Mean and Shellfish

by Tamar Myers

  I rolled my eyes. I rolled them up, right, left, down and all around again. That was payback for all the times that Susannah had rolled her eyes at me when I was raising her. (I was twenty when our parents were killed, and she was eleven.)

  Susannah was not amused. ‘What is that all about?’

  ‘Doesn’t it look familiar?’ I asked.

  ‘It does not, and that’s so juvenile! If you’re not careful, your eyes are going to get stuck in the upward position.’

  I rolled them up as far as I could.

  ‘Stop it right now!’ she yelled. ‘You’re just trying to get me mad, and it’s not going to work.’

  ‘OK, dear,’ I said soothingly. ‘Take it down a notch.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ she snapped. ‘I’m not upset. I’m just highly irritated.’

  ‘Understood,’ I said.

  ‘And just to prove that I’m not upset, I’m going to share with you what Miriam overheard that big Texan say to that little Texan out by the barn last night.’

  ‘I’m all ears, dear,’ I said.

  ‘He said that they sure were lucky to find that house in Hernia to rent starting a week before the festival, and how it allowed them the time to do everything that they needed to do.’

  ‘What? Are you sure you heard that right?’

  ‘OK, that does it. I’m out of here. You’re calling me a liar, and I’m not going to stand for it.’

  ‘Wait! I’m sorry. That didn’t come out right. It just doesn’t make any sense, because if they have a rented house, then why are they staying here?’

  Susannah shrugged. ‘Maybe you should ask them.’

  ‘Touché,’ I said. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, dear, it seems like you and Miriam have really hit it off.’

  Susannah grinned. ‘Yeah, she’s cool.’

  I decided to push my luck. ‘Where did you take her this afternoon, after you guys were done making that salad?’

  ‘Pittsburgh,’ Susannah said nonchalantly.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Susannah said. ‘Miriam wanted to see what American gay and lesbian bars were like, to compare them with the ones back in Australia. But it was too early to go bar-hopping, and so when we got as far as Monroeville, we stopped in at an Applebee’s for supper, and then turned around and drove straight back here. She was anxious to hear what you guys thought about her Aussie seafood salad.’

  ‘Is Miriam a lesbian?’ To my credit, I asked the question very casually, like I might have asked: ‘Would you care for another helping of green beans?’

  ‘Isn’t that wonderful?’ Susannah said, as she carefully studied my face for a negative reaction. ‘You know, about her being a lesbian. I think it’s awesome, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m chuffed pink,’ I said.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I’m plum tickled,’ I replied.

  ‘Whatever,’ Susannah said, having failed to get a rise out of me. ‘Hey Mags, Miriam wants to know if she should come out to her family. What do you think? Should she tell Ida and Gabe that she’s a lesbian?’

  I wagged a long, knobby finger as if it were a metronome. ‘It’s none of their business, and I can just hear Ida now, and she’s saying something very judgmental.’

  Susannah snapped equally long fingers. ‘You’re right. Besides, Miriam—’

  ‘Susannah! Susannah! Susannah!’ It was Miriam.

  ‘That’s bizarre,’ Susannah said. ‘The second I mentioned her name, she starts calling me. Do you think that she heard me?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘But go ahead and respond; tell her where you are. She needs to get in here where it’s safe.’

  ‘Mags, I told you that Melvin is not—’

  ‘Forget Melvin for a second. What about the Texan duo? Someone is after me – someone muy loco.’

  ‘Mags, you know I don’t speak Amish.’

  ‘That was Spanish for “very crazy”.’

  ‘Anyway, after Miriam is safely seated on this child-size mattress on the floor, or reclining against her own pile of pillows, then we can theorize some more on what to do. So go ahead, tell her where we are.’

  Had I not been so stressed, I might have laughed at poor Miriam’s reaction when she heard Susannah’s voice as it came seemingly out of nowhere, and then directed her to the master bathroom. Thank heavens Miriam was in her battery-powered wheelchair, and not using her unwieldy crutches. I was waiting at the door, and the second after she zipped in, I slammed that metal door behind her, and bolted it. But when I turned to tell her what was going on, she beat me to the draw.

  ‘Come on, guys,’ Miriam said breathlessly. ‘Let’s hustle. They’re getting away!’

  ‘Who?’ I said.

  ‘The Texans! Tiny and Delphia. Miss Yoder, Delphia took their rental car, but Tiny drove off in your car.’

  ‘You mean he stole it?’

  ‘That’s correct,’ Miriam said.

  ‘Did you call the police?’ I said hysterically, as was my wont.

  ‘Yes ma’am. That good-looking policeman said he’d be right on it, and since he already knew your license plate number, you were supposed to just sit tight.’

  ‘Then why did you tell us to hustle?’ I said.

  ‘I meant that Susannah and I should hustle,’ Miriam said. ‘Because before they took off, I heard Tiny on the phone talking to someone in a low voice, but not so quiet that I couldn’t overhear him, of course. Do you want to know what he said?’

  ‘There will always be an England!’ I screamed.

  ‘No ma’am, that’s not what he said.’

  ‘I meant why would you even have to ask? Of course I want to know, you – you – fellow child of God.’

  ‘Right,’ Miriam said, ‘although I am an atheist by the way. At any rate, on the phone Tiny was telling someone that he needed the materials to be delivered to the house tonight, and that the address for that house was 2032 Sweetbriar Lane. He said that only when the Mennonite witch and her inn lit up like a million firecrackers, only then would he feel like he’d gotten the vengeance that he came for.’

  I sank back down on the mattress. ‘Was he speaking about me?’

  ‘There’ll always be a United States of America,’ Miriam said.

  ‘That’s not a song lyric, dear,’ I said, ‘but I pray that you’re right.’

  ‘Mags,’ Susannah said, ‘what did you do that was so horrible to those poor people that makes them want to blow you to smithereens?’

  ‘How should I know?’ I cried. ‘I’ve had hundreds of guests, and the worst thing that I’ve ever done was be brutally honest – you know, give someone a piece of my mind.’

  ‘That means there are hundreds of people mad enough to kill you,’ Susannah said. She wasn’t joking.

  ‘Thanks, sis,’ I said. ‘I get that you and Barbara Peters think I’m a terrible woman because I speak my mind. But do you believe that I should die on account of it? Or how about your little nephew?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Mags,’ Susannah said, giving me a sisterly push on the shoulder, ‘don’t be such a drama queen. Nobody said that you should die; I just said that you have a big mouth, and not everyone loves you for it. Tell you what, ignore what Toy said – he can handle your stolen car from his end, he’s competent – and you come along with us to check out this place where Tiny and Delphia are expecting their delivery. That’s probably where they’re headed right now.’

  ‘Yeah, come with us, mate,’ Miriam said. ‘Three is always better than one. What do the French call it? Fromage au trois – yes, that’s it.’

  ‘Fromage means cheese, dear,’ I said. ‘But OK, I’ll go. Just let me write a note first.’

  ‘What will you write?’ Susannah said. ‘That you can’t be bothered to listen to a male authority figure? Or that you’re intelligent enough to chase down your own clues?’

  ‘Let’s just skedaddle,’ I said, and hopped to my feet with the nimbleness of a sedated moose. Trust me, it isn’t easy jumpi
ng up from a mattress on the floor when one is as vertically enhanced as I am.

  Outside night had fallen hard, and the darkness felt thick, as if it had a dimension to it. Normally, the parking area between the house and barn would have been brightly illuminated by a security light, but it must have burned out the night before. My feet were familiar with steps leading down from the kitchen, but how on earth the other two managed it was beyond me. I was especially worried about Miriam, who’d abandoned her wheelchair at the door, instead of taking the ramp meant for just such conveyances. Instead, after tucking her red lap robe around her like a long skirt, she hopped out the door like a one-legged robin.

  ‘Get in the back,’ she said to me. ‘Susannah you’re riding shotgun.’

  ‘Do you need directions?’ I asked.

  Miriam didn’t answer, which was just as well. Although I knew where Sweetbriar Road was, I had never heard of Sweetbriar Lane. The former was a two-lane, rural road that saw very little traffic except for farmers. If an area farmer had rented his house to folks from out of state, I would know. Believe me. Cousin Sam, who owns Yoder’s Corner Market, is privy to all the gossip in the county, and outsiders are the number-one topic.

  I thought that Miriam would program the address into her car’s GPS system, but she didn’t. As soon as I set my patooty on the back seat of her car, and had closed the door, off we went. I didn’t even have time to buckle my seat belt. I was about to tell the poor foreign girl to turn right out of my driveway, when she made a reckless left turn. Then she stomped on the accelerator as if it was the head of the world’s most poisonous snake and it was fixing to bite her. The speed limit along that stretch of Hertzler Road is forty-five mph, but Miriam was soon well above ninety. Maybe even over 100 mph. My thoughts had trouble keeping up with me at that speed.

  I was flattened against the rear seat with so much force that my heart was squeezed out of my chest and into my throat. Fortunately, because my heart is so hard, and so small, I was in no danger of choking. But you can bet your bippy that I was terrified.

  Quite possibly my sister, the ex-con, had given this woman drugs. Ever since her late teen years, Susannah had always dabbled in forbidden stimulants of one sort or another, as well as alcohol. I’m not saying that these things are the reason that she married her first husband, the Presbyterian, but drugs are definitely responsible for her poor judgment in falling for Melvin Stoltzfus. I suspect that her stint in the hoosegow did not help her go straight either. From what I’ve read, determined inmates can often find a way to get drugs into prison, as long as they are able to pay for them. The one thing that I do know about my sister is that as lazy as she is, if it’s something that she is desperate to have, she will find a way to get it.

  But if it wasn’t drugs that had Miriam’s foot practically pushing through the floorboards, then perhaps maybe it was the force of habit. Could it be that Australians always ignored the rules of the road? I base this theory on an advertisement that I saw on television for a popular Australian-styled steakhouse here in America. Its slogan was ‘no rules, mate’.

  Or could Miriam’s bizarre behaviour have anything to do with the fact that she was an atheist? Didn’t that open her up to demon possession? I’m just saying that a demon would love nothing better than to terrorize a nice, middle-aged, Conservative Mennonite woman like me. Then again, after the testimony of the other two women in the car, maybe I wasn’t such a nice woman, what with my big mouth, and committing one of the worst sins a woman can commit, and that is to be sarcastic. After all, a sarcastic man is thought to be ‘clever’, while a sarcastic woman is labelled ‘snarky’.

  Of course, none of my aforementioned theories really mattered if the end result was a fatal accident. I was assured of my salvation and so I wasn’t afraid of dying. Now that I knew the approximate coordinates for Heaven: southeast to Jerusalem for a very long way, and then up for a much, much longer way. However, I didn’t want to head off for the Pearly Gates until I’d had a chance to see my darling daughter Alison again. And I had to smell the sweaty head of my little boy once more before I gave him his bath. Also, surely the Good Lord wouldn’t begrudge me the mattress mambo one last time. Although, perhaps He would, having never danced it Himself – oh, how could such a sacrilegious thought enter my head at this moment? Another wicked thought like this, and I might have time to repent before becoming yet another highway statistic.

  ‘Slow down!’ I screamed. ‘Slow down. I’m begging you.’

  ‘Take it easy, sis,’ Susannah shouted.

  I will say this for Miriam. She had the reflexes of a cat in its prime, and the night vision of an owl. She was a foreigner, totally unfamiliar with our backroads and narrow country lanes, yet she managed to make a dozen right angle turns at harrowing speeds. We have more of these roads than I have spider veins on my thick, Yoder ankles, and after the fifth abrupt turn, I was completely lost.

  Periodically Miriam leaned into the horn just before a streak of light zoomed past. This I took to be another vehicle. Finally the stress became too much for me and I closed my eyes and resorted to prayer and reciting verses from the Book of Psalms in order to soothe myself.

  Eventually I must have fallen asleep. Extreme stress can do that, you know – make a body sleepy. If perchance one does not agree with my observation, then I submit that said argumentative individual has never been subjected to the magnitude of stress that I have just described.

  That said, it is my guess that at least two hours had passed when I was suddenly awakened by the car lurching to a stop. The moon had risen by then, and its light illuminated a small, dilapidated cabin. To put it kindly, it was a ramshackle shack. The structure appeared to be surrounded by dense forest, save for the small, weed-filled clearing in which we’d parked. A lit, low-wattage lightbulb hung suspended above the front door, which was inexplicably open. The interior of the cabin was dark, giving it an abandoned appearance.

  ‘Looks like the bears have been back,’ Miriam said, as she tapped a staccato rhythm on the steering wheel. ‘Susannah, did you remember to put the cheese and salami back into the fridge before we left?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Susannah said. ‘I mean, I think that I did.’

  ‘I guess we’ll find out soon enough,’ Miriam said.

  Then with a laboured grunt Susannah threw open her car door. When the overhead light came on, my first feeling was one of embarrassment. I had drooled on myself considerably and might even have had had a slight accident. But that feeling was fleeting, because I was startled into a new reality by Miriam turning to bark at me in a register two octaves lower than her normal voice, and in an American accent.

  ‘Get out of the car! Now! Move it!’

  Wasn’t pinching oneself the way to tell if one was dreaming, or not? So I pinched. Hard. Then really hard.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘You better get out, sis,’ Susannah said quietly, ‘if you don’t want any trouble.’

  I pinched three other locations. ‘Ouch! Ouch! Ow-wa-wa-wa! I want my mommy!’

  That’s when Miriam reached into the back of the car, undid my seat belt, grabbed me by my coiled braids beneath my organza prayer cap and dragged me rudely, and painfully, from the car. And that’s when I truly did want my mommy who, by the way, had not been all that cuddly, if I am to be honest. Clearly this was no longer a dream, but a case of two women under the influence of drugs.

  ‘Dear,’ I told myself, in the faintest of whispers, ‘it behooves you to play along, because they are not themselves at the moment. Their minds have been hijacked by the chemicals that have entered their bloodstreams. Likewise, you must forgive them, as the Lord forgave those who crucified Him on account that they did not know what they were doing.’

  ‘What is she mumbling?’ Miriam hollered.

  ‘I’m sure she’s praying,’ Susannah said. ‘The poor deluded thing is always praying. As if that will do her any good.’

  What that did was hike my hackles up into my armpits. I forgot abo
ut the pain, my drug-crazed kidnappers, and that I was being dragged by my braids, by a baritone-voiced Miriam.

  I slapped my abductor’s hands away while I struggled to my feet. When she attempted to grab me again, I shoved her hard. Yes, I know, slapping and shoving are both forms of violence, and I am a pacifist, but it sounded to me as if my sister was in danger of burning in Hell for all eternity.

  ‘Susannah Priscilla Yoder Entwhistle Stoltzfus! Shame on you! If Mama and Papa could hear you say that praying doesn’t do any good, they’d turn over in their graves with the regularity of a cement mixer. Has this foreign woman seduced you into becoming an atheist and abandoning the faith of our fathers that is living still, in spite of dungeons, fires and swords?’

  ‘Oh, Mags,’ Susannah moaned, ‘you are such a dweeb. If you don’t cooperate, you’re going to be sorry. That’s all I’m going to say.’

  I gasped in horror. ‘You have become an atheist, haven’t you? Don’t you realize just how illogical that position is? If God was standing right here, then I could prove that He existed, but there are supposedly billions of galaxies out there, and God could be out visiting any one of them, on any given day that you searched. So you see, you could never prove that God doesn’t exist; you can only prove that He does.’

  ‘Ha,’ Susannah said, ‘you don’t even believe that there is more than this galaxy, because if there were, your precious Heaven would be so far away, that angels would lose all their feathers commuting between here and there.’

  ‘That’s blasphemy,’ I said, as tears of rage filled my eyes.

  ‘That was clever,’ Miriam said.

  ‘Stuff it, dear,’ I said to the not-so-dear Aussie. I didn’t care anymore if she was Gabe’s cousin. She now was about as welcome as a bad case of dandruff on a black Sunday dress.

  Apparently Miriam didn’t care about playing nice either, because she hauled off and backhanded me across the face. I lost my balance and crashed into Susannah, who then swore using words that I’m sure made Satan himself blush, if indeed even Satan knew their meanings, which I rather doubt.

  Then, when I had regained my balance, I felt the barrel of a pistol pressed against my ribs. ‘No more shenanigans, Yoder,’ Miriam growled.