Grandmother, Laughing Read online

  But there at the table my eyes watched the preacher’s hands, the tractor grease in the cracks, the blood blister under the thumbnail. Fuschtje Funk was a farmer, after all. His forefinger along the butter knife had a dark brown wart beside the middle knuckle. He stuck the knife into the middle of a tweeback bun and broke it open, even like Jesus I thought, and I wondered me if Jesus had used a knife to break the bread for his disciples. I watched him cut a sliver of butter and smear it over half the bun. Then he reached his knife over to the wild plum jam, and he skimmed a knifeful off the top and reached his bun closer so that the jam dripped onto the bun and not onto the tablecloth. He saw me watching and one of his eyes slowly closed, and I got this grizzlijch feeling in my stomach.

  “By us we don’t smear double,” my father said.

  Everybody stopped breathing. Preacher Funk’s face reddened down to his collar so the patch of stubble beard looked like a black checker on a red square. He didn’t speak, but he looked at the two halves of his bun, and then he scraped the jam off the butter onto the dry half-bun lying beside his plate.

  I held my breath until after Papuh led the preacher into the sitting room. I had just tied on my apron to clean up the table when Papuh came back into the kitchen, his face white as the sofa dust cover in his hands. He waved me to come.

  Again that Sunday kitchen was so quiet I could hear the flies’ footsteps on the tablecloth. What wanted these men with me? I had never sat alone with Papuh in the sitting room, and only if I was getting baptized would a preacher want to talk with me. Spring baptism was long past already and for sure I wasn’t marrying myself yet, so what was the hurry?

  But in those days a daughter obeyed her father, so I went into the sitting room without even running upstairs to look in the mirror first. I didn’t breathe but I could feel my heart boompsing against my dress as I sat down on the first hard chair. That’s when I saw I still had my apron on.

  Papuh had pulled open the curtain on the south window. Sitting with his back to the light, Preacher Funk was a shadow that reached across the floor to my Sunday shoes. My feet wanted to breathe, but on Sundays we had to wear our shoes inside. I could feel his eyes looking out of the shadow, and I wondered what he was thinking and I wondered if my hair was all fixed into place. Papuh sat down on one end of the soft sofa like it was a hard chair, knees together, hands lying on his legs.

  I waited for somebody to say something to me, but for many minutes I heard only fuscheling from the kitchen and clicking back and forth from the grandfather clock.

  “And so, how many acres are you renting yourself?” my father said to Preacher Funk.

  “Eighty from Friesen and forty from Nickel,” Preacher Funk said.

  “Nickel’s yard too?”

  “Not this year, but I can have the barn for the winter, if I need it.”

  “And the house? Is somebody living in the house?” Papuh’s words made me hold in my breath.

  “Only Nickel’s brother-in-law, Driedger.” I started to breathe out, then stopped when Funk said, “But I heard he is moving to Pracha Darp to work by Pracha Platt for the winter. Anyways, Nickel’s house is too small for him with all those children.”

  My heart boompsed like a ball on a cement step.

  “Must be close to a dozen, anyways.” Papuh spoke in such a flat voice that I couldn’t tell if he thought that was a good thing.

  “Yoh, eleven, I think.” Funk’s flat voice matched my father’s.

  “So you have cattle for the barn?”

  “Three cows now, and one strong that’s been with the bull already.” My breathing settled and I thought about what Liestje was doing.

  “There is no water hole on the Nickel place.”

  “No, but there is a good well, twenty-five feet deep.”

  “Lots of water to pump every day.”

  “For sure, lots of pumping. But the water has a good taste. And the pump is new. Nickel put in a new pump last year. A child can pump water with it.”

  “Still, for a woman alone with the cattle, and for sure you’ll get pigs and chickens too, it’s lots to pump for when you have to go preaching away.” I felt my ears get hot and I bit my teeth together hard.

  “My brother will help out when I go away.”

  “Of course, and I could send Pete over after he finishes his chores at home. I have to keep him busy so he doesn’t stick his nose all the time into that storybook that he got from the teacher for Christmas. So sure, Pete can help with your chores when you are away. Nickel’s house will be big enough for you at first.”

  “For sure I don’t have eleven children … yet.”

  My heart clappered so fast I thought it would fly apart.

  “And you are buying your own land too?”

  “I bought the other forty from Nickel already, and if it is the Lord’s will and Nickel doesn’t want everything all at once, I figure the home forty will be mine after another harvest.”

  “The Nickel place is close for both families. Such things are important. It is easier to hold things together then.”

  Holem de gruel! The room rocked like a tub floating on water. I pushed my feet to the floor to schteepa myself against the grizzlijch feeling tjrieseling in my stomach. The men’s voices sounded like they were coming from another world.

  “Yoh, yoh,” Preacher Funk said, “we must hold things together. Things have gotten too loose. Too many have lost the way.”

  “Again last week,” my father said, “a sudden wedding in Pracha Darp.”

  “Yes, too sudden for baptism … and still they want a wedding in the church, even after holding yet a dance at the Felaffniss.”

  “And after the wedding too. Where is the church in all this?” My father’s hands gripped his knees like rooster claws. “And now I hear there will be casting of lots by the mission sale.”

  “Well, yes, I heard. But maybe a raffle isn’t such a bad thing,” Preacher Funk said, “if it helps people to give more to God.”

  “Is it giving to God if you are thinking about winning a prize?”

  “For sure, some people will buy a ticket without thinking about the Lord’s work. Still, that same money could maybe go for tobacco …”

  “But I don’t think we should be casting lots like the Romans by the cross. We aren’t Catholics yet, with bingo and selling candles in the church. But the worst thing,” my father said, “is that a thing like a raffle makes people yankah themselves for something they don’t have and then they won’t be satisfied with what God has given them for their hard work.”

  “Yes, things are getting too loose,” Preacher Funk said. “Maybe Fuchtig Froese’s grandfather is right when he says that a raffle is like communism in Russlaund because everybody is sharing the cost of something that only one person gets some use out of.”

  “Well, yeah, Fuchtig Froese is against fire insurance too …”

  “And some fuschel behind their hands that Froese has never actually put any money into a collect on Sunday morning, just uses his long fingers to rattle the silver that is already there.”

  I saw my father’s head jerk just a little when he heard that. The two lines at the top of his nose were deeper than a freshly ploughed furrow. A talking preacher is scarier than a preacher who smears double, I thought. And it got even scarier when the preacher said again, “Yes, things are getting too loose. The time has come to separate the wheat from the chaff.” For a minute there was only breathing. I heard the outside kitchen door open and close. My mother and Liestje walked past outside the window. Then Preacher Funk asked a question about my father’s crop.

  So it went then till half-four. Never once did they talk me on or ask me what I thought or even say clearly what I thought they were saying. And this grizzlijch feeling I had in my stomach got grizzlijcher and grizzlijcher as I listened and stared at my tight shoes, having a dream with my eyes open
. I was looking at this stubble patch along that jawbone, and I all of a sudden thought of Tien’s cousins from Herbert in Saskatchewan who had talked about having a flat tire by Moose Jaw and I suddenly wished I was outside alone some place so I could laugh. So Mamuh wasn’t altogether right when she said it was Obrum and the lawnswing that first made me want to laugh. It was Preacher Fuschtje Funk’s moose jaw.

  But, of course, even Suaruh Suschtje had felt Papuh’s willow switch, and that stubble patch was really scarier than it was funny so that laugh just stayed a little itch down inside some place by the blind intestine. But it was always there every time I saw Preacher Funk for the next forty years, even after he learned how to shave himself and had married Liestje. But on that Sunday my sister was walking in the garden with my mother and I was in the sitting room hearing how easy it would be for a woman to pump water for the cattle from a twenty-five-foot well. For the first time in my life I prayed without eating something after or going to bed, and I prayed that Preacher Funk would not stay for faspa and smear double again. Well, sometimes somebody listens at the other end of a prayer, because when the clock struck half-four Preacher Funk stood up and said he had to go visit the old Schallemboych woman who was sick at the other end of the village.

  Schallemboych’s Tien was my best friend, the only one in school who didn’t call me Suaruh Suschtje. She was the only person I had ever shared secrets with. For me, a heavenly Sunday afternoon was to walk through the Darp to Tien’s place and sit with her on her bed and tell each other things. So my heart wanted to boomps two ways when Papuh stood up too and said that I should walk along with Preacher Funk and bring Schallemboych’s Tien’s grandmother one of those rhubarb pies we had baked on Saturday afternoon.

  Well, we lived in the village, almost everybody still did in those days, and there was no way to walk from one end of the village to the other on a Sunday afternoon without being seen. The little boys with their slingshots shot stones at sparrows, and the big boys out of school already rode bicycles with their Sunday pants clipped to their legs or rolled up almost to the knee. Men leaned against machinery or sat on chairs brought outside into the shade, where they spat out knackzoat shells and rolled themselves smokes with brown fingers. Women walked around the edges of gardens, showing where the cutworms had been busy and how high the stickroses had grown. Big girls looked out of upstairs windows, and some we met walking along the Gauss, the village street.

  It was almost like a blizzard that day as we walked, Preacher Funk and me, as the cottonwood trees shed their little balls of wool. I felt some fall on my hair, but I couldn’t brush them away with the heavy glass pie plate in my hands. For an eyeblink, I wondered if I should give the pie to the preacher to carry, but it seemed like he hardly knew that I was there. He didn’t talk as we walked, at least not through the first half of the village. His black shoes stepped on the earth even with mine, though his legs were longer so every few steps he held one foot in the air a little bit longer to get into step with me again. More cotton balls fell on my hair and I wished I had tied on a kerchief, but it was hot and I have to say even without a kerchief my head was sweating and I could feel something sticking to my forehead, only I didn’t know if it was hair or poplar wool. Close by the schoolhouse we passed three Giesbrecht sisters, who looked at me stonefaced but then started laughing as soon as they had passed. Preacher Funk didn’t seem to notice, and when I peeked at him sideways I noticed a funny thing. I would have thought that with his black clothes the white cotton balls would have been sticking to him like snowflakes, but none of the cotton had stuck, not even on the brim of his black hat. I shivered with that grizzlijch feeling again. What kind of man could walk through such a cottonwood snow and not even have one seed stick to his black preacher clothes? What kind of a woman would want to walk beside such a man?

  And then we were walking past the Nickel place, past the house too small for eleven Driedger children. The older ones played anti-over around the house, bouncing the ball on the roof, and Dora Driedger came out of the door with a broom in her hand and schelled those kids out good and loud. They ran away across the yard to the barn, and I saw one of the boys jump up on the well and start to pump while one of the girls held her face under the spout so she could drink.

  That’s when Preacher Funk spoke with his face still turned away from me. “En Prädja mott ne eaboare Frü habe. Doawäajens ha ejk die ütjelaesed.” A preacher needs to have a sombre wife. That’s why I have picked you out.

  My backstring grizzeled and I blinked away a cotton fluff falling on my eye. Out of the watery dark of my eyelid I saw my grandmother sit up in her black trough coffin. She looked me straight in the eyes. And then her old thin shoulders shook up and down inside her loose black dress. She laughed so hard her black grandmother bonnet slipped off her hair and hung over one ear. My feet stumbled in the ruts where a wagon got stuck the last time it rained and for an eyeblink I thought I would fall and I could even see the rhubarb pie flying through the air to my grandmother laughing in her coffin. I almost screamed out, but I was so grülijch scared no scream could get past my throat.

  I got my feet back onto even ground again with the pie plate still in my hands, the dishtowel still wrapped tight. Beside me Preacher Funk walked, still looking the other way. He was still talking and he hadn’t noticed me wreck my ankle in those ruts. And still those poplar fluffs wouldn’t stick to his black clothes.

  Each step beside Preacher Funk made my wrecked ankle shoot pain up my leg. I couldn’t see my laughing grandmother anymore, but I could hear her, as if she was part of the pain from my ankle. As we got closer to Tien’s place the pain seemed to change from a hurting to a tickling that crept up my leg to the place somewhere in the belly where it seems that the laughing nerves live.

  Oh but no, I wasn’t laughing yet. Suaruh Suschtje Sudermann wasn’t that easy a nut to crack. But with my grandmother still laughing in my ears as I walked beside black Preacher Funk who had picked me out to be his sombre wife, I wished that I could laugh, and my backstring shuddered colder than it ever had sitting on a frosted beckhouse seat in January. And I thought that if I became Preacher Funk’s wife, I would never ever be able to laugh, for sure not sitting up in my coffin.

  Tien yaupsed up a mouthful of air when she opened the door for us. Then she looked from my face to Preacher Funk’s face and she almost thought the wrong thing, but Tien was never one to wait long to find something out so she hurry said to Preacher Funk that her grandmother was in the sitting room and then she told me to bring the pie into the kitchen. But before I could set the pie on the kitchen table, Tien had gripped me by the sleeve and pulled me out the back door into the garden.

  “Susch,” Tien said, “waut gruelt die?” What frightens you?

  “I don’t want to be the preacher’s sombre wife,” I said.

  “Oh but no,” Tien said, “what makes you think such a thing?”

  “Well, Papuh and Preacher Funk …” Tears sippled down my cheek and I told her about the pump and the twenty-five-foot well and the eleven children and the raffle that was so evil and the cotton fluffs that wouldn’t stick to the preacher’s black clothes, and I couldn’t help myself, I even told Tien about my laughing grandmother sitting up in the black coffin. I frightened myself when I told her about that, because I had never even told her about how I could sometimes see my grandmother Glootje Susch under the crabapple trees in the garden, ever since I had heard Willa Wiebe talk about her as he quawlemed our sitting room full with his tobacco smoke. I told Tien that if Papuh and Preacher Funk had their way, I would never be able to laugh, and what was a raffle anyways?

  3

  Susch

  Darpslied Elders Villa

  I think I went to sleep while I was remembering. It is good to have pills to keep a person alive, but not so good if then a person just sleeps most of the time. And a person doesn’t remember so good after taking pills and sometimes the pills give me d
reams that maybe aren’t right for an old woman. When I woke up I felt like I had dreamed something about Russlaund. It had to be Russlaund because the people were talking mostly Flat German, but behind the dream some voices were talking a different language, but it wasn’t English like it would have been here in Canada. And it was a long-ago dream because there were only horses and oil lamps, no cars or even any trains, and I saw a basket on the back step of a house in a village I had never been to. A baby cried in that basket.

  Funny thing, when I woke up I thought I smelled tobacco smoke, only nowadays they don’t allow people with their cigarettes into the hospital, not like the olden days when a doctor would walk right into a sick room with his pipe or even a cigar. Obrum Kehler never smoked while we were married and my father didn’t believe in it either, even if most of his neighbours had brown fingers. But this smoke I smelled maybe had something to do with that baby crying in the basket in the dream because all of a sudden in my head I was a little girl again, looking down into our sitting room on a Sunday afternoon when the Willa Wiebes were spatsearing by our place. I was frightened of all those Willa Wiebe children so wild and noisy running all over the yard so I schlikjed myself into the house and crept the stairs up into the girls’ room and crawled under the bed and looked down through the heating grate.

  Willa Wiebe sat in the big sofa chair, rolling himself a cigarette even when he already had one burning between his lips with the smoke kjrieseling up to my nose. My father sat in the hard armchair across the corner from him and Mumchi Willa sat at the far end of the sofa with my mother sitting at the end close to my father so that my parents sat the Willa Wiebes in between. It seemed like Willa Wiebe was talking most of the talk himself. My father was just listening and waving the smoke away and trying not to cough, and I could see that my mother wanted to stand up from her chair and get out of that smoky room. It was almost like Willa Wiebe and his wife were like two oxen hitched to the same yoke, and every time my mother moved to stand up, Willa Wiebe would haustig be quiet and Mumchi Willa Wiebe would start talking loud and my parents would have to listen to her. It seemed like the whole afternoon my mother and father never even said a word. Willa and his wife took turns talking at each other past my parents through the smoke and the flying sunflower seeds, and I could see that my parents were wishing they could make these yahst go away, just like I wished the Willa Wiebe children so noisy outside would febeizel themselves and leave our family alone, quiet. Then my eyes started watering from the smoke coming up through the heating grate and I turned myself sideways so my ear was pressed down on the iron holes and I started listening to what Willa Wiebe was talking about. Soon it fell me by that he was ravelling out relatives backwards to Russlaund and he was talking about Suschtje Sudermann, a gypsy baby who grew up into a woman who could walk through burning ashes in her bare feet. Glootje Susch, the people called her, and she was somebody from long ago in my family.