When Strawberries Bloom (2 page)

And soon she learned to love school, in spite of sad songs.

The next morning when Lizzie combed her hair, she made sure it was all put up neatly in an orderly fashion. Dat looked at Lizzie once, then followed up with closer scrutiny before he gave Mam a bewildered look.

Mam checked Lizzie’s neat attire, her covering pulled forward to cover her carefully combed hair. Lizzie’s eyebrows were raised in a quite pious expression, her eyes downcast in her Herculean effort at humility.

Mam’s eyes met Dat’s and she shrugged her shoulders. Dat cleared his throat.

“Well, Lizzie, to what do we owe this change of heart you’re displaying?”

Lizzie looked up at Dat, her eyes as meek and docile as a sheep’s.

“Oh, the girls told me if I want to be a schoolteacher, I need to mend my ways. I mean, comb my hair more severely and act more responsible. How do I look?” she asked, batting her eyelashes demurely.

Mam sputtered. She made a brave attempt to keep from laughing, but in the end her shoulders shook until she gave up helplessly. Dat looked a bit stern, then seeing Mam wiping her eyes, he laughed with her.

When Emma came down the stairs, she was startled to hear everyone laughing so early in the morning until she saw Lizzie’s hair and covering.

“Oh, my goodness!” she gasped.

Lizzie was a bit insulted to see everyone laughing at her real effort to appear grown up and responsible.

“Well, go ahead and laugh then,” she said.

“We weren’t laughing at you, Lizzie. But you are laying it on a bit thick,” Dat said. “After all, Lizzie, you have to be yourself. You can’t purposefully turn yourself into a whole other sort of person. I do admire you for dressing more respectfully, but I have a good feeling about the school board. If they know you truly want to teach school, they’ll be kind enough to give you a try. I’m pretty sure they will.”

“Of course, they will,” Mam agreed.

Lizzie sighed. It was almost unbelievable that Dat actually thought the school board would ask her to teach! In this community there was only one school for Amish and Mennonite students, and as far as Lizzie knew, its teacher was getting married in the fall. That meant they would need a new teacher, and she knew of no one else who wanted the job. So maybe … just maybe …

T
HE NEXT SUNDAY, LIZZIE
dressed quite soberly. During church, she sang along with the congregation, singing quite purposefully, listening to the preacher with no fidgeting or whispering. She wanted the men on the school board to think she was a mature young woman, capable of teaching in the fall. She knew that the responsibility and seriousness of teaching could be completely overwhelming, which, really, sometimes if she thought about it, was about as frightening as … well, as lots of things about the unknown.

Emma was very supportive, always being positive when they talked about it. She even told Lizzie that she thought she would be a teacher herself someday, but the way things were turning out, she just didn’t know if that would happen. Lizzie knew exactly why Emma didn’t seriously pursue teaching. It was because she still held the dream of being married soon. She probably thought that if she didn’t commit herself to teaching, Joshua would ask her to marry him.

After services were over, Lizzie helped the other single girls carry trays of bread and pies, ham, soft cheese spread, pickles, and red beets to the long tables where the traditional Sunday dinner was served. She caught sight of Stephen standing on the other side of the room, laughing at something Uncle Marvin had said. Stephen smiled at her and Lizzie’s heart sped up. But when Uncle Marvin turned to see who had caught Stephen’s attention, Lizzie ducked her head and walked away.

Dat was talking with an unfamiliar man who looked to be about his age. Lizzie wondered if he was part of the Beiler family who had recently moved to the area. She remembered that Dat mentioned one evening at the supper table that this Jonas Beiler was pushing for the development of an Amish school board to help the Mennonites run the local school.

“Who’s that?” she asked Emma.

Emma smiled and shrugged.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Lizzie sighed and went on with her duties, hoping with all her heart that she was making a good impression.

By the next week, Lizzie had almost forgotten about impressing the school board with her good behavior. She was so busy working as a
maud
for a local family, and her days and evenings were full of spring cleaning and planting. She didn’t have time to worry about teaching school. Mandy said they probably wouldn’t ask her anyway, because she was only 17 years old. Lizzie quickly reminded her that she would be almost 18 in the fall, and that was plenty old enough to teach school.

She was upstairs cleaning her closet one warm evening, just as the birds were twittering their good-night songs, when the door of her room burst open.

“Lizzie, get down to the kitchen! The school board is here!” Mandy hissed.

Lizzie dropped the dress she was holding, her mouth open in disbelief. “The real school board?”

“Of course!”

Lizzie felt her heartbeat accelerate, and the color drained from her face. Quickly she dashed to the mirror, checking her hair and covering before she nervously wiped a few fuzzies from her apron. She could think of nothing, absolutely nothing to say. For some reason it felt as if they were there to spank her, like she was still a little girl who had done something mischievous in school, and the stern-faced school board had come to tell her what her punishment was going to be.

Her knees hardly supported her as she went slowly down the stairs, clutching the sides of her covering, checking that it covered part of her ears. Who knew? They might change their minds if she didn’t look too fancy.

In the kitchen, Dat and Mam sat at the kitchen table with three men. Lizzie recognized Jonas Beiler from his conversation with Dat at church. The other two men, Elam Glick and Elmer Esh, had lived in the community much longer, and Lizzie knew them well. In one glance, Lizzie could see that Mam was nervous because her hands were closed with her thumbs tucked under her fingers. That’s what Mam always did when she was worried about something.

“H … Hello!” Lizzie said in what she hoped was a sweet and humble way.

“Good evening, Lizzie,” they all said, looking at her closely.

“How are you?” Jonas Beiler asked.

“Good,” was all Lizzie could think of before she swallowed fitfully.

He looked at Dat before he asked how old she was. For all the world I feel like I’m a young cow or horse being taken to an auction, Lizzie thought.

They all talked about the weather, the price of milk, the price of the farm that had been sold recently, until Lizzie felt like screaming. Why didn’t they say what they wanted? She began chewing on the inside of her thumbnail until Mam looked at her with lowered eyebrows. Lizzie quickly put her hands under the table and pressed them together as tightly as she could.

Finally, Jonas Beiler looked at Lizzie and cleared his throat.

“So your father says you’d like to try teaching school?”

Lizzie’s heart jumped to her throat. But she looked steadily at him, meeting his clear gaze.

“I’d like to,” she said.

“Well, that’s good. We are going to need a teacher this fall because the Mennonite girl, I forget her name, is getting married. So …”

He left that sentence hanging in the air, and Lizzie felt as if she had been holding a balloon which the wind had suddenly whipped away, completely out of her grasp. He had only mentioned the fact that they needed a teacher; he hadn’t really asked her to teach the school.

Just as suddenly, the departing balloon drifted back firmly into Lizzie’s hands when Jonas said, “Would you consider being the new teacher in the fall then?”

“Yes!” Lizzie breathed, her eyes shining.

“That’s good,” Elam Glick said, smiling.

“Yes, we’re glad you want to,” Elmer Esh added.

“You’ll need these,” Jonas said, handing her a small orange booklet and a few other papers.

Lizzie flipped through the pages as the men talked about the date school would be opening, the book order, the rules of conduct for a teacher, and many other things that Lizzie hadn’t considered before. But nothing deterred her. Not one thing they talked about gave her the blues. She was so thrilled about sitting right there in the kitchen, reveling in the delightful knowledge that the school board had really honest-to-goodness asked her to be a teacher.

Before the men left they each wished
der saya
for her, or God’s blessing, which brought tears to Lizzie’s eyes. Wasn’t that the nicest thing in the whole world for a school board to say? She didn’t feel worthy, but their words made her feel as if she could conquer anything. She would do her very, very, absolute best to become the teacher they expected her to be.

After saying good-night to them, Lizzie turned to Mam and clasped her hands to her chest. “Ma-am!”

“Looks like you’re a teacher, Lizzie!”

Emma and Mandy clattered down the stairs, congratulating her as she twirled joyously around the kitchen. Jason thought she was making an awful fuss about it, and the twins danced funny little steps of their own.

“Jason, you may as well not look so sour! I’m going to be your teacher, too, you know!”

“I know!” he said, but Lizzie could tell he was pleased. She loved Jason, grown boy that he was now. He was turning out to be a good-looking young man and his curly hair was his most adorable feature, she thought.

Lizzie could still remember the day Jason was born.

“Emma, look at your brother. His name is Jason, and he looks a lot like Lizzie,” Dat had said.

Emma whispered, “Jason? Aww, he’s cute! Can I hold him, Dat?”

Dat had smiled and lowered the blue bundle into Emma’s lap while Emma stroked the little cheeks and touched his downy hair.

Lizzie peered under the flap of the soft, woolly blanket. She was suddenly overcome with horror. He was so ugly and so bright red she couldn’t imagine ever letting Mam take him to church. His eyes were closed, but he had lots of deep wrinkles around them. Lizzie could not imagine how he could ever see around all that skin. His nose was big and puffy, and his mouth was much too big for his face.

She felt Mam come up behind her and put her arm around her shoulders. Lizzie leaned against Mam and tried hard to smile—at least to smile enough to be nice. But she wished so much her new baby brother wasn’t so ugly.

“Isn’t he sweet, Lizzie? You may hold him, too. Emma, may Lizzie hold Baby Jason now?” Mam asked.

“I–I don’t want to hold him. Emma may.” And much to her shame, Lizzie started to cry.

“What’s wrong? Come, Lizzie.” Mam sat down on a soft chair and just held Lizzie till she finished crying. “Now tell me what’s wrong.”

But Lizzie never did tell Mam the real reason she cried. She just told her that her head hurt, because it wasn’t nice to say Jason was ugly. But he really was.

Now Jason had grown into a strong young man with even features and wild curls that caught the eye of more than one girl Lizzie knew. He was a good brother, and Lizzie hoped he was well-behaved at school because he was about to become her student.

Dat smiled, pleased that Lizzie would be a teacher. That afforded him some status in the community, one of his girls being the first Amish teacher in this school. That fact made him smile, Lizzie knew. Mam was beaming as well, although when everyone quieted down she said she hoped Lizzie was aware of the responsibility that was involved.

“I know, Mam!” Lizzie assured her. “I can handle 20 children. I know I can. I just wish it was the end of August and I could get started. I can already begin on some artwork, can’t I?”

“Probably when you come home from work in the evening,” Mam agreed.

That evening Lizzie did not sleep for a very long, long time. Thoughts and projects she would try the next year whirled through her head like a child’s pinwheel on a stick, turning in the wind until she couldn’t make sense of anything.

She did remember to thank God from the bottom of her heart for the chance to be a real schoolteacher before she drifted off to a happy slumber.