“The Invitation,” featuring Rachel and George and a religious conversion of sorts, was published in the January 15, 1991 issue of Gospel Herald, a Mennonite Church magazine. I’ve changed the characters’ names, though. Rachel and George are now Anna and Wade, and it’s Peg and Jay who are coming to dinner, instead of Eunice and Perry, and the pastor is Scott, not Elroy.
Her name isn’t really Anna. Wade and Scott and the others exist, certainly, but not all in one piece, so to speak, or place, and they didn’t necessarily do these things. So how much of this story actually happened?
I will say this: Anna did, indeed, wear her shiny blouse—a green one—one momentous Sunday morning. That is the only thing I will say is for sure. Whether Peg and Jay and their children actually came for dinner the night before is quite beside the point. You’ll recognize the behavior. But perhaps you’ve managed to shake the surly bonds of prideful habits.
How to begin to tell you about that awful Saturday—I mean, before the company came?
An entire filthy house staring Anna in the face. Three children listlessly dragging dust rags. (“Upstairs, all of you!” she’d barked at Mary Beth and Jonathan and Todd. “Get the stuff under the beds, too.”) The cracked wheat buns she had to get started on, and the pies. (Fruit pies; Peg was always saying that a dessert ought to have some redeeming value.) And the windows (this was not something Anna generally bothered with, but there was a buildup).
When the pies were in the oven, Anna got out a bucket and put cold water and a rag in it and ran around taking care of the windows. She guessed it would be about dark by the time Jay and Peg came, and the dirt wouldn’t show then; the thought of this very nearly induced Anna to empty her bucket. Oh well, Wade would be home by noon; he could do the floors.
The telephone rang right when Anna was getting out the white store-bought bread and jelly—there wasn’t time to make lunch, of course. She stopped screeching at the boys, who were conjointly stabbing their knives into the peanut butter, and adjusted her face before she said hello, but it was just Wade. The car, he said, was up on the hoist now. They’d just now gotten to it. Was she getting along okay?
Was she getting along okay? She was furious.
It wasn’t the boys’ fault, certainly, and then somebody’s knocking the jelly jar onto the floor, reducing it to a mass of quivering shards, was just an accident. Did she have to slap the boys? Both of them? So hard?
How often that afternoon did Anna have to remind the children about their books and dirty hankies and socks strewn about? (I would have to say she yelled, actually. Repeatedly.) The spots on the living room carpet wouldn’t come out. There were cobwebs she hadn’t ever even seen before. Jonathan kept saying he had so straightened up the hall closet. When Wade did get home, about 4:30, Anna threw her bucket at him, or maybe it was the buns.
What with having to deal with him, and the potatoes that needed to be peeled, and everything else, Anna barely managed to get the table ready, and herself; she was up in the bathroom trying to get some hairs out of the washbowl when she heard the children squealing and Jay’s booming voice, and she raced downstairs and hugged Peg and laughed and told Jay not to worry about his shoes—what was a little mud?
Anna hugged Jay, too, and the children. She told Peg to go sit down; no, she didn’t need any help. Jay said she was looking great, thinner than ever, which pleased Anna enormously, but she only said Aw, like it didn’t matter, and sucked in her belly some more.
She was practically reeling with hunger. But at dinner when the bread went around again and everybody was moaning about how good it was and the basket got to Anna, she said, “Oh, I can’t.”
“Won’t somebody eat this little bit of salad?” she pleaded as she took the leftovers from the table.
And right before she urged the men to have a little more pie, which they did, Anna cast dark, warning looks at Todd and Jonathan and Mary Beth, just in case they were forgetting what she’d told them at lunch about not being pigs tonight, for once, and containing their greed.
Peg couldn’t help Anna after dinner, either. The dishes could wait.
Wade and Anna and Peg and Jay talked till, oh, it must have been 11:00. The conversation was affable, benevolent, sometimes uproarious; it seemed a pity to break it up, but they all had to be at church in the morning.
Wade wanted Anna to come to bed right away, after the children were settled. But there were still all those dishes and Anna just couldn’t bear to think of them sitting all night in their own grease, even though Wade said he’d do them tomorrow. So Anna and Wade washed dishes until midnight. Anna finished off the salad (it would’ve gotten slimy in the refrigerator) and the rest of the mashed potatoes, and there were two small buns that were sort of dried out by now and not worth saving. And then she had to do something about the mud, which made her angry, because Wade had gone to bed.
You can see why the Sunday morning rush was worse than usual, with nobody waking up until 8:00. Wade had to drag Mary Beth and Jonathan out of their beds and get Todd’s clothes and get out the cornflakes for everybody. Anna had to do her hair. Then she put on her shiny green blouse and stood for a while in front of the mirror, trying to decide whether to wear it with the green cloth rose and buttoned the whole way up or leave the rose off and the top button undone. She decided she preferred the rose off. She thought she looked pretty good.
Wade kept yelling about being late, and at the end everybody was sort of trampling over each other trying to get out the door. You can imagine the mess they left on the kitchen table—the knocked-over cereal box, the sodden cornflakes stuck fast to the insides of the bowls.
Right before the sermon, Anna saw that she’d forgotten to button her sleeves.
Wade was drawing fire trucks for Todd, and Jonathan was lining his cars along the bench, and Mary Beth was reading the papers she’d gotten in Sunday school So Anna could listen, some, to Scott’s sermon. Scott seemed in rare form this morning—louder than usual and troubled by the sins of the world. It looked like he was going to extend an invitation. He’d never done that.
Everybody was getting to their feet, now, pulling out hymnals. Jonathan piled his cars into a heap and Mary Beth stuffed her papers inside Anna’s purse and Wade laid Todd, who’d fallen asleep, onto the bench.
About halfway through the first verse of “Just As I Am,” Anna got this strange notion.
Like she ought to walk up front.
Now this, of course, was ridiculous.
During the second verse, Anna could hardly sing. She was hot all over and her chest was thumping, although Wade, if he’d looked over at her, wouldn’t have noticed. Go up front? She, a full-grown woman? Dear Lord.
Wade’s wife go up front?
The fear and shame flooding Anna’s soul—dread fear of losing her dignity and making a spectacle of herself, and shame for her temper and vanity and lies—swirled and eddied and pounded at her ears.
They were on the third verse, now. Anna gave up. She told Mary Beth to move and she pushed past Wade and Jonathan and she stepped into the side aisle, and Anna’s feet in their high heels went one in front of the other the whole way up, almost to where Scott was standing, gawking, probably.
There she stood, Anna, in her shiny green blouse. She was soaking one of Wade’s hankies (Anna always uses his hankies) and her shoulders were heaving. Well, having to walk up front like that would upset anybody. Anna should have been praying, she knew and she did pray, a little. But mostly she just cried. Sobbed. Scott was praying; he had his hands on her head, smashing her hair down. Anna couldn’t pray much, herself.
Something else seemed to be happening—an eventuality she’d actually considered, briefly, before she left her bench. They were into another song, now, and other people were coming up front. Anna couldn’t see exactly who all. There were, why, five or six people—you know how it goes.
She, Anna, had probably started this.
She wasn’t crying, now. And a certain familiar feeling was warming Anna.
She was able to get back to her seat before the closing prayer. Folks all around, she could see, were rheumy-eyed and blowing their noses.
Afterward Wade got everybody out to the car almost right away, for which Anna was grateful. Her face was all red and swollen. Wade was real sweet about everything, said it was fine if that was what she’d needed to do. Anna twisted his hanky into a tight ball and didn’t say anything. She felt terrible. What could she say? How could she tell him she’d felt like a hero, doing it?
Peg, unfortunately, missed out on Anna’s conversion. She’d had to hurry home after Sunday school to put the spareribs into the oven because the pastor and his family were coming for lunch. Also there was a bit of dusting and sweeping she hadn’t gotten to yesterday, and everyone’s wet towels were still slopped all over the bathroom.
And then she had to get that black fungus off the tub faucet. She got back to church just in time to pick up Jay and the children in the parking lot and still beat the pastor’s family to the house.
On the drive over to Jay and Peg’s for lunch, Scott seemed mighty pensive. His wife turned to him, her brow scrunched up. “What do you suppose was wrong with Anna? My oh my! There must be trouble we don’t know about.” But Scott couldn’t say what.
Some days after, alone at the church and ostensibly toiling over another sermon, he fingered thoughtfully the clipping on his desk and set to work, instead, on a letter to the editor of Gospel Truth:
“I have in my files an article that appeared some time ago in your ‘Hear, Hear!’ column, in which Ernest J. Hershberger wrote why he as a pastor stopped using the altar call. At the time, it struck a chord with me. I, too, believed that altar calls confused the fundamental issues of the gospel and placed undue emphasis on a single act—that of walking down an aisle.
“But I see now that I was wrong. A recent incident at church has convinced me that public confession, by its very nature, can be instrumental in relieving us of sins. How sad to think that we pastors have deprived our people of opportunities for spiritual growth.”
And maybe it was that very same day, or the next, that Wade and Anna and the children were going somewhere in the car, and Wade was punching the radio buttons, hunting for music, but he got a radio preacher instead. Anna remarked, above the noise, “Well, it’s only through the mercy of God that we’re saved. It’s only through grace.”
Wade said, “Of course, Anna.”
She knew he didn’t understand. But she let it go at that.
“The Invitation” by Shirley Kurtz
Her name isn’t really Anna. Wade and Scott and the others exist, certainly, but not all in one piece, so to speak, or place, and they didn’t necessarily do these things. So how much of this story actually happened?I will say this: Anna did, indeed, wear her shiny blouse—a green one—one momentous Sunday morning. That is the only thing I will say is for sure. Whether Peg and Jay and their children actually came for dinner the night before is quite beside the point. You’ll recognize the behavior. But perhaps you’ve managed to shake the surly bonds of prideful habits.
How to begin to tell you about that awful Saturday—I mean, before the company came?
An entire filthy house staring Anna in the face. Three children listlessly dragging dust rags. (“Upstairs, all of you!” she’d barked at Mary Beth and Jonathan and Todd. “Get the stuff under the beds, too.”) The cracked wheat buns she had to get started on, and the pies. (Fruit pies; Peg was always saying that a dessert ought to have some redeeming value.) And the windows (this was not something Anna generally bothered with, but there was a buildup).
When the pies were in the oven, Anna got out a bucket and put cold water and a rag in it and ran around taking care of the windows. She guessed it would be about dark by the time Jay and Peg came, and the dirt wouldn’t show then; the thought of this very nearly induced Anna to empty her bucket. Oh well, Wade would be home by noon; he could do the floors.
The telephone rang right when Anna was getting out the white store-bought bread and jelly—there wasn’t time to make lunch, of course. She stopped screeching at the boys, who were conjointly stabbing their knives into the peanut butter, and adjusted her face before she said hello, but it was just Wade. The car, he said, was up on the hoist now. They’d just now gotten to it. Was she getting along okay?
Was she getting along okay? She was furious.
It wasn’t the boys’ fault, certainly, and then somebody’s knocking the jelly jar onto the floor, reducing it to a mass of quivering shards, was just an accident. Did she have to slap the boys? Both of them? So hard?
How often that afternoon did Anna have to remind the children about their books and dirty hankies and socks strewn about? (I would have to say she yelled, actually. Repeatedly.) The spots on the living room carpet wouldn’t come out. There were cobwebs she hadn’t ever even seen before. Jonathan kept saying he had so straightened up the hall closet. When Wade did get home, about 4:30, Anna threw her bucket at him, or maybe it was the buns.
What with having to deal with him, and the potatoes that needed to be peeled, and everything else, Anna barely managed to get the table ready, and herself; she was up in the bathroom trying to get some hairs out of the washbowl when she heard the children squealing and Jay’s booming voice, and she raced downstairs and hugged Peg and laughed and told Jay not to worry about his shoes—what was a little mud?
Anna hugged Jay, too, and the children. She told Peg to go sit down; no, she didn’t need any help. Jay said she was looking great, thinner than ever, which pleased Anna enormously, but she only said Aw, like it didn’t matter, and sucked in her belly some more.
She was practically reeling with hunger. But at dinner when the bread went around again and everybody was moaning about how good it was and the basket got to Anna, she said, “Oh, I can’t.”
“Won’t somebody eat this little bit of salad?” she pleaded as she took the leftovers from the table.
And right before she urged the men to have a little more pie, which they did, Anna cast dark, warning looks at Todd and Jonathan and Mary Beth, just in case they were forgetting what she’d told them at lunch about not being pigs tonight, for once, and containing their greed.
Peg couldn’t help Anna after dinner, either. The dishes could wait.
Wade and Anna and Peg and Jay talked till, oh, it must have been 11:00. The conversation was affable, benevolent, sometimes uproarious; it seemed a pity to break it up, but they all had to be at church in the morning.
Wade wanted Anna to come to bed right away, after the children were settled. But there were still all those dishes and Anna just couldn’t bear to think of them sitting all night in their own grease, even though Wade said he’d do them tomorrow. So Anna and Wade washed dishes until midnight. Anna finished off the salad (it would’ve gotten slimy in the refrigerator) and the rest of the mashed potatoes, and there were two small buns that were sort of dried out by now and not worth saving. And then she had to do something about the mud, which made her angry, because Wade had gone to bed.
You can see why the Sunday morning rush was worse than usual, with nobody waking up until 8:00. Wade had to drag Mary Beth and Jonathan out of their beds and get Todd’s clothes and get out the cornflakes for everybody. Anna had to do her hair. Then she put on her shiny green blouse and stood for a while in front of the mirror, trying to decide whether to wear it with the green cloth rose and buttoned the whole way up or leave the rose off and the top button undone. She decided she preferred the rose off. She thought she looked pretty good.
Wade kept yelling about being late, and at the end everybody was sort of trampling over each other trying to get out the door. You can imagine the mess they left on the kitchen table—the knocked-over cereal box, the sodden cornflakes stuck fast to the insides of the bowls.
Right before the sermon, Anna saw that she’d forgotten to button her sleeves.
Wade was drawing fire trucks for Todd, and Jonathan was lining his cars along the bench, and Mary Beth was reading the papers she’d gotten in Sunday school So Anna could listen, some, to Scott’s sermon. Scott seemed in rare form this morning—louder than usual and troubled by the sins of the world. It looked like he was going to extend an invitation. He’d never done that.
Everybody was getting to their feet, now, pulling out hymnals. Jonathan piled his cars into a heap and Mary Beth stuffed her papers inside Anna’s purse and Wade laid Todd, who’d fallen asleep, onto the bench.
About halfway through the first verse of “Just As I Am,” Anna got this strange notion.
Like she ought to walk up front.
Now this, of course, was ridiculous.
During the second verse, Anna could hardly sing. She was hot all over and her chest was thumping, although Wade, if he’d looked over at her, wouldn’t have noticed. Go up front? She, a full-grown woman? Dear Lord.
Wade’s wife go up front?
The fear and shame flooding Anna’s soul—dread fear of losing her dignity and making a spectacle of herself, and shame for her temper and vanity and lies—swirled and eddied and pounded at her ears.
They were on the third verse, now. Anna gave up. She told Mary Beth to move and she pushed past Wade and Jonathan and she stepped into the side aisle, and Anna’s feet in their high heels went one in front of the other the whole way up, almost to where Scott was standing, gawking, probably.
There she stood, Anna, in her shiny green blouse. She was soaking one of Wade’s hankies (Anna always uses his hankies) and her shoulders were heaving. Well, having to walk up front like that would upset anybody. Anna should have been praying, she knew and she did pray, a little. But mostly she just cried. Sobbed. Scott was praying; he had his hands on her head, smashing her hair down. Anna couldn’t pray much, herself.
Something else seemed to be happening—an eventuality she’d actually considered, briefly, before she left her bench. They were into another song, now, and other people were coming up front. Anna couldn’t see exactly who all. There were, why, five or six people—you know how it goes.
She, Anna, had probably started this.
She wasn’t crying, now. And a certain familiar feeling was warming Anna.
She was able to get back to her seat before the closing prayer. Folks all around, she could see, were rheumy-eyed and blowing their noses.
Afterward Wade got everybody out to the car almost right away, for which Anna was grateful. Her face was all red and swollen. Wade was real sweet about everything, said it was fine if that was what she’d needed to do. Anna twisted his hanky into a tight ball and didn’t say anything. She felt terrible. What could she say? How could she tell him she’d felt like a hero, doing it?
Peg, unfortunately, missed out on Anna’s conversion. She’d had to hurry home after Sunday school to put the spareribs into the oven because the pastor and his family were coming for lunch. Also there was a bit of dusting and sweeping she hadn’t gotten to yesterday, and everyone’s wet towels were still slopped all over the bathroom.
And then she had to get that black fungus off the tub faucet. She got back to church just in time to pick up Jay and the children in the parking lot and still beat the pastor’s family to the house.
On the drive over to Jay and Peg’s for lunch, Scott seemed mighty pensive. His wife turned to him, her brow scrunched up. “What do you suppose was wrong with Anna? My oh my! There must be trouble we don’t know about.” But Scott couldn’t say what.
Some days after, alone at the church and ostensibly toiling over another sermon, he fingered thoughtfully the clipping on his desk and set to work, instead, on a letter to the editor of Gospel Truth:
“I have in my files an article that appeared some time ago in your ‘Hear, Hear!’ column, in which Ernest J. Hershberger wrote why he as a pastor stopped using the altar call. At the time, it struck a chord with me. I, too, believed that altar calls confused the fundamental issues of the gospel and placed undue emphasis on a single act—that of walking down an aisle.
“But I see now that I was wrong. A recent incident at church has convinced me that public confession, by its very nature, can be instrumental in relieving us of sins. How sad to think that we pastors have deprived our people of opportunities for spiritual growth.”
And maybe it was that very same day, or the next, that Wade and Anna and the children were going somewhere in the car, and Wade was punching the radio buttons, hunting for music, but he got a radio preacher instead. Anna remarked, above the noise, “Well, it’s only through the mercy of God that we’re saved. It’s only through grace.”
Wade said, “Of course, Anna.”
She knew he didn’t understand. But she let it go at that.
