“I went back to dreaming
and becoming.”
Miss Winkler in her robe and crown,
with her runners-up.
ELEVEN
A Place of Our Own in Plum Coulee/Winkler
LISTEN TO ME , and I will make you wise,” said one of the guests to my father. Our family had been asked to sing at the wedding of Sarah Hofer, one of Sana Basel’s runaway daughters. It was the first English wedding we had ever been to. I knew full well that beneath that swirl of white was a Hutterite girl, but everyone said Sarah sure pulled it off. Her husband, Bruce—who chewed nervously on his lower lip—was terribly handsome and ten years younger than the bride. Paul Vetter had let himself be talked into coming, and Sana Basel was holding court with people she had never met, her face aglow beneath her new Tiechel. At the reception, over a tray of matrimonial cake, Zacky Waldner, another runaway from Sunnyside Colony, approached my father. “Ron, I know a nice farm for you,” he said, leaning in.
The next afternoon we all went to see it. The property was located in the Mennonite heartland of southern Manitoba. A modest three-bedroom house stood on a large yard off the main highway, which led in one direction to Plum Coulee and in the other to Winkler. It had an unfinished basement that Mother imagined would be a good place for teenage boys. Two huge, rectangular chicken barns filled the backyard. It came with ninety-seven acres of land, planted in wheat, as perfect as it was impossible.
Gary Jackman wanted forty thousand dollars for it, and that was a fortune to my father, whose meager savings wouldn’t amount to a respectable down payment. Mr. Jackman had anticipated driving by on the highway from town and feeling proud that it was in good hands. He was very attached to his farm and wanted it to go to someone who would realize its potential, but his hopes were fading. He had shown it to so many people he was ready to throw in the towel. Someone had tried to buy it, but the deal fell through.
Father wasn’t much of a prospect. “I’ve got the button, but I don’t have the shirt,” he said, apologetically. “Well, that’s something,” Gary Jackman replied. Those words gave Father hope, and when Mr. Jackman offered to apply the two-thousand-dollar down payment from the deal that went sour to Father, his optimism grew.
The manager of the Winkler Credit Union looked into Father’s eyes the next afternoon and decided to take a chance on a humble man with a vision. Suddenly Father’s dream of owning his own place was a reality, a mere two years after we’d left Fairholme Colony. Dad’s sister Rosie Baer from Ontario loaned him five thousand dollars, and for the third time in three years, we had a new home.
“When you stepped out of your pickup that day, I saw you cast your eyes in prayer toward the heavens, and I knew then that you were the right buyer for my farm,” Gary Jackman later told Father.
Father applied the seven years of experience he had acquired as chicken man in New Rosedale Colony, and we were all soon gainfully employed gathering seven thousand eggs a day. An egg contract with Ogilvie Feeds had come with the sale, and a Winnipeg feed company supplied Father with feed and nine thousand Highline chickens each cycle. Father received 10 percent of the profit and all the cracked eggs we could eat.
These were among the happiest times of our parents’ lives. The Hutterite colony that had been so central to our being was replaced by the Church of God in Plum Coulee, where Mother became so involved in prayer meetings that some days the breakfast dishes were still on the table when we came home from school.
The people from the nearby village of Plum Coulee and the bigger town of Winkler ten kilometers to the west were conservative, hardworking, and just as keen as my parents to keep their children on the straight and narrow. Consequently we spent most of our spare time in church. Not the solemn and sober Mennonite churches that dotted the landscape, but the loudest and liveliest churches Mother could find.
Mother couldn’t get enough of these churches. We eventually became a permanent fixture at the Global Mission’s church in Winkler, where an irate neighbor hurled an onion through the window to get the zealous congregation to tone down the “Amens” and “Hallelujahs.” The shattered glass and baseball-sized vegetable landed with a thud down the center aisle, and Flower Annie, a mentally challenged woman who helped support herself by making flowers out of crepe paper, put it in her purse to cook in her soup the next day.
Our home was continually crowded with people who needed a place to stay, a hot meal, or a word of encouragement. We never locked our doors, and sometimes when we arrived home late from a revival meeting, our beds were already occupied. No one was ever turned away. “There’s always room for one more,” was Mother’s motto as she spread foam mattresses on the floor of the living room. “When the first shift is asleep, I’ll stand them up against the wall and the second shift can go to bed,” she teased. Some came and went. Others, like Dave Klassen, a nursing student in need of a family, stayed for years.
When Anna Basel’s daughters Rachel and Edna left Deerboine Colony, they, too, became part of our family. Dad helped them get jobs and set up bank accounts, and he insisted they save their money, learn to drive, and eventually buy cars.
My siblings and I were now going to school in Plum Coulee with young people, some of whom were conflicted about their Mennonite roots. Our classmates were having as much of an identity crisis as we were, trying to update their parents and modernize their points of view. They respected their parents but considered them old-fashioned and sometimes embarrassing. Father finally relaxed our dress codes, and we were all soon wearing generic blue jeans while the others strutted around in their Lees and Wranglers.
But I remained most at home with my Hutterite friends. I looked forward to our visits to Fairholme and especially to my letters from Catherine.
Hello, Ann-Marie,
I’m not doing much, just wishing you would be here. We’d have so much fun together. I’m trying to sing, but I’m just a croaking pity. You’d better try to come as quick as possible to ease my loneliness. Oh, I miss you. I miss your long finger pointing at me. I miss it terribly . . .
— Catherine
Catherine and I both wanted a bigger life. Even though it seemed improbable, we had earnestly decided to become world-famous singers and spent much of our time together practicing songs we’d heard on the radio, for by now she had her own transistor under her pillow in the attic in Fairholme. We also got plenty of practice when we were apart, me in church, and she on the Hutterite wedding circuit.
Hi, Ann-Marie,
Lots of water has passed under the bridge since we last saw each other. I’ve been to so many Hulbas. Practiced up my voice. Linda from Fairholme had her Hulba last week, and this coming week is her wedding in Milltown to a guy named Jerry. Then, WONDER OF WONDERS, Walter is getting married to Betty from Elm River on Nov. 25th. I think. I was in Oakridge Colony yesterday and sang my eyeballs out there too! They appreciated it terribly much and loved it even more so.
— Catherine
Our new home came with a new baby. On New Year’s Eve, Mother gave birth to Brian Perry Dornn. My parents hadn’t wanted any more children, but Brian soon convinced us he was no accident. With a bright-red rash on each cheek, he was sent to bring us joy. We took him with us on our last visit to see Oma in the hospital in Winnipeg. She was in so much pain it hurt us to look at her, but her lips stretched into a momentary smile when Mother held out her latest production. “Brine?” she asked rolling her r. “What kind of a name is that?”
Oma had visited our farm in Plum Coulee soon after we’d settled in. Father had gone to Fairholme to fetch her and gave her the grand tour . . . the house, the barns, the chickens, and the crops. His enthusiasm delighted her. “I want to live out my life with my own people,” Oma told him, cleaning her glasses with her apron as they drove around looking at the wheat fields. That afternoon she extracted a promise from Father that as soon as he could afford a little trailer, she would come and live next door to us just as she had on the colony. Her face shone with contentment when the two of them returned for supper.
Shortly after her visit, however, she took sick. She had always had a weak heart, but when the doctors insisted on putting in a pacemaker, her body rejected it and she had a stroke. Gangrene set into her left leg, and the doctors had to amputate. When the deadly infection spread, the surgery had to be repeated. For nine months she suffered terribly before a merciful death released her from the incessant pain.
At the funeral in Fairholme, I holed up in the attic at Catherine’s house, refusing to go next door to view Oma in her casket. Oma and Opa had filled the empty corridors of missing grandparents. I couldn’t bear the thought of never looking into her eyes again or hearing her call my name. “You don’t have to,” my gentle friend assured me until Mother pulled me inside, and insisted, “Du musst!”
In her wooden coffin, Oma’s head lay on a soft feather pillow, and her hair, as pale as her skin, was tucked beneath a black Tiechel. Oma’s hands, once so busy with the daily tasks of life, now rested across her navy Mieder. I was struck by her silence. No more gasps and moans; at eighty-two years of age, she was free. Her harrowing, pain-filled life was over.
Mother told me that shortly after moving to Fairholme, a letter from Oma and Opa’s two missing sons had arrived from East Germany into the care of my parents. After the boys had been forced into the German army, their parents never heard from them again, but their sons had been released from prison and had written a letter and enclosed a picture. Father went next door and asked his elderly aunt and uncle if they would know their sons Heinrich and Jacob Georg after so many years.
“Oh, we would know them!” they both cried. “There is no such thing as us not knowing our own children!”
Father pulled out the photograph and asked, “Do you recognize these people?”
Eyeing the picture carefully, they handed it back and forth, finally shaking their heads, sure they had never seen the men before.
“These are your boys,” Father gently told them.
Oma and Opa gasped, their eyes widening as they took in their sons’ images, absorbing the hardship and the sadness in their faces. “Mein Gott!” Oma whispered as she and Opa sank into a chair and wept.
At the opposite end of the community, fifty-six-year-old Jake Maendel lay dying of cancer. Mother’s attempts to see him one last time had been spurned. She had appealed to his daughter Katya by way of a letter pleading for reconciliation.
Dear Katya,
This will really be a surprise to you to get a letter from me. But this has been on my mind for so long already. You know, Katya, I am deeply concerned about your dad. It must be so very hard for him and for the family to see him suffer and slowly getting weaker. It bothers me many times that we cannot come to see him, I often think of the saying, blood is no water. It is my brother, and I cannot help being concerned. The thought might come to you that we didn’t seem to care much when we lived in Fairholme, for which you have all rights to say, but that time we had all kinds of hurt feelings and were full of bitterness. It was so hard to carry all that around all the time, so we went on our knees in earnest prayer, and we can really say now we are no longer the same. We can only feel sorry that we have wasted all those years. We all have to search our hearts daily, as we all don’t know how soon our end may be. May you accept my humble concern and sincerity. We remain in love.
— Mary, Ronald, and
Family
A week later, my father drove Mother to Jake Vetter’s funeral. In full Hutterite apparel, she slipped quietly into the last row of chairs. It was a beautiful September day, and so many people from other colonies had come to pay their respects that the funeral was held outside on the front lawn. Jake Maendel was an icon to many in the Schmiedeleut colonies. In the distance, my mother glimpsed his emaciated corpse. It was all that remained of her estranged brother. While the Hutterite sermon droned on, tears spilled from her eyes onto the dark folds of her skirt.
Back in Plum Coulee, Father’s accumulated years of frustration were being converted into a steely determination. In addition to our daily chores of gathering eggs, summers were spent hoeing half-mile-long rows of sugar beets in the nearby fields with migrant Mexican Mennonites. My brothers tarred and patched roofs during the day in Plum Coulee, and by late afternoons all ten of us could be seen walking hand in hand through Mr. Harder’s oat fields, plucking out pesky wild oats. Father taught us how to tell the weeds apart from the grain, and we’d trek through the fields east to west, north to south, and then on the diagonal until he was satisfied that Mr. Harder’s oat crop would be number one. Even our baby brother got in on the action. The Hutterite philosophy “Arbeit macht das Leben Süss—Work makes life sweet” and the importance of being dutiful were values our parents held dear.
By the time Brian was two years old, he was also my assistant on the top floor of barn number one, gathering sixty eggs a day, points down, into a filler. Brian was a sweet child, alive with happiness. Everything was an adventure, and we all adored him. Once, when he finished gathering his row early, he gleefully threw some of his eggs on Old Critter, who was eating her hay down below. When I caught him, I gave him a couple of whacks on his diapered bottom. Deeply wounded, he threw his arms around my neck and sobbed. Thereafter, influenced by Mother’s spiritual fervor, he spent his free time praying over sick chickens Dad had taken out of their cages and put on the barn floor so they could die in peace. Some sprang back to life, and we thought nothing of it as Father happily returned them to their cages.
When we weren’t doing farm chores, we were coming or going to church or having church people to our home for prayer meetings. Mother went from being a good-natured Hutterite woman to a firebrand. Her faith was fierce, and she tried to convert everyone she talked to, including the Electrolux salesman who thought he’d come to sell her a necessary household item.
The carpets in our house came in gaudy squares of gold and orange and were impossible to clean. Mother called them ecklig, “obscene.” She took hot, soapy water and a scrub brush to them every Saturday without any satisfaction. But when the Electrolux salesman stopped by to entice her to buy a vacuum cleaner, she had an even better offer for him and set about convincing him to give his heart to Jesus. By the time we returned from gathering eggs— tired, smelly, and hungry—they were only halfway through their respective sales pitches, so Mother invited him to stay for supper. When he saw what she was serving, he bolted, for piled high on a plate in the center of the table, Mother had placed our weekly feast of “walkers and talkers,” boiled chicken feet and necks.
Father steadfastly relied on Mother’s prayers when dry weather threatened his crops, because her God was big enough to make it rain. During dry spells he was on edge, his face strained from watching his parched wheat fields withering. I remember being awakened in the night by a breeze blowing the screen door in the living room open. I caught sight of my parents standing in the open field that began at the edge of the garden. In the dark I could see their outlines, Mother in her nightgown and Father in his pajamas. Their hands, clasped together, were raised against a darkened sky as Mother, her voice determined and sure, prayed for rain. A rumble of thunder made me jump, and out of the darkness gusts of wind blew drops of rain against the windowpane. I heard cheers of joy as Mother, still clutching Father’s arm, ran toward the house. Her simple faith touched the heart of God. She invited miracles, and they came. And every year, by the grace of God, we inched forward.
In many ways, our inner lives remained similar to what we had on the colony, rich with shared memories and experiences. But it was through Catherine’s letters that I was given a keyhole peek into what my life might have been had we stayed.
Dear Ann-Marie,
Hello, how are you still keeping? We’re very busy hereabouts, picking, canning, cleaning, weeding etc. . . . No end, it seems. When are you coming around? Next Sunday? I wish you’d make it fast. We just finished weeding the strawberry patch and killing a few crate roosters, and now the bell has rung again. Weeding some more . . . (sigh) . . .
I’m back, made a mistake. It wasn’t weeding after all. Was only bringing fruit home from the kitchen. To me it seems they enjoy ring-a-linging that stupid bell!
— Catherine
While Catherine was trying to escape the sound of the bell in Fairholme, I was desperate to flee the daily grind of doing dishes, folding laundry, and gathering eggs. Father had tacked a sign on the side of barn one. It read Jesus Saves, and every time I walked through the front entrance, I wished that Jesus would save me from the rows and rows of eggs waiting to be put in fillers.
My “world-famous singer” side just couldn’t bear the constant clatter of work. A 4-H cooking class was being offered at Mrs. Wiebe’s house in Plum Coulee every Thursday after school. Mrs. Wiebe was the mother of one of my classmates. She could have taught underwater basket weaving and I would have enlisted, such was my desperation to get off the farm.
Before the ink was dry on my signature, Rosie had signed up too. Mother couldn’t understand why we wanted somebody else to teach us how to read a recipe book and bake cookies when we already knew how. Didn’t we spend every Saturday baking up a storm just to get us through the week? Besides, who would give us a ride home? We weren’t going to tell her that walking the mile and a half would get us out of supper dishes. I missed the regulated summer afternoon naps in Fairholme, where even in peak season everything came to a halt after dinner so adults and children could rest, and Catherine and I would steal away to the bakery for a pickle and a bun and important Secret Flowerpot matters.
Mrs. Weibe’s classes gave us a break from farm duties, but the setting was gloomy and sober. Her house, with its drawn curtains, choked off any natural light and felt dark and uninviting. We could see the dust on all the clutter and trinkets that lined her shelves and on the fake plastic flowers on her kitchen table. Rosie and I felt queasy when she took a duster to them, rearranging the dirt. Her four sons avoided coming into the kitchen area, and the teasing and banter so typical of Hutterite homes was missing. The atmosphere felt hollow without the ribbing and smart remarks we would have been subjected to on the colony as we pored over the recipe book on the kitchen table.
All of Mrs. Wiebe’s excess weight had accumulated at her waist, which was mounted on two skinny little legs that appeared below a knee-length hem. Because the belts on her dresses didn’t fit around her middle, she fastened them in the smaller expanse immediately under her bosom. While we contemplated oven temperature and serving sizes, a loud explosion rocked us to attention. Four more eruptions followed, all coming from the oven. “Oh dear, oh dear!” Mrs. Wiebe whimpered, reaching for her hot pads. Pulling the handle, she was confronted by a mess of white splats all over the inside of her oven. The potatoes she was baking for supper had blown up. This would have caused gales of laughter in Fairholme, and by supper the whole colony would have known about it. Mrs. Wiebe would have earned herself an appropriate nickname, like Kartoffel Suzie, “Potato Suzie,” by which she would be referred to forevermore. The story would have entertained the women working in the kitchen, garden, and bakery every time it was told. But in Mrs. Wiebe’s kitchen, this was no laughing matter, and Rosie and I had to stifle our amusement as our flustered host ended the cooking lesson and engaged us in cleaning up the splatter while she washed and carefully pierced five more potatoes with a fork.
Dear Ann-Marie:
You wouldn’t believe it, but Rachel and some others were involved in helping a getaway. For Sue it was. She left the colony. Her Josh Vetter from James Valley Colony and his wife somehow didn’t smoothen out things a bit. Her mother told Josh Vetter that Sue was leaving, and naturally he got all excited, because of course he thinks she’s aiming straight for hell with her skirts on fire already. Didn’t know if it helped him any tho’ because Sue was at Peter Vetter’s place when her mother told him, so she just took off right away and walked out to the back roads and Rachel came along and picked her up. But getting her satchel out was another thing. One move toward her bedroom would have been a giveaway, so they’re sending it by bus to Brandon.
— Catherine
Catherine kept me plugged in to the Hutterite telegraph and all the latest gossip going on back in Fairholme. We were each other’s lifeline. I had an unfortunate imagination and made my life sound much more glamorous than it really was. I pretended I had the world by the tail, when I was actually hanging from a string. Then God sent me Charlene Mironuck.
Charlene was my first English friend, and we met at a revival meeting. She was a city girl from Regina, too beautiful and sure of herself for me to ever think we had anything in common; but for reasons I never fully understood and was too afraid to ask, she chose me as her friend. She had shiny brown hair, an upturned nose, and a warm smile that made her popular with the boys, while I was still trying to get girls to like me. We were in an entirely different class. Charlene got the latest fashions every season, while I wore clothes other people had discarded, but she saw potential in this overweight girl with a thirty-six-inch waist and a bad wardrobe.
Charlene cornered me after the church service to ask why I was wearing a light blue dress with white pantyhose in the dead of winter. Her directness was blunted by a glint in her eyes that said, “I can help.” From then on we were fast friends and kept in touch through whatever means we could, mostly letters. For one blissful week in the summers, we both attended church camp in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, where we stayed in the girls’ dorm together. It was heaven.
Charlene was twelve and I was fourteen, but she tended to me with the devotion of a Mutterle (little mother). She staged a fashion intervention and taught me how to curl my hair, what to wear and how to wear it, taking up where Mother, who was too busy praising Jesus, left off. Slowly I began to develop a sense of myself.
I was now in my teens, and I started to rebel against the work-and-revival-meeting routine that dominated our lives. On weekends I was determined that if Rosie and I did the floors, the dishes, the baking, and general cleanup, by which time the boys had nearly succumbed to the fumes of chicken manure while cleaning the barns, we should all be taken to town in the afternoon for an outing.
Mother was relatively easy to convince, but Father was a tougher case. He needed a reason to go to town. He was too tired to wander the stores in Winkler, looking at things he couldn’t afford, but he was the only one with a driver’s license. Every weekend we had a tug-of-war over the shopping trip. “The cat can look at the king,” Mother used to humor him, unsuccessfully. Nothing made farm chores more enjoyable for me than the thought of wandering the spacious Winkler dry goods store on Main Street, fingering crisp new blouses and the stiff cuffs of the latest bell bottoms in the Style-Rite women’s department, side by side with the sunburned faces of Mennonite ladies.
The one time Father went without a fuss was when he’d decided to buy an accordion for Rosie and me. It was the closest thing to a piano he could afford. Our passion for playing a musical instrument began in earnest in Domain, where a piano stood at the back of the classroom. All of the girls except my sister and me took turns playing “O Canada” every morning while the rest stood at attention and sang. I was seized by such jealousy with the way Tanya’s hands danced effortlessly on the keys; I could barely sing along.
Father loved music and felt bad that he was unable to provide us with formal lessons. Every evening before bed, we gathered in the living room to sing and pray, and he had promised us that as soon as he could afford it, he would buy us a musical instrument, although lessons were still out of the question. At the Winkler music store, Mr. Riemer showed us how to push and pull our new instrument into submission. It looked easy, but it wasn’t. It was a heady experience for my sister and me, who thought we were on our way to accordion greatness. All the excitement at the store came home with us. Rosie and I timed each other for exactly half an hour of practice before we traded off. We were hard at it when Father tried to hush us because he couldn’t hear on the phone.
“Are you missing anything?” yelled the manager of the Winkler music store through the commotion.
“No sir, I don’t think so,” Father replied.
“Well, there’s a little boy here who’s crying, and he says he belongs to you,” shouted Mr. Reimer through a screech of bad notes. In all the flurry we had forgotten Phillip, and no one noticed. We would surely have discovered his absence when it came time for chores.
As a teenager, I craved my own sense of space, a measure of independence. Father agreed that I could get a job and came with me for my interview at the Salem Personal Care Home in Winkler, where my cousin Rachel already worked full-time. “If she gives you any trouble at all, just call me,” he told Mrs. Shritt, who agreed to hire me for four hours after school in the dining room. I was thrilled to be earning my own money. After class I reported to the Salem Home kitchen to serve supper and do the dishes for frail and elderly Mennonites.
Mr. Heoppner always took his false teeth out of his pocket and put them beside his plate for moral support when he ate his supper. Most of the time he forgot them on his tray, and I put them through the dishwasher before returning them to him. He was a sizable man with bedsores, who only wanted to eat bread. Eating bread was a source of comfort to him, and if we denied him five slices with his meal, huge tears would stream down his face. “You are starving me to death!” he’d cry accusingly.
I felt sorry for him and many of the others because it seemed so sad that none of their families could look after them anymore. On the Hutterite colony we were taught that it is an honor and a privilege to look after your aging parents and grandparents, but the monetary and time demands on families in the outside world made such a cushioned circle of care difficult to duplicate.
Hello, Ann-Marie:
They told me how disappointed you were when you were told I was in Baker [Colony]. I was so terribly sorry. Especially that birthday cake. We could have had lots of fun. You were too considerate, Ann-Marie, with that John Denver songbook. I don’t know exactly what to say. Thanks a billion! But mostly I feel the motive behind it which I appreciate even more than that. What can I say? . . . when I heard you were here I was kind of floored. I thought you’d come the Saturday before at Dafit Vetter’s funeral. So I didn’t bargain on you coming next weekend. I didn’t have much choice. Lisa and I had to clean my Aunt Mary’s house. I knew that for four weeks beforehand, but didn’t know precisely just when. I can vouch that your cake was delicious. I was wondering if you had baked it. I especially thought those yellow roses were very pretty. When will be the next time you come around? I missed singing with you . . . groan. I could knock someone on the head! Thunk, blam . . . I missed everything! I’m so darn sorry it had to work out that way, you going one way and me going the other. Thanks for the songbook, but mostly thanks for being my friend.
— Love, Catherine
Winkler and Plum Coulee were predominately white societies, and it was through the Global Missions Organization that we made our acquaintance with black people. Each summer the church imported a dash of color from Africa and the West Indies, a handful of brothers and sisters from affiliate churches, to attend church camp in Canada. After a week of sitting on pews, they naturally wanted to stay on and experience some Canadian culture, so the elders in the church asked my parents to take them in for three weeks. We had no room, but my parents said yes.
We could not have been more opposite, from the color of our skin, to the speed with which we moved, to the foods we ate. At a loss for words, Father referred to them as “darkies.” They in kind called us “whities,” and we hit it off immediately. Summer was our busy season, and we had so much work to do we hurried everywhere we went. Our guests, however, sauntered, slapping at the flies and mosquitoes with one of Mother’s dish towels. We gulped down our meat and potatoes while they chewed and savored theirs, wondering out loud if we ever ate curried rice or fish. We had not heard of their dishes, but Mother let the ladies take over her small kitchen and show us how.
They asked to use Mother’s washing machine but failed to mention they had never used one before. When we heard loud groans and rattling coming from the basement, Mother discovered that they had stuffed the machine with their entire wardrobe and every color of garment they owned. Our differences in speech became more fodder for humor. We razzed them for the way they said “ax” instead of “ask,” and they poked fun at our pitiful “th” sounds, laughing until our sides hurt. Sister Jenny let me touch her hair and roared like thunder when I told her it felt like soft steel wool. Her arms and legs glistened from her daily application of Vaseline. She said it was her best beauty secret, and I immediately started in on the large jar mother used for Brian’s diaper rash in the hopes that my skin would look as silky as hers.
It was clear we had the same God. We sang and worked, played and prayed together. They injected our summers with fun. Their laid-back disposition was good for us. They got just as much work done without being as frantic as we were, tearing around at high speed. We held hands and wept when they left for home. None became dearer to us than Rhoney Pryce.
He was a tall, handsome nineteen-year-old from the Caribbean island of Antigua. Mature and resourceful, Rhoney loved hard work, good fun, and playing pranks. He was black as midnight, but he fit in with us like a missing piece of a puzzle. We all fell in love with him. My brothers idolized him; my parents, whom he towered over, adored him; and I without any effort developed a crush on him.
We had a large strawberry patch, which we slaved over in early July when the berries were ripe. Our challenge was to sell them as soon as they were picked, because they perished quickly in the hot weather. Rhoney knew his way around the marketplace at his home in Antigua, and he showed this clueless bunch how it should be done at our home. Piling one crate on top of his head and one in each hand, he walked out to the road. Tall, proud, and statuesque, he created such a spectacle that cars on the highway slowed down for a good look, and then he had them. With his blinding white smile and charming manner, he coerced tight-fisted Mennonites into buying every last strawberry we picked. My brothers swore he cheated and put glue on his head to balance the crates, but he just laughed as they tried desperately to imitate him.
That first summer we became buddies while working in the garden and gathering eggs together during the day, and in the evenings playing soccer and football on our large front lawn. He was full of zest and energy and gave my athletic brothers a workout to remember. Rhoney didn’t seem to mind that he spent his so-called Canadian holiday working on a farm. He was meticulously groomed, his light cotton shirts and pants pressed to professional standards. Mother couldn’t believe the way he could wield her iron but insisted on doing his laundry and promised his standards would be upheld.
When he left to go home, we all stood in a row, sniffling. He was like our vacation, and now it was over and the fun was going home. After he’d said his good-bye to the rest of the family, he asked me if I would go on a short walk with him. He took my hand as we walked, and I started to tingle, and my stomach had butterflies. He talked about how much he’d enjoyed himself and how dear my family was to him. When he hugged me and asked if I would be his girlfriend, I said yes, and Rhoney gave me a silver clasp bracelet, promising to return the following summer.
Dear Ann-Marie,
My 16th birthday went by unnoticed by everyone, even myself. Who can remember such a thing on a day the Canadians lost their pants to the Russians? I won’t talk about the Canada–Russia series. It’s a thorn in my flesh. Oct 8, 1974.
— Catherine
I could not relate to many of the Mennonite girls at school, who seemed content to get a job, marry locally, and have children after high school. I wanted a much bigger life, even though the dangers of such a dream were constantly drilled into me at church. God, marriage, and family were all that was offered to a good Christian girl, but I wasn’t sold. Instead, I wrote myself a letter in which I promised to not marry until I was at least twenty-eight years old.
I had Sandra, who was always so happy to see me; I had faithful Catherine, whose letters I lived for; I had Charlene looking out for me; and now I had Rhoney too. But my desire to fit in was broadened to a bigger challenge: the English world at large. With Charlene as a tutor, I was gaining confidence, and I shared everything she taught me with Catherine.
The summer after Rhoney left, I was immersed in our murky dugout, wearing the bracelet that he had given me and a Hutterite dress. My parents took the plunge, too, so to speak. But it was a decision Mother in particular wrestled with.
Adult baptism is one of the tenets of the Hutterite faith. Jacob Hutter was burned at the stake in the town square in Innsbruck, Austria, for insisting on adult baptism, in direct contradiction with the teachings of the Catholic Church. Those sacrifices still meant something to Mother, who had been baptized in New Rosedale as an adult at age nineteen. In preparation for baptism, her behavior had been scrutinized for a full year, and she was required to memorize long excerpts of Hutterite catechism and say them aloud in church. Every Sunday afternoon, for six weeks prior to Easter, she and the other candidates had to attend the homes of all the department heads at the New Rosedale Colony and receive a half hour of admonition and Bible reading. These included the German teacher, John Maendel; Andreas Hofer, the senior minister; Jake Maendel, the assistant minister, and Paul Hofer Sr., the farm boss.
Each candidate confessed his or her sins to the head minister and by doing so became reborn in Christ. Transgressions, such as earning private money, drinking to excess, or physically and verbally abusive behavior, warranted harsher punishments for those who had made baptismal vows, since a higher standard was now expected of them. According to the Hutterite Church, faith in Jesus Christ must be expressed through the love and service of the community.
On Easter Sunday, the baptismal candidates were called to the front, where they knelt down in a row. Andreas Hofer, the senior minister, cupped his hand over each head while Jake Maendel poured water into Andreas’s hands. When the water was released, each became full members of the church and received communion for the first time. Father had taken his vows and officially joined the Hutterite church a year before my mother. After much thought, arms locked, my parents were rebaptized together.
It had taken them a long time to let go of the vestiges of their Hutterite life. Their appearance had not been a burden, but one day we arrived home from school to find Mother with her hair cut and Father with his beard shaved off. It was astonishing. Mother looked much younger, and Father didn’t seem as stern without his beard. It had really suited him, and I was sorry to see it go.
Dear Ann-Marie:
I wish you’d come around. I’m often wishy for you. We could go for a walk in the rain. You know, nobody would be crazy enough to go for a stroll in the rain except you. Come soon!
— Love, Catherine
Rhoney returned the following July. We were like a bunch of happy puppies, jumping up and down, thrilled to see him. I was a few pounds heavier, but he just shook his head when he saw me, released his suitcase, and stretched out his arms.
We worked hard in the vegetable patch that summer and enjoyed starlit walks in the evenings along the railroad tracks that ran across the far side of Father’s fields. Rhoney tore up and down the yard with my spirited brothers and lingered over coffee in the afternoons with my parents, exchanging stories about how faith in God had changed their lives. He had earned their trust, but my father was very uncomfortable with me dating. He didn’t have the heart to say anything to Rhoney but sent word through Mother, who discouraged a serious relationship. Rhoney knew I was still very young, but he assured me he would give me time to grow up. In the meantime, he would direct his energies toward immigrating to Canada and getting a job in the hospitality industry.
Our relationship lost its innocence when Rhoney and I went to the Winkler fair. I could feel the stares from the townspeople as we walked by holding hands. Rhoney was so proud, but I wriggled like a kitten trying to escape his clutches. My face grew red as I twisted my fingers out of his grip. I didn’t like being gawked at, and I wished the ground would swallow me up. Those awful feelings of inadequacy came rushing back at me like a tidal wave. My own culture was so subject to ridicule that I didn’t have the maturity or confidence to defend Rhoney’s. I was still that vulnerable ten-year-old trying to make sense of myself and my new world, a tender root trying to push through the ground and become a flower. Hiding behind English clothes and hairstyles wasn’t enough. I needed time and space to become, but I could not explain this to Rhoney.
He was devastated when I broke off the relationship by letter after he went back to Antigua, and he tried to change my mind. When he saw that reasoning with me was hopeless, he turned to my parents for comfort. They wrote him a letter, reassuring him of the special place he would always hold in their hearts.
To Mum and Dad . . .
I just cannot find words to express myself to you the way I really want to for your thoughtfulness, kindness, and affection to me at all times. I say these words from deep within my heart. Your letter was very meaningful to me, and I just cannot get over the fact of how personal you were to me. It really shows me you care, which I must honestly say I was aware of. Mum and Dad, your letter drives the stakes of love in my heart for both of you deeper still.
— Love, Rhoney
I went back to dreaming and becoming. I wanted to wear makeup and get my ears pierced, but Father wouldn’t allow it. With the money from my job at Salem Home, I bought some light blue Revlon eye shadow, Maybelline mascara, and Bonne Belle strawberry lip gloss. When no one was around, I would hide in the bathroom and try them on, but then one of my brothers or sisters would need the washroom and start pounding on the door, and I had to quickly wash it all off. They were such a nuisance!
Dear Ann-Marie,
On Saturday we went picking string beans at Baker Colony. They have a big garden in comparison to the people they got. Anyways, our girls (silly nuts), decided that the boys from Sunnyside will be coming to our place, as they said they would, but any crazy kook could have told them they would rather go to the Hulba in Bloomfield than come here and have a baseball game. So we rushed back and it was all in vain.
— Catherine
In grade twelve, I got a job as a carhop at A&W. I loved everything about it: the teen burgers, the onion rings, the chubby chicken, and the root beer. It was located next to our high school in Winkler, and I worked an eight-hour shift every day after school. Father insisted that I save my wages and buy a used car. When I had accumulated six hundred dollars, he found me a small blue Mustang. I named it Charlie, and it took me everywhere I needed to go.
One day, our manager, Cornie Blatz, called me into the office. “You’re going to represent A&W in the Miss Winkler Queen Pageant, and you’re going to win!” he said, slapping his hands on his desk. Entering a pageant was the furthest thing from my mind.
“I’m too fat,” I told him.
He grinned. “You make up for it in personality and talent.”
“I have nothing to wear,” I confessed.
Cornie wrote out a check for one hundred dollars and handed it to me. “Then go get yourself something,” he countered.
Cornie Blatz was fun to work for. He was a hard-living man with a soft heart and a mischievous twinkle in his eye. He was involved in the community, but his business had never won the pageant. In a staunchly Mennonite town, he was putting his money on a Hutterite. Catherine couldn’t believe it when I told her the news.
I heard rumblings that a non-Mennonite girl shouldn’t be in the pageant, and Catherine agreed that I should thank my lucky stars just to have been entered. She had to be there, she told me, she just had to, and we started plotting and planning ways she could attend the Old Time Value Days, the annual summer festival in Winkler, where the pageant was held. Part of the pageant included a talent competition, and she loved my idea of singing Sonny and Cher’s hit “I Got You Babe” with my then–five-year-old brother, Brian.
I knew the pageant’s penny vote was a lost cause. Families of the other girls were stuffing their boxes with twenty-dollar bills, but Dad refused to put any money in my box because he said it was a people vote, and it would be unethical. When I related this to Catherine, she pressed a handful of nickels and dimes in my hand for the boxes.
The day of the pageant was like a dream. Hutterites from nearby colonies had obviously heard of my entry and came to watch. I was excited to see some polka-dotted heads in the throng around the stage, but my eyes searched the crowd for Catherine. My duet with Brian went very well, and we received lots of applause, but one of the contestants had sewn a number of gorgeous gowns, and I felt sure she had won the competition.
It was a warm, windy night up on the main stage. I had lost a few pounds and was wearing the lime green dress I had bought with Cornie’s money. When the judges called my name as the winner, cheers rang out, and I was hugged and robed and crowned. A bouquet of flowers was thrust in the crook of my arm, and I was pushed into center stage, looking like I’d been struck by lightning. Then at the back of the crowd, I saw her—dark eyes shining and a hopeful smile watching me as I stood in the spotlight. Catherine!
“I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!” An elated Cornie Blatz beamed as I came off the stage. “You have made me so proud!” he shouted, as he grabbed and squeezed me till I couldn’t breathe.
On the way to the photographer’s studio with my runners-up, I saw my parents leaning against a storefront, dumbfounded. “You’re supposed to say congratulations,” I coached.
Back home, I strutted and clicked my way around the house in my heels and regalia. “Nitt foll in den Brunn einhin. Don’t fall into the well,” Father warned when he returned from checking the chickens. Pride was considered the ultimate flaw in Hutterite culture, and we were taught to diligently guard against it. In my moment of triumph, Father was worried I might get my nose too high in the air and wouldn’t see where I was going.
I wrapped myself in the long velvet robe and lay down on the bed. The rabbit skin collar choked my neck, and the combs on my crown pierced my head, but I could not bring myself to take them off. It had taken too long to transform from a Hutterite nobody to an English somebody. I’d finally pushed aside the ridicule and rejection and had swallowed the bitterness of school yard taunts. Even so, longing still plagued my heart.
I thought about the girl from a lifetime ago who had slept in her Hutterite dress the night before she was swept away from the colony, blissfully content with her station in life. Fairholme had been full of hope and promise. By now, I would be a Diene, and wearing a Tiechel. I would have a cook week, a bake week, and a hope chest filled with cross-stitching and dreams about the future. Oh, Oma, if I could just lay my head against your bosom and feel you stroke my hair and hear you tell me again that someday I would understand Father’s desire to be free. Why couldn’t he have tried harder to fit in like other colony men? Paul Vetter and Paul Jr. had their struggles with the system, too, but they hadn’t left.
Like a bird pushed out of its nest, I had been forced out of my cherished existence and thrust into the harsh, cold climate of the outside world, left to fumble my way to a new identity. My turning point came in a letter from Catherine. It was then that I realized, and was able to appreciate, the gift that Father had given to me.
Dear Ann-Marie:
I feel I owe you this letter to sort out my thoughts and mixed feelings, doubts, anxieties, etc. . . . innumerable! The list is endless. I’m beginning to feel doubtful about my leaving and whether I’m making the right decision. Not that I’m saying I’m backing off, yet. The reason is because of countless things, doubts of getting a job—well first of all, as it eventually turns out, I’ll be leaving just a week before my cooking week, and it could possibly be the week of the big wedding. You know, George is getting married on July 16. I don’t know if I feel pangs because of a sense of duty and consider canceling my leaving hence? Am I crazy? You probably think I am. Well, maybe I don’t know what is right anymore. And then the girls are going and practicing singing for the wedding, and there I am, of course, along with them knowing pretty well I could let them down on the wedding when they’re counting on me. But the thing is if I leave, I feel I’d first of all want to spend a week at church camp with you to analyze my thinking and get myself going the right direction. I don’t know if my mom caught on when I told her I’m going and I don’t expect to be back. She didn’t say much. I didn’t either. So it stands. With my Dad, that’s another story. He’d be very sore at my leaving, I’m sure. I’ve talked around the subject several times before with him and maybe he suspects. The thing is, no amount of talking will soothe my parents’ feeling about the matter (my dad’s anyway. I told him I see no future here and he couldn’t give me any good ideas on how to go on and feel satisfied). I know how he feels, but if I start listening to everybody’s opinion I’m sure I’ll go crazy.
I told sister Janice I’m leaving, and she honestly thought I’m nuts and couldn’t believe it. Well, all she thought about was she’d have nobody to sing with at the wedding, that I was sort of leaving her stranded. Well I think that’s very selfish thinking, and why shouldn’t I do what I feel is right? In a way I can’t really blame her. You know we were a big part of wedding entertainment, and weddings don’t come every day. I know my lazy self would really like to sit back and indulge in this living. It’s really very easy. That’s the whole trouble about it. It’s so easy to slide back into comfort and security . . . you know I’m so green in life outside the colony, so “wet behind the ears.” I get scared. That’s why I’d like to get off my easy chair and start living, start giving the most of my ability, making myself a better person.
— Catherine
As Catherine bared her soul, I understood for the first time that freedom is not found on a Hutterite colony any more than it is found off the colony. True freedom is an inside job—it is taking responsibility for ourselves and daring to confront and release the anger and resentment that keeps us from leading meaningful lives. My parents had wanted us to have that freedom by not saddling us with their baggage, but most of all, by pursuing the path of forgiveness themselves. Now, it was up to us to rise to the challenge.