by Dale Cramer
Mamm frowned. “Oh, I don’t know. How many students do you have?”
“Twelve,” Miriam answered. Her class had grown over the last couple of weeks.
“Hold on now,” Caleb said, his hands up, palms out. “Thanksgiving is an American holiday, and we live in Mexico now. Why, I bet these people never even heard of Thanksgiving. Even Schulman has never lived in America.”
Mamm was on the verge of sulking. “That’s why I want to do it,” she said. “I’m American, and I miss it.”
“She’s right,” Emma chimed in. “It would be like home again, and I’m thinking we’re all a little bit homesick just now.”
“I don’t know,” Caleb said. “I’m not sure we have the stores to make it through the winter as it is. A big feast like that . . . I don’t know.”
Emma reached across and laid her hand on his. “We need this, Dat,” she said softly. “It will lift everyone’s spirits, and besides, how can we not set aside a day to thank Gott for all our good fortune in this new land?”
“But it’s an American holiday.”
“No, Dat, it’s a Gott holiday. We should thank Him for coming with us to Mexico.”
Caleb smiled then. He could never resist his Emma. “Schulman has turkeys,” he said, and the planning began.
It would be a memorable feast. Dat traded Schulman a shoat for two large turkeys, and when he invited them to the feast, Schulman’s wife insisted on bringing pies. By some miracle Emma found a big sackful of dates in the hacienda mercado for date pudding, but there were no cranberries to be found anywhere.
Mamm and her daughters stormed the kitchen early on Thursday morning, and when the weather turned out to be fine the men nailed up long rows of tables in the front yard.
Domingo was among the first to arrive, his oxcart loaded with the four boys he always brought to school. He also brought with him a young Mexican woman with dark eyes, long silky hair as black as a crow and a demure but captivating smile. Miriam was carrying a stack of plates out to the tables when he pulled up near the barn, and she stopped in her tracks to watch as Domingo helped the young woman down from the wagon.
Rachel was right behind Miriam, and nearly bumped into her when she stopped to stare.
“Who is that?” Miriam asked.
Rachel followed her gaze. The young woman wore a colorful Aztec sarape over a dark print peasant skirt and blouse. She was stunningly beautiful. Domingo was very careful of her, deferential, and there was a proud smile in his eyes. Rachel glanced at her older sister’s face and saw a faint but unmistakable trace of jealousy.
“Oh, Miriam, please tell me that look in your eye is not what I think it is. Domingo?”
Their eyes met. Miriam turned away without answering, confirming Rachel’s suspicion.
“Well,” Rachel said to her back, “I hope for your sake she’s his wife. It would save you from a great deal of trouble.”
There was nothing Miriam could say at this point. She marched toward the tables without looking back.
Ten minutes later the sisters were carrying food from the house when Domingo rounded the corner and called out to them.
“Miriam! Rachel! There you are. I was looking for you.”
They stopped in the yard, each of them holding a bowl of potatoes, and waited while Domingo and his dark-eyed beauty caught up with them.
Domingo’s eyes went straight to Miriam.
“This is Kyra,” he said proudly. “She is the mother of two of your students.”
“Sí, Benito and Juan are mine,” Kyra said, pressing Miriam’s hand between her own. “I cannot tell you how grateful I am that you are teaching them to read. I only hope they do not worry you too much. That Juan, he is full of the devil.” She grinned at Domingo then, and added, “Just like his uncle.”
Miriam’s eyes widened in surprise – and, Rachel couldn’t help noticing, a fair dollop of relief. “So, Juan and Benito are your nephews, Domingo?”
“Sí. Why do you think they are so afraid of me?” he said, smiling.
Rachel could only shake her head in amusement at how quickly Miriam’s attitude toward Kyra changed. Kyra offered to help set the tables, and within minutes she and Miriam were laughing and chatting like old friends.
Later, she thought, we will have to have a talk, my sister and me.
Miriam had already invited all her students before she learned that they assumed the invitation included their families. By noon there were over fifty people in the front yard – a truly international gathering of Mexicans, Germans, and American Amish.
Dat raised his hands and took command of the situation, in a loud voice explaining how things would go. First the men would serve themselves, then the women and children, but before anyone was allowed to eat he would offer thanks for Gott’s bounty. It was not his custom to pray out loud at mealtime, but for the benefit of his guests he did so on this occasion, and he did it in Spanish.
There was more food here than many of these people had ever seen in one place. Turkey, chicken, roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, loaves and loaves of fresh-baked bread, Mamm’s special pumpkin butter, corn on the cob, all kinds of salad and greens – including cabbage, which Rachel noted with considerable amusement that the Mexicans indeed would not touch – and then the desserts.
Afterward, Miriam helped the women with cleanup while the men retired to the new horseshoe pits beside the barn. While she was washing dishes, Harvey ran in to tell her that he and some of the Mexican boys were saddling horses for an impromptu race around the cornfield.
Miriam dried her hands and walked down to the field with Rachel and Kyra to watch. She saw Domingo already trotting down to the field on the little pinto the bandits had traded them. She had personally nursed the horse back to health, tending his foot until it was sound, fattening him up and brushing out his coat until he looked presentable. And with Domingo sitting tall in the saddle, the little pinto held himself like a champion.
Domingo put on a surprising burst at the start of the race and pulled ahead. Miriam tried, but she couldn’t take her eyes off of him – that chiseled bronze figure straining forward in the saddle, his cotton shirt flapping in the wind, and his long black hair flying. She told herself this was only a childish infatuation, that it was wrong, that he was not Amish. That it would pass.
Anyway, she thought, when he looks at me he sees only an old maid schoolteacher.
But in that one brief moment, flying over the field with the grace of a deer and the raw power of a mountain lion, he took her breath away. He was beautiful.
By the time they rounded the last turn the pinto had begun to lose steam so that Harvey, riding the larger standard-bred stallion, pulled away. He won by three lengths, and Miriam laughed and clapped and cheered along with Rachel and Kyra, though she fervently hoped that her little sister hadn’t noticed that she wasn’t watching the winner.
As the girls strolled casually back up toward the house Rachel patted Kyra’s back and raved, “That pinto sure loves to run, and your brother handles him like he’s known him all his life!”
Kyra nodded, smiling proudly. “Your brother rides like the wind, too.” Then she turned to Miriam and said, “You know, Señorita Miriam, Domingo admires you very much. It is a wonderful thing you are doing, teaching the niños to read.” She leaned closer, as if it was a secret, and said, “And Domingo, too. He has always wanted to learn, but when he was a boy my father would not let him go to the Catholic school.”
Miriam’s head tilted. “There is a school here? At El Prado?”
“Oh no. Not anymore. The government closed down most of the Catholic schools five years ago after the new constitution outlawed them, including the one in the iglesia at El Prado. Domingo could have gone there when he was little, but our father would not allow it. He said the Catholic Church was only a tool of the imperialist Spaniards.”
“But you wear a cross around your neck,” Miriam said, pointing. “I thought you were Catholic.”
“I am,” Kyra said, pinching the cross from her chest and touching it to her lips. “My mother is mestizo, and a Catholic from birth, but my father was full-blooded Nahua and he held to the old ways. He let my mother do as she wished with me because I was a girl, but Domingo answered only to him. When Domingo was born all my father’s brothers and friends brought weapons and laid them in his crib. He was trained from childhood to be a Nahua warrior.”
“Domingo?” Miriam said, genuinely shocked. The Domingo she knew did not seem like a warrior at all. “He has never spoken of this. Did he fight in the revolution?”
Kyra shook her head. “He was planning to go, but then my father was killed at Zacatecas, along with my husband.”
Tenderhearted Rachel was almost in tears. “Your husband died in the war? I’m so sorry, Kyra.”
“He was a good man, and I miss him,” Kyra said softly. “But many families were torn apart in the revolution. My mother begged Domingo not to go then, because he was the only man left to provide for us. He made a promise to her, and he has honored it. My brother is an honorable man,” she said, her dark eyes shining with pride.
“I’m really surprised to hear this about Domingo, though,” Miriam said. “I have never seen him raise a hand to anyone, and he always seems so gentle with children and horses.”
“He is,” Kyra said, drawing aside her heavy hair to watch her brother pull the saddle from the pinto and hang it on the corral fence. “He is very gentle . . . until someone he loves is threatened.”
“Rachel, get up.”
Someone was shaking her shoulder.
She sat up too quickly, banging her head against Emma’s lantern.
“It’s the middle of the night,” she mumbled. Cold.
“Come quick,” Emma whispered. “Mary’s having her baby.”
Rachel grabbed the quilt from her bed, flung it around her shoulders to cover her gown and stumbled down to the basement behind Emma and her lantern. They passed Mamm in the kitchen, in her gown with her hair down, a rare sight. A pot of water sat on the stovetop, and Mamm was bending over, shoving firewood into the cold stove.
“Ezra woke me just a few minutes ago,” Emma explained on the way down the basement steps. “She’s having regular pains. He said he counted and they’re about five minutes between.”
The canvas divider glowed yellow from a lantern on the other side. Levi was still asleep in the dark near the stairs, little Mose bundled next to him. Underneath the stairs was the potato bin, and in the corner stood the barrels of sauerkraut, fermenting.
Beyond the curtain they found Mary alone in her bed, with Ezra standing at her side. Her dark hair was loose around her, and the mound of her belly swelled the blankets. Ezra took one look at Emma and Rachel and said, “I think I’ll mebbe see if I can get a couple more hours’ sleep before chores.”
Then he left. In a hurry.
Mary’s face was ghostly pale and covered with sweat despite the cold.
Emma sat down on the edge of the bed, handing her lantern to Rachel and taking Mary’s hand. A second lantern hissed and guttered on the nail keg next to the bed. The air smelled of hot kerosene, a comforting scent.
“How do you feel?” Emma asked, which struck Rachel as a rather odd question under the circumstances.
“Like I’m going to have a baby,” she grunted.
Emma wiped sweat-damp hair out of Mary’s eyes. “Is there anything we can get you?”
She shook her head and, against all reason, chuckled. “I only wish I hadn’t eaten so much turkey this afternoon. Most of it is in the chamber pot now.”
The curtain parted and Mamm swept into the room, now fully dressed, her prayer kapp neatly pinned in place. Of the four women present she was the only one wearing her kapp. Having borne thirteen children herself, Mamm knew there was no great rush, so she had taken the time to dress. She breezed around the bed to sit on the other side and hold Mary’s other hand.
“I put the scissors and some rags on the stove to boil,” she said, patting Mary’s hand. “There’s lots of time, yet. Rachel, I laid out some baby blankets on the kitchen table. When the stove is good and hot you should go up and iron them.”
“I’m ironing blankets again?” she asked.
“Heat cleanses,” her mother said. “Everything has to be clean, you know.”
Shoulder to shoulder with Emma, scrubbing her hands over a pan of water on the kitchen counter while the sterilizing pot began to tick and steam on the stove lid, Rachel said, “I feel useless. I want to be more than a blanket ironer.”
“Hush,” Emma said. “Always in such a rush. Anyway, mark my words, the moment will come when you are needed, just like when I had my Mose. And if not, then watch and learn. Even if all you do is iron blankets, at least you get to witness the miracle of birth.”
Emma was right. It was an honor just to be there, to see what was about to happen, to be there when Mary’s baby was born. If Emma wanted her to observe, then Rachel would observe.
Later, when she returned with the blankets and the boiling pot, Mary looked up at her, fresh from another contraction, and asked, “Where are my boys?”
Rachel smiled, setting the pot on a trunk in the corner. “Upstairs with their dat on the living room floor next to Aaron and Harvey. They’re all snoring.”
“Men.”
“Oh, child, this is no place for a man,” Mamm said. “It’s good they can sleep.”
The three of them hovered over Mary for the next two hours while the contractions intensified and the intervals grew shorter.
To her surprise, when the time came Rachel learned that she was no longer just a blanket ironer. Mamm stepped aside and made way for her to actually take part in the delivery. Rachel wrapped her new niece in a freshly ironed white blanket and held her still while Emma cleared the nose and mouth. The infant shivered, flung its arms wide in surprise, and a rusty little cry came from its mouth. Mamm wrung out a cloth from the pot and began wiping the baby’s face.
“She’s a fine-looking girl,” Mamm said, smiling. “Her color is very good, and just look at that headful of hair!”
Everything had gone smoothly, but the night was not over yet.
Chapter 35
The baby’s eyes were open, gazing at her mother’s face, inches away. Mary ticked the little nose with a forefinger.
“We need to clean you up real good,” she said, “so you can meet your father. Oh, Ezra is going to be so proud. He so wanted a little girl to – ”
She didn’t finish the sentence. Her head rocked forward suddenly and the smile flew away, replaced by a twisted grimace.
Mamm grabbed the newborn baby and handed her to Rachel, who tucked the bundle inside her quilt to keep her warm.
“Another pain,” Mamm said, furrows forming between her eyes. “She’s not done.”
Footsteps crossed the floor over their heads as the household began to move about their morning routine, getting dressed and seeing to their chores. Outside the window the black of night had faded to dark gray.
The new contraction finally eased, and Mary lay back against the pillow breathing heavily. “What’s happening to me?” she gasped.
Mamm sat on the side of the bed and pressed her palms to Mary’s abdomen. As her hands moved, fear came into her eyes. “You’re having twins,” she said, her voice shaking.
Rachel saw the look in her mother’s eyes. There was something they were not saying in front of Mary. Something ominous.
“What’s wrong, Mamm?”
“It’s just . . . you know, I had twins, once. Mine went fine, but not all of them do. Everyone says the second one is tricky because sometimes it lays the wrong way.”
This made perfect sense to Rachel. If there were two babies in a crowded space and their heads were the biggest part of them, it made sense they would lie in opposite directions.
Ezra poked his head through the curtain, grinning sheepishly. “Did I hear a baby cry?”
Mary loo
ked up, smiling bravely at her husband.
“I have given you a daughter,” she said weakly.
Rachel opened her quilt and showed the bundle to Ezra, who stood just inside the curtain beaming over his new baby girl.
“Amanda,” he said, with a kind of reverence. “We wanted to call her Amanda if it was a girl.”
Emma nodded. “It’s a girl. Trust us. But you should get out of here now. We’re not done yet.”
Ezra looked from Emma to Mary, puzzled.
“She’s having twins, Ezra. Go. We’ll call you.”
“OH! I’m sorry, I thought she was finished. I’ll just – ” Wincing, he backed through the curtain, and they heard him run up the stairs shouting to the rest of the family, “Twins! My Mary is having twins!”
But forty minutes passed and the baby still refused to be born. It wouldn’t budge. Mary was losing strength, and Mamm was starting to fall apart. Her splayed fingers pressed gently against Mary’s abdomen.
“I can feel it,” she said, her voice high-pitched and quavering. “The head is over here. No, no, no. It’s not lined up good.”
“What can we do?” Rachel asked. “There must be something we can do.”
Mamm was wringing her hands and rocking back and forth now, the way Ada did when she was upset. “We can try to turn it mebbe, I don’t know. Oh, this is bad. Rachel, go upstairs and tell them to pray. Do it now.”
Rachel took Baby Amanda with her and did as she was told.
Emma followed her to the top of the steps.
“There’s more to it,” Emma whispered. “Mary’s life is in danger, too. If the baby doesn’t come out, they both will die.”
Rachel entered the living room feeling as if she’d been kicked in the stomach by a mule. The family had all gathered around the wood stove, where they had a roaring fire going. They had not gone out to do chores, all of them wanting to meet the new baby first.
“The second one is turned wrong,” Rachel said, holding back tears, but deciding on the spur of the moment not to burden the men with Emma’s ominous words. “Mamm says pray.”
