Mennonites Don't Dance Read Online Free

door to the house every morning, stood up, stretched and followed Jonah to the barn. They wound around his legs and made throaty, purring meowing sounds when he stopped to lift the pitted iron latch and open the wooden door, its grain dry and split by weather and age. On the other side there were more cats and kittens — Jonah counted thirty-one in all, including an enormous feathery-furred tom, which presided over the red-rimmed dish. The rest sat around the other dishes, as though they were diners waiting to be served.
    â€œWe had a dog for a while,” Jonah said one morning when he’d been with his aunt for more than a month. Ardelle looked up from the pot of oatmeal she was stirring and he saw that she quickly hid a look of surprise.
    â€œA dog,” she repeated. A nudge to go on.
    â€œA little one, I don’t know what kind it was. A Heinz 57, I guess. I remember once, we were having sausages for supper. She wanted one something terrible, but Dad had taught her to sit still or get walloped.”
    Ardelle put her pot to the back of the stove and turned to give him her full attention. She seemed to sense that Jonah was about to falter.
    â€œAnyway.” Jonah swallowed. “I could see that she was trying to get close, but she was moving so slow that Dad didn’t see her until she was all the way to the table. She jumped up and snatched the sausage from his plate and ran off. Dad got up and they chased each other around and around the table with him calling ‘Get back here, you little schweinhund , you little sausage snatcher!’”
    Ardelle, who had lightly clamped a hand over her mouth until that moment, suddenly laughed out loud. A big, delighted bark of a sound that sent her teeth skittering across the kitchen floor. Jonah forgot about being nervous and watched the teeth in surprise, then looked at his aunt, her mouth round and open and empty. Seeing the look on her face, he burst into laughter and they howled together until his back ached and his eyes spilled over with tears.
    â€œToo much sugar when I was a girl,” Ardelle said when they finally recovered enough and she bent to fetch her dentures, rinse and pop them back in her mouth. “Your mom’s still got all of hers. Probably she’ll be buried with every one of her original teeth still in her head.”
    â€œShe lost one last winter,” Jonah said. He looked down and away, unsure of himself.
    â€œDid she now?”
    â€œYeah,” Jonah said. “She fell on some ice and it broke. A front one, too. After that it turned all black and she had to have it pulled.”
    â€œWell, it’s nothing to laugh at, though it’ll do.” Ardelle grinned at Jonah until he couldn’t help but do the same. Later he wondered why he had told her that about the dog, his mother’s tooth.
    At the end of summer, Ardelle drove Jonah back to the train in Brandon. Already the trees were beginning to turn gold and red around the edges. There was a chill in the air, a current underneath the lingering warmth of the season. Together at the station, Jonah and Ardelle sat on a bench and waited. For a while neither of them said anything until she handed Jonah a lunch box filled with a jar of milk, four beef and mashed potato sandwiches, and a slab of lemon squares to eat on his trip back home.
    â€œIt doesn’t mean you don’t love your parents if you choose to believe in a little grace.” Into his hand Ardelle pressed a leaf of thin India paper that he recognized as having been torn from a Bible. On it a verse was circled, which she told him to remember for a time when he might need it. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you a future and a hope , it said, on the page taken from Isaiah.
    â€œI’ve set aside a bit of money over the years,” Ardelle said. “Enough to send you to Bible school in Caronport.