Crossing Over Read Free

are buried side by side in Peter Miller Cemetery, a barren rise of shin-high gravestones where the dead are serenaded by meadow larks and protected by a crooked, rusting metal gate.
    My brother’s stone reads: “Tobias A. Miller, son of Alvin & Martha T., 1964–1967, Age 3 yrs., 29 da.” My sister’s: “Miriam A. Miller, infant dau. of Alvin T. and Martha T., B. Sept. 3, 1980, lived 3 hrs.”
    Tobias’s accident happened before I was born. He had poured gas into a spray can customarily used for fly repellent. He got too close to the water heater’s pilot light and the gas exploded. The heat from the fire was so intense it blistered paint on the basement’s walls.
    My father would later say it was a blessing that Tobias died. Satan, he said, would never again tempt him to do wrong.
    Miriam, a doctor said, may have been the victim of exhaust fumes coming from a leaky conduit that led from the washing machine to a gas engine. The pipe had six cracks in it, and Mom would frequently get sick while doing the wash.
    Miriam’s body was put in a little white Styrofoam box that was placed on a dresser in my parents’ bedroom. It stayed there for three days while we waited for relatives to arrive in Kalona for graveside services.
    Benedict and I once went into the bedroom and tried to open the lid of the box, but it had been sealed shut. At the time, I don’t think we fully understood what was inside.
    Of course, there were a lot of things we didn’t understand then; couldn’t possibly have understood then.
    As Old Order Amish children, we were taught that we were the privileged ones, chosen by God to do his work and the only ones who stood a chance of being saved. We therefore were forbidden from doing missionary work outside the community.
    We were also warned that everything outside our world—otherwise known as English—was evil, inhabited by thieves and liars.
    Amish children—along with Amish wives—were, and still are, a subservient class. Children are valued more for their work habits than their developing personalities, and any money they make before they turn twenty-one must go to their parents. Wives exist to care for the children and to serve their husbands. Nothing more.
    That’s not to say we didn’t have fun. In our spare time, two of my brothers and I would run barefoot in the van Gogh fields behind our farm and hunt butterflies for my collection. We didn’t have a net, so we’d sneak up on them and, just when their wings shut, we’d slip our fingers over them. We put them to rest by dipping their heads in tiny vials of gasoline.
    I was attracted to the beauty of the butterflies. And while I felt sorry that they had to die, I figured that meant I could enjoy them that much longer. Such is the way of life—and death—on a farm.
    Sometimes we’d also go hunting for bird eggs to destroy, targeting the nests of blackbirds and cowbirds. They were considered nuisances because they robbed the nests of other birds.
    It was a fascinating exercise. You’d have to look up and watch the behavior of the birds. When they circled above your head, scolding and carrying on, you knew you were close. When they backed off, you knew the trail was cold. Sometimes they’d get really close to our heads, but we never paid much attention.
    Again, it wasn’t that I didn’t like birds; I’d spend hours listening to their whistles and songs so I could identify them by sound. It’s just that on an Amish farm, animals are viewed more as commodities or pests than pets or natural wonders.
    One time, an English woman came to our farm and began fussing over a piglet in the hog shed. She kissed it all over despite its foul smell, and I thought, “This lady’s lost it. She thinks this stinking pig is a pet or something.”
    One of our favorite childhood pursuits had nothing to do with animals. We made mud cookies.