Devotion(17)

‘What did she say?’

‘She told me to mind my mouth.’

Anna Maria wiped tears from her eyes. ‘Oh, I do hope she tries it. I love the thought of Johanne Nussbaum sharing a pillow with a dough bin.’

Thea’s home was a happy place to be, for all the winter winds breached the cottage walls and the roof leaked. Friedrich Eichenwald was a quiet man, content with his work and his family, and Anna Maria swept me up in the expansive love she showed her daughter. Theirs was a place of ready laughter, and while at first I found the family’s affection for one another odd and uncomfortable to behold, I soon could not help but compare my own parents unfavourably to the Eichenwalds. Anna Maria embraced me more than my own mother did, and when I heard Friedrich talk with his daughter, I wished that my own father would show the same interest in me, would speak to me of his own accord and not through the borrowed word of God. At home, the family table had become less a place of fellowship than a pulpit for my father’s denunciation of the Union Church and despair at the ever-shrinking possibility of religious freedom. His earthly sight seemed levelled only at his fields, our animals. Mama never placed her hand on Papa’s neck as she served him his dinner. Papa never commented on Mama’s beauty, though it was there, remarkable and singular, every hour of the day. They worked within their own spheres, remote and distinct from one another. Papa spoke of Mama as his helpmeet and he only ever called her Mutter. Friedrich referred to his wife by her name. He uttered it like an affirmation.

Matthias, ever my comfort, offered moments of light amidst the endless labour and criticism. During the week I lived for the rare hours when we might be in each other’s company: I relished his kicks under the table, the green bean tucked in his upper lip when he thought Mama wasn’t looking. But his days were spent in my father’s dominion and I was trapped in my mother’s.

‘Sometimes I wonder if I was born into the wrong family,’ I told Thea one afternoon as we sat in front of Anna Maria’s hearth, bare feet extended towards the embers.

‘Why?’ She was drowsy. I could hear it in her voice.

I hesitated. I knew that Thea thought all marriages were like her parents’: hands finding one another across tables or in passing, a constant homing of fingers. She never hesitated to wrap her arms about me in affection, and it was difficult for me to articulate the joy I felt each time she hugged me. I was no longer a child picked up by my father or permitted to crawl into my twin’s bed. My mother’s unpredictable kisses did not satisfy the longing I had to be touched, to be recognised as worthy of touch. I wanted to tell Thea that I was often so hungry for another body to acknowledge my own that I sometimes felt the weight of her arm slung around my shoulder long after I went home. Her cool fingers between my own left my skin burning. I wanted to tell her that sometimes I woke in the night convinced her hand was still in mine.

‘Your family does not ignore the body,’ I said eventually.

Thea rested her head on my shoulder.


Despite her initial trepidation, Mama tolerated my weekly absences from home in a way she had not since I was a child. Other than occasionally quipping that if I loved Anna Maria’s Sauergurken so much I should just live there and save her the effort of setting my place at the table, she held her tongue and said nothing when I continually came home late on Sunday evenings, face flushed with cold, as long as I was back in time to milk the cows with Matthias – the one day I was able to share the chore with him.

‘Do you think Mama is relieved to be rid of me?’ I asked Matthias one night. I had returned home from the Eichenwalds’ earlier than usual and had felt, immediately, that Mama was displeased to see me.

Matthias turned and opened his mouth, and I attempted to squirt milk into it. We both laughed as it hit him in the eye.

‘Do you even care?’ Matthias replied, wiping his face on his shirtsleeve. ‘You don’t have to sit and listen to Papa complaining about Calvinists all day.’

‘She can’t wait to marry me off and get me out of the house,’ I muttered.

‘Hanne, I doubt it’s you. She’s happy for me to head off with Hans, when Elder Pasche allows him to go. Perhaps she just likes the time to herself.’ He reached out and took my pail of milk, hooking it onto the yoke across his shoulders. ‘You’re lucky Thea never has to sit and study sermons to keep the Sabbath. Think of how Hans suffers.’


It never occurred to me that Mama might have been preoccupied with her own affairs until, one morning in late January, I found her hunched over in the orchard, a mess in the frost and one arm gripping the bare branches of an apple tree for support. She did not know I was there until I placed my hand on her shoulder. She was shaking.

Mama allowed me to help her into the house and ease her into a chair, even as she told me she was fine, that she had just had a funny turn. Even in the days following, when she stopped eating and heaved at the fatty smell of frying Leberwurst, she refused to admit she was unwell.

That Sunday I chose to remain home in order to look after her.

‘You would tell me, wouldn’t you?’ I asked, after a day of watching her run outside to throw up in the snow. ‘If you were truly sick?’ I was washing the dishes and, when Mama did not reply, I stood up from the pan of hot water and wrapped my arms around her middle.

Mama gently steered me back towards my chore. ‘Hanne, what I need now is a little rest and nothing more. A little space.’ She picked up her plate and scraped the uneaten food into Hulda’s pail.