Free Mennonites Don't Dance by Darcie Friesen Hossack Page B

Ani longed to rescue her, wash her up and put her back in her room. She’d promise to never leave her lying around again.
    â€œYou’re getting too old for dolls, anyway,” Clive said. He stood up and patted Ani, in a reassuring way, on the shoulder before pushing the lid down on top of the garbage. “Now don’t let me see you trying to get that thing out of there.”
    Later, when Ani’s mother found her crying on her bed, Ani tried to explain what had happened. But it came out sounding childish.
    â€œSusie will think I let her get thrown out.” Ani said. “She won’t understand.”
    Ani buried her head in her knees and sobbed. The next day was garbage day, and she felt sick to her stomach imagining what would happen to her doll. Susie would be covered in other people’s garbage and compressed before being taken to the nuisance grounds.
    â€œI’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do about it now, honey. That was one of Clive’s rules,” her mother said. “Maybe we’ll both have to be more careful and considerate.” She squeezed Ani into a hug. “I’m sure he didn’t intend to be mean. Just remember how well the two of you got along last Christmas.”
    Ani could no longer sleep. Clive insisted she become accustomed to noise at night, and to light from the television that flickered from the living room to the frenetic rhythm of old western shoot-outs. And if it wasn’t the TV, the scratchy sounds of old country and western records whined in her ears. Even after Clive finally turned them off and he and her mother went to bed, the motors from the ice house droned on and off all night. They flicked a switch in her mind every time they powered up.
    â€œIt’s something you’re just going to have to get used to,” Clive told her the first time she crept out of her room and asked if he could turn down the record player.
    â€œJust a little?” She looked to her mother, who was reading a magazine. “I can’t get to sleep.”
    â€œWell, it won’t happen with you standing here. Just put it out of your mind,” Clive said.
    Ani wanted to tell him that it was stupid to think anyone could sleep through all that horrible honky-tonk. Although the words were climbing up her throat, she didn’t let them out. After she went back to bed, she heard her mother and Clive talking.
    â€œIt’s not her fault,” her mother said. “I always made sure it was quiet for her at night.”
    â€œSure you did, and now she expects it. You didn’t do her any favours by spoiling her, you know.”
    â€œI just think it’s a lot to adjust to — a new home along with everything else.”
    Clive disagreed and that was the end of it.
    By the time Ani was ten, a year after her mother married Clive, it became harder and harder at school to hide her fatigue. After math one day, her teacher, Mr. Buchanan, told her to stay in her seat. When all the other students were gone, he came and leaned over her.
    â€œI’d like to know why you’re always so tired in my class, Ani,” he said. “Do you have a proper bed time?”
    Ani was quiet and didn’t look at him, but she could feel pressure building in her chest as though her heart was a balloon, ready to burst.
    â€œDo you have an answer for me?” Mr. Buchanan said.
    Still looking down, Ani said the only thing she knew that would get him off her case. “It’s just PMS.” She got up out of her desk and left the room. After that, Mr. Buchanan left her alone, and Ani knew it was because ever since Janelle Klassen had gotten her period when she was nine and a half, and told him so, he let her get out of anything she wanted. “Can I sit out of gym class because I have cramps?” became Janelle’s favourite way to be excused from a hated sport. Mr. Buchanan’s face would turn beet red and he’d let