Lulu Marketplace

Mennonite families are no different than any other community. The same violence occurs, the same incest, the brand of man's inhumanity to man . . . and woman . . . embroiders their landscapes. The debatable difference from the real world lies in the fact that no one talks about it. That was my cardinal sin. I did talk, refusing to live the happy, Utopian fantasy embraced by my Kinfolk. Somewhere, 7 brothers and 2 sisters inhabit a universe where my name is rarely spoken, save for wondering if I'm still alive and why I'm crazy. But they keep searching nonetheless. Cousins, nieces and nephews have no idea what I look like. The Family has no knowledge of where, or who, I am. But then, they never did. I do not exist, for I have been shunned, sentenced to wander like a ghost in the world outside those picture-perfect pastures of the Midwest. Those Elders have rendered me as faceless as their children's dolls and still . . . having no mouth to speak to their deaf ears . . . still, I possess a pen.