Mejal

Mejal is one of the women deliberating whether to leave Molotschna, and her importance lies in how she combines irreverence, solidarity, and practical care. She has no son to leave behind, but she takes part in arguments about the safety of children and the demands of faith, and repeatedly acts to support the group in concrete ways. Her cigarette, laughter, and teasing punctuate grave discussions without making their stakes disappear.

Position in the Deliberations

Mejal’s marriage to Andreas places her within the colony’s household order, but the meetings give her space to speak about that order with humor and candor. She jokes that Andreas is frightened each month when she menstruates and does not die, a remark Greta Loewen dismisses as an exaggeration. Salome Friesen responds by asking whether Mejal has explained the female cycle to him. The exchange makes Mejal’s irreverence visible, while also showing that the women do not agree on how freely a wife should speak about her husband.

Mejal also joins the discussion over the age limits proposed for children accompanying the women. Fifteen-year-old boys are already with the men, while boys twelve and younger may go with the women; Salome asks why boys aged thirteen and fourteen should be excluded. Mejal reinforces the question, challenging the assumption that boys of that age must be feared. August Epp answers that they can cause harm but are still children who can be taught. His response offers a distinction between acknowledging risk and treating young adolescents as beyond guidance, a distinction pertinent to the women’s effort to decide whom their departure should protect.

Solidarity and Disagreement

Mejal’s closeness with Salome is marked by a recurring pattern: although the two spend much time at odds, they come together during crises. When Salome is grieving the temporary separation from Aaron, Mejal crosses the plywood table to embrace her fully. The gesture is significant partly because Mejal has no son of her own to leave behind; her support is not simply an expression of the same immediate maternal loss, but an act of solidarity with another mother and with the other women facing separation from their children.

She also takes part in the group’s discussion of biblical authority. Salome argues that women cannot know for themselves what the Bible says when they are unable to read it, and that male interpretations have been handed down to them as grounds for obedience to their husbands. Mejal’s response is not to resolve the dispute: she rolls her eyes and her cigarette. Her reaction registers skepticism and impatience, while the exchange itself exposes the conditions shaping the argument—women are being asked to judge religious obligations through a text they have been prevented from reading.

Faith, Safety, and the Choice to Leave

When Agata argues that staying would put the women in direct collision with violence and compromise the Mennonite commitment to pacifism, Mejal draws on her cigarette, exhales, and nods. She recognizes the force of Agata’s reasoning. Agata later contends that leaving would better enable the women to practice pacifism, love, and forgiveness, rather than risk a coerced forgiveness or a state of war. Mejal’s assent connects the choice to leave not merely with immediate safety but with a religious standard the women understand as their own responsibility.

The collective plan also includes re-educating the boys who leave, through the women’s example and their efforts to raise young males as compassionate and respectful. That proposal belongs to Salome and the group rather than to Mejal alone, but it sits beside Mejal’s insistence that thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds should not automatically be excluded. Together, these discussions show the women weighing protection against the possibility of teaching, rather than treating either safety or faith as a simple, settled answer.

Practical Care and Rising Urgency

Mejal’s participation is not confined to debate. When Earnest Thiessen asks Agata for help bathing, Mejal offers to take him home, wash and feed him, and bring bread, sausage, and instant coffee back to the loft. Agata specifically asks her to ensure the bathwater is warm but not scalding; Mejal nods, then accompanies Earnest down the ladder. The episode places ordinary care alongside the larger work of deciding the women’s future, and shows Mejal attending to an older man’s needs while helping sustain the meeting.

Later, Mejal returns with food agitated by news that a fire is raging north of the colony and that the men in the city may return early to save their animals. Her report changes the atmosphere: the possibility of the men coming back makes the decision’s timing more pressing. Ona Friesen asks whether the men can be assumed to save the women as well, and the older women answer with brief, raucous laughter. Mejal’s news thus brings an external threat into the loft, turning the abstract question of departure into a question of how much time remains.

Narrative Role

Mejal helps make the women’s gathering feel at once argumentative and communal. She challenges the exclusion of adolescent boys, acknowledges the force of a pacifist argument for leaving, offers care to Earnest, and physically supports Salome in grief. Her jokes and cigarette gestures provide flashes of levity, but they do not cancel the serious disagreements around marriage, biblical interpretation, and children’s safety. Through these contrasts, Mejal appears not as the group’s sole strategist or spokesperson but as a participant whose presence joins dissent, assent, and daily responsibility.