Winter seemed to stretch on endlessly, which was compounded by the fact that we couldn't eat more often to relieve our boredom. Besides, the food was boring too. How many pieces of dry toast with orange marmalade, or bowlfuls of lentil soup or venison stew can you eat before they become uninteresting?

We played board games, sewed, made stuff out of whatever materials were at hand, listened to music, read our bibles. I especially liked the Old Testament, both for the endless small details and because the characters were rarely perfect. Even Abigail, the righteous Abigail, snuck off against her husbands orders and presented the fugitive David with food and gifts and said her husband was stupid! For a woman to say that about her husband and master in Yahweh's eyes seemed scandalous and oddly thrilling. Denis/Eliyah spent a lot of time reading the bible, mispronouncing things, and preaching at us. It annoyed me because he got a lot of his facts wrong, like confusing Abraham with Moses, or Joseph with Jonathan. Also, after his name change, he seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time reading aloud about the prophet Elijah and pretending to be just like him, calling angry bears down from the mountains to rip up anyone who dared disrespect him. He thought that was very appealing, far more than any of the non-violent things the prophet had done.

If there was no particular family member to persecute, lecture, shame and denounce for hours on end, there were still other solutions to the boredom. We could have a rubber band fight. We used only the thick light brown bands, and Eliyah/Denis owned the bag of them. Moreover, he had a paint paddle that he'd notched to receive six bands that he could use as a rubber band gun for better aim and to prevent reloading between each shot. Needless to say, none of us had such a gun, nor did we have any rubber bands. If we had, they would have been taken from us anyway. There were still four of us against him though, and although our sisters either cired after a few hits or gave up, Raphah and I kept diving for the bands, waiting until he ran out and had to reload, or until he stooped to pick one up from the ground. Even so, we couldn't pull them back as far as he could with his paint stick, and he typically aimed for the face, while we were not allowed to. Raphah started wearing goggles to protect his eyes, and then graduated to a full snowsuit as well, which, of course, took all the fun out of hitting him in Eliyah's point of view, since he'd no longer scream and jump.

I rolled newspaper up tightly on the diagonal into a solid rod, folding one of the weaker corners in as I rolled. The other corner I bent to make a D shapecurving back toward the rod. Voila, I had a sword! Of course, Raphah immediately made one too, and then we could have sword fights. That was fun. He kept making very long swords, which I made fun of. Mine was fairly short but strong, while his broke because the paper had been invested in length. Then he started putting sticks into the cores of his swords (he had gone through several and I still had my original) and it wasn't fun anymore. The idea was never to inflict damage, it was just supposed to be rowdy playacting.

Sometimes the diversions weren't much fun. Eliyah liked to pit us in fights against each other. The more hairpulling and squealing there was, the more he enjoyed it. He would order three to attack one person. I didn't like that sort of thing; he enjoyed seeing how far he could push me with the other kids before I would try to defend myself. Throughout all these games, my mom never intervened beyond standing on the sidelines and begging her husband to stop

It was about this time that Denis/Eliyah started talking about how he was going to sell the girls in the family to good husbands, how he would "trade us for many ponies, rifles, and blankets". I didn't care for the idea of being sold off to the highest bidder. I already had a pretty good idea of who I wanted, though I never spoke of such things. When we objected, he just leaned back in his chair, fingers interlocked across his ample belly, and chuckled, repeating the part about many ponies, rifles and blankets, looking us over appraisingly.

Sarah's name meant "princess", and she held her head high as she also announced his disdain for this idea, but he remained undeterred. He then prattled on about how we should marry rich older men, much older, so that by the time we hit our thrties, our husband would be dead, we would have inherited everything, and could then have the freedom to marry for love. I hated this idea passionately. Money meant little to me, and the idea of planning to benefit by some poor old man's demise was abhorrent. Another problem was how on earth they were going to manage selling me off to anyone at all; I was such a tomboy with almost no domestic skills, not any interest in developing them. Attempts to feminize me were more or less wasted....

And every Friday evening, while the family slept, bellies full of the Sabbath meal's lentil soup, I sat by the window watching the patterns of my breath curling into the cold air, lit by the light which was always clamped onto the outside of my windowsill, and watched for headlights descending down the curve of the dirt road, to see if they'd turn in at Mark's driveway. I always knew if he was there.

Sheba finally went into labor in the garage, and of a litter of six puppies, only one was Bruno's, a little female. I called her Beauty and asked if I could have her to fill the space left by Bruno's death, but my parents were noncommital. The fact of the matter was that we had too many dogs already and no real way to feed them. Rachel/Gia was charmed by the warm brown tones of Beauty among all the black and white pups and started fawning on her, saying Beauty would be hers. I decided to pick a new favorite; one of the male puppies had a very wide white stripe down his face, making him look clownish. I picked him, naming him Bandit. By the time they were six weeks old, Eliyah had a favorite as well, the dominant pup, Kodiak. Another male was black with fawn markings and no white at all; Rachel picked this one, forgetting about Beauty, and named him Alaska.

When Mark saw the puppies, he noticed Beauty right away and chuckled that it looked like Bruno had been a dirty old man. I avoided meeting Raphah's eye and blushed as Mom and Eliyah wondered aloud how Bruno could possibly have sired that puppy. We asked Mark if he wanted a puppy, and after playing with them all, he decided he would...he always had a soft spot for animals. He decided that he would pick a puppy and that he and I would share it, since he couldn't take it back to the Tri-Cities with him. He would pay for the dog food, shots, etc, and I would give the puppy love, attention, and training. We had already trained the puppies to sit and come on command by tossing precious nuggets of dog food to the ones that obeyed. They caught the food in mid air; and quickly associated the food with the action and command. Mark cuddled Beauty a lot, and asked me which one I'd like. Beauty was the one I should have picked, but at times Rachel still insisted she was hers, so I showed Bandit to him instead. His eye went wistfully back to Beauty, and I wish I'd picked her instead, but he decided that Bandit was pretty cute too, promptly blowing a raspberry on his tummy as though the pup were a toddler. Bandit's head was broad and massive, as Bruno's had been. It's possible he was Bruno's as well, since he did grow into a large dog, but he had Sheba's active temperament rather than Bruno's steady, sweet demeanor as Beauty did.

From then on, Mark wrote me letters while he was gone, and I was allowed to write him back, even though all letters (incoming and outgoing) would be thoroughly scrutinized. He sent money for dog food and parvo shots, begging me not to spend it on New York Seltzer (a thought which offended me a little- I would never have done that!). Eliyah promptly took all the money and spent it on food and gas. He said it was Mark's way of helping us, that the money wasn't really meant to dog food and shots, Mark was just being tactful. When Mark wrote me a week or two later and asked if I'd gotten Bandit the parvo shot, I didn't know what to say....I felt that I'd failed him, but didn't know what to do about it.