Almost Eden Read online

  Anyways, that time when I was five didn’t really count, because after you repent and are saved you’re supposed to get baptized, to let other people know you’re serious about it. Beth says people can only get baptized in a Mennonite church if they’re old enough to understand what it all means, like to be a Christian and become a church member and everything. It’s because Mennonites are Anabaptists. It’s a big deal. In the olden days, the first Anabaptists were burned at the stake and everything.

  Beth took baptism classes and got baptized last year and has been a royal pain in the behind ever since. Excuse me, but it’s true. First she gave her testimony in church, all about the day Jesus saved her. Then on baptism Sunday, she stepped into the pool that was up high behind the choir pews. Usually it was hidden behind a panel of some kind. But on baptism Sundays the panel came off and there was the pool with Reverend Funk, all in white, standing in water up to his waist. The pool was really more like a big tub, but a mural on the wall behind was supposed to make it look like the reverend was standing in a river. It all looked pretty fake, if you ask me.

  The baptism candidates–that’s what they’re called–they wore white robes. A floodlight shone on the pool and the congregation sang, “Shall We Gather at the River.”

  Even though the mural and everything seemed fake, when everyone started singing, it was hard not to get all choked up and shivery. You really felt religious then. You almost wanted to be up there getting baptized yourself so you would maybe always have that kind of feeling.

  When Beth was in the water Reverend Funk put one hand on her back. With his other hand he held her hands folded over her chest. He said, “Do you confess your sins and accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”

  And Beth said “I do.”

  It was like she was marrying God.

  The reverend dunked her backwards into the water and pulled her up again. She climbed soaking wet out of the pool with her gown clinging to her so there wasn’t much left to the imagination, that was for sure.

  “Did you get water up your nose?” I asked Beth later. I always got water up my nose when I got dunked backwards.

  “Do you have to act so infantile?” she said.

  I didn’t think that was such a Christian thing to say.

  At the MB church they dunked you all the way under. My friend Heather told me that at the Bergthaler Mennonite church where she went, they only sprinkled water over your head. It made me wonder how they baptized people at the five other Mennonite churches in town.

  We’d gone to the MB for as long as I could remember, at least Mom, Beth, Lena, and I had. We always sat in the back pew, because sometimes Dad would sneak in after the service had started already and sit with us. I liked it when Dad came to church because he gave us Life Savers when Reverend Funk got too long winded, which was pretty much every Sunday.

  Besides Sunday School and church service on Sundays, I went to Pioneer Girls on Wednesday evenings and junior choir practice Friday nights. Soon I’d be old enough to start Young People’s on Sunday nights, too.

  Mom told me once that we went to the MB because they had a service in English and not just German. And because Reverend Thiessen who used to be the reverend there was the only one who would marry them after Dad joined the Air Force when Canada went to war against Hitler. See, if you belong to the Mennonite church you’re not supposed to fight or kill other people, no matter what. Mennonites are pacifists. They believe Christians are supposed to follow Christ’s example and turn the other cheek, love their enemies, and do good to those who hate them. They’re supposed to be peacemakers, not soldiers.

  I’m not much of a peacemaker, but then just because our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents were Mennonites, doesn’t mean that I’m a Mennonite. No one is really a Mennonite until they are baptized. That’s what schnoddanaze Beth says. It doesn’t matter how much kielke or plumen mouse you eat.

  “Even Mennonites can’t agree on what being a Mennonite means,” my mom says.

  One of the main reasons Mennonites came to Canada was to get away from the fighting in Russia, and because in Canada they wouldn’t have to join the army. It was the same reason they’d moved to Russia in the first place, because Catherine the Great promised pretty much the same thing about a hundred years earlier yet.

  Mennonites always wandered around a lot, I guess. They wanted to stay separate from the rest of the world.

  Anyways, my dad says there wasn’t really any place in the world you could go to get away from war anymore.

  Even right now here in Canada we’re smack in between the United States and the Soviets. Who knows when the Cold War might warm up and one of them will launch a missile over the north pole and it could come flying over our heads or maybe go off course and KABOOM! That would be the end of that because a nuclear bomb incinerates everything. Most of the time I tried not to think about it but sometimes at night it was hard not to.

  My dad didn’t kill anyone in the war. He joined the ground crew and learned to be a mechanic that fixed plane engines. But then he never left Canada even because he got sick with rheumatic fever and the Air Force sent him home.

  The Bergthaler Mennonite Church where my dad was baptized when he was a teenager said working on the engines so the planes could go off and kill people was the same as killing people. They said he should have done alternative service, like in the forestry camps or the coal mines.

  “Where is the difference?” my dad asked. Didn’t the army use coal? Didn’t soldiers keep the country safe so Mennonites could plant trees and go to church? Didn’t Mennonites all the time join up as medics who fixed up the soldiers so they could fight another day?

  But the church said that if Isaak Redekop–that’s my dad–wanted to marry Esther Hiebert–that’s my mom–in their church, he would have to get up in front of the congregation and confess his sin and ask for forgiveness.

  “Vite dee,” my dad said. Which in Plautdietsch means “know yourself,” but which really means “mind your own beeswax,” only not so polite.

  So Mom and Dad got married in the MB instead. Reverend Thiessen didn’t see things the same way, I guess. Good thing there are seven Mennonite churches in Hopefield or maybe my parents wouldn’t have found one to marry them and then I wouldn’t be here.

  Anyways, I’m not five anymore. I don’t think that being scared to death of hell is a good reason to believe in heaven. But even now I’ve turned twelve already, I don’t understand it all. Like why does God let people in poor countries starve or let people blow each other up in wars or make floods that drown all the crops?

  Or take my mother away.

  This wasn’t the first time Mom had been gone. It wasn’t the second time either. Maybe it was the third or fourth time. I don’t know for sure. I tried not to remember about those times.

  How many more times was God going to take her away? Maybe I was doing something wrong. Maybe God was punishing me for my sins–for how I made a stink when Dad said the pajama party was canceled instead of right away honoring my father and mother like it says in the ten commandments.

  Mom had been gone two days. So far I’d let Lena get sunburned, walked in on Beth, lied to my best friend, fought with my sisters, knocked the Reverend’s wife over, and totally humiliated my father. Probably I’d set some kind of new record. No wonder Mom had to get away from here; I wanted to get away from me, too.

  For sure there were a lot of weeds growing in my garden.

  A knock on the door woke me up. The light in the room told me I’d slept away the afternoon, and my stomach told me I’d missed faspa yet, too. Dad came in and sat on the edge of my bed.

  “How would you like a job painting?” he said. Just like that. Out of the blue.

  I rubbed my eyes and sat up. “Huh? Me?”

  Dad looked a bit desperate. “I’ll hire you to paint the garage.”

  Mornings only, he said. I’d still have to take Lena to the pool with me in the afternoons. But he’d p
ay me, a dollar an hour, to scrape, sand, prime, and paint the siding and trim on the garage.

  Probably I looked as confused as I felt.

  “Things can’t go on like this all summer or you girls will end up killing each other,” Dad said. “Or someone else.”

  All summer? Did he think Mom might be away all summer?

  “Actually,” he admitted, “it was Nettie’s idea. She thought you needed a project to keep you busy. There’s some chocolate cake in the kitchen that she sent home for you, too.”

  Good ol’ Auntie Nettie.

  I decided to take the job. It would be one way I could make it up to Mom, to surprise her when she came home. And it would show Dad and God that I was really trying to be a good daughter and a good Christian. Plus I could use the money to buy myself a new bike and I’d get a really great tan and Beth wouldn’t be able to tell me what to do because I’d be the boss.

  I also decided to pray to God for twenty-one days, like Daniel. Then maybe I’d understand Him better. It wouldn’t be hard to stay away from wine, since I didn’t drink it anyways. If Beth’s cooking didn’t improve, giving up meat wouldn’t be a great hardship either. Not eating any bread might be a problem, but I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

  Twenty-one days was three weeks. Lots of time for God to make my mother well again. Summer holidays would be more than half over already.

  I wondered if I would have a vision.

  Dear God,

  Please forgive me for fighting with Beth and Lena, and for what happened to Mrs. Funk and for embarrassing Dad and everything.

  I solemnly promise to pray to you every day for twenty-one days. And I premise not to eat any meat or bread or drink any wine either, so that my heart, mind, and body will be clear and open to understanding your will, just like Daniel.

  I wondered if I should pray in any special way. Should I close my eyes and bow my head and kneel down, or should I just pray anywhere and anytime in my head, which was the everyday kind of praying. I decided I would pray at bedtime, because then I wouldn’t forget, but I would talk to God inside my head, or else Lena would wonder what I was doing on my knees all the time and she’d tell Beth and then Beth would think she’d made some kind of convert and I was going to be a holy roller like her yet.

  I pray it is your will to make my mother well again so she can come home. Please help me to do a good job of painting the garage.

  Amen.

  First thing after breakfast on Monday Dad made us go apologize to Reverend Funk and Mrs. Funk. They were pretty forgiving. Being who they were, they sort of had to be. I mean, forgiving others their trespasses is in the Lord’s Prayer and everything; it’s practically a commandment.

  At first I think they were surprised to see us but Reverend Funk invited us in all the same. “How’s it going?” he asked.

  I almost blurted, “On two legs, like a gander,” which is what Dad said all the time when someone asked him how it was going. I bit my tongue just in time, but I had to cover my mouth with my hand to keep the giggles inside.

  “Fine, thank you,” said Beth. We weren’t even in the house yet and she was giving me a dirty look. She handed Mrs. Funk the coffee cake we’d made. “This is for you. We’re terribly sorry about what happened.”

  “Beth baked the cake,” added Lena. “And me and Elsie made the icing.”

  “You mean, ‘Elsie and I made the icing,’” Beth corrected her. Beth was all the time trying to make us speak English properly so we wouldn’t sound like country bumpkins. She had her work cut out for her.

  “No you didn’t,” said Lena. “Me and Elsie did.”

  Reverend Funk had a good chuckle. Beth should’ve known better than to try and make us look good.

  Mrs. Funk held the cake out in front of her like it might jump into her lap or explode or something.

  “How nice.” She smiled at Lena. “I’ll just put this in the kitchen.”

  I’d never been in the home of a man of God before. There wasn’t a thing out of place in the Funk’s house. Not a speck of dust. The vacuum lines in the carpet didn’t cross each other even.

  Immaculate was a good word to describe the living room. For sure the rest of the house was the same. Like the Funks were maybe expecting Jesus to pop in for a visit. All ready for the second coming.

  I perched on the edge of the sofa so I wouldn’t get the cushion dirty, and tried to tuck my bare feet out of sight and not squirm too much. At first I worried Mrs. Funk would offer us a piece of Beth’s coffee cake. No matter how careful I was I knew I’d leave crumbs all over her spotless carpet. But she never offered, which was a relief.

  “We won’t stay long. We just stopped by to apologize.” Beth nodded at me.

  I cleared my throat. I’d practiced what to say on the way over. “I’m sorry I was fighting with Lena and that we crashed into you. It was a dreadful accident.” Beth had told me to leave out the “dreadful” part, but I thought it was just the right word for the occasion. Anyways, who knew when I’d get to use it again?

  “And I’m sorry I fell on top of you,” Lena said. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “We hope you weren’t hurt.” I added that bit because I thought it helped show how sorry we were, even though Mrs. Funk couldn’t really be hurt since the flower bed was pretty soft and Lena was still small yet.

  “Apology accepted,” Mrs. Funk sniffed.

  Reverend Funk thanked us. He said he thought we’d all learned a valuable lesson about working out our differences and respecting each other’s feelings, rather than resorting to physical force. “Demonstrating Christ’s love in our daily lives begins within our own families.”

  “Would you lead us in asking for God’s forgiveness?” asked Beth.

  Holy Moses. If you ask me she was laying it on a little thick. Besides which, I’d already prayed for God’s forgiveness on my own. But no one asked me, and Reverend Funk was sure glad to be asked. Before I knew it there we were, kneeling in the Funk’s immaculate living room. The reverend put one hand on my head and the other one on Lena’s.

  “‘Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me,’” he prayed. I bowed my head. With his hand on it there wasn’t much else I could do. I kept my mouth shut and tried to listen to what he was saying, but all the time I was thinking that I wanted to get the heck out of there. I knew I should feel close to God and everything, but I guess there was something wrong with me because I didn’t. I felt about as far away from God as a person could get. My neck hurt by the time Reverend Funk said, “Amen.”

  “It must be hard for you girls with no mother at home,” Mrs. Funk said, smiling a tight little smile. “I can understand how you might have trouble coping, Beth, with so much responsibility for the house and your rather, uh, rambunctious younger sisters.”

  It wasn’t like she’d said anything we didn’t know already. But the way she said it, talking down her nose like, made it sound like Lena and I were beetles of some kind. The rambunctious dungbugs. I wanted to crawl under the sofa. Except probably it was so clean under there I wouldn’t be able to find any dirt to hang out with.

  “Elsie and Lena help quite a lot with the housework. Elsie is even painting the garage,” said Beth.

  “Really.” Mrs. Funk raised one eyebrow at me.

  I was so stunned by what Beth said I forgot to be insulted by Mrs. Funk’s eyebrow. I even grinned a little. Beth’s cheeks were turning a real nice shade of pink, but she sat with her back stiff and her chin in the air. Wonders never cease, my mom says.

  When we left, Reverend Funk said he’d be sure to remember our mother in his prayers. “Take comfort in knowing He is with you. Leave your troubles in the hands of God.”

  One thing for sure, with all the praying going on for Mom, sooner or later God was going to have to do something.

  “Well,” said Beth, as soon as we were out the door, “that went pretty well, don’t you think?”

  I was so glad to be outside breathing fr
esh air I could’ve hugged her. I lifted my face and arms up to the blue sky and felt the warm sunshine soaking through to my cold bones. “It went on two legs like a gander,” I said.

  Beth sighed. “Reprobate.”

  I didn’t have a clue what she meant, and even though I knew it couldn’t be anything good, I decided to let it go because of the way Beth stuck up for me with Mrs. Funk. But I made a mental note to look up reprobate in the dictionary.

  “If they come to visit us again I’m hiding,” said Lena.

  I’d bet my last nickel that the reverend and his wife wouldn’t come anywhere near our place for a long time. “C’mon,” I said. “I’ll race you home.”

  We ran all the way. Beth and I let Lena win.

  Dear God,

  I started my new job today, since I was still grounded yet, Only I didn’t get to paint. Before I can paint there’s a lot of other stuff to do. Today I swept and hosed all the dirt and spider webs off the garage. When Lena came out to watch I hosed her off, too. She liked it. At least she kept coming back for more until Beth told us to quit goofing off.

  I’m a little hungry because I didn’t eat any meat or bread all day, not even one of the fresh cinnamon buns Grandma baked. Don’t get me wrong–I’m not complaining, I just wanted you to know. Anyways, I didn’t miss much. Supper was leftover stew, I only ate the vegetables.

  Beth didn’t notice that I snooped through her drawers and swiped some of her things. You know what I mean, I found a little instruction sheet in the box. It has pictures and everything, so I think I’ll be okay when the time comes, I’m sorry for taking them without asking. I didn’t know what else to do. I promise to replace her stuff as soon as I can.

  We apologized to the Funks today. I guess you know that. Reverend Funk said to leave our troubles in God’s hands. Sometimes I wonder how your hands can hold all the bad things in the world. Sometimes I wonder if my mother being sick is so small a problem compared to all the other problems in the world that it might slip out between your fingers.