Stones for Bread (43 page)

When I tell Jude the bakehouse is his, he blinks at me from behind his glasses and bites his bottom lip into his mouth, stretching the skin around his lip rings.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

It’s early morning, our time together before coworkers or customers arrive. I covet this time, and though our relationship is nothing like the one I had with his grandfather, having Jude here keeps Xavier a part of things and Wild Rise needs that.

“I’m leaving for Tennessee today,” I say.

“I talked to Seamus last night. He didn’t tell me.”

“He doesn’t know. No one does.”

Jude grins. “You sly dog.”

“I assume that’s a compliment.”

“He loves you, you know.”

I nod. “That’s why I’m going. And that’s why I want you to be head baker here. If you want it.”

“I’m a high school dropout who can’t hardly read.”

“But you have the hands. That’s what Zave told me when you first came. You’ve proven yourself, and there’s no one I trust more with my bread.”

I hold my arms open to him and he steps in, bony against me, Xavier in miniature. He squeezes me so tightly my ribs pop. I ruffle his hair, now algae green, and straighten his apron. “This is our secret, got it? I’ll e-mail Gretchen tonight and we’ll figure things out, but I don’t want any fanfare. Besides, it’s not like I’m gone for good. I’ll be back every month to check up on all of you.”

“Y’all,” he said. “If you’re living down there, you better learn to talk like them.”

“I’ll work on it.”

I spend the rest of the morning wandering around the bakehouse, committing the smells to memory, running my hands over the wainscot, enjoying the cadence of Tee’s chopping and Ellie’s laughter. At lunchtime a class of kindergarteners comes for their field trip, thirteen this time. I write their names on the paper chef hats. I tell them about dough, giving them some to work into crusts for their pizzas. And as
they flatten and knead and pinch, I watch their hands. No Poilâne. No Jude. Simply a table full of six-year-olds who may one day remember their time with the bread and come to love it in ways unexpected.

Everyone’s busyness makes me invisible. I take the stoneware jar of starter from the cooler. When the children’s class is finished, I take one last look around Wild Rise and slip out the front door with them, up the stairs to my apartment. I spin layers of cotton towels around Oma’s crock, thinking this must be how she wrapped it before leaving her home behind, traveling thousands of miles with her daughter to an unknown land. I asked my mother once why they came here, and she gave a generic immigrant answer: “For a better life.” But my grandmother loved her country, and they were no more poor or burdened there than in the United States, perhaps less so. I won’t ever know what Oma would say was the true reason that stirred her away from all she knew. But I see now through a glass less dimly, with eyes of faith, tracing the thumbprint of God from one event to another until here I am, bubble wrap and masking tape wadded thickly over the towels, trusting the Anfrishsauer will safely make another journey to a new home.

Twenty-Four

I’m young, eight, home from third grade because of snow. My mother and I spend the morning playing Pick Up Sticks and Old Maid because the television doesn’t work.
But the lights turn on
, I say.

The cable is out
. She offers to put a video in the VCR, but we don’t have many to choose from, only Christmas movies, aerobics tapes, and a flat, brown box with a picture of a man and a woman on the cover; her neck is long and gold, and he hovers above her as if he’ll bite it.
Gone with the Wind
, I read.
What’s this?

A very long movie
.

Is it good?

If you’re a grown-up
.

I want to play outside, but it’s an icy storm, each flake a tiny, sharp dagger, the front patio shiny as a skating rink. Instead, I build a fort with the couch cushions and a bedsheet; it’s cool and crackly and smells like only a fresh bedsheet can. My favorite scent in the world, even better than bread in the oven. I don’t tell my mother, but I think she knows. She sees me press my face into the smooth fabric and finds
me some mornings hugging a wadded sheet I’ve taken from the linen closet because I wake in the night from a bad dream and can’t bear to slip back into sleep without the smell in my nose. My own twin-sized sheets don’t offer the same comfort, the flannel too fuzzy and hot, saturated in my own skin oils and dust mites.

My mother lets me eat an early lunch in the fort. SpaghettiOs, a special treat. She keeps a can hidden behind the green beans for days when she has her pains and Daddy needs to feed me dinner. She doesn’t get them often, but when they come she can be in bed for days, the bedroom shades pulled all the way to the sills. I hear her cry, and my father tells me the pains make her sad. I don’t know where they settle, but I have had enough earaches and sore throats to understand what it means to hurt.

I bring my empty bowl to the kitchen sink. My mother captures me in her apron, tying me in it, and says,
It’s time
.

Are we baking?

You are.
The canister of flour is on the counter, the measuring cups, the ring of spoons.
Show me you have learned
.

I don’t understand
.

I want to see you make the bread. All by yourself
.

I need the cookbook
.

No
, she says, crouching, placing her palm over my heart. Her touch magnifies the beating somehow.
The recipe is here
.
Tell me, what four things do you need?

Flour, water, salt, yeast
, I say, the words an incantation, spurring my arms to motion. Closing my eyes, I conjure images of my mother the last time I watched her bake, and I do as she does. Three cups flour. Two cups water. One tablespoon each of yeast and salt. I stir until the mass of dough thickens and traps the spoon. Then I sprinkle flour on the counter and begin kneading. My hands stick. I reach into the canister for more, hold it high and let it rain down like fairy dust. No, my mother doesn’t do this, but I am the sorceress today.

I work the dough and she tells me of the past, how older women taught young girls the art of bread, how the children were included in these things from an early age and they take them in as the right way to do it. Perhaps the only way. The new bride buys butter or oleo for her home, a choice depending on what her mother has always done. She folds socks or rolls them into balls. She adds washing soda to the laundry or chlorine bleach. She does what she knows; it’s imitation at first, but somewhere the lines blur and it becomes her way, no less a part of her than the hue of her eyes or the crookedness of her teeth.

I cover my dough with a damp towel and place the bowl in the oven with the pilot light on, and we wait together, watching Scarlett O’Hara lose more than she gains, and when intermission comes I shape my loaf into a fat braid—again because it’s mine and I want to—and let it puff again under the towel, on the counter this time, and play the remainder of the movie. I don’t care for it, but happily sit through the characters’ pouting and drinking and shouting at one another if it means I spend the afternoon tucked beneath my mother’s arm, my cheek on her soft breast, her fingers twining my hair.

The bread goes into the oven. I keep the light on and watch it bake as my mother prepares our beef stew supper. My father stumbles into the house, weary from his daylong battle to keep the delivery truck from skidding off the weather-beaten roads, kisses my mother more tenderly than Rhett ever did Scarlett, and changes into dry socks. I set the table and she spoons hot meat and root vegetables into bowls, and I take the bread from the oven, burning my wrist on the rack. The loaf is too flat and dark, and it should cool but we don’t let it, instead slicing it with Oma’s long, toothy knife, the still-humid crumb tearing unevenly.

It’s beautiful, Liesl
, my mother says.

For real?

Yes
. Her cool fingers touch the blister on my wrist.
You are now a keeper of bread
.

Recipe Index

Barley-Wheat Sourdough,
235

Cecelia’s Dark Chocolate Pain au Levain,
62

Claudia’s Christstollen,
154

Liesl’s Orange Chai Boule,
17

Pumpernickel Onion Sourdough Bread,
207

Sourdough Breakfast Cake,
292

“Stick to Your Buns” Sticky Buns,
192

Wild Rise Petite Baguette,
110

Wild White Sandwich Bread,
250

Wild Yeast Starter,
45

Reading Group Guide

1. Liesl’s grandmother quotes a German proverb to her:
Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.
What does she mean by this? How does this relate to your daily life? Your faith journey?

2. When Liesl’s grandmother dies, Claudia says to her,
“It will come again, Liesl. Grief always does. And in the face of it, you’ll need to decide if you’ll step over the pieces and leave them to be trampled, or if you’ll gather them up for salvage.”
How have you reacted to grief when you’ve seen it in the lives of others? In your own life?

3. Seamus isn’t the typical romantic interest often found in novels. How do his authenticity and idiosyncrasies give him the ability to draw Liesl from within herself? What about him helps Liesl come to view him as a safe person?

4. In an age when so many people are searching for—and in ways, creating—their own fifteen minutes of fame, do you think it’s realistic for Liesl to turn down her own television show? How would you choose if you were in her position?

5. Seamus has told Cecelia her mother left them because she “never learned how to love.” Cecelia, however, states she didn’t realize
loving someone was something needed to be taught. What do you think? Do you agree with Seamus or Cecelia?

6. Intergenerational ties are strongly represented in
Stones for Bread
, particularly between Liesl, Claudia, and Oma. Do you think we, as a society, have lost some of those bonds today?

7. Liesl, Xavier, and Jude all share an intense love of bread and baking, and it knits them together in a way that gives them a deeper understanding of one another. Have you had a relationship based on the sharing of a skill or passion? How has that influenced your life at present?

8. Did you learn anything new about the history of bread and how one simple food has shaped the human experience? What fact did you find most interesting?

Acknowledgments

I always come to the acknowledgments scratching my head, knowing there are more people to thank than I can ever fit onto these pages. Here is my non-exhaustive list, with apologies to all those I’ve neglected to include, compounded by the fact I wrote this while thirty-nine weeks pregnant, which any woman who’s been pregnant understands is a rather forgetful time.

Thank you:

Thomas Nelson Publishers, for taking a chance on this novel.

Amanda Bostic, editorial director at HarperCollins Christian Publishing, and my personal editor, for being my champion and advocate. Your enthusiasm for
Stones for Bread
means more to me than I can express.

Line editor extraordinaire, Rachelle Gardner.

Bill Jensen, my agent and friend and fellow home artisan baker, who offered this idea to me.

Those who helped with the languages represented in this novel: Claudia Bell (whose name I borrowed for Liesl’s mother and who
I hope ins’t too disappointed by her fictional namesake), Melinda Bokelman, and Jen DeBusk.

All my recipe tasters and testers.

Everyone who has prayed for me, my writing, and my family, especially the people of Clifton Park Center Baptist Church, Redeemer Reformed Presbyterian Church, and Gentle Christian Mothers.

My parents, Ann and Joseph Parrish, for their continued and seemingly endless support.

My sister, Laura Parrish Combs, for loving me even though I hate to answer my phone, and for all the hand-me-downs.

My children—Gray, Jacob, Claire, and Noah—who continue to challenge and grow me.

And Chris, who tells me every day he loves me. No regrets.

Invaluable in writing the history portions of
Stones for Bread
was H. E. Jacob’s brilliant
6,000 Years of Bread: Its Holy and Unholy History
, published by Skyhorse Publishing (2007), forward by Peter Reinhart.

About the Author

Author photo by Allen Clark

Christa Parrish is the award-winning author of four novels, including the 2009 ECPA Fiction Book of the Year
Watch Over Me
. Married to author and pastor Chris Coppernoll, Christa co-labors with him in co-leading their church’s youth ministry program, and weekly Bible study. When not writing, she is chauffeuring her Grand Champion purple belt to and from Taekwondo classes, teaching a preschooler the alphabet, and changing newborn diapers. She is now also slightly obsessed with the art of baking bread.