A Complicated Kindness

East Village is a tourist destination for people curious about “Mennos,” and when the Queen came to visit, Trudie refused to go into town and be part of the spectacle. Instead, Trudie watched from a rooftop. Nomi relates other curious ways Trudie enforced and balked at Mennonite culture, including being hesitant to let Nomi see Swiss Family Robinson because movies are inherently sinful. Nomi compares this to her friend Agnes’s life: Agnes’s father was a bartender and smoked publicly, and Agnes does not have to figure out “what was and wasn’t allowed” (15). Much of this tension in Trudie comes from being The Mouth’s sister.

Tash is a lot like her mother, rebelling against the culture, and Nomi spent a lot of time when she was younger worrying about Tash’s behavior condemning her to hell. For example, Tash would say John Lennon instead of Jesus Christ in the call and response portion of church. Ray is a deeply devout man but not particularly authoritarian, so Trudie would often have to step in and correct Tash. As a child, Nomi couldn’t understand Tash’s impulse toward rebellion, thinking she was ruining the family’s chance of spending eternity together.

Nomi relays several other examples of her mother’s outsized personality and conflicting rebellious impulses, concluding with a story of her crashing a motorcycle she wouldn’t tell Ray she was learning to ride. The image of Trudie flying through the air lingers in Nomi’s mind, as does a more recent image: discovering Trudie’s passport in a drawer, which undermines Nomi’s image of her traveling abroad.

Nomi tells the story of meeting Travis, her boyfriend of five months: it was at a New Year’s Eve party at Suicide Hill. The two drink and smoke weed, and Nomi starts talking with Travis about music while trying to maintain an air of mystery. Nomi is accidentally kicked in the face at a minute to midnight by a boy who’s being carried toward the bonfire; she tries to keep Travis from kissing her as her mouth fills with blood, but he does anyway, which coincides with the moment she passes out.

Nomi first met Travis as an infant; there’s a picture of him as a toddler stepping on her. Trudie often volunteered to be in the crying room, where the children are cared for during church, and Nomi and Tash tagged along. Trudie would unhook the speaker so they couldn’t hear her brother preach; she would play American radio stations instead, with Nomi as a lookout so they didn’t get in trouble. Nomi reflects that Trudie’s rebellious behavior drove a deep inner conflict in Ray, who, until Trudie left, was “Torn […] between the woman he loves and the faith that keeps his motor running” (26).

Nomi talks about Ray, who is concerned about her future. To Nomi, he seems haunted by what’s happened. She recalls the time he built a garbage hutch, which is something Trudie always wanted him to do. He’s proud of his achievement, but when the garbagemen begin to haul it away, mistaking it for more garbage, he doesn’t stop them.

Nomi visits Lydia (often referred to as Lids), her longtime friend who is in the hospital with an undiagnosed illness. Lydia is in intense pain, but she likes to hear Nomi’s stories of what’s going on in town and Nomi’s life. Lydia asks if Nomi and Travis have had sex yet, and then remarks, “I will probably […] never know the pleasure,” referring to her illness and strict religious morals (32). Nomi likes that she and Lydia are friends despite their differences, and she takes care of her physical needs in the hospital and is deeply protective of her.

Nomi and Travis drive out to the pits, where local teens often gather. The two of them argue because they’re thinking about different things, and Travis wanders off to find the Golden Comb or Eldon (local pot dealers). Nomi goes down to the water and finds her old neighbor Sheridan Klippenstein. Sheridan’s dad has left to tour with a rock band, and his mother died by suicide. Nomi remembers Sheridan’s parents; his father was excommunicated, and his mother had a breakdown afterward. Now Sheridan works up in the town where his mother took her own life. Nomi hears Travis honking his truck horn and ends their conversation.

When Nomi was a child, she pretended to be a scarecrow by standing very still in a field. One day while doing this, she saw two plain black Mennonite dresses floating through the air. One of them went onto the roof of her grandmother’s barn. She thinks it’s perhaps the best thing that ever happened to her.

After a day of lounging around with Travis outdoors, Nomi asks him if they can go see if the dress is still up there. Her grandmother is dead now, and the house is used for missionaries who have returned. The dress isn’t there, and Travis urges her, “Don’t be sad about stuff like that, okay[?]” (42).

Nomi recalls Ray and Trudie’s first date, which was a trip to church. She knows that Trudie’s lively persona and Ray’s buttoned-down quiet belied their deep interest in each other. He tended to agree with her on everything but his suit jacket, which he wore everywhere, even when it was hot.

When Trudie told the girls the story of their first date, Tash realized that it was a shunning ceremony. The girls are fascinated by shunning and what people did to deserve it; Nomi particularly likes its moral unambiguity. The Mouth is the pastor of the Mennonite church and frequently presides over shunnings.

Nomi recalls her mother having conversations with no one, often in anger; when pressed, Trudie would deny it, but Nomi recognized it as an intense rage on behalf of people who have been shunned or otherwise hurt by the Mennonite church. Nomi understands that, but she sees that there’s “a complicated kindness” (46) in the community too.

Right next to East Village is a recreation of the town as it was when the Mennonites first built the community. It’s a tourist attraction for Americans, but Nomi sees it as a representation of the façade all Mennonites in her community operate under; she recalls frequent trouble with her typing teacher whenever she would question the tenets of their faith. The actual town is much more normal, with kids getting into trouble through drinking and smoking like in any other community.

The Mouth presents their community as a simple one living in defiance of “groovy” culture (50). Nomi knows that The Mouth had some terrible experiences earlier in his life that led him back to the Mennonite faith with such fervor; she doesn’t know the truth, but she suspects he was dumped by some girl who thought he was too conservative.

Late one night, Nomi passes The Mouth’s house and sees him methodically eating ice cream, looking like a guy “completely defeated by life” (51). She recognizes the same look in her mother, sometimes.

Nomi thinks about escaping East Village, which she knows is more possible than it seems because her mother and sister did it. Since Nomi doesn’t know where they are, she feels that she has the right to create her own story: Tash and Ian raising a baby in California, Trudie on a cruise ship somewhere. She doesn’t dwell on the facts that countervail these stories. She holds on to her version as a kind of faith.