Operation Bonnet Read online

  “Mmm,” I said. Was there anything better than the pink your nose and cheeks earned in the last hour of the day? A last-chance sunburn.

  “Was that a yes, you will try not to freak out, or a no, you have to freak out, it’s your inalienable right?”

  “When do I freak out, Matt? I’m probably the most calm, even-tempered person you know.”

  “Except for the time you threw your desk chair out the window of your bedroom because you got a B-minus in American Literature.”

  “I was robbed. Mr. Barrows hated me.”

  “And the time you walked up and down the street with a megaphone, shouting, ‘Scum! Scum! The baseball season’s done!’”

  “They should have let us use the field for the used book sale.”

  “And the city council paint-gun incident.”

  I sighed. “Anomalies, all of them.”

  “Of course.”

  I turned back to face him, the chair’s painted wood warm against my cheek. “Speak freely and without fear of freak-out.”

  “Right.” He cleared his throat. “Nellie—”

  “Wait.” I held up my hand, listening. “Mrs. H. is here.”

  Matt scanned the porch, watching at the door behind us. “I don’t hear a thing.”

  “Oh, she’s coming all right. I didn’t spend my entire adolescence listening for those rubber soles for nothing.” And sure enough, the screen door banged to attention, and Mrs. H. came to stand a safe distance from Matt.

  “I thought you’d gone home for the night, Mrs. H. And yet it is lovely, as always to see you.” I smiled and nodded toward Matt. “You remember That Friend of Mine.”

  “Hello,” Matt said cheerily. “Good to see you again. How’s the grudge?”

  Mrs. H. pursed her lips. “In the interest of moving forward, I’m going to ignore that comment.”

  Matt’s eyebrows arched. “Well done. All the signs of a healthy resolution.” He tilted his head slightly and peered through his new glasses. “Mrs. H., how does this make you feel?”

  She sniffed. “I feel fine, which is just about the same as I’ve felt my whole darn life. Now.” She withdrew an envelope from the pocket of her skirt. “If you wouldn’t mind, take this to … ehm. Your father.” She shook the paper in front of Matt’s face, as if it were burning her fingers.

  He grasped it but kept it aloft. “You wrote my dad a note?” He stared at the paper, not moving.

  “And you’d better believe it’s for his eyes only,” she snapped. Then, more gently. “I’d appreciate your help.” She looked like she was about to get sick.

  Matt tucked the note carefully into a pocket on his cargo shorts. “My pleasure.” He nodded at Mrs. H., and I could see kindness spill from his face. “This is good.”

  She took two slow but shallow breaths, then nodded quickly. She turned to go.

  “Good night,” I called. “I’d tell you to sleep well, but I’ll bet you already will.”

  She lifted a hand without turning around.

  Matt stared at the door. “What the heck was that all about?”

  I leaned back again on my chair, taking my empty parfait glass with me. After a few furtive slurps of melted ice cream, I set it down on the table between us. “I think, dear Matt, we have just witnessed the miracle of forgiveness. Or at least a baby step in that direction.”

  “Wait a minute.” He pushed me over to the side to make room for his rear on my chair. “Are you saying you knew about this? That she finally told you what happened?” He was leaning over me, and I noticed how defined his jaw had gotten over the summer.

  “Have you lost weight?” I sat up on one elbow and checked out his face. “Your face looks like the face of a grown man. When did it get that way?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I believe the process began at around age fourteen. You see, Nellie, boys and girls are different. Perhaps the best way to begin this discussion is to talk about something called—”

  “I do not want to talk about any of your things or my things, thank you.” I kept staring. “You have a jaw. It’s a man jaw. And you have no zits and new glasses and you’re tan.” I put both hands on his shoulders. “Matt, I think you might be hot.”

  He blushed two shades of red. “Thanks.” His voice was so soft I barely heard him, so I punched his arm to bring him back.

  “Seriously. Good work.” I lay back down and stretched my legs off the side of the chair. “And yes, I knew about Mrs. H. Your dad stood her up for their junior prom, and she’s been mad about it for a million years.”

  “Ooh, that’s rough. Though I can’t imagine her being the life of the party.”

  I scowled. “Hardly the point. It was rude and insensitive and only a ploy to get Francine Waterson to laugh.” I shook my head. “I’ll bet she had the most annoying, tinny little laugh. And a pathetic vocabulary.”

  Matt stared at me. “I don’t understand any of the words coming out of your mouth.”

  “Just know,” I said, patting him on the head, “that I have encouraged our dear Mrs. H. to respond to your dad’s friendly gestures and get on with her life. Apparently it’s working. Maybe I should look into psychiatry. I seem to be really good at it.” I gathered the two parfait glasses and stood. “I’m getting another sundae. You want one?”

  When I reached the door, I looked back for Matt’s response. He was sitting with his head in his hands. “Sure,” he said, his voice muffled.

  “I thought you’d be happy about Mrs. H.,” I yelled through the door. He mumbled a response, but I couldn’t hear the exact words. “And what were you going to tell me?”

  He waited until I was back on the porch, handing him a fresh injection of sugar and cold. He pushed back in his chair, legs unfolding, and shook his head. “Nothing. I can’t even remember.” He licked a drop of caramel off his thumb.

  I raised my spoon for a toast. “To new beginnings,” I said. “Cheers.”

  He nodded and tipped his spoon into mine. “Exactly,” he said, holding his glass still in front of him. He seemed to be somewhere else, and I allowed the silence, content to hear the breeze whistle its low-pitched approval of day’s end.

  18

  Roll with It

  I had my fist poised on the wood frame of the door, ready to knock, but I stopped to watch first. Grandma Mary sat with four young children at one end of the long kitchen table. They faced the door, Granny holding the hands of the two closest to her and swaying as they sang a peppy song in German. Two girls and two boys, all clearly from the same gene pool with their blond curls and bright eyes. The girls were dressed in dark purple with black aprons tied on the front. Their bonnets were the same style as the women’s, only smaller and a bit tousled-looking. The boys had hats too, theirs brimmed and made of straw. The dark blue of their shirts played off the color of their eyes.

  Granny Mary patted each one on his or her knee in time to the music, joining in on the last stanza. Her thin vibrato merged with the pure, unadorned voices of the children, and she closed her eyes as they finished.

  She issued a percussive command in Pennsylvania Dutch, which I took to mean, “Get thy hineys back to work,” or perhaps, “Singalong with Grumpy Pants is over!” because they hopped off the table bench and ran giggling to the door. I opened it for them, catching a few curious glances before they headed to the wooden swing set out back.

  “Come in,” called Sarah, stopping her work of sweeping under the table. Elizabeth and Katie greeted me from the sink. Elizabeth stood by the hand pump and was letting water cascade into the tub of the sink, where it met with a mountain of dishes waiting to be baptized. Katie waved at me with a white dish towel.

  “Wie Geht’s?” I dropped it like a hammer, thanks to a late-night YouTube tutorial the evening before.

  Elizabeth giggled, but G
ranny Mary tipped her chin at me in understated praise. “Gut, danki. I hope you are ready to be working, Nellie Monroe. No more chopping onions for you.”

  I caught Katie’s eye, and she lifted her shoulders in a small shrug. Secretly, I just hoped we wouldn’t have to butcher anything. I’d seen a group of men hanging out by what Katie had called the smokehouse. When they’d opened the door, I’d seen sinewy slabs of animal parts hanging from the rafters. I knew the meat I ate came from a living being, but I felt really good about it taking a detour onto a Styrofoam package before I took it home and fried it up in a pan. I thought of the bristly little hairs I’d seen on that piglet the last visit and gulped. “What are we doing today, Grandmother Mary?”

  She let a bag of flour drop onto the counter. “Pastry crust. Wash all of your hands.”

  “Pastry?” Oh, that was not much better than hairy pigs. I did not flourish with pastry. In fact, I’d tried exactly two piecrusts in my life. One ended in a gloppy, Play-Doh mess and was inedible even to Gucci, our dog at the time. The other provoked weeping and indelicate language before it even got to the oven. Elizabeth pumped a fresh stream of water for me and pointed to a slab of brown soap. “Holy moly, did you make this?” I held up the bar and smelled it. Lavender.

  “My mother did,” Elizabeth said, leaning into her work of scrubbing a soiled pot. “We help, but she does the best job at the making of soap. She also makes honey oatmeal, lemon mint, and almond with orange.” She lowered her voice. “Do not ask about this to Grandmother Mary. She prefers to use only lye soap.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “With pumice?”

  Elizabeth giggled. “I know this pumice. It is just like Grandmother Mary. This is a good joke.”

  “Girls! Enough chatter. Nellie Monroe, it is the hour for pastry.”

  I dried my hands on a clean towel embroidered with flowers. “Grandmother Mary, isn’t pastry awfully advanced? What about cookies? Or brownies? Or a cake? I love chocolate cake, don’t you?”

  Mary sighed. “You are talking always too much. So many words from one small body. Come.”

  The last word issued a command, and I scooted over to where she stood by the large table. She handed me a starched apron and waited while I tied the strings. She shuffled to the end of the table, muttering in Pennsylvania Dutch under her breath. After a quick tug on the bottom drawer, she straightened and waved a blue kerchief at me. “Take off that kapp. It is as large as a chicken. You must be able to see to make a good piecrust.”

  I nodded and untied my bonnet from my chin. It was all I could do not to moan with pleasure, a noise I was certain would not endear me to Granny. The kerchief weighed nothing in comparison to my bonnet. I tucked a stray curl into my ponytail holder and smiled hopefully. “Better?”

  “You have so very much hair,” she said. It was the closest she’d come to sounding impressed with me.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She sniffed, brought back to her usual disdain for all those imperfect humans around her. “Too much of anything is a sin,” she said.

  I was sinning because I had thick hair?

  She added, “‘Charm is fleeting, and beauty deceptive; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.’”

  I tried connecting my Nona to these words, clearly from the Bible she and Granny Mary both read. Perhaps because Granny’s voice sounded so much like machine-gun fire, it was too distracting by the time she got to that part about praising.

  She slapped a whisk into my hand and dumped the dry ingredients into a commercial-sized metal mixing bowl. “Flour, salt, sugar. Mix.”

  I whisked like I’d never whisked before. She was standing so close to me, I could count her individual breaths. When she was satisfied, she pointed to two packages wrapped in wax paper.

  “To make a crust that flakes, you must use both lard and butter.” She handed me a small knife. “Cut into pieces and combine with dry elements.”

  I reached for the butter but she karate-chopped my forearm. “Wait!”

  I pulled my arm back from the fire of Sensei Mary. “What? Wait for what?”

  “Wait to be ready.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Pastry has no patience. You begin only when you are ready. If you work the dough for too long, you will ruin it.” She nodded.

  I was staring at her eyeballs, watching her blink but not move her gaze from mine. “Well, that just makes me scared.”

  “Ah,” she said. A smile began a pioneering expedition around her mouth. “And so there is humility in that head of large hair. This is good.” She slapped the island with both hands. “You are ready.”

  I reached for the butter slowly. She was puny, but that karate chop had stung. When I’d set both slabs in front of me, I took a deep breath.

  “This is not to be nervous,” she said, pushing away that thought with one bony hand. “These will only be three pies, just enough for dessert tonight for our family. I give you a small job to start.”

  “Thanks,” I said, incorporating the butter and lard into the flour mixture. Lard, as it happened, smelled exactly how it should with a name like that. It smelled piggy and fatty and like something one should never, ever touch without latex gloves.

  “Hurry!” Granny Mary was breathing onto my shoulder. I could feel perspiration forming on my upper lip. “The dough will get tired. Here—add cold water.”

  “How much?” My voice was too high on the scale, but I was sweating over lard and flour. I couldn’t be bothered with social niceties.

  “How much water,” she said, “is to depend on the weather, the humidity, the feel of the dough. You need more.”

  I emptied a tablespoon, then another, then another, until Granny grabbed the spoon out of my hand.

  “Make into ball and we roll.”

  I took the long wooden rolling pin she offered and put it down gingerly on the ball of dough.

  “You work it! Like this.” Granny Mary pantomimed the rolling motion over her spot at the counter. I looked around to see if the other women were watching, but only Katie caught my eye. I could see she was very close to the Church Laugh, the one that cannot be unleashed without punishment and so becomes a girl’s only thought and focal point. I myself had experienced this phenomenon on many occasions, and I did not envy Katie. One burst of laughter while Granny Mary was “working it,” and she’d probably have to donate her body for the next batch of lye soap.

  “There.” Granny stood back, little dots of sweat beading her forehead. “Do not delay. Roll it now, Nellie Monroe!”

  I rolled it, friend. Oh, did I roll it. I pushed and pulled and grunted and floured until Granny Mary grabbed the pin from me and pointed to three greased and waiting glass pie dishes.

  “We will do one-crust pies today. Lattice top later.” She took a thin spatula and loosened one crust from the counter. In one quick motion, she rolled the crust around the rolling pin and slipped it perfectly into one of the dishes.

  I sighed. “The last time I tried this part, my crust looked like it had already been chewed.”

  Mary wrinkled her nose. “This is an unsavory image for the thoughts. Try it now before the dough becomes too warm.”

  My first attempt had the already-chewed problem and Mary tsked with disapproval. I clenched my jaw and floured the pin again. The second was a step up, at least to the competency of a four-year-old. The final looked like Mary’s if she’d been drinking, and I was sure she hadn’t.

  “Gut,” she said. “We flute.” She showed me how to push one knuckle between two fingers to make the fancy ripple effect on the top of the crust. A few fork pokes for venting, and we stepped back to admire our work.

  “Nellie Monroe,” she said finally, her eyes on the dishes, “do not become any more arrogant than you already are, but these are good piecrusts. I will eat a slice myself.”

  Sarah
sighed happily or with relief, I wasn’t sure which. Elizabeth and Katie smiled at me with encouragement.

  “Thank you, Grandmother Mary. You helped me face my fear.”

  She sniffed. “Who fears a pie crust?” But I saw her smile as she lowered herself on a chair to rest.

  We took our plates and glasses to a long picnic table that stood sentry under a weeping willow. Mary sat first, and we followed. The kitchen needed a breather after the baking, and we did as well. I patted my forehead with the edge of my apron and smiled at my piece of pie.

  The three crusts had been filled with fruits of the Schrock garden. One raspberry, one rhubarb, one blueberry, all bursting with color and the promise of a really good snack. Sarah’s face had shown surprise when Granny Mary had suggested we each take a plate out to the table off the front porch.

  “It is appropriate,” she’d said when Sarah had stared. “Nellie Monroe should taste her first piecrust, and also this kitchen is too hot for work.”

  Katie had whispered to me as we plated five slices. “This I cannot believe! We work in the hot, the cold that freezes, the rain. Never do we stop for a piece of pie.” She nudged me gently with her elbow. “Nellie Monroe has worked a miracle.”

  The breeze was cool under the beckoning fingers of the willow. I watched the languid branches brush each other, ask for a dance but then snap back in fidelity to their own stems. My slice of pie, from the raspberry, tasted just like it should, having been raised from birth by the hands of these hardworking women. I could smell the butter, the berries, vanilla, and a tidge of lemon, as I brought it to my mouth. The crust melted against my tongue, just the right mix of flaking and soft, sweet and salty. I closed my eyes and must have moaned my appreciation, because the girls giggled.

  “Nellie, it is possible you have found your choice of work. Your profession,” Elizabeth said. She pointed her spoon at me, recently cleaned from a helping of blueberry. “You enjoy the eating so much, and the crust is very good. You should be a cook.”

  I took a tarrying sip of lemonade, buying time. “I’m not too sure about that,” I said, finally. I’d rather spy on families like yours and bring secret information back to the people who hire me. Hey, anybody hear from Amos Shetler these days? That answer didn’t sound quite as diplomatic. I felt a tiny drop in my stomach. It’s not deceit, I told the drop. It’s a job.