The Amish Midwife

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “Will,” Marta said. “How are you?”

  “My soul is well. My heart…well, you know.”

  She nodded and reached for his hand. “I know the DA told you not to talk with me—”

  “And I won’t. Not about the case.” He clucked his tongue. “Although I do not understand this. I asked the detective to leave well enough alone, including burying her in peace without an autopsy, but he said it’s the state that is bringing charges, not me. I told him you told us to go to the hospital and that I listened to Lydia when she refused. It was my fault as much as hers, but certainly not yours.”

  “Don’t talk that way,” Marta said. “Just tell the grand jury what happened.”

  “That’s just it,” Will answered. “Some things in life happen, they can’t be changed.”

  I couldn’t help but question Will’s philosophy. If people acted in responsible ways, most tragedies could be averted. Not all, of course, but most.

  Rachael stood to the side watching her uncle, while the twins had turned around on the bench and were balancing on their knees.

  When Will exclaimed, “Where are my girls?” all three came running as if they had been waiting for his cue, giggling as they did. He swept them into his arms and then asked, “Where’s Christy?”

  “Resting,” Rachael answered. “Grossmammi said for us not to bother her.”

  He peered over the three blond heads at his grandmother.

  Alice shrugged. “She’s having another hard day, that’s all.”

  He nodded and then squeezed the girls until they squealed. “I still have my joy,” he said to Marta. “God is still gut.”

  “Ya,” she answered, but I thought I detected a hint of bitterness in her voice.

  “Speaking of, how is Klara and Alexander’s only joy? I heard she was ill again.”

  “I hadn’t heard,” Marta said. “I’ll have to ask Klara.” Marta started toward the back door, but Will kept talking.

  “Who is this?” He was looking at me now.

  “My assistant,” Marta answered, her hand on the doorknob.

  I stepped forward and extended my hand. “Lexie Jaeger.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you.” His shake was firm. “So you’re a relative of Marta’s?”

  My eyes popped wide. Why would he assume that?

  Marta answered quickly. “She’s from Oregon.”

  “W-why do you say that?” I stammered at the same time.

  He shifted the girls higher in his arms and they squealed again. “Well, for being Englisch you look like—”

  Marta interrupted him. “We need to go.”

  “Like who?” My voice was loud.

  Will glanced at Marta and then at me. He opened his mouth, but then Alice swooped into our half circle and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Marta needs to get home,” she said. The next moment we were out the door.

  In the car, I tried to get Marta to talk. “Whom do I look like?” I asked.

  “Will was just making conversation.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Ella mistook me for someone else the first time she saw me.”

  “Well, I’ve said this before. She’s a fanciful girl.” She backed the car around and started toward the highway.

  “What is Klara and Alexander’s child’s name?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer me.

  “Marta?”

  “Ada,” she finally said. “Her name is Ada.”

  I asked why Will referred to her as Klara and Alexander’s only joy.

  “She’s their only child,” Marta said.

  “Klara couldn’t have any more?”

  “Something like that,” she answered. She turned onto the highway in the opposite direction of her home and said she needed to stop by the store. She seemed distracted, more than usual. I had my nose to the window, taking in the countryside. We passed a farmhouse that was just a few feet from the road and then a stucco schoolhouse with a bell in the tower. The children had all gone home. “Did you see Christy?” I asked, still looking out the window.

  Marta shook her head. “Alice said she’s having a hard time, but she needs to accept that her mother is gone and move on.”

  My back stiffened. What did Marta know about losing a mother? Hers was still alive and well, while Christy’s and mine had been taken from us far too soon. In many ways, I knew the child would never get over such a fundamental loss. Certainly, I hadn’t.

  “What’s wrong with Ada?” I asked, trying to keep the anger from my voice.

  “She has hereditary spherocytosis.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Abnormally shaped blood cells. It causes hemolytic anemia.”

  That I had heard of. Not great, but at least it wasn’t life threatening. “So she has transfusions? For treatment, right? And she has to be careful not to rupture her spleen?”

  Marta nodded.

  “Did they catch it when she was little?”

  “Not until she was twenty. She’d always been sickly, but it took them a while to figure out what it was.”

  “Does anyone else in the family have it?” I asked.

  “Not that we know of.”

  We rode in silence for a few minutes, me thinking about what all might be in my genes that I had no idea about and then about the past that I had no idea about, either. I wanted Marta to bring up Amielbach without being asked, but I knew the chances of that were thin. Finally I said, “It’s time to pay the piper.”

  “Later, when we are home.”

  “Might be better to talk here in the car, where the kids can’t eavesdrop.”

  She didn’t respond to that as she slowed for a carriage just ahead. Two little boys, preschool age, peeked over the back end of it. Both wore black hats, and one held a baseball in his hand. I turned my attention to the fields. A lane appeared, then a silo, and then a barn. For some reason, my pulse quickened. Then I saw the house, off to the side in a stand of pine trees.

  “Stop,” I said, rolling down the window and reaching for my camera in the pocket of my jacket.

  The house wasn’t anything spectacular. It certainly wasn’t Amielbach. It was white, like so many other Old Order Amish houses, but it had a balcony on the second floor. A balcony that somehow seemed familiar.

  Marta appeared not to have heard me.

  “Please stop!” I said, this time louder.

  Instead she pulled around the horse and carriage and sped away.

  TWELVE

  It was no surprise that Marta marched in the direction of her office as soon as she parked her car, leaving the gallon of milk and the bag of apples on the backseat.

  I got out and slammed the passenger door like a teenager. I’d been ranting ever since she refused to stop at the house with the balcony. She’d been ignoring me, as she would a teenager, even as I had stormed along beside her through the grocery store.

  Now I stood next to the car and yelled again. “You promised you’d give me the information!”

  “I will,” she called over her shoulder. “In a minute.”

  I stomped up the three steps to the cottage. I didn’t need James’s help to figure out that Marta was heavily into avoidance. I could come up with that on my own.

  Once I reached my alcove, I dialed his number and then let it ring until it went into voice mail. I hit “end.” It was mid afternoon back home. He probably had a class. I sent him a text and asked him to give me a call when he had a chance.

  A minute later he replied: With study group. Will call later.

  I spread out on my tiny bed.

  If Marta were related to me, did I really want to know anything more about this family? What if everyone was as coldhearted as she?

  I closed my eyes for a couple of minutes and was close to dozing off when I heard Ella’s bedroom door open and footsteps in the hall. When she said “Oops” my eyes flew open. Ella was darting away from the alcove with Zed behind her.

  “Come back!” I ordered, stumbling off the bed
to the floor.

  “I’ll be right there.” I could hear Ella’s steps in the hall.

  I looked to my right. Her doorway was about ready to swallow her with Zed next in line.

  “Ella!”

  She stopped. Maybe my voice reminded her of her mother’s.

  “Come back here.”

  Zed turned first. As Ella swiveled around, I saw the carved box in her hands.

  “We just wanted to get a better look.” Her voice was as meek as her expression.

  “That’s fine, but there’s no reason to be so secretive about it.” I reached for the box and opened it. The locks of hair and letter were still inside.

  Zed stood with his arms crossed over his checked shirt, his head downcast.

  “How about you?” I asked. “Have you seen the house before?”

  He shook his head.

  “I remember where I saw a picture of that house,” Ella said. “It’s in the family Bible.”

  “Here?” I glanced toward Marta’s room. Is that where she would keep it? Had a clue been that close to me all this time?

  Ella shook her head. “I was snooping. It was a couple of years ago at Aunt Klara’s, and I was looking for a puzzle to do with Mammi. The Bible was behind a stack of games.”

  I titled my head, imagining Amish children sitting around playing games and doing puzzles with their grandparents, touched by the sweet image.

  “I started to thumb through it—the pages were really thin—and found a loose piece of paper with a picture of the house.” Her eyes grew wide with the memory.

  “Was there anything else in the Bible? A list of births and deaths?”

  Ella wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know, but that was what I was wondering the other day when I told you I would help you find your birth family. The day I found the drawing of the house, Aunt Klara came into the room, so I had to put away the Bible and pick out a puzzle, pronto.”

  I sat back down on the bed. “Tell me about Ada.”

  Ella’s face reddened as she glanced at Zed. He shrugged.

  “Your mom said she’s your cousin. Klara’s daughter,” I said.

  Ella nodded.

  “And she looks like me.”

  “Mom told you that?” Ella sounded dumbfounded.

  I frowned. “No. Will Gundy did.”

  “Oh,” Ella said.

  “Is it true?”

  “Kind of. Maybe. A little, anyway.” She shrugged. “I’d need to see the two of you together…” Her voice trailed off.

  I leaned forward. “Please take me to your aunt’s house.”

  Now it was Zed’s turn to look unnerved.

  Ella made a face and then said slowly, “Well, I don’t think I should. But maybe I could go…” Her brows tightened. “Maybe you could drop me off, and I could say I’m doing a family history project for school and need to ask Mammi some questions.” She turned toward her brother. “Remember those projects? In the fourth grade? But Mom wouldn’t give me any information so I made it all up, and you just copied mine when it was your turn?”

  He nodded solemnly. I remembered those sorts of projects. They were the kind that made an adopted kid feel like a freak. I’d always get a stomachache on the days I presented. I’d felt like a poser.

  “What do you think?” Ella asked. “It might be a way to see if there’s more info in the Bible.”

  “Sounds good,” I said, even though I really wanted a look at Ada myself. Patience had never been a virtue for me—except when it came to labor and delivery. “What about your mom?”

  “She has a meeting tomorrow afternoon with her lawyer. At least that’s what she said this morning.”

  I agreed to the plan, although I did feel bad that I was encouraging both children—Zed by association—to go behind their mother’s back. Then again, I didn’t feel bad enough to give up hope of finally getting some information—especially if Marta was going to keep blowing me off.

  I slipped the box under my bed and closed my eyes as Ella and Zed scurried down the stairs. I dozed and then woke to Marta standing over me. It was dark outside and I could barely make out her form.

  “Amielbach is a property in Switzerland,” she said. “It was in my mother’s family until a number of years ago.” She spoke as if she were reading from a script or had rehearsed, over and over, what to say. “I have no other information about it.”

  I sat upright, coming out of my fog. “Was the property sold?”

  “Yes.” Her voice still sounded robotic.

  “By?”

  “My mother, I presume.”

  “When?”

  She stepped backward. “I don’t know, exactly.”

  “How about approximately?”

  “More than twenty years ago.”

  I was sitting on the end of the bed now. “Why?”

  She stepped back again. “That’s all the information I have.” She turned. In a couple of steps she was descending the stairs.

  “Marta!” I was scrambling after her. “Please.” By the time I reached the staircase she had disappeared. In a minute I was in the living room and then the dining room. Marta sat at the table next to Zed, his algebra book between them.

  “Yes?” she said, without looking up.

  I stopped. I didn’t want to risk my plan with Ella and Zed for the next day by pushing Marta further. And she had upheld her end of the bargain. “I was wondering if there’s anything leftover from dinner,” I said. “I must have slept through.”

  James didn’t phone me back, but when I awoke the next morning I had a text from him, apologizing for not calling. I texted him, saying I’d delivered one baby already and was present for another birth at the hospital. I included that I’d had breakfast with an OB doc and it was fun to hear about the baby business in Pennsylvania. Then I asked him to call late that afternoon his time, and I would update him about my adoption search. I was hoping to have more information after Ella visited Klara’s house.

  I spent the day seeing patients in Marta’s office. When the last one left, I finished my charting and anticipated taking Ella out to Klara’s. As I closed the cabinet, the front door opened and Marta stepped inside, her cape around her shoulders and what looked like a homeopathic bottle in her hand. “Could you take this to Esther?” she asked. “I’m late for a meeting.”

  I twirled a strand of hair. Esther’s wasn’t that far from her lawyer’s office. Had she gotten wind of what Ella and I planned to do?

  “And could you take Zed and Ella with you? It would do them good to see Simon.”

  I took the bottle. It was tincture of valerian, a sleeping herb. It wouldn’t take that much longer to go by Esther’s, at least I didn’t think it would. My geography of Lancaster County still wasn’t very good. And it gave us an excuse to be out. I agreed, not that Marta had any doubt I would. She was almost out the door without so much as a “thank you” when she stopped and turned around.

  “What else?” I asked, waiting for yet another demand from this difficult woman.

  Instead, I was surprised when she took a step toward me, her cheeks flushing a bright pink, and spoke. “Nothing. I just wanted… I… Thank you. Not only for bringing that to Esther, but for everything. I know I haven’t said it much since you got here, but thank you.”

  Could it be that under the hard Marta shell beat the heart of a real live person?

  “I hope you understand that you have come here at the single most difficult point in my life,” she continued. “I know I tend to be short with people and dismissive and brusque, but this homicide charge is just so very scary and stressful… I’ve been far worse with all of that than usual…” As she struggled for the right words, I couldn’t believe the effect of what she’d already said had on me. Like a warm, soothing balm washing over a wound, her words of thanks and apology had been needed by me more than I realized.

  “You’re welcome, and you’re forgiven,” I told her, holding up one hand as if to assure her that she’d said enough and didn�
��t need to go on. “Thanks for telling me.”

  She nodded, but before she turned to go, she gave me a slight smile. “I wish you could know me when I wasn’t in the midst of absolute disaster. I’m really not a bad person.”

  I chuckled. “I wish you could know me when I’m not in the midst of a desperate search. I’m not so bad either.”

  We shared a smile, and then she gave a single nod and turned to go. As the door slowly closed behind her, my own smile lingered for a bit. But as it faded, I began to feel guilty, as though I were the one who owed her an apology now. Here I was about to involve her children in my own schemes, behind her back, just as the woman had decided to offer me an olive branch.

  Timing never had been my strong suit.

  A half hour later, Esther greeted us and ushered us into her row house. Tantalizing spices greeted us. “I’m making stew,” she said. “Can you stay for dinner?”

  I politely declined, and Ella added that we had another errand to run.

  Simon was on the couch, covered with a crocheted afghan, and was just waking. He smiled at Zed and then rubbed his eyes with his chubby hands.

  “Hi, bud,” Zed said, kneeling down beside him.

  Simon scrambled to his knees and held up his arms. Zed lifted him and then held him, a little awkwardly.

  “Ah,” Ella said. “Why do you want Zed to hold you? What about me?”

  Simon giggled and dove toward Ella. She caught him and settled him on her hip like a pro.

  I gave Esther the valerian and asked how she was doing. We chatted a little about her insomnia. In my practice, we recommended that women exercise during the day and drink chamomile tea at night. Rarely did we prescribe sleep aids, although every once in a while we did. A few times I had suggested that a woman look into valerian—something I knew from working with Sophie—but I always left it entirely up to the patient. I’d never think to give one of them a bottle of the stuff—it just wasn’t done in the professional world of nurse-midwifery.

  “We should get going,” Ella said, tugging on my sleeve like a little kid. Simon was pulling on the strings of her cap, yanking it from side to side, but the straight pins held it in place.

  Simon and Esther gave everyone a hug, including me.