by Tamar Myers
FOURTEEN
‘Vanity of vanities,’ says the Preacher; ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’ Ecclesiastes 1:2.
We Americans are a church-going people. We have one of the highest rates of church attendance in the world. Those of us who do make it a habit to show up at God’s House every Sunday also own a copy of his written word, the Holy Bible – hopefully the King James Version, which I am sure is the one that Jesus himself must have read.
Although I make it part of my routine, as do many other American Christians, to work their way through the entire Bible every year, I will admit that there are parts that I tend to skim. For instance, do I really need to know how to make a portable meeting house that can be lugged around in the desert for forty years?
Or how about the parts that challenge my cherished beliefs, and which Pastor Diffledorf can’t answer. For example, in the Book of Jeremiah, God curses King Jeconiah (a Davidic King) and says that none of his descendants will ever sit on the throne of David. But in the Book of Matthew, King Jeconiah is listed as one of Jesus’s direct ancestors. The problem is that in order to fulfil the messianic prophecy, Jesus had to be descended from the House of David, which stopped with King Jeconiah. Oy vey, as my Jewish husband would say, if that were one of his theological puzzles – which it isn’t. Pastor Diffledorf says that I’ll just have to ask the Lord for the answer when I get to Heaven.
But oh, how I’ve digressed, just to avoid a painful subject: that of my vanity. Although I’ve always possessed an admirable amount of humility, the sudden success of Amish Sinsations must have gone to my head. That’s the only way that I can explain the disastrous chain of events that was about to upend my life.
By then, Amish Sinsations was an even a bigger hit with the so-called one percent than its predecessor had been, and I had every confidence that it was what Agnes called ‘a keeper’. We Pennsylvania Dutch have traditionally subscribed to the dictum that ‘fat’s where it’s at’ when it comes to our cooking. If you ask me, that’s how the Good Lord designed us, otherwise we wouldn’t be drawn to a perfectly marbled steak, or bacon, or cinnamon rolls, or even just bread warm from the oven that’s been slathered in real creamery butter.
Now let’s talk about sugar: white granulated sugar, powdered sugar, dark brown sugar, medium brown sugar, and light brown sugar. All of these are a party for one’s mouth. Honey is as well. Of course, one would be sadly remiss not to mention the Crown Jewel of North America: maple syrup. Why else did God create sugar maples, if not for us to enjoy their wonderful bounty on our pancakes, candy, and even in our coffee?
One day, when the sun was shining brightly, and birds were singing in the lilac bushes on either side of the nursery window, I received a call from Sarah Conway, the personal assistant to the editor of A Woman’s Place. This highly esteemed homemaker’s magazine combines mouth-watering recipes, housekeeping tips, gardening, and lots of scripture, within its pages. It is issued monthly, and I know many women for whom this publication constitutes their only reading material, other than their Bible and daily devotions guide.
One can only imagine then how thrilled I was to have the editor of this esteemed magazine request a stay at The PennDutch Inn. This was especially the case since Sarah, the assistant, let it be known that her boss, Gordon Gaiters, had read about my ‘esteemed’ establishment in Condor’s Nest Travel, another highly esteemed publication. In addition to booking the entire inn (to ensure his privacy, Sarah said), Mr Gaiters wished to eat several of his meals at Amish Sinsations. Would I be willing to accommodate him? You bet your bippy I would. It was all so perfect!
Or not. How could I have allowed myself to be seduced by the flattering words Sarah Conway had thrown at me? Was she an evil temptress like the serpent in the perfect Garden of Eden? How stupid of me to have gotten carried away like that. I had forgotten that I was supposed to be a businesswoman of integrity. In order to accommodate Gordon Gaiters’ request for use of the entire inn, I was going to have to call every guest who had confirmed reservations for the week of his stay and tell each one of them that their reservation was not going to be honoured. Some of these guests might feel less than pleased to learn that the holiday they’d been planning for a year or more had to be scratched. Some might even get it into their heads to sue.
There was another downside to Gordon Gaiters’ sudden visit. This aspect was even more troubling than having to deal with an angry, hysterical public threatening to blackball my inn and the restaurant, both actions which were likely to happen when I pulled the plug on my highly prized reservations. What caused my stomach to churn, and my hand to reach for antacids, was my growing awareness that I no longer could stand shoulder to shoulder with the underlying premise in each issue of A Woman’s Place magazine. Inside the publication, the first page following the Table of Contents is illustrated with the facsimile of an ancient scroll. Written across the scroll are words that are supposed to look like Hebrew but are actually English. The author is the Apostle Paul and the quote I refer to is Ephesians 5:22-23a in the New King James Version of the New Testament: ‘Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife.’
Well, for one thing, Paul was never married, and for another, he made it pretty clear in other passages that he wasn’t too fond of women. That’s just my opinion, of course, and who am I to argue with a man who had a divine revelation with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, and thereafter claimed that he knew Jesus better than anyone who’d actually prayed, touched, sweated, walked, and tarried with the bodily Jesus for thirty-three long years? I’m just saying, I’m just a woman, I’m just Magdalena Portulacca Yoder. That’s a lot of ‘justs’ in order to justify myself. We still have freedom of religion in this country, so I don’t have to agree with those verses that say that a man is the head of the wife, and that a woman should submit to him.
I think that Paul said those things, but I don’t believe that Jesus said them. So there! I certainly don’t want Alison to grow up to be submissive. That would break my heart – and to think that some folks say that I don’t have a heart. My heart may be tiny and shrivelled, but I know that I still have one, because my doctor heard a faint beating sound in my chest at my last physical check-up. Well, either that, or it was my acid reflux acting up, she wasn’t sure.
It was around the time that I became an inadvertent adulteress that I began to have serious issues with the content of A Woman’s Place. At first, I foolishly attempted to express my opinions by writing letters to the editor. Long, instructive letters – for I am a passionate woman, if you will. Most of my letters were published, but only after they’d been chopped to bits by the editor, thereby making me out to sound foolish, perhaps even mad. After that I simply let my subscription to A Woman’s Place lapse. In all honesty, before Sarah Conway called to book the entire inn, I had not once, in six years, picked up an issue of her employer’s magazine. Although I had spotted some well-thumbed ones lying about in various homes I’d visited during that time frame, I’d heard almost no one speak of A Woman’s Place anymore. My friends are loyal and considerate of my feelings, unlike Gordon Gaiters, who had taken my letters and twisted them into pithy bits of mockery – aimed at me! And all because I disagreed with some of the content in his magazine. Talk about hubris!
Why then, one might ask, did I agree to let him have use of all my rooms for a week? Because of hubris. Like Granny said, the word did have a pleasant, feminine sound. Sort of like the female equivalent of Hubert. Although nicknames would be a bit awkward, given that ‘bris’ is the Hebrew word for ritual circumcision. A Jewish couple would probably wish to refrain from having to introduce their boy and girl twins as ‘these are our children, Bert and Circumcision’. Back to my sin of pride: since Gordon Gaiters had shredded my self-worth six years ago, it was important to me, in a big way, to show him that not only had I survived, but that I had thrived.
So there you have it. And once having fully committed to Gordon Gaiters�
�� imminent visit, I was feeling both extremely excited, and at the same time, full of dread. These two emotions, duelling for supremacy, even caused me to break out with a few pimples, as if I were a teenager again. At least Alison and I had something to bond over throughout the coming days – if only she would lift a page out of my childhood, and be one of those children who was seen, but never heard. Realistically, that was about as likely as a snowstorm in August.
Given that it was still early August, school was not yet back in session, so I encouraged – nay, practically begged – our daughter to arrange a sleepover at a friend’s home. Better yet, a series of friends’ homes. Despite her bad grammar, Alison is a surprisingly popular girl, not only with her peers, but with their parents. Gabe thinks that may be because she has learned to ‘play the game’, as he calls it. Several times when he has gone early to pick her up from an overnight stay at a friend’s house, he has caught her helping the mother washing up in the kitchen and speaking to her in Standard English.
I am so ashamed to admit that I even tried bribing Alison with cash to stay away from The PennDutch Inn, but to no avail. When that didn’t work, I tried luring her into the lounge area of our master bedroom where Gabe keeps his sinfully large flat-screen television, with the added bonus of unlimited snacks, both sugary and savoury, but she wouldn’t bite. Finally, at my wit’s end, I finished where I should have begun, which was on my knees, imploring God to keep her mouth firmly shut, just like the angel did to the mouths of the lions who would have torn the Prophet Daniel limb from limb.
Whatever game Alison was playing on the day of Gordon Gaiters’ arrival, I couldn’t help but admire her pluck and enthusiasm. Since she’s not my biological daughter, I can’t rightly say that she’s a ‘chip off the old block’, but as we share cousinship in so many family lines, it’s not totally beyond the realm of possibility that she’s my very much younger identical twin sister.
That said, the afternoon when Gordon Gaiters arrived, chauffeured by Sarah Conway, my dear sweet husband and me had long since kissed and made up. The details are, of course, nobody’s business. Gabe and I strive not to go to bed angry with each other, and if the circumstances are such that one of us has to retire in a foul mood, we both agree that it had better be him. Gabe awakes each morning with his mind a blank slate, whereas my mind still has scribbles etched on it from forty years ago.
When Alison espied Gordon Gaiters’ sleek car from her bedroom window, she flew down from upstairs like Harry Potter himself, and out to greet him. I hadn’t been sure if Alison had ever read A Woman’s Place, and had been afraid to ask, but she acted as if he was a rock star, or a famous actor. Her motive, I had no doubt, was to rack up ‘brownie points’ with me, so that I would overlook her choice of reading material.
But when Sarah Conway stepped out of the sleek new automobile with the Missouri license plates, Alison stopped dead in her tracks. Her eyes widened to the size of manhole covers, and her lower jaw swung back and forth just above her bare feet. That may have been a slight exaggeration, but I too was stunned by what I beheld.
Sarah Conway bore a striking resemblance to Hernia’s very own Barbara Hostetler. She was sinfully tall (at least she would have seemed so to Freni), she had Barbara’s green eyes, the same rich brown hair, bordering on auburn (although hers was lightly streaked with grey), and the same pleasant features. Where they differed the most physically was that Sarah Conway appeared to be a generation older than Barbara Hostetler, which would have put Sarah at around sixty. What was not immediately noticeable, was that she had apparently spent a good deal of time outdoors in the sun, without having first applied sunscreen. At any rate, a more imaginative woman than I am might have entertained the idea, however briefly, that Sarah Conway was Barbara Conway’s mother come to pay a surprise visit.
It is no secret that I have often been accused of being one muffin shy of a gift basket. In my defence, I wish to state that although Barbara Hostetler is a legitimate Amish woman, from a well-known Amish community in Iowa, she came to Pennsylvania to marry Freni’s son Jonathan. Jonathan did not go there to seek a bride. What’s more, Barbara Hostetler was a so-called foundling. She had been found in a barn as a newborn, most likely abandoned by an Amish teenager who had left the community to sow her ‘wild oats’ during the years of teenage leniency called rumschpringe, and then returned home.
Besides their obvious difference in age, they were also dressed quite differently. Whereas Barbara Hostetler wears dresses sewn out of plain coloured cloth, and keeps her hair covered unless she is sleeping, Sarah Conway was dressed in the style to which some very conservative evangelical groups adhere. Sarah’s light blue shirtdress with its tiny flower print was even more modest than Barbara’s with its ankle length skirt, long sleeves, and stand-up collar, which she wore buttoned to her throat. Her still gorgeous hair, which the Bible states is a woman’s ‘crowning glory’, although braided and coiled around her head in the identical manner as Barbara’s, seemed strangely naked in its uncovered state.
‘Wow,’ Alison said, when she’d found her tongue. ‘Who are you?’
‘You will address me as “Miss Conway”,’ the new arrival said.
‘Ya sure ya ain’t Barbara Hostetler’s mom?’ Alison said.
Sarah Conway stiffened. ‘Are you sure that you’re not being incredibly rude?’
‘Maybe I am, or maybe I ain’t,’ Alison said.
‘So you are just being rude. And you’re immodestly dressed, too, I see. And here I thought this was a Conservative Mennonite establishment. Or are you just an uncouth neighbourhood girl? I can’t imagine that Miss Yoder would hire a maid the likes of you.’
A more responsible parent upon reading this verbal exchange transcribed on a page, might conclude that I should have chastised my child for having sassed Sarah Conway in the first place. That’s what my mama would have done, had I dared speak to an adult the way Alison had. However, that never would have happened, because back then I didn’t even have the chutzpah to speak to my dolls that way. At any rate, Sarah Conway’s harsh criticism of Alison caused me to react to her in a most unchristian manner. One might say that the Devil made me do it.
‘Miss Sarah Conway,’ I roared. ‘You are unworthy of touching the hem of this girl’s garment, to borrow a phrase from the Good Lord himself. Alison may be rude, and crude, and socially unacceptable, but she has a heart of gold, and she is my beloved daughter. Nobody can point out her many and obvious faults except her father and me. Have I made myself clear?’
Much to my great surprise Sarah Conway’s green eyes smiled. Not her lips, mind you, but her eyes.
‘Well then,’ she said, ‘now that introductions have been made, I must attend to my employer.’
When the Barbara Hostetler lookalike headed around the bonnet of the sleek automobile to assist Gordon Gaiters, my dear, sweet Alison flew into action. Perhaps she wished to prove herself hospitable after all, although the result was that she and Sarah Conway practically came to blows to see who would be the one to open the car door for the elderly gent. It was a foregone conclusion, however, as few living people possess elbows sharper than Alison’s.
‘Mr Gaiters,’ she shouted into the man’s ear. ‘How ya doing?’
‘He’s just fine,’ I heard Sarah Conway say a bit crossly.
OK, I might have lagged some five yards or so behind my daughter, but my hearing is still so sharp that I can hear the Babester clip his toenails when I’m in our barn, and he’s back in our master bathroom. To be fair, Sarah Conway was only trying to do her job when my rude, but altogether endearing, daughter butted in.
‘Good,’ Alison said, ‘then I can walk the old man up to the house.’
‘I beg your pardon!’ Sarah Conway said.
‘Nah,’ Alison said, ‘ya ain’t gotta beg for nothing, lady. Not with this fancy-schmancy car ya been driving.’ She reached for Gordon Gaiters’ arm, but he snatched it away as fast as greased lightning. Believe you me, that old man was mig
hty impressive for someone who I assumed was looking eighty in the rear-view mirror.
‘It’s not her car, little girl, it’s mine.’
‘Is that so, huh? Then why ain’t ya the one driving it? And just so ya know, I ain’t no little girl.’
Before Alison could launch another verbal assault on my guests, Sarah Conway launched a physical assault on her. With her gloved hands she literally gave my daughter a hard push that sent the dear child toppling backward to the rough asphalt drive. Alison thrust out her arm in an attempt to break her fall, but still ended up lying on her back, her knees spread, and the skirt of her sundress flipped back.
‘Hey!’ she shouted as she went down. Then she lay there moaning, while I stood there staring, dumbstruck, for far too long. There are times, sadly, when it is impossible to process what one has just seen. At least that happens to me.
Sarah Conway, on the other hand, had a shorter reaction time than I did. ‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ she gushed. ‘Sometimes I don’t know my own strength.’ She extended a hand to Alison before I could even move. ‘Here girl. Upsy-daisy.’
Alison merely glared at the woman. That’s when I rushed in. ‘How bad is it, dear? Do I need to call Gabe?’
Alison sat slowly and showed me a bloody right palm to which tiny bits of asphalt adhered. With her other hand she rubbed her back as she straightened it. Then she twisted her head this way and that, and I could hear her neck ‘crack’. Getting her cartilage to crack is one of my young teen’s favourite ways to frighten and annoy me.
‘Nah, I’ll live.’
‘In that case,’ Gordon Gaiters said, ‘you might do me the great favour of putting your knees together as soon as possible. No Christian child should be seen in such a compromising position.’
‘Why, I never!’ I said.
