Davey's Daughter (18 page)

Sarah smiled now, as the pupils seemed hesitant, the singing class punctuated by empty spaces, leaving the class incomplete, little rows of strong white teeth with too many missing.

“Please stand together, share a songbook with the one nearest you, and let’s sing page 47. I remember that song from my own school years.”

The singing was pathetic, Sarah finally admitted to herself, after starting a clear rendition of “I’ll Fly Away.” She sang alone with only a few quavering, half-hearted attempts made by the lower grade girls.

Mostly, the pupils stood like angry little bees, their eyes bold, alert, watching her as warily as hornets protecting their nests and as ready to sting. The songbooks flopped in colorful disarray, some of them unopened, held belligerently to chests, clearly showing the students’ unwillingness to participate in any form of song.

Well, she couldn’t fix everything the first morning. She’d stood her ground about the Bible reading, so she’d pretend the singing class was not out of the ordinary.

After the children were seated back at their desks, Sarah introduced herself, then asked the children to wear the colorful name tags she had made with the number of each student’s grade written in bold black beside their names, to make it easier to remember this first day.

No one seemed to mind, so Sarah pressed them to small shirtfronts and black pinafores, colorful dress fronts for the little girls who wore belt aprons pinned around their waists with sturdy silver safety pins.

“There!” she announced, smiling.

Ben Zook had two children in school, a little boy in third grade named Marlin, and Marianne in second grade. Sarah smiled to herself. Marianne resembled a much smaller version of Anna, her energetic little body as round as a barrel, propelled on two very small feet that were perfectly capable of carrying her swiftly wherever she needed to go.

Standing behind her desk, she told the children her name was Sarah Beiler, and she would be their teacher the remainder of the year, hopefully, if everyone would be willing to work together with her. There would be new rules, new ways, and she proceeded to read the twelve rules she’d set for the school.

A hand was raised, then another.

“Yes?”

“That’s a stupid rule, about putting our hands on our desk when you read the Bible.”

“You think so? Why?”

“It just is.”

“Why?”

“We didn’t used to have to do it.”

The speaker was a fifth-grade boy named Chester, his hair as brilliantly inclined to a fiery, golden red as that of his sister Elizabeth
—
Liz for short
—
the fat, belligerent first arrival.

“I know. But it’s very distracting to read from the Bible when all that noise is going on. It’s unnecessary, annoying, and so I won’t allow it.”

“We gotta do it every morning?”

“Every morning.”

Another hand was raised.

Roy, a sixth-grader, his straight brown hair hanging all the way into his eyes, shook his head as if to rid himself of the offending curtain of hair before telling Sarah that was when he learned his memory verse, when Martha read the Bible.

“Sorry, Roy. You’ll have to learn the verse at home.”

“I don’t have time. I have to do chores, eat supper, and go to bed.”

“Really? You must have an awful lot of chores, eat a long supper, and go to bed very early.”

A few smiles accompanied this statement, a spark of interest shining from a number of eyes.

Arithmetic classes began with the first grade, the dark-haired little boy named Mark, a willing and eager student. Lena Mae, a small, thin girl with a perpetual frown and a pinched, weary look about her face appeared much older than her six years. Sarah wondered at the strain showing on the pale face.

Reuben and Kathryn made up the rest of the first grade, both brown-haired, quiet, and afraid to speak, which Sarah knew came from the lurking attitude of sarcasm that hovered over the classroom like a rotten stench.

Sarah had reached fifth-grade arithmetic when she heard a rapping on the front door and caught sight of two of the eighth-grade girls standing behind two older women, their faces boding no good.

Well, so be it.

Sarah went to the door, her knees almost losing the ability to carry her until her hand reached the doorknob, a much-needed source of support.

“Hello.”

“Hi. Can you come out on the porch for a moment?”

The voice held no friendliness, but wasn’t quite full of anger either.

Sarah stepped out, leaving the door open, the pupils turning in their seats to see what was occurring on the porch.

Ruth Stoltzfus was Rosanna’s mother. She was short, squat, and clutched her sweater tightly around her waist, her brilliant red dress matching the high color in her cheeks.

“What is going on?”

Before Sarah answered, the taller, angular mother behind Ruth nodded her head, her eyes snapping, her mouth turned down in a stern frown. Sarah imagined a snapping turtle wearing a black bonnet but dismissed the thought immediately.

“I asked the pupils to stop making noise while I read the Bible for devotions. When that didn’t work, I asked them to place their hands on their desks.”

“Whatever for? I never in all my life heard such a thing. That’s way too strict. You can’t send children home from school because of such a little thing. I mean, who would listen to such a ridiculous rule?”

These words were forced from the angular mother’s mouth, the frown bobbing up and down as she spoke, the nodding head of Ruth Stoltzfus accompanying the words of her friend.

The two eighth-grade girls watched Sarah, triumph an ill-concealed victory they claimed more fully with every word their mothers spoke.

“What should I have done?”

There was no answer immediately as the mothers looked at one another, then to the victorious daughters, before sputtering, shaking their heads.

Finally, the tall one with the black bonnet spoke. “Well, you wouldn’t have had to go to such drastic measures. It’s simply unnecessary. They wouldn’t have HAD to put their hands on their desks. Being sent home is serious business.”

“Yes, I agree. But if I’m supposed to teach Ivy Run School, we need to be able to understand each other. If you would like to know what needs to happen in this school, then we’ll have a parent teacher’s meeting on Friday evening.

“If you won’t attend, then you may as well take your girls out of school now. Putting their hands on their desks is only the tip of the iceberg, believe me.”

After the last pupil had disappeared down the road, walking or propelling their scooters homeward, Sarah sank into the swivel chair, leaned back, and folded her hands on her stomach. She propped her elbows on the cracked vinyl arm rests with tufts of white fibers protruding from them, and she knew this day had been the beginning of the end.

She’d already failed, and it was only her first day. The mothers were right. She’d been too strict.

Love never fails, and she had reacted to disobedience with a hard, angry stance, a refusal to back down, and now all was lost. She’d be so ashamed. The only girl in Lancaster County who’d taught school only one week before having to give up.

Well, she also held the dubious title of being the only girl whose fiancé had run off to Haiti and married an English woman as well as the title of being the one caught in a web of intrigue as far as Ashley Walters was concerned. She’d failed her, too.

D
at said the barn raising at Enos Miller’s went well. In fact, it was enough to rekindle any love that had ever been lost among the community.

It was the overwhelming number of men, the orderly manner in which things occurred when each one was willing to take instructions from the seasoned older men who had directed the raising of many barns before this one, that reduced him to a lip-quivering, tear-filled man of gratitude.

The weather had been unusually fine. The mud and debris had all been shoveled onto a blackened, odorous heap that would continue smoking for days.

The sun warmed them as they erected the skeleton of the building. The fresh, yellow lumber smelled of hope and faith yet again for Dat.

Opinions had been shelved for the day of the barn raising, as the charity among them built a shrine to love in action, a kind of holiness about the building that didn’t allow gossip or hating or backbiting.

Dat was inspired, rejuvenated, his faith in his fellowmen firmly entrenched.

In his mind, he chose to look for the good in each one, tolerate the opinions that he didn’t agree with, and live each day trying to look at the world through the eyes of a benevolent Savior.

“If God has so much mercy on us
—
each day it’s fresh and new
—
then we need to acknowledge this same mercy for our
mit and neva mensch
(fellowman).”

As he spoke, the family was still seated at the supper table, Levi at his right, Mam at his left. The old doubleknit tablecloth covered the oak extension table and was laden with Mam’s Corelle dishes. The serving dishes were now half empty, containing mashed potatoes and beef gravy and corn and buttered noodles. Smaller glass dishes held applesauce and coleslaw, and one had only a bit of red beet juice covering the bottom, the last red beet egg having been speared by Levi, salted well, and enjoyed with great relish.

The evening sun was casting deep shadows in the corners of the large farmhouse kitchen, so Mam got up and flicked a lighter beneath the propane lamp in the oak cabinet, illuminating Sarah’s face and highlighting the misery that had been her day.

Levi, as always, trumpeted the news headlines, having head every detail from Sarah herself, as she wailed out her disastrous day, alternating between complete refusal to think her teaching career was salvageable to fighting for her own way, refusing to accept failure. It was alright for Dat to give this whole
schtick
(piece) about love and looking for the good in each person, but she simply couldn’t run a classroom on love. That was all there was to it.

“
Die Sarah wahu un heila
(Sarah was crying)!” he announced with importance, snapping his suspenders for emphasis.

Dat looked at Sarah sharply.

“You were crying?
Ach
my. And I completely forgot to ask you about your first day at school. Was it really that bad?”

“Every bit,” Sarah said, nodding. She proceeded to relate her entire day in her own words, Dat listening carefully.

“So now you have this parent teacher’s meeting Friday evening, right?” he asked finally.

“I guess. I don’t know. Mrs. Turtle
—
oops!”

Sarah clapped a hand over mouth, her eyes already begging Dat’s forgiveness.

“What?” he asked, grinning as he dabbed at a few spots of grape jelly on the tablecloth.

“Oh, one of the mothers looks like a snapping turtle.”

Levi looked sharply at Sarah, then burst out laughing. Suzie snickered, then joined in, and Priscilla grinned widely, enjoying Sarah’s description.

Dat remained sober, and Sarah was chastised by this alone. “You say the whole school is infested with mockery and sarcasm. I think perhaps some must have found its way home.”

He told Sarah, then, that to expect perfection had been drastic. In disbelief, shame so acute she visibly squirmed in her chair, she listened as he told her in soft tones that he had experienced this type of uprising many times as a minister. He was expected to lead but often found that serving was the better approach.

“What you did, we would all like to do, but it was a huge bite for your first day. I wish you the best, having this parent teacher’s meeting, but don’t be surprised if not too much is accomplished. Your goal is to get those children to want to obey your rules.”

“It’s impossible!” Sarah burst out, on the verge of tears.

“Go halfway. Go to school in the morning, and see how many hands are placed on their desks, see how long it goes until they feel awkward, sitting on their hands. They can’t do much, with their hands under their…um…backsides.”

Mam shook up and down, her eyes twinkling.

“But Dat, they’re so disobedient. So openly
fa-schput
(mocking).”

“That didn’t start overnight, and it’s not going to go away overnight. Try and win them. Stand firm.”

“I just want to quit.”

“I’ve wanted to quit many times. These past few years have probably been the hardest ever, with the differences in opinion where the barn fires have been concerned. Now a group of ministers thinks anyone who talks to reporters should be
schtrofed
(chastised), and I think that’s a drastic measure.”

“Like the hands on the desks.”

“Afraid so.”

Dat looked at the clock and rose to do the evening chores, whistling under his breath as he pulled on his boots.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you all. That Lee Glick that’s helping the Widow Lydia’s Omar with his Belgians? He was driving a mare double with that half-trained stallion. It was a sight, I tell you. Every head was turned when they drove into Enos’s with a load of hay. I’ve never seen a neck on a Belgian like that. He sure does have a way with horses. I think he must be a special person, the way that Omar looks up to him. Not often you see such adoration.”

Side by side, Sarah and her mother washed and dried dishes, discussing the school day as the land around them settled into darkness. Yellow squares of light appeared at the cow stable windows as the diesel purred into action, providing power for the milking machines and cooling the fresh, warm milk poured into the gleaming bulk tank in the milk house.

Levi sang loudly as he resumed shuffling his Rook cards, and Suzie came banging through the
kesslehaus
door, filling a bucket with hot water from the hose attached to the wall, faithfully doing her chores, feeding the new calves.

Mam shook her head when Sarah asked why Suzie didn’t get her hot water in the milk house, so she let it go. Perhaps she was much more controlling that she knew.

She swiped viciously at a burnt pan, added a few sprinkles of dish soap, and attacked it once more, before rinsing it beneath the faucet and stacking it in the dish drainer. Then she leaned back, her hands propped on a corner of the sink, lowered her head, and shook with laughter.

“So, this is how my spinsterhood begins. I have to have you and Dat to set my priorities straight. Seriously, I’m so ashamed.”

“Oh no, Sarah. Please don’t be ashamed. You’re so young. We learn by our own mistakes. Everyone does. Some learn faster than others, but we learn, eventually.”

“What would I do without my parents?”

Sarah slid an arm around her mother’s waist, leaving a trail of white suds, and her mother wrapped her in her arms, holding the red and white checked dish towel behind Sarah’s back.

In the background, Levi sang, “We’ll work, we’ll work till Jesus comes, we’ll work, we’ll work till Jesus comes.”

The clock struck six, steam rose from the teakettle on the coal stove, and Sarah knew she was blessed beyond measure.

As she packed her lunch the following morning, the world seemed like a better place, loaded with endless possibilities. It was amazing what a good night’s sleep could do for her spirits.

She spread mayonnaise on a slice of whole wheat bread, layered Lebanon bologna, cheese, and lettuce on top, then added another slice of bread. She shoved it into a Zip-loc bag and turned to find a small container to hold some bread and butter pickles. Another bag of potato chips, a few carrots, and one small molasses cookie went into the insulated pouch, and she was done.

Today she was wearing a dress the color of her eyes, a deep sage green. She pushed up the sleeves as she prepared her lunch.

She’d wear her Nikes and accompany the children to the playground, if she could cajole them into playing an organized game.

She had never seen children huddled in individual groups without playing a single game at recess. She guessed it wasn’t considered cool to play games, and some of those pupils surely could use some physical exertion.

The job was monumental, no doubt, but her energy motored along, fueled by a healthy breakfast of granola, vanilla yogurt, and a sliced banana. When her driver showed up, she ran out to the waiting vehicle, waving briskly at Dat, who stood at the door to the milk house.

One by one, or in groups, the children sidled through the door, watching their new teacher with varied degrees of suspicion or curiosity.

No one answered her round of good mornings, but with Dat’s advice intact, she could let it go. The upper graders slouched in various positions, their desks suddenly a place to display any outlandish way of sitting they could devise.

She chose to ignore that, knowing they were baiting the trap. Get the teacher mad and we have the upper hand, they seemed to say.

“Good morning, boys and girls!” Her voice quivered, straightened, steadied.

The murmurs were low, somewhat garbled, and came mostly from the first and second grade, as two upper grade boys flashed mirrors, combed their hair up over their heads, turning the mirrors to view the results of looking English.

Sarah began reading the Bible, as she had done the day before, asking no one to put their hands on their desks. Timidly, a few first graders placed them on their desktops, the little knuckles white from clenching them so hard.

Bewildered, unsure, the remaining students looked around, lifted eyebrows, mouthed questions. Their hands remained in their laps or hung loosely at their sides as they were unsure exactly how to proceed.

But it was quiet
—
clock-ticking-on-the-wall, beautifully quiet.

They stood and repeated the Lord’s Prayer, Sarah stumbling over the same passage, a few more pupils reciting along with her than the day before.

Singing class was a study in disorganization. No one stood straight or even tried to put any heart into the song, so Sarah asked if they would like to learn new songs instead of repetitively singing the old ones.

No one bothered to answer, the girls’ eyes half-closed with boredom, the boys much too cool to notice the fact that she’d spoken at all.

That set the tone for the whole day. Disinterest, rebellion, outright anger, refusal to accept rules, probably everything that could have gone wrong did.

At the end of the day, her shoulders ached from being held stiffly in place, her right ear was throbbing seriously, and the beginning of a major headache was hovering somewhere in the region of her right temple.

Not once had any child spoken respectfully to her.

The games at recess hadn’t happened, the boys informing her the only game they played was baseball, and it was too cold for that.

Sarah suggested Prisoners Base or Colored Eggs, which brought such a display of mockery that Sarah dropped the whole idea.

Many students failed their lessons, scoring percentages below sixty-five, and refused to tackle the list of do-overs, so that at the end of the day, Sarah lay her arms on her desk and sobbed great tears of defeat and remorse. She wished she’d never started this impossible task. She wasn’t cut out to be a schoolteacher. Unqualified
—
that was the word. And she still had that daunting parent teacher’s meeting to live through.

When the doorknob turned, she wasn’t afraid, figuring one of the students had forgotten a book or a paper. Then she seriously considered dropping on her knees and crawling under her desk, where she would stay till Lee Glick went away.

Why? How could he pop into her classroom unannounced? Her curly hair was completely out of control, her eyes were sore and swollen, her face blotchy, her nose red from wiping it repeatedly, and there he stood, dressed in clean, casual clothes. No work clothes this time.

“Sarah?” The word was a question, an inquiry with a polite, kind tone carrying it.

“
Ach
Lee. I…” Helplessly, her hands fluttered to her face. “I’m a mess.”

He strode toward her desk, and she lowered her eyes. She felt him standing behind her chair and stifled a gasp as his hands came down on her shoulders.

“You look like you’ve had a rough day.”

“Yep.”

“May I massage your shoulders? Not in a …um…you know. I’m just a friend. Let me.”

“Okay.”

Whether it was right or proper was completely forgotten, the healing comfort in his hands restoring her sense of well-being.

She felt the headache dissipate, the sharp pain between her shoulders loosen, as his hands massaged away the frustration and hopelessness of the day.

“Feel better?”

He stepped back, flexing his fingers, and Sarah felt a sense of loss as sharply as any physical pain, accompanied by the absolute knowledge that he had no business being here in this schoolroom giving her a “friendly” massage. Lee was a two-faced deceiver giving her hope now, even though he was dating Rose.