by MYERS, TAMAR
“You’re a wicked man, Sam. May I assume that the chief told you all about Minerva’s untimely demise?”
My former kinsman snorted. “You call that untimely? I’d have run her over with my delivery truck years ago if I’d thought I could get away with it.”
I couldn’t help gasping. Even for a Methodist that was going a bit far.
“And you call yourself a Christian!”
“Just hold your horses, Magdalena, until you hear what I have to say. But in the meantime, knowing you as I do, would you care to have a snack? I’m working on a couple of boxes of stale cookies and a gallon of slightly off orange juice; can’t afford to throw away inventory just because of due dates. Speaking of which, you look pretty close. Would you like to sit down? I can pull my chair around from behind the counter.”
It saddens me to say that the offer he’d just made was by far his most generous ever. But alas, this sort of miserly behavior is quite in keeping with Sam’s character. When asked for food to contribute to family gatherings, he donates day-old bread and cold-cut packages that have been pried open by cautious customers. However, one must remember not to pile the coals of scorn too high on my pseudo-cousin’s head. I mean, surely a good deal of the blame must lie with his maternal ancestress: persnickety Priscilla Peabody of Parsippany, whose parsimony was legendary. It was said she could squeeze blood from a persimmon, but I again digress.
“I hate alliteration,” Sam said.
“What?”
“I said, ‘You don’t look so hot.’ Don’t get me wrong, you still look hotter than Angelina, but you look kind of sick.”
“Uh-huh. I think I need to use the bathroom.”
He pointed to the rear of the store. “Well, you know where it is. Just don’t blame me if you see anything lying around—you know, like magazines and such—because it’s my private bathroom. I don’t normally let customers use it.”
“Don’t worry.” I hadn’t taken more than three steps when I felt my thighs become drenched with warm liquid.
“Magdalena! You could have at least held it in a few seconds longer!”
Believe me, I was mortified. Then terrified. It wasn’t time yet, not for that to happen. It was still two weeks too early. Besides, there was no way I was going to even begin the process of welcoming Little Jacob into the world in Sam Yoder ’s miserable excuse for a grocery store.
“I didn’t! I mean, it’s nothing; just a little too much coffee this morning, that’s all.”
Sam may have been a slimy, slithering sleazebag, to put it kindly, but he wasn’t a brainless slug. When it sank into his elliptical bald head that my water had broken, he lunged for his desk phone.
“I’m calling 911,” he said. “Then I’m calling Gabe. Anyone else?”
“Oprah? Sam, it isn’t what you think. It’s just an embarrassing little episode of—holy Toledo!” I all but dropped to my knees as Little Jacob, no doubt inspired by Sam’s lunge, dove for the nearest exit. Honestly, it was an abdominal pain the likes and intensity of which I’d never before experienced.
Sam’s dialing hand froze while a smirk spread across his smarmy face. “Why, Magdalena, I do believe you swore.”
“I did not! But since you’re going to call, call now.”
“All right, all right.” He leaned on his checkout counter while he talked, and he talked far too long. My Amish cook, Freni, could have baked yeast rolls from scratch while he alternately nodded and mumbled.
“Well?” I demanded, quite reasonably after two real minutes (as measured by the clock above the counter) had passed. “What’s taking so long?”
“Shh! I can’t hear what she’s saying if you insist on prattling in my ear.”
I wasn’t anywhere near his ear, a fact for which Sam should thank his lucky stars. “Jumping junipers and a pear tree,” I screeched as a second pain shot like a lightning bolt down my abdomen to my nether regions.
Instead of getting off the phone, Sam stared at his watch while talking louder. “Yes, that was her. Look, you’ve got to send someone out; I can’t do this alone.”
The hairs on the nape of my neck stood up as I, true to form, assumed the worst. “Do what?”
“But I’ve never birthed a baby before,” he all but shouted into the phone.
“And you won’t now! Give me that dang thing!” Normally, given his strength, playing keep-away with Sam would be a losing proposition for me. But by leading with my belly (sorry, Little Jacob) I was able to unnerve him to the point where I could have grabbed a million dollars in cash from his register. Wresting the phone from him was child’s play.
Nonetheless, Sam had to catch his breath. “You don’t want to know, Magdalena.”
“Yes, I do,” I hollered into the receiver. “What is going on?”
The person on the other end of the line swore at me for shouting but caught herself after the third invective. “Why, Magdalena Yoder, is that you?”
“Thelma Liddleputt?”
“Indeed it is. I don’t believe we’ve spoken since the tenth grade.”
“And there’s no time to speak now, dear, unless it has to do with the situation at hand. Where is the ambulance, and what is all this about Sam birthing my baby?”
“Uh—I take it he didn’t tell you?”
“No, we’ve been too busy having tea and crumpets. Of course he didn’t tell me—he just got off the phone!”
“Magdalena, sarcasm does not become you; it never did. Remember that time in biology class when we were lab partners and we had to dissect a—”
“Tell me where the ambulance is, Thelma, or I’ll crawl through this phone line, belly and all, and do to you what we did to that frog—oops! I’m sorry, Thelma, I really am. The Devil made me say that.”
There followed an unforgivably long pause. “I’ll forgive you, Magdalena, but only because you’re in the final stages of labor, and due to the mass poisonings at your church, there isn’t an ambulance available in the tri-county area.”
7
“This is no time for games, Thelma. Minerva J. Jay was the only victim of our pancake breakfast, as you well know.”
“You wish. After you left, twenty-three people came down with food-poisoning symptoms and we had to call in the rescue squads from Somerset and Blair counties to transport the victims to Bedford County Memorial Hospital.”
“That’s just not possible.”
“I don’t lie—like some people I know, Magdalena. Remember the time in English class when Mrs. Seibert asked you if you’d finished your term paper, and you said that you had, but you hadn’t even begun?”
“We’re all works in progress, dear. Even you. Anyway, I’m not in the final stages of labor, because I’ve only just begun. I’ll just have Chief Ackerman drive me into town.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible either. Your chief of police was pressed into service transporting the victims, but now he’s stuck on this side of the bridge.”
“Bridge? What bridge?”
“The one that spans Slave Creek. Isn’t that the only way in and out of Hernia, except for that painfully circu—uh—circu—no, it’s not circumference, uh—”
I may have lied to Mrs. Seibert, but at least I passed her course. “You mean circuitous,” I may have snapped. “What about it?”
“Goodness me, Magdalena, there’s no need to get snippy, just because you’re about to have a baby with no one but that creepy Sam Yoder to assist you.”
“I’m not about to—holy guacamole and a bowl full of chips,” I roared. The third contraction was more like a wave of contractions, each one stronger than the last, and if my language strayed from snack items, it really was not my fault so much as it was Eve’s. It was she, after all, who first bit into the forbidden fruit and then offered it to Adam. As part of Eve’s punishment, the Good Lord cursed her with the pain of childbirth.
Until now I’d never really given that particular part of the creation story a whole lot of thought, but suddenly it had re
levance, and, if I might be so bold, it seemed perhaps more than a wee bit unfair. I mean, far be it from me to tell God how to structure his punishment scale, but shouldn’t Adam—and I mean this in the generic sense—also have to share in the pain of childbirth? Little Jacob got into my womb with some outside help, and if getting out of it was going to hurt so ding-dang much, then by rights my husband, Gabriel, ought to be made to share in the pain (Lord, that is only a suggestion, mind You).
“Magdalena, are you there?”
“No,” I panted, “I’m off gathering mushrooms in the steppes of Mongolia.”
“Is that sarcasm again?”
“You think? Finish telling me about the bridge, Thelma, or you don’t get invited to this baby’s dedication.” As a Mennonite, I belong to a denomination that not only eschews, but practically abhors infant baptism. My ancestors faced death at the hands of the established church in Switzerland during the late 1500s, rather than submit to what they viewed as a senseless practice. The dedication of an infant to the Lord, however, has a sound biblical basis. Of course, Thelma needed no invitation if she merely wanted to attend the church service, but she knew that I was referring to the reception that would later be held at my house.
Thelma sighed. “Oh, all right, but you’re so bossy. Always have been. Anyway, one of the ambulances was crossing the bridge when this big truck carrying farm machinery comes barreling down the hill from the other direction. The ambulance driver—that was Rory from up in Altoona—just managed to squeeze by, but the truck jackknifed and slammed sideways into the rails. Magdalena, there’s no way you’re getting across Slave Creek unless someone carries you across in a stretcher. Even then, how will you get there?”
“Sam,” I bellowed, “get your truck!”
“I can’t,” he whined. “I tried to take my Dorothy into town last week and two tires blew. I haven’t had time to fix them.” Alas, he was probably telling the truth; the last time Dorothy had been weighed at Miller’s Feed Store, she’d tipped the grain scale at six hundred and eighty-four pounds.
“Magdalena,” Thelma snarled, “did you just shout in my ear?”
“You would too if a watermelon was pressing down on your pelvis.”
“Aha, just as I thought. You’re a very lucky woman, Magdalena Yoder; this is one of those what I call ‘zip-zap’ deliveries. Only one in a thousand women gets to be this lucky.”
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!”
“Which is not to say that it isn’t without some discomfort. But like you said, you’re about to give birth to a watermelon. You can’t expect to get off scot-free.”
“Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!”
“Do you feel like you need to push?”
How in the Sam Hill could I answer that question when I was panting as hard as if I’d just run the Pittsburgh marathon?
“Magdalena, did you take birthing classes? You know, like Lamaze?”
Oh, that I had! Mine has been a somewhat rocky marriage, and there have been a lot of things I’ve been intending to do but that I have put off until “things get better.” Of course, they never quite have.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Thelma said after my telling pause. “So, here’s what you’ll do—”
“Unnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnh!”
I gasped for air like a stranded carp. I had no doubt that this last contraction had done more than position Little Jacob for a “zip-zap” exit. The bugger was already on his way.
“But—I—want an—ep—i—dural!”
“It’s too late, Magdalena, even if there was a doctor standing right there. By the way, are you wearing panty hose?”
“What?”
“Oh, that’s right, I remember now; you wear sturdy Christian underwear and thick woolen stockings when the weather’s cold. Well, the good news is that the stockings can stay—”
I dropped the phone and instinctively lowered myself to a squatting position; Little Jacob had let it be known he was tired of our conversation.
“So that is how this little fella came to be born in Sam’s tawdry market, and me without a single drop of painkiller in my system,” I explained to the cluster of loved ones gathered around my bed in Bedford County Memorial Hospital. It was eight hours after the fact, and this was my bazillionth retelling of the story, but the first time that the entire bunch could assemble at the same time. The bridge had just been cleared.
If I must say so myself, Sam had done a remarkably good job of the delivery. He’d cut Little Jacob’s cord with a sterilized box cutter, cleared the little fellow’s air passages, bathed him, and swaddled him in an old apron that had been washed so many times, it was as soft as a pima cotton jersey.
My pseudo-cousin had even rustled up a semiclean set of sweat duds for me. It was the first time I’d ever worn pants. I might have been bothered even more by this very clear violation of Scripture had it not been for the fact that I had nothing on underneath them. Well, what’s done is done, right? Since then I’d been bathed by a coterie of nurses (I donated their lounge, after all) and dressed in a sex-appropriate gown—that is to say, one of my very own new flannel nighties that the Babester had brought from home.
“Nu,” my mother-in-law demanded, “you call dat a story? Mitt dis von I vas in labor for five days, not five minutes.”
“Actually, it was closer to twenty-five minutes from start to finish. Once he poked his head out and looked around, Little Jacob seemed to have second thoughts.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, “and that’s when I had to—”
“But all’s well that ends well, right, Little Jacob?”
As if on cue, my seven-pound, two-ounce bundle of joy simultaneously mewled and yawned. Of course this indescribably cute response elicited oohs and aahs from everyone in the room, but as well it should. I’m not prejudiced, mind you—a fairer woman was never born—but Little Jacob was the single most perfect and harmoniously formed newborn I had ever seen.
“Mags,” my sister, Susannah, said, “are you going to breast-feed?” The poor dear not only has a deficit of bosom, but she is able to, and does, carry a pitiful pooch named Shnookums around in her bra.
“Oh, gross,” my pseudo-stepdaughter, Alison, chimed in. “Mom, ya don’t mean ya really are going to feed him with your—I mean, that’s disgusting!”
“Going to? I’ve already nursed him three times; your little brother is a bottomless pit.”
“Ya mean that too?”
“You better believe it. If Lake Erie was breast milk, he could drain it dry.”
“That’s my boy,” the Babester said proudly.
“No, Mom,” Alison said, and there was an unusual sense of urgency in her voice. “I mean, like, is he really my little brother?”
“Listen, dear,” I said, “you’re my foster daughter now, right?”
“Right.”
“But more than that, you’re the daughter of my heart. So, therefore, Little Jacob is your brother. Case closed.”
Alison beamed. “Mom, you’re the best!”
Freni Hostetler, who is both my Amish cook and a mother figure, nodded vigorously. Due to the fact that she lacks a neck, her stout body rocked back and forth like a spinning top about to topple over.
“Yah, Magdalena, I am very proud of you. And to think that you had this baby with only Sam Yoder as a midwife! Ach, it was a miracle.”
“Amen,” Freni’s husband, Mose, intoned.
“But tell me, Magdalena,” Freni continued, “how soon will you have the brisket?”
“I guess that all depends on when you smuggle it in. And the sooner the better, I say. I’m famished.”
“Hon,” the Babester said, “I think she means ‘bris.’ ”
“What’s that? A little brisket?”
“Ach,” said Mose, stroking his beard, “I think maybe someone should tell her.”
“Tell me what?”
“Hon,” Gabe said, but his eyes were not on mine, “a bris is a ritual circumcision. We talked about that,
remember?”
Dare I admit that I had? But the conversation had occurred ages ago, and it had been theoretical, when Little Jacob was still just a little heartbeat who might never develop a whatchamacallit. Besides, I’d given birth to a human being just eight hours ago. How could I be expected to remember anything at the moment?
“Maybe vaguely,” I said. “But since we have thirteen years to go before that’s an issue, I don’t think we need to talk about this further now. We don’t want to give our little precious nightmares, do we?”
“Oy gevalt,” my mother-in-law, Ida, said. “Now she’s shikkur.”
“Ma,” Gabe said with surprising sharpness, “Magdalena is not drunk; she’s just confused.” The Babester then turned to me tenderly, this time making eye contact. “Hon, thirteen is when you get bar mitzvahed. You get circumcised when you’re eight days old.”
“What?”
“What’s circumcision?” Alison said.
“Snip, snip,” Susannah said crudely.
“Ach,” Freni gasped.
“Snip, snip where?” Alison demanded.
“Down below,” I said meaningfully. It was the only term my adoptive parents had ever used for genitalia, male or female, and, I’m ashamed to say, Alison knew exactly what I meant.
It was her turn to gasp. “All of it?”
As long as gasping seemed to be the thing to do, Ida wouldn’t be left out. “Such an imagination dis child has. Tell her, Gabeleh.”
I gasped. “Now? In mixed company?”
“It’s in the Bible,” my sweetie said. “Starting with Abraham—although he was circumcised when he was an old man. But Jesus had his bris when he was just eight days old.”
“Oh, all right,” I said, “you may as well explain. You’re a doctor, after all.” The truth is that every time Gabe, who is not a Christian, brings up Jesus to score a point, he wins a point.
My husband, the doctor, wasted no time. “It’s called a foreskin. Think of it as a hood of skin that extends over the end of the penis. During a bris—which is a ritual circumcision—the skin is surgically removed.”
