The Amish Midwife

by Mindy Starns Clark

  Sophie’s comfort enveloped me.

  “Finish your laundry and then go back and sit with him. I have a birth to go to, but I’ll stop back on my way home. I shouldn’t be long.”

  I thanked her and waved. She was still slim and slight, but her hair was completely gray now, a silvery color under the Mennonite head covering—or cap, as I thought of it—that gave her an elegant look. At the base of her neck, her hair was twisted into a tidy bun.

  Sophie had given me my very first job, hiring me as an assistant the summer I was sixteen to file papers, order supplies, and drive her to births when she was tired. I would also watch siblings, make tea, and wash dishes. She was a lay-midwife, initially trained by another lay-midwife, though she had never attended college or become a nurse. She did go to an occasional conference and took continuing education classes by correspondence, and she belonged to an association where she networked with other midwives. As a lay-midwife, Sophie had an Oregon license to do home deliveries, but that’s all she could do. When one of her clients ended up at a hospital, she couldn’t care for the mother or deliver the baby. A nurse-midwife or a doctor took over from there.

  Some of my colleagues disapproved of lay-midwives, but I didn’t, at least not when it came to a normal birth. Even though I’d had six years of college, Sophie still knew more than I did. She knew remedies to start labor and to stop it, methods to soothe and relax the mother, and natural ways to calm her. She knew when to take charge and when to step back. In high school I’d written an essay about the history of midwifery and came across a quote by a second-century Greek physician. He said a midwife needed to be of a “sympathetic disposition, although she need not have borne a child herself.” That was Sophie. Never married. Never a mother. But always sympathetic.

  It was because of her that I found the work I loved. Becoming a midwife was both my passion and my profession. Being a nurse-midwife meant I experienced all the joy of the delivery while being in the controlled environment of a hospital.

  In the past few weeks, I had been so consumed with my father’s care that I hadn’t thought much about work. But I realized now that I missed it very much, missed the excitement and joy and even the heartbreak that were all part of the package.

  Putting away those yearnings for now, I pinned the last towel in place, picked up the basket, and turned back toward the house.

  Dad woke at six and asked for water. As he drank I offered him soup, but he declined. He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “Your grandmother loved you very much.”

  I nodded. That was part of my story. And that my grandmother was tall, like me. She had told my parents then that my birth mother wasn’t in a position to keep me, but I was loved very much. That was what my grandmother most wanted me to know: that I was loved.

  I thought it was odd how Dad wanted to talk about my adoption now. We hadn’t discussed it in years, not since I was a teenager. Back then, when I wrestled with matters of identity and religion, I asked my father if my birth grandmother had been concerned about his and Mama’s faith.

  “Why?” he had asked.

  I probably rolled my eyes, and then I said, “Mama’s head covering. Didn’t the woman think it odd?” I had stopped wearing my own cap the year before, telling my father it had no meaning for me.

  Back then I spent a lot of time thinking about my birth family, creating a story of my own to pick up where the few facts my parents knew left off. My Oregon birth certificate didn’t have the names of my biological parents on it, but it did list my birthplace as Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, which I found on a map, a tilted rectangle not far from Philadelphia. The atlas described it as one of the wealthiest counties in the country, so after that I began to imagine my birth family living in their mansion in their fancy Philadelphia suburb and belonging to a country club. I could just see my grandparents playing golf during the summer and bridge during the winter.

  I did a lot of research, scouring the library at my high school for information about Pennsylvania, trying to replace the fictions in my head with facts. I even studied the style of the quilt I had been wrapped in when I was first handed over to my parents. It was a simple block pattern of burgundy, green, and blue squares on a black background. One book said the design was often used by the Amish, whose quilts sold for hundreds and even thousands of dollars. I figured my grandmother had purchased it at an expensive handicraft boutique in the city. Either that, or she had gotten it straight from Amish country herself, which didn’t look all that far from Philadelphia and was probably a common day trip for a woman of means and leisure.

  I imagined my birth mother as eighteen or nineteen when I was born. Pregnant by accident. Old enough to love me but not to keep me. I imagined my grandmother to be between Mama and Dad in age—forty-four and fifty at the time—when she handed me to them, young enough to keep me but benevolent enough to give me to a childless couple. Though she might have been familiar with Plain people in general, because she lived in Pennsylvania and had purchased the quilt, I felt sure she had been a little alarmed by their age and dress. Already, Dad would have had white hair and must have had his black hat with him. And Mama would have worn her Mennonite cap, rubber-soled shoes, and a Plain caped dress.

  Dad spoke slowly, something I found especially annoying back then in my teenage years. “Your birth grandmother didn’t think there was anything odd about Mama’s head covering,” he said. He was shelling hazelnuts at the kitchen table. He looked at me with his kind blue eyes. “She knew we were Mennonite, Alexandra. We’re whom she wanted for you—whom God wanted.”

  The tone in his voice hadn’t been harsh, but it had been firm. And final. I was afraid I’d hurt his feelings.

  Now Dad coughed. I offered him more water, but he shook his head, his eyes barely open. With each breath the rattle in his chest grew more pronounced, and after a while he closed his eyes and I thought he’d drifted off to sleep, but then he said, “Always remember how much Mama and I love you too.”

  “I will,” I whispered.

  “When your grandmother gave you to us, she handed over a box as well. A carved box.”

  A box had never been part of the story. I sat on the edge of the bed, and he relaxed his grip on my hand and turned his face toward me.

  “Why didn’t I know about this?”

  “It wasn’t something to give a small child, not like the quilt, so we put it away until you were older. Time passed, and then your mother…” His voice trailed off.

  Then my mother died, and either he forgot or he chose not to tell me. I held my breath as I waited for him to continue.

  “What can I say but forgive me? She would have told you about the box years ago.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “In my closet.”

  I glanced toward the closed wooden doors.

  “What’s in it?” I asked.

  “Some old papers.” He coughed again. “That sort of thing. Nothing of too much importance, as far as we could ever tell.”

  He coughed some more, stirring the rattle from deep in his chest.

  “I’ll look at the box later.” I squeezed my father’s hand.

  “The key is on the bureau.” He placed his free hand flat over his chest, over the double wedding ring quilt my mother made their first year of marriage.

  “The key?”

  “To the box. It’s in my coin dish.”

  I remembered coming across a key when I chose coins for my Sunday offerings as a child.

  “Don’t forget,” he said.

  “I won’t.” I let go of his hand and picked up his Bible again. Under any other circumstances, especially with Dad’s blessing, I would have been tearing the closet apart as I searched for the box, but at the moment I couldn’t bear to leave his side, not even for that.

  I continued to read, even though he fell back to sleep by the time I finished Psalm 24. When Sophie let herself into the house, I was on Psalm 50.

  “Go on,” Sophie said, sittin
g on the edge of the bed, taking my father’s hand.

  I finished with, “Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me: and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I show the salvation of God.” I closed his old Bible with a thump.

  “How did it go?” I asked.

  “A boy. Five hours, two pushes, and six brothers thrilled with his arrival.”

  I smiled. I didn’t see births like that very often in the maternity ward where I worked—that many siblings awaiting the baby’s arrival, the whole family celebrating together.

  “Have you decided what you’ll do with the house?” Sophie asked.

  I shrugged. I hadn’t decided anything. I didn’t want to sell it, rent it, or live in it. Nor did I want to sell the orchard. I wanted Dad in both the orchard and the house, alive. “I don’t know,” I said softly.

  “How are things going with James?”

  Sophie knew I had a habit of dumping men who became too serious. I thought I would feel differently with James because we’d known each other so many years, but now I wasn’t so sure. We started going out right after Dad was diagnosed last year, which might have been a reaction on my part to my fear of losing my father. I’d always found James attractive, even when I’d pretended to hate him during high school, but there was a part of me that was afraid to trust him, to trust any man besides Dad.

  James and I didn’t talk much about our future. Sophie, the ladies at church, friends from work, and the people he went to school with all assumed we would get married. I knew James wouldn’t ask me until he was done with graduate school and had a job, though. He’d become hopelessly old-fashioned in that way.

  Two months ago I wanted nothing more than to marry him and start a family. But lately I had no idea what I wanted.

  An uneven breath from Dad caught both Sophie’s and my attention. He inhaled again. We waited. Finally he exhaled.

  “Sweetie,” Sophie said as she stood. She reached for my hands and placed them on top of his, on top of his chest, on top of the quilt. “Sweetie,” she said again. “I think it’s time.”

  “No.” I laced my hands in his, leaning over him. It was too soon. I wasn’t ready.

  He inhaled again. We waited.

  “Come quickly, Lord Jesus,” Sophie whispered.

  “Breathe,” I countered. But he didn’t.

  He had never been overly affectionate with me, nor I with him, but now I kissed his face, his cheek, his eyelids, his forehead.

  “He’s gone,” Sophie said.

  “I know.” I squeezed his hands.

  “Death is so holy, just like birth.” Sophie smiled as tears spilled down her face.

  I let go of his hands, hoping he was right and that he and Mama had just been reunited.

  “God rest both your souls,” I said, but the words rang hollow. I turned away and wept.

  TWO

  Dad’s house was located just outside of Aurora, a small town in northern Oregon. Founded in 1856 as a Christian communal society, it consisted of period cabins, houses, and stately white meeting halls. The commune was made up of German and Swiss immigrants, but they disbanded when their leader died nearly thirty years later.

  In comparison, the Mennonites were latecomers to Oregon, not arriving until 1889. What they did have in common with the Aurora Commune was that their roots, although a bit tangled, originated in Switzerland and Germany too.

  That’s what I thought about as I drove through tiny Aurora on my way to the funeral home in the larger nearby town of Canby. I was trying to distract myself from my grief, but it didn’t work. As I passed by the barbershop where Dad got his hair cut, tears filled my eyes yet again, as they had all morning.

  By the time I reached the funeral home, I had managed to compose myself. Almost on autopilot, I went inside and made the arrangements. Back out in the car when I was done, I sent a text to James, telling him that it was all finished and that I had scheduled the service for the day after next. He texted back to say he’d just completed his presentation and would head down in about an hour. I responded, asking him to wait until the next day. I needed time alone. I didn’t tell him I felt as if I were moving under icy water, as if my thoughts were drowning, as if my words were bubbles floating upward to a cold and swirling surface.

  I went home and put clean sheets on my parents’ bed, carefully folding the hospital corners, and then smoothed the quilt back in place. Then I sat on the end, running my hand over the cherry footboard, nicked here and there by time but still smooth.

  I grasped the post of the footboard, as if the action might pull me upward, out of my underwater world, and stood, opening Dad’s top bureau drawer and running my hand over rows of cotton handkerchiefs. I closed the drawer. Dad’s comforting scent filled the room. He always smelled fresh, as clean as a bar of soap. His shaving cup and brush were still on the bureau, left by me after the last time I shaved him, three days ago now.

  Next to his cup was his china coin dish. I picked through it, sorting the quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies, and stacked them on the linen runner the way I had when I was little, until all that was left in the bottom of the dish was the key. It was smaller than I remembered, and tarnished. I shoved it into the pocket of my jeans and hoped the box contained a photo of me as a newborn. Or a photo of my birth mother. Or my grandmother. Maybe even a simple letter, explaining everything.

  I went to the closet and started on the lower shelf, sliding the clothes on hangers to the side to make sure there wasn’t anything behind them. I saw nothing more than shoes and Dad’s work hat and dress hat. I reached with my hand to the top shelf but didn’t feel anything, so I pulled the straight-back chair from the corner of the room into the closet, wrestling it through the narrow door. I felt along the top shelf and flopped my hand around, trying to reach the far corner. Nothing. Then my fingertips hit against something. Bull’s-eye. I scooted the object forward to the front of the shelf. I felt the carving before I could see the box, but a moment later I cradled it in my hands as I stepped down from the chair.

  It was about a foot long by a foot wide and six inches in height. The wood was dark and intricately carved, as Dad had said. And it was dusty.

  First I brushed the box off with a towel, examining the carving as I did. Trees and rugged mountains were carved around the sides, and on the top was a grand old building with turrets, balconies, and shuttered windows with a waterfall off to the right. The box was beautiful and unlike anything I’d ever seen. I sat down at the oak table in the dining room and turned the key in the lock, but nothing happened. I wiggled it, took it out, and inserted it again. Still nothing. I ran my hands along the lid, searching for some sort of trick to open the box. Again, nothing. I tried the key one last time and felt something give. I turned it as far as it would go. The lock clicked. I opened it quickly. Dad was right. There were papers in the box. Handwritten, in German. I’d taken a year in high school but could barely remember a thing.

  The document was two pages long, yellowed, with the words Die Schweiz at the top. I willed there to be a photo—something personal. There wasn’t, but from between the pages fell two locks of hair, each tied with a thin strip of black cloth. I carefully picked them up to study them. One lock was obviously the fine blond hair of a newborn. The other was thicker, longer, and darker. Mine and my mother’s? Holding a lock in each hand, I couldn’t take my eyes from the one I just knew was hers.

  Finally, reluctantly, I put the locks back into the box and examined the document again. It appeared to be a letter to someone named Elsbeth, dated 1877. On the last page was a fancy signature that read Abraham Sommers. Elsbeth and Abraham. Were they husband and wife? Father and daughter? Something else? Maybe my great-great-grandparents were wealthy German timber barons in Pennsylvania during the nineteenth century. That fit in nicely with what I’d concocted years ago in my mind about my birth family. But why would my grandmother have wanted me to have the box and letter? Why had she included the locks of hair?

  I stretched m
y back. Plenty of people in Dad’s church spoke German. I would ask Sophie tomorrow. Both she and James were coming then to help me get ready for the funeral.

  Scrubbing was something that brought me comfort, so I tackled the kitchen while James de-cluttered the living room and Sophie turned on the vacuum cleaner. I would go through Dad’s clothes and books later by myself. James was such a packrat that if I let him help, I knew he would cart more things to his already overcrowded studio apartment in Portland than I would be able to take to Goodwill. This issue was a sore point between us, and I had no intention of contributing to the problem.

  I cleared the kitchen counters and sprinkled cleanser over the worn Formica. Dad had always kept the house spotless when I was growing up and trained me well in that, but in the years after I left he began to let things pile up. A stack of newspapers here. A tower of books there. It wasn’t as if he lived as a teenager—the dishes and laundry were always done—but it was as if he relaxed his standards a bit. As if he finally cleaned just for himself without having to worry about me. And that was a good thing.

  “What’s this?”

  I turned toward James as I clenched the large gritty sponge. He stood in the kitchen doorway, the carved box in his hands. I’d left the box open on the table beside Dad’s easy chair the day before.

  “Oh, that.” I tossed the sponge into the sink. “I found it yesterday.” The vacuum cleaner stopped in the background, and Sophie appeared next to James.

  “There’s a letter.” He held it up. “And two locks of hair.”

  I nodded.

  Sophie’s cap tilted a little to the left. “Who’s it from?”

  “From my birth grandmother. At least that’s what Dad said.”

  “The letter’s in German.” James held the document in one hand and balanced the box in his other.

  “I know.” I rinsed my hands. “Do you know who could translate it for me?” I turned toward Sophie.