Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (Memoir) (2010) (5 page)

He did so with preacherly gravitas. "I can taste some kind of pepper in it," he said. "It has a kick."

"That's
cayenne
pepper," my mother affirmed joyously.

"Rhoda," said Staci, "I hear you've been dating again. Do you mind if I ask if it's serious? Because maybe you should think about waiting a while before you start dating again."

"I've tried all four soups!" my father said.

"When you have a broken tooth," said my mother, "soup is exactly the right thing to eat. There's a space in your mouth that your tongue keeps feeling for, and it's so tender that the best thing for it is soup."

"Cures what ails you," agreed Caleb.

"Well, I hope nobody at this table is ailing," said Staci, looking at me pointedly. "I hope nobody has anything
contagious
."

"It's the cold and flu season," said Aaron. "At school they were dropping like flies. There was a Group A streptococci going around."

"Your immune system is probably really vulnerable right now," Staci told me, "because of the amount of stress you're under. Are you feeling the stress? Because you look kind of stressed and run-down. Going through a divorce is supposed to be one of the biggest stressors, and it's probably worse when you find out that your husband has been cheating on you with a guy. I like your hair color, though. Are those highlights?"

"And while all four kinds of soup are tasty," continued my father, as if no one else had been speaking, "the best part is this Zwiebach. Mary, send the Zwiebach around again."

For one golden moment no one spoke. We were all too busy helping ourselves to Zwiebach, breaking bread together.

THREE

M
y parents and I had been on the road since 7:40 a.m., having spent the night in a two-bed, one-room Travelodge accommodation. The room had been distinctly inferior. Thirteen years prior my husband had been hospitalized in a crisis unit on a 5150-"Detention of Mentally Disordered Persons for Danger to Self and Others"-while I suffered the helplessness that comes from loving a man who takes a fistful of pills. Even if his doctors managed to turn him around with medication, who would make him take antidepressants one at a time once he was out of the hospital? And how was I going to manage the medical bills on my tiny grad student's stipend? "That's terrible," my mother had said on the phone. There was an infinitesimal pause while I waited for the bounce-back. It came right on cue: "You are hurting. But at least with Nick in the hospital you'll have some peace and quiet to work on your dissertation!" I therefore recognized her signature style when she observed, on entering the shabby motel room, "It's not elegant. But at least there are towels!"

Whenever my parents used a coupon to procure something, they felt 100 percent committed to liking it.

We three were en route to Bend, Oregon, to visit my sister. The car trip was a little over a thousand miles, half of which we drove on Christmas Day. I had spent the morning drifting in and out of uncomfortable sleep. The night before, my father's snoring had kept me up-that and the fact that I had packed my prescription sleeping pills in a suitcase that was wedged in the trunk of the car. Because the backseat of the Camry was overflowing with beribboned presents for my niece, I didn't have much room to negotiate my legs. I lay with my head on my father's shaving kit, legs crossed Indian-style, but with the crossed legs up in the air against the window.

Around noon my father asked us if we would prefer Burger King or McDonald's. It had been at least a decade since I had visited either of these establishments, so I was unable to offer much input. Mom elected McDonald's, on the grounds of better coffee. "You could use your senior discount to order Rhoda a cup of decaf," she suggested.

My father liked this idea. He did not drink coffee himself, but he had no objection to my drinking it, especially if he could save forty cents.

"See there, Mary," said my father, pointing to a sign in the McDonald's window. "It says here that you can get a McChicken Sandwich for a dollar."

"Okay!" My mother accepted this hint.

Fast food is always a hurdle for cooks, and I admit I blanched at the thought of a sucrotic chicken patty injected with flavorlike chemicals and breaded into the dimensions of a crunchy McSand-dollar. I therefore announced that I would have a burger instead. The burger was a full three dollars, so I offered to get the lunch tab, which for the three of us, after the senior discount, came to $6.20.

"No, no!" My father waved my wallet away. "I've got it, I've got it."

Then, as we sat down, he added, "You could have had three
chicken
sandwiches for the price of that one burger."

"Yes, but I like this better."

"You like that burger?"

"I wouldn't exactly say that I
like
it," I said. "But I like it better than the chicken sandwich."

My mother set down her sandwich and busily applied ketchup from a squeeze pouch. "It's a little bland," she admitted, "but some ketchup will perk this right up!" She tested a bite. "Much better!"

"This chicken sandwich, which cost one dollar, is preferable to the Wendy's chicken sandwich I had yesterday, which cost $2.34," said my father. "You want to try it?"

"I'm not really a chicken-patty kinda gal," I said.

"When we get back to the car, we can have the last of that cranberry bread," said my mother. "And there's still some coffee in the thermos from yesterday."

This remark was problematic on a variety of levels.

"Mom," I said, pointing to the cup of decaf that was at that moment steaming in her hand, "why wouldn't you drink
this
coffee with the cranberry bread?"

"This coffee might be gone by then, because I'm drinking it with my McSandwich."

"Then why don't you just get a refill on your way out?"

"They charge for refills!" interrupted my father, sensing an opening. "Even on the senior discount!"

"But . . . since you made the coffee in the thermos yesterday morning, won't it be completely cold by now?"

"Oh, well, room temperature. And it's wet! We could drink it if we were desperate. We could drink it if we had car trouble and had to wait by the side of the road."

"How true," I said helplessly.

We can all agree that a snort of day-old coffee will go a long way toward improving our mood in the case of automotive duress.

"See there?" my father said, nodding at the McDonald's menu. "Says there that you could have had a Ranch Snack Wrap for $1.29!"

How different road trips were with my father than with my mother! Both were refreshing in their way, but the trip with my father as driver unfolded in mile after mile of soothing silence. Dad didn't converse, didn't listen to the radio, didn't enjoy the music that my mother urged him to play every so often. Mom always fortified the Camry with a spiritually edifying variety of CDs, including one by my parents' neighbor Chet Wiens and his Mustard Seed Praise Quartet. There was also a new release by my cousin's daughter Starla, who had carved out for herself a career in opera, but who had recently begun rendering perfervid coloratura show tunes à la Ethel Merman. And there were some instrumental CDs too, particularly one that featured some worshipful stylings upon the pan flute.

But it was one thing at a time for Si Janzen. He wasn't what you'd call a multitasker. He liked to concentrate on driving. Sustained conversation, the kind that involved the exchange of abstract ideas, occurred only during brief rest stops and visits to fast-food establishments, and even then it was sort of frowned on. During the actual drive he might utter relevant, specific commentary on the passing landscape. These comments emerged as part of a topically appropriate metanarrative. "I see some sheep," he'd announce. Or, "There's a big jobber of a Winnebago." Personally, I have always found these remarks rather challenging to respond to, as they seem both to invite dialogue yet simultaneously forbid elaboration. However, over the course of a forty-five-year marriage, my mother had mastered the art of replying to my father's cryptic overtures. She always gave him her full attention, even if he had interrupted her crossword puzzle or Sudoku. To "I see some sheep," she might look up and answer brightly, "Sheep dip!" To "There's a big jobber of a Winnebago," she might reply, "Big gas guzzler!"

Dad always declined our offers to pitch in with the driving. Other drivers made him nervous, especially my mother.

He had a point there. When it was just my mother and I in the car alone together, I preferred to drive, and god knows I'm not a great driver. But I'm better than she is. Fortunately she never asserts an intention to take the wheel. A couple of weeks prior to our trip up to Bend, the two of us had made a three-day trip to Arizona, to visit some of her Bible-college friends who were going to be in Flagstaff to spend time with their daughter Frieda. Because these were Mennonite friends, I knew them too, of course. In fact I had known Frieda long ago, when I had dated her older brother, back when I was in Bible school. (Sidebar: Reinhold and I dated for a whole year without figuring out how to kiss with tongue. It's not that we were bad at French-kissing; it's that we didn't do it at all. We didn't
know about it
, see.)

When I heard that Frieda, Reinhold's likable baby sister, now lived in the desert on the outskirts of Flagstaff, I expressed surprise. "Is there a big Mennonite community down there?" I asked.

"No," said my father. He liked conversations about the whereabouts of Mennonites. "Frieda has had health issues, and her health requires her to live in a warm dry climate."

My mother chimed in, "Allergies, Si. And chronic fatigue syndrome."

"Ohhhh," I said knowingly. I assumed that chronic fatigue syndrome was code for serious depression, and I wondered if Frieda hadn't just needed to ditch the Mennonites for a while. Been there.

"No, she's really ill," Mom said. "She almost died."

"Well, in that case, it's great that a change of climate has helped," I said. "It has helped, hasn't it?"

"It has," my father amended soberly. "Frieda lives in a small condo about thirty minutes away from the city."

"All alone?"

"There is a fellow, a friend, who visits her from time to time," said my father in his best preacher's voice. He added, "And they relate to one another, there in the desert."

On the drive to Arizona, Mom and I exchanged many reminiscences about the family car trips we had taken in my youth. I can't speak for my brothers, but Hannah and I dreaded these trips, due to our father's inflexibility and the suspension of creature comforts. It's hard for me to believe that my father willingly agreed to camping vacations, given how miserable they made him. They were leisurely but urgent; aimless yet planned. My father forced us to hit the road every day by 6:00 a.m., not to arrive at a specific destination, but to experience the bucolic pleasures of driving in the cool of the day.

Perhaps the big draw of camping was that it saved money. To this day I am unclear about whether we couldn't afford real vacations, or whether the cheaper car trip was simply a matter of principle. Whatever the cause, the result was the same: a family of six, two Coleman ice chests, an ancient pump stove, and a tin garbage pail that featured an educational map of the United States-so that we could practice capital cities along the way-all stuffed into a white Volkswagen van.

A typical morning involved rising in the thin light of predawn, stumbling out of our crowded tent to a distant biffy, and drinking lukewarm instant cocoa out of a Styrofoam cup. Because the cocoa was lukewarm, the powder wouldn't wholly dissolve; it rose in lumps to the surface. These were discrete, aggressive lumps, not to be mistaken for the miniature marshmallows, which offered their own chunky texture in the sediment at the bottom.

Hannah and I shivered in the damp while my father yelled at my brothers, whose duty it was to help him disassemble the tent, because they were boys. My brothers worked silently, using the claw end of a hammer to pry up the tent stakes while my father struggled with the collapse of the tent poles. In all my growing-up years I never heard either of my parents take the Lord's name in vain, or utter a single foul four-letter word. However, during tenting season I flinched at such fierce imprecations as "GolDARN it!" and "DagNABBIT!" During the tent dismantle, I often took Hannah by the hand and led her some distance away. My father's simmering impatience made her cry.

Since we'd hit the road after the cocoa but before the breakfast, Mom would wait until the sun was up to unfurl the Pandora's icebox of odors. In the space of the cramped van, those odors assumed a pungency that was the inevitable prelude to carsickness. For breakfast there'd be stale
Schnetke
, bruised bananas, and tepid milk in oft-used Styrofoam cups, rinsed out by me and Hannah as the tent came down. Mom stretched the milk by mixing it with nonfat milk powder and water. This made us gag, but we each were required to down a full cup. Nor were we allowed to pick out the raisins in the
Schnetke
, on the grounds that Jesus did not sufficiently appreciate finicky children. We would jolly well eat what we were served. We would approach the throne of God with a clear conscience and a heart of gratitude. Starving children on the Chaco wanted those raisins!

I was terrified that God would call me to become a missionary to the Chaco. The Chaco was an arid stretch of high-altitude land in South America that defied profitable farming. The Mennonites of my youth had reached enthusiastic consensus concerning the Chaco, with its many indigenous non-Christian peoples: it was ripe for mission work. I'm still not sure of what goes on on the Chaco, but as a child I suspected that it involved proliferating weevils and manioc root. From many Sunday-night-church slide presentations, I learned that a missionary organization called Word Made Flesh often summoned Mennonite missionaries to plant churches on the Chaco. When I saw the slides, I privately concluded that what the Chaco needed was not church planting, but a better selection of fruits and vegetables. Forget church planting; just get busy with watermelons. A juicy sweet watermelon could kick the ass of any manioc root. Probably!

When Word Made Flesh kids appeared in Sunday school, on leave from their vital church-planting work on the Chaco, these missionary children were humorless, pious, and pale. The girls wore their aprons to church. And their conversation was full of references to demons, which didn't surprise me a bit. Where else would you expect demons to hang out but on the Chaco, shriveling the manioc crop?

If any of us kids expressed a lack of gratitude for anything that came out of the icebox, Mom was quick on the draw with the Chaco, pulling it out fast, like a gunslinger in the Old West. Starving children on the Chaco would fight for the pleasure of sipping powdery blue milk out of a Styrofoam cup! I inferred that Styrofoam cups were rare on the Chaco, whereupon that place of blight and godlessness rose a little higher in my estimation.