Between a Wok and a Hard Place

by Tamar Myers

  I banged my head again. “You married her in Hernia, too?”

  “Deirdre and I were married in Minneapolis. I was talking about you and I. Since Deirdre and I never divorced, our marriage is still legal. It’s our marriage— yours and mine—that is null and void.”

  “Null and void? Don’t be silly, dear. I may have been innocent, but I wasn’t that innocent.”

  Aaron sighed. “It was the best sex I’d ever had, I’ll grant you that.”

  It all clicked then. It all came together at once, like the offering plates at the end of the Doxology.

  “It may have been great sex for you,” I screamed, “but it was adultery! I am an adulteress!”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Mags.”

  “You’re an adulterer, too, Aaron!”

  “Well, that’s taking the negative view.”

  “What other view could there possibly be? Read your Bible, Aaron!”

  He sighed again. “I was hoping you’d be more enlightened, Mags.”

  I tried strangling the receiver but it didn’t satisfy my English desire to kill. “What do we do now, Aaron?” I asked through clenched teeth.

  “That’s why I’m calling, Mags. I want to do the honorable thing.”

  “Dumping Deirdre is not going to be easy, dear.”

  There was a long, pregnant pause, in which Deirdre might possibly have gotten pregnant. “Uh—Mags, what I’ve been trying to say the whole time is that I still love Deirdre. I want the marriage to work now.”

  My pause was decidedly barren. “What did you say?”

  “Don’t you see! I owe it all to you. After we got married—our ceremony, I mean—I got to thinking about my life with Deirdre. I came back up here to see if there was any hope for her and I.”

  “And?”

  “I’m in love with her, Mags. I think I always have been. And you reminded me of her, Mags. You made me remember the good times she and I shared together. I’ll always owe you that.”

  I screamed so loud that David Bowie heard me on his compound on Bali. He told me that the next time I saw him. Claimed I owed him for two light bulbs and a champagne glass.

  Freni put me to bed. She rubbed Vicks on my chest, wrapped my neck with a strip of flannel, and tucked a hot water bottle under my feet—never mind that the afternoon’s downpour had done little to ameliorate the heat, and the air-conditioning in my back bedroom leaves something to be desired. She was, of course, just expressing her love the only way she knew how. At least she didn’t force-feed me the remains of her largely uneaten dinner. The castor oil she finally got past my lips was all the supper I needed.

  I woke up sporadically, remembered my horrible conversation with Aaron, and almost immediately fell back into a shock-induced sleep. I remember feeling unbearably hot at one point, but whether it was a freshly refilled hot water bottle, a menopausal hot flash, or my dream that Aaron was burning in Hell, I can’t say for sure. Perhaps all three. It was just after ten a.m. when I came to a sleep-satiated start. Someone was sitting on my bed, patting my leg.

  “Oh no, you don’t!” I screamed. “We’re not even married, remember?”

  “Ach!”

  I opened my eyes. “Freni?”

  Freni slid to the floor. “Yah, you were having a bad dream, Magdalena.”

  “You mean all that stuff about Aaron wasn’t true?”

  Freni’s eyes rolled. It was a desperate, not an insolent gesture.

  “Freni! What is it?”

  Freni was frantic. “Ach, it wasn’t all a dream, Magdalena, but there are other kettles in the sea.”

  “What?”

  “The fish called the pot black and it broke the camel’s back,” she said. “But you’ll be all right, you’ll see. It’s always darkest when there’s a bun in the oven.”

  “I’m pregnant?” I screeched.

  “Ach, how should I know?”

  I sat up in bed. My head pounded as if I’d just come off a bender—not that I would know, mind you. But I’ve observed Susannah enough times to know the symptoms.

  “Freni, did Aaron call last night during dinner and tell me that he’d been married before? That he was still married to her?”

  “Yah.” Her bottom lip quivered.

  “So I am an adulteress,” I wailed.

  “Yah, but it wasn’t your fault,” Freni said in her most soothing voice, the one she uses to coax souffles from the oven. “It was Aaron Miller’s fault. And the Millers have always been,” she lapsed into Pennsylvania Dutch, “anner Satt Leit.” The “other sort of people.”

  “Miller.” The word sounded foreign on my tongue, never mind that Susannah and I have Millers on both sides of the family. “May I never hear that word again.”

  “Amen,” Freni said loyally. “Now you are back to being a Yoder. Just like you always were.”

  “Not quite,” I said, hanging my head in shame.

  Freni blushed. “Ach, that! Nothing is perfect, Magdalena. Anyway, now you know what it is all about.”

  “Much ado about nothing, if you ask me.”

  “Speak for yourself,” my elderly kinswoman said. “Like they say, some of the best lunches in life are free.” She said something else, too, but I put my hands over my ears and kept them there until she was done.

  “What will I tell everyone, Freni? How can I face the shame?”

  Freni drew herself up to her full five feet two inches. “You will tell them the truth, Magdalena. Everyone knows the kind of woman you are. No one will believe for a second that you did anything wrong.”

  I caught my breath, pointing to the ceiling. “Except for Pops.”

  “Ach, the man should talk. It was him who raised Aaron Junior.”

  “Melvin will get a huge kick out of this, you can count on that.”

  “Melvin, schmelvin, let him talk. The more he talks, the more everyone else will feel sorry for you. You want to make it easy on yourself? You call Melvin right now and tell him the whole story. By dinnertime the whole town will think you’re a saint. Like Lot’s wife or something.”

  “Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt for the sin of disobeying God, and bigamy is a sin,” I said, forgetting for a moment that most of the characters in the Bible were, in fact, bigamists, if not polygamists. “Stand back. I’m liable to be turned into a white chunk of sodium before your very eyes.”

  “Ach,” said Freni, “you always did look good in white.”

  I reached out and clasped her hand. My own mama could not have been half as supportive. Even dead, Mama was no doubt judging me for a sin I had committed unwittingly. If I didn’t hurry up and change the subject she would start turning in her grave again. The last time she reached a full spin the folks out in L.A. reported a 6.2 earthquake.

  “So, what else is new?” I said, willing my features into the approximation of a smile.

  “Nothing—ach, just on small thing, but I wasn’t going to bother you with it until you were feeling better.”

  “Bother away.”

  She frowned. “A lady has been calling the desk phone ever since I got here this morning. Five times now, maybe six.”

  “What does she want?”

  “Flowers.”

  “What?”

  “Each time a different flower. Orchids, roses, daisies—even a lotus. That is a flower, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sort of like a water lily, I think. Exactly what else does she say?”

  “Ach, I don’t remember, Magdalena. She asks for the flowers, and when I tell her we don’t sell them, she hangs up.”

  “That’s very strange,” I said.

  Freni smiled. “Ach, but not as strange as the time Susannah got a call from the Pope.”

  “And Susannah had the nerve to pretend she was Mother Teresa! Who would have thought the phone companies could cross wires like that?”

  Freni retucked a hospital corner that had come loose. “So, you will be all right then?”

  I smiled bravely. “Right as rain
.”

  “Good. Then I’ll get you your breakfast.”

  “Bacon with still a little play left in it, two eggs poached medium, and some cinnamon toast will be nice,” I said. “Oh, and some hot chocolate—with extra marshmallows.”

  Now that I was no longer married, and would certainly never marry again, there was no reason to hang on to my figure. I’d read some place that the taste buds start to go at age sixty, or thereabouts. I had a lot of eating to do if I was going to catch up with my contemporaries in the next fifteen years. As soon as I got a chance I’d drive in to Bedford, buy a size 24W dress at Dancing Joe’s Dress Barn, and proceed to fill it out.

  “No bacon, Magdalena. No eggs either until the chickens lay again. Those English are eating us out of house and home.”

  “They’re paying guests,” I reminded her gently. “What do we have in the larder?”

  “Scrapple,” she said brightly.

  I wrinkled my nose. Scrapple is a mixture of cornmeal and ground animal parts that can’t make it to the plate in their normal guise. The stuff is shaped into a loaf, sliced, and fried, and often served with syrup. My people think it’s a delicacy. Since only a Germanic stomach can tolerate scrapple, I have often entertained the idea that I was adopted. Local legend has it that the late Duke and Duchess of Windsor toured Hernia in the forties and, according to at least one rumor- monger, abandoned an unwanted royal baby. Freni insists, however, that any resemblance between me and the late Duchess of Windsor is purely coincidental.

  “Well,” Freni said, with a gleam in her beady eyes, “since you were in no condition to eat your dessert last night, I saved it for you.”

  “What is it?” I could barely remember anything about the evening. Becoming an adulteress takes a lot out of one’s system.

  “Gingerbread. From scratch. I made it just in case none of the pies turned out.”

  “Did any turn out?”

  Freni pursed her lips. “Mrs. Dixon’s pie wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t too good either, but everyone seemed to think so. They barely touched my gingerbread.”

  “Does that gingerbread come with warm lemon sauce?”

  “Ach, what else?”

  I would have clasped Freni gratefully to my bosom, had it not been for the Vicks smeared on my chest. Freni’s gingerbread is the best in the world, and my second favorite food, after her homemade cinnamon rolls. Filling that size 24W dress was going to take less time than I thought. Perhaps I had aimed my sights too low.

  Chapter Twenty

  Bigamist’s Breakfast Gingerbread

  1 ¾ cups sifted all-purpose flour

  1 teaspoons ground ginger

  ½ teaspoon cinnamon

  ½ teaspoon baking soda

  ¼ teaspoon ground cloves

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  ¼ cup shortening

  1 large egg

  ½ cup white sugar

  ¾ cup buttermilk

  ½ cup dark molasses

  Preheat oven to 350°F.

  In a large bowl, sift dry ingredients together and set aside.

  Cream the shortening and sugar in a large bowl. Beat in egg. Slowly add sifted dry ingredients, alternating with small amounts of buttermilk and molasses until all ingredients have been combined. Beat well.

  Bake in a 9-x9-inch greased loaf pan for 25 minutes. Serve warm with homemade lemon sauce.

  Lemon Sauce

  ½ cup white sugar

  3 tablespoons cornstarch

  Pinch of salt

  2 cups boiling water

  ¼ cup butter

  1 lemon, grated rind and juice (seeds removed)

  In a medium saucepan, thoroughly mix sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Add boiling water gradually, stirring constantly. Bring to low boil and cook 6-8 minutes, stirring frequently. Add butter and stir until melted and combined with sauce. Add lemon juice and grated rind. Stir and serve over generous squares of warm gingerbread.

  Note: If recovering from a traumatic revelation, do not bother to count calories.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  One should be allowed to finish one’s breakfast in peace. “There is no peace for the wicked,” Mama often said, and I guess she was right. You would have thought it was National Bother Bigamists Day.

  When the phone rang on my personal line, I reluctantly picked up. Only three people, Aaron, Susannah, and Melvin Stoltzfus are apt to be on the other end, and I wasn’t in the mood to speak to any of them that day. Still, a phone unanswered is a potential problem waiting to be nipped in the bud.

  “Hello?” At least that’s what I intended to say. The gingerbread may have distorted it a little.

  “Magdalena?”

  I swallowed. “I am not buying any, thank you very much! I never, ever buy from phone solicitors. In fact, you tell your supervisor—”

  “Magdalena, stop screeching this minute. I am not a phone solicitor. It’s me, Elizabeth.”

  Elizabeth is as common a name among Mennonites and Amish as Jennifer, or even Caitlin, is among the English. It could have been any of a hundred acquaintances. Grandma Yoder was an Elizabeth, for crying out loud. If it was her, I certainly didn’t want to talk. Even while she was alive, Grandma Yoder was intimidating.

  “You have dialed in error,” I said in my most mechanical voice. “Please check the number you wish to reach—”

  “You aren’t fooling anyone, Magdalena, with that fake phone voice. I always said you sounded like a goose in a thunderstorm, and you haven’t changed a bit.”

  “You’re so kind,” I said, “but I haven’t the slightest idea who you are.”

  “We are not amused, Magdalena.”

  “Neither am I, toots,” I said getting tough. “Identify yourself, or I’m hanging up.”

  “Ach, it’s Lilibet, of course.”

  I knew who it was then. Elizabeth Augsburger was the only Amish woman I knew who went by that nickname. Lizzie, Elizabeth, even Betty—but Lilibet? You would think she was the Queen of England by the way she carried on. It was most un-Amish of her. Everything about her was. Maybe it was she who the Duke and Duchess of Windsor abandoned as a baby. That would explain her inordinate fondness of dogs and horses and her use of the royal “we.”

  “Why are you calling, Lilibet? You don’t even own a phone.”

  “Ach, somebody had to call, so I walked into Miller’s Feed Store. You owe me, Magdalena.”

  “I’ll put a quarter in the mail.”

  “Very funny, Magdalena. You haven’t the slightest idea why I’m calling, do you?”

  “Miller’s is having a special sale and you didn’t want me to miss out?”

  “It’s your father-in-law, Magdalena. Aaron Senior is very upset. He barely slept a wink last night.”

  “How would you know, dear?”

  “He and my Amos were up half the night talking, that’s why. The other half I heard him crying.”

  “What? Pops spent the night at your place?”

  “As if you didn’t know. That poor man.”

  “Just because I didn’t believe his story about a flying saucer landing in the pond. Do you believe in flying saucers, Lilibet?”

  Of course she didn’t. We are a practical people, with Bible-based beliefs. And there is absolutely no mention of flying saucers in the Bible, the Book of Ezekiel notwithstanding.

  She gave a little gasp. “What on earth are you talking about, Magdalena?”

  “Little green men from Mars. Illegal aliens whose children we definitely don’t want in our schools.”

  “Ach, you never could think straighter than a row of English fence poles. It’s no wonder you did what you did. A mad dog wouldn’t be so mean.”

  If there’s one thing I hate, it’s being called mean. I really do try to see the good in everyone. Hadn’t I been proving it by helping Melvin out in his time of need? And Pops—how many women these days would put up with their father-in-law moving in the day after their wedding?

  “Tell the old coot, I’m sorry,” I sai
d.

  There was a pregnant silence during which the population of Bangladesh doubled, as did the number of Elvis sightings in Fargo, North Dakota.

  “I’ll tell him,” she said at last, “but I am disappointed in you, Magdalena. You don’t seem to feel the least little bit of shame.”

  “Shame? For what?”

  “Jesus forgave that adulteress, Magdalena, but the crowd was ready to throw stones. And there are lots of stones around Hernia.”

  My ears were burning, but it was embarrassment, not shame. There is a difference, you know. The bee in Lilibet’s bonnet had nothing to do with Martians. I laid back against my pillows and pondered the possibilities. It could only be one thing, but surely the Amish-Mennonite grapevine couldn’t be that fast, not when half the grapes didn’t own telephones and relied on horses and buggies to get around.

  “Before you lob a boulder at me, at least spell out the charges,” I said bravely.

  “Kicking an elderly man out on the street would be enough,” Lilibet snapped, “but to do so in order to carry on an affair is just—”

  “Affair?”

  “Don’t you take that innocent tone with me, Magdalena. I’ve seen those loud, brassy outfits you wear into town. Multicolor floral prints!”

  I ignored her fashion observation. Surely it wasn’t possible to have an affair and not know it. I know, there were times—with Aaron—when I was a mite distracted, but I never got so lost in my menu-planning that I didn’t know what was going on.

  “Who am I having this affair with?” I asked calmly.

  “Ach, you have less shame than a dog in heat. Next you’ll be saying that this affair was the back doctor’s idea.”

  “Back doctor?”

  “He was here trying to sell me one of those braces, you know. Magdalena, you could do better in the looks department—as long as you’re going to cheat, I mean.”

  Whether it was my looks, or Wilmar Brack’s that went lacking, it wasn’t clear. But it was finally as plain as dandruff on Aaron’s collars that there was a plot underfoot to disgrace me.