The Amish Midwife

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “What’s wrong with her?” I whispered.

  “She’s getting older.” Klara shrugged.

  There was a quilt spread across Mammi’s lap, and with a small gasp I realized that it looked exactly like the one she had sent with me when she gave me over to Mama and Dad. For some reason, just seeing it there softened my heart toward this woman and made me feel connected to her in a unique way. Maybe she had surrendered me to strangers in an airport, but it wasn’t as though she just walked in there and gave me over randomly.

  We’re whom she wanted for you, my dad had said. Whom God wanted.

  “Did she make that quilt?” I asked Klara now.

  “Decades ago.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Seventy-eight.”

  She was only two years older than Dad had been, but compared to him she seemed ancient. “I have questions for her,” I said.

  Klara exhaled loudly. “I don’t want to wake her up.”

  “What does her doctor say?”

  “Not much.” Her voice softened a little. She glanced out the window into the darkness.

  “I wanted to ask her about Giselle.”

  Klara stiffened.

  “And about Mammi meeting my parents in the Philadelphia Airport—”

  “You need to go,” Klara said. Her voice was harsh.

  “Please. Won’t you help me?”

  Klara stepped back out onto the porch, and again I followed her. As she locked the door she said, “Did Marta put you up to this?”

  I almost laughed. “No.”

  “What has she told you?”

  I shrugged, thinking if I said “nothing” it would give her even more reason not to give me any information either. “I just want to know my story,” I said. “Why I was given up.” I couldn’t make out the expression on Klara’s face as she marched away from me. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask,” I called out, my voice rising.

  Shadows leaped around the yard as we reached the front, and Klara suddenly stopped and spun around to face me. “What do you want from me? Ada is sick. I can’t afford to live in the past. What’s happened has happened.”

  “So, it’s pretty much forgive and forget in your opinion too?” My heart raced again.

  “Is that what Marta told you?”

  I didn’t answer as I walked around her to the brick path.

  “Don’t come back,” she said. “You’ve done enough damage as it is.”

  Oh, I’d be back all right. I kept walking until I heard the front door slam. Then I turned around. The curtain in the upstairs window fluttered again. I waved. Seething inside and rehearsing what I would say to Ella, I marched up the lane.

  But when I reached the car, she wasn’t there. I called out her name, but she didn’t answer. I phoned her cell, but she didn’t pick up. My anger began to turn to panic. Maybe I’d been too trusting to leave her. Maybe someone had taken her.

  I started the car. As I reached the highway, a motorcycle roared by. On the back was Ella.

  EIGHTEEN

  I turned right and followed. Of course it was Ezra on the front of the bike. I kept my distance, not wanting to cause him to wreck, but I blinked my bright lights to get his attention.

  Ella wore a helmet and a leather jacket. I presumed both were Ezra’s because his head was bare and he wore only a T-shirt. Ella’s dress fluttered free around her legs, and she leaned against Ezra’s back, her cheek on his shoulder. “Please don’t wreck,” I whispered. I’d seen far too many motorcycle accidents during my ER rotation.

  I honked as we neared the willow trees and flashed my lights again. Finally, Ezra pulled over. By the time I stopped, both were laughing. Ella climbed from the motorcycle, smoothing her dress down, and then whipped the helmet off her head, her long auburn hair falling loose. She retrieved a handful of bobby pins and her cap from her apron pocket.

  Ezra gave me a sheepish grin as I climbed out of my car. “We’re old friends,” he said.

  “So I heard.” I hoped I looked like the gruff older cousin, ready to bust the kid. I turned to Ella. “We need to get going. Give Ezra his jacket.”

  She obliged and then gave him a flirty wave as well.

  “See you Sat—”

  “Thanks!” she called out, obviously trying to drown out his words.

  He winked.

  I knew then they thought I was ancient, unable to interpret their not so subtle communication. I decided not to drill her about going on the motorcycle ride. It wasn’t my place. When we passed Klara’s she asked me how it went. I answered her vaguely, not giving many details.

  “I was so nervous waiting for you,” she said. “When I heard Ezra’s motorcycle, I ran out to the road.”

  Likely story. I was sure she would have ran toward the sound of Ezra’s motorcycle no matter what else was going on. “So,” I said, “that first day when I met you and you thought I was someone else—”

  She squirmed a little.

  “Who did you think I was?”

  By the light of the full moon, I saw her roll her eyes. I stayed quiet.

  Finally she said, “Ada.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She shrugged. “Zed thought so too.”

  “Ella—”

  “I didn’t know you then, Lexie.” She paused. “And I thought Mom would be mad.”

  “Why?”

  “I grew up with her telling me I talked too much, that I didn’t have any boundaries. All of that. She expected me to be this nice little girl. But I’m not nice. And I’m not Amish.”

  I wanted to laugh. She was one of the nicest people I’d ever met. And her life didn’t seem that different from the Amish.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, turning toward me. “So you and Ada are cousins. You already knew that, right?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But you two look more alike than most cousins—for example, more alike than you and I do.”

  “Genetics,” I said. “It could happen.” But I wasn’t sure. Maybe we were just cousins who happened to share a number of dominant genes, but I suspected that we were even more, that we were half sisters instead.

  “Are you going to stay?” Ella turned up the heat in the car.

  “I probably should…at least until Saturday,” I answered, giving her a sideways glance.

  “Don’t tell Mom.”

  “What do you have planned?”

  “Volleyball and a sing.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Honest,” Ella said. “That’s what Amish kids do.”

  “Even ones on their rumschpringe?”

  “Ya,” she answered. “Even those. Besides,” she said. “Saturday is my sixteenth birthday.”

  Marta stood at the kitchen sink, washing dishes when we arrived. She’d made a broccoli-and-rice casserole for dinner that Ella and I ate as we told her about Esther’s delivery. Next I told her about checking on Peggy and little Thomas.

  Ella shot me a look but she didn’t need to. I had no desire to tell Marta about my stop at Klara’s. I still felt as though I’d been gutted alive. Besides, what if Marta and Klara formed an alliance and ganged up on me? I couldn’t handle them one-on-one, let alone two-on-one.

  Worse, I was still feeling guilty about my own behavior from earlier, when I had so stubbornly forced Marta’s hand once I knew we had a patient in labor. Though I deserved to get all of the information she had given me thus far—and plenty more, for that matter—I still didn’t like the way I had gone about it, and something in me wanted to make amends.

  “Would it help if I stayed another week?” I asked Marta. “I can call the agency tomorrow. If I use the extended-stay hotel, I don’t need to find a place to live.” I had to go back and see Ada and soon. Once I left Lancaster County, I didn’t know how long it would be before I could return.

  She did that funny little lip purse I’d seen so many times. Finally she said, “I don’t want to put you out.”

  I stood and p
icked up my plate, carrying it to the sink. “Think about it.”

  “Maybe just until I find someone else. It should only take a few days.”

  “Just until then,” I said, suddenly exhausted. I quietly washed my dishes and put them in the rack, hoping Sean would be free for lunch the next day.

  NINETEEN

  Please let me go.” Zed’s voice carried up the staircase the next morning.

  I couldn’t make out Marta’s answer, but as I started down the steps, I heard, “Ella isn’t going either. You’ll both be at school.”

  “But it would be a good civics lesson.” Zed was as close to whining as I’d heard him. I stopped on the last step.

  “The answer is no.” Marta handed him his backpack. “Ella,” she called into the kitchen. “You need to get moving.”

  She came out in a moment, her coat already on. She kissed her mother on the cheek but didn’t say a word. A second later she led the way out of the house with Zed tagging along behind.

  “I’d like to go,” I said. There were no prenatal appointments scheduled for the morning.

  She shook her head without looking at me.

  “You need someone with you, Marta. I’ll take notes in case you forget what was said.”

  She frowned. “Believe me, I think I’ll remember.” The arraignment was scheduled for ten, but Marta was required to turn herself in by nine.

  I left the house an hour after she did. The morning was the warmest yet since I’d been in Pennsylvania, and the trees along the road were beginning to bud, making me wonder if the leaves on the hazelnut trees back home were unfolding. It would be time to spray soon.

  A crowd was gathered outside the courthouse again—both Amish and Mennonite, both men and women and several babies and young children. I didn’t see any buggies and assumed the Amish had hired drivers to bring them into town. I found a parking place a couple of blocks away and hurried to the courthouse. The crowd must have gone inside because the sidewalk was clear. I stepped through the double doors and passed through the security checkpoint, and then I ascended the stairs to the courtroom. The wooden benches on both sides were filled with Marta’s supporters.

  “Lexie!” David sat in the middle of the room and motioned to me. I joined him, asking about Esther, Caroline, and Simon, a little surprised that he would leave them all alone so soon. He assured me that Esther had insisted he come to support Marta.

  Speaking of support, I began scanning the crowd, wondering if Klara would show up for her little sister, but none of the faces under the caps belonged to her. One, in the back row, belonged to Alice, though. She nodded at me and smiled. Will Gundy wasn’t in the room.

  A few minutes later Marta and Connie Stanton entered and sat on the front right side of the room. Moments later a man, whom I assumed was the DA, entered. And then we all rose as the bailiff announced the judge, an old man with a full head of snow-white hair that contrasted dramatically with his black robe.

  I had told Marta I would take notes, but I was so mesmerized by the proceedings that I hardly wrote anything down on the pad of paper I’d brought. The DA read the charges of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and one count of practicing without a license. He said that Marta Bayer had played God that night with the life of Lydia Gundy and her unborn son, and that if Marta had acted responsibly both would be alive today. Then the judge asked for the plea and Marta responded, clearly, “Not guilty.” The judge addressed her, saying that the charges were serious and reminding her that both a mother and baby were dead under her watch. “Three children are without a mother and little brother, and a husband is without his wife and son,” he said. “This is a lifelong sentence for them.”

  Marta’s head, from the back, did not budge. Nor did her shoulders. Tears filled my eyes. Would two more children—teenagers with no father—end up without their mother too?

  The judge said that a pretrial hearing would be scheduled for two weeks. “In the meantime, you will be held in the Lancaster County jail,” he said to Marta. “Bail is posted at five hundred thousand dollars.” Even though I hardly watched TV, I’d seen enough crime shows to know that meant Marta would have to come up with fifty thousand to get out. I also knew she didn’t have that kind of money. I looked around the room. Chances were that no one in the courtroom did, either. I was sure there were plenty of Amish and Mennonites who were land rich, but they probably didn’t have fifty thousand dollars in cash available to cough up at a moment’s notice. A murmur rose through the courtroom, and the judge hit his gavel on the desk.

  After the judge dismissed the court, Marta turned around, searching the crowd. I stepped out into the aisle and she motioned to me with just a nod of her head. Connie Stanton stood beside her, gathering her files and papers. I stepped around people filling the aisle and made my way against the stream to the divider.

  “Tell Ella and Zed what happened.” Marta’s voice was calm.

  “I will.”

  “I don’t know when I’ll be home…” She blinked quickly. “I never thought this would happen, but just in case I had made arrangements a few days ago for the children to go to Esther and David’s. Though now that the baby’s come…”

  “No, they can’t be there. I’ll stay. The kids can remain at home, and I’ll stay with them.”

  “It’s too much to ask of you—”

  “I can keep up with your appointments and deliveries as well.”

  “What about Philadelphia?”

  I shrugged. “I’ll tell the agency I’ve been delayed.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It’s a family emergency,” I added, stressing the word “family” and wanting her to hear me.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, and from the look in her eyes, I knew she had.

  The bailiff came toward her, and then it was time for her to go.

  I followed the crowd to the back of the room, turning before I exited. The bailiff led Marta past the judge’s bench to a door, where he punched in a code. A second later he opened the door and she slipped through.

  On the sidewalk in front of the courthouse groups of Amish and Mennonites mingled. I stood for a moment, feeling awkward and alone. I searched for David, but he must have already left.

  “Lexie.” It was Alice, motioning for me to join her. I did and she introduced me to a couple of other Amish women as Marta’s helper. I asked how Hannah was, and Alice said, “Tired. She’s been resting. In fact, I should get going to help her with the girls. But first I’ll tell Will what happened.” She took a deep breath. “Something must be done about this.” Alice gave me a half hug and slipped away into the crowd and then down the sidewalk. A moment later she climbed into the front seat of a van.

  My steps were heavy as I walked around the corner toward my car. I needed to take a look at the schedule and sort through who was due when. Delivering babies was such a juggle between prenatal appointments, deliveries, and follow-up care. With Marta doing the scheduling and canceling of appointments, I’d been spared the stress of all of that. Now I would need Ella’s help. I hoped she would know whom to call if a mother didn’t have a phone or didn’t check her messages very often.

  While I was still in town, I went to Esther’s house to check on her and Caroline. I also wanted to let her know I would be staying with Ella and Zed at the cottage, so they wouldn’t have to move in here temporarily after all. I gave Esther the bare bones of the hearing, knowing David would fill her in more fully when he got home later.

  As I examined little Caroline, Esther talked about how the baby wanted to sleep all the time. I suggested that she unwrap her when it was feeding time—that perhaps being so warm and cozy made it hard for her to stay awake. Simon was still out of sorts and wouldn’t let me come near him. When I left, Esther was sitting on the couch with both the baby and Simon on her lap.

  As I reached my car, my phone beeped with a text from Sean. He was available for lunch. We ate at a Vietnamese restaurant in downtown Lancaster. The family who own
ed the place was friendly, and in conversation we learned that they had fled from New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Sean and I each had a bowl of beef noodle soup, the perfect lunch for a drizzly day.

  He was concerned about Marta, and I gave him a play-by-play of the arraignment. When I told him how high the bail was, he whistled in response but said he wouldn’t be surprised if someone posted it. “There are many Amish who are much wealthier than they appear.”

  When everyone looked pretty much the same, it was hard to tell.

  “The DA must think Marta was negligent in not calling 911 sooner.” I twirled noodles around my chopsticks.

  “What was Lydia’s blood pressure?”

  I told him and he agreed it was high. I also explained the preeclampsia angle.

  He leaned back in his chair. “Does Marta carry oxygen with her?”

  “Yes. Two tanks.” I now carried one of them in my car. “And I’m sure she used it. Why wouldn’t she have?”

  I thought about how Lydia might have died as I put down my chopsticks and picked up the plastic spoon. I’d heard of people dying in their sleep before, even young people, and the autopsy not turning up a cause. “Do you think her attorney can get the charges reduced to practicing without a license?” That was a really weird thing about Pennsylvania. The state didn’t issue licenses for lay-midwives—most were licensed through national organizations. But if things went wrong the state had no qualms in prosecuting midwives for practicing without a state license, even though they couldn’t get one.

  “Probably not.” He paused for a moment and then speculated. “There must be evidence in the chart that she should have called 911 sooner or referred Lydia to a physician.”

  I nodded. Surely the DA had subpoenaed the chart at the beginning of the case. Though I had just recently met my aunt, I knew in my heart there was no way Marta would have altered her charting afterward.

  As I drove away from the restaurant, I thought of all the other things I would need to do. Ella cooked, but I would have to do the grocery shopping. Maybe pay the bills, which meant I should take a look at Marta’s books to see if they were balanced. I would visit Marta in jail by tomorrow or the next day to get the information to help me keep her home and practice afloat.