Wheat for the Wise

By Margery S. Stewart

(Previous chapter)

Chapter 3

Synopsis: Jennie Starr, whose husband Rex is not a member of the Church, realizes that, in spite of many material blessings enjoyed by the family, there is a need for spirituality and for religious training. Rex agrees to permit Jennie and the children to become active in the Church for a trial period of one year.

In the days that passed, Jennie would think ruefully of the pictures she had conjured up that night. She saw herself and the children sitting demurely in Sunday School or sacrament meeting and being good. Somehow, their quiet sitting was to project them into a problemless world. It was a nice dream but had no basis in fact.

On the following Monday evening, the bishop and a counselor called to ask her to take over the Trekker class in Primary.

Rex, who was courteous and curious, grinned at her over the bishop’s head. In his grin was amusement and challenge.

“I would be very happy to take the Trekker class,” said Jennie, her chin high.

“Trickers?” Rex teased her in the days that followed. “Tricker Treckers” was his favorite.

Jennie wasn’t to start her teaching until a week from Wednesday; but she took Lance, Sabra, and Lora over to enroll them. The first snow of the year had fallen. The ground showed bleakly through the thin layer of white. Muddy snowmen and weedy forts were everywhere present.

Jennie made her way into the meetinghouse, deposited her children in the chapel among the various teachers, and went blithely off to do her grocery shopping. She carried with her the idyllic picture of all the angelic faces of the children, uplifted, singing the “Crusader’s Hymn”. It warmed her just to think about them. Ah, Dad, and you would be so pleased with all of it, she thought, your grandchildren so neatly scrubbed and starched, singing with the rest of them.

When she returned later to take them home, the chapel was empty. She went in search of the various classrooms where the children might be detained. Walking softly down a long, tiled corridor, she was halted by the sound of hysterical weeping. A grown woman, by the sound of it. “It’s bad enough,” the voice was crying, “to try to teach them above their noise . . . but to be snowballed after class!”

Jennie stopped short, an ominous foreboding taking place of her happy anticipation.

There was another voice, the Primary president’s probably, in soft, dismayed concern.

Jennie went slowly down the corridor. She ran head on into Sister Phillips, the president, who was coming slowly down an intersecting hallway.

Jennie looked questioningly into the weary, gentle face. Sister Phillips bit her lip.

“Was she . . .?” Jennie hesitated, “was it the Trekker class who snowballed her?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Sister Phillips. She straightened the armful of flannel-board figures. “Sometimes small boys can’t tell the difference between a teacher and one of themselves . . . sometimes the snowball goes beyond its mark . . . and sometimes,” she looked Jennie directly in the eye, “sometimes they do it on purpose.”

Jennie swallowed. “I just wondered,” she said, angry at herself for not resigning here and now.

Sister Phillips did not plead. “If it were easy to be a teacher, anyone could do it. You have well-behaved children, Sister Starr. It must have taken training.”

Jennie lowered her head. “It’s easy to train someone you love. . . . ” She held back the words. She was already filled with doubt and antagonism. She had a quick temper. With one’s own children, there was always the final parental prerogative of a swift punishment, a banishment to the bathroom . . . “and don’t come out until you’ve changed your disposition!” But with a stranger’s children? How did one begin?

She said it aloud. “How do you enforce discipline?”

“We love them and teach them,” said Sister Phillips quietly, “and then wait for the teaching to grow.” She rearranged the flannel-board figures.

She’s waiting for me to say I’ve changed my mind, Jennie thought. She’s expecting me to renege. It’s my hair. I look frivolous. She took a deep breath. “I’ll do my very best.”

“Thank you,” said Sister Phillips and let out an explosive breath of relief. They laughed in mutual understanding. I love her, Jennie decided. I really do.

The next Wednesday, Jennie came armed with a lesson she had practiced every day, visual aids in precise order, and a stern set to her chin. She sat with the Trekkers on the next to the last row. The Trekkers were ten. They were squirmy; they had come lately from” school; and the smell of peanut butter and gymnasium and sneakers made Jennie dizzy.

The red-haired boy, by whom she sat, squirmed and twisted, dismayed at finding himself in such close proximity to authority. Jennie smiled at him in what she hoped was a friendly way, but he studied her lifted cheek muscles without enthusiasm. His companions eyed her covertly. Their down-turned thumbs and whispered groans did not reassure her.

During singing practice, she confiscated one hamster and a sling shot. She put the hamster in her purse, hoping it would have air enough, and the sling shot in her coat pocket.

When they marched to their classes, she marched behind them.

The boys were fighting over the chairs. Everyone wanted to sit on the back row.

Jennie began with the flannelboard.

“You didn’t call the roll,” said the red-haired boy sternly. “You’re supposed to call our names first.”

Jennie, before she realized her mistake, dropped the flannelboard and picked up the roll book. After a moment she realized that the boys were answering to any name they chose.

The lesson could not be heard above the din. Jennie labored in the jungle of their laughter and their tumult. She tried to bring the pioneers through the thick grasses of their unconcern and felt as if she, alone, had brought the entire covered-wagon contingent across the plains.

It ended at last. She retrieved the red-haired boy’s hamster from her purse and the sling from her pocket. She said the closing prayer herself, and then the class leaped out from the room like grasshoppers from a burning field.

Jennie stood alone in the empty classroom, impregnated now with the boy smell of peanut butter, sneaker, and gym.

She picked up her things and went in search of Sister Phillips. Sister Phillips was sitting alone in the chapel. She was on the front row, and she looked up as Jennie approached her.

Does she have to look that way? Jennie thought. Does she have to look brave and alone and sort of marching-along-army . . . waiting for the deserters to catch up?

“How did it go?” Sister Phillips asked softly.

“Just fine,” Jennie found herself saying brightly. “But I think next week I’ll try a slightly different approach.”

“You are free to experiment,” said Sister Phillips and smiled. She put her hand in her pocket and pulled out a wriggling furry object. “I think it is Billy’s other hamster. I thought he had but the one . . . or I should most certainly have examined him further.”

“I didn’t mind,” said Jennie, “not the hamster.”

Dinner that night, was also an ordeal. Rex had come home in a joyful mood. “How about a movie?”

She leaned on the counter. “Look . . . if I can get through this next hour without folding, I’ll be grateful.”

He whistled. “That bad, eh?”

“It’s just because I’m no teacher,” she said defensively.

He shrugged. “Throw it back to them. You don’t have to do it.”

He eyed her questioningly. “I met Lorna on the street today. She said you’ve had to give up the club to do this Primary bit.” Sabra came floating in. “I have made a new dance,” she said. “Watch me.” She danced about the kitchen in leaps and sallies and exquisite turnings that brought Jennie’s heart to her throat.

‘What is it?” Jennie asked.

“It’s my thought of the pioneer women,” said Sabra. . . . “Now this part is Nauvoo . . . see I am low and sorrowing . . . and now I am burying my little brother . . . and now I am leaping on the plains because it is spring . . . and now I see the Valley and at first I am sorry, because it is so empty . . . but then I know what it will be soon . . . all filled with roses . . . so I plant . . . and all covered with fields of wheat . . . so I sow and I sing because I am happy.”

Jennie turned back to the oven and the broiling steaks. I’m definitely no teacher, she thought. Not one of my boys went home thinking about pioneers. They probably don’t remember a word I said.

“Do you like your teacher?” she asked Sabra.

“Oh, yes.” Then Sabra came close and whispered in her light voice, “I’ll fast for you next Wednesday. I truly will. We learned about fasting today. You go without food and water . . . and get what you ask for. . . . ”

“It isn’t so simple,” Jennie cried in protest.

“Maybe it is,”- said Sabra with a sideways glance. . . . “We don’t know yet . . . but maybe it is.”

Sabra went out of the kitchen in her quiet, preoccupied way.

“She’s not like anyone I ever knew,” Rex said, “sometimes she doesn’t seem real.”

Jennie had the same feeling, as if Sabra knew things of which the rest of them were completely unaware.

Nor was dinner a happy affair. They sat down to the steaks which were overdone, to the hastily prepared salad, and the frozen vegetables, which Rex frowned upon.

He said, “The stock market has been behaving like a one-armed paper hanger with hives.” He began to eat his steak.

Lance looked at him curiously, “How come we don’t bless the food in our house . . . like other people?”

There was a long silence. Jennie could feel Rex counting to ten. She watched his flush subside. She did not answer Lance,
not knowing how.

But Rex glared at his son. “If you’re so eager to have us do it, go ahead.”

Lance said stubbornly, “I will. They showed us how in Primary.” He made a brief thanksgiving for the food and dug into his potato. “We sure should have done that before.”

“Yes,” said Lora emphatically, “we sure should have.”

Jennie touched Rex’s hand. She felt him relax.

He met her eye to eye. “One year,” he said through his teeth, “one small year.”

But Jennie wondered if he would be able to take even that one year. It was as if she had unwittingly brought into the house a radioactive stone and everyone around was beginning to react furiously. The house seemed steaming with new ideas and demands.

But when the children were in bed, she lit the fire in the fireplace in the family room. She made a cold steak sandwich for Rex and poured a glass of milk. He hadn’t eaten much dinner. She took them in to him and Rex turned off the television and sat back to eat.

Jennie said cautiously, “It isn’t the end of the world to say a blessing on the food. . . . Lots of people do.”

“It’s not that,” Rex admitted. “I don’t mind blessing the food. It just gets me that my son brings it up in that way.”

She sat back on the hassock and considered. “It made me feel strange, too,” she said, “and hostile to the idea. I wonder if it makes us feel guilty?”

Rex laughed and took another bite of his sandwich. “I rather think that’s it. At least we’re in the parade. All parents, in our day, are made to feel guilty about something or other. Writers stay up nights to think up new ways to keep us swimming in this gloomy soup.”

Jennie laughed, too, but without mirth. “If you have it bad, you ought to be a mother. To be a mother nowadays is to have a bounty on your head.”

Rex stretched. “Right. Some people use the word mother like doctors use the term virus.”

Jennie filched one of his potato chips. She pulled a cushion from the couch to the floor and leaned against his knee. “Do you believe in God?”

“Et tu? Of course, I do.” “Well then, we should thank him for our food. Right?” “Right.”

She cradled his palm against her cheek. “Well, then, we have been guilty.”

He said soberly, “Whatever church we join . . . we’ll bless the food.”

She sat up sharply. “Rex? What do you mean?”

He looked at her with stern, considering eyes. “My family is the most important thing in my life. I’m not going to let them become involved in anything on someone else’s say-so. I’m going to investigate every religion on the face of the earth. When I find one that is right to me . . . that’s, it.”

She had no words for argument. They sat in silence watching the dying fire.

(To be continued)