The Amish Midwife

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “James said that, huh?” Marta smiled. “He’s a keeper, that one.”

  “I know. I plan to.”

  We reached the bridge and stopped in the middle. The water level had lowered significantly. A dove swooped down from above and rested on the railing, looking at us.

  “I wouldn’t call it a secret,” she said, staring out onto the water, “but I suppose there is a final element you’re not aware of. To be honest, I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out on your own.”

  I looked at her, wondering if I had missed something.

  “Remember earlier when we were talking about Burke Bauer’s son, Freddy?” she asked. “The boy who helped bring us the buggy the night his father ran off with Giselle?”

  I nodded. Marta looked up at the dove, which had begun to make soft cooing sounds, perhaps calling out to some far-off mate.

  “What about him?”

  Marta stood up straight and slipped her hands into the pocket of her apron. “Freddy was like his father in many ways. He, too, was charming, kind, and gentle. Unfortunately, he, too, was weak. But I didn’t realize that back then. I just knew that I liked him, that I wanted to know him better. He carried a lot of pain from what his father had done, and because of my sister’s actions, I felt responsible in some way.”

  “But you weren’t.”

  “No, I wasn’t. But at twelve I still thought the whole world revolved around me, even the bad parts. Crazy as it sounds, I think I felt drawn to Freddy the first time I saw him, even if he was a year younger than I was. Of course, our little friendship eventually petered out, but when we were older we ran into each other again, though by that point he was no longer a boy at all but instead had grown into a very handsome young man. We compared notes, and as it turned out, none of us except Mammi had ever heard from Giselle again once she left for good—not even the great Burke Bauer himself. Freddy said his parents were still together, though not very happy, and that he was pretty sure his dad had had a few more extramarital affairs over the years.”

  “Did you ever see Freddy again after that?”

  Marta laughed.

  “Why, yes. Given the history there between our two families, we began to fancy ourselves as a modern-day Romeo and Juliet. Our love would prevail, regardless of the factors that divided us. Made for a very exciting relationship, you know, so clandestine and romantic and everything.”

  I turned to her, my eyes wide.

  “So you dated Freddy Bauer?”

  She nodded, saying, “Way more than that, Lexie. We got married. Freddy Bauer was my husband. Ella’s father.”

  “I can’t believe it!” I cried, my hands flying to my cheeks.

  “It’s true.”

  I was speechless for a moment as I tried to grasp what she was telling me.

  “But…that means my biological father was your father-in-law?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’re not just my aunt, you’re also my…my what?”

  Marta smiled.

  “Your half brother’s wife. We’re sisters-in-law, of a sort.”

  My jaw remained open. Truly, if I had thought our family sounded like a bad country song before, at that point I could have sung the chorus and then some!

  “Wait a minute,” I told her, shaking my head, trying to align what I knew with what I was learning. “Your married name isn’t Bauer. It’s Bayer.”

  Marta shrugged. “When I first got pregnant with Ella, Freddy decided to anglicize our name, changing the Bauer to Bayer. He said it would be easier on our kids, but I always suspected he had mostly done it as a dig at his father. When it came to Burke, my husband tended to be a bit passive-aggressive.”

  “I can see that. So how did the two of you end up as Mennonites? Was that also some sort of dig at Dad?”

  Marta shook her head. “No, it wasn’t like that. When my time of rumschpringe ended, I was in love with Freddy and decided not to join the Amish church. He belonged to a nondenominational group, but I needed something Plainer. We finally reached a compromise and became Mennonite.” She hesitated and then added, “At least I thought that’s how it was at the time. But maybe you’re right. Maybe Freddy used it as yet another dig at his father—turning his back on Burke’s wealth to join a Plain community.”

  I looked away, her words ringing in my ears. His father was also my father. Suddenly, I wanted to meet my half brother more than anything.

  “Where is he now, Marta? What happened to end your marriage?”

  “Lexie!” she suddenly cried, throwing her hands out and tilting her head toward the sky. “Can you not leave a single stone unturned?” Her voice was loud but not necessarily angry. More like exasperated. Worn down.

  I couldn’t help but grin, thinking that lately I had become pretty good at wearing people down.

  “Fine!” she said, dropping her arms to her sides and turning to face me. “Fine. You want to know? Just like his father, Freddy was a cheat. Worse than that, his affair was with an Amish girl, just like Daddy. A local Amish girl. That he got pregnant. Yes, Lexie, history had repeated itself. Can you imagine how that made me feel?”

  I was stunned. After all of the pain that Burke’s actions had caused his family, how could Freddy, of all people, have turned around and done the very same thing to his?

  “Believe it or not, he tried to minimize it. ‘No big deal’? ‘It meant nothing’? Had he really forgotten how it felt to be that betrayed young man who showed up at our house all those years ago with Giselle’s horse and buggy, only to learn what his father had done?” She allowed her questions to hang in the night air and then added, “Despite all that, I tried to make things work, I really did. For Ella’s sake, I think I could have gotten past the infidelity, with counseling and time. But Freddy wasn’t having any of it. He stuck it out for a while but eventually insisted on a divorce, saying he wanted a ‘fresh start’ somewhere else. Last I heard, he was living up in Canada somewhere. Probably still running around with women half his age.”

  So much for wanting to meet my half brother. Instead, I felt a deep surge of pity for Marta, not to mention an even stronger bond.

  “What happened to the one here, the Amish woman, and their baby?” I whispered.

  Marta studied my face for a long time as all around us crickets chirped and fireflies lit up the night.

  “You already know the answer to that question.”

  Then she turned and began walking back toward the house. After a beat, I raced to catch up with her, my mind spinning.

  “I do?”

  Marta glanced at me and kept walking.

  “She was so young, so ashamed, so ambivalent about all that lay ahead. Finally, after much prayer, I felt the Lord leading us to raise the baby as our own. I suggested adoption.”

  “You and Freddy tried to adopt her baby? His baby?”

  “Well, actually, that’s what we told people, but in truth only I adopted him. Freddy didn’t need to, because he was already the child’s father.”

  I stopped walking, my mouth flying open. She was talking about Zed! The baby Marta’s husband had conceived out of wedlock with an Amish woman was Zed. The boy Marta loved and cared for and had raised as her son—despite the fact that he was living proof of her husband’s infidelity—was Zed.

  “That’s the only reason Freddy stuck around at first and tried to make a go of our marriage, because he had a new son,” Marta told me now when she saw I had been rendered speechless. “But it was no use. By the time Zed could crawl, Freddy had walked out on all three of us, gone for good.”

  Still stunned, I ran my hands through my hair, gathered it into my fist, and let it fall.

  “What happened to the woman?”

  “Crazy as it sounds, she and I became friends.”

  “Friends? Marta, how on earth—”

  “It started during the pregnancy. Despite all that had happened between her and my husband, once she agreed to the adoption, I knew I wanted to be there when my baby was bein
g born. I only intended to observe, but when I learned she was actually willing to let me be the midwife, of course I agreed.”

  “Unbelievable,” I said, shaking my head, knowing that such an arrangement was surely due to their faith, to the concept of not just forgiving but also forgetting. Just as I had with James earlier, suddenly I was seeing Marta with new eyes.

  “Throughout the entire pregnancy and birth, I guess you could say that she and I bonded, as odd as that sounds. Of course, once we brought Zed home, nothing mattered at all except that he was ours. Mine.” Her eyes grew fierce. “He is mine, you know, as surely as if he had come from my own womb.”

  I knew. Remembering Mama, remembering Dad. I knew. Smiling, I thought of James’s words earlier, of how God could redeem a bad situation and bring from it, in the end, so much good.

  “You stayed in touch with his birth mother?”

  “Yes. She eventually married a wonderful Amish man, and when they were expecting their first child, she asked me to be her midwife again. I was happy to do it. In fact, I successfully delivered all of her babies. Until the last one, that is.” Marta shuddered.

  “What happened?”

  She gave me a look, as if to say, as she had before, that I already knew. “What happened is that she was in labor with her fifth child when something went wrong. Both she and the baby died.”

  “Come again?” I asked, wondering if I had misunderstood.

  Holding out her hands, palms upward, Marta simply looked at me, willing me to get it. Then it came to me. The person she was talking about, the one who had given birth to Zed so long ago, had been Lydia, the very patient Marta had lost in childbirth all these years later.

  The very patient Marta been accused of killing.

  I said Lydia’s name aloud. Glancing around us, Marta moved closer, gripped my arm above the elbow, and lowered her voice to a whisper.

  “Yes. It was Lydia. Now that you know, you can understand the astonishing position I have found myself in over these past few months. Freddy’s affair with her happened years ago. Water under the bridge. Forgiven. Forgotten. Truly, I had nothing but love for Lydia, nothing but gratitude for her having given me my son.”

  I nodded, believing her, knowing it was true.

  “But once I was implicated in her death, everything changed. I knew my hands were clean, that the past was past, but try convincing a jury of that in a court of law. A secular jury who doesn’t understand God’s ways. Can you imagine? With this knowledge, a clever attorney could have twisted things around completely, maybe even raised the charges from manslaughter to first-degree murder. How hard would it have been, really, to convince a jury that I had wanted Lydia to die? If they learned of the connection between us, they would have seen it as payback for the affair she’d once had with my husband. Since the moment I first learned the DA was going to pursue this case, I have lived in terror of someone involved finding out about this other connection between us.”

  Marta released her hold on my arm but continued to lean close as she spoke.

  “For a while, it looked like I was home free, that this other matter wasn’t going to come up and complicate things after all. But then you showed up and started asking questions. Like a big house of cards, I knew then they were going to fall. Since my night in jail, I’ve even been trying to prepare myself for the electric chair.”

  I was so stunned it was hard to speak. “Did your lawyer say that could happen?”

  Marta shook her head. “Connie doesn’t know about any of this. Until now, I haven’t breathed a word to a soul, except you. After the way I’ve treated you—and all you did for me in spite of it—I suppose I owe you that much.”

  I took a big step backward, resisting the urge to exclaim out loud. So that’s what all of this had been about for her? That’s why she had been so cruel to me? Almost as if an earthquake were reshuffling the ground under my feet, I found myself realigning with this new knowledge. It changed everything.

  “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how important it is that you keep my secret.” Marta added, her face solemn. “The case has been dismissed, but the DA could always reopen it if he thought he had new evidence against me.”

  My mind raced, uncomfortable with the weight of what I had learned. “What about Lydia’s family? How could they not know about her affair with Freddy, about Zed?”

  “Oh, some of them do, of course. Lydia’s mother. Her grandmother. Even Will. But it would never have dawned on any of them to bring that up now. Like me, they see that as far in the past and in no way relevant to what’s been going on in the present.”

  Her words made sense. To the Amish, it always came down to repenting, which Lydia had obviously done. Once forgiven was indeed once forgotten. Marta had thought her big secret was safe until the moment I appeared on her doorstep and demanded to know the truth and started to ask questions about the entire family. No wonder she had been so mean to me. She’d been fighting for her very life.

  Putting a hand to my mouth, I shook my head slowly, from side to side. “I am so sorry Marta. If only I had known…”

  She held up a hand to stop me.

  “Don’t say you’re sorry, Lexie, I’m the one who needs to apologize. And I do. I apologize for the way I’ve treated you this whole time. You weren’t wrong in coming here, not at all. It’s just that, for me, it was bad timing. Really bad timing.”

  I admitted to her that timing never had been my strong suit, and we shared a smile. Marta slid her hands into her pockets, her shoulders visibly relaxed. She gestured toward the house with a tilt of her head, and we both began walking again.

  “For what it’s worth,” she said as we went, “I’m actually glad about what happened this afternoon over at Mammi’s, especially because Zed was there to hear it. If he ever wants to know the truth about his parentage, he’ll have an easier time of it because of you. Because of what he saw today. I thank you for that.”

  I nodded, soothed by Marta’s apology and her thanks, both from the woman I had thought incapable of either. How very wrong I had been.

  We walked together in companionable silence, my aunt and I, but as we reached the driveway to the cottage, I hesitated, still concerned about the secret she had confided in me.

  “If we learned anything today,” I said carefully, “it’s how destructive secrets can be.”

  Marta nodded, her eyes narrowing as she waited to see where I was going.

  “Even though your case has been dismissed, Marta, I think you need to share this information with Connie so she can tell the DA. That may not be the safest or the smartest move, but it’s definitely the right one.”

  She exhaled slowly, lowering her head. She looked so sad that I added, “I think there’s a very good chance that he’ll see the situation in its entirety and let the matter go. But if you don’t bring this to his attention one way or another, you’re always going to know that you hid a part of the truth, and it’s going to eat away at you like a cancer.”

  Marta blinked, sending twin tears down her ruddy cheeks. As she wiped them away, she gave a sardonic laugh. “This from the woman who made Ella tell me about her drunken episode with Ezra. I guess I should have expected the same standards to apply.”

  “They’re not my standards, Marta. They’re God’s.”

  Again she nodded, and I could tell from her expression that she would do as I was urging. Before either of us spoke, my cell phone began vibrating in my pocket.

  “Think about it,” I said. “We can talk later.”

  She nodded, gave me a quick hug, and told me to go ahead and take the call. I pulled out my phone to see Ada’s name on the screen. Marta went on inside as I answered.

  Her voice was raw and I asked how she was doing. “So-so,” she said. “Mamm, Daed, and I have been talking all afternoon. That’s been good.” She asked if I could come over the next morning. It was Sunday, but it was their week off from services. They were all asking for me to visit.

  I said Jam
es and I would stop by.

  Then she said, “Mamm wants to talk with you.”

  I swallowed hard, not at all sure that I wanted to talk to her. But then Klara was on the phone and I had no choice. “Lexie,” she said. Her voice was soft and timid, not the way she spoke in person at all. “I wanted to say that I am sorry for how things were handled, for my part in all of it.”

  I could find neither voice nor words to reply. As I stood there with my mouth hanging open, she spoke again.

  “I understand if this sounds like too little, too late. I will pray for your forgiveness, and perhaps in time God will grant that prayer and soften your heart.”

  Cheeks flushing with sudden humility, I swallowed hard and managed a small “thank you” in reply.

  “I also wanted you to know I have Giselle’s address. She lives in Switzerland. I’ll give it to you tomorrow.”

  Before I could respond, Ada was back on the phone, saying goodbye and that she would see me the next day. After I hung up, I went over Klara’s words in my brain. Though it would probably take some time, I would make an effort to forgive her. She was my aunt, after all, and that was the Amish way.

  James rested on the sofa, and Zed was on the computer when I walked into the cottage. Marta stood behind her son. She looked alarmed as she turned toward me. “Zed has an email from Switzerland.”

  “Did the man talk to Giselle?” I asked, hurrying to her side with James following me from the living room.

  “No. Well, probably.” She pointed to the screen. The email was written in English. “Read it,” she said, stepping back. James stood beside me.

  Dear Zed,

  Thank you for inquiring after me. It is good to have word of home and information about my daughters. I am pleased they have met again after all these years. I am quite happy living in Switzerland and have found a measure of rest and peace. I think of my mother and sisters, and my daughters, often. I will think of my niece and nephew too, now that I know they exist.