No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk (3 page)

Sarah literally pulled Freni into the crowded house. Susannah and I followed anxiously on our own steam. Despite our kinship, and friendship, with Freni, we were entering a world where we were the outsiders. The strange ones. For Susannah that might not have been a first, but for me it most certainly was. I must confess that I was nervous enough to perspire—of course ever so slightly.

At least I had introduced myself to Sarah Yost, whereas poor Susannah had been utterly ignored. To her credit, my baby sister handled this social gaffe with remarkable aplomb. Instead of drawing attention to herself in a negative fashion, Susannah appeared to be content merely rolling her eyes. This action not only speaks louder than words, but substitutes for at least fifty in my sister’s vocabulary. Whereas I get the bulk of my exercise from jumping to conclusions, Susannah gets hers from ocular rotation. In our defense, I must state that neither form of exercise requires any special equipment, and both can be performed virtually anywhere.

At any rate, the message was clear. Susannah was bored.

“Ahem,” I interrupted. I have learned the hard way that it is best not to push the limits of Susannah’s patience in public.

Freni frowned. “Magdalena, can’t you see that our cousin needs comforting?”

I nodded at Susannah, whose eyes were rolling so fast they were a blur of white. The poor girl was going to exhaust herself any second and pass out. Either that or go blind.

“I am touched that you two came,” Sarah said graciously. Her English, like that of most of the younger Amish, was flawless. “It means so much to me to have family around at a time like this.”

“We’re delighted to be here,” I said, and then would have kicked myself, had I not been wearing my pointed shoes. “I’m so sorry about Yost’s death,” I added feebly.

At least Sarah’s tears were genuine. “I suppose I’m still in shock. Somehow it doesn’t all seem real.”

“I know just how you feel,” Susannah said. “I felt that way when Bubbles, my goldfish, died.”

I am not averse to kicking Susannah with my pointed shoes. “Is there anything we can do?” I asked.

Sarah smiled wanly through her tears. “No. Just your being here is enough.”

“Well, maybe we should go find a motel,” I offered. Freni had filled me in on a few statistics on the way over. Since Amish traditionally have large families, I was not surprised to learn that Sarah and Yost had ten children, and she was a lot younger than I.

“Ach! How you talk!” Sarah said with sudden vigor. Clearly she and Freni were blood kin somewhere down the line.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that I’m anxious to leave. We can look for a motel later.”

Sarah wiped her face with a sleeve. “Imagine staying in an English motel when you have family!”

“I only meant—” I gestured helplessly at the crowd.

“Just Freni will be staying here. The two of you will be staying with Samuel and Elizabeth Troyer. Sam is your father’s second cousin once and your mother’s third cousin twice, and Lizzie is your father’s fourth cousin once removed and your mother’s double second cousin twice removed. They only have five children— all boys—so there is plenty of room. It has already been arranged.”

I was only mildly surprised. If the American people really wanted a balanced budget and a government that ran as efficiently as Swiss trains, they would elect an Amish woman to the Presidency. Of course, no Amish person would be caught dead in the White House. (Although I have yet to convince Susannah that Abe Lincoln wasn’t Amish.)

“How old are the Troyer boys?” my sister asked hopefully.

My pointed shoes quickly put an end to that line of questioning. I said a few more words of comfort and whisked Susannah out of speaking range.

“Excuse me, but do you know if Annie Stutzman is here?” I asked a woman who was the spitting image of Mama at her age.

The woman pointed wordlessly at a girl who couldn’t have been more than twelve.

“No, I’m sure that’s not her. This Annie Stutzman was my father’s cousin.”

The woman shrugged. “I know eight Annie Stutzmans, dear. Do you want me to point them all out to you?”

I decided to save Annie for later. Anyone who didn’t have a phone yet was capable of calling me up at six-thirty in the morning to pass on news she had just heard would manage to get in touch with me before I left the area. Anyway, Annie had said she would see me at the cemetery. If she wanted to talk to me that afternoon, all she had to do was come up to me and open her mouth. Two tall English women, one wearing enough makeup to supply a small suburb of Pittsburgh for a year, could not be that hard to spot in a sea of bobbing bonnets.

For the next several hours we sat around like warts on a pickle, waiting for the Troyers (who were present) to leave. Although all the Amish were extremely cordial, it is sometimes hard to connect with a roomful of strangers, even if half of them are wearing your face. I wasn’t particularly interested in learning that Emma Hershberger’s bunions were acting up again, or that Milla Kauffman made her broad noodles without any eggs. As for the fact that Amanda Miller was three weeks overdue with her eighth baby, well, in the words of Susannah, “Who cares?”

There were three other English there, but undoubtedly they had been brought up better than Susannah and I. They wore their looks of boredom quite gracefully.

I struck up a conversation with one of them—an ample woman named Harriet. She had driven a carload of Amish over from Goshen, Indiana, but she had done it for money. Harriet had just begun her career as a middle-aged mercenary, driving the devout in dire times, and what she knew about the Amish would fill one page in a doll-sized notebook.

“I think their ancestors were pilgrims,” Harriet said. “That’s right, the Amish are some kind of modern-day pilgrim, and they believe in dressing up like in the olden days. Which is really kind of silly, when you think about it,” she added, “because even the Indians today don’t dress like they used to.”

“Is that so,” I said politely. Susannah, however, smirked.

“Now take the Mennonites,” Harriet said knowingly. “They’re a queer bunch as well.”

“Do tell,” I urged.

“They’re sort of diluted Amish, if you ask me. They’re not as strict, but they’re just as clannish. Won’t look you straight in the eye if you’re not one of them. Did you know that Richard Nixon was a Mennonite?”

I stared at her. “He was a Quaker,” I said firmly. “It’s not the same thing.”

She gave me a pitying glance. “How much were you paid to drive your Amish passengers here, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“A thousand dollars.” It was a joke said with a straight face—which isn’t the same as lying.

Harriet’s eyes bulged and she gasped for air. “Well,” she said at last, “I’m going to have me a talk with the Berkeys before I drive them home!”

I prayed silently that God and the Berkeys would forgive me. “I suppose the Berkeys told you about the oil wells they have on their farm?”

Harriet shook her head. “Nope, but it doesn’t surprise me none. The Amish might look poor—on account of their pilgrim costumes—but they’re smart businessmen. The Berkeys said that the Amish man who died was starting up a rival cheese factory. Farmersburg Swiss, you know.”

“Yes, the Amish are Swiss.” At least she had gotten one fact right.

“No, I meant the cheese. Farmersburg Swiss cheese. Surely you’ve heard of it.”

“Not until now, dear.”

Harriet rolled her eyes, giving me a preview of what Susannah might look like twenty years and fifty pounds down the pike. “Farmersburg Swiss is gourmet. Everybody knows that. Even in Goshen, Indiana, people with sophisticated taste eat Farmersburg Swiss.”

“You don’t say.” This from a woman who made “gourmet” rhyme with “your pet”!

“Farmersburg Swiss has a rich, nutty flavor that the other Swisses can’t touch. Its firm but creamy texture alone puts it in a class all by itself.” She licked her lips and sighed contentedly.

I would have run out right then and bought some, except that something she had said earlier suddenly clicked. “Did you say that Mr. Yoder was starting up a rival cheese factory?” I asked. “Who owns the first, and where is it?”

Harriet shook her head in amazement. “It’s hard to believe what people miss out on when they’re not paying attention. Daisybell Dairies is by far the largest building in town!”

I confessed that we had taken a back way and avoided town altogether. Mercifully I didn’t have to explain how that happened.

“Well, if I were you I’d stop at the factory on my way out of town and buy some of the cheese direct. That’s what I plan to do. With the competition dead, prices might soar. You might even want to do a little investing in Daisybell stock, provided it’s a public corporation.”

I promised to check the cheese stocks in my local paper on my return home. In the meantime I had a little local checking to do. Something was definitely rotten in Denmark, and it was beginning to smell like cheese.

Farmersburg Swiss Cheese Hors d’Oeuvres

2 tubes crescent roll dough

16 paper-thin slices of Farmersburg Swiss cheese

24 paper-thin slices of hard salami

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Divide crescent dough along perforated lines into eight rectangles (two triangles each). Pinch seams together.

Cover each rectangle with a slice of Farmersburg Swiss and three overlapping slices of hard salami. Overlay with another slice of Farmersburg Swiss. Roll the rectangles into tight logs, and pinch dough shut along seams. With a sharp knife, slice each log into four even pieces.

Arrange pieces, seam side down, on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for ten minutes or until light brown. Serve hot.

This recipe makes enough hors d’oeuvres for eight polite people or two of Susannah’s friends.

Note: In the event Farmersburg Swiss is unavailable, any Swiss cheese will do.

Lizzie and Sam were as nice a couple as one could hope to meet. They made us feel instantly at home on their farm, and if they felt uncomfortable having two English women invade their world, they never let on. Unfortunately the same could not be said about their boys.

The children virtually ignored me, but Elias, the baby, cried every time Susannah got within focus. Isaac, the eldest, was the towheaded boy who had called Susannah a clown. Apparently he had been only warming up then. As for the middle boys, Benjamin, Solomon and Peter, they either cried or taunted Susannah, depending on the proximity of their parents.

Poor Susannah. It was the first time in her life that members of the male sex had refused to put her on a pedestal.

“Why don’t they like me?” she wailed that evening at supper. To emphasize her anguish, my sister flung out her arms, and the explosion of fabric that followed took several seconds to settle, draping across the adjacent plates like a collapsed parachute.

We were eating supper by the light of a hurricane lamp. Perhaps the flickering shadows made my sister look particularly ominous, or perhaps it had just been a long day for everyone involved, but even six-year-old Isaac was provoked to tears.

“The English woman scares me!” he sobbed. Much to my relief, he pointed only at Susannah.

“Hush,” Lizzie said sternly.

“No dessert for naughty boys,” Samuel said, although he looked a little wary of Susannah himself.

But the five little boys could not be quieted. It was as if they took turns sobbing, each one inspiring the next to reach higher pitch and louder volume. In Hernia, when the volunteer fire department rehearses its disaster alarm, we are at least given written notice three days in advance.

The five boys took their turns screeching and howling while their parents sat looking helplessly on. The threat of no dessert had meant nothing. Clearly, the Troyers possessed genes that the Yoders did not. Papa would have sent us straight off to bed, without any supper, and the next day Mama would have made us clean out the chicken coop. In a Yoder house, one did what one was told.

Eventually the boys tired of taking turns and began bellowing in unison. Who knows how long the racket would have lasted had not a sixth voice, even louder and higher-pitched than the others, joined in. Fortunately only Susannah and I picked up on the interloper. Immediately my pointed shoes found a home.

“Well, excuuuse me!” Susannah said, but without need of another hint she left the dinner table and went outside. She should have been grateful, because I know she was dying for a cigarette by then. Undoubtedly Shnookums needed to be fed too, for his stomach couldn’t be larger than a thimble.

With Susannah’s departure the din dimmed dramatically, and I managed to demonstrate that I was an appreciative guest by consuming a respectable portion of the meager repast Lizzie had provided. Not that there wasn’t a lot of food, but canned sardines and bread are not your typical Amish supper. Not being a connoisseur of finned things, I concentrated on the bread and its accouterments. The whimpers and snuffles around me were not enough to deter my appetite.

“This apple butter is the best I’ve ever eaten,” I said, spreading a fourth slice of bread. Truthfully I’d tasted far better, but the good Lord knew my motive for stretching the truth was pure.