by Tamar Myers
I also had to bathe Little Jacob, and redress him, and do likewise for myself, so it was late afternoon by the time we got into Bedford, our nearest real city. With a population of nearly four thousand people, this bustling metropolis offers just about everything a good Christian could want—and then some. I was able to purchase poster board without any trouble and make it to the First Farmer’s Bank five minutes before they locked the doors.
As I stood at the island counter tallying checks for deposit, Little Jacob played on the floor at my feet with his own “checkbook.” This is a mockup that I made out of old canceled and voided checks just for him. It’s never too early to teach a child how to run a successful business if you ask me—even if he can’t say his “R”s.
“Mama,” the little fellar in question said, whilst tugging on my skirt, “I see a wobba.”
“That’s nice, dear.”
“Now I see two wobbas.”
“A wobba what, dear?” I asked absently. “A wobba band?”
“No, silly; they ah wobba men. But now I see thwee of them.”
“Shhh, honey, Mama’s trying to hurry.”
He continued to tug on my skirt. “One of them’s wobbing that nice lady behind the countah, Mama. You know, the nice lady who sometimes gives me candy. The kind that isn’t stale.”
“What?” I looked up from my work.
There were three people in the reception area, other than the two security guards. All three of the customers were Amish men, but all three were indeed armed, and one did have a gun pointed at the back of Amy Neubrander ’s head.
2
Of course the scenario I beheld was impossible since Amish men don’t carry guns, and they don’t rob banks, and even a person with just one drop of Amish blood could not point a gun at another human being. I know this is so, because my own ancestor, Jacob Hochstetler, made the difficult choice that he and his family would be massacred by the Delaware Indians rather than defend themselves. Needless to say, some of them survived, but you get my point; the Amish are the epitome of the phrase “a gentle people.”
So if what I saw was an impossibility, then I was either experiencing a psychotic break or the world had just gone to Hades in a handbasket, and neither prospect was good for my Little Jacob. When you’re a mother, it’s all about the children, isn’t it? The thing is this: Amy was somebody’s child as well. The poor girl was barely into her twenties—if that. She might have been still in her late teens.
And what about the two security guards? one might ask. What were they doing? Why, absolutely nothing! They were standing as stock-still as the cylindrical trash containers on either side of the doors.
Amy seemed remarkably calm. “It takes two minutes for the SWAT team to get here,” she said in a loud clear voice, “and I pressed the alarm a minute ago. If you leave now, you might still have a chance to get away.”
The Amish do not value education; in fact they eschew it as worldly and dangerous. They are, however, as a rule not unintelligent. In contrast, these three were as bright as the warts on a pickle—and I say that with all Christian charity. The men looked at one another, at Amy, around the lobby at the security cameras, at the security guards, at me, and then back at one another.
The one standing closest to me called out to the others, “Do you think she’s telling the truth?”
“Only one way to find out,” said the man who had the gun pointed directly at Amy’s forehead.
“Shoot the witch,” growled the third man, “and let’s get on with it.” Of course, being a criminal, he used far stronger language than that.
“No, don’t shoot huh!” Little Jacob was on his feet and halfway across the marble expanse before I could react.
They said that one’s life passes in front of one’s eyes in a life-threatening situation, but the only thing I had on my mind was the safety of my sweet little son. Like a hundred-thirty-five-pound projectile of flesh and bone, I flew at my offspring, knocking him to the floor. We slid the rest of the way across the room, where we crashed into the villain in front of the counter.
I still don’t know if it was the impact that caused it, or if the robber was trigger-happy, but the gun did indeed go off. Fortunately the bullet barely grazed Amy, doing more damage to her blouse than her upper arm. Still, she screamed and staggered backward, eventually tripping and falling. It was at about this point that the two trash can-like guards awoke from their fear-induced coma and began to stumble about like a pair of drunks. Add to this craziness the antics of the bank manager and the two other clerks, and the lobby suddenly resembled a three- ring circus.
Apparently all this activity was just too much for the simple Amish felons, who mercifully hightailed it out of the bank without another word, and more important, without firing another shot. However, the police did not show up for another five minutes. In fact, when they did show up, it was only because I had called them on my cell phone.
“Nine-one-one,” the dispatcher said in a disarmingly cheery voice.
“Uh—there’s been a bank robbery. At the First Farmer’s Bank.”
“Magdalena, is that you?”
“Hedda?”
“Yup, that’s me: Hedda Schnurmeister, although you used to call me Hedda Gabbler, on account of I used to talk so much, although I never did get the connection. But it’s Hedda Winkler now, and if I recall correctly, you’re no longer—”
“Shut up—please, Hedda. Like I said, there’s been a bank robbery. Put me through to the police.”
“Holy salami! Are you sure? How much money did they get?”
“Well, they didn’t get anything because my son—you never saw a braver hero in all your born days—confronted them. But they did shoot Amy Neubrander in the left arm, so make sure you dispatch an ambulance as well.”
“Hold on, Magdalena, will you? I’ve got another call coming in.”
“But, Hedda—”
I waited two minutes for her to get back on the line. In the meantime, I directed the security guards as they tore a three- inch-wide strip from the bottom of my petticoat and wrapped it like a tourniquet around Amy’s arm. As we were doing this, Little Jacob cooed to her in a mixture of Pennsylvania Dutch, Yiddish, and, of course, English. The tyke is growing up trilingual, thanks to a Jewish grandmother and an Amish cousin who are living and working in close proximity. (For the record, neither of these women is “R” deficient.)
“Magdalena, are you there?”
“Of course. Where’s the ambulance? Where are the police?”
“Hold your horses, Magdalena; I’m about to send them. You’re not going to believe this, but there’s been an honest-to-goodness bank robbery in this town—well, an attempt at one, at any rate. That was the bank president on the line just now. He said that an incredibly brave little boy put a stop to it. And I mean a little boy too—like three or four.”
“He’s four. He can’t say his ‘R’s and he’s small for his age, but other than that, he’s completely normal.”
“Yeah? How would you know?”
“Because he’s my son, you—you—nincompoop!”
“Why, Magdalena Yoder, is that any way for a good Mennonite woman to talk?”
I am, indeed, Magdalena Yoder—I am, in fact, Magdalena Portulacca Yoder Rosen. There are those who would claim that I am anything but a good Mennonite woman, and that my apple has not only fallen far from the tree, but it has rolled out of the orchard altogether. Of course they are wrong.
A good Mennonite woman should be humble, and if I must say so myself, I am quite proud of my humility. A good Mennonite woman should be soft-spoken, never judgmental, always striving to be Christ-like. Well, let it be known that I offer observations, not judgments, and I am quite capable of whispering them. As for a Christ- like demeanor, let us not forget that the Dear Lord exhibited a great deal of agitation when he happened upon the moneychangers in the temple, and if this is the example I choose to emulate, who then are others to judge me?
Of co
urse there remains the fact that I married outside my faith. This seems to stick in the craws of many of my coreligionists, never mind that the man I married is of the same faith as Jesus Himself, plus his mother, stepfather, and most of the disciples. The One Way contingent not only believes that the Babester will burn in Hell for all Eternity, but some of them demand that I believe that as well. A few of the more pious have informed me that I have endangered my own soul in a sort of Singe and Sizzle by Association (the Babester ’s words, not mine) theology.
At any rate, I have tried to be a good Mennonite woman, I tried to be a good big sister (at that, I did fail miserably), I try to be a good wife, and I try to be a good mother. However, when I saw my only child, that integral part of me who grew beneath my heart for eight and a half months, come so close to being murdered that day in the bank, something within me finally snapped.
The more vindictive in our community were overheard to say cruel things like “Magdalena’s gone bonkers, Magdalena’s berserk, she’s stark-raving mad, nuttier than one of Elvina’s fruitcakes”—the list of pejorative descriptions was longer than Cynthia Bertelsmann’s abnormally long arms. Even Freni, my best friend and kinswoman, is said to have muttered, “I think maybe the little bird has flown from her clock, yah?”
Ironically, it was Freni, perhaps the least educated of my analysts, who came closest in her description. It wasn’t that I was running around foaming at the mouth whilst spouting nonsense; I was doing quite the opposite. The cuckoo had flown the clock, and since there was no one home anymore, I—as represented by the clock—was shutting down.
The first thing to go was my appetite; only Freni noticed that. Meanwhile joie de vivre seeped out of me like sap from a tapped maple tree. In short order my sex drive dried up like a cut day-lily left to wither on hot pavement; only Gabriel noticed that. It wasn’t until it became too burdensome to think, and therefore to talk, that those outside my immediate family noticed the change in my personality.
Again it was the perceptive Freni who diagnosed me first. “So,” she said to Gabe, and right in front of me too, “about our Magdalena, I have been thinking.”
“Yes?”
“She has the post-pardon expression.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Ach, not that one. The other one. The post-pardon.”
“I see.” And Gabe did. He’s fifty, and she’s seventy- six; he’s Jewish, she’s Amish; he’s a cardiologist, she’s a cook, but somehow the two of them ended up sharing the same brain wave that deals with communication.
“Yet it is clear that you do not agree,” she said.
“Freni, it’s been four years since Little Jacob was born. If it was postpartum depression, we would have seen signs of it before this. I think it is generalized depression brought on by the trauma of what happened at the bank.”
As they talked, they calmly peeled potatoes for supper. It was just as if I wasn’t there—but I was, sitting ramrod straight on a chair in the corner, because that was how Gabe had positioned me, and even slumping seemed like it was too much effort. Thank Heaven the little one was spending the day with Freni’s grandchildren on the Hostetler family farm.
“Is there a pill for such a thing?” Freni asked.
“Yes and no. There are several medications that can help, but she also might benefit from some talk therapy.”
“Yah, that one can talk.”
Gabe set peeler and spud in the sink and slid an arm affectionately around my kinswoman. Normally, that would have been twice as much contact as she might have experienced during a reproductive cycle with her husband, Mose, but the Babester has killer good looks, and Freni has had a crush on him since day one.
“I know of a top-notch facility in the Poconos. She’ll have round-the-clock supervision and all the talk therapy she can handle—plus, since she’ll be in a safe environment, they’ll be free to experiment with her medication levels.”
Freni nodded, which took a bit of effort, seeing as how she has no neck. “So this is the Clooney bin of which they speak?”
“Of which who speaks?” Gabe demanded, his brown eyes flickering.
“Ach,” Freni squawked, “folks!”
By “folks” she meant just about everyone in our tightly knit community of Mennonites, Baptists, Methodists, and yes, Amish, all of whom shied away from seeking help for so-called mental illnesses. The Lord was supposed to be able to fix what was wrong with us. Sometimes, however, the Devil got such a strong hold on a person that he or she was unwilling to shake his- or herself loose from demonic possession, and again turn to the healing power of Christ. Only then, and this happened very rarely, did one of our own get shipped off to a loony bin somewhere, and usually those folks never returned.
“The word is ‘loony,’ ” Gabe said sadly, “not ‘Clooney’—although our Magdalena—at least the one we used to know—is very found of George. Anyway, Freni, we don’t call them loony bins anymore; it isn’t PC.”
“Personal computers, yah? This word I learn from Magdalena, but now you make no sense.” She wrested free of Gabe’s comforting arm. “This world makes no sense to me.”
“Me either,” said Gabe, his voice breaking.
I spent three and a half months in the West Pocono Home for the Emotionally Challenged. There I was deconstructed, reconstructed, and instructed in the basics of good mental health. But although I recovered to the point that I could be engaged in meaningless conversation, I felt as if I had yet to recover my oomph.
“We need to help her find a way to get her mojo back,” my Beloved said on one of his weekly visits.
“Ya,” my Jewish mother-in law said. “Dis von needs her mo-Jew.” Although Ida was born Jewish, she is now Mother Superior to a convent operated by the Sisters of Perpetual Apathy.
“Ma,” said the Babester, “do you think you can help?”
Believe me, I heard the words. I was just incapable of protesting. When one is in the deepest of depressions, taking any action, even one as simple as speech, is an intense struggle. To step once again into a head-on confrontation with the mother-in-law from you-know-where (Manhattan) was flat-out impossible. My mouth simply refused to take directions from my brain. I may as well have been encased in Plexiglas; at least then I would have made a very comely coatrack.
“Of course, bubbeleh,” Mother Superior said to her son. “Zee sisters und I vill vait on her hand und giant foot. She vill be vell taken care of. Een zee meantime you take wery good care of mine grandson—zee leetle pisher—ya?”
“Thanks, Ma, I’ll bring her right over.”
And he did—just as soon as he was finished retying himself to his mother’s apron strings. In all fairness, gratitude will do that to one, just as much as desperation. I’m sure that if our roles had been reversed, I too might have thrown myself gratefully into the hands of a ready-built support system—or, more accurately, thrown my spouse. Somewhere. I’d rather not say where.
3
The Sisters of Perpetual Apathy operate the Convent of No Hope, which is located directly across the road from my bed-and-breakfast, the PennDutch Inn. The purpose of this new quasireligious order is to haphazardly assist others in their search for a life of meaningless existence. Complete and total apathy is the depth to which they all aspire to sink. Why make any effort, they preach, if life is just going to kick the manure out of you? In fact, why even care that it does? Just exist! Want nothing, feel nothing, care about nothing and no one, and you will be blessed with an abundance of pain and disappointment, but perhaps not quite as much as if you’d invested any hope in your life. Hope—now that was an ugly four-letter word! And shame on all the potty mouths who kept that word in their vocabularies.
Given the disastrous downturn of the economy beginning in ’08, and the vast number of home foreclosures, a shell-shocked public welcomed the opportunity to go numb. “Novocain for the masses,” one pundit observed, coining a brilliantly original phrase. At any rate, the Sisters of Perpetual Apathy be
came a huge movement with chapters in all fifty states, and even spawned a corresponding men’s movement called the Brothers of Eternal and Abject Disillusionment.
The convent building is an old farmhouse where my pseudo- first husband grew up. The house was added to several times, and finally the barn was torn down and a huge dormitory wing was built. Because my current, and real, husband still owned the land and the original building, I was given preferential treatment and assigned a private room. I was even assigned a pair of novices to look after me 24-7: Sister Distemper and Sister Disarticulate. Their jobs were to see that I maintained a routine of personal hygiene, and remained well nourished—both physically and spiritually.
One day Sister Distemper was particularly cross with me on account of the fact that I accidentally dribbled marinara sauce down the white starched bib of my guest apron. After lunch, instead of taking me back to my room for my usual nap, Sister Distemper sat me out on the patio to wait until Sister Disarticulate took over from her at the four o’clock shift change. Frankly, this state of affairs pleased me—that is to say, as much as anything could. By then it was late spring, so the weather was pleasant and the air was filled with birdsong.
Just minutes before the good sister was supposed to take over the new shift, a very large pigeon flew overhead and dropped its enormous deposit on top of my head. The back of my head was covered by an organza prayer cap, but the bird’s black-and-white offering landed toward the front; in fact, the more liquid aspect of this unwanted gift had begun to dribble down my forehead and channel into my deeply etched frown line.
