Mother over Lunschen in Fairholme. “I feel myself at home with them.” I knew he was referring to the truck driver from Modern Dairies who came each week to collect the milk. He was so affable that the company had kept him on even after he lost his driver’s license due to careless driving. They just had someone else drive him.
In school, we collided head-on with popular culture. I knew we were different, terribly different, and I half forgave the teacher for not wanting us in her school. We didn’t know how to swim or skate or ride a bicycle. We had never tasted pizza, macaroni and cheese, or a banana split—rites of passage in mainstream society. Our knowledge of the English language was adequate, but we much preferred to speak our own language, which we called Hutterisch and which is spoken by all Hutterites in North America. It is a sweet, guttural language that can get to the point with a candor and precision not found in English. Unfortunately, though, our dialect does not require the “th” sound, and at recess, my call for a classmate to “trow da ball to turd base” during a baseball game was met with peals of laughter from the other children.
I also wasn’t up to speed on the Department of Education’s standards, or quite possibly I had been too busy taking note of Mrs. Phillipot’s outfits to pay attention to the lesson, but when Mrs. Erb asked me, “What country are you from?” I confidently told her “Fairholme Colony” in front of the whole class. Mrs. Erb cleared her throat and changed the subject. It was going to be a long school year.
The ringlets and hot pants wanted little or nothing to do with us. They enjoyed feeling superior, always glancing at us sideways or laughing at our ignorance. On the school grounds, my sister and I never had much trouble finding each other, with our long dresses billowing in the wind. Since none of the girls wanted to play with me at recess, I often headed for the swings. I would swing as high as possible, feeling the wind in my face and my long braids flapping against my back. It made me feel free. I envisioned myself back on the swings in Fairholme, with Catherine and Sandra by my side. During class time, I shadowed the “in crowd,” all eyes as to what they wore and all ears as to what they talked about.
I felt hungry all the time. The longing to fit in translated into craving for food, but our school lunches became another lesson in humility. Mother had never made school lunches before. Now she had to make five of them every night while I tried to explain to her what the English kids were eating.
We were complete sandwich novices. On the colony we ate full-course meals daily, and only on special occasions, such as weddings or funerals, were ham sandwiches served as a night snack. Ham was now out of the question. The only luncheon meat we could afford was bologna that was weeks past its “best before” date and mottled with mold. Mother trimmed the green edges from the meat with a knife and tucked an uneven piece between two slices of stale white bread. She included a large carrot, peel still intact, with each sandwich. On the colony, eating a carrot straight from the ground without the benefit of a wash was considered healthy, but I washed them as a precaution. Mother sorted through the box of apples from the grocer and cut out the rotting pieces before adding them to our piles. When we protested, she told us that when children in Africa were starving, it was a sin to complain! Their parents, she noted, would just love the good half of our orange or apple to feed to their kids. Mother was so persuasive, we starting feeling lucky—until we got to school.
She packed our lunches in clear plastic bread bags she had saved over the summer. They had the predictable effect on our classmates, who carried crisp, brown bags filled with fresh food. Our classmates stared at us as though we were the eighth wonder of the world, but I swear I heard beautiful music when Russell Monroe opened his lunch box and pulled out a small thermos with steaming hot soup and cellophane-wrapped soda crackers. Next came a sandwich piled with pale, thin slices of meat topped by a sheet of lettuce. The sandwich was wrapped in wax paper and cut into four even triangles. He brought out carrots the size of french fries and matching celery sticks to dip into a white, creamy mixture. I was determined to dip my finger into it for a taste if ever he looked away, but he never did. Then, just when I thought a lunch couldn’t get better, he produced a triangle-shaped Tupperware container with a piece of apple pie and whipped cream. The only thing missing were the servants. I couldn’t take my eyes off him or his marvelous lunch.
I watched him take out a napkin and place it on his lap. Adjusting his glasses and running his fingers through his coarse, blond hair, he began to eat in a very civilized sort of way. Russell always drank his water at the end of his meal, not washing it back in between as we did. I was certain that with a lunch of this magnitude, I’d have good manners too. I wondered if his mother’s entire day was taken up with the planning and preparation of his lunches, and I began to fantasize about being his sister.
When it came to technical presentation and artistic merit, Russell’s food got my vote every time, but my other classmates pulled out delicious-looking assortments too. Their sandwiches were wrapped in some kind of magic plastic, and when I asked what it was, the whole class began to snicker. Tanya Radner’s sandwiches oozed with a white substance that was even more curious. On the colony we never used mayonnaise or salad dressing. “What a dummy!” Tanya told everyone within earshot when I worked up the nerve to cautiously ask her what it was. I quickly informed Mother that we had to purchase Saran Wrap and mayonnaise immediately if we were to amount to anything, but when she started in on those African children again, I knew I would get nowhere with her.
Taking matters in my own hands, I discreetly started picking plastic wrap and paper bags out of the garbage can beside Mrs. Erb’s desk. One day, when the rest of the class had gone out for recess, I spotted a large gob of excess mayonnaise on Tanya’s Saran Wrap. Locking myself in a bathroom stall, I carefully opened the crumpled plastic and licked the creamy paste with my tongue. I expected it to taste like the wonderful Schmond wacken (thick dipping cream) often served on the colony, but the flavor was bitter and unpleasant. I was profoundly grateful that Mother hadn’t gone out to buy a jar at my foolish insistence, and my heart went out to poor Tanya, whose sandwiches were smothered in mayonnaise every day.
It didn’t take long for me to collect enough discarded Saran wrap and paper bags for all five of our lunches, and Mother and I both loved it. We wiped the durable plastic clean every night and used it over and over again. The paper bags gave some measure of privacy to our inferior lunches, and for me, at least, that was a great relief.
The ceaseless rain had now made it impossible for Mr. Read to get anywhere near our muddied lane. It was a quagmire. He resorted to taking us to school on a stoneboat, a wooden slab harnessed to a horse. We met our new “bus” at the lane entrance and climbed onto the open makeshift sleigh. Mud flew up from behind as the poor horse dragged us over miles of gumbo. By the time we reached the school yard, we had mud splats on our clothes, our faces, and in our hair.
Father battled the mud too. After work, he would park his truck three miles from home on an adjoining gravel road, then slog through the quagmire to our house. And every morning, he’d walk back again and drive to work. At night, Mom and I would wait for him by the window and rejoice when we saw his dark, solitary shape in the distance, struggling to lift his boots, heavy with muck. Mother hadn’t waited for him like that since she was eighteen years old and still lived at Sana Basel’s house. She remembered the drone of his tractor in the fields and how she had longed to be alone with him, to explain her feelings, and tell him that it was her brothers who wanted her to marry Elie. That was so long ago she caught her breath at the thought of it. Once home, Father sank into a chair, often too exhausted to eat the supper Mother had waiting for him. He just took off his boots and collapsed into bed.
Being mud-splattered from head to toe was one thing, but we found the English kids’ aversion to dirt equally peculiar. The girls were obsessed with keeping their clothes clean during recess. They acted as if their mothers didn’t know how to use a washing machine. Even some of the boys had this unnatural obsession with being tidy. I remember one muddy afternoon when Marty Wilkes came screaming down the far end of the playground, pointing to a large gob of mud on his light-brown corduroy pants. “My mother’s gonna kill me! My mother’s gonna kill me!” he wailed.
I had never in my life heard such a pronouncement, and I rushed toward him, completely forgetting my inferior status as I faced him friend to friend. I had to know what he had done that would condemn him to death at the hand of his own mother. His mouthwatering lunches flashed before me as I recalled thick egg-salad sandwiches on soft, white bread and chocolate cake with at least an inch of icing. “What did you do?” I asked, my heart pounding.
“She’s gonna kill me because I got my good pants dirty!” he howled, tears streaming down his face.
Mouth agape, I looked down at his soiled pants and back up at him. By now Mrs. Erb had arrived, but I stood there as if I were nailed to the ground. I had no words for a young boy about to be killed by his own mother. How on earth could a mother who packed those wonderful lunches kill him just for that? I asked myself. Quite unexpectedly I felt grateful for my own parents. All our difficulties combined were still better than death over a blotch of mud. Mrs. Erb helped Marty clean some of the dirt off his pants and calmed him down. By the time she finished with him, I thought he was taking his impending death rather well.
I rushed my mud-splattered self into the house after school. Kicking off my boots, I found Mother in the basement, getting ready for her nightly round of laundry. On the colony, when we were young children running around barefoot and playing outdoors, she sometimes would put clean clothes on us up to four times a day, and it was still a point of pride with her that she send us out of the house with clean clothes and boots. I poured Marty’s anguished story on her in great detail. She was pretty sure that the worst that would happen to him was a good spanking, but I wasn’t swayed. I knew Mother didn’t have a clue how those English people carried on. I thought that they probably would rather kill their children than be caught spanking them. I feared for his life, and I knew only God could save him now. All those old Bible stories came back to me, especially the one about Abraham going off to kill his son Isaac. I got on my knees at bedtime and prayed that God would spare Marty’s life too.
My eyes searched the room for Marty as I entered the class the next morning. There he was, clean pants and all, chattering away as if nothing ever happened. He didn’t look at all relieved to be alive, nor the least bit grateful that I had personally intervened on his behalf before God to spare his life. Well, I thought to myself as he cast me a condescending “What are you looking at me for?” glance, I will never bail you out again! In light of his obvious ingratitude, I felt sorry that God hadn’t allowed him at least a bit of damage.
Winter and its predictable cold descended early, and plans for the annual Christmas concert got under way in earnest. I brought home the wonderful news that I would be participating in something called a square dance. It was greeted with a moment of silence from both of my parents. “We did not leave the colony to go dancing,” Dad announced as he left the room. Poor Dad. He had been warned before leaving the colony that his children would run wild and go dancing when they grew up. The devil with the dancing shoes had arrived much sooner than expected, and he felt his worst nightmare was coming true. I was devastated. At school we had already spent the previous afternoon practicing in the gym downstairs, and I was completely dazzled. Entirely uncoordinated, I worked double-hard with my two left feet, lest I be expelled from this fantastic opportunity to advance socially. The other girls handled themselves with incredible ease, but I didn’t let their giggles interfere with my concentration. Not now; this was too important.
I couldn’t believe my parents were out to ruin my chance to fit in with the others. I begged and pleaded to no avail. The next morning, heartsick, I headed for Mrs. Erb’s office at the back of the school and announced an end to my dancing career. She pursed her lips and, without commenting, sent me back to the classroom. In the afternoon, Mrs. Erb insisted I join the dance rehearsal. I was so grateful, I forgave her for the cool reception she had given us at the beginning of the school year. I had noticed a shift in her attitude ever since she had assigned our grade an essay about our biggest surprise. While the rest of the class wrote about waking up on Christmas morning to a new toy or bike or puppy, my story recounted the shock of finding out we were leaving the colony. Later that week, when the rest of the class was skating at the nearby community rink, I stood behind the boards, watching, because I didn’t have any skates. Mrs. Erb came up and asked me about the essay and what I missed about living on the colony. Our exchange made me feel good as details tumbled out about running to the Essenschul for a hot meal every day at noon, living within shouting distance of my best friends, and the sound of Sana Basel’s voice when she told us a story. Her face softened, and there was a tenderness in her voice that I had not heard before.
Mrs. Erb decided to take on Father. It wasn’t a dance, she told him. It was a drill. Only the girls were participating, and for a dance to really be a dance, boys must be involved. She stressed that it was a vital part of school curriculum. “All the children,” she said, “must participate in the Christmas concert.” Father scratched his head in bewilderment. Wouldn’t he be proud, she added, seeing his daughter on stage, not really dancing?
My outfit was the next challenge. Mother and I worked on it together. We were sent home with instructions to wear white blouses and red square-dancing skirts to the concert. I didn’t dare mention the square-dancing part of the skirt to Mother, lest the dance word set off more alarm bells. I simply told her I needed a red skirt and a white blouse. Somewhere in her closet, she found a white, frilly blouse, which fit fairly well, but we had to resort to the secondhand store to find the skirt. The store racks bulged with miniskirts of every conceivable size and color, but to Mother, proper length was far more important than style and color. After an extended search, we happened upon a below-the-knee, rusty-red skirt that she bought for seventy-five cents.
The night of the Christmas concert, we rushed through supper, and Mother, Rosie, and I hurried to get the dishes done. Our whole family was going, and the excitement was palpable. It was too cold for anyone to sit in the camper, so all nine of us piled into the cab of the pickup. Six-year-old Phillip sat on the left of Dad, the driver. On Dad’s right, Alex occupied Edwin’s lap, Eugenie sat on mine, and Rosie sat on Mother’s. Carl, the baby, held on to the dashboard and leaned back on the rest of us. It was a tight squeeze, and an elbow scuffle ensued as we all tried to get comfortable.
I rushed into the community hall in Domain as soon as I could propel myself from the pickup. Fighting my way through the frills on Mother’s blouse, I arrived at the back of the stage to find myself surrounded by short, red, flared skirts and crisp, white shirts with little red bows at the collar. What had been apparent to the other girls all along suddenly became apparent to me. A square-dancing skirt was no ordinary skirt. I turned crimson with embarrassment. “See,” said Father, following my red-faced performance, “dancing is a sin!” Fortunately, one of the mothers took pity on me and created a longer, less-flamboyant version for me to wear in future performances. I still didn’t look nearly as cute as the other girls, but if dancing was a sin, it was a risk I was ready to take.
The next day, school let out for the Christmas holidays. We were playing on the high banks of snow in front of the school, waiting for Mr. Read, when Bernie Legit stopped by. He lived in town and walked home like other students, but today he didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry. “Hey girls,” he announced, “I’d like to sing a song for you.” On the colony, singing a song for someone is a way to honor them, and we were all ears as to the nature of this tribute. “Okay,” Rosie and I said in unison as we stopped playing and stood at attention in front of him. He opened his mouth and began. “I wish you a merry Christmas, I wish you a merry Christmas, I wish you a merry Christmas, and an awful New Year.” Before he could enjoy his own cleverness, Rosie, with a fist to his stomach, had knocked the wind out of him and landed him in a snowbank. As he gasped for air, she pinned his arms behind him and demanded an apology. “Little, but Oh My,” is how Father referred to Rosie. Her small stature belied her natural athletic abilities. Even though Bernie was twice her size, I could have told him to not take her on, but, God forgive me, the scene with him begging for forgiveness was altogether enjoyable.
Our Christmas present was another trip back to Fairholme. Catherine loved the Fortrel dress with the lace that Katie Wurtz had made for me and was full of questions about my new “English life.” I told her all about the hot pants and the smarty-pants at school. Admittedly, I was economical with the truth when describing the wonderful school lunches Mother made, smartening mine up by including a few of Russell’s hot items. Catherine’s mouth just watered.
When we made our way over to Suzanna Basel’s house, her son Hardi spied us from the back window and quickly pried it open. “Go home. We don’t want you!” he yelled mischievously. “Ann-Marie, how come you’re so fat?” his brother Ernie bellowed, his dark hair falling in his face as he bent toward the opening to be heard. At school, Mrs. Erb had weighed us with her black bathroom scale, and I came in at 112 pounds. I was eleven years old, and heavier than the boys in class! I could forgive myself for gaining weight on Hutterite food, but to do so on past-due edibles was very discouraging.
“Be quiet, you dumb dogs,” my Suzanna Basel shouted to her unruly sons. The table was sagging with cakes and pies and chocolates and nuts from the colony’s Weihnachtsgeschenken, “Christmas goods.” Suzanna Basel pinched my cheeks and dusted the peanut shells off the chairs for Catherine and me to sit down. “Gold remains gold.” She smiled as she pressed her cheek against mine. Suzanna Basel asked her daughter Hilda to find the McIntosh toffee bar she had saved for me and hidden in her underwear drawer. It was my favorite treat, and my aunt had not forgotten. Fritz Vetter tumbled in the door from the turkey barn and marched straight to the sink to wash. “Ann-Marie, what are you doing here again?” he teased, splashing his face with soapy water.
“Ach Stilla Voter,” his wife scolded. “Oh, Father, be quiet.”
“Can you dance yet?” he asked cunningly as he reached for the nutcracker and settled into a chair.
“Yes,” I countered, knowing he wouldn’t believe me.
“You’re going to go to hell!” Fritz Vetter teased, and Suzanna Basel bopped him on the head with a flyswatter.
“That’s enough, now,” she said.
After Lunschen, Hilda, Catherine, and I went to the living room to sing. As our voices blended together, I was enveloped by a warmth I could not describe. I wanted to put that moment in a box and take it home with me so that when I was lonely, I could unwrap it and it would comfort me.
Darkness descended before my sister Rosie came to collect me for the trip home. She had spent the afternoon playing with her best friend, Janice, Catherine’s sister. Hilda sent us out the door with a generous bag of treats. Catherine’s mom and my Oma packed all the leftovers from Lunschen and supper in a box and followed us to the pickup where Dad was waiting with Mother and the others. Sana Basel was there, too, with a box of goodies and a round of hugs. Our school lunches cheered for days.
Winter storms that year made it difficult for Mr. Read to get back to school to take us home. The five of us would have to sit and wait for him, sometimes up to an hour and a half, because of unpredictably bad weather. We were hungry and restless, so Mrs. Erb decided to let us watch cartoons on a small, black-and-white television in the library. This was our first foray into the land of TV, and we were captivated by the images on the screen, especially with Mighty Mouse.
The kids in school often discussed what they watched at home. We soon learned that their favorite program was Walt Disney. It aired on Sunday night, and on Monday during lunch hour, that’s all they talked about. We couldn’t figure out who Walt Disney was, and Alex and I got into a big argument about whether he was a horse, a person, or a dog. Every week the show seemed to change, and it was so frustrating to try and follow the plot. I loved Mighty Mouse for being so clear about himself. He was a mouse and he stayed a mouse.
In the beginning of January, I got whooping cough and had to miss over a month of school. Mrs. Erb sent my schoolwork home with Alex, but I just coughed all over it and didn’t get very much done. Every morning, Mother prayed over me before tackling piles of laundry, dirty floors, and a kitchen strewn with boiling pots and dirty dishes. She had taken to praying over everything, including her secondhand appliances, and God mercifully extended the life of her washing machine and stove a number of times.
By Valentine’s Day, the cough had begun to subside, and I finally started to feel better, but Mother kept me home a few more days as a precaution. Mrs. Erb gave Alex a box of valentines for me from the class. Up in my room, I sat on the edge of the bed and opened the lid, covered in red tissue and decorated with silver cardboard hearts and pink flowers. I was delighted to find that nearly everyone in my grade had sent me a valentine. I read the sweet little rhymes and greetings on the cards and they almost restored my faith in returning to school. “Be a Cool Cat.” “Have a GREAT Valentine’s Day.” “Smile, You’re Fascinating!” read some of the cards. Diane, with the luscious blonde curls, had decorated and sent a heart-shaped gingerbread cookie. Even Russell had thought to send me a card. “You’re swell, Valentine,” it read. So are your lunches! I thought to myself.
I reached for the last card on the bottom of the box, recognizing Tanya Radner’s handwriting on the front of the envelope. My heart skipped a beat as I pulled out the card shaped like a duck with a hat pulled over its eyes. Her valentine message was scrawled across the front. “I hope I never see you again—Tanya.” I could feel what little bit of confidence I’d gained begin to wash away, despite the talk I’d had with Mrs. Erb about my essay. I was suddenly ashamed of our poor clothes and rotting food and Hutterite accent. I was ashamed that, in spite of my daisy hankie and square-dance skirt and saved Saran Wrap, I was a failure at being English. I ripped up her valentine and threw it under my bed.
Not long after that, Mother called us into the living room when we came home from school. Pale and shaken, she told us Dad had had an accident and was in the hospital. Our eyes grew large as she explained that the two middle fingers on his right hand got caught beneath a truck scale in a freak accident at work and were crushed. The doctors were talking about amputating. Mother asked us to all kneel down and pray for his fingers to be spared. Alone in his hospital bed, Dad was more worried about being out of a job than he was about losing his fingers.
The doctors decided to give him time before resorting to surgery, and they released him later in the week. His hand was tightly wrapped in thick, white bandages and he grimaced and winced when Mother changed them. It was a gruesome sight to see his fingers flapping from his blackened hand, but Mother prayed diligently for their recovery.
My father’s primary concern now was his family’s survival. As he endured the agonizing wait for his hand to heal, salvation came in the form of adult education. He discovered he could be paid to go to school in Winnipeg, and the prospect excited him. He had only completed grade eight on the colony, but given the opportunity, he would have favored a full and broad education.
Father excelled in school and received top marks. He loved it, but by the end of June, the program ran out of money and the school closed. We were glad to have him back home. During the week he had boarded at Dippety Doo Pete’s in Winnipeg and only came home on weekends. Mother had found this especially difficult. Miraculously, though, his fingers were coming back to life. The doctors couldn’t believe it, but Mother said she knew all along that they would. On the heels of such good news, Father announced we’d soon be moving. But not before the last day of school.
Everyone referred to field day with some kind of reverence. We didn’t know what to expect, but it sounded exciting, and we were hoping it was something like picnic day, the last day of school on the colony. Picnic day always included a rousing game of baseball. Fairholmers took their ball games very seriously, and poor players had to give it their all or risk the disapproval of the senior boys. If the boys were too harsh, saying “Du bist Zunichts! You’re not worth nothing!” to someone who struck out, the older girls ran interference. With the skill of a sharpshooter, they put the boys in their place, saying, “And you still wet your bed!”
When everyone was dusty and winded from stealing bases and diving for catches, often with bare hands, we all ran to a little valley shaped like a bowl for the bubblegum throw. Peter Vetter stood on one end of the field surrounded by white boxes of tsutzel candy (“sucking” candy) and gum. The boys readied their pants pockets, and the girls folded up their aprons to create a pouch as we waited in a long line. “Ready, set, go!” cried Peter Vetter, throwing the treats in the air. For the next ten minutes, it rained candy and gum until our pockets and aprons overflowed.
All the girls at the school in Domain appeared to be wearing new hot pants on field day morning. I envied their outfits, though it hadn’t occurred to me that the last day of school would be the sort of day that required new clothing. Mrs. Erb and Miss Pattimore came out of the school wearing sun hats and carrying clipboards. They were both wearing white slacks, and it was the first time I had seen either of them in pants. My sisters and I were the only skirts in the school yard.
The yard was filled with all kinds of athletic challenges that, seemingly, had appeared overnight, and some of the students were practicing their skills in the high jump, the ball throw, and the triple jump pit. Their parents were stationed at various events as volunteer referees. Many of them were so openly affectionate to their children, I just stared at them. Very young children were unabashedly kissed and hugged and squeezed on the colony, but after a child turns six, affection is verbalized rather than demonstrated. Endearments such as “Du lieba, du bist fein (My sweet one, you are wonderful)” were spoken by mothers with love in their eyes, but physical affection was more restrained.
We were segregated according to age and gender and given instructions on when and where we would be competing. I followed my group to our first event, which was the hundred-yard dash. I ran as if I were being chased by a herd of wild elephants, my skirt trailing behind me, and caught everyone by surprise, including myself, when I came in third. At the high jump, I hurled myself over the bar for another third-place finish. I lost out on the three-hundred-yard dash but came second in the ball throw. The last event was the triple jump, where I had to hop, step, and jump to the finish. I heaved myself across the sandpit but caught my skirt in my shoe and landed with a thump. It was still enough for third place.
A strong breeze that smelled of dust and hot dogs blew past us. I was hungry. I headed straight for the hot dog stand, pleased with the way my blue and white ribbons fluttered against my face when I walked. The hot dogs were free of charge, so I ordered two and spread them with relish. In the distance, I could see Rosie and Alex covered in red ribbons. They had placed first in all of their events, and Phillip had only to win the triple jump to do the same.
All the parents had been invited to school that day, and as I made my way to the sandpit, I saw my own parents arrive, a moment I had been dreading. Mother’s dark-purple, Fortrel English dress was long and shapeless, and she looked so out of place in her black kerchief next to the other mothers in their light-colored shorts and sleeveless blouses. Dad still wore a beard and was hard to miss in the land of the clean shaven. Despite my embarrassment, I ran over and urged them to come quickly and watch Phillip in his last event.
A large group of spectators gathered at the sandpit, and you could feel the tension in the air. Too many red ribbons had gone to our family, and some of the parents whose children had placed first in previous years looked irritated. Phillip’s main rival was an athletic boy in his class named Gary. The crowd cheered wildly when Gary’s turn came up, and he satisfied them with an excellent jump. Phillip’s turn was met with contrasting silence. We kept quiet too—afraid to show any emotion—but the anticipation in our eyes betrayed our lack of composure. My parents stood in the back of the crowd, and Mother’s head was slightly bowed. Phillip had grown three inches since the spring, and as he stared straight ahead, practicing the motions mentally before taking the leap, I noticed his pants were too short.
We held our breath as he landed. The referee shook his head and announced it was too close to call. They would have to try again. Gary’s turn came up again, and so did the cheers as he landed another crowd-pleasing jump. Phillip took his place once more on the starting line and, with a fiercely determined look on his face, darted straight ahead, hop, step, and jumping his way to a clear victory. The crowd applauded politely, scarcely concealing their disappointment as Phillip was presented with the final red ribbon. We were ecstatic but kept our jubilation to ourselves, to avoid offending anyone.
At the end of it all, we piled into Dad’s old pickup. It had been an unexpectedly good day for this band of misfits, and God knows, we needed one. As we drove off, we started cheering and congratulating Phillip and each other for a job well done. Our long and difficult first year had ended on a high note, and we felt a small measure of vindication.