AND BESIDES GOD MADE POISON IVY
(First published in Due West, Turnstone Press, 1996)

A story by Armin Wiebe
Copyright © Armin Wiebe 1996

        For six months your grandfather Kjrayel Kehler sat stone-faced with my father in the sitting room every Sunday afternoon answering a whole catechism of questions about his mother's arthritis and how much milk the schemmel cow gave that Kjrayel had bought from Harder's auction. And my father always asked Kjrayel a question about what Preacher Funk had said in Sunday morning church.

         Kjrayel Kehler always had an answer for that question, too, and when the dinner dishes were all washed my father would let your grandfather come outside with me to sit on the lawn swing beside the lilac bushes. And I would laugh so much sometimes I got the hiccups because being with Kjrayel Kehler was like trying to stand up on a moving swing and after he was gone I would still stay there on the lawn swing bench afraid that my legs wouldn't hold me up. I would stay there until my father rattled the upside down pails on the post. Then I would hurry to put on my milking dress. 

         A heavy rain held up the thrashing gang at the neighbour's for a day and your grandfather said to me at breakfast that we would go to Yanzeed to pick blueberries. I don't think he was that interested in blueberries really, but he wanted an excuse to drive the Model T he had bought in Winnipeg even before the harvest. So sure he was that he would have a bumper crop. Your grandfather was so eager to drive the car that he didn't even go to the beckhouse after breakfast, which was almost like having the sun stand still in the sky, because in those days I could set the morning clock by his visit to the two-holer.

         I hardly had tied loose my apron and put on my straw hat before he was honking the Model T horn. He had a dozen syrup pails piled in the back seat and two ten-gallon cream cans standing on the floor and I schmuistahed to myself that my Kjrayel must be thinking he would get a bumper crop of blueberries, too. Not that I had anything against having lots of blueberries to put some colour on the table during the long winter, and I liked riding along with my man in the Model T after a rain when the road was too wet for dust.

         And I liked watching how your grandfather gripped the wheel with both hands, the end of his tongue sticking out from his lips like baloney between pieces of bread. How he looked straight ahead through the window glass -- until he saw something to laugh about. Like how that cow in the ditch looked like Milyoon Moates or how the new telephone poles looked like a row of upside down women's legs with high-heels on. I saw, too, how he was shrugging himself around a little oftener than seemed necessary to be comfortable, even on those Model T seats.

         Sure enough, as soon as we had picked blueberries for maybe five minutes your grandfather febeizeled himself into the bush and I didn't see him again until I came back from emptying my syrup pails into the cream can in the car.

         For hours we picked, a bumper crop of berries, both cream cans and all the pails full, and before we went home we sat on the shade side of the car and ate jreeve schnetje and drank cool coffee from a jar and even popped a few blueberries into each others' mouths. If this Indian family hadn't stopped their horse and wagon right beside our Model T who knows what Kjrayel Kehler would have started there in the shade so far away from Gutenthal. The Indians soon picked their way into the bush and only the horse was left there to see, but an eye is an eye, even when it is looking out from the side of a horse's head.

         Later, I was happy for sure that it was so schendlich hot that night we each had to stay on our own side of the bed. I mean, in those days your grandfather took it seriously what the wedding preacher had said about being joined together and with no children yet in the house a woman could let herself go, too, but this night it was good it was too hot.

         The sparrows already tsittered outside the window when I heard a mourning dove. I listened to hear if your grandfather Kjrayel Kehler was going to coo back to it the way he liked to do. But instead he jumped out of bed and ripped his combination underwear off so fast the buttons flew all over the room. Before I could even say, "What's loose?", I saw that his middle was covered with gnauts, the poison ivy itch, front and back, between the legs, all over everything, and he danced there as broadlegged as he could without falling down.

         I shouldn't have laughed at your grandfather like that, but sometimes a woman forgets to remember her place, and besides if it had happened to me, his dear wife, your grandfather Kjrayel Kehler would have laughed at me and blabbered the story to all who would listen, even unto the day when I will be lying in my coffin waiting to be buried in my best dress.

         How could I help it? Could God himself have kept a straight face looking at your grandfather dancing naked from one leg to the other in the morning light?

         But at the same time I had to cry, too, because such an itchy gnauts between the legs had to be a bigger plague than anything God sent down to Job in the Old Testament. And I was happy for sure that it had been too hot in the night for any joining together into one flesh.

         "What did you wipe yourself with yesterday in the bush?" I asked when I had stopped shuddering enough to talk.

         For once Kjrayel Kehler couldn't say anything. He just looked at me and a tear sippled down his cheek.

         I tried to wash him with warm water and lye soap but the red blisters were so sore and so itchy he screamed when I touched him, even with a soapy bare hand. I filled the wash tub and when he sat down in the soapy water he felt a little better and I gave him his porridge to eat. With his hands busy at least he didn't try to scratch himself. But every few minutes the itch got so gruelich strong he shrugged himself and schulpsed water all over the floor.

         Your grandfather was still sitting in the tub when I came in from the milking.

         "Suschkje," he said to me. "The thrashers are coming today. What will I do?"

         "You can't wear pants with such gnauts, it would rub the skin too much."

         "And I can't go naked to thrash barley."

         "I'll just have to tell them that you are sick and they will have to thrash without you."

         "No. I'm not sick. I just have gnauts. I just need some kind of clothes to wear that don't rub me between the legs. There must be something."

         "Well, I don't know," I said as I poured fresh milk through the strainer into the separator bowl. "Even wide pants would rub together and a person can't walk around broadlegged all day." I speeded up the separator crank until the bell on the handle stopped ringing so I could open the spout. The morning air blew in through the wire window and I felt it come up my legs under my skirt. That's when I laughed at your grandfather again.

         I didn't think Kjrayel Kehler would really do it, and I could see that it wasn't easy for him. At first he wanted a manly dress, like one of my dark winter skirts, but the wool made him kjriesch out with hurting. And he didn't want flowers, he said, as he stroked each dress and skirt to see how smooth it was. But every dress that was light and cool had flowers and your grandfather just couldn't bring himself to wear flowers on the thrashing field. He kept coming back to my black winter skirt.

         I could see what he was thinking. With that skirt he could wear his own shirt, and from far off the dark skirt wouldn't show so easy and with no flowers he wouldn't feel so much like a woman. If only the wool wasn't so scratchy.

         I looked at your grandfather's freckled bow legs and his blistered hams. I looked at the long paper dry cleaning bag at the end of the row of hanging dresses. I thought of how I would feel if it hadn't been too hot for loving in the night. Still, it was a hard thing for me to do.

         The silk underskirt from my wedding dress fit him quite well, looser than it fit me, because a man doesn't have to have room to give birth to children. With his workshirt covering up the soft lace of the bodice and the black skirt covering up the rest Kjrayel Kehler stepped out the door to face the thrashers.

         I don't know how much ribbing your grandfather got as they pitched the sheaves into the thrashing machine, but at meal times not a word was said about Kjrayel Kehler sitting at the head of the table with the air from the wire window blowing up his skirt. Maybe it was because Kjrayel Kehler kept telling one funny story after another so they forgot to laugh at his dress. Still, the few times I had a chance to look out to the thrashing field I saw that more people than necessary were stopping to watch.

         Each night while Kjrayel sat in the soapy water I washed the barley dust out of the silk and hung it on the line to dry for morning. I cried on the second night when the spots of gun grease wouldn't wash out even though I rubbed till my hands were sore.

         On Saturday at noon Preacher Funk drove into the yard just as the men were washing up for dinner and I heard the preacher say something about how he had heard that the Catholic pope was helping with the thrasher gang. I didn't hear what Kjrayel Kehler said back to him, but Preacher Funk didn't stay long after that and I thought I could see in your grandfather's eye that look he gets when he is planning something for a surprise.

         That night Kjrayel was reading the Bible while he soaked himself in the tub. Yodel Heinrichs had brought him a box of baking soda to put in the water and your grandfather agreed that it took some of the itch away. I had laid out my second best underskirt on the table and was going to cut out a pattern for some pyjamas that he could wear under his Sunday pants for going to church.

         "Suschkje," he said to me. "Don't forget to wash that underskirt for church tomorrow."

         I had my cloth scissors ready to cut. "You mean you will wear a dress to church?"

         "Well sure," he said. "In the Bible the men are always going around with dresses on. People who go to church should know such a thing."

         I was so bedutzed by all this that I didn't know if I was going to shame myself the next day because my man had a dress on or if I should be happy with a man who thought church was so important that nothing could keep him away. Maybe I could hide myself on the women's side of the church.

         So I washed that silk wedding underskirt with the gun grease spots on it and hung it up to dry. It had been a tiresome week what with feeding the thrashers and canning blueberries and making catsup from the tomatoes that were ripening all at once. I had no room to think about what dress Kjrayel would wear to church in the morning.

         It would have been good to have a camera to take off a picture of your grandfather that Sunday, but we didn't have such a thing yet, and for sure in those days nobody would have brought a camera to church unless there was a wedding on. So I can't show you what your grandfather looked like. At his funeral I wouldn't let them open the coffin and people figured it was because of the way the cancer had eaten away at him when it took so long to die. The people can think what they want.

         We should have hidden the Model T in the barn that Sunday afternoon, closed our windows and pulled shut the curtains so it looked like nobody was home. But we didn't. Instead we sat at the dinner table longer than we should have and let the air from the wire window blow up our skirts. I still didn't know if I should laugh or cry or shame myself.

         And then the first buggy full of visitors clattered into the yard.

         When your grandfather Kjrayel Kehler died they took him from me before he was even gone. Funeral Home Fehr wouldn't even let me see Kjrayel till he had him all fixed ready for the viewing. Like your grandfather was some kind of Stalin and Lenin in Moscow or something like that. Well, one thing I learned living forty-three years with Kjrayel Kehler is that just because somebody in a Sunday suit says, no, doesn't mean that it can't be done. And who anyways heard of a locked funeral home in Flatland? 

         We never talked about that Sunday, though I always felt that it meant something, something more than a kjrayel-hauns joke, though for sure a kjrayel-hauns joke it was. I am just a simple woman but I lived with your grandfather for over forty-three years and in such a man there is always something else going on besides the ploughing and the thrashing and the sitting on the church bench on Sunday morning. By the time we got up from that dinner table half a dozen buggies and three Model A's had parked themselves in our yard and we were like Adam and Eve with no place to hide.

         Kjrayel Kehler gave me a kiss on the cheek and he fuscheled in my ear, "Don't even think about giving all these people faspa. If they don't smell the coffee they will soon get tired and go away." Then he walked outside in my white wedding dress and sat down on the lawn swing and shuckled all afternoon without saying a word. The next Wednesday evening when I walked into the sewing circle I overheard Schallemboych's Tien saying that your grandfather had looked like he was praying with his eyes open.

         I have to admit that I was envying myself over your grandfather. I mean a woman only gets to wear such a dress one day in her life and then it just hangs there, though I once heard of a woman who made curtains out of hers. I was still crying on the bed when Kjrayel Kehler came in after the visitors had gone away. I wouldn't let him touch me in the night for a whole month after that, long after the gnauts had disappeared.

         I don't know if it would have been his wish, but there are more things in this world than the eyes can see or what can be read about in a newspaper. I had sat up with your grandfather in the hospital for four nights in a row and the doctor told me to get some sleep. So your mother stayed with Kjrayel Kehler and I went home to bed.

         When the phone woke me up in the middle of the night I felt like I had been ripped out of a dream I couldn't remember. And then after I was dressed and waiting for your father to take me to the hospital I suddenly felt like something was pushing me and making me do what I did.    

         It wasn't until late the night before the funeral that I was able to sneak into the funeral home to be with your grandfather alone. I had never undressed Kjrayel Kehler in those forty-three years we lived together, at least not with the lights on, and then a coffin doesn't have that much room in it, so it was scary and funny at the same time and I kept thinking that Kjrayel was going to sit up and tell me to stop tickling him. And it's not easy to dress a person who isn't helping, especially when Funeral Home Fehr could have walked in any minute. But I thought I saw your grandfather's lips smile just a little when the silk underskirt touched his skin.

         The gun grease spots showed through the wedding dress but it was too late to rub them with bluing. And besides God made poison ivy and He planted it in the same places He put the blueberry bushes and I know I shouldn't say such a thing, but I have sometimes wondered if maybe God didn't make poison ivy with its three leaves and white berries just before He made Adam out of a lump of mud and set him loose running naked through the Garden of Eden. At least, if your grandfather Kjrayel Kehler had been God, that's how he would have done it.