In church, she was one of the loudest singers. She knew all the words to all the hymns and when she sang she reminded me of a bird or a political prisoner who had just been released from her cage. When I was really small I put my head in her lap. I could see individual hairs poking through her nylons. She rubbed my back. During Communion the women washed each other’s feet without removing their nylons. Oh, she said, they dry in a jiffy. She’d snap her fingers. The men however did remove their socks and I saw my fair share of podiatric horror.
After church she’d say let’s go in a crisp, very unambiguous way. You were supposed to walk down the aisle to the back and shake hands with The Mouth and various laymen but she’d usually grab me and my sister’s hands and take us out the front door, next to the organ. She’d say whew, it’s so hot in there. I needed air.
We’d sit in the car and wait for my dad because he always went down the aisle to shake hands, the way you were supposed to, and it took a very long time. Often, our car would be the last one to leave the parking lot.
While we waited for my dad to finish inside, my mom would stare straight ahead with a funny little smile on her face. Sometimes my dad would come out and say I think I’ll walk home and she would say oh, now you tell me. The girls and I have been sitting here waiting for you. All right then, my dad would say, we’ll drive. No, my mom would say, it makes no difference now. You may as well walk if you want to. Should I, my dad would ask. Oh my god, my sister would say. Do you want to, my mom would ask. I had planned to, my dad would say. Then do, she’d say. And so he would. He loved her ass off. That’s what I believe.
I may be a disappointment to Menno Simons but I would like him to know that I have carved, out of the raw material that he has provided, a new faith. I still believe that one day we’ll all be together, the four of us, in New York City. Lou Reed could live with us too. We would all sleep until noon, then play Frisbee in Central Park, then watch him play in clubs. We’d be his roadies. People would say hey, is that Lou Reed and his Mennonite family of roadies?
Trudie liked to talk about her childhood. Oh, I had the run of this place, she’d say, about the town. My mom’s family was one of the original ones to come here. My sister would laugh and say what place? This town is like a movie set. Nothing real is allowed to happen. It’s a ghost town. It’s Brigadoon.
My mom told her that we could have stayed in Russia and had our barns set on fire and our stomachs torn out. In war, she said, the oddballs are first on the chopping block.
Oh, is that an original thought? Tash would ask her.
I mean they left with next to nothing, my mom would say. Maybe a dozen buns. Or a few blankets. Most of them fled in the middle of the night. Okay, that’s a cliché—the middle of the night, Tash would say. People flee throughout the day as well.
A lot of the families were separated along the way, said my mom, or simply died and were left by the side of the road. There was no time to bury them. We’re lucky they let us come here.
My sister would say oh yeah, I feel so lucky. From Stalag 14 to Studio 54. My mom laughed at her when she said things like that and Tash would suck in her cheeks.
My grandma tried to get my mother to keep a cleaner house. Do you need motivation, she asked her. My mom said no, she didn’t need motivation because she didn’t care so fervently about a clean house. A clean house, my grandma said, is rather like a calling card. If the Rapture occurs while you’re out and the Lord God descends upon us and enters your home, he will know, by its cleanliness, that you are one of his sheep. And then what, asked my mom. And he will wait for you to return, said my grandma. And if my house is a mess, asked my mom. He’ll leave quietly, said my grandma. Oh, said my mom, I see. I never knew if she really did or if she only said she did, or if she was maintaining one of those infuriating airs of bemusement.
Our house stayed the same, in its level of disorder. My father would sigh, and escape into his world of isotopes and carbons. I learned that radioactive elements are by nature unstable and that they lose mass over time because of emissions from their nuclei.
But who cares? I’d ask my dad.
Well, he’d answer, holding his chin between his thumb and index finger. These radioactive elements decay in order to become more stable. I rather like that, he’d say. This is where the Second Law of Thermodynamics comes into play. My dad and his Second Law.
Don’t talk, I’d say. I’d put my hand over his mouth.
My mom loved to play Dutch Blitz, which is a card game invented by the Amish people of Pennsylvania. We are offshoots of each other, although they are even more perturbed by the real world.
The game has to do with speed. Trudie often kept me up past midnight so she’d have someone to play Dutch Blitz with her. She was crazy for Dutch Blitz. One more game, she’d say even though in between rounds, during the shuffling, I’d have put my head down on the table and closed my eyes. Sometimes Tash would come home while we were playing and say oh my god, you’re playing Dutch Blitz, and Trudie would say okay that’s it for me, thanks Nomi, that was fun. I think she used Dutch Blitz to keep herself awake until we were all safely in the house. But I didn’t know it at the time. She didn’t worry outwardly, ever. She hated public displays of agony, although there would come a day when she would have one.
One day The Mouth came over to our place and asked to speak to her alone outside on the driveway. She said oh for Pete’s sake, Hans, what’s the problem? Tash and I watched them from inside the house, through the living-room window. She sat on the trunk of the car with her back to us and The Mouth stood with his arms crossed, talking to her, and listening to her occasionally. Although we couldn’t see her talking. Sometimes her hands would swing upwards in that universal gesture of helplessness. Then she hunched over and rested her face in her hand. I could make out the keel of her spine pushing against her summer blouse. (I just employed the words keel and blouse. I’m seventy years old.) I asked Tash what they were talking about and she said how the frig would she know.
Once, while The Mouth was doing the talking, she turned around and looked at us and waved. She waved, I told Tash, and Tash said she wasn’t blind.
She’s happy, right? I asked Tash. Otherwise, why is she waving?
It’s involuntary, said Tash. Mothers wave. We’re supposed to smile. I smiled at my waving mother. Tash didn’t.
Is she crying? I said. Hey Tash, is she cry—…you should wave back.
He wants her to do something, said Tash. She blew a bubble with her own spit.
What? I asked. What do you mean? Tash pointed at them.
Look at that asshole, said Tash. Look at his goddamn…
Shhhh, I said. I put my hand over her mouth and she grabbed it away and told me to get lost. She stood up and said, okay, this is the tail end of a five-hundred-year experiment that has failed.
What? I asked.
What? she said, and got up to put on a record.
The Mouth seemed to want to talk some more but my mom had got off the trunk of the car and was slowly backing away from him, towards the house. She was nodding and looking over her shoulder at us as if to say that’s fine, okay, but now I have to get back to my kids. Eventually he left and she came inside. What did he want, I asked her and she said oh, pfff, nothing. Nothing? I asked. She smiled and went into the kitchen to fill a pot with water. I followed her. Nothing? I asked. He wants me to work in the library at the church, she said. Like, a job, I asked. Yes, she said. Will you, I asked. And she laughed in a way that bothered me. Well Nomi, she said, of course I will. And then smiled that big, fake spooky smile that I admired and hated at the same time.