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Mom says there’s many ministries for a girl with too much time on her hands, so much time that that girl might be tempted to complain.
    Daddy speaks low. ‘Didn’t hear no complaining.’
    Mom’s eyes close and she starts her humming.
    â€˜Ingwald still mowing the Turgeson place?’ His asking is apology to Mom.
    She nods.
    â€˜Stick with what you know, girl. Come summer, take the ride-on and go mow that big yard for the Turgesons.’
    I know where he means. Not a quarter mile from our place live elders from the church. When grass is there, Uncle Ingwald comes and mows their yard, carefully guiding the lawn tractor around a river of orange-red Indian paintbrushes that sections the lawn. Turgeson ain’t invalid, so I don’t know why he don’t mow. I want to know why.
    â€˜Girl, you can mow. You know that coyotes run with straight tails and that bears stink. That’s what you need to know.’ Daddy knows what I don’t need to know.
    Over the rickety bridge, past my Uncle Peter’s farm, and we are near home. Compared to along the hayfields and the woods, it must be freezing, much worse in the shadows under the low-hanging bridge. It is a secret place, and secret places are cold. There are animals that can’t survive in the secret places and there are beings that can live only there. I look at the marshy field and the river as we pass nearby, crusted here and there with muddy ice, and think of all that’s waiting there to grow: wild rice, cranberries, rainbow trout and mud suckers. They are all sleeping, lingering, waiting for real winter to start and then to end. They are waiting for the sun to make the water move again.
    After morning service on Sundays and midday dinner, my parents rest together. When I go into the bathroom after, I seek Mom’s scent in the laundry pile. Her underclothes are more than I should touch, but I do. Against my face, the white smells of late flowers, dying purple roses that have sat on the church organ days too long. But when supper before evening service is short and cold — just eating chipped beef made from leftover venison and a boiled-milk gravy on toast, not even pickles on the table — I can smell they’ve missed their nap. The orange plastic saltshaker and butter dish pass back and forth without fingers touching. The laundry pile don’t need to tell me nothing.
    Mornings are for preaching and Bible school, but Sunday nights are more for prayer and praise. Evening services — both Sundays and Wednesdays — are always more relaxed with singing and sharing and such. With my family and friends around me, I can rest and feel covered and protected. But now, I wait in the fellowship hall alone, just peeping out between the coats, while the rest of them is inside the sanctuary praying. Not all of them, of course — Naomi and Aunt Gloria are busy cleaning in the kitchen — but most of them is in there together: Uncle Ingwald and Samuel, Mom and Daddy, and Reuben. As Uncle Ingwald was saying the prayer to send us out into the world and back again safely — ‘without a hair on our heads gone astray’ — he asked for prayer requests; not unusual, but Reuben raising a hand was.
    Naomi’s clanging the coffee cups together in the church kitchen, aiming at snapping off a couple white handles. If she’s trying to pretend to be washing dishes and helping out of holiness, she ain’t fooling no one. Aunt Gloria don’t even look up from the long counter where she is reassembling the communion trays, slotting the small glasses back into their metal dishes; they’ve been waiting on the drying slat since this morning’s service. After passing amongst us to distribute the Body and the Blood, the elders bring the trays back to the church kitchen, where one of the ladies rinses any leftovers away. Gloria just needs to put everything back together: the glasses slide into the