The Amish Midwife

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “Who’s here?” Marta was at the top of the stairs.

  Alexander stood. “It’s me.”

  “Alex.” She hurried on down, and she smiled as she made eye contact with him. “What brings you out this way?”

  He held his hat against his chest. “Sorry business, I’m afraid. Lexie has asked Ada to do one of those DNA tests.”

  “Lexie?” Marta stopped on the bottom step. “Why ever so? Isn’t it enough that you know you’re cousins?”

  I looked from Alexander to Marta, from his hazel eyes to her blue. I pointed to my brown eyes and thought of Ada. “Chances are Alexander is not Ada’s father. Or else Klara isn’t her mother. Or both.”

  “Oh, gracious,” Marta said. Her tone was different than what I’d heard before. Patronizing, yes, but also a little showy. “You’re speaking statistics, not real life. Of course Alexander is Ada’s father.”

  I crossed my arms. “Does the name Burke Bauer mean anything to either of you?”

  Marta and Alexander looked at each other, clearly alarmed, though they both managed to recover quickly.

  “I think he used to own the Gundy place.” Marta spoke with an air of nonchalance. “Where Will lives now.”

  Alexander nodded, his jaw tight. “Bauer was Englisch. I believe he passed away a while back.”

  “Oh, right. I’d heard that too,” Marta replied, and then she returned her attention to me. “Why are you asking?”

  “Mammi mentioned him to me.” I felt flustered. Suddenly I realized my source didn’t have much credibility.

  “Ah,” Marta said, nodding sadly as if in pity for me that I had believed the absurd musings of a senile old woman.

  “Yes, well,” Alexander added, clearing his throat, “you probably noticed that her mind is all over the place.”

  Our eyes met, and I knew there was more that he wasn’t saying. Looking away, he took a deep breath and continued.

  “Anyway, Lexie, I’m not sorry you’ve come out to Lancaster County from Oregon. It’s been a pleasure to meet you, really, and if I weren’t afraid of what trouble you might cause, I think I would be pleased to get to know you. But you don’t know the hornets’ nest you’re stirring.” He turned to Marta. “I’ll be on my way then.”

  She thanked him for coming and walked him out the door. “I’ll talk with her,” came Marta’s faint voice as the door was closing behind her, “and convince her to drop this whole DNA thing.”

  No, you won’t, I thought fiercely. I took the stairs two at a time and grabbed my computer and my purse, and then I flew back down the stairs. I was at the door before Marta had come in, and without saying a word, I breezed past her to my car.

  “Lexie,” she called after me, “come back.”

  I shook my head as I climbed into my car. I’d had enough.

  Running away from Marta meant going to Lancaster General and sitting with Sean while he had a late dinner. As he ate I told him about my day, starting with finding my name whited-out from the family Bible and ending with Alexander and Marta trying to bully me about the DNA testing. He listened attentively to the whole tale, commenting occasionally, and then he urged me to stand strong on the matter of the DNA testing if it was important to me.

  “Do you know how accurate those send-away tests are?” I asked.

  “Not really, but I have a buddy here who works extensively with DNA. He could do the testing for you and probably have some answers back in no time.”

  “Seriously? Sean, that would be wonderful.”

  Grinning, he pulled his phone from the pocket of his lab coat and typed in a message. Moments later came the reply, which he read to me.

  “‘No problem getting the test done, but sisters are hard to match. Need a DNA sample from the mother.’” Sean met my gaze, a look of pity on his face.

  I slumped in my chair until I remembered the carved box with its two locks of hair, one that looked as if it had come from an infant, and the other that had probably come from an adult.

  “Wait! Would hair work?” I asked, thinking of the lock of longer, thicker hair had surely been Giselle’s.

  Sean smiled as he texted his friend back. I held my breath. Sean’s phone beeped again. He read it quickly and then met my gaze.

  “Bingo! He’s going to be out of town for a few days, but he can do it next Wednesday if you want.”

  “I’ll get a hold of Ada.” She was twenty-four. Surely she could make her own decisions. But she was also totally dependent on her parents and seemed to be very much a daddy’s girl. I took out my phone, wrote out a quick text, and hit “send.”

  “Thanks, Sean.”

  “If you get the info you want, do you think you can let all this go?” He picked up his turkey wrap.

  I shrugged, feeling too fried to answer.

  “Cuz this is the sort of thing that could send a person over the edge.”

  I wasn’t sure if he meant me or him. I changed the subject to his house. He’d had four people look at it already and an offer had come in an hour before. He was going to think about it overnight, but he was pretty sure he’d accept.

  “How about your place out West?” he asked.

  I told him I hadn’t called my Realtor. The truth was that I didn’t have the emotional energy to deal with that too. I’d wait until she called me.

  Next he asked about Marta’s case.

  “Oh no,” I groaned. “Her pretrial hearing is next week. Wednesday. I promised I’d go with her.”

  “And miss your DNA test? Come on, Lexie, blow her off. Look at how she’s treated you over and over.”

  I couldn’t blow her off. I’d tried. There was Ella and Zed. She was their mother. Beyond that, she was my aunt. How could I explain to Sean that in spite of everything, she knew me before. She was part of my story. “I can’t.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll ask my buddy if next Thursday will work instead.”

  “And I’ll ask Ada.” Both of us pulled out our phones. I was pretty sure I had a couple of prenatal appointments Thursday morning, but Marta would simply have to reschedule them. That’s all there was to it.

  “Is Ada pretty passive?” Sean asked as we both sat and waited for our replies.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Will she do what anyone tells her to?”

  I shook my head. The young Amish women I’d met so far were quite capable and not the type who could be pushed around. “No. In fact, she acts pretty normal.” I hesitated. Maybe normal wasn’t the word I was looking for. “Likeable.”

  He snorted.

  “No one growing up the way she has can be normal.” He leaned forward. “I speak from experience, remember? Being raised in such legalism—and the Amish are over-the-top compared to my experience—traps people completely. They have to break out and leave, like I did, to free themselves.”

  “I don’t agree,” I said. “Sure, I think it’s weird that they only allow an eighth-grade education, and some of the rules do seem arbitrary, but I’ve seen plenty of Amish women who seem genuinely happy.”

  Sean shook his head. “Because they don’t know anything else. They’re like indentured servants. Stockholm syndrome. You were lucky, Lexie. Even though it wasn’t your choice, you got out.”

  Lucky? Really? I changed the subject to his work. I didn’t want to discuss adoption or the Amish anymore. He was telling me about a C-section delivery involving triplets when my cell rang. “What timing. It’s my Realtor,” I said.

  “Ooh, take it. Maybe it’s a lucky day for both of us.” He beamed.

  I flipped open my phone. Darci said, just as James had indicated, that a couple from California was interested in seeing the house. I gave her Sophie’s number to get the key and hung up, feeling ambivalent.

  Sean knew what was going on from my side of the conversation and high-fived me. “That’s great,” he said. “You can pay for med school with your profit.”

  I must have winced.

  “I’m serious. You would make a good docto
r.”

  “I make a good midwife,” I said, and then I corrected myself with, “nurse-midwife.”

  He nodded and then gave me his charming smile, his bright blue eyes lighting up like a tropical sky.

  “Hey, I’m going to Baltimore for a weekend—late April or early May. Want to come with me?”

  “Maybe.” I couldn’t think that far ahead, even though it was only a couple of weeks away.

  “It would be great to have you come.”

  I would think about it. Baltimore could be an option. Not to go to med school, necessarily, but to get to know Sean better.

  “When was the last time you went home?” I asked. I realized all of his talk about his family was years in the past. And he hadn’t talked at all about any future visits in the works.

  “It’s been a couple of years.”

  “Really?” I couldn’t imagine, especially when he had all those brothers and sisters.

  He nodded. “At least two.” He grinned again. “I’ve been busy.”

  I was trying to form a reply when he added, “Speaking of busy, I need to run for now.”

  I hung around the hospital after he went back to work, surfing their Wi-Fi by using the password Sean had given me. I googled Burke F. Bauer, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and found the same articles Zed had.

  Next I checked the adoption registry. Once again, no responses. I emailed Sophie, telling her the Realtor was going to call her about the key to the house so she could show it. I quickly explained I wasn’t sure I was going to sell—I was just exploring my options. I skimmed a few blogs I regularly kept up with, and at ten thirty I logged off, slipped my laptop into its case, and checked my cell phone for the tenth time since I’d texted Ada. No response there, either.

  A half hour later I was back at the cottage, sneaking in the unlocked door and up to the security of my alcove.

  The next morning Marta met me at the bottom of the stairs.

  “In regard to last night—”

  I put up my hand to stop her.

  “I’m not interested in another lecture about letting things be, Marta. Unless you are willing to come clean and tell me everything I want to know, don’t bother,” I said curtly. I’d had enough of playing duck, duck, goose with her.

  Her eyes grew cold as ice. She turned on her heel and marched into the kitchen.

  I tried to ignore the tension between us as I went about my day, examining patients and thinking through my upcoming schedule. I had a short time until I was expected to report for work in Philadelphia, but besides the mystery of why I was born in Montgomery County, I realized no more information was there for me. My desire to work and live in Philly was now nonexistent.

  Despite the ongoing conflict with Marta, I felt encouraged by my growing relationships with Zed and Ella, not to mention my patients. During the next week I checked my phone over and over, hoping for a text from Ada, and delivered three babies, numbers 259, 260, and 261, or numbers four, five, and six in Lancaster County. Two were primagravida mothers and the third was a gravida five who was two weeks late. Still, all three were textbook smooth with not even a moment of complications.

  After the third birth, I came home Wednesday morning and slept for a few hours before accompanying Marta to the courthouse. The pretrial hearing was brief. The DA said he was ready to plea bargain. Marta spoke for herself, saying she was innocent and had no reason to bargain. Her attorney was clearly flustered and requested to speak to the judge. He granted her permission, and Connie Stanton shuffled up to the bench. The back of her gray skirt was wrinkled, and her hair, tucked into an untidy French roll, looked as if it might spring free at any moment.

  As she spoke to the judge, I looked around the room, noting a few Amish and Mennonites in attendance, but none I knew. Feeling antsy, I pulled out my cell phone to check for messages. It had been a week, and even though the DNA test was scheduled for tomorrow, Ada still hadn’t returned my text. Actually texts—I’d sent two more asking if she’d received the first, and she still hadn’t responded.

  The phone vibrated just as I was putting it away and I quickly jerked it back up, only to see that the message wasn’t from Ada but instead from Sophie: Got your email! You contacted a Realtor? What’s going on? Call me…

  I would have to answer her later. Connie Stanton stopped whispering to the judge and stepped away from the bench. He hit his gavel once and set a trial date of September 17. September. By then, I’d either be in Oregon for the hazelnut harvest or I would have sold the orchard. Maybe I would be in Baltimore. But there was no way I was going to be in Pennsylvania. Even Marta had to know I couldn’t stick around that long.

  She turned toward me, and a moment later I pushed open the solid wood doors and she followed me out to the second floor lobby and then down the stairs to the foyer. Neither of us said a word as we walked to the car. Once we were in the borrowed Datsun, Marta said she’d been thinking a lot about Esther and wondering how Caroline was doing. Given all she’d just been through, I marveled at her train of thought.

  “Let’s stop by,” she said. “We’re just a couple of blocks away.”

  Now that the baby was under the care of a pediatrician, ours was strictly a social visit. But once we got there, it soon turned into something more. David was home, and as he let us in, he explained that Caroline had a cold and her breathing seemed labored. They had an appointment with the doctor for that afternoon but had been trying to decide if they should head over sooner, if maybe they should even get her to the hospital.

  “Go get your stethoscope,” Marta whispered to me.

  A few minutes later I had little Caroline lengthwise in my lap, her dark eyes fixed on mine, the diaphragm of my scope against her body. But I knew already, from the rise and fall of her chest, that she had pneumonia.

  Marta knew it too. “You take them,” she said to me. “I’ll stay with Simon.”

  The ER doc confirmed that Caroline had pneumonia and ordered tests to find out if it was bacterial or viral. She was admitted to the pediatric critical care unit and in no time was in a warm isolette, wearing just a diaper, and hooked up to an IV.

  I stayed with Esther and David, answering their questions. If the pneumonia was bacterial, Caroline would be given antibiotics. If it was viral, then all that could be done would be to give her fluids and oxygen, if she needed it. The nurses were attentive and gentle with both the baby and Esther and David. I tried to talk the parents into going down to the cafeteria for lunch, but they wouldn’t leave their daughter’s side.

  I went down by myself, sending Sean a text on the way, and bought sandwiches for Esther and David. When I came back into the room, an oxygen mask was over Caroline’s face. Esther was crying even as she was humming to the baby. It took me a second to recognize the tune, the chorus to “Our God Is an Awesome God.”

  “She is struggling more and more to get her breath,” David told me. “We leave her in God’s hands.”

  “And the nurses’ and doctors’ hands,” I added.

  David gave me a harsh look. “And who do you think guides those hands, heals their patients? God. Only God.”

  I met his gaze.

  “Lexie Jaeger,” he said to me, “I wonder if you have not encountered much sorrow in your life.”

  I was taken aback by his question. I’d been abandoned by my birth mother. Mama had died when I was eight. My father had died just recently. “Yes,” I told him. “I have encountered sorrow.”

  “And did it make you trust Jesus more?”

  I looked away, heat creeping into my face. Could David tell it had done quite the opposite, that my sorrow had made me determined not to trust anyone but myself?

  “My sorrow has made me trust Christ. My parents, my seven siblings, and my grandparents all died before my eyes. I trusted Jesus with them and they are in heaven. We will trust Him with our daughter.”

  I glanced at Esther. She had one hand on her baby and another one in the air. Her eyes were closed as she sang softly.r />
  “Please pray for Caroline,” David said. “Please trust God with her.”

  I left the hospital in a daze, David’s words echoing in my mind. When I reached the car, I climbed in and simply sat for a long time, marveling at the odd sensation inside my chest, the slow melting of a heart that had been frozen solid for years.

  I prayed right there. Then I texted Sophie to ask her and all of the church members to pray. I texted Marta. I texted Ella because I knew she would soon be out of school. I texted James. And Ada. I thought of all of us praying, all of us connected. All of us thinking about baby Caroline and Esther and David and little Simon at the same time. As I started up the car and drove away, I asked God not to let Caroline die… because I knew she could. I knew babies did.

  Caroline was baby number 258; baby number three in Lancaster County. I wanted her to live. Esther and David had already lost so much in life. I didn’t want them to go through the sorrow of also losing their little girl.

  Marta stayed with Simon, and I went ahead and saw three late afternoon appointments and then called the traveling nurse agency, apologized, and withdrew my application. I had no idea where I would land next, but I did know that I wasn’t done in Lancaster County.

  Before we ate dinner I said the blessing—out loud, the way Dad had done when I was growing up—and asked for healing for baby Caroline. Ella and Zed both said “amen” with me. We were pretty somber as we ate. Marta called a little after nine to say that Esther was spending the night at the hospital, but that David had come home to be with Simon. Marta was staying over, though, so David could go back first thing in the morning or even during the night, if need be. She said Caroline was still on oxygen.

  I had a text from Sophie, asking how the baby was doing and then one from James, asking the same. I still hadn’t heard from Ada about the DNA test. I would have to call Sean in the morning and ask him to get a hold of his friend to cancel our appointment.

  Right before bedtime Zed called me into the dining room. “I heard from the guy in Switzerland,” he said, looking up from the screen. “He says he talked with the Giselle lady he knows. He said she reacted when he asked if she used to live in Pennsylvania but wouldn’t give him any information.”