Authors: Lynn Austin
The arched door was unlocked. I stepped inside to be greeted by a musty
odor so disagreeable that even Sophie wrinkled her nose. Simple oak pews flanked the center aisle, facing an unadorned pulpit. The four narrow windows on each of the side walls were made of clear glass. I remembered the rich, walnut woodwork and stained-glass windows in the stone church where I’d worshiped back home and felt cheated. I had been forced to give it up—for this?
By the time I walked back to the farmhouse, Herr Metzger was preparing to leave. I thanked him for fetching me from the train station.
“My wife will pay you a visit in a few days, when you’re settled,” he promised before he drove away.
I turned back to my new home, staring in dismay at the dingy gray box. There were two large maple trees in the front yard, but nothing else; no bushes or shrubs, no flowers or climbing vines or painted flower boxes.
“Come inside and let me show you around,” Friedrich urged. I followed him up crooked wooden steps and across a wide front porch with railings all around it. “This will be a nice place to sit on summer evenings when it’s hot,” he said.
The walls of the frame house seemed flimsy and thin compared to the thick-walled German farmhouses I was used to. I wondered what would happen when the winter wind blew. The front door opened onto a dark hallway with stairs leading to the second floor. Friedrich opened the door to a small room on the right. “This will be my study someday. Can’t you picture it with a desk and some bookshelves?”
The parlor was through the doorway on our left, and beyond it was a formal dining room with a bay window. All of the rooms were sparsely furnished with items donated by the parishioners. Undismayed by the barrenness of the huge, high-ceilinged rooms, Fritz showed me a thick magazine.
“This is the Sears Roebuck catalogue. It has everything we’ll need to furnish a house. And the prices are very reasonable too. We just mail in our order with the money, and they deliver it by mail or railroad freight.” I tried to feign interest as Friedrich leafed through the pages, pointing to pictures of upholstered sofas, rocking chairs, oak bedroom sets with dressers and nightstands—even pianos and sewing machines. But Friedrich was too excited to linger over the catalogue for very long.
“Wait until you see the kitchen.” He led me by the hand into a kitchen so large that Mama, Oma, both of my sisters, and I could have all worked without bumping elbows. It had a cast-iron cook stove that would burn either wood or coal, a pantry lined with shelves, a granitine sink with a hand pump, a well-
worn linoleum floor, and wainscoted walls. A gas lamp hung from the ceiling and three extra lamps lined a shelf above a porcelain-topped worktable.
“There’s plenty of storage space for your dishes and things,” Friedrich said, unlatching the door to one of the two tall cupboards that hung from the wall. “And when we get hungry, there’s some chicken and dumplings in the icebox for our supper, courtesy of Mrs. Metzger.”
I was weary of forcing a smile on my lips that I didn’t feel. For some reason, I felt close to tears. I turned to peer out of the kitchen window to hide them and saw a couple of apple trees, a garden area, a small barn, the privy, and two other outbuildings.
Friedrich took my hand again.” Want to see upstairs?” His grin vanished when he saw my face. “Louise, what’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry . . . I guess I’m just feeling a little overwhelmed.”
He lifted Sophie from my arms and set her on the floor. When she began to cry I reached for her but Friedrich stopped me, pulling me into his arms instead.
“She’ll be all right for a moment or two. I’ve scarcely had a chance to hold you without the baby wedged between us.” He gave me a long, lingering kiss, then took my face in his hands. “I love you, Louise. And I’m going to do everything in my power to make you happy here.”
Friedrich meant well, but all my joy had been extinguished as I had sailed away from my home and my family in Germany. This was my first day in my new house in America. I should have been content. But I was sure that I would never really be happy again.
I soon learned that I had many expectations thrust upon me as Pastor Schroder’s wife. In nice weather, Friedrich liked me to go with him on his rounds, paying social and condolence calls on his parishioners, bringing meals to the sick and shut-in. Although I was one of the youngest wives, I was expected to lead the women’s missionary society, raising funds in support of overseas missions in China. I was called upon to help prepare meals for all the church functions, such as picnics and weddings and funeral luncheons.
Friedrich was immensely successful and well-liked in the community, but as I listened to the glowing tales of the former pastor’s wife, I realized that compared to her, I was a great disappointment in every way—not the least of which was my inability to play the piano. Judging by all the attention and the pitying looks the older matrons gave Friedrich—the gifts of breads and pies
and pastries they brought to him—I knew they all felt very sorry for poor Pastor Schroder. What a heavy burden he carried, encumbered with a useless wife like me.
Although I knew a lot of women in the village by name, I didn’t feel close to any of them. Magda was the only “family” I had, and I didn’t see her very often. She lived more than a mile away on the other side of the river. Gustav traveled a great deal with his work, stranding her at home without transportation. I looked forward to Sunday church services not for the opportunity to worship God, but because I would see Magda.
I blamed Friedrich’s God for my losses. Friedrich preached that He was a God of love, and that He’d shown His love by sacrificing His Son, Jesus Christ. But to me He was the God who had told Friedrich not to serve in the army, the God who talked to him in dreams, the God who convinced him to immigrate, and then held me to my marriage vows until death.
The God I’d once known had been left behind in the stone church in Germany where Papa was an elder, Kurt was a deacon, and our lives were held in perfect balance—the church where Sophie was baptized at the walnut font in the nave, and where my grandfather rested beneath a stone marker in the cemetery outside. Having faith in Friedrich’s God meant giving up control of my fate. He was one more person who wielded power over my life.
And so I sat in the pew with Sophie on my lap, Sunday after Sunday, too angry to pray. The only control I had was over my emotions, and I chose bitterness and resentment.
Friedrich was jubilant when we learned later that first summer that I was expecting. We both wanted another baby very badly. But in September I suffered a miscarriage.
“It’s little wonder that a child can’t live in my womb,” I told him. “I feel so dead inside . . . like I have nothing to live for.”
“Aren’t we enough, Louise?” he whispered as he lay in the darkness beside me. “Aren’t Sophie and I enough?” But I was afraid to love them, afraid I would lose them too.
My grief and despondency lasted well into December. It was Friedrich who decided we needed a Christmas tree and dragged one into our parlor, trimming it with candles and ornaments from home. It was Friedrich who cut pine boughs to decorate the church for the Christmas Eve service. And it was Friedrich who greeted all the parishioners who stopped by the house, bringing Christmas gifts and baked goods. If the Metzgers hadn’t invited us to their home for Christmas dinner, we wouldn’t have had a dinner at all.
Friedrich was in the habit of rising early every morning to read the Scriptures and pray before he left for work at the mill. One morning when I was unable to sleep, I found him on his knees before dawn. “What do you need to pray for?” I asked bitterly. “You got your own way. Your prayers were answered. We’re here in America where you wanted to be.”
I saw the sorrow in his eyes as he pulled himself to his feet. “I pray that you will forgive me for bringing you here,” he said softly. “And that you will love me again someday.”
Friedrich never stopped trying to show his love and to win mine in return. True to his promise, he filled our home with furnishings from the Sears Roebuck catalogue and stocked my kitchen with blue-enameled cookware and all the latest cooking gadgets. In springtime he brought me bunches of violets and apple blossoms, tucking a flower in my hair or in the buttonhole of my shirtwaist. In summer he presented me with the first ripe tomato from our garden, still warm from the sun. When I stood at the sink washing dishes he would often come up behind me and encircle me with his arms, resting his head against the back of my shoulder. He never begged me to love him or demanded that I return his love. He was never angry or impatient with me, even when I was sunk in despair for days at a time. He simply loved me. But I felt nothing in return.
I learned that I was expecting again the following spring, one year after arriving in America, and suffered a second miscarriage that summer. I had lost so much weight, the doctor said that I was too unhealthy to carry a child to term. I gazed at the hollow-eyed woman I saw in the silver mirror and wondered how Friedrich could still think she was pretty.
My despondency deepened my second winter in America when Mama wrote to tell me that Oma had died. She had suffered a bad fall and had died a week later. I buried Oma’s crying cup deep inside a drawer in the sideboard.
Meanwhile, my friend Magda had delivered her fifth child, a son, and was pregnant with her sixth. Gustav had become dissatisfied with his job selling farm equipment. He had worked at the mill with Friedrich for a while, but he had been fired after an argument with his boss. Now he worked as a traveling salesman, peddling patent medicines door to door. Friedrich bought a supply of Dr. Brown’s Vegetable Cure from him, hoping it would cure my malaise.
Magda had so little compared with me—a tiny, rented house full of ragged children; a sporadic income; a husband who showed her little affection. Why couldn’t I appreciate the bounty Friedrich’s labors had produced? His church was thriving, his sermons so popular with the new mill workers that his congregation
had doubled to eighty families. With the increase in pay, he no longer needed to work at the mill but was studying books on theology and Greek, preparing to apply for ordination. We’d been given a milk cow and some chickens, we had fruit trees and a garden—all that we could ever need or want. Yet Magda thrived and I was miserable.
In July of 1899, I discovered that I was in a family way for a fourth time. Unwilling to lose another child, Friedrich hired one of the Metzgers’ plump, teenaged daughters to help me with the cleaning and washing. Sophie, who would turn four the following month, adored her.
That August we learned that my brother Emil had been drafted after completing only two and a half years at university. When he finished his military training he was shipped to the German colonies in the Far East. Emil’s letters read like adventure novels. He was so excited by all that he saw and did that he didn’t have time to be homesick. He sent me a photograph of himself in his uniform, and it brought a rare smile to my lips. “He’s finally seeing the world,” I told Fritz. “That was his
Someday
dream.”
I was relieved to discover that I didn’t need to learn English, since I could talk to Magda and most of the other villagers in German. Friedrich had learned to read and speak English quite well after nearly four years in America, so he would translate the newspaper for me, especially any news that involved Germany or the Far East, where Emil was stationed. I would sit in the rocking chair in the parlor every evening after dinner, or on the front porch if the weather was nice, and listen while Friedrich read me the news of the day.
Then on a rainy day in April of 1900, Emma was born—a child of a new century, a new homeland. As Friedrich baptized her in his musty-smelling church, I realized that unlike her parents and older sister, Emma was an American.
Caring for her brought me more pleasure than I’d known for a long time, and my health was much improved. The only dark cloud on the horizon was the news of the Boxer Rebellion in the Far East and the fear that my brother would be swept into the maelstrom.
On a scorching summer evening in late August, the telegraph boy rode his bicycle into our backyard. I had just rocked four-month-old Emma to sleep and laid her in her basket, clad in only her diaper. Sophie, who had just turned
five, was cooling off with a bath, happily splashing in the kitchen washtub. I stood by the kitchen door listening to the sound of crickets and katydids, watching the fireflies wink on and off in the tall grass beside the barn.
Friedrich was hoeing a row of pole beans in the garden, stripped to his singlet and trousers in the blistering heat. When he saw the telegraph boy, he propped his hoe against the shed and walked across the yard. I watched him as he studied the envelope and saw his shoulders sag as if he’d just hefted a heavy sack of grain onto his back. When he glanced up at the house, I was gripped by a terrible dread. He dug a coin from his pocket for a tip and the boy wheeled away. I saw Fritz glance at the house again before ripping open the envelope.
I couldn’t watch. I turned away and pulled Sophie from the water, wiggling and protesting. “No, Mama . . . wait! I want to play some more.”
“It’s time for bed.” I towelled her dry, none too gently.
“But it isn’t dark yet. Can’t I catch fireflies with Papa?”
“No. Put your nightgown on. Now.” I was immediately sorry for speaking sharply, promising to read
Hansel and Gretel
to make it up to her. I moved through the routine of bedtime—unplaiting her braids, brushing her hair, reading the fairy tale, saying her prayers—as if slogging through deep water.
I was upstairs when I heard the screen door slap shut. Friedrich’s work boots echoed on the linoleum floor as he paced around the kitchen. I hugged Sophie so tightly she squealed. After tucking her in, I slowly descended the stairs. Friedrich waited for me in the kitchen, his face white with pain.
“Is it Emil?” I whispered.
He nodded. “The Chinese rebels attacked a train carrying allied troops to Peking. Emil . . . Emil was killed.” He held his arms out to me, waiting to comfort me, but I couldn’t run to him. I didn’t want his comfort. He and God were all wrapped up in one package and I felt betrayed by both of them, abandoned and angry.