A Clearing in the Wild Read Free

imagined Bethel into being. It is a joyous place, Bethel, even though my father says many will be summoned in the morning to discuss reasons we might have to leave again.
    Change never troubled me. I welcome change, newness, though I work to keep my pride in check about it. Pride is an evil thing, our leader tells us. We must not envy, must not lust, must not covet. So no one knows I’ve stitched a ruffle to my crinoline. It is a harmless vanity easily removed but one that warms my spirit knowing it is there, unique on this winter morning as crisp as a hot-ironed crease. I gaze without envy along the row of plain and simple wool dresses of Bethel’s sisters on the benches.
    Change has its richness in a colony where everything seems the same. At seventeen, I am of marriageable age, so change sticking its head inside my door will be patted like a welcomed dog on its happy head.
    Before we left our brick home this morning, my mother cautioned me when I noted that this might be my last Christmas as Emma Wagner.Next year, next Christmas, I might carry a new name and enter the festivities not as a child, but as a woman.
    “He preaches of late, Father Keil does, that one should be devoted to the colony, not marry so young,” my mother said as we readied to leave for the service. She combed Johanna’s hair into a braid, brushed a crumb from little Louisa’s face. “He says perhaps women should marry not at all. Tink of Saint Paul who advised, ‘I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I.’ ”
    “But he also said it’s ‘better to marry than to burn,’ ” I challenged. I could see my breath through the cold of our large house. I licked my fingers and flattened three-year-old William’s cowlick as he sped out the door, then pulled on gloves made by Bethel factory workers.
    “Paul says that, too,” my mother continued, “but then tells, ‘He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife.’ ”
    “
Ja
, a good husband should please his wife,” I said. “Besides, Father Keil married.” I pulled on my woolen hood and tied the bows beneath my chin. “His nine children might say he either burned much or none at all.”
    “
Ach
, Emma!” my mother chastened. “How you talk. Young Father Keil married before he came to know the Lord as he knows Him now.” Her hands shooed me out the door toward the rest of the family.
    “He’s been a colony leader for many years, and his wife Louisa still has diapers to change,” I said, walking backward to keep chatting with my mother. My father held a lantern so we could see to walk to the church on the crunching snow, and he used it to signal me to turn about, gather up my younger brothers and sisters.
    “Wiser now he is, so he shares his wisdom with us, and we must listen,” my mother finished.
    “Who is wiser?” my father said as we joined him beneath the stars.
    “You,” my mother offered, taking his arm.
    I didn’t pursue the subject, but my disagreement with her and with our leader’s view gave me yet another reason to be joyful about my unseen ruffle. After all, isn’t part of wisdom thinking on one’s own, doing not what everyone else does but making distinctive marks, as distinctive as … as a Turkish instrument carried by a German man?
    Now we sat and listened to the bells of the
Schellenbaum
tinkle at this early hour service. Surely our leader didn’t think young men and women would forgo marriage or families for the sake of the colony? How would it grow? Would he rely on new conversions of men going with courage into the outside world, men too strong to be lured into the world’s ways?
    The tall man standing next to our leader moved to center the
Schellenbaum
on its stand beside the altar. My heart pounded with anticipation. He was my father’s good friend, our