by Tamar Myers
“Ach! Okay, I will spill.” She turned off the bacon and took a deep breath, her enormous bosom rising and falling like a small tsunami. “Yah, it is time for the truth.”
“And nothing but.”
“Your mama was barren, Magdalena. Just like you. And Miss Sarah, the friend you speak so much of.”
“You mean the Sahara, as in desert?”
“Please, Magdalena, this is no time for the riddles.”
Her words began to sink in. “No way!”
“But your papa—well, you already know about Zelda. So anyway, there was a young woman, a teenager, who came in the family way. Some say that the baby’s papa was your papa, and some say it was a stranger. To make short the story—”
“So I am adopted?”
Freni shrugged, which is to say, her bosom bobbled even more. “I think maybe you are half adopted, because you look just like your papa.”
I felt like I’d been punched in the soft hollows behind my knees. Truly, I was in danger of collapsing. And since I also felt like throwing up, I had to be careful where I landed.
“And Susannah? Is she adopted as well?”
“Maybe not so much.”
“Not so much? What does that mean?”
“It means that by now the desert is blooming, yah?”
I staggered over to sit in a “distressed” kitchen chair—one of several for which I’d paid big bucks, following a freak tornado several years ago that demolished my heirloom kitchen chairs. The originals had been in Mama’s family for two centuries—except now she wasn’t my mama. Not really.
“Magdalena, are you all right?”
“No, I’m not all right! Is Susannah my sister, or is she not?”
“Yah, of course.”
“Then what’s this blooming desert stuff? Honestly, Freni, you speak in riddles every bit as much as I do.”
Freni removed her grease-and flour-covered glasses. Believe it or not, without them she could see even less, which was no doubt her intention. That way my quivering chin and tear-filled eyes became a meaningless blur.
“Your mama and papa loved you very much. They could not have loved more the fruit of their loom.”
“That would be ‘loins,’ dear. But please, continue.”
“Every day, they thank God for you in their prayers. Then one day, when your mama thinks the change of life has come, she goes to see the doctor. He tells her she is to have a baby. At first she cannot believe it; at her age, it is not possible. But when the day comes that she must accept the truth, she becomes historical.”
“You mean hysterical?”
“That is what I said. So I ask her why she cries, and she says because now she is afraid that with a new baby, she will love her little Magdalena less. She says that you”—Freni nodded in my general direction—“meant more to her than anything in the world. More than your papa. Ach, maybe even more than God.”
I gasped. “She didn’t!”
“Such a terrible thing to say, yah? But for her, it is the truth, because she loves you so much. Then when Susannah is born, she gets this postmodern depression that everyone is talking about. One day she confides in my ears—you must promise never to tell anyone what she confides.”
“I promise!”
“No one. Ever. Not even your Gabester.”
“Yes, yes, go on.”
“She wishes to drown Susannah in Miller’s Pond. Like a kitten, she says.”
I clapped my hands to my ears in horror. “I can’t believe this!”
“I could not believe either. I ask Mose to hitch the horse to the Sunday buggy so that we could take her to see the pastor of your church. At that time, it was Reverend Amstutz—a very kind man, but maybe not so good with people.”
“What did he say?”
“He said it was the Devil putting such ideas in her head. He tells us to pray. So we pray—everyone in Hernia prays, I think—but the Devil does not leave your mama, and I must stay with her every second, even though by then I have my little Jonathan to care for, because she thinks always of the pond.”
I was on the edge of my distressed chair. “What about Papa?”
“Ach, a good man too. But maybe not so—Magdalena, this I do not know how to say.”
“Try Dutch,” I said, referring to the German dialect that is the first language of most Amish.
“No, it is not the words, but what they say.”
“You mean you have something to tell me about Papa that I won’t want to hear? Give me a break, Freni. Please. What did he do, go off and father six more children?”
“Ach! Look how you talk. Your papa did not think so well in this stressful time. That is why he went to Cleveland.”
“Cleveland?”
“To visit his aunt.”
“How long did he stay?”
“Six months.”
I was eleven years old at the time, but I hadn’t even the dimmest memory of my beloved papa taking a six-month sabbatical from my demon-possessed mama. I’d always believed Papa and I had enjoyed an especially close relationship, but boy, was I ever wrong. And to think I always felt closer to Papa, and, if I were to be absolutely honest, was more saddened by his death than I was Mama’s.
“What happened to Mama? How did she get rid of the demon?”
Using her apron, Freni smeared the grease-and-flour combo around on her glasses before popping them back on. Apparently, the worst was over, and it was safe again to make eye contact with yours truly.
“I think maybe it was not a real demon. When the prayers did not work so good, Mose and I drove your mama in to Bedford to see a doctor. One for the head.”
She paused to hang her own head in shame, for having resorted to psychiatry. The woman must be admired on several accounts. For one thing, her lack of neck turned head-hanging into a daunting task. I waited patiently until she continued.
“These head doctors, they are not in the Bible, are they, Magdalena?”
“Neither are dentists, but you and Mose have both been to see one.”
“Toupee.”
“Excuse me?”
“Like the French say, yah?”
“Ah, touché! But anyway, was the psychiatrist able to help? He must have been, because although Mama was as high-strung as a kite in a hurricane, I certainly don’t remember her as being particularly possessed.”
“He gave your mama some pills, and soon she is better. Not like before the post-pardon depression, but still, much better.”
I waited to see if there was more, but there wasn’t. “Is that all, Freni? Is there anything else you’ve neglected to tell me? Do I have a brother chained in the attic?”
My kinswoman turned as white as boiled rice.
“There isn’t,” I cried. “Is there?”
“Not anymore.”
“What?”
For the first time in ages a smile crept across her pale, unadorned lips. “So now you feel better, yah?”
“No, not really. I can’t believe I was lied to all these years. I feel betrayed. Why did they do that? My parents, I mean. And why did you lie to me?”
“Ach, I did not want to hurt you. You are like a daughter to me.”
“But this hurts!” Tears were streaming down my face. If I wore mascara, like Susannah, I’d look just like a panda bear—albeit a comely one, with the figure of a brick outhouse. So says Gabe.
Freni extended her stubby arms. Her intention was to hug me. But just seeing her attempting to perform this unnatural act opened my floodgates even wider. I bawled like an eight-year-old girl who’s been told that she is too old now to get Christmas presents other than bobby socks and sturdy Christian underwear—not that I would necessarily know about such a child.
“Shush, meine kind,” Freni said and grabbed me in a warm and somewhat redolent embrace. (Even at this hour of the morning, she smelled of green onions.) “It will be okay, yah?”
“No, it won’t! How could Mama and Papa do this to me? They’re dead, and now I’
ll never know the truth.”
It’s not just we Yoders who engage in backslapping hugs, but virtually all Mennonites of Amish ancestry and, of course, the Amish. It has been postulated that this ritual behavior, usually performed upon greeting and departing, has its origins in the fact that both groups are intensely food oriented, and that the back-whacking is actually a precursor to the Heimlich maneuver. To corroborate this theory, bear in mind that the first person to deviate from normal hugs was a gentleman by the name of Heimlich Yoder. Enough said.
There are limits to backslapping too, and Freni had reached hers. “So now I will tell you why your mama lied,” she said.
10
Butter Pecan Ice Cream Recipe
Ingredients:
½ pint (250 ml) single/light cream
2 oz (50 g) brown sugar
1 tablespoon butter
½ pint (250 ml) heavy/double cream
½ teaspoon vanilla extract (or according to taste)
¼ cup pecans (chopped)
Place the single cream, sugar, and butter into a saucepan and mix together over low heat. Stir until the mixture starts to bubble around the edges. Remove the saucepan from the heat, and allow to cool.
When the mixture is cold, transfer it to an ice cream maker and stir in the double cream and vanilla extract. Freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions, but remember to add the pecans as the ice cream starts to harden.
11
“Your mama was afraid that if you knew the truth—that you did not share the pants—then maybe you would stop loving her,” Freni said.
“Share pants? Mama didn’t put one foot inside a pair of trousers until Susannah was a teenager. By then, I was out of the nest. Okay, so I still lived at home then, but I’d grown my adult plumage. I could have flown, and might have too, if Mama hadn’t been so clingy. I mean that figuratively, of course.”
“Ach, du lieber! Not the trouser pants—the jeans.”
“Wrong again, dear. Mama never touched a pair of Levi’s.”
Freni wrung her scallion-scented hands. “Not the cloth jeans; the ones inside the body. The MBNA, yah?”
Then it hit me, like a ton of Mama’s eggless dumplings. (To put it kindly, Mama was culinarily challenged.) “DNA!” I screamed. “Genes!”
“Yah, that’s what I said.”
“Are you telling me that Mama thought that just because we didn’t share the same flesh and blood, that I wouldn’t love her?”
Freni nodded, no doubt speechless upon finally discovering that my stupidity knows no bounds.
“But that’s so—so—well, I’m not that shallow.”
“Yah, not so shallow. This I tell her, but with different words.”
“Thank you. And Papa, what was his excuse?”
“Your papa”—she paused, and I could tell she was praying for a Christian tongue—“he made the honky-tonky with this woman and that woman, but of your mama, he was always afraid.”
“She was half his size, for crying out loud.”
“But she had a giant personality, yah?”
“For sure.”
“You must always remember one thing, Magdalena; Mose and I do not care about this DMA. To us, you will always be a Yoder and a Hostetler. And, of course, now a Rosen too.”
“I love you, Freni!” I threw my arms around the stout woman, hugging her tightly to me. Taking her by surprise as I did, her arms were pinned to her sides. It took her less than thirty seconds to cry uncle.
“Ach, let me go!”
“Not until you say ‘I love you’ back to me.”
“You already know that I do.”
“But you gotta say it.”
“Enough with the games, Magdalena. The English will have a cold breakfast.”
I squeezed harder. I was rather enjoying myself. It’s not every day that a five-foot, ten-inch python devours a stubby Amish woman in Hernia, Pennsylvania.
“Unh.”
“Say it, dear.”
“Ah unh ooh.”
“Close enough.”
Since, in my humble opinion, nothing says loving better than a good whiff of cow manure, after releasing Freni from my death grip, I headed out to the barn. It is no ordinary barn, believe you me.
I got married the first time in that barn. I also discovered a body in that barn, pinned to an upright beam by a pitchfork. I have happier memories as well: as a girl I discovered litter after litter of adorable kittens that had been birthed in its hayloft; I learned that Beverly Neuhauser didn’t wear panties, Christian or otherwise; and it was impressed on me, quite literally, that Isaac Newton was quite right about gravity. The last was a happy memory because the entire week following my bungled attempt to fly (mop heads are no substitute for proper wings), I was every bit as pampered as one of Marie Antoinette’s pooches.
If two cows are capable of pleasantly stimulating my olfactory senses, imagine what a small herd can do! So entranced was I by the Essence of Holstein that I plumb, and quite shamefully, had momentarily forgotten the previous night’s horrible tragedy. When I saw Doc’s handwriting, scrawled in blood across the broad door, I nearly fainted. Who could have done such a thing to an eighty-some-year-old man?
While I waited for the lightheadedness to pass, I closed my eyes and prayed for Doc’s recovery. Had it been permissible to pray for the slow torture of his assailants, I probably would have done so. (It was my non-Mennonite blood doing the thinking, I assure you.) Then, because Chief Chris is a good man, but still relatively inexperienced, I prayed for the wisdom and strength I was going to need to find Doc’s assailant and bring him, or her, to justice.
“Magdalena, are you okay?”
I jumped so high that my left foot literally came out of its brogan. Jamming it back in, I plastered a smile across my comely face.
“Mose! Where did you come from?”
Freni’s dear husband is seventy-five, but is every bit as fit as a man nine tenths his age. When Papa was alive and kept an active dairy herd, Mose worked for him full time. Now he looks after my two cows and helps out with maintenance. He does not, however, keep regular hours.
“I wanted to see the English cows.”
“And?”
“Never have I seen such beautiful Holsteins.”
“Were you here at milking time?” Dairy dilettantes are sometimes surprised to learn that cows must be milked twice a day, every day, come rain or high fevers, and that the morning milking usually takes place at a time most folks would prefer to be snoozing. I personally don’t rise at that hour, so I’ve hired a nearby Amish boy to do the job. And just for the record, I would sooner accuse myself of assaulting Doc than I would accuse Seth.
“Yah, because this I must see. With such machines, Magdalena, I think it is possible to get milk from a rock.”
I couldn’t help but smile. As much work as it was, Papa had eschewed electric milking machines for the true hands-on approach. He thought the cows responded to his warm touch by producing more milk, and with a higher butterfat content.
“So you think these cows deserve to be in this contest?”
Mose bit his lip as he appeared to think this over.
“What is it?” I demanded. “I know you and Freni aren’t too keen on contests, but there’s more to that here, isn’t there?”
“Ach, Magdalena, I cannot tell a lie.”
We’d been having this conversation in the barn, next to Doc’s bloody message. I beckoned Mose into the bright, rejuvenating sunshine of a perfect April morning.
“Okay, Mose, out with it.”
He glanced around, perhaps looking for the Devil. “They are all beautiful cows, yah? But except for one, I think. This one is—ach, but I must say this—ordinary?”
“Ordinary?” Mose would not knowingly bad-mouth a flea. To hear him use such harsh language about a cow shocked me to the tips of my stocking-clad toes. I reeled like a drunk woman. Had I been wearing dentures, I might well have stepped on them. Fortunately, my real chomper
s are in tip-top condition, thanks to all the milk Mama made me drink as a girl.
He nodded. “It is not a bad cow; I myself have such animals. But there are many wrinkles on the bag, and it is smaller than the average.”
“Show me.”
Mose led me around to a pen on the north side of the barn. It was the enclosure picked by the Dorfman brothers. Although I’d seen and admired their cows the day before, armed with Mose’s information, I saw them now with new eyes. One of the Holsteins was still a beauty, but indeed, the other was, well, ordinary. She certainly wasn’t worth toting all the way from North Dakota.
“So now you see.”
“For sure. What gives?”
“Gives?”
“What are the owners of this cow up to?”
Mose shrugged. “The ways of the English are like piddles, yah?”
“Piddles?”
“Games for the mind.”
“Ah, you must mean ‘riddles.’”
“Forgive me, Magdalena, but I think the correct word is ‘piddles.’”
It was time to stop yanking his chain, as Susannah would say. “Did you say anything to the Dorfman brothers about their inferior entry?”
“Ach, no, it is not my business.”
“Good man. Leave it to me; I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“Be careful, yah?” His look of concern was heartening.
“I will, indeed.”
“But this time, really careful. Not like the other times.”
“Mose, just because I’ve been thrown down a mine shaft, left trussed in a burning house, ordered to jump out of an airplane, and even carted off to the wilds of Maryland, is not to say that I’m a careless woman. Au contraire; the very fact that I’ve survived these many and varied attempts on my life is proof that I am skilled at extracting myself from the very jaws of the Grim Reaper. Or would that be Reaperess? Then again, if we are to eliminate sexism from language, we cannot automatically assign gender to an entity that lacks a corporal being. But if we do, is not turnabout fair play? I mean, what’s good for the gander is good for the goose, and vice versa.”
