Bertha's Resolve: Love's Journey in Sugarcreek, Book 4

by Serena B. Miller

Jane and Darlene waited outside while Bertha used the commode and flushed. It shuddered for a moment, but it worked. Then she washed her hands and face from the trickle of water that came out of the lavatory faucet. It was a pitiful little stream, and she wondered if it was at all possible to coax a shower out of the one she saw in the corner. Thankfully, the water felt cool, and after drying her hands and face on the thin towel hanging nearby, she felt a little better.

  “Your turn,” she said, as she came out of the bathroom.

  “I think we’ve made a mistake,” Darlene said. She seemed genuinely distraught, nearly in tears. “This is a terrible place.”

  “It isn’t so bad,” Jane said. “At least they have running water. That’s more than I grew up with back home.”

  “I need a bath,” Darlene said. “I feel dirty and disgusting just from being here. They made us sit on the floor!”

  “Be quiet,” Bertha warned. “You can deal with it until we get to where we are going. Perhaps there will be better facilities for you when we get to the hospital.”

  “But we’re almost sleeping on the floor,” Darlene gave a delicate shudder. “Who knows what kind of thing might crawl over or bite us tonight?”

  Bertha had not known Darlene well before they came, but she was already starting to form a dislike for her. Apparently the girl had not realized the state of poverty she was getting ready to enter when she came to this country.

  Of course, Bertha wasn’t sure she had entirely realized it either.

  “We’ll be fine,” Bertha said. “Now, finish up so we can go have dinner with the Lawrence’s. I like them.”

  As she entered the main room, Dr. Lawrence was helping his wife set out plates and food on the table. From a corner, he brought folding chairs. There were not enough to go around, but that was no surprise.

  “I always eat standing up anyway,” he said when he noticed Bertha mentally counting the place settings.

  “It is nice of you to take us in,” she said. “Where will we be staying tomorrow?”

  “That’s something we need to talk about,” he said. “It turns out, I am going to have to share you with another facility that needs help.”

  “Another facility?”

  “One of our Mennonite children’s homes is nearby. The woman who managed it had a medical issue that forced her to return to the states. We were hoping one of you might be willing to take over.”

  “Can the hospital spare one of us?” Jane asked.

  “I’ve been training some nationals to help. They do not have your education, but they are competent with basic things. My question is, do any of you feel like you can take on the project.”

  “What is involved?” Bertha asked as she settled herself at the table.

  “It’s a combination of being a teacher and nurse to approximately thirty children. All of them are of different ages and levels of education. It would be a lot like teaching at an old-fashioned one-room schoolhouse. Erma was quite competent at it, but not everyone would or could do it.”

  “I think I would rather work at the hospital,” Jane said. “Unless you have no one else.”

  “I like children,” Darlene said, “but I don’t know if I could keep track of that many.”

  Dr. Lawrence addressed his next comments to Bertha, as though he was hoping she would accept the job.

  “The side-benefit is that the children are very loving. It is a job for a kind person who loves children, who doesn’t mind helping care for them, and who has a great deal of energy. The church pays a small stipend, but it takes some people a great deal of time and energy to raise funds for it, so the stipend isn’t much. Whoever takes the position will only have enough to get by. A nurse would be ideal because there are many diseases in Haiti, and the children are not immune.”

  Bertha didn’t even have to give it any thought. It sounded exactly like what she had come here to do. Help the children.

  “I’ll do it,” she said. “Gladly.”

  “Even though it goes way beyond your nursing skills?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you like children, Bertha?” Dr. Lawrence asked.

  “Very much. I was raised Amish. In an Amish community, there are always small children around. From the time I was five, I almost always had one in my arms or on my hip. If not my younger sister and brother, there were plenty of little cousins to help care for.”

  “Charlotte?” he said. “What do you think?”

  His wife was leaning over, stirring to fluff up a pot of rice she had just brought to the table. The steam clouded her round glasses.

  “I think Bertha is a gift from God,” she said. “The children will be blessed to have her.”

  Three little boys came crowding through the door. The oldest was maybe ten, the youngest about six. They wore matching blue uniforms with knee socks. Each had a small stack of books under their arm. It was evident that they had just come from school.

  “Say hello to our friends,” Dr. Lawrence said. “This is Miss Porter, Miss Troyer, and Miss Johnson.” He nodded toward each woman in turn. “And these are our sons,” he said, proudly. “Mathew, Mark, and Luke.”

  The little boys were well-taught. They solemnly shook each of the three women’s hands—then excused themselves and went to the other room, presumably to shed uniforms and books.

  “Anthony is hoping for a John someday,” Charlotte said. “But I think Gwen is a nice name. It was my mother’s. Dinner is ready, by the way. Anthony, would you say the blessing?”

  As Bertha bowed her head, a feeling of extreme peace flooded her heart. For the first time in her life, she felt like she was doing the right thing at the right time in the right place. She’d worked hard for this moment, and she savored it. At last, she was in Haiti. Exactly where God wanted.

  Her life’s work had finally begun!

  Chapter 25

  Rachel stopped by the Sugar Haus Inn and found a cozy scene in her aunts’ kitchen. Lydia was cutting quilting squares and Anna was sitting at a side table sorting and counting her collection of seashells.

  “How many do you have now?” Rachel asked Anna.

  “One hundred and three,” Anna said, proudly.

  “Former guests sent her cockle shells from Australia,” Lydia said. “It was very thoughtful of them.”

  “See?” Anna held up four tiny white shells. “Pretty!”

  “Very pretty.” Rachel duly admired them before lifting Holly from her carrier.

  “May I hold the bobli?” Lydia pushed back from the table and held out her arms, into which Rachel placed her little daughter. Holly studied Lydia with solemn, blue eyes.

  “Look at that,” Lydia said, fondly. “Everything is so new to her, she’s even interested in an old lady in a prayer kapp.”

  Lydia cooed over the infant as she rocked back and forth on her straight-backed kitchen chair. She glanced up at Rachel with the glow of happiness in her face, sharing the great gift of snuggling a newborn.

  There was only one thing that had ever trumped cooking and quilting for Lydia, and that was getting to hold a baby. A series of miscarriages had left her childless but with a never-ending love for children. Rachel had lost count of the baby blankets Lydia had knitted for the new mothers at church over the years.

  “You have a good maam,” Lydia untied the baby’s warm, fuzzy cap, pulled it off, and laid it on the table. Holly’s silky, nearly-white hair stood straight up from her head from the static electricity, which gave her a startled look. She was in the process of sucking her thumb and took it out of her mouth just long enough to give Rachel a look that seemed to say, “Do you see what’s happening here, mommy?”

  Rachel and Lydia laughed at the expression on Holly’s face.

  “Is your sweater keeping you warm, our sweet bobli?” Lydia said as she unbuttoned the soft wool outer garment.

  “It’s her favorite.” Rachel grinned. “She knows her Aunt Lydia knitted it. That moss green is so lovely.”

  “Pink
can be overdone,” Lydia said. “That’s what I was thinking at your baby shower. Of course, Holly was already here, so everyone knew she was a girl. I was afraid there would be too much pink.”

  “Where is Bertha?” Rachel asked.

  Anna was so absorbed in arranging her collection of seashells, she seemed to be in her own world, but Lydia glanced up from adoring the baby. “Bertha went to the barn. I think she was upset.”

  “Why was she upset?” Rachel asked.

  “I’m not sure. She was reading interesting pieces from The Budget to me. Then she suddenly looked like she was about to cry, and left.”

  Rachel reached for the paper and scanned the various pages. To her eyes, there was nothing that could have made Bertha cry. News about weather and crops, births and deaths, chickens, and out-of-town visitors.

  “I do not see anything in here,” Rachel said.

  Lydia kissed Holly on top of her fluffy head. “It’s best not to ask. Sometimes when Bertha gets upset over something, she’ll be quiet and cranky for days before she’ll break down and talk about it.”

  “And sometimes Bertha gets cranky for no reason at all,” Rachel said.

  “There’s always a reason,” Lydia said. “Sometimes, it seems to me it often happens whenever she thinks about Haiti.”

  “She’s never talked about it to me all that much,” Rachel said. “I’ve always thought that odd.”

  “As close as we’ve been, and as long as we’ve lived together, she does tend to change the subject whenever it comes up,” Lydia said. “I think it is painful for her, so I leave it alone. It’s strange, though. She was there for so long, you would think stories about it would constantly be on her lips.”

  “It reminds me of some war veterans who will talk about anything except the war,” Rachel said. “I can’t imagine Haiti having been an easy place to work.”

  “There are wars that don’t involve guns,” Lydia said. “But they still leave scars. I have long suspected that our Bertha may have fought many battles while she was there.”

  “I have often suspected the same,” Rachel said. “I’ll leave her alone for now, but do you know what she wanted to talk with me about? She left a message on my answering machine. That’s why I came over.”

  “Oh! We’ve made an appointment with a new doctor for Anna,” Lydia glanced at her younger sister, who seemed absorbed in arranging her seashells.

  “What’s wrong?” Rachel was instantly alarmed.

  “She just seems to be especially tired these days,” Lydia said. “Bertha and I have become concerned. It’s too cold and too far to take the buggy. The appointment is at two in the afternoon, the day after tomorrow. Is it possible for you to take them?”

  “I’ll make it possible,” Rachel said. “I want to hear what the doctor has to say, as well.”

  Anna was humming to herself as she continued to rearrange her shells.

  Lydia and Rachel exchanged glances that held many unspoken worries.

  “When I was ten, after dad’s death, Anna was my best friend,” Rachel said. “She always had a hug or some small gift to give me whenever I was struggling. She helped heal my heart after Dad died. I don’t know what I would have done without her.”

  “We used to play together.” Anna glanced up at Rachel and smiled. “I liked that.”

  “I did, too.” Rachel realized Anna was paying more attention than she’d known. “And you are still my best friend.”

  “I know,” Anna said, simply, going back to sorting her shells. “But, now I play with Bobby.”

  Chapter 26

  Bertha didn’t need a mirror to know that her face was blotchy and her eyes badly swollen from crying. It was a relief Rachel did not come out to the barn to find her. The last thing she wanted was to go back inside and have to explain why she’d been sitting out in the barn bawling.

  To give herself time to recover, she began to do her evening chores. She fed their horse and scattered some chicken feed outside the barn. Then she opened the door of the chicken pen and let the hens out to give them a chance to dig in some fresh earth. She watched as they flapped and scrambled their way out onto the barn lot and began scratching and pecking at the dirt.

  She was grateful that it was almost milking time. It would give her an excuse to stay outside in the barn a bit longer before she went back into the house. Perhaps if she stayed out here long enough, Lydia would think it was being outside in the cold weather that had caused her red nose and eyes.

  She grabbed the soapy water bucket, squatted down on her milk stool, washed off their Jersey cow’s udder, and positioned the milk bucket beneath the cow. Leaning her head against Marigold’s stomach, she began the task of squirting streams of milk into the sparkling stainless steel milk bucket.

  Until recently, their cousin, Eli, who owned the farm next to theirs, provided them with plenty of milk. He kept a few head of cows and sold to one of the cheese-making plants in the area. But Eli was having some trouble with arthritis and no longer wanted to keep up with all that milking. He’d sold his dairy herd to his oldest son.

  One cow was special, though, and he didn’t want to part with her. Marigold was a gentle beast to whom he’d gotten attached. When Bertha offered to take Marigold off his hands, he’d jumped at the opportunity. Sometimes, when Bertha came out to milk, Eli would already be there ready to do the chore for her.

  She didn’t blame him. There was something about being in a barn that always felt healing to her. She thought it was the scent, which was partially a mixture of earth, manure, hay, and the feed they gave their livestock.

  Or perhaps it was the company of Marigold, herself. Bertha had read in a farmer’s magazine recently that the latest health craze was something called “cow cuddling.” Some people were paying up to three hundred dollars an hour to spend time with a cow. A photo in the magazine showed two cows lying in a meadow, each patiently allowing a woman to lounge against them.

  Despite all of Bertha’s years of dealing with cows, this was not a behavior with which she was even vaguely familiar. Unless it was getting ready to rain, when most cows automatically laid down in a field, it would be hard work to get a cow to simply lie down and stay there. Cows needed to eat. They wanted to be up grazing.

  She also wondered if there were flies in that meadow, and if—as was the nature of cows—it ever needed to swat a fly with its tail. Bertha had been smacked in the face many times by a cow’s tail. Kicked, too. Even now, there was always the possibility of the cow sticking its back hoof in the pail of milk and knocking it over.

  It would take someone better with animals than her to train a cow to lollygag around in a meadow with some city woman reclining against it. In Bertha’s opinion, women who had enough time and money to hire a cow to hug, needed to—what was the phrase the young people used these days? Oh yes. They needed to get a life.

  But she did understand the desire. The article said that the cow’s body temperature was higher than a human’s, and its heart rate lower, which automatically caused a person’s heart to begin to slow down as well. The article said cuddling a cow was a great stress relief.

  She didn’t know about that. She rarely thought of herself as being stressed—that was city talk. But she did know that she had always felt refreshed and invigorated after milking. Buying milk at the grocery store would be easier, maybe, but that would involve hitching up the buggy and driving into town. If she did that, what would become of her mornings and evenings in the barn?

  With the milk bucket full and Marigold’s udder sufficiently drained, she stood up from the milk stool, slowly. It was getting harder to rise from such a low position, but she was determined to keep moving. Getting up and down from the milking stool a couple of times a day was good exercise. She had always been a strong woman and intended to continue to be so as long as possible.

  Her eyes scanned the sky as she walked to the house. Those were snow clouds again. She would gladly welcome spring when it came. Snow tended to get old
soon after Christmas had come and gone.

  Rachel and the baby had already left by the time Bertha came back into the house. That was just as well.

  Lydia looked up from her quilting. “Are you okay?”

  “I am,” Bertha said.

  One of the things she appreciated about her sister was that Lydia seldom pried. She seemed to know that if Bertha wanted to tell her anything she would.

  “Rachel was here,” Lydia said. “She couldn’t stay long, but she had gotten your message and said she would be able to take Anna to the doctor.”

  “That’s good, then.” Bertha removed her heavy winter outer clothing. “That’s very good.”

  Chapter 27

  Haiti

  1963

  Charlotte’s kitchen was sparse in the extreme. The family-owned exactly five bowls, five forks, and five tin cups. Just enough to feed their family. For the children to eat, the nurses hurried to finish their meal, and then Charlotte washed the bowls, filled them again, and handed one to each of the boys who took them outside to sit on the front steps while they ate.

  As Charlotte tended to the children, Dr. Lawrence continued to question the nurses.

  “So, tell me why you’re here?” he said. “How did you women conclude that your heart’s desire was to end up working for a pittance in one of the most impoverished nations in the world?”

  No one volunteered an answer. He glanced around the room. “What about you, Jane?”

  “Me?”

  “You are the only Jane I know,” Dr. Lawrence said.

  Jane, a lovely brunette with dark eyes, had spoken only a few words since they left that morning. Now, to Bertha’s surprise, Jane opened up and quite a lot to share.

  “My father was a medical missionary to India,” she said. “Until his health got worse and he had to come home. He never ceased to talk about the days he had spent caring for people there. He had me late in life. My mother was a lot younger. I helped her nurse him through his final illness. Now…I figure it’s my turn to do mission work. I guess it’s kind of a way to carry on his work. I loved my father very much.”