The Hand That Rocks the Ladle

by Tamar Myers

  “Then find Little Freni!”

  “I’m doing my best, Freni. In fact, I’ve been following a few leads.”

  “Yah?”

  “Yah,” I said, and then flushed with shame. “Freni, dear, do you know Rebecca Zook? The one who until just recently was working at Miller’s Feed Store?”

  “Ach, such a sad story.”

  “Oh?”

  “There are rumors, Magdalena.”

  “What sort of rumors?”

  Freni sighed, delighted to have my rapt attention. “She’s in the family way.”

  “I know that, dear. It isn’t a secret—oh, you mean she isn’t married. Is that it?”

  “Yah, but there is more.”

  “Do tell!” The ninth commandment forbids us to give false testimony against our neighbors. It does not forbid true testimony. Besides, Proverbs, chapter eighteen, verse eight says, “The words of a gossip are like choice morsels, they go down to a man’s inmost parts.” Freni took a deep breath, nearly sucking my ear into the phone. “They say she bundled with an English man and—”

  “Get out of town!”

  “What? You want I should tell this story or not, Magdalena?”

  “I want! ‘Get out of town’ is only an expression I learned from Susannah. Go on with your story, dear.” “Do you know what this bundling is, Magdalena?” “Yes, but I want to hear more.” Boy, did I! Supposedly, the custom originated some centuries ago in the cold, unheated farmhouses of Switzerland, but persists to this day among some Amish groups, especially here in Hernia, Pennsylvania. It is a controversial subject, even among the Amish themselves. I had heard references to bundling as long as I can remember, but had never had the nerve to ask Freni for details. Mama, a Mennonite born and bred, looked down her long Yoder (and not only by marriage) nose at the custom, calling it “sinful” and “an abomination.” Of course, Mama was also of the opinion that Mennonites should never engage in sex while standing, lest it lead to dancing.

  At any rate, beyond the age of sixteen Amish teenagers are given an astonishing amount of leeway, known as miteinander rumschpringe, or literally, “running around together.” This is the age when dating begins. If a relationship becomes serious, some Amish will permit the young people to cuddle, in bed, in a horizontal position. More often than not a rough board is placed between the couple to prevent any direct physical contact. In some Amish communities, however, the couple may actually embrace, but only from the waist up. One Amish church in the area insists that the young men remain fully clothed, but the young women may remove their dresses, as long as they remain in their petticoats!

  Freni mumbled something that let me know she didn’t approve of bundling altogether. No doubt this disapproval extends to Jonathan and Barbara’s marital relations—or it may be because her son married a woman she couldn’t stand (i.e., any woman).

  “But from what I hear, Magdalena, the Zooks practice this custom.”

  “With or without the board?”

  “Ach!” She paused. “Without. And now they are paying the price.”

  “But with an English man?”

  “Yah, a young boy who comes into the feed store now and then.”

  “You’re saying the Zooks allowed their daughter to date an English boy?”

  “Ach, so dense, Magdalena. Maybe they don’t allow such a thing, but if they practice the bundling—well, you see what happens?”

  In Freni’s court the Zooks had been tried and convicted of parental neglect, or worse. It was time to steer the conversation away from the irresponsible parents and back to Rebecca.

  “Is there any possibility of marriage?”

  “Ach!” The sound of boulders crashing into my ear was a clue that Freni had dropped the phone on her end.

  “Freni? Are you okay?”

  “Yah,” she panted, “but such nonsense you talk. Maybe the Zooks are not such good parents, and maybe Elizabeth is not such a good housekeeper—and her pie crusts are too dry—but they would never let Rebecca marry an English.”

  “They would shun her?”

  “Yah, of course!”

  Of course. Shunning is a major tenant of Ordnung, the Amish code of behavior. Members of the community are required to shun those individuals who have been excommunicated for grievous sins. These sins range from persistent playing of the radio (despite grave warnings) to adultery. The act of shunning is not a token slap on the wrist. One is forbidden to talk to, sleep with, and even eat with a shunned person. Fortunately, this need not be a permanent situation. If the sinner is truly repentant and promises to change his or her ways, they can be reunited to the community, both physically and spiritually. If the sinner is intransigent, the shunning could go on forever.

  Spiritual insubordination can sometimes have disastrous consequences. Take the Troyers, for example, who live just down the road from me. He was excommunicated for pridefully installing rubber tires on his buggy. That was six months ago, and since then, by all accounts, Daniel and Lizzie Troyer have been living in separate parts of the house. Meanwhile Daniel refuses to repent for something which he does not view as a sin. In fact, I have seen him drive past my house in that very buggy, flaunting those comfy tires in broad daylight!

  Unfortunately, but as might be expected, Daniel’s parents, siblings, and numerous cousins think the bishop—who is a first cousin to Lizzie—has been too harsh. Lizzie’s family, and reportedly herself included, support the bishop. There is speculation now that this particular congregation will split in half, and those in favor of rubber buggy tires will establish a new church. This will undoubtedly mean the end of Daniel and Lizzie’s marriage. The Troyer situation might even be funny if it were not for the fact that Jonathan and Barbara are in favor of rubber tires, whereas Mose and Freni are dear friends of Lizzie’s parents, and thus quite against this seductive worldly comfort. When rubber tires threaten to divide my loved ones, it stops being a laughing matter.

  “Freni, dear,” I said softly, “is there any chance that Rebecca Zook will repent?”

  “Who knows? The Zooks are a hardheaded bunch. So why do you want to know about Rebecca?”

  “I thought she might be able to use a new friend,” I said deftly. That was true, only I didn’t expect that new friend to be me.

  “The Zooks want these rubber tires,” Freni said tartly.

  “Maybe I could talk them out of them.”

  Freni snorted. I knew what she was thinking. I’m a car-driving Mennonite, for crying out loud. I couldn’t possibly talk an Amish person out of anything that was bad for them. To the contrary, I was likely to buy them a one-way express ticket to you know where.

  “Are they the same Zooks who live next to the Kauffmans on Zweibacher Road?” I asked cagily.

  “Ach! Those are the Bontragers! Rebecca Zook lives in that big white house on Hooley Lane. The one right beside that terrible curve. Dead Man’s Curve,” she added in a whisper.

  Virtually every Amish family in the area lives in a big white house, but I knew now exactly which one she meant. Last winter two Hernia high school boys were drag racing down Hooley Lane, when the car in front plowed head-on into a horse and buggy. Five members of the Stutzman family were killed outright, three others were critically injured, including the driver of the lead car. As for the poor horse, no amount of whispering could save his hide.

  “Terrible about that accident,” I said, and clucked appropriately. “So when are you coming home, Freni? Do you need a ride?”

  “Visiting hours are over at eight,” she said. “That nice Mennonite couple will be picking me up.”

  “The Redigers? Aren’t they being just a little too nice?” Believe me, I’d known Freni my entire life. There was no way I could be jealous of two leaf-watching upstarts from Indiana. Even if they were fellow Mennonites.

  “Such good people, Magdalena. Always so calm and soothing. You could take a page from their dictionary.”

  “That’s book,” I wailed. “And the Redigers use rubber
tires!”

  Freni hung up. She obviously didn’t have a comeback for that.

  I stood for a moment in the front by the lobby phone. I could hear peals of laughter emanating from the kitchen. A surreptitious peek into the dining room revealed the professor devouring a tome along with his meal. There was a scowl on his forehead. Clearly, neither party needed me.

  They say that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. They may be right in this case. I got going—right out the front door and straight into the lap of temptation.

  Fifteen

  Bubble and Squeak

  2 cups cold mashed potatoes

  1 cup cold roast beef, shredded

  1 cup cold steamed or boiled cabbage, chopped finely

  1 medium onion, chopped finely

  2 ounces sharp cheddar cheese

  4 slices bacon

  Salt and pepper to taste

  Fry bacon until crisp, and remove from pan. Mix and shape remaining ingredients into four large patties. Fry for about five minutes on each side until hot through and golden brown. Garnish with crumbled bacon.

  Sixteen

  I have a new neighbor. The farm across from me, the one where my erstwhile Pooky Bear, the bigamist who took my precious flower and tore it asunder, used to live, this farm has been sold to an immigrant. Dr. Gabriel Rosen—a medical doctor in this case—doesn’t hail from someplace overseas, but from New York City. The Big Apple, as he calls it. Urban refugee is what he calls himself.

  Hernia has seen a lot of urban refugees lately. Our clean air, cheap prices, and uncongested streets are appealing to folks from Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and in Gabriel’s case, even much farther away. To be honest, we locals regard these newcomers with a mixture of awe and contempt. They buy our most expensive houses, or build enormous new ones, but then they wander about in blue jeans, or shorts that barely cover their fannies.

  Although Dr. Rosen wears blue jeans, he is not like the rest. And he is not an urban refugee, no matter what he says. It was clear from the moment I met him that Gabe, as I now call him, was running to something, not from something. Gabe came west seeking solitude and a place to begin his new career, that of a writer. One has to admire a man who gave up a three-hundred-thousand-dollar salary at one of the nation’s most prestigious heart clinics to write books. Either that, or mark him off as crazy.

  Gabe is not crazy. He is, however, drop-dead gorgeous. Taller than I by at least two inches, he has warm brown eyes and a head of dark curly hair, so thick and beautiful it is all I can do not to reach out and run my hands through it. In fact, I once dreamed that I ran my toes through his locks.

  We haven’t exactly been dating, Gabe and I, but we do seem to find the slightest excuse to run across Hertzler Road and borrow this or that, or share some trivial bit of news. Last Sunday he showed up to borrow a cup of lima beans, just as I was sitting down to lunch. Lima beans! Cooked ones yet! Freni stoutly denies having told Gabe that lima beans were on my lunch menu, which they were. Since Freni never lies, well—go figure, as Susannah would say.

  I rang the doorbell, and seeing myself reflected in the windowpane, quickly tucked a wisp of hair behind my ear. I wear my mouse-colored hair in a bun, and although I possess several equine features, I am not altogether unattractive.

  The door flung open and Gabe stood there in a pair of tight jeans and pale yellow golf shirt. He was barefoot, and in the long summer dusk I could see that he. had deeply tanned, slender feet with high arches.

  “I came to borrow a cup of lima beans,” I said. Actually, I came to sound Gabe out about joining the staff of Hernia Hospital. That, and to gaze once again upon that heavenly face.

  Gabe has a brilliant smile. He is, after all, a man who can afford the finest dental work available.

  “Will half a cup of frozen mashed potatoes do?”

  “Frozen?”

  “I’m afraid it’s a TV dinner tonight. I really can cook, you know, but I got wrapped up in the climax scene.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He laughed and ushered me inside. “The chase scene. The one in which my protagonist single-handedly fights, in an alley, a gang of five Pakistani drug smugglers who pose as New York cabbies.”

  “Ah, so it’s a mystery!” Gabe has been as closemouthed about his book as my faux-husband was about the missing years of his life.

  “Yeah, it’s a mystery, all right. I didn’t want to talk about it before because—well, I guess because I’m kind of superstitious. But now that I have just the denouement remaining, it seems safe.”

  I settled back in the offered chair, a black, buttery soft Italian leather monster that practically hugged me. Gabe sprawled across a matching sofa. So many cows were giving their lives for furniture these days. “What’s the title of your mystery?”

  “Haven’t decided. Did I tell you my protagonist was a seventy-eight-year-old Yiddish-speaking grandmother from the Bronx?”

  “No!”

  “Well it is. So I was tentatively thinking of The Hand that Rocks the Dreidel.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “A dreidel is like a little top. It’s a children’s game that’s played at Hanukkah.”

  “Why a mystery?” I said. And why didn’t he direct me to sit on the couch as well. I wouldn’t have minded a little sprawling in my direction.

  “I wanted to jump into writing with both feet, and mysteries are the most demanding form of fiction there is.”

  “How so?”

  “Literary and mainstream writers can wander all over the board. They can digress until the cows come home—I love that expression now that I’m living in the country. Anyway, a mystery has to have a plot, and everything in the book must somehow advance that plot.”

  “Will it have proper punctuation?”

  He looked surprised. “Of course.”

  “I only say that because I hate books that omit quotation marks. That mountain book left me cold.”

  “Yes, but that was a literary novel. Those authors can get away with anything, including murder.”

  “What about romance?”

  “I’m all for romance,” he said, and winked.

  I blushed. I’m sure of that. My face engorged with so much blood that my feet floated off the floor, as light and dry as Freni’s biscuits.

  “Care for some wine?” he asked.

  “I don’t drink.” I may have said it emphatically.

  “Nothing?”

  “Water, juice, milk, tea, coffee—oh, and cocoa. I really love cocoa.”

  “Is this a religious thing?”

  I felt my face burn. My feet floated even higher. Gabriel and I had almost nothing in common, I knew that. Maybe that’s what made him so exciting. With Aaron, I’d picked a forbidden fruit, but unknowingly. There had been no excitement in that. With Gabriel came a whole new territory of possible sins. The prospect of avoiding them all—or not—made me giddy.

  “Wine is an abomination,” I said calmly. “It says so in the Bible.”

  “It also says that it gladdens the heart.”

  “Maybe in your Bible.”

  He smiled. “Maybe we shouldn’t discuss religion. Not just yet. I’ve got some diet cola on hand. How about that? Or is that forbidden too?”

  “Of course not.”

  “It wasn’t on your list.”

  “And neither was rudeness, but you seem to have no problem dispensing that.”

  Brown eyes studied my face solemnly. “I’m sorry. I guess I presumed too much.”

  “Just what exactly does that mean?”

  “Well, I thought a little good-natured banter was okay.”

  It was such a trivial thing, his little gibe, yet somehow it was now a pivotal point. Either I got over my defensiveness, or this relationship was going nowhere. Did I tell you that Gabriel Rosen had the longest, darkest eyelashes I had ever seen on a man?

  “Banter away!” I cried.

  He grinned. “Sorry again. And if I step over the line now and then
, call me on it.”

  “Will do.”

  “So, what do you want to drink? I could make cocoa.”

  “It’s July, dear. Do you have any grape juice?” Maybe I couldn’t drink wine, but was it so wrong to pretend?

  “Straight up or on the rocks?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Without ice, or with.”

  “Oh, I get it. Without. I don’t want to dilute it.” I gave him what I hoped was a mischievous wink. The last time I winked at a man he thought I had a cinder in my eye and offered assistance to remove it. You can be sure I told Deacon Graber to keep his mitts off me. He wasn’t that cute.

  “I’ll bring you a double,” he said. “Extra strong.” Then either he winked back, or he had a smoldering log in his left eye.

  While Gabe retired to the kitchen, I studied my surroundings. The previous owners, the Millers, had hired a heterosexual interior decorator from Pittsburgh. The result was dreadful. But the place looked pretty good now. If it wasn’t for the pheromones that had been bombarding me like sleet in November, I would have been worried.

  I noticed a row of silver-framed photographs on the mantel. From where I sat some of the pictures appeared to be of children. I knew that Gabe wasn’t married—I will never make that mistake again—but he had been at one time. “Long divorced,” he described it. And I knew about a nephew. But I wasn’t sure about children. I may be a tad bossy, but I’m not nosy.

  I struggled from the comfortable embrace of the leather armchair and strode to the fireplace. A young man with a bad complexion grimaced at me on the left. No doubt the college-aged nephew. To his right two little girls, one blond, one dark, smiled through a paucity of teeth.

  “My nieces,” Gabe said, reading my mind.

  I wheeled. I hadn’t heard him return, but he was standing there all right, a pair of long-stemmed goblets in his hands.

  “Here.” He handed me a goblet.

  “Thanks.” I took the drink.

  Gabe read my mind again. “Mine’s grape juice too.” “You didn’t have to!” I am ashamed to say that I was simultaneously relieved and disappointed.