by Tamar Myers
“Pastor Lantz is one of God’s very special helpers,” said Mama emphatically. Edmond Lantz, our pastor at the time, was a fearsome-looking man, nearing eighty, who looked just like I thought God might look. To my eight-year-old mind, not only was it possible that Pastor Lantz was God’s helper, but it was conceivable that from time to time God made special in-person appearances in the pastor’s body. From then on I became terribly afraid of Pastor Lantz, and breathed a huge sigh of relief when he died before I was baptized shortly after my twelfth birthday. Unfortunately, I believed that God took notice of my sigh of relief, which put a damper on the whole occasion anyway.
Of course I have since learned that Mama was no Mennonite theologian, and that many of her pronouncements were fabricated with the sole propose of keeping me in line. This realization has been purely intellectual. My body is still held hostage by Mama’s dictums, which is why I was guzzling a bottle of Pepto-Bismol when I pulled up in front of the Simses Victorian parsonage.
“Come in, come in,” said Reverend Sims affably. “Martha’s in the kitchen, but isn’t that where Marthas usually are?” He chuckled pleasantly at his little biblical joke.
“Lunch smells delicious,” I said. I didn’t offer to help Martha. I believe guests should act like guests. If I had wanted to pull k.p. duty, I would have stayed home in the cozy familiarity of my own kitchen.
“Care for something to drink?” asked the reverend.
“No, thank you,” I said quickly. Rumor had it that some of the Presbyterian churches allowed their members to drink alcoholic beverages, and I wasn’t sure which kind Reverend Sims ran.
“Well, how is Susannah?” asked the reverend blithely. The nerve of that man.
“Susannah is the same,” I said as evenly as I could. I do try not to insult my hosts.
“I hope you still don’t blame me for her marriage to Maurice Entwhistle.”
“He was one of your members, and you did perform the ceremony,” I pointed out.
Reverend Sims spread his hands as if absolving himself of responsibility. I noticed then that he had the smallest hands I had ever seen on a man. Even Jim’s hands were larger. “Maurice Entwhistle may not have been the perfect husband to your sister, but it takes two to tango, as they say.”
“We Mennonites don’t dance.”
Just then Martha popped her head in the room and announced that lunch was ready.
I very much admired Martha’s dining room decor, with its antique china hutches, and family photos on the velvet-flocked walls. As for the food she had prepared, it did nothing to improve my stomach. The most peculiar dish was a prune souffle, of which neither Martha nor the reverend partook. If it hadn’t been for the parsley that decorated it, I would never have thought it edible. The reverend claimed that he hadn’t eaten prunes in years, which I’m sure explains the state of the ingredients in that particular casserole. Undoubtedly they were left over from the time when Annie Sims, the reverend’s semi-invalid mother and a deaconess herself, had ruled over the household in a reign of ecclesiastical terror. Anyway, the prune dish tasted as awful as it looked, so I nibbled at the parsley while pushing the prune mixture around my plate.
“So what’s the catch?” I asked after about forty-five minutes of insipid small talk.
I thought I saw Martha pale, but it may have been a burst of sunshine through the window. “What catch? There’s no catch, Magdalena. Orlando and I simply wanted to get to know you better. Isn’t that right, dear?”
Frankly, the reverend seemed at a loss for words, but a stern look from Martha prompted a reply. “Ah, yes, we want to get to know you better, Magdalena. Is it all right if I call you Mags?”
“That would be fine,” I said, and then, just to give Mama a Sabbath spin in her grave, I added, “Orlando.” I saw the reverend wince, but otherwise he pretty much kept his cool. “What did Reverend Gingerich preach his sermon on today?”
“The Bible.”
“Touche,” said the reverend, “but what was the text?”
“I forget exactly, but it had to do with guilt.”
“Ah, a weighty subject,” he mused.
“Boy, I’ll say. Reverend Gingerich talked about both collective and individual guilt. When you—”
“I have nothing to feel guilty about,” said Martha rather forcefully.
“Of course not, dear,” said her husband. He reached across the table and grabbed one of his wife’s hands between his small ones. “I already explained to Magdalena that we do not accept responsibility for Susannah’s marriage. Isn’t that right, Magdalena?”
“Yes.”
By then I had a headache in addition to my stomach problems, and I wanted nothing more than to go home and take a nap. But first I had to pretend to eat dessert, which turned out to be merely a rerun of the store-bought pound cake and frozen strawberries. This time there wasn’t even any whipped cream.
“Bye, dear, it was so nice to see you again,” said Martha as she gave me a big good-bye hug.” I hate being hugged, especially by nonrelated females. In my opinion, people who are chronic huggers are that way because they were deprived of their pillows as youngsters. Normal people don’t feel a need to go around wrapping their clammy flesh around others. And what really made it uncomfortable in this case was that Martha and I didn’t even like each other. It all seemed very strange to me.
“Thanks again for lunch,” I said politely. “It was delicious.” Even Mama would have approved of a lie like that.
“Bye now, come again,” said the reverend. He didn’t try to hug me, but I wouldn’t have minded quite so much if he had.
“Stay in touch!” Martha called gaily as I headed down the walk.
“I will,” I said stupidly out of convention. I had no intention of staying in touch with a woman whose church had corrupted my sister, and who couldn’t even be bothered to bake her own pound cake.
Chapter Eighteen
Susannah and I walked over to the Hostetler farm for Sunday night supper. There are two ways to get to where Freni and Mose live. If you take the road, Hertzler Lane, to the left, and then turn left again on Miller’s Run, and then left one more time on Beechy Grove Lane, it’s exactly 6.3 miles from the PennDutch. But if you simply go out the back door and head straight out between the six-seater and the chicken coop, it’s only eight-tenths of a mile. Even when I have the car I seldom drive it. Susannah, on the other hand, would hitch a ride from her bedroom to the bathroom if she could.
“I don’t see why we have to walk there,” she grumped.
“Well, we could sprint.”
“Very funny, Magdalena. Just wait until I get a car. Then I’m not walking anywhere.”
“That will be fine, dear.”
The truth is, Susannah will never own a car, not if she has to pay for it herself. I wouldn’t say that I am a wealthy woman, but the PennDutch is successful enough to keep me quite comfortable. The same cannot be said for Susannah. Whatever money comes her way makes a big splash and then simply evaporates, like water spilled on a hot griddle. Most of the time Susannah doesn’t have two nickels to rub together.
Although we’d gone only a hundred yards, I let Susannah stop and rest her poor, achy, tired feet while I made a brief detour to the outhouse. Of course I didn’t plan to use it; it hasn’t been used for that purpose since Grandma Yoder was alive and I was still a little girl. But for some strange reason, the door, which is supposed to be closed, had come open again. I peeked inside to see if maybe a tramp had taken up residence, but of course none had. Any tramp worth his satchel would pick the barn over the six-seater any day, although all that movie equipment and confusion could be offputting. Not that tramps stop by much anymore. But during one brief period in the seventies, we had as many as eight tramps living in the barn. I have a strong suspicion, however, that most of those guys were Vietnam War draft dodgers. As Mennonites, both Mama and Papa were staunch pacifists.
After securing the outhouse door, this time with a stick wedged
tightly through the clasp, I retrieved Susannah. It is no small thing to walk between two corn fields and through a patch of woods with her. Stopping every few feet to disentangle yards of billowing fabric from the clutches of burrs and twigs is a chore I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, but I can be just as stubborn as my sister. God had given us a beautiful, cloudless day. To have ridden to the Hostetlers in a melange of metal and rubber would have been downright sacrilegious. Besides, I wanted Susannah to see just how stupid it had been of her to buy those Italian platform shoes. Just to drive the lesson home, I led us on a few detours where I knew the walking would be rough. And, of course, I walked as fast as I could.
Not that it really mattered what time we arrived at the Hostetlers. Freni and Mose eat their big Sunday meal for lunch, as most churchgoing people in Hernia do. Sunday night supper is invariably leftovers, and in the summertime they are generally served cold. Actually, food had very little to do with the supper invitation, in my opinion. I think the whole thing was Mose’s idea, and that his intent was for Susannah and me—well, me, at any rate— to mediate the dispute between Freni and her daughter- in-law, Barbara. That was a very kind and loving act on Mose’s part, but to be absolutely honest about it, it was rather like asking the Irish to mediate the Israeli-Palestinian situation.
The funny thing is that Freni and Barbara are spitting images of each other, except that Barbara is a good ten inches taller. They both have the same slightly beaked nose, the same mousy brown hair (although Freni’s is now streaked with gray), the same watery blue eyes half hidden behind plain-rimmed glasses, and, of course, they’re both stubborn enough to make a mule seem compliant. They are, in fact, distant cousins. The Amish in and around Hernia are so interrelated that it would have been impossible for John to find a local bride who was no closer than a second cousin, which is why he went packing off to one of the western communities to find a mate. If Freni and Barbara consulted their family genealogies, which I have, and which they both stubbornly refuse to do, they would find that Barbara and John are sixth cousins—but in four different ways. If you ask me, Freni not only sees herself mirrored in Barbara, but magnified. Believe me, this is enough to scare anyone. Barbara, on the other hand, sees a diminished version of herself when she looks at Freni, and for some reason this upsets her as well. Frankly, I think she should feel grateful.
Freni met us on the front porch. “You’re late,” she said without preamble. Freni doesn’t even own a watch, but she glanced at her wrist nonetheless.
“It’s her fault,” I said pointing to Susannah. Might as well let the blame fall where it’s due.
“She wouldn’t let us drive over,” Susannah whined.
But Freni had already turned away and was headed back inside. Unlike me, who somehow feels guilty about our parents’ death, and therefore somehow responsible for Susannah’s moods, Freni simply won’t tolerate any of my younger sister’s negative behavior. “A dog whines,” Freni once said to Susannah, “and that’s why its place is outside.” Of course, this didn’t sit well with Susannah, who not only keeps her dog inside, but inside her bra. Which is not to say that the two women aren’t fond of each other; I’m sure they love each other dearly. But I’m just as sure that if Freni ever found that little pooch of Susannah’s unattended, she would feed it to the barn cats.
“You’re late,” said Barbara Hostetler, nee Zook.
I pointed at Susannah again.
“Sit,” said Mose.
“Yah, sit,” said John. John is a very quiet young man, and I was surprised to hear two consecutive words come out of his mouth. It was clear he was feeling anxious about the evening.
After grace, the two Hostetler women passed around platters of cold meat loaf and homemade cheese, homemade bread, and enough pickled vegetables to make a platoon pucker. We all dug in like hogs at a slop trough.
“It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” said Mose when, after a good ten minutes, no one had spoken.
“It’s too hot,” said Freni. She brushed back a wisp of graying hair and tucked it into her prayer cap.
“It’s a lot hotter than this back home,” said Barbara, even though her mouth was full.
“I think it is delightful,” I said, braving Freni’s glares. “I love summertime and sunny days.”
“It shows,” said Susannah rudely. “Sun is bad for your skin, you know. It causes wrinkles. And you don’t have wrinkles, Magdalena. They’re canyons. The National Park Service should offer mule trips down your face.”
I was too mature to fight back. Susannah would have to wait and find her bed short-sheeted.
“Autumn is my favorite season back home. I love the cool days and crisp nights. And of course the changing leaves,” said Barbara. She sounded genuinely wistful to me. Maybe even homesick.
“You mean you have trees on the prairie?” Freni asked.
“The corn looks good this year, doesn’t it? I think it’s going to be a good harvest,” Mose said quickly.
“So do I,” said John. Three consecutive words was a definite record. Any more and he’d turn into a veritable blabbermouth.
“Back home we grow wheat,” Barbara said between bites. “And corn too.”
Freni glared at her daughter-in-law. “Home is where your husband is.”
Barbara returned Freni’s glare. “Home is where you feel comfortable, if you ask me.”
“Which no one did,” said Freni.
“Please pass the cheese,” said John desperately.
“Of course, dear,” Barbara said. She handed her husband the cheese plate, and as she did so, she leaned toward him so that her sleeve brushed up against his.
Even I was shocked. I had never before heard, or seen, such a public display of affection from someone sharing my genes, Susannah excluded. Perhaps Barbara’s looks were coincidental. Perhaps she was really adopted—or stolen from the English as a baby.
Part of me still holds out the hope that this is the case with Susannah. It would, after all, explain a lot. Even though I was ten years old at the time of her birth, I hadn’t had an inkling that Mama was pregnant. But then, why would I? Mama had always been a large woman, to put it kindly, and as for the origin of babies, I believed until my eighteenth birthday that angels brought them down from heaven, all washed and clean, and waiting to be fed. When Mama sat me down on that auspicious day and told me that Papa had given her seeds, which she had grown in her tummy, like watermelons, I wanted to barf. Anyway, I could just imagine how shocked Freni must have been at Barbara’s display of wantonness.
“Why, I never!” she gasped. Her face had turned as white as her prayer cap.
“I bet you didn’t,” giggled Susannah.
I kicked her under the table.
“She is my wife,” John said. His lips began to twitch and his eyes glazed over. “Mother, you will have to accept her, or we will go and live with her folks until we can afford a farm of our own.”
We all, John included, sat in stunned silence. It was almost as bad as the time Helen Gingerich, Reverend Gingerich’s wife, lost her panties on her way up to play the organ. Fortunately, on that occasion the choir soon diverted our attention with a rousing a cappella rendition of “And the Walls Came Tumbling Down.” But Freni’s house lacks a resident choir—she doesn’t even own a radio. Being August and all, we stood a good chance of choking on flies unless someone, or something, diverted us.
I did what I could. I began to sing the theme song from Green Acres. It is, after all, one of the few secular songs I know. Admittedly, mine is not the best voice, but it is not the worst either. Contrary to what Susannah says, I do not sound like a cat in a blender.
I think it was very rude of Susannah to laugh at my singing in front of the others. It was just as rude for John, Barbara, and Mose to join in the laughter. I would still be mad at the four of them if Freni hadn’t cracked that smile. The crisis, at least for the moment, was under control.
Chapter Nineteen
After supper, we sat
outside on the front porch and watched the August moon rise. Out in the yard the fireflies danced, crickets chirped, and in the patch of woods an owl awakened and began to hoot. On a distant farm, a dog began to howl. I love spending summer evenings outside, and would have been even more blissful if I hadn’t had a sneaking suspicion that our sudden adjournment to the great outdoors was somehow related to my singing. Perhaps they figured on using the night noises as camouflage should I suddenly burst into song. Still, one must take pleasure where and how one finds it, as long as it is clean, of course.
We were all comfortable in Mose’s handmade rockers, except for Susannah. My sister has never learned to enjoy times of quiet conversation, or to commune with nature. I blame it on television, mostly the commercials. If it isn’t new and improved, or fifty percent off, Susannah simply can’t be bothered.
Somehow the conversation meandered around to veterinarians. “Oh, by the way, Doc Shafer sends his regards to you, Mose,” I remembered to say. “He says next time you need Matilda and Bertha bred, he’s got a bull more than willing to do the job.” For some reason, it is quite acceptable in my circle to speak of animals in the lewdest terms, while we humans only get to pass seeds around.
“Tell Doc thanks,” said Mose. He seemed grateful for my efforts. “I’ll keep it in mind. But speaking of Matilda, all those folks milling around out there by the barn are making her crazy. Even keeping her in the pasture doesn’t help much. Her milk production is down by fifty percent. Her teats are hard as wood.”
"You don’t say,” said Susannah.
I couldn’t see her face, but I was sure she was rolling her eyes. I tried kicking her for good measure, but banged my foot on a rocker strut instead.
“Actually,” said Mose as he began to stroke his beard, “Matilda started acting funny before I put her out to pasture. It was that morning before the Englishman died that she started getting real nervous.” He gave Susannah what for Mose was an accusing look. “It might have been all your trips in and out of the barn.”
