June 7

June 7 marks the day the women’s debate in Molotschna Colony moves toward departure: they agree to leave after dark and prepare the supplies needed for an uncertain journey. It is also a date in a mediated record. August Epp, appointed to write minutes for women who cannot read, preserves their deliberations in a document meant to outlast the meeting, even as the women’s decision begins to take practical form.

The date and its pressure

The date appears as a heading in the women’s minutes and again in August Epp’s account after the meeting. Those markers give June 7 a documentary as well as chronological role: the day is both the occasion of discussion and the point from which the record is organized. The urgency surrounding that discussion comes from a deadline imposed by the colony’s male leadership. After the accused men are arrested, the women are told they will have only two days to organize a response. If they do not forgive the men when they return, they will have to leave for an outside world they know little about.

The minutes do not present June 7 as an ordinary day of deliberation. The women must choose under threat of expulsion, with little time and sharply different views about what response is possible. The date therefore holds together two pressures: the imposed timetable and the women’s attempt to make a decision collectively rather than have one dictated to them.

A record made across a language divide

August Epp has been asked by Ona Friesen to record the meetings and create a document about them. That task is necessary because the women are illiterate, but it is not a transparent transcription. They speak Plautdietsch, or Low German, while August must translate their speech into English in his mind before writing it down. He also supplies explanations about language and his own ability to read and write, making the minutes a layered account shaped by translation and by the recorder’s presence.

The intended audience extends beyond the women in the hayloft. Ona gives August brown paper taken from the summer kitchen and asks him to write the options’ pros and cons on a large sheet. The women cannot read the list, she explains, but they can keep it there as an artifact for others to discover. The paper thus serves a purpose different from immediate communication: it makes the debate materially legible to possible future readers, while exposing the gap between those who speak, those who can write, and those who may later interpret the record.

From debate to a decision to leave

The options have not been equally acceptable to everyone. Salome Friesen has argued that doing nothing is not a genuine option, though allowing a vote on it could still be empowering. Mejal Loewen challenges Salome’s authority to decide what counts as reality or which options are available. The women nevertheless agree that the Friesen and Loewen families will debate the choices and help determine how to implement one. On June 7, that dispute gives way to a practical decision: Agata Friesen asks whether they agree to leave that night after dark, so they can pass the Chortiza and Hiakjeke colonies unseen. The women nod.

The decision is not made weightless by agreement. Ona asks what lies beyond those colonies, leaving the limits of their route knowledge in view even as the departure plan takes shape. The group prepares for movement without claiming to know everything that awaits them. Their choice is to leave together under cover of darkness, not to treat the unfamiliar world as already understood.

Supplies, minutes, and what remains

August’s preparations make the plan concrete. A map is wrapped around a large block of cheese and covered with brown paper. The Co-op Safe is placed in the back of Greta’s buggy, beneath the rear seat; onions, soap, and pieces of wood are packed for food, washing, traction in mud, or kindling. Dynamite, the map, and additional provisions go in a hatbox at the front. These objects register the practical demands of departure: navigation, sustenance, and the possibility that the road itself will impede them.

After the meeting, August gathers his notebooks and the minutes and asks Salome to give them to Ona. Salome points out that Ona cannot read them and asks what she would do with them. The exchange sharpens the day’s archival tension: the women have asked for a record that they themselves cannot read, both to preserve their proceedings and to leave evidence for others. June 7 closes not with that tension resolved, but with the minutes still in August’s hands and the women’s departure planned for after dark.