by Dale Cramer
“We were at the table cutting out squares for a new quilt when she doubled over and grabbed her belly,” Mary said as she untied Emma’s kapp. “She had another pain after that, but they’re a long ways apart yet, so I’m thinking maybe it’s just false labor and she’ll get over it.”
“It’s too soon,” Mamm whimpered.
There was fear in Emma’s eyes, and Rachel counted months in her head. Emma had been married a little less than six months. The baby couldn’t be more than eight months along, at the most. It was too early – not nearly as early as Mamm thought it was, but still too early.
Suddenly, Emma squeezed Rachel’s hand tightly and gasped. “I think my water just broke!”
“Oh, my stars!” Mamm cried, her eyes wide. “Now the baby must come! What will we do?”
Rachel’s resolve nearly melted then, knowing that with a few well-chosen words she could relieve the panic in her mother’s heart, but she didn’t dare. She stared across the bed at Mary’s horrified face, yellow in the pale light.
“It will be all right,” Rachel said calmly, and even as she said the words she saw a question come to Mary’s eyes. Perhaps she had spoken too calmly. Mary knew something was not right about this. She could count too, and she was no fool.
Mary glanced down at Emma, who nodded ever so slightly. Mary’s head tilted, her lips parted and the flash of shock in her eyes melted quickly into a vague sadness. Without a word passing between them the three sisters now shared Emma’s secret, a secret none of them would utter in front of their mother.
They helped Emma undress and got her into a clean gown, even as her contractions grew stronger and the time between them shortened. Rachel watched her writhe, feeling helpless and utterly useless, desperately wishing she could do something, anything, to relieve the spasms of horrendous pain contorting her sister’s face. And yet, at the same time she began to feel an inexplicable but unquenchable thirst for knowledge, to learn all she could about what was happening.
“What does it feel like when that happens?” she asked meekly during a lull.
Emma’s eyes opened. “You mean the pains?”
She nodded.
Emma closed her eyes again and didn’t answer right away. In a minute she muttered, “Remember the other day when you had a really bad charley horse in your leg?”
“Jah.”
“It’s like that, only ten times worse. My lower back cramps really bad, then it spreads around to the front, and then it goes all over like a wave.”
Emma’s pain, and her mother’s fears, seemed to grow deeper with each wave. Mary had taken over while her mother watched, crying quietly, at the foot of the bed.
Mamm could barely contain her growing terror. “This cannot end well. It’s too soon!” she moaned.
“It will be a long night,” Mary said. “Rachel, why don’t you go upstairs and make preparations – put a log in the stove and draw a big pot of water to boil. Also, put the iron on the stove and make ready to iron some baby blankets. You’ll find them in that trunk over there.”
Rachel was all too glad to have work to do, to have something to occupy her hands and mind while they waited. Patience was not one of her strengths to begin with, and endless minutes of waiting punctuated by convulsions of pain was almost more than she could bear. A thousand times she wondered if perhaps Emma was wrong about her. While she stoked the fire and ironed the blankets, a million random thoughts swooped through her mind like bats.
Will Emma be all right? Will Mamm figure out her secret? Will the baby live? How, oh how, Gott, can I help? What can I do?
As the hours passed and Emma’s time drew near, Mamm grew increasingly despondent, pacing and coughing and weeping quietly, certain that she was witnessing the loss of Emma’s first baby. She was just too tenderhearted.
Even so, not one of them had the heart to tell her that it might not be so.
In the wee hours of the morning Emma gave birth to a tiny baby boy, not much bigger than Rachel’s hand. Though her hair clung together in damp rivulets and her gown was soaked with sweat, even during the worst of it she made no noise louder than a groan.
But the infant lay limp in Mary’s hands while she rubbed him and massaged his chest in vain. He did not cry, nor did he move. Mamm broke down, wailing with grief. Mary, too, was on the verge of giving up, her hands trembling with panic. Her last two babies had been lost in much the same way, and the memory haunted her now.
Rachel stood mute on the other side of the bed, her heart pounding, her hands clasped over her mouth, and her eyes full of tears. This could not be happening – not to Emma!
Suddenly, Emma turned. Her eyes bored into Rachel, a lightning bolt of desperation. The voice in Rachel’s head screamed, Do something! She did not understand her sister’s faith in her, yet she had never doubted it. Such faith would not be denied.
Rachel said a brief, silent prayer as she rushed to Mary’s side and, gently but firmly, took the baby from her. Putting her mouth over the tiny infant’s whole mouth and nose, she breathed carefully into him and then pressed his chest with her thumb. The third time she did this he flung his tiny arms out and arched his back, his face crinkled in a soundless cry.
Rachel almost dropped him in astonishment, and in the next instant found herself laughing hysterically out of boundless joy, mountainous relief, and the sheer absurdity of it all. That was me? No one in the room was less prepared or more shocked than Rachel herself by what they had just witnessed.
Watching closely, forgetting to breathe herself, Mamm blinked and recoiled.
“He lives?” She looked again to be sure, then took a deep shuddering breath and raised hands and eyes to the heavens. “He lives! Oh, thank you, Gott!”
Rachel gently kissed the baby’s forehead, handed him over to a stunned Mary and stepped back out of the way while they cleaned and wrapped him and laid him on his mother’s breast.
Now that the crisis had passed, Rachel’s emotions overwhelmed her. In the space of five minutes she had felt a new life quicken in her hands, and a new Rachel quicken in her soul. It was a watershed moment. As long as she lived, she would remember her life in two parts – life before the birth of Emma’s baby, and life after. She sank to her knees, laid her forehead on the edge of the bed, cried and prayed, and prayed and cried.
Emma’s face relaxed into a contented smile. The anguish of the last few hours melted away, entirely forgiven and forgotten in the presence of new life.
“A handsome new son,” Levi said when he was finally allowed into the room. He sat on the side of the bed, full of quiet gratitude that Gott had granted his wish, though he did not deserve such grace. He would only watch, afraid to touch the tiny infant.
Mamm gazed tearfully at the little bundle. “So small. Will you name him Uri, after your father?”
Levi’s face darkened for a second. Everyone knew he and his father were not on the best of terms. No one talked about it openly, but they all knew it was one of the reasons Levi wanted to leave Ohio in the first place. His decision to move with the Benders to Mexico had done nothing to heal the rift between him and his father.
He shook his head. “No, Mamm. His name will be Mose.”
Emma nodded, smiled. “Mose. That’s a good strong name.”
Mary had fallen silent. She had barely said a word since Rachel took the baby from her and breathed into it, and she kept staring at Rachel with a trace of puzzlement in her eyes.
Finally, Rachel asked, “What is it, Mary? What’s the matter?”
Mary frowned as if greatly confused. “How did you know, Rachel? You’ve never even seen a baby born before. How did you know what to do?”
“Other than God’s grace, I don’t know. It was just there when I needed it, that’s all.”
“You don’t know.” Mary shook her head in quiet amazement. “Well then, it’s a gift. That’s the only explanation.”
In her heart Rachel was thrilled and terrified at being filled with a sense not her own. T
hat Gott had given her that sense at the very moment when Emma needed her was indeed a gift.
Chapter 27
An air of cautious celebration tiptoed around the Bender farm for the next few days – cautious because both Mary and Mamm said that the premature baby’s first few days, perhaps weeks, would be as perilous as his birth. The women of the family all hovered over him for days. Little Mose was very small and frail, but they soon learned that he was also very tenacious. He fed well and grew quickly. He had a headful of copper hair a little darker than Rachel’s, and curly.
Caleb was proud of his new grandson – the first Amish baby born in Mexico – but the timing worried him. Over the years he had heard enough about birthing babies to know that one could not live at six months. Caleb could count, yet he did not entirely trust his instincts where womanly matters were concerned. He said nothing to Emma or Levi, but one morning he came to Martha while she was alone in her kitchen garden.
“Little Mose is doing well, isn’t he?” he said.
She straightened up with a big yellow squash in one hand, a paring knife in the other. “Jah,” she said. “He grows stronger every day. I think he is going to be fine.”
“A miracle,” Caleb said, scratching his cheek. “I don’t believe I ever heard of a six-month baby living more than a day or two before.”
She watched him cautiously, and when their eyes met she looked away. She knew.
“Jah, a miracle,” Martha said, bending down to put the squash in her basket with the others. “Or maybe it wasn’t so early as we thought.” She said this without looking at him.
His eyebrows went up, his suspicion confirmed. “An eight-month baby can live,” he said. “Maybe sometimes even a seven.”
She nodded, still not looking at him. “But not a six-month baby. It’s just not finished yet.”
Neither of them said anything for a minute. They stood mute in their garden, two statues, one with her head lowered and the other gazing solemnly at the horizon.
“They deceived us, Martha. They deceived everyone. This is wrong.” His voice was heavy with sadness, for he loved Emma greatly. “So what will we do?”
She bent over to put her paring knife into the basket, then dusted her hands on her apron as she high-stepped over the vines until she stood facing him. She raised her round face to his.
“Why must we do anything? They are married yet, and we are in Mexico, a thousand miles from our church.”
“There has been sin. There should be repentance.”
“Do you not think they suffered? Do you not think they repented to Gott? Must we shame them before men?”
He took a deep breath, his eyes level. “They sinned before Gott and man – they should repent before Gott and man.”
“And what would be the point of that? Nothing would change, except that they and their child would bear the shame for the rest of their days. What is the point of that?”
“It’s what is right,” Caleb said. “It’s the truth.”
Hanging her head, Martha pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed at her eyes.
“And what of love?” she said softly, without looking up. “What of Joseph, who, when his betrothed was with child, sought to put her away privately to spare her from the shame? Is not love greater than the law?”
“Our daughter is not the Virgin Mary,” he said, “and anyways, an angel came to Joseph if I remember right.” But he felt his resolve slipping. Like Jonas Weaver, in his youth Caleb Bender had been wise enough to marry a friend. Now that friend was asking for a favor.
She didn’t touch him, or even look up. She was folding that handkerchief, folding and folding again until it became a tight little cube between her fingertips. He barely heard her when she said, “Can’t I be your angel?”
A cool breeze rippled over the fields, swept through the garden and tugged at the brim of Caleb’s hat. Even now, when he looked at his Martha he could still see the lovely, slender eighteen-year-old girl who captured his heart so long ago. He kept his eyes on the horizon, but his rough hand came up to stroke the back of her arm.
“Jah,” he said quietly. “You surely may.”
Chapter 28
As soon as the house was finished the men set to work, digging into the side of the knoll for the ground floor of a banked barn while Rachel and Miriam turned the loose dirt into bricks. Mary’s little boys worked with them, stomping and sloshing in the mud, but Ada stayed balled up in bed crying with one of her headaches.
Somehow Ada had made a connection in her muddled mind. It finally got through to her as they were nailing the last of the roof on the house that this was permanent. They wouldn’t be going back to Salt Creek Township anytime soon. Rachel watched as the revelation slowly melted the corners of her oldest sister’s eyes, and then her mouth, and then her shoulders. The finishing of the house, the very thing everyone else celebrated, seemed to extinguish the last of Ada’s hope.
Miriam took the screed and scraped the top off of a fresh row of wet bricks. Rachel came behind her with a flat shovel, clearing away the excess mud, tossing it back into the mixing pit.
“So, when are you going to start your school?” Rachel asked.
Miriam stopped and leaned on the handle of the screed, staring off into the distance. “I don’t know. In the beginning I would need you to help me, and right now we are too busy – when would we have time? Maybe in a month or two, after the harvest.”
“Are you going to teach English?”
Miriam wiped sweat from her forehead with a wrist – her hands were too dirty. Then she looked at her sleeve to see if she’d smeared mud on it from her forehead.
“I don’t see any reason for it. We only learned English in Ohio because it was America and people speak English there. Here, everyone speaks Spanish. It wouldn’t make any sense to teach these little ones English when we live in Mexico.” Mary’s little boys had not learned any English yet because they had not started school. They spoke only Dutch.
“Are you still planning to teach the Mexicans, as well?”
Miriam shrugged. “Why not? It will be easier for our own children to learn Spanish if there are Mexican children in the class, and they can all learn to read at the same time.”
As they talked, Domingo trundled a wooden wheelbarrow down from the barn and dumped a load of fresh dirt ten feet away.
“But you don’t even have teachers’ books,” Rachel said.
“I don’t need them. In the beginning I will only teach how to read and write and add and subtract. I know how to do those things. Later, someone else will come.”
“But you’re not a teacher, Miriam. Do you really think you can do this?”
Miriam smiled. “What harm can it do to try? Anyway, how do we know I’m not a teacher if I never tried to teach?”
Domingo set his wheelbarrow down and straightened up, staring at Miriam. “You’re going to teach school?”
“Jah,” Miriam said, “but you mustn’t tell anyone, Domingo. It’s a secret. I haven’t asked Dat about it yet.”
Domingo shrugged, and Rachel looked a little sideways at her sister. “You haven’t talked to Dat about this?”
“Not yet. I will. There hasn’t been a really good time to bring it up.”
Rachel chuckled. “You’re afraid he will say no.”
A puzzled frown crossed Domingo’s face. “Why would your father say no to a school?”
Miriam almost grinned, sheepishly. “Well, we’re thinking he might not be too crazy about the idea of Amish children being in school with outsiders. After all, he brought us all the way to Mexico so we wouldn’t have to go to school all the time with Englishers, and the subject might still be a little tender with him. But I don’t think Dat minds learning, so long as it’s just reading, writing, and arithmetic. He knows how important it is to be able to read.”
“Outsiders,” Domingo said, his head tilting. “You mean Mexicans?”
“Sí.”
“You’re going
to teach mestizo children to read?”
Miriam nodded. “That’s what I was thinking, yes – but only if they want to, of course. I just thought since – ”
“They will want to, cualnezqui,” Domingo said. There was a new light in his eyes.
“Well,” Rachel said, “it’s a month or two yet before the end of harvest – plenty of time to talk Dat into it. If you’re afraid, you can always get Emma to ask him. She can talk him into anything.”
Miriam shook her head. “I might think about that if he says no, but this is really important to me, Rachel. I want to do it myself.”
Chapter 29
The field corn was finally ready. Caleb’s boys had barely finished building a crude corncrib when everybody took to the fields to bring in the ears. Though the crib looked like a leaky Noah’s Ark, thrown together out of leftover slats and floating on knee-high posts to keep the rabbits out, it was their only way of drying corn for feeding the animals over the winter. Caleb didn’t know for certain what their first Mexican winter would be like.
Domingo worked alongside Caleb and Aaron, pulling the field corn, tossing ears into the wagon as a pair of draft horses eased along, guided only by whistles from Caleb.
“The bandits I’ve seen so far don’t seem that bad,” Caleb said. “The only thing frightening about them is all those guns. The ones I’ve seen around here didn’t scare me nowhere near as much as that El Pantera fella. Most of them are even sort of polite.”
Domingo chuckled. “Those are the ones who were raised as peons on haciendas. From the time they are born they are taught to be respectful of anyone they don’t know, and it becomes a habit. Life is easier that way. They will smile at you and mind their manners right up until they cut your throat and steal your horse.”
