The Amish Midwife

by Mindy Starns Clark

  Ella was down on the floor trying to talk to Simon. He crawled away from her and then plopped down on the far side of the room, next to the bathroom door.

  “He’s been out of sorts since last evening,” David said. “Since Esther’s labor started.”

  “Last evening?” I stole a glance at her again. She was most likely standing because she couldn’t sit.

  “Around eight,” David said. “And she only got a few hours of sleep. She worked on that paper most of the night.”

  Esther was statue still again, and I wondered if she were having another contraction. She’d already been in labor for fifteen hours. “Show me the bedroom,” I said to David. Esther wasn’t going to have the baby until she sent the paper off, so she might as well get it done. I would set up my supplies. I hoped that once she was ready, the birth would go quickly.

  By the time she joined us in the bedroom, she was nine centimeters dilated and fully effaced. David rubbed her back while Ella fed Simon lunch and then put him down for a nap. But he didn’t sleep. He stood in his crib, screaming for his mother. He knew something was up, knew in some instinctual way that his life was about to change. Finally, Esther asked Ella to fetch him and rock him in the living room, which she did until he fell asleep, and then she slipped him back into his crib.

  Esther and David’s little girl arrived at 1:47 p.m. They named her Caroline—a perfect name for a perfect baby. Baby number 258. She had her mother’s chin, her father’s nose, and her brother’s forehead. When Simon awoke, Ella carried him in and he patted his little sister’s head and then clung to his mother, his chubby hands entangled in her clean pink nightgown.

  Caroline took it all in. Simon. Esther. David. The woman—me—hovering nearby. And the girl—Ella—whose face was filled with awe. I asked Esther if I could take a photo of her family. She agreed, asking Ella to squeeze in too. After I’d captured the image, she asked if I would email her the photo. She would send it home to her mother and sisters.

  When we left three hours later, I was thinking about my own birth again and my upcoming search in Montgomery County. Why Giselle would have left Lancaster County to have me was a mystery, and even though I was anxious to be on my way and get some more answers, I knew I was in no shape to drive to Harrisburg this evening. I couldn’t search for the birth certificate until tomorrow anyway, so that left me getting a hotel or staying at Marta’s for another night. I sighed. I sent Sean a text, asking if we could do lunch the next day.

  Before going home we headed for Peggy’s. I felt we had left too soon, in too much of a rush. I wanted to make sure she and her little baby boy were fine. For once Ella didn’t speak as we drove. She perked up when we drove by Ezra’s place, but he was nowhere in sight. I glanced down the lane when we passed Klara’s. Tomorrow. If all went well, I would stop at Klara’s, have lunch with Sean, and then leave for Harrisburg.

  My life was beginning to feel like the movie Groundhog Day, where everything is exactly the same, over and over and over again.

  Everything was fine at Peggy’s. In fact, she was surprised to see me. The family was eating an early dinner of enchiladas, taco salad, and cornbread—all cooked by the older daughters. Peggy declared it the most delicious meal she’d ever eaten. The baby was sleeping in a bassinet next to the table. Her husband, Eli, stood, introduced himself, and shyly thanked me. Then he sat back down, and a daughter on his right passed him more cornbread.

  “I’ll bring the baby in for a checkup in a week,” Peggy said.

  I didn’t know what to tell her. Marta wouldn’t be seeing patients in a week, and I would be gone. I told her to call Marta to set up an appointment. I stopped myself from imagining a newborn riding in a buggy without a car seat, or even with a car seat, but I told her the midwife would come to her.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I’ll be more than ready to get out of the house by then.”

  I held the little boy—Peggy whispered that his name was Thomas—and untucked his blanket and T-shirt. The area around his belly button looked good. He wasn’t feverish. He looked up at me with a wrinkled forehead and inky eyes. I buttoned him back together, and as I did he reached for my finger and squeezed. If only I knew what he was thinking. Did he recognize me? Had I left some mark on him? I handed him back to Peggy and told the family goodbye.

  Who had left a mark on me?

  As we drove by the weeping willow trees, I knew I wouldn’t wait until tomorrow.

  SEVENTEEN

  Ella asked me what I was doing as I turned down the lane.

  “Stopping at Klara’s,” I answered.

  “This late?”

  I nodded.

  “Can I wait in the car?” she muttered. “I’m not nearly as brave as you.”

  “It’s cold out,” I said. “And getting dark.”

  “I have my coat. And I’ll hide in the backseat. But could you stop the car now? Before you get any closer to the house?” She slouched down, staring straight ahead.

  I wasn’t crazy about leaving Ella alone way out here, but the look on her face convinced me to allow it. I pulled over to the edge of the lane and climbed out. As I walked the last fifty yards, Holstein cows gathered around the white fence. The large white barn was most likely outfitted as a dairy. Beyond it was a weathered outbuilding and behind that, in the waning light, I could make out twin, parallel lines of trees. Most likely a creek ran through the property there, something I had missed the other day when I’d been spying from the road through my camera.

  Walking along the field, I thought of baby Caroline and little Thomas, of how warmly they were welcomed into their families. I thought of the trust in their eyes.

  I gave James the impression I hadn’t done any reading on adoption, but that wasn’t true. I’d read enough to know about an infant’s ability to grieve.

  I often wondered if a relinquished newborn had the same feelings of loss as a newborn whose parents were killed in a tragic accident or moved away or otherwise disappeared from their lives. None of the babies would be able to comprehend what happened, but still the emotions of losing everything familiar would be there.

  I’d definitely studied what birth was like for a newborn. I knew I would have recognized Giselle’s smell and her voice. And I knew, whether I was taken from her at birth or a few days after, that I had mourned her. I knew that without her colostrum and then breast milk that I was at a greater risk for allergies, infections, and disease. I knew buried within me, subconsciously, was the primitive terror of being separated from her. I knew she was my first tragic loss and that, no matter the protection I’d been given since, that loss impacted my lifelong sense of trust.

  I kept my eyes on the house as I thought about her, and I thought about her because it was easier than thinking about the people inside the house as I walked up the brick path.

  The porch steps were just a few feet away. The curtain in the upstairs window on the left side of the balcony fluttered. I stopped, willing myself to breath, willing my heart to not thump right out of my chest.

  The only other time I’d been close to this scared was when Dad took me to college my freshman year. It wasn’t college that scared me—not the academics, not making new friends, not living away from home. It wasn’t what I thought my new classmates would think of Dad’s hat and clothes that scared me, either. I was over all of that by then.

  At first, as I sat and cried in his car and he put his arm around me, I knew what didn’t scare me—but I couldn’t pinpoint what did. I just knew I was terrified.

  He told me to give it a week. He said if I still felt sad he would come get me, and I would still have time to enroll in Chemeketa Community College. I called him after a week and told him I was fine. Three weeks later he called to ask when I was coming home for a visit. He said he’d been missing me and hoped he would see me soon. After I told him goodbye and hung up the phone, I sat on my bed and cried. He was still my father. He still wanted me. I realized then that I’d been afraid he was done parenting me.
Even though he’d said I could move back home, I’d been afraid he didn’t want me anymore.

  He came and got me the next weekend for a visit.

  The upstairs curtain of Klara’s house fluttered again, and I climbed the steps. Here I was, my beloved father dead, forcing myself on people who hadn’t wanted me twenty-six years ago and most likely didn’t want me now. I crossed the porch, knocked on the heavy front door, and waited. For the first time it occurred to me that they might not answer the door. In that case I’d go around to the daadi haus and find Mammi myself. I knocked again. And waited. I knocked a third time and then turned on my heels. I barely heard the door creak open a crack. I turned back.

  “Yes?” A man stood at the door, probably the same one I’d seen in the field the week before.

  “My name is Lexie Jaeger. I’m looking for Klara.”

  The door opened all the way. His face was worn and weathered, and up close I could see that his eyes were gray.

  “She’s out back. Could I tell her what you want?”

  “I can wait,” I said. I thought of Ella. She’d have to bear with me.

  The man squinted. Finally he said, “Come on in then. I’ll go see how long she’s going to be.”

  He led me into a living room and motioned me over to a brown couch with a green crocheted afghan draped over the back. I sat and looked around the room. There were the bookcases Ella mentioned and the stack of puzzles. Behind them would be the Bible. I wondered if I had enough time to look, but it was as if I were glued to the couch. Though I already knew my name was in it, I was still the unwanted child. I didn’t have the right to look.

  There was an old, old clock on the mantel that ticked off each second, and above it was a framed cross-stitch that said “Bless this house and all who enter.” I scoffed and turned toward the kitchen. A long plank table with benches on either side filled one end. It could seat twelve at least. The kitchen was open with white cabinets and gray Formica counters. Plants filled a window box above the sink. Jars of peaches, pears, and tomatoes filled an open floor-to-ceiling pantry cupboard off to the side.

  I heard the back door open and what sounded like two people coming inside. A woman’s voice was speaking in Pennsylvania Dutch. She didn’t sound angry and she wasn’t loud, just firm. The man didn’t answer.

  The woman was in the kitchen now, coming toward me around the table. She was tall and had the same austere appearance of many of the middle-aged Amish women I’d seen. Her sandy hair, just a strip of which was visible at the hairline, was balding at the center part and covered with a black bonnet. Her dress was the same pale blue as her eyes.

  According to the family Bible, if this was Klara, she was my aunt.

  She froze when she saw me, and I studied her face, expecting to see the same wild range of emotions I had observed the first time Marta laid eyes on me. Though Klara’s reaction was just as extreme as her sister’s had been, it wasn’t nearly so ambiguous. Where Marta had shown at least a flash of something akin to joy, this woman’s face exhibited nothing but a tightly controlled rage. Suddenly, her eyes began darting around the room, searching, I presumed, for someone who might have come with me.

  “Lexie,” I said, stumbling to my feet. “I’m Lexie Jaeger. From Oregon.” I stepped around the couch. “Are you Klara?”

  She simply nodded and put her hands behind her back.

  “Then you must be Alexander,” I said to the man.

  “I am,” he answered, meeting my eyes for a split second and then looking at the floor.

  “I have questions—”

  “You need to go,” Klara said.

  “I want to see Mammi.”

  “Mammi?” The tone of her voice jolted me.

  “And Ada.” I squared my shoulders.

  “No. You need to go.” She stepped toward the front door. “Now!”

  I didn’t move but instead looked to Alexander. His head was turned, his attention directed toward something at the far end of the large room. Following his gaze, I spotted an open wooden staircase along the back wall. From somewhere above us, a female voice called out, “Who’s here?”

  Dashing to the base of the stairs, Klara answered quickly in Pennsylvania Dutch. Then she turned back toward me, her features twisted in fury.

  “You have no idea what you’re doing,” she hissed.

  Again, I looked to Alexander, who was nodding. He, too, seemed to want me to go, though in his eyes I saw not anger but something more like pleading. Desperation. Whatever their individual reasons were, neither one wanted me here.

  “I need to see Mammi,” I said softly to them both. Though this man in front of me may very well have been my own father, at the moment my grandmother would have to be my priority.

  Klara’s eyebrows raised, two pale brown arches in a ruddy forehead. “No!”

  “I have a right to see her. You know I do.”

  While Alexander stood quietly by, Klara bustled forward and grabbed my hand. Her skin was rough and cold, and I tried to pull away but her grip was firm. Suddenly, she lunged for the front door, dragging me along.

  “I want to know everything! I want to know about Giselle!” I exclaimed as I struggled against her, shocked that this older woman was much stronger than I.

  “Mamm?”

  As the steps of the staircase began to creak, Klara let out a deep growl and gave one last, powerful thrust, jerking open the front door and trying to push me through onto the porch. I managed to stop her by gripping each side of the door frame and holding on as tightly as I could.

  “Mamm! What are you doing?”

  Klara froze, and over her shoulder I could see a young Amish woman hurrying down the stairs. Her feet were bare. She wore a traditional dress but no apron, and her blond hair was pulled back in a bun, but no cap. Instantly, Klara released me. I seized the opportunity to move fully inside again, just beyond reach of her icy fingers, and plant my feet firmly, like a tree with roots shooting into the earth.

  The woman was on the bottom step now. She was shorter than I, and thin, too thin. As she came closer, I saw that her eyes were brown, like mine, and we shared the same upturned nose.

  “What’s going on?” Her voice was full of concern.

  Klara smoothed her skirt and apron, and tucked a loose strand of hair under her cap. “She’s from Oregon,” she said, her face becoming an emotionless mask. “Visiting Amish country.” She clasped her hands behind her back again and looked at me. “Isn’t that right?”

  For a surreal moment life stopped and I took it all in. Alexander, watching and waiting, as if defeated, to see how it would all play out. Klara, trying with all her might to pretend as if nothing of importance was taking place right here, in this moment. And a lovely young woman, who I assumed was my cousin, gazing at me with such intensity that I felt as if I were splitting in two.

  Then she reached for my hand and gave it a shake. “I’m Ada.” Her smile was warm and genuine. She looked the way I wanted to feel. Trusting. Protected. Hopeful.

  “Ada! Deine kapp!” Klara snapped.

  One delicate hand fluttered to the back of the woman’s head, and she blushed. “I was getting ready for bed when I heard voices.”

  “She needs her rest. This is too much for her,” Klara said to me. “She’s ill.”

  “I heard,” I answered.

  “You did?” Ada asked. “From who?”

  “The Gundys.”

  She looked at me straight away, her mouth solemn but her eyes smiling. “How are they?”

  Klara stepped between us, forcing our hands apart, and spoke to Ada again in Pennsylvania Dutch. Ada sighed and whispered, “Ya.” Then she turned to me. “You will come again?”

  “Ya.” I winced, hoping I didn’t sound as if I were mocking her. The word had slipped out. “Yes. I would love to see you again.”

  “Come along, then.” Klara opened the front door and stepped out. I followed her, turning to wave at Ada, but she was already heading back up the stairs, t
he skirt of her dress swaying a little with each labored step.

  I followed Klara out the door and then veered to my right, heading toward the daadi haus.

  “Where are you going?” Klara’s face was still stony.

  “To see Mammi.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible right now.”

  I kept walking.

  “The door to her house is locked.” Klara had her hand over the pocket of her apron.

  I turned then and looked straight at her. My face wasn’t placid. Nor was it still. I could feel it growing redder by the moment. “Unlock it then, or I will march right back into your house and up those stairs and tell Ada I’m her cousin.”

  She stared me down for a few moments. I held her gaze. A cow mooed in the distance. A cat leaped from the porch down to the ground and then darted toward the field. I caught the scent of fresh-tilled soil in the breeze.

  I followed a few feet behind her. By the light of the moon I could make out bare trellises lining the side of the house. We reached the backyard and skirted the perimeter of a garden plot. At the daadi haus a modern, battery-operated lantern sat on a table on the porch, and next to that was a lone rocking chair. The little house was painted the same sparkling white as the other buildings on the farm, with no embellishments. At the base of the front steps was a pot of daffodils in full bloom.

  “She’s asleep,” Klara said as we reached the door and she quietly unlocked it. “But you may look at her.”

  She stepped inside and I followed, my heart pounding furiously at the thought of seeing my own birth grandmother for the very first time—well, actually, for the very first time since she carried me into an airport twenty-six years ago and handed me over to a pair of strangers.

  Blinking, I stood there inside the stuffy room and took in the sight of the old woman. She was sleeping in a recliner, tufts of white hair like cotton balls poking out from under her cap. Her head was tilted back and her mouth was open just a little. My eyes fell on her chest, which seemed so still, and I held my breath until I saw it rise and fall.