Batter Off Dead

by MYERS, TAMAR

  That shocked him into a moment of silence. “I could ask you the same thing, you know,” he said at last.

  “Yes, but I’m the interrogator. Now, please answer.”

  “It wasn’t me. But I can answer that for you; the pills were dropped into a single bowl of batter, and then Miss Jay with her enormous appetite ate that entire batch.”

  “Hmm. I suppose that would work—if the killer knew the cakes were headed out to a specific customer. But we were working at breakneck speed. We were all taking turns, dashing about madly, filling in as needed. What you’re suggesting would have taken some planning.”

  “You were dashing about at breakneck speed, Miss Yoder, because that’s your modus operandi.”

  “It’s genetic; I can’t help it! It’s a disease.”

  “Nevertheless, any one of the rest of us, by keeping a calmer head, could have planned an entire griddle full of cakes for that glutton. It was a given that she would show. Oh, and by the way, before you point out that I have one of the calmest heads—which I do—I must likewise point out that your maniacal behavior would also make a perfect cover for that insidious crime.”

  “How dare—”

  “Good night, Miss Yoder. Please watch your step going down the spiral staircase. And peace be with you.”

  “He’s awesome,” Alison said.

  It was less than an hour later, and we were sitting around the kitchen table enjoying a hearty supper of beef cabbage soup and corn bread. Little Jacob, of course, was growing fat on his own special diet. Freni had been driven home by her husband, Mose, via horse and buggy, so my dearly beloved was the only other adult there.

  “He’s a murder suspect,” I said.

  “And no, you can’t date him,” Gabriel said.

  Alison slammed her spoon down on the table, sending specks of broth out into the universe. “Aw, man, you guys are like the meanest parents there are.”

  Oh, what music to my ears. That my pseudo-stepdaughter should refer to my husband and me as her parents, even in a fit of anger, meant that she had truly come to accept us as such. Biologically she was the fruit of my quasi-first husband’s loins. Aaron, you see, was the cause of my inadvertent bigamy because he was legally married to, but separated from, a strumpet up in Minnesota, one to whom he is still hitched. They, however, neither wanted to raise Alison, nor cared enough about the child to turn custody of her over to me. Thank heaven all that would change in just eight weeks when the court could declare Alison officially abandoned and our petition to adopt her would be finalized.

  I flashed our future full-daughter a placating smile. “When you turn eighteen, you may date anyone you wish. Although I must warn you that in the meantime you should work really hard on developing a taste for Christian rock music. He plays it for a couple of hours every night for the benefit of his groupies.”

  “Yuck. I don’t like religious music—no offense, Mom. And whatcha mean by groupies?”

  Gabe winked at me. “She means the girls that hang around him, right, hon?”

  “Yes, but I’m not making this up. Alison, dear, before you came to live with me—with us—I had big-name stars stay here at the inn, and none of them had quite this guy’s charisma.”

  “Oh, man,” Alison said as she lurched for her spoon, “this reeks big-time. How come you had big stars stay here before I come along, and since then only piddly people like what’s her name?”

  “Babs is not piddly!”

  Gabe sighed. “I’ll say. You don’t have to be a person who loves people to go nuts over her singing. Even Ma loves her, and she’s critical of everyone.”

  As if on cue, the swinging door from the dining room flew open. “Did I hear my name taken in wain?”

  I couldn’t help but groan. Ida Rosen used to be the mother-in-law from Hades, but ever since she found out that her shikse daughter-in-law (that would be me) could produce an heir, she has been the mother-in-law from the suburb next to Hades.

  “Ma,” Gabe hastened to explain, “I was just saying how much you love Barbra.”

  “Yah, a good Jewish girl, that one.” She pulled a chair out opposite Alison and, unbidden, hiked her rather hefty heinie up to the seat. The chair groaned as well.

  “Do you want some beef cabbage soup, Grandma Ida?” Alison knows there is no love lost between the two of us, but she adores us both.

  “From a can?”

  “Absolutely not,” I declared indignantly. “Freni made this from scratch.”

  “Den mebbe a litle.”

  “Ma,” Gabe said quietly, “your accent’s getting stronger again.”

  Ida pretended not to hear. “Nu, Magdalena, I vas reading dis article in Hadassah magazine und I tink about you.”

  “Really?” I was mildly curious; still, I wanted to slap my lips for betraying me.

  “Yah. It said dat your Jesus vas a Jew.”

  I waited patiently for something enlightening to follow.

  “Did you know dat?” she said, a bit piqued when no response from me was forthcoming.

  “Why, yes I did.”

  “So, He vas a convert. Den it is not such a bad ting for you to convert, no?”

  “No! I mean, He wasn’t a convert; He was born Jewish.”

  “Even better! But imagine such a ting! All the goyim say dat He vas a Christian, und now you, who are an expert in such tings, say He vasn’t.”

  “Of course Jesus was a Christian,” Alison said. “Every dummy knows that—oops, sorry, Grandma Ida.”

  “No, Alison,” I said softly, “to be a Christian means that you are a follower of Christ. Jesus was not a follower of Himself.”

  Meanwhile Ida was shaking her head. “Vas His mama a Jew?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Born that way as well.”

  “Den dis I don’t understand; vhy do so many Christians hate de Jews vhen der own Jesus und His mother vere Jewish?”

  Gabe and I made eye contact but said nothing. Surely Ida knew the answer to that question. She was a survivor of Nazi Germany, for crying out loud. She’d been exposed to anti-Semitism all her life. If she’d been called a Christ killer once, she’d been called it a thousand times.

  “Yeah, why?” Alison demanded.

  “Because,” I said at last, “they blame the Jews for killing Jesus.”

  “But I thought it was the Romans,” Alison said.

  “Yes, directly—but it was all of us who put Him up there on the cross; it was the sins of the world that He volunteered to die for.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Oy veys meer.”

  When Alison descends deep into thought, her brows literally meet. “What I don’t get is that these people, the ones who blame the Jews for Jesus’ death, how come they ain’t thanking the Jews instead? I mean, if Jesus died an old man, He wouldn’t o’ taken away nobody’s sin, and they wouldn’t have crosses and such for the front of their churches. They’d have to hang up canes or wheelchairs instead.”

  As sacrilegious as that was, I couldn’t help but smile. The girl had a point; one could hardly subscribe to a faith that relied on a sacrifice, and then not have a sacrificial victim. I was about to add an enlightening theological comment of my own when I saw Ida giving Alison what looked like a thumbs-up.

  “What was that about?” I demanded.

  “It weren’t nothing,” Alison said.

  “You mean it wasn’t nothing, dear,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s exactly what I meant,” Alison said.

  “Yah, das vhat she meant,” Ida said without missing a beat.

  I looked from Alison to Ida and back again. Something was going on between the two of them.

  “Out with it!” I roared. Beneath the blanket Little Jacob stopped nursing, but only for a second. With his strong nerves and insatiable appetite, my bundle of joy was indeed a chip off my old bun.

  It was Ida, bless her grandmotherly heart, who went first. “This one,” she said without a trace of an accent, “
is not having such a good time at school.”

  I turned to Alison with alarm. “You’re not failing algebra again, are you, dear? Because we can get you a tutor.”

  “Mom, it ain’t that.”

  “Oh, sweetheart,” Gabe said, “is that Lipinski girl picking on you again because you’re uh—well, you know.”

  “Ya mean because I’m a carpenter ’s dream?”

  Ida found her accent again. “Vhat does dat mean?”

  “It means that I’m flat chested, Grandma Ida.”

  “Nu? Better dat you should have too litle den too much. Even vhen I go shluffie on my back, dey—”

  “TMI!” Gabe cried. “Too much information!”

  “Anyvey, her chests, dey are not de problem. De problem is dat some of de children are anti-semantic.”

  I started. “What? They’re opposed to the use of connotative meanings?”

  “Oy,” Ida groaned, “dis von is meshugah for sure.”

  “They call me Jew girl!” Alison blurted.

  I was momentarily stunned. Alison was no more a “Jew girl” than I was a “Jew woman.” And what was wrong with being either?

  “Is that an insult?” I asked.

  “The proper term is Jewish,” Gabe said quietly.

  “But she isn’t.” I turned to Alison. “Who calls you that?”

  “Walter Gawronski even calls me a stinking Jew girl. He says that I have Jew cooties.”

  “Did you tell him you were a Mennonite?” The Gawronskis were newcomers to town, having immigrated here from south-western Ohio.

  “That’s not the point,” Gabe said.

  “Besides, Mom, he ain’t the only one. Mandy Keim calls me Jew girl too, and she goes to our church. So does Brittany Augsburger and Johnny Schrock and Denise Livengood and—”

  “What do you say to them, dear?”

  “First I told them that I weren’t, on account of Dad was only my sorta stepdad, but since my real dad—I mean what’s their names up in Minnesota—don’t even want me anymore, and youse two is gonna adopt me, I tell ’em I’m half Jewish, and so what?”

  “Dis von makes me proud,” Ida said.

  “And if being proud wasn’t against my religion,” I said, “I’d put Grandma Ida’s pride to shame with how much pride I feel.”

  And indeed, I was proud of Alison, although it broke my heart to hear her refer to her birth parents as “what’s their names.” That scoundrel—the one who stole my maidenhood under false pretenses—and his wife had actually petitioned the courts to have their parental bonds with Alison officially terminated. Their motive was to end the child-support checks they sent to me every month, which I faithfully deposited in Alison’s college fund. Of course the judge didn’t grant the Millers their wish directly, but he did sentence them both to six months in jail for child abandonment and had the state declare them unfit parents, which amounted to the same thing as a parent-child annulment.

  Gabe’s response to Alison’s answer was to get up and put his arms around her neck. “Just think, honey, in only two more months Mom and I will be able to legally adopt you.”

  Ida hoisted her bosoms onto the table so that she could lean forward as much as possible. “Nu, bubbeleh, den vill you be a Rosen, or a Yodel?”

  “That’s Yoder,” I roared.

  At that, Little Jacob decided his dinner was over and it was time to kvetch big-time. His sudden cry of distress was so loud that even I, the one who’d been holding him, was startled. It was almost as if he’d popped out of nowhere and yelled, “Boo.” Naturally I whipped off the blankie that had been covering him, popped his dinner container back into its holster, and proceeded to burp the little fella.

  Poor Ida turned white, then pink, then white, and then pink again, all in slow motion. Observing her reaction was a bit like watching a chromatically challenged lava lamp, except that lava lamps generally do not possess the power of speech.

  “Oy gevalt!” she finally managed to say. “Und dis you do in front of your family?”

  “Don’t you eat in front of this family?”

  “Yah, but—dis—dis mitt de breast, und in front of de child yet!”

  “Don’tcha worry none, Grandma Ida,” Alison said. “I seen this a million times, so I’m used to it now. And it ain’t gonna pervert me any, ’cause I’m already perverted. Ain’t I, Mom?”

  “What?”

  “Don’tcha remember that at Cousin Freni’s farm I seen that bull and a cow make themselves a calf?”

  “Yes, dear. But Ida—”

  “Und my poor little Gabeleh? You do such a ting in front of him?”

  “Ma, get off her case,” Gabe said, much to my surprise. “I’m a doctor; I think I can handle it.”

  “Besides,” I said, perhaps a wee bit cruelly, “how do you think Little Jacob came to be?”

  “Funny that you should bring up that subject,” Alison said, “because I’ve been meaning to ask you about that.”

  “Oy veys meer,” I said just as Little Jacob let out an enormous burp.

  17

  Alison merely wanted to know if there were parallels to be drawn between the mating cows and what humans did behind closed doors. She’d already concluded as much; she just wanted an adult to confirm it. My intent was to tell her that a loving, committed relationship was a lot different than livestock breeding, but I made the mistake of beginning my explanation with the word yes, which sent her gagging from the room. The next morning, as I drove her to school, she declared that she would never, ever have sex, not even if she lived to be a million years old, and if at some point she should decide she wanted a child, she would adopt one just like we did. Silently, I thanked the Good Lord for the amorous bull, and wisely, I said nothing.

  Usually Alison rides the bus, which stops at the end of our driveway, but on this particular day I had an unscheduled parent-teacher meeting to attend. The victim of my visit was Merle Waggler, a soft, sloppy, but perpetually smiling young man who teaches Alison eighth-grade math and earth science. Merle is a lifelong member of Beechy Grove Mennonite Church and has been a member of the brotherhood ever since he married about ten years ago. Most important, he was near the top of my suspect list.

  It may seem odd to save one of my biggest suspects for last, but I’d been out of practice for the length of Little Jacob’s gestation, and I needed to get my size elevens wet again before jumping back in up to my neck. Besides, I’ve always found Merle’s perpetual smile a bit off-putting. I know it’s a smile because he’s a Christian and attends my church; if I was a stranger, however, I would be sorely tempted to interpret his upturned lips as a smirk. Maybe it’s because what goes on in his eyes simply doesn’t match what comes out of his mouth on a good many occasions.

  Alison used to adore Mr. Waggler until he started reading, in a loud voice, the class’s math-test scores. He said that he did it to reward the good students and encourage the middling ones, but Alison believes, as do I, that he wasn’t above humiliating the poor students. I don’t think he did it to be mean (Alison does), but to shame his pupils into studying harder. I base my interpretation of his motive on the fact that shame was a huge motivator for me while I was in school. Not only was I “Yoder with the Odor,” but because of one D on a spelling test (I was out with the flu the week the words were assigned), I was dubbed Dumbdalena for an entire semester—and that was by a teacher: Mrs. Regier.

  At any rate, I found Merle Waggler in the teachers’ lounge, in his usual sloppy attire, having a cup of coffee and chatting with a very pretty—and unnaturally blond—student teacher from over by Somerset. I was hoping that my unexpected appearance would put the fear of Magdalena in Merle, because he is a good ten years younger than me, if not more, but he merely smiled. Or smirked, depending on one’s interpretation.

  “Mmm,” he intoned, as per his usual way of beginning to speak. “Let me guess: she’s held up a gas station, and you’re on your way to bail her out of jail. You want me to know that I shouldn’t delay cla
ss on her account.”

  The student teacher twittered while I raged silently—well, for all of five seconds. “Excuse me? Was that supposed to be funny, Merle?”

  “Mmm, Magdalena, you must admit that your—ah, how shall I put this—protégée? Anyway, she has all the makings of a juvenile delinquent.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. This from a teacher who wore sweatshirts to school? Never mind that when he was in high school—I forget which year—Merle and a buddy were arrested for spray painting near obscenities on the bridge over Slave Creek. The only reason the judge dismissed their cases was because the boys had been clever enough to employ euphemisms instead of outright vulgar expressions. Personally, I find the use of innuendo just as offensive.

  “She is not a juvenile delinquent!” I ejaculated angrily.

  “Mmm, I didn’t say she was; I said she had the makings of one. Really, Magdalena, you do jump to conclusions.”

  “At least I get my exercise—oops, that wasn’t very nice of me. Sorry.”

  “Mmm, I’ll take it as you meant it. So, what do you want?”

  No beating around the bush for me. “Did you like Minerva J. Jay?”

  “Did I what?”

  “You dropped the mmms.”

  “Huh?” He looked at me like I was the crazy woman I’ve sometimes been made out to be.

  “You do say it a lot,” the student teacher said, and then, realizing that she’d placed a fledgling foot in her mouth, made a sudden exit from the room.

  “Back to Minerva, dear,” I said. “Did she get on your last nerva?”

  “You’re so droll, Magdalena, that sometimes I forget to laugh. And yes, she did get on my nerves; she got on everyone’s nerves. Didn’t she? Can you honestly name one person in this town who liked her?”

  “Reverend Richard Nixon—he of the church of thirty-two names. He probably liked her; he likes everybody.”

  “Yeah? Well, he doesn’t like Roman Catholics; he told me that once himself.”

  “Just because of their religion?”

  “Mmm, you got it. Anyway, now that your little survey is finished, I need to be getting to my homeroom; the bell is about to ring.”