“Without warning, Sana Basel
showed up on our doorstep.”
Sana Basel,
an extraordinary woman.
WE MOVED TO Rogers’ Farm over the course of our second summer away from Fairholme Colony. It was three miles from Dahl’s Farm, partway in every direction, and equally isolated. At the end of a bumpy ride down a series of back roads, the forest gave way to an enormous house guarding a neglected farmyard. The home had clearly once belonged to someone of means, but its deteriorating exterior was marred by gashes of peeling paint and corroding brickwork. The lawn and flower beds were buried under tall grass and weeds. Inside, the sheen had long gone from the hardwood floors, and the air was thick with dust.
We had never seen a house with such big rooms before. The living room and adjacent parlor on the main floor were the size of a small hockey rink—a consideration not lost on my brothers, who would use it to play floor hockey when the weather outside was too wet or too cold. An arched doorway led from the parlor to the kitchen and dining room. Above the kitchen sink, a dirty window filtered a stream of sunlight that fell on withered, green vinyl counters running the length of each wall. The north wall of the dining room had begun to buckle and would have come crashing down were it not for a pigheaded desire to cling to past glories. Father warned us to steer clear of the area.
The basement was a fright. Unlike Fairholme’s basement, lined with jars of burgundy beets, red-cheeked apples swimming in syrupy preserve, and the comforting smells of fresh laundry and new potatoes, this room gave us the urge to dash back upstairs. It was dim and musty, with low ceilings and deep cracks in the stone foundation, home to a growing family of mice who thrived in the eerie atmosphere.
At the front entrance, an imposing oak staircase wound its way to spacious bedrooms on the second floor. On the colony, sharing was a way of life, with one bedroom often serving all the male or female children in families until they left home. My two sisters and I claimed a room to the right of the stairs near a long, rectangular bathroom, and my four brothers decided on one on the left. A third bedroom remained empty. Heavy wooden doors off the kitchen opened to the master suite, which my parents chose as their own. Since Mother spent most of her time cooking, she could now all but wake up next to the stove.
Father’s employer, Pete Siemens, owned the estate and had offered Dad rent-free accommodations in exchange for repairing the property. The excess rain had ruined Mr. Siemens’s crops, so he had invested in cattle. They were housed outside in a lonely feed lot next to a fading red barn that loomed as large as the house, and Mr. Siemens hired my dad to manage them. When not working, Father purchased some used wood at a lumber mart in Winnipeg and began the sober task of making a crumbling mansion inhabitable for his family. Mother scrubbed every inch of the new house and was exhausted before we even began to pack the old one.
After our departure from Dahl’s Farm, Dad’s brother Christopher; his wife, Susie; and their six children took refuge in it. Dissatisfied with community life and encouraged by my father’s bold move to live in the outside world, Uncle Chris had packed up his family and left the colony only a year after his brother. Mother was finally able to enjoy some quality time on her new telephone by talking with Aunt Susie, which helped stave off their loneliness and isolation. Women were not taught to drive on the colony, so personal visits were not an option. But a cup of hot coffee in one hand and the telephone in the other made life bearable for them both.
I felt a constant tug to return to Fairholme. In early July, Mother received word that the colony’s strawberry crop had exceeded all expectations and Fairholme was badly in need of help. Calls to other colonies, like James Valley and New Rosedale, were pointless because the women there had their own large gardens to harvest. I begged Mother to let me go help. I behaved like an angel, and the following Sunday, when we went to Fairholme for a visit, my parents left me behind in Oma’s care. I slept in her bed and ate all my meals with her, and we resumed our former roles as if we’d never been apart. I was the happy Hutterite girl, free from the dress codes and protocol of the English world, and she was my doting grandmother who loved me unconditionally, braiding my hair or tying bows in the back of my Hutterite dresses with her worn and arthritic hands.
Oma was the only one on the colony allowed to wear a ring. It was made of copper, and she wore it on her right ring finger. The doctor said the metal had a therapeutic effect on the pain and stiffness, and Jake Vetter made an allowance for that. Oltvetter Dornn tried to convince her to use his remedy and go up to the bee house every morning and let twenty bees sting her bare arm, but she would have none of it. I secretly thought she liked the way the ring looked on her hand.
On the first night, when we were lying in bed together, she had me look very closely at her earlobes. They both had pin-sized holes, and she told me that when she was a teenager in Russia, she had pierced ears and real gold earrings. As I lay there in the dark, I thought of her as a young girl before heartache and loss would taint her life with sadness. I tried to imagine her running through a field, being chased by her sisters, her earrings gleaming in the sun. It dawned on me that Oma had been English once, and that maybe one day I would find the joy in being English too. I nestled closer to her and placed my leg against hers, but I knew it could never be. I would never be English enough for earrings.
Catherine was responsible for bringing Oma her food from the community kitchen, and she heaped the already ample servings even higher on my account. Fresh bread was served with most of the meals, and after my daily banquets, I practiced making sandwiches with the leftovers while Oma did the dishes in her little sink. “What are you making?” Oma asked, as I added some jam to a piece of bread that I had spread with cottage cheese. I explained to her that sandwiches were almost all that English people ate and that I needed to experiment with fillings because Mother was always running out of ideas.
I spent most of that week in the strawberry patch with Sandra. The sun had painted her hands and face the color of maple sugar, and her smile warmed me from the inside out. Three times a day, the bell beckoned us to the strawberry patch, and Sandra’s dad, my Peter Vetter, promised us a quarter for every turn. I earned seventy-five cents a day, which I rushed straight to Oma, who put the quarters in a canning jar in her dish cupboard so I wouldn’t lose them or be tempted to run down to Bambi Gardens and spend them on candy. The weather was hot and the work backbreaking, but Sandra and I were lost in the joy of each other’s company. While we picked, I regaled her with stories of the English kids at school, dramatizing Marty Wilkes’s theatrical cries for help after he muddied his pants, and demonstrating the length of hot pants by pulling up my skirt as high above my knees as I dared. When I stood up to stretch my back, I saw Peter Vetter hauling irrigation pipes to the tomato fields an acre away. It had been a dry spring, but thanks to his efforts, the garden was as lush as Eden.
I missed seeing my mother working with the other women, hearing her laugh and swap stories with her gardening partner, who was Catherine’s mother, Katie Hofer. During our daily ice cream break, the older women patted my head sympathetically and proclaimed me unshuldig, “innocent.” I knew that they blamed my parents for what had happened, but I was still too attached to let go, not ready to give up the silky sand beneath my feet, the dusty, winding paths, and the sound of the kitchen bell. I ached for the structure of the days, the familiar, lined faces of the women in the kitchen, the smell of the baking buns, and the guttural sound of our language. My heart was not ready to accept that this was no longer home.
We ate strawberries while we worked, plopping juicy red berries into our mouths at will. At Lunschen, we savored them in pies and cakes. Whenever the colony had surplus from the garden, it was sold to the public. From early morning until late afternoon, English people came and went, buying the luscious fruit almost as fast as we could pick it.
Galvanized by our family’s money troubles, I began offering customers a tour of Fairholme for a quarter. Our first stop was the pig barn, because we knew we could count on Catherine’s dad, Paul Jr., the pig man, to provide some humor and entertainment. He was gregarious and didn’t let us down. “Come in, come in, and see my beautiful pigs!” he shouted, trying to be heard above the drone of the ventilation fans. Tucking a piglet under his left arm, Paul gave them an animated tour, making no apologies for the pervasive stench. Afterward, we headed for the hatchery to find Michel. He enjoyed strangers and peppered them with questions. By the time they had escaped his interrogations, Michel knew how old they were, when they had started going bald, if they smoked or drank, or if any of their children were in trouble with the law and why. Our tour ended in the main kitchen, where the colony women were transforming crates full of strawberries into a year’s supply of freezer jam. Sana Basel and Ankela were sitting on a bench, cutting the stems from a big bowl of berries on their laps, their fingers and corners of their mouths stained red. “What’s your name, and what church do you go to?” Sana Basel asked the visitors sweetly. The first thing she wanted to know about anyone was whether they were geistlich (spiritual).
I wasn’t shy about collecting a wage and requested a quarter for both Sandra and me when we escorted them back to the car. When my parents returned at the end of the week, I had a grand total of nine dollars to my name. On the drive home, the quarters rattled in the jar clutched in my sunburned hands. I had hoped to spend my new wealth on a pair of skates, but when Father told me that skates cost more than nine dollars, my hopes were dashed. I knew that if he helped me buy skates, there would be six other eager siblings in line for a pair, and our financial reality made such an indulgence entirely unaffordable.
I hid my jar of quarters in the drawer beneath my underwear when we arrived home late that evening. As I climbed into bed, I remembered Mother and Father’s late-night whispers about our finances and Oma’s fretting that Father needed money to survive now that he was on his own. He was fixing one of the windows in the parlor when I approached him with my treasure. “Dad,” I said earnestly, “I think I have more money than you do. You are working so hard, and I feel you should have this money so we don’t go broke.” Dad studied my young face, tilted his head back, and laughed. Mother stood in the doorway to the kitchen, her hand covering her mouth to keep from laughing too.
“Well,” said Father, trying to keep a straight face, “I think you do have more money than I do, and I could sure use an extra nine dollars.”
I knew I was doing the right thing, just as I knew that wishing I was back in Fairholme was selfish. Father took the jar from my outstretched hand while Mother watched, shaking her head.
Over the summer holidays, Father would sometimes take all of us along when he went to Winnipeg to buy tractor parts, bags of feed, or medical supplies for the cattle. Other than the occasional visit to Fairholme and going to church on Sunday, these were the only outings we had. We loved every chance to get away, and so did our mother. In the warmer months, my brothers traveled in the camper while the rest of us sat in the cab with our parents. Most of our time was spent in the industrial part of the city, waiting for Dad to finish his business rounds. By late afternoon, we were usually famished. Dad couldn’t possibly afford to take us to a restaurant, so he headed straight to his friend, the Jewish grocer.
“Do you have anything for me today, sir?” Dad called out as he entered the small corner store. The fluorescent lights in the high ceilings were bright, and the store smelled of cardboard boxes. “Sure do, Ron, sure do. I’ve been expecting you.” The grocer took Dad through a door in the back with a sign on it that read No Admittance.
Mother and I wandered around the store, listening to the country music playing on the radio, and gawking at the wonderful things stacked on the shelves. I was keen on anything exciting that could go between two slices of bread, and spotting a plastic container of caramel spread next to a jar of peanut butter, I opened the corner of the lid and dipped my finger into it. It looked and tasted like melted toffee. I quickly closed the lid and went looking for my mother, who was in the next aisle, dangling a bag of buns from each hand. My enthusiasm boiled over as I explained the merits of having caramel spread in our school sandwiches. “No,” said Mother firmly. “It probably tastes like honey, and we still have lots left in the jar that Oma gave us.” I couldn’t very well tell her how much better than honey it tasted without incrimination, but her unwillingness to even consider my request upset me terribly.
Dad and the grocer burst out of the No Admittance door, each carrying two boxes piled one atop the other. They headed outside to the truck, and Dad lifted the camper door and slid them in.
“Is there anything else I can get for you, Ron?” asked the grocer as they came back into the store together. Mother and I were standing at the checkout with two dozen buns and no caramel spread. “Yes, just a minute,” said Father, hurrying over to the cooler. He picked up a huge coil of garlic sausage and with his pocketknife cut off about three feet and brought it to the counter. “That’s good sausage you have there, Ron. It should last you a while,” said the grocer.
“Well, sir, about fifteen minutes!” replied Dad, and they both started to laugh. Father paid his bill and thanked his friend.
Still nursing my grudge, I hopped into the back of the camper with my brothers while my younger siblings climbed into the cab. Dad cut generous pieces of the garlic sausage for each of us, and Mother passed us a dozen buns while Father opened two of the boxes he bought from the grocer. One contained bananas and the other green grapes, both well past their prime. “Let’s pray,” Father said as he held the camper door open. No matter where we were or how inconvenient it was, our parents held fast to the Hutterite tradition of praying before we ate, replacing the memorized German prayers we used to say in unison with prayers from the heart. “Thank you for your faithfulness and for your many blessings, O God. Bless these gifts that you have given to us. Amen.” He let the camper door down and climbed into the cab to eat with Mother and the younger children.
The sausage was rich and flavorful, and after devouring every morsel, we helped ourselves to salvageable parts of the grapes and bananas. As we were enjoying our feast, the camper door flew open, and a wild-eyed man with torn clothes and long, unkempt hair was glaring at us. My brothers and I froze. “Got something for a starving man?” he asked. His strong body odor mixed with the aromatic haze of garlic sausage and rotting bananas inside the camper. I slowly reached into the box of grapes and tentatively held out a stem. He eyed the shriveled, brown fruit and spewed out a stream of vulgarities, slamming the camper door and storming off in a cloud of profanity. We held our breath before bursting into nervous laughter.
“The kids in Africa would love this stuff!” said Alex, echoing the line Mother frequently used on us. I quickly recovered from my caramel-spread disappointment, and in that moment I was enormously glad to be Ann-Marie Dornn, glad that my Mother prayed to Jesus daily, and despite my standing as a displaced Hutterite, glad to be on my way home to the security of Rogers’ Farm.
My eleventh birthday came and went at the end of that July with the same amount of fanfare as any other day: no cake, no card, no presents. On the colony, our parents usually acknowledged our birthdays by reminiscing about the day we were born. Most of us didn’t have baby pictures, and we loved hearing those stories. Mother always told me about my delicate features and dainty hands, and that my eyes were like large, shiny marbles when I looked up at her. It made me feel special. But I wished I could have a fabulous party like the girls at school.
I had never actually been to a birthday party, and they sounded like elaborate events. I would listen to the girls in my grade gush about their birthday cakes and new birthday dresses and gifts of Barbie dolls and tea sets and longed to be a part of the fun, but no invitation was ever extended to me. I learned to accept that as I accepted leaving Fairholme. It just was.
Later that summer, we received a box of used clothing from Adele Georg, my dad’s cousin who had lived with us at Fairholme for those nine months. We had occasional contact with Adele, Alex, and their children after they had departed Fairholme; and when their parcel arrived from Edmonton, we were elated. Mother cut through the tape with a kitchen knife, and something the color of a sunflower caught my eye. When I plucked it from the pile, a beautiful sleeveless dress with an exquisitely fitted torso and a full pleated skirt unfolded. “That’s mine!” I shouted.
“Here’s the belt for it,” Mother said, tossing me a wide, yellow belt with a plain silver buckle. It was too small to fit around my waist, so I found the scissors and promptly cut the four belt loops off the new dress. “What are you doing?” Mother exclaimed, pulling her head out of the box, clutching a bread bag filled with pink sponge rollers.
“Oh, Mom, those are curlers for our hair!” I blurted, ignoring her question and snatching the bag from her hand. She was like a fish out of water when it came to English clothes and accessories.
My yellow dress filled me with hope. It was strictly a worldly yellow, not something you’d ever see walking around a Hutterite colony, and it begged to be worn on my first day back to school. I locked myself in the bathroom and tried on the dress, studying the girl in the mirror who craved acceptance in this strange, new world. My father’s blue eyes stared back at me. “Dornn eyes,” the colony women called them. My sturdy nose and good sense of smell, considered valuable on the colony, now seemed like a liability in the land of small, upturned varieties. The heart-shaped face in the mirror was my mother’s, a Maendel face, and in that moment, I missed having one of my aunts grab my full cheeks and lovingly pinch them.
Mother still braided our waist-length hair every week, but I yearned for ringlets like the girls at school. Rosie agreed to my suggestion that we set each other’s hair with Adele’s old rollers, as long as it didn’t take too much time. She was more interested in perfecting the cartwheel and climbing trees than in primping in front of a mirror. Her patience for an older sister with stars in her eyes had serious time limits.
When we came downstairs for evening prayers, the boys had a good laugh at our expense, but that didn’t dampen my enthusiasm for ringlets, and Rosie didn’t care. We endured a rough night of sleep, but early the next morning, as soon as I heard Mother and Dad stirring downstairs, I made my way to the bathroom and took out the rollers one by one. Tight, uneven knots of hair that resembled a ball of prairie tumbleweed stared back at me. I was heartsick. Mother soon had our scalps stooped under the kitchen sink and our hair tamed into braids. There would be no highly anticipated ringlets flowing down my shoulders.
As the first day of school approached, we already knew we no longer had a bus driver. The effort it took to maneuver our lane had taken its toll on poor Mr. Read, and he had made the decision to retire. Father applied for the job, and the school board was more than happy to pay him to transport us. This turned my well-planned first day back into a disaster.
Mother and I took the brown paper bags and Saran wrap we’d saved out of storage. Now that Eugenie was going into grade one, we had six lunches to pack instead of five. Anticipating the extra income he would make as bus driver, Dad had brought home a coil of garlic sausage from the Jewish grocer and we were off on a sandwich-making bonanza.
Up in my room, I laid out my beautiful yellow dress and enlisted Rosie’s help with the zipper. “Rosie!” I yelled. She was already outside, climbing a tree, with no thought to our sorry status. “What?” she called back, impatiently. I managed to get her back upstairs to zip the zipper on the dress, but she caught my skin and I screamed. “It doesn’t even fit you!” she said, annoyed by the interruption. “Yes, it does. Do it up slowly,” I instructed, taking a deep breath as she grappled to separate the metal from my skin. It had not occurred to me to apply restraint in the eating department over the summer holidays. On the colony, women’s skirts were held together at the waist by a safety pin. If they gained or lost a little weight, the safety pin was moved to adapt to the change without much fuss or notice. The pleated skirts and fitted jackets suited large and small body types. Being healthy and feeling good were what mattered. We could never understand why English women placed such an excessive focus on their weight, or why overweight women did themselves the indignity of wearing shorts and sleeveless tops, exposing large, floppy arms and dimpled thighs.
By the time I was zipped up, we were both red faced, and Dad was hollering that it was time to go. As I drifted down the stairs, I imagined the reaction of the girls at school, watching me float through the school yard. I knew I would make a good impression and couldn’t wait to see the look on Tanya Radner’s face. Dad glanced up at the yellow swirl coming down the stairs and asked what I thought I was wearing. “A dress,” I answered emphatically.
“You’re not going to school without sleeves! Go get dressed,” he commanded, as if I were standing there naked. Humiliated, I returned to my room and changed.
At school, we were still treated like outsiders, but the students turned on the charm when it came time to choose sides for a softball game. Alex was the most coveted player and everyone’s first choice, but he was increasingly frustrated with the way we were being treated. He became so upset that one day he refused to participate. “The other kids don’t want anything to do with us off the field,” he told Mrs. Erb, “and we don’t want nothin’ to do with them on the field.” When provoked, Alex could be impossibly stubborn. This took Mrs. Erb by surprise.
“Well, are you just going to quit playing baseball?” she asked incredulously.
“No, we’ll take them all on, the entire school, Dornns against the rest!” said Alex defiantly.
“But there’s only six of you and thirty-five of them!” argued Mrs. Erb, pointing out the obvious imbalance.
“That’s okay,” said Alex firmly.
Mrs. Erb could see that the only way to break his resolve was to let him have his way, at least this once. Alex’s protest struck a chord with the rest of us, and we stood by his rash decision without bothering to calculate our odds against such a large contingent of players. Minutes later, we found ourselves borrowing gloves from our opponents. Some refused, but others reluctantly parted with their leather goods.
Mrs. Erb retained her position as pitcher. In fairness to both sides, she steered clear of the ball after the pitch, leaving it to others to make the plays. The English kids won the coin flip and the first at bat.
Alex organized and coached us. He assigned Rosie as back-catcher, placed me on first base, Eugenie on third, and he and Phillip took the outfield. Our opponents had their best players bat first. A couple of them hit well and managed to get on base, but Alex and Phillip did a great job of intercepting what could have been home runs. Rosie made some excellent plays, too, and in a weak moment, I felt grateful she was a better athlete than she was a hairdresser.
Two batters were out, and the bases were loaded when Angela Mason stepped up to the plate in her new hot pants and perfect ringlets and struck out. She burst into tears, and we could scarcely conceal our joy.
Alex continued to play a strategic game, using his weaker players first. He had me lead off. I hit well enough to get to first base, and Phillip and Rosie followed with solid ground balls. The bases were loaded when Alex stepped up to the plate. He prepared to bat left, but when the entire outfield simultaneously ran to right field in anticipation of his hitting a home run, Alex saw an opportunity. When Mrs. Erb wound up for the pitch, he swung himself around, batted right, and drove the ball far down the abandoned left field, earning us four runs. Aggravated shouts of “no fair” filled the air, and poor Mrs. Erb didn’t know what to do with this new twist on an already awkward situation. After arguing back and forth, Mrs. Erb determined that what Alex had done was fair and square, but he couldn’t do it again. She let the score stand at 4–0 and ordered us to play ball. We stuck to our game plan, and when Alex’s turn came up again, he batted left. With a loud crack, the ball flew over the heads of all the outfielders and garnered our team another four runs. Our score was well into the double digits by the time we accumulated three outs. The other team played another scoreless inning, and we were again back in the batter’s box. At Alex’s next at bat, with bases loaded, we were so far ahead he began to relax and tease the outfielders. “Farther, go out farther,” he hollered, motioning with his hand high in the air. “You’d better move back,” he taunted. Off they scampered into the outfield, unable to anticipate his next move. Alex bunted the ball, and we all stole home.
We were dusty and bruised but covered in smiles when the game finally came to an end after nine innings. The score was 40–0. We had completely shut out the other team, far exceeding our own expectations. Our classmates refused to ever play against us again, but we had made a point and secured for ourselves a grudging respect.
Throughout the school year, we made bimonthly visits to Fairholme. Catherine and I spent hours in her attic, comparing our lives and imagining how our futures might unfold. The slanting ceilings forced us to stoop over when we walked, and in the warmer weather, it was as hot as a steam bath, but it was the only place we had the least bit of privacy. We reminisced about Mrs. Phillipot, and she kept me posted on the spirited and opinionated Diene from Fairholme who had married into other colonies. Every community had its own eccentricities, and sometimes the adjustment after marriage was difficult, especially if the new colony was too strict or old-fashioned.
Catherine represented the cherished life I had left behind, and I was her door to the frightening and fascinating outside world. Only once did we have an argument. Whenever I visited Fairholme, I always spent time alone with both Sandra and Catherine. It never caused any friction, because we respected each other’s friendships. During a long walk with Sandra, she told me she knew how babies were born. She said men lie on top of the women “und nah tut er’s einhin [and he puts it in].” It was at once shocking and self-explanatory. Up in the attic, I anxiously shared Sandra’s startling news with Catherine, and a difference of opinion ensued. Catherine insisted it was complete rubbish, but the damage was done. We could not look our parents in the eye for weeks.
Away from the security of Catherine’s attic, I kept to my fixation of improving our image at school and discovered from my classmates that a hamburger was the ultimate lunch. I had tasted a hamburger once before when Alex and I accompanied Miss Pattimore to the Centennial Library in Winnipeg one day after school. By the time we had chosen books and checked them out, Alex and I were fading from hunger. “Let’s go to McDonald’s,” Miss Pattimore said cheerfully.
The only restaurant we had ever been to was Jimmy’s Café in Portage la Prairie. It was a little Chinese coffee shop frequented by Hutterites when they came to town on business or for medical appointments. Jimmy was small and friendly, and his English was no better than ours. A haze of cigarette smoke always hung in the air, and the clatter of plates could be heard from behind a set of swinging doors. Everyone on the colony ordered the same dish, shrimp fried rice, because it was the most exotic thing we had ever tasted. Neither shrimp nor rice was ever served in Fairholme, and that one little stop made getting a needle or being sick worthwhile.
At McDonald’s, Alex swung open the glass doors and we walked up to the counter, where Miss Pattimore ordered all of us small fries, an orange soft drink, and a hamburger. Sliding into the booth, I lifted the corner of the bun and saw a round pickle and a splash of ketchup on the burger. My brother and I devoured ours, and Alex licked the extra ketchup off his hamburger wrapper. I couldn’t really blame him since both of us were still really hungry.
After the meal, Miss Pattimore told us her mother lived in the city and she wanted to stop by and see her for a few minutes. She asked us to wait in the car. We could not understand why her mother wouldn’t want to see us too. This was so unlike the colony, where we paraded in and out of each other’s homes all the time. The older people, especially, loved to meet someone new, and Alex and I wondered out loud why her mother would be so unsociable. Was she ill, or was her house a mess? We would not have minded. After about twenty minutes, Miss Pattimore bounced down the front steps of her mother’s home. I watched the drawn curtains in the living room to see whether curiosity would get the better of her mother, but I waited in vain.
The sun had set when we finally returned home. “We’re starving, Mom,” I said as we burst through the front door.
“Didn’t you have supper?” she asked, surprised.
“No, we didn’t,” I answered. “All we had was a hamburger and french fries.”
“Well, that’s called supper, Ann-Marie,” Mother replied.
I convinced Mother that we should create our own version of a hamburger since we could not afford ground beef. It was slaughtering season in New Rosedale, and my mother’s older brother Eddie had brought us a large pail of chicken gizzards, livers, and hearts. Eddie Vetter was always kind to us, repairing our run-down appliances when God didn’t, or replacing them with another secondhand model when death by overuse was confirmed. Mother used a small meat grinder, and the chicken hearts and gizzards were soon ground into “hamburger.” We fried it up with some onions and added salt and pepper for taste. The meat was chewy and didn’t bind very well, but it tasted surprisingly good. Mother made everyone a hamburger sandwich for their school lunches, and I added a splash of ketchup.
The next day, before I had even taken a bite, Bernie Legit was standing in front of me, holding a large chocolate brownie in the palm of his hand. At almost six feet tall, Bernie looked like an undernourished flagpole. “Trade you this for your hamburger sandwich,” he said. My eyes fixed on the thick slab of chocolate. “C’mon,” said Alex, with a glint in his eye, “give it to the poor guy. It’ll put some meat on his bones.” We traded lunches, and I held my breath. “Wow, this tastes great! It’s the best hamburger I’ve ever had,” he said, taking another bite. The whole class was intrigued.
My brother waited until Bernie had swallowed the last meaty morsel before jumping in, unable to contain himself. “Do you know what you just ate?” Alex demanded gleefully.
“What?” gasped Bernie, his eyes filling with fear.
“Those were chicken innards. Ground-up chicken innards! And they taste better than hamburger ’cause they’re better for you,” he replied smugly. Bernie heaved and ran for the bathroom. It was the last time anyone traded an item of food with one of us.
The leaves turned to red and gold that autumn, and we shivered in the morning cold, anticipating the bone-chilling temperatures that would soon follow. One evening, when frost had cloaked the lawns and fallow fields, Father called me downstairs. “Ann-Marie, come to the kitchen!” he shouted. I was high in the Alps with Heidi, Peter, and the goats, and the budding romance between the goat herder and his alpine sweetheart was just heating up. Borrowed library books were my great escape, and I did not want to be disturbed.
“What do you want, Dad?” I called, leaning over the banister.
“Come right away; you have to come!” he said. Halfway down the stairs, the smell of overripe bananas told me he’d been to Winnipeg to visit his grocer friend. Boxes of fruit and vegetables stood haphazardly around the kitchen, waiting to be sorted and salvaged. Dad was standing there with a broad smile on his face. “Look what I bought for you,” he said, holding out a pair of white skates.
“Oh, Dad!” I raced toward him. “Where did you get them?”
“Well,” he replied, “remember those nine dollars you gave me so we wouldn’t go broke? I found these at a secondhand store in Winnipeg today.”
The skates were in good condition, and although I would need to stuff the toes with thick socks until I grew into them, I was absolutely thrilled.
Skating was forbidden on the colony, but every year a handful of the boys in Fairholme secretly acquired a used pair and would take turns with them on the river. If caught, they would be disciplined in the Essenschul. Once a year, at Easter, they were allowed to turn the skates over to the Prediger, without penalty, to be burned. Easter was a time of soul-searching and renewal, where even children are encouraged to claim a fresh start. But the kind of renewal Oltvetter Dornn undertook that spring would reopen old wounds with Jake Maendel and ignite another controversy.
When we left Fairholme, Oltvetter Dornn had wanted to come with us, but Father refused to bend to Oltvetter’s one stipulation: that we call Dahl’s Farm a Hutterite colony. Still, Oltvetter came once to visit us at Rogers’ Farm, and he shuffled around our house in his black hat and gray bedroom slippers, killing flies and conversing with Mother while she worked. At eighty-three, he was out of sorts. Both of his sons had left Fairholme, and he felt alone again, still clinging to the notion that community life was the only way to heaven. Mother had her radio on the religious broadcast channel, where one evangelist gave a compelling sermon in German about salvation. Oltvetter was captivated by the evangelist’s urging to make an outward commitment to Jesus, and with tears streaming down his face, he gave his heart to the Lord right in our kitchen. When he returned to Fairholme, he kept quiet about his experience, as Hutterites do not believe in such public declarations of salvation but rather believe in practicing their faith through acts of service.
Back in Fairholme, Oltvetter’s soul stirred like a body of unruhigs Wosser (restless water). He requested permission for a trip to Ontario to see his three daughters, and while in the province, he also would visit Julius Farm, the community that drew him away from the Hutterites thirty years earlier and the one from which he had been evicted. Oltvetter wanted to return one last time to make peace with the place that had once held so much promise and ended in so much heartbreak.
In the years after my grandfather left Julius Farm, Julius Kubassek’s tyranny had eventually been his downfall. Oltvetter’s tormentor lost the respect of his followers, and while fleeing the community the previous year, he had died of a heart attack. After his sudden death, his followers learned of his plan to buy himself property with the thousands of dollars he’d squirreled away in a secret bank account.
I remember Oltvetter standing at the train station in Winnipeg, bent over his cane, his trusted flyswatter strangled in the lid of his suitcase, ready to reconcile with his past.
His visit was most agreeable. The people at Julius Farm in Bright, Ontario, were happy to see him. He also enjoyed time with his daughters, who took him wherever he wanted to go, including to local revival meetings. Inspired by his conversion experience via the radio evangelist, he decided to be rebaptized as a way of reconfirming his faith. When news of that filtered back to Fairholme, however, Jake Vetter was furious. Oltvetter’s actions were seen as denouncing his Hutterite faith.
Anticipating a period of certain excommunication back in Fairholme, Oltvetter prolonged his return. Then, one night, he went to sleep and never woke up. In the morning he was discovered with his hands in the air and a look of serenity on his face. God had taken him home.
It was left to Father to inform Jake, who unleashed his fury over the phone, telling Dad that his father’s rebaptism put his burial on colony ground in question. “He doesn’t belong to us anymore. He’s no longer a Hutterite,” Jake said.
“Well, Jake, that’s all I wanted to know,” Father said before quietly hanging up the phone. Beneath his bluster, Father knew Jake Maendel wanted more than anything to have Oltvetter laid to rest in Fairholme. He just wanted Father to beg for the privilege, but Father wouldn’t.
The Bright community wanted to restore the dignity to my grandfather in death that Julius had stripped away in life, and the people at Julius Farm offered to have Oltvetter’s funeral there, with all expenses paid. Christian Dornn’s pursuit of security in the realm of community life had left him yearning for something more. In the end he found it within himself, and the lamb lay down with the lion. Oltvetter was laid to rest in the same graveyard as his former nemesis, Julius Kubassek.
After his death, the Bright community decided to honor Grandfather Dornn by giving Father and Uncle Chris, who still resided at Dahl’s Farm, four hundred dollars each to buy a cow. This was a most unfortunate turn of events for Tanya Radner, as we ended up with her favorite pet. Tanya’s dad owned cattle, and Father put the word out in the spring that he was looking to buy a good milk cow. Mr. Radner had some for sale, and Dad unknowingly chose Tanya’s favorite. Edwin and Alex walked the five miles to Tanya’s farm to collect Daisy and led the beautiful Jersey cow off her property and home to ours. At school the next day, she begged Alex not to change Daisy’s name. “Oh, heavens,” said Alex, rolling his eyes. “I’m not sticking with a foolish name like that. We’ve changed her name to Old Critter,” he declared.
“Old Critter!” shouted Tanya. “That’s an awful name. How dare you name my cow Old Critter!” she cried.
“She’s my cow now, Tanya,” said Alex calmly. I knew that finding pleasure in the misfortune of another was sinful, but I hoped God would give me a pass.
Without warning, Sana Basel showed up on our doorstep. She entered the house shouting, “Tank-you, tank-you, tank-you” to the perfect stranger who had dropped her off after confirming her destination. No one could resist her. The driver had dropped by Fairholme to buy some eggs and found himself charmed into giving Sana Basel a ride to her sister’s house—destination unknown, but with assurances that it couldn’t be far. How they found Rogers’ Farm still remains a mystery.
Mother threw her arms around her sister, overjoyed to see her. Sana Basel had a gift for making the mundane seem special, and she soon plunged into the work at hand with both feet, delegating with cheerful gusto. “Oh, my heavens, it smells like cats and rats and mice in here,” she said, bursting into my brothers’ bedroom and stripping the sheets. She had brought some Specksaften with her to help Mother with the spring cleaning.
As they washed walls together, Mother taught Sana Basel the new songs she was learning on the radio, and Sana Basel regaled her with the latest news. At a large funeral in Ibervelle Colony, die frommer “the virtuous” Miriam Hofer from Hope Springs had slept with another man, and everyone was talking about it. Miriam’s husband had checked into her aunt’s guest bedroom early, and at midnight Miriam quietly undressed in the dark and hopped into bed next to him. The next morning, she awoke to find that the man she had spent the night with wasn’t her husband. She was in the wrong guest bedroom! The whole colony was aflutter over it, and Miriam was horrified. She just could not believe her foolish mistake.
For a few wonderful days we relished Sana Basel’s presence before we reluctantly drove her back to the colony, singing favorite hymns until the old truck rounded the dusty gravel road that led to Fairholme.
There was lots of space at Rogers’ Farm, which seemed to have a beneficial effect, and whether by necessity or design, we fared better in our new neck of the woods. With calves in the barn, Edwin and Alex had regular chores to do, which relieved the boredom of the previous summer. When the calves took ill, Mother expanded her prayer constituency to include them, and God turned out to be just as reliable with the livestock as with worn-out appliances. Father saw a future for himself in cattle, but he longed to be independent. He offered Pete Siemens ten thousand dollars for Rogers’ Farm. When Mr. Siemens hinted at selling the house and property on the open market, Father upped his bid to fifteen thousand dollars.
While Mother and Dad contemplated their future, along came whirling dervish Terry Miller. He was part evangelist, part comedian and was considered by many Hutterites to be a troublemaker. My parents knew Terry as an outsider who stayed at Forest River Hutterite Colony years ago in North Dakota. Terry promptly evangelized the young people on the colony, causing enough chaos that he was finally expelled. The exile did little to deter him, and wherever there was a soul to be saved, Hutterite or otherwise, he was bound to find them.
By the time he and Mother had consumed their cups of coffee, Terry had her convinced that a free week of Bible camp could do her children no harm, and Edwin, Alex, Rosie, Phillip, and I, with at least one change of clean underwear, were off to Grenfell, Saskatchewan, for a week of deliverance at the Grenfell Bible Camp. As we pulled away in Terry’s big, black car, I noticed that Mother and Dad looked bone weary, and I realized they needed a holiday too. They stood at the front door and waved. Carl and Genie cried because they wanted to come as well, but Mother held firm, claiming she couldn’t send that many bed wetters at one time; it just wouldn’t be right.
Terry’s clean vehicle had never been subjected to so many sinners before, but it didn’t seem to bother him. We stopped at every fast-food outlet on the expansive Trans-Canada Highway leading to Grenfell and pulled into Bible camp just in time for the evening service. Terry led us to a big, white tent filled with people shouting, “Hallelujah, thank you, Jesus” and “Glory to God.” We followed him into the revival meeting, and he led us straight to the front row before proceeding to the stage, his whole body in buoyant motion as he went. The whole place fell under a rapturous spell as he started to sing a familiar hymn. A woman in a large, blue sun hat earnestly played the piano as the throng willingly joined in, hands stretched upward. “I surrender all, I surrender all; all to Thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all!”
Calls for repentance prompted people to come forward in droves. Brother Miller and two others disembarked from the stage to start praying over people at the front. We tried to push our chairs back to put some distance between the acknowledged sinners and ourselves, but there was no place to go. “Praise God, they’re dropping like flies tonight,” I heard someone behind me say.
My eyes and mouth hung wide open as more and more people fell backward into a trance and onto the hard ground. I was sure they must have had a heart attack. Someone tried to get me to fall back, too, and applied some pressure to my head, but I pushed forward, grateful for every extra pound of body weight to withstand the force. I could just imagine what the people on the colony would say to the goings-on here. “What insanity!” they would have exclaimed, glad that the good Lord didn’t require them to make fools of themselves like this bunch. By the time the three-hour service was over, all of the bodies on the floor had recovered and returned to their seats.
The next morning in the common breakfast area, I took in the full spectrum of mortals attending the Bible camp. There were misfits of every shape and variety: middle-aged women with elaborate beehive hairdos, young women in flowing peasant skirts, and young men with worn blue jeans and outrageous Afros, all desperate to make contact with God.
The second evening’s service was as shocking as the first. The focus was on speaking in tongues. After a rousing pep talk from Brother Miller about the utility of such a gift in warding off evil spirits, we were directed to test our linguistic capacity. Everyone went into high gear, grunting and crying out in odd-sounding syllables. A preacher headed toward me, and placing his large hand on my head with a thud, he commanded me to open my mouth and start talking. When my unyielding tongue froze, he shook my head and commanded me to make some verbal contact. Spontaneously, I started reciting a traditional table prayer in German as he jumped up and down, praising God for victory.
Our salvation at Bible camp was not enough to secure our future at Rogers’ Farm. When we returned home, Father was in turmoil. Pete Siemens was selling the property out from under him. His renovations were so impressive that Mr. Siemens saw an opportunity to make a profit. Dad found out about other prospective buyers when the strangers knocked on the door and said that Pete Siemens had sent them. Father clenched his jaw as he let them in, and we ate our supper meal in silence while they toured our home.
“God will look after us, Dad. Don’t be afraid,” murmured Mother, but Father would not rest. The weight of a wife and seven hungry children eating at his table lay heavily on his mind. “Och, Mary,” he sighed, cupping his face in his hands. “Joining the colony was the worst mistake I ever made. I would be so much further ahead today if—”
“Votar! Father!” we cried in unison, blinking and swallowing as we saw our lives flash before our eyes.
“How can you say that? Then you wouldn’t have us!” Mother scolded. Father’s face melted into a weary smile.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said, chastened.
I thought about the story he’d once told us about coming over from Russia in a great boat. His clearest memory was of his mother sending him to the ship’s canteen for some peppermints. The seas were rough, and she was seasick. He was only five years old, but she had pressed some rubles into his hand and told him to get the mints to settle her lurching stomach. On the counter in the store, the steward had a small windup bird that hopped up and down, and Father was so intrigued that he threw his money on the counter and dashed off with it. The steward gave chase, and after wrestling the bird from his hand, offered him a handful of peppermints to take to his mother. Beneath Father’s distress lay the heart of that young boy who tried to do the right thing but found that what he wanted was just out of his grasp.
That night we all knelt in a circle in the living room to pray. I caught sight of Father’s folded hands. I remembered those hands on the steering wheel of the truck as he and I drove to Deerboine Colony to collect Mother and Renie. They were the hands once fine enough to do delicate calligraphy, the hands that rested on Mother’s shoulder in a moment of tenderness, the hands that shook in anger over Jake Vetter’s unreasonableness. I saw not just my father, but a man of conviction and principle, willing to do whatever it took to support his family.
Two weeks after we moved out of our beloved mansion, it was completely destroyed by fire. The fire department, we were later told, attributed the blaze to faulty wiring in the basement. But Mother’s prediction that God would take care of us turned out to be true.