The Devil's Larder

The Devil's Larder


Monika still can't talk, but it doesn't matter; she has nothing left to say. She looks like an animal, moans like an animal and feels as dirty as the pigs snorting at the trough next to the stall where she has been sleeping. Apart from the pigs, her only company is her pen and a small notebook. She knows this pain is rooted not only in her mouth, but in the Amish idea of Gelassenheit and she has had enough.

When Monika's brother Klaus started molesting her, she was only 11. He was 19. Then when he moved away, her 17-year-old brother Peiter, started raping her. She didn't try to stop either of them at first, because she couldn't say "No," to her brothers, who were so much older than she was. But lately she's started fighting back. She doesn't want to be one more Amish girl who has a baby fathered by her father or a brother.

Over the last little while, she's been dropping hints to Mrs. Burke, the English woman she cleans for, but because she's been afraid to come right out with it, Mrs. Burke doesn't really understand, although she knows Monika isn't happy. So last week she got bolder and used the phone at the Burkes' while they were out and called Children and Family Services, who sent someone out to talk to her and ask her mother Sarah some questions. Sarah was furious and denied knowing what Monika was talking about. She even suggested to the worker that her daughter was mentally ill. Then there was the visit from the lawyer, followed by the bishop and some of the elders, threatening Monika to take back her story or be taken out to the woodpile - or worse. With no faith in anyone to protect her, she did as she was told. She knew from a cousin who'd left the Amish, that she'd have to be physically hurt by her family before the state would do anything about it. She prays that what her mother has done will be enough to bring the worker back.

Lying curled up like a baby on a bale of hay in the barn, the same barn where all of this began, (she can still see Pieter's face and hear him telling her to shut up and roll over on the scratchy bale of hay while he pounded himself into her), the pain shooting through her mouth and up into her face is excruciating. Pressing her hands over her mouth and pushing doesn't help at all and because she hasn't eaten for three days, she also feels weak. She wishes she could go back to sleep because she doesn't feel it then and the dreams make her feel better too.

She has just woken up from one where she and her mother were reading together. Her mother was once a teacher and although books were strongly discouraged in the Swartzentruber district, the strictest of all Amish communities, Monika knows Sarah secretly read them late at night when she thought everyone was asleep. So when Monika found a pile of Nancy Drews in an abandoned schoolhouse, her mother didn't get angry or ask her to return them. There was a time when her mother could be kind. But that was a long time ago, before her father beat Sarah into submission after he caught her reading one night, and things just got worse after that. Maybe Monika needed the dream to remember a better time in her life, because right now all she feels in pain and rage.

The trip to the Swartzentruber dentist in another town in the buggy with some of the other children from the community, wasn't something Monika had looked forward to, but she never imagined it would turn out the way it did. After she watched two of the other children have one or two bad teeth pulled, she waited her turn and was glad she'd come just to have a small cavity filled. So when she felt the dentist injecting novocaine into her top gum, she shook her head trying to explain what she had come for - the cavity on the bottom - but it was no use. He asked her mother which teeth should go, and Sarah answered, "All of them." After he had pulled all the way along the top gum and then the bottom, and the last tooth had pinged into the metal pan, on the table next to the chair, her mother looked at her and said, "I guess you won't be talking anymore."

She has been bleeding steadily for three days now and hasn't had any medication to relieve the pain or the swelling. Her family has paid little attention to her other than to sporadically give her some water to drink. She isn't surprised because she knows they believe her pain and her thirst are punishment for her sins. This is what they think she deserves.

Monika's always had her mother's penchant for talking out of turn and some of her father's stubbornness too. Whether for wearing her cap too far back on her head or for "acting around" in church, she was often in trouble at home, and her father, despite his age and heart problems, knew how to give her a good beating. Sometimes he used the strap, a foot-long piece of rubber; other times, he took her "to the woodpile" and hit her with a piece of wood until she could barely stand up.

She liked to draw, which violated the Ordnung. And she didn't like the constant dimness in the house or at school or in church. The community only allowed kerosene, which gave off less light than gas, and even candles had to be kept at a low glow, making it difficult for her to read and she was always squinting. Whenever she was foolish enough to talk about any of those things it was the strap or the woodpile.

Her life in her own mind has always been dull, hard, strict and painful. Maybe it was the Nancy Drew books, but she knew there was more to life than this and wanted to taste it, savour it, devour it. The only relief she got was when she went to clean the house where the Burkes lived and could sneak peeks at television shows that were on if their kids were home, or sometimes magazines - especially the fashion magazines with pictures of girls and women and boys and men dressed in colourful clothes and living in the real world doing real things. Touching each other, kissing, smiling, shopping, drinking. She wanted to live like that.

Not in a world where girls were made to wear dark colours and dresses had to reach down to the tops of their shoes. Monika dreamed of spike heels in bright colours, sheer pantyhose and lacy bras and pretty underwear. Here girls weren't allowed to wear bras at all and underwear had to be homemade. Black shawls, white or black bonnets, no makeup or fragrance or nail polish of any kind.

Real life in her world means getting up at five a.m., going to the barn with her brothers to feed the animals and milk the cows. Then joining the family for prayer and breakfast. If it's laundry day, she has to get the gasoline motor started on the wringer washing machine, do the wash, and hang it out on the line to dry before she goes to school. Other mornings she helps the younger children get ready for school, packing their lunch boxes and brushing their hair. Then after school she works in the garden, preparing it for planting, or harvesting vegetables for meals.

"God help me. Someone help me," she scribbles in her book. Maybe when she has a little more energy she'll find the perfect words. But right now, she's so tired, all she can do is tuck the notebook into the top of her dress where it comforts her even while it scratches her breasts and makes them itchy. Whether there is a god or not, and she's not sure about that anymore, she's glad that she can keep her thoughts to herself. No one knows about them except her friend Ana, and Ana would never say anything. If Ana knew about what her mother and the dentist had done, Monika knows she'd do something - call the police maybe - but Ana doesn't know. No one knows.

Trying to make herself stronger by counting her blessings, and writing them down, Monika comes up with only three. Ana, of course, and then going to the Burkes' and lastly, taking the family's horses out to pasture. It's the only chore she enjoys and hasn't told her mother how much she loves the horses or Sarah would ask someone else to do it. When she's with the horses she loves to clap her hands, making them scatter and then chase them around the open field, because it makes her feel free. There's no one else around and she can run, or do sommersaults if she wants to, falling into the sweet grass or simply lie down on her back, close her eyes, and dream.

If the bishop hadn't found her the cleaning job with the Burkes, she would have lost her mind a long time ago. When the Burkes go out shopping or to a movie, things Monika has never done, she can almost live the life she dreams of. In a real house with pictures on the walls and coloured cloth on the furniture, a television, a modern kitchen, sometimes music, and all those books and magazines. She knows from reading them that there is so much to learn about the world that she isn't learning. And so much to see that she isn't seeing. And she thinks Mrs. Burke likes her. The other night she heard her on the phone, and she's been thinking about what Mrs. Burke said ever since. "A lot of Amish will tell you they don't want their kids to be educated," she said. "The more they know, the more apt they are to leave. Poor Monika, coming here and seeing how we live and then going back to that family of hers. It breaks my heart. Honestly, I know she's not happy, there's something going on over there that I worry about, but I don't know what it is and I'm afraid to ask."

Hearing that made Monika happy, because she loves the way Mrs. Burke is and she's going to need her help. She wonders what it would be like to be part of this family, who are always hugging in the house or going out and doing things together. She'd like to go to Mrs. Burke now, and just fall into her arms and weep, but she's so embarrassed about the way she looks; all swollen and red and tear-stained from the pain and the shame, the helplessness and the betrayal she feels.

Mrs.Burke likes to tell her how pretty she is - or at least she used to. And even though Monika never believed it, and has never heard anyone else say it, it makes her smile inside just remembering. She knows her mother has told the bishop to tell the Burkes that she's sick, but if Mrs. Burke knew what had really happened, she would help. Monika is sure of that.

All of the thoughts spinning through her sore head are broken by the sound of the barn door opening and then the confident clackety-clack of Sarah's shoes with their tiny heels walking along the wooden floor. Sarah leans over her, and in a voice that is pitiless shouts, "Monika. Get up. That's enough feeling sorry for yourself now. Get those horses out to pasture, and then get back here as soon as you can and start supper."

Monika nods, humming assent, and slowly pulls herself up. As she watches Sarah's back make its way to the barn door she wishes she could strike her dead. Maybe an arrow right through her back and out the front. Or a bullet. If she believed in hell, she'd be worried about these thoughts, but she doesn't believe in anything anymore except her own ability set herself free
.
She feels dizzy and almost falls down, but grabs hold of one of the rough beams to steady herself. Taking a damp rag hanging from a nail and wiping her blood-stained face, she checks to make sure the pen and notebook with its message to Mrs. Burke are still there. Then dipping the dirty rag into the water trough she splashes her face until she feels more awake, and slowly makes her way over to the horse barn. The bright light outside gives her a headache, and all she'd like to do is fall down and sleep it off, but there is no turning back now.

Leading the horses out to pasture, her heart thumping like a trapped wild thing, Monika imagines what it would be like to walk past the field, out the gate and never come back.

Out in the field, she's glad the animals are feeling frisky. Feebly clapping one hand against the notebook, she waits for the horses to scatter and then stumbles across the field to a mailbox, where she drops off the letter to Mrs. Burke. "Are you willing to help me?" she wrote. "I need

to get out of here." She told Mrs. Burke what had happened and then asked if she could put a message in a plastic bottle and leave it in the ditch by the mailbox where it would be easy to find.
Four days later, feeling stronger because she had been eating a little and getting outside, Monica spooked the horses again. When she got to the ditch she could see the bottle with a piece of paper in it. Lifting it up, she opened the folded pale yellow paper and read: "Our arms are open to you and so are our doors. Come as soon as you can." It was signed Jennifer Burke.

Monica burned the note with a match and went home.

It was her turn to make supper. She lit the stove, began heating water, and sat down to write a letter to her mother. In it, she thanked Sarah for finally doing something to wake her up give her a reason to find the courage to leave. Licking the envelope and sealing it, and then leaving it on the windowsill for Sarah, Monika felt happy. Her teeth were gone, but her future was waiting. She smiled.

Then she walked out the door, down the porch steps, and ran.