Running Around (and Such) (23 page)

“Well, Mam, I can’t understand why they knotted like that. Me and Lizzie were just sitting on the steps talking for a little while.”

“Just be careful. You have to mind your business when you wash.” Mam wiped her hands on her apron, watching as Emma put the diapers through the wringer, which pressed out the water from the diapers and then deposited them into the blue rinse water.

Mam turned to go but paused again to watch Emma rinsing them. “Be sure and rinse them thoroughly. The last time you washed, the diapers were as stiff as a board.”

That did it. Lizzie decided she didn’t like Mam that morning. Who felt like washing now? Maybe the last time the diapers were stiff and not rinsed very well, but they weren’t as stiff as a board. Mam stretched stuff. Lizzie supposed that’s where she got it. At least Emma claimed Lizzie did, too—stretch the truth that is, not rinse the diapers.

These days, Lizzie didn’t mind doing the laundry as much, even when it was bitterly cold. She lugged the wicker clothes basket filled with wet clothes out to the wash line and then used wooden clothes pins to hang the snowy white, sweet-smelling shirts. They blew straight out and away from her on the sharp winter breeze, flapping quietly as Emma hung each one up.

Things were better at home since Lizzie returned from Dunnville. No one mentioned Don Albert anymore. Lizzie thought about him less, too, now that she was 16 and would soon be running around with Emma on the weekends.

After she had hung the final load of laundry on the line, she swept the last of the water across the old wooden floor, washing out the wringer washer and rinse tubs well. Banging the wooden washhouse door, she ran down the steps and dashed into the kitchen, drawn by the rich aroma of freshly baked molasses cookies.

Ever since Lizzie was a small child, Mam’s molasses cookies were her favorite. Mam made them large and perfectly round, not too high but not flat, with little ditches across the top that she sprinkled with sugar. The cookies were perfect for dunking in hot chocolate. You could soak them real well without having them crumble and fall apart. And these didn’t sink to the bottom like some did while you raced to the kitchen cabinet drawer for a spoon to save your drowning cookie. When that happened, the worst part was having ruined a perfectly good cup of hot chocolate. It never tasted quite the same when drowned cookie crumbs floated across its surface.

Mam smiled at Lizzie as she came into the kitchen. “All done?” she asked. “Did the wash freeze as fast as you hung it out?”

“Not really,” Lizzie answered. “Mmm, these look good. May I make hot chocolate?”

“Go ahead,” Mam said, turning to flip more freshly baked cookies expertly.

Emma joined them for a cup of cocoa, and the conversation turned to Lizzie’s sewing.

“Oh, I dread it,” Lizzie groaned. “Why can’t Emma just sew my dresses like she does my coverings? I hate to sew and I can’t do it.”

“You have to learn, Lizzie,” Emma said. “Who will sew for you after you get married?” she asked, her eyes wide and incredulous.

“You can!” Lizzie laughed.

“Oh, no. I won’t have time on my old farm with all my children,” Emma said, chuckling.

“Oh, Emma! You’ll never change. I hope you do marry Joshua and spend all the rest of your days on his old pig and cow farm. You will live there until you’re old and fat and wrinkly.”

Emma threw back her head and roared. “And you’ll probably be my next-door neighbor on another old pig and cow farm!”

“Oh, no, I won’t! I will not marry anyone who milks cows, it doesn’t matter how nice-looking, kind, or wonderful a person he is,” Lizzie shot back.

“Now, now,” Mam laughed. “Exactly what you vow and declare you will never do is usually what you end up doing.”

“Not me,” Lizzie stated firmly.

“Lizzie, you better start thinking about a husband. Four more days and it’s your very first weekend to go with me to Allen County. Ephraim Yoders are having the supper for all the youth. Imagine that! Everything is planned already! I’m so excited to be able to take my younger sister along.”

Lizzie smiled at Emma appreciatively. “Do you really feel that way?”

“Why, of course, Lizzie.”

In that moment, Lizzie realized how good a sister Emma had become to her. Emma helped her style her dresses, she was teaching her how to sew and how to make her coverings fit well, and now she was actually looking forward to taking her along on Sunday evening. Emma was a dear a lot of the time, no doubt about it. She seemed less bossy and more generous and unselfish than ever, devoting her time and energy to helping Lizzie successfully join the young people’s social events.

“Lizzie…” Mam began a bit hesitantly.

“Hmmm?”

“I worry about you starting to run around.”

“Why?” Lizzie turned to Mam, her anticipation still brightly evident.

“I just do. I suppose that incident with that…that English man, whatever his name was, just put a fear in me. You’re not very…how can I say it? You need to be very careful, Lizzie. Remember how we talked about the thin line between friendliness and flirtation?”

Lizzie sighed and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Mam, here we go again. Aren’t we allowed to flirt a little after we’re 16? I bet you did.”

Mam pursed her lips as she told Lizzie in no uncertain terms that finding a husband was not about flirting with handsome boys or thinking the decision was entirely up to her or depended on her appearance. Neither, she said, did fanciness and style have anything to do with it. Lizzie should learn to pray sincerely for God’s will in her life with a humble spirit, Mam said emphatically, so that God could lead her to the right man.

Lizzie wasn’t against praying. She had just never been sure how to do it right. Ever. She had always put her patties down, as Amish children were taught to do. At mealtime, Amish people never prayed out loud like English people did, so Lizzie always felt especially ill at ease when she heard someone praying aloud.

Concentrating seemed to be Lizzie’s problem. Dat told them to thank the Lord for their food and to look down at their plates as they prayed. Lizzie often forgot to pray because she was peeping at someone or thinking other thoughts. She didn’t know why, but it seemed she could never stop her mind and pray a long prayer during patties down. She tried hard though. Emma dropped her head far and moved her lips as she said her silent prayer. Lizzie often watched her sideways, fascinated by her goodness.

A
S MAM TALKED EARNESTLY
, Lizzie’s spirits fell into a downward spiral. She wished it would all make more sense. “Well, Mam, you know I don’t understand what you mean. If I comb my hair flat as a pancake and make my dresses as long as yours and sit on a chair with my hands folded my first weekend, no boy is ever going to look at me, you know that. That’s what you mean by being humble, isn’t it?”

Emma burst out laughing and Mam joined her helplessly. As Emma showed Lizzie a dress pattern that she recommended and Lizzie picked the fabric for her first “running-around” dress, Mam resumed the conversation. She first tried to explain to Lizzie how important it was to obey God’s will, which basically, for a young person, meant letting her conscience guide her and trying to do what was right in all matters.

Every so often, Mam and Dat got all worked up about the girls’ spiritual lives.

That whole year after Emma turned 16 and Lizzie’s 16
^th
birthday approached, the girls were learning how to live a new life, trying to live the way that Jesus taught. They learned the rules of the church, and they promised to obey and help build the church.

Mam even had tears, talking to them about all of this. Lizzie could tell that Emma took it very, very seriously. But the whole business depressed Lizzie to the point of tears. This would not be fun. They had to be so careful. What if they said or did one thing wrong ever again in their lives? And if they grew into old people, imagine the hopelessness of their situation, unless they all stayed at home and read their Bibles almost continuously.

Mam read her Bible a lot, urging the girls to as well. Emma read her Bible every evening before she blew out her kerosene lamp, but half the time Lizzie wasn’t sure where her Bible was. Mam would have a fit if she knew.

Lizzie never told anyone, but the Bible scared her a lot. It just seemed too holy, too righteous, and too impossible to follow. She often wished she wouldn’t feel that way, wondering if she was normal. Emma said the Bible comforted her, which went beyond Lizzie’s understanding. That made her feel so guilty that she could never, ever tell Emma how she felt about all the talk about spiritual things.

As Mam launched into one of her speeches that just gave Lizzie the blues, Lizzie quietly slipped out of the room and went up to her bedroom.

She heard steps coming up the stairway, so she quickly closed her door. Nobody had to know where she was.

“Lizzie, are you in there?” Mandy called.

No answer.

“Lizzie?”

She still didn’t answer.

The steps turned, the sound ebbing away before starting down the stairs. Good, Lizzie thought. Mandy can go play with Jason.

Lizzie rolled over, searching for a book to read. She had read them all so many times she hardly knew what to read anymore. If only Mam could spot more mystery books, but they were getting harder to find. Lizzie just loved those books about teenagers not much older than she and Emma solving exciting mysteries, some of them even a bit dangerous. They were all interesting, good, clean books that Mam approved of. They weren’t allowed to read just anything.

The last book she read was about a huge colony of bats living in a cave—vampire bats. If one of them bit a horse or a human being, the bats gave them a disease called rabies, which caused you to lose your mind and die a slow, painful death.

After Lizzie finished that book, she wouldn’t go outside after dark. There was an electric pole light at the corner of their yard, which was actually the neighbors’. Every night in the summertime, a cloud of insects whirled around the light. Bats often swooped in among them. Dat told Lizzie they didn’t have rabies; well, only rarely. Bats also have radar that warns them of an approaching object, which makes them steer clear of people.

Lizzie told Dat that vampire bats are thirsty for blood; in fact, they’ll sit on horses and drink their blood. Mam said she should quit reading those mysteries if she was going to be afraid of bats. Besides, very likely none of what they had in them was true.

Lizzie’s Uncle Marvin had often told her about the time a bat flew into Aunt Rachel’s room and sat in her hair. Rachel screamed and screamed, picking up the horrible creature and throwing it against the wall with all her strength, where it slid to the floor, quite dead. The bat was probably rabid, or why would it have become tangled in Rachel’s hair? Evidently its radar wasn’t working, which meant it had already lost its mind. So Lizzie remained unconvinced of Dat’s reassurances, refusing to go out at night for a very long time.

She found her
Tom Sawyer
book, but she had read it so many times that it was boring now. She kept looking.
My Friend Flicka
. Oh, that was a different one. She had only skipped through it before. So happy to have something to read, Lizzie rearranged the pillows, flipped on her back, opened the book, and started in. She was soon transported to a horse ranch in the West, where she worked alongside a family who owned a great herd of horses and cattle.

All at once she became aware of her name being called quite anxiously. It sounded as if it came from outside in the yard. She listened a while but didn’t answer. Then she heard someone at the foot of the stairs.

“I
did
look up there!”

“Well, where could she be? Lizzie!”

It was Mam, and her voice sounded as if she was close to tears. For an instant, Lizzie felt like remaining quiet, but her conscience made her do what was right. Putting her book aside, she yelled, “What?”

“Where
were
you?” Mam asked weakly. Lizzie could hear the great relief in her voice. “We looked all over the place for you.”

“I was up here.”

“Then you didn’t answer when I called you the first time,” Mandy said.

Lizzie didn’t say anything.

“Come on down now, Lizzie. We’re having a snack,” Mam said.

Lizzie sat up, fixed her hair and covering a bit, and checked her face in the mirror before starting downstairs. She was so pleased that Mam was worried. That was so good for her, because now she would be more careful about what she said and would like her every bit as much as Emma.

Dat and Jason were making popcorn. Lizzie was instantly hungry. Mam had made a pitcher of ice-cold chocolate milk and put out pumpkin whoopie pies and blueberry pie. Lizzie sat in a chair, smiling at Emma, feeling quite pleased because everyone had been worried.

“Where were you, Lizzie?” Mam asked.

“In my room.”

“What were you doing?”

“Reading.”

“Didn’t you hear us looking for you?”

“Hm-mm.”

“I bet you did,” Emma said.

“No, not until someone was calling for me in the yard.” She unwrapped a pumpkin whoopie pie and took a huge, soft bite. The icing stuck to her cheek, and she wiped it away with her hand. Mmmm. Mam made the best whoopie pies.