Mennonite in a Little Black Dress Read online

  We nodded our understanding. Garlicky BO, okay.

  Mrs. Eplett exhorted, warming to her subject, "Class, if I had BO, I would want you to tell me. Would you tell me?"

  "Sure!" offered Mike Helm.

  "Thank you, Mike. I appreciate your attitude. Class, it is our duty to tell Milla that she has BO. We need to make a plan."

  The grade six class at Easterby Elementary sat stunned in early-onset schadenfreude. This was rich.

  "Is there anyone who is friends with Milla?" asked Mrs. Eplett.

  Slowly Lola and I raised our hands. We had been over to Milla's house once or twice, and we knew that Milla, the queen of high-water pants, didn't have many friends. Lola and I were Mennonite, but Milla was fat. Fat was worse than Mennonite. In the playground economy, the only thing as bad as being fat was being gay. Yet gay you could deny. Fat you could not. Milla could not hide her size. In fact, it was as if she went out of her way to accent it, given her pants.

  "Rhoda, Lola, good." Mrs. Eplett acknowledged our reluctant hands. "Will you be willing to help us?"

  Lola and I nodded hesitantly.

  "Excellent," Mrs. Eplett said. "Now here's the plan."

  The plan was that Lola and I would lure Milla into the sixth graders' hall at recess. At a prearranged time Milt Perko, the class goofball, would approach us. Milt Perko would be the bearer of the bad news. He was to ask Milla in a plain manly way, on behalf of us all, to wear deodorant. Milt Perko, desktop farter, snapper of bras, purveyor of dirty jokes! Everybody loved Milty, and thus it was Milty who was called to step up in our time of need. Mrs. Eplett nominated him, Mike Helm seconded, and twenty-four hands rose in democratic support.

  On the day in question I was in exquisite agony, panicking for poor Milla. I had just read A Tale of Two Cities, and as Lola and I led Milla into the sixth graders' hall, I imagined that we were three aristocrats in the tumbrel, heads shaved, modest and pure, awaiting the guillotine. It is a far, far greater thing that I do now than I have ever done.

  Milty rounded the corner, right on time to the minute. Would the goofball be able to keep a straight face? He approached, hands in pockets, serious as church. He had never looked more unfunny; he looked Mature. Now he walked straight up to us, looked Milla manfully in the eye, and said without preamble, "Milla, the whole class would appreciate it if you would wear some deodorant once in a while. Mrs. Eplett asked me to tell you. And the class voted and everything."

  Milla looked suddenly skyward. A fake little doll's smile pinched her lips.

  Milty wasn't going to leave until he had an answer. "Okay, Milla? Deodorant, okay? Ban or Sure? You can spray it in your armpit, okay?"

  "Okay," she whispered. Then, from out of nowhere, she summoned a queenly spirit: "Now if you don't mind, Milty, we were having a private conversation."

  Milty nodded. Mission accomplished. He strode off heroically, whistling.

  Milla turned to me and Lola, blinking back tears. She reached for my hand. We three sat on the hall rail all recess, holding hands, talking about Milla's sister Hava as if nothing had gone wrong. As if we weren't holding hands at all.

  The pain and panic I felt attending this incident were strangely excruciating. I had nightmares about it for years afterward, and I still sometimes dream of Milty Perko turning the corner of some mental corridor, striding toward me, agent of doom, a grim Ezekiel. Lola and I knew we had betrayed Milla, but it never occurred to us that we had had a choice in the matter. I can't speak for Lola, but in the sixth grade I had absolutely no apparatus with which to resist authority. I couldn't even conceive of articulating opposition to an adult's judgment. And I was light-years away from the confidence it would take to stand on top of my desk and fart out loud and on purpose, as Milty Perko occasionally did, to our collective admiration and applause.

  "Good god," exclaimed Hannah when I had finished telling the story. "What on earth could Mrs. Eplett have been thinking? What kind of pedagogy results in a public shaming?"

  Some years after I had become a professor, my father sent me a newspaper clipping. Its subject was my now-ancient sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Eplett. I was astonished to learn that she was still alive, but there she was in a photograph that confirmed it, bewigged and chipper. The photograph had been taken at a function celebrating her long contribution to the teaching field. The newspaper article quoted several generations of ex-students whose comments were all effusive in their praise for Ann C. Eplett. "Mrs. Eplett used to whupp our bottoms when we were naughty!" "She was the best teacher of all time! She checked to see if we brushed our teeth before school!" "Mrs. Eplett sent me home because I had headlice!" As I scanned the column of appreciative memories, I experienced a wave of gratitude myself. Although Mrs. Eplett had been my worst teacher, not my best, I nodded at the eloquent testament to the long-ranging effects our teachers and mentors exert on us.

  I said as much to my sister. Hannah answered, "Mentor, schmentor. That was criminal, what Mrs. Eplett did to poor sweet Milla, even if she did always smell like crotch. I wonder whatever happened to her?"

  "Lola heard that she became a pediatrician. She has a thriving practice in Orlando."

  "Still."

  "I know. It probably scarred her for life. It scarred me for life!"

  "That whole not-questioning-authority thing helps explain why you stayed with Nick so long after you should have left," she said.

  "I know," I agreed morosely. "Damn. And the weird thing is, I'm a scholar. Challenging authority is what I do. For a living. You give me any argument, and I'll tell you what's wrong with it."

  "And that's a charming feature in a sister!" she said. "The weird thing is, you and I can challenge authority in our professional lives. I was the same way when I was working at the bank. But you show me a Mennonite woman, and I'll show you a woman who sucks at asserting herself in her personal life."

  It wasn't as though I never challenged Nick. He made it easy to see the ways in which he was dysfunctional, since he pointed them out himself. It's just that he was so tortured, so depressed, so funny and fabulous, that I didn't have the heart to put up the boundaries that I know I should have.

  "I wasn't ready to stick my landing the first few times I left him," I said sadly.

  "So what? You were ready this time. You don't have to look back with regret," she said. "In fact, you don't have to look back at all."

  "Thing is, I loved him."

  "You still love him."

  "Damn," I said again. "Middle age is all about learning to live with ambiguity."

  "No it isn't," Hannah said thoughtfully. "You've been living successfully with ambiguity since you started questioning the whole Mennonite Ursprach. And you've always known that loving Nick didn't mean you should necessarily live with Nick. He's so unhappy that he'd make anybody miserable."

  "He didn't make me miserable. Toward the end, maybe."

  "He should have made you miserable. I don't think middle age is about learning to live with ambiguity; it's just the opposite. It's about finally developing the resolve to reject ambiguity and embrace simplicity. What could be simpler than saying, 'No matter how I feel about him, I will not expose myself to his damage'? I'm not saying it isn't painful. But it is simple."

  I shook my head. "You make it sound as if I was the one who left. But I was the coward who never would have left. Who never wanted to leave. It was he who left me."

  "It's you who are doing the leaving now. Finally! Do you know, of all the times when you guys broke up, this is the only time you've ever seemed at peace?"

  That night Hannah and I stayed up late watching Japanese Iron Chef on the food network. I didn't have cable, a fact that I liked to pretend was due to my recent financial cutbacks/marital fiasco, but which was really due to my being an academic dork. Tragically, we professors are more likely to pick up a windy biography on Feo Belcari than turn on the TV. Hannah was appalled that this was the very first time I had ever heard of the whole Iron Chef concept-"How can you call yourself
a cook and not know what's going on in the food world?"

  "Can't I be a decent cook without knowing what other people are cooking?"

  "No."

  I tried again. "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

  "Get current, or get out of the kitchen," she said.

  "Well," I said, reaching, "at least I'm not wearing a fleece vest."

  Watching this show was like the helpless feeling you get when you feel cosmically compelled to take a big swig of buttermilk. The smell makes you shudder, but you keep coming back. On the show, a food critic, presented with a dish of Israeli couscous in a rich ruby beet juice, offered some detailed feedback in Japanese, none of which we understood. But the food critic spoke for a long time. He developed his theme, gesticulating elaborately, chasing nuanced implications. Finally he concluded with an oratorical flourish of serious expostulation. Just as he was wrapping it up, there came the calm voice-over of a professional translator. This is how she translated the food critic's long eloquent commentary:

  "I'm feeling good." (Pause)

  "All over." (Pause)

  "Right now."

  That night, humming "Brighten the Corner Where You Are," I went to bed conducting a mental review of the day. Hornblower, check. Big Job, check. Couscous, check. Simplicity, check. My heart was broken, my legs were scarred, and I might well lose my house. But, go figure, I was feeling pretty good. All over. Right now.

  EIGHT

  Rippling Water

  As a child, I wanted so badly to dance that once I told my Sunday-school class I was going to be on television that very night, tap-dancing on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour. The Ted Mack Amateur Hour was the American Idol of its generation, a variety show that featured early versions of stage parents and their vocally enhanced tots. Quavering with vibrato, befringed in cowboy outfits, children belted out their show tunes and lurched in manic circles, like toys run amok.

  Several church moms called my mother, asking in amazed disapproval what channel I was going to be on. The next Sunday part of my punishment was to ask the entire Sunday-school class for forgiveness, just as Mrs. Ollenburger-she of the fleshy upper arms-had begged the church body for forgiveness when she'd had the vainglorious liposuction.

  With a pattern of dodgy behavior already established, I was a shoe-in for further scrutiny. Ancient Mrs. Lorenz, my Sunday-school teacher, took it upon herself to ask my mother if it was true that I was allergic to raisins. When faced with a tray of Mrs. Lorenz's brittle oatmeal cookies, we kids would have rather eaten the phone book. Plus these particular cookies were not just stale; they were crawling with raisins. Mrs. Lorenz handed me a big sandy cookie into which raisins had burrowed like ants in a farm. I took one pro forma nibble and then shook my head at Mrs. Lorenz: I was allergic, so tragically allergic, to raisins. One raisin and my throat would swell up and I could die. The dance drama of the previous Sunday alerted Mrs. Lorenz, who discovered just as soon as Sunday school was over that no, I did not have a deadly raisin allergy. Confessing my sin was bad enough, but the worst part was getting up once more in front of a sizable group to do it.

  The attending punishments didn't derail my longing to dance, however. The passion continued unabated into my adult years, until I finally reached the age of independence and had the means to take lessons. Only once did the Mennonite attitude toward dancing actually save me embarrassment. This was in grade eight, when I was enrolled in a hideous earth science course.

  Mr. Handwerker taught to the Talented Tenth. The smarty-pants turbodorks (including my brother Aaron) loved him. They clustered in his homeroom with their redolent bologna sandwiches. Aaron was a lordly little spud whose proclivity to name all animals by scientific genus was not socially problematic until he got his height some years later, in high school. In junior high he was teacher's pet. He was in training to take over the surly condescension of Mr. Handwerker. Mr. Handwerker's impatient arrogance made it impossible to admit that I couldn't tell an igneous rock from a sedimentary. Even in the eighth grade I suspected a home truth that life would later confirm: namely, that the separation of igneous from sedimentary rocks might not even be necessary. Personally, I began to wonder why we couldn't just mix-'n'-match our rocks. Why labor to categorize them? Were we rehearsing an unspecified but inevitable event in the hereafter, as when the Lord Jesus would separate the sheep from the goats?

  Like the biblical fool who builds his house on the sand, Mr. Handwerker had built his reputation on whisking his earth science class to the Grand Canyon for a week of canteens that teemed with tadpoles. Mr. Handwerker was under the impression that this excursion would shape our lives forever. In order to raise funds for the pricey field trip, my eighth-grade earth science class was forced to sell See's suckers, magazine subscriptions, World's Finest chocolate, and lightbulbs. Yet our collective efforts were not enough, as they had been in years past. So for the first time Mr. Handwerker commanded his eighth-grade class to stage a talent show.

  Unfortunately my class was not blessed with talent. Moreover, we were exhausted from selling See's suckers, magazine subscriptions, World's Finest chocolate, and lightbulbs. We didn't want to backpack down the steep Hermit Trail; we didn't want to marvel at arrowheads and sedimentary rocks. But like all children whose elders get a bee in their bonnet, we were forced to suck it up and obey. Since my older brother was teacher's pet, and since Mr. Handwerker knew that Mennonite girls could sew, I was the designated mistress of costumes. I sewed my heart out for that nightmarish event. For one number I designed and sewed four pink floral antebellum dresses out of sheets I'd found on clearance at Gottschalks, using wire hangers and taffeta to approximate hoopskirts.

  The talent show finale was an all-class hoedown that involved bucolic kerchiefs and square-dancing. The theory was that it would make the audience shout, "Yeehaw!" I still remember the lyrics to the chorus, penned by our own redoubtable teacher.

  Werkie forbids us singin'

  songs around here

  Werkie forbids us dancin'

  moves around here

  But we don't care what Werkie forbids;

  cause we're the singin', dancin' SCIENCE KIDS!

  As executive choreographer, Mr. Handwerker thought it would be hilarious to have me, the tallest person in the class, whisk a cartoonishly horrified Glenn Arbus, a tiny twig of a boy, into the center spotlight for a hurly-burly romp. This tall-short dance would provide comic relief, said Mr. Handwerker.

  At the rehearsal when Mr. Handwerker first broached this plan, he called me and Glenn front and center, in front of everybody.

  "You, Knucklehead," he said to me, pointing, "will grab Twig by the arm and drag him into the spotlight here. And you," he said to Twig, "will act horrified and reluctant. You will dig in your heels while she drags you. You got that?"

  Twig stoically shrugged and agreed. Poor chap, it must have been at least as humiliating for him as it was for me. When I recall this moment, I always cling to a rumor that I heard many years ago, that Twig grew up to become a brilliant genetic researcher.

  As appalled as I was, I would have done whatever Mr. Handwerker had asked. I didn't know how to resist. I wasn't even aware that resistance existed as an option. Mennonite girls weren't raised that way. However, it did rightly occur to me that the authority of the church would trump the authority of a teacher whose chief interest was the categorization of rocks. I therefore hung my head and mumbled that I didn't think my mother would let me do the dance.

  "What's that?" Mr. Handwerker said sharply. "Speak up, Numbskull!" He thought this style of address was a form of wit.

  "I have to ask my mom. About the dancing," I said, trying to make this recourse sound like a logical step any eighth grader might take.

  "Jesus H. Christ," said Mr. Handwerker. "Okay. You do that."

  I did do that. The answer was an emphatic, crisply worded letter that explained why Mary Janzen's daughter would NEVER participate in a public spectacle involving dance, even if there were thousands of rock
s in the Grand Canyon that needed categorizing. Mennonites did not dance. Period. Dancing was deeply, passionately verboten on two grounds. The first reason was that dancing led to sex . . . and this, dear readers, had been documented. In the Mennonite movement called the Fröhliche Richtung (the Joyful Direction), circa 1860, a band of renegade charismatic Mennonites started expressing the joy of the Holy Spirit via dance. During these joyful church-service dances, the aisle that divided the men's side from the women's was crossed. Boys began dancing all too joyfully with girls. Parts were felt! Accounts were written! Diaries were discovered! Adolescents were punished!

  The second reason dancing was taboo in the Ukrainian Mennonite church was more a matter of tacit custom than a stated position. There was something about the lighthearted frivolity of dance that suggested a fatal weakness in priorities. Mennonites were supposed to work with dignity, and when the work was done, there would be something to show for it. That was the great beauty of work: there was always a measurable outcome. On the other hand, you could dance until the cows came home, but you'd never have anything to show for your dancing. In fact, it was precisely this lazy, shiftless revelry that was the problem with the native Russian peasants. If idleness was the devil's workshop, then dance was the beanbag on which the devil was enjoying himself a little too freely.

  In junior high, I could not know that twenty years later a belated idea would occur to some of the younger Mennonites. Like all ideas that occurred to Mennonites, this one was not fresh. But it was new to them. It struck some of the younger set that dancing might not be so bad. However, the only way that Mennonites could endorse a new activity was to make the careful case that God was okay with it. Thus "liturgical movement" made its debut in some Mennonite churches. Always in quotations, "liturgical movement" consisted of three Sunday-school teachers dressed in bad white skirts moving in synchronized patterns. Together these brave ladies would step to the left, then lunge to the right, then lift one arm like an elephant trunk, gesturing toward the heavens. I'm sad to say that "liturgical movement" gave the older Mennonites bilious indigestion. It never really caught on.