The Amish Midwife (12 page)

John excused himself and said he needed to return to work. Sally sat up, refastened the pins at her waist, and then walked with us out to the porch. “Ruth,” she called. “It’s time to bake our bread.”

The girl waved goodbye to Alice and the twins and skipped across the grass. She smiled at me as she passed.

Alice stood, lifting one of the little girls onto her hip. She had a black cape over her dress now. The sun passed behind a cloud and the air grew chilly.

“Marta,” she said. “Did Will reach you?” The woman’s voice was soft and calm, but something about her tone gave me pause, especially when I noticed Marta’s subtle but distinct reaction, her face paling at the mere mention of the man’s name. “He had a question for you.”

Marta shook her head, her eyes giving away nothing. She opened her mouth to speak, and then she hesitated, handing me her bag and motioning toward her car. Apparently, I was being dismissed just as things were getting interesting.

“I’m seeing Hannah tomorrow,” Marta said to Alice, turning her back to me as I moved away. “Will he be working at the greenhouses?”

“Yes, he should be.”

“Good. I will speak to him then.” Though her words sounded
matter-of-fact, the tone of her voice was anything but. “How is Christy doing?”

I walked slowly, listening.

“She’s here today and resting inside,” I thought I heard Alice reply.

Their voices fading out of my hearing range, I gave up and climbed into Marta’s car. I set her bag at my feet, wondering what all of that was about, and stared at the large white house in front of me. The windows were new and energy efficient. Four Adirondack chairs graced the wide front porch. A flat of germaniums sat on the front steps, ready to be planted. One of the twins ran to the edge of the porch and smiled at me. I waved and then made a silly face. She made one back, and we both laughed. A moment later Marta appeared.

She started the car in silence. As she pulled out of the lane, we passed Ezra, who was standing off to the right with a shovel in his hand. Beside him was a small tree ready to be planted. He was still hatless, and the sleeves of his shirt were pushed haphazardly up to his elbows. He caught my eye and grinned, exuding an instant charm. Though I was at least six years older than he, I had the distinct feeling that he was trying to flirt with me. I smiled back and then turned away, suppressing a laugh. He was trouble, that one.

“Who is Will?” I asked Marta, not surprised when she didn’t answer. Instead, she focused on her driving as she headed toward the highway. Her face was still so pale, I decided not to press the issue for now.

Glancing back toward the busy farm we had just left, I thought about all of the various people I had met there. Amish families were so large I wondered how anyone could keep track of their names, much less their various connections. “So tell me again how everyone here is related,” I said.

Settling back in her seat and relaxing her grip on the wheel, Marta explained that Alice was the mother of Nancy, who was married to Benjamin. “Alice and her husband didn’t have any sons, so their son-in-law runs the family business.” She went on to say that Nancy and Benjamin had one daughter and three sons. The youngest, Ezra, was the red-headed boy we had watched getting scolded. The middle boy, John, was married to Sally, the patient we had come to see.

“Their daughter, Hannah, is also a patient of mine. She’s due in May. I have an appointment with her in just a couple of days.”

“What about their oldest son? What’s his name?”

Marta hesitated a moment before answering. “Their oldest son is Will. He runs a large nursery,” she said evenly, and then she pursed her lips tightly, as if she had said too much.

“So who is Christy?” I asked, changing tactics.

Marta grunted at my persistence. “The twins’ older sister. She’s eleven.”

“And they are the children of… ?”

“Will. They are the children of Will. But they stay with their Aunty Hannah—or sometimes Nancy and Alice—during the day.”

“Why? Where’s their mother?”

Marta simply shook her head, and I could tell by the set of her chin and the grip of her hands on the steering wheel that this line of conversation was closed. She put on her blinker, slowed, and turned onto a wider road. Frustrated, I stared out of my window and counted to ten, knowing I should hold my tongue.

“So you grew up Mennonite?” Marta asked finally, breaking the silence.

“I did.”

“General Conference, then? Certainly not Old Order.”

“There aren’t any Old Order left in Oregon,” I said, explaining that the Old Order Mennonites came in the late 1880s but over time joined less conservative groups. “The little church I grew up in is now independent.” Though that church was by no means liberal, I’m sure
I
appeared to be, especially to Marta. Especially because I no longer even identified myself as Mennonite.

“How is it you know nothing about the Amish?” she asked.

I bristled. “Why should I? There hasn’t been an Amish settlement in our region for more than a hundred years.” I didn’t add that in Pennsylvania, the Amish and Mennonites may have been closely linked, but in Oregon they weren’t. In fact, no one there ever gave the Amish much thought unless something was in the media.

“You really didn’t know that in the Amish culture children stop school at the eighth grade?”

I shook my head, certain I would have remembered that. “So the school we passed is it? A one-room, eighth-grade education?”

Marta nodded. Despite Sally’s earlier assurance that the learning continued beyond school, I couldn’t help but think that the Mennonites were looking better all the time.

My own experience with the Mennonite religion started out well. How could it have not? I was one of the few children at my parents’ church, and I was adored. I also got the faith part early in life. Jesus loved me. God had a plan for my life. I wanted to be baptized as soon as I could. I even wanted to wear the head covering at first, although my motivation was—back then—that I wanted to wear what Mama had worn.

But the older I grew and the more I read, the more confused I became. Congregations had split over whether or not to have Sunday school and whether baptism should be by immersion or pouring water over the head. Head coverings varied from group to group. In middle school wearing a head covering set me apart, but by high school I felt like an outcast. How could wearing pants instead of a skirt seem immodest? Did it really matter whether a woman’s head covering was heart shaped or round? Had God stopped listening to my prayers once I put mine away all together?

The Anabaptist movement, of which the Amish, Mennonites, Brethren, Dunkers, Hutterites, Apostolics, and more all belonged, had begun in Switzerland in the 1500s during the Protestant Reformation. The word Anabaptist meant, literally, “second baptism” and had risen out of the belief that God intended baptism to be not for infants but instead for adults, ones who made a conscious decision to follow Christ. This position put them in direct violation of State dictates, but they stood firm on their belief, which resulted in imprisonment, martyrdom, and finally a movement that grew strong and spread and splintered and spread some more.

I sighed. If Marta expected me to learn all the ends and outs of the Amish—which I surmised probably made the Mennonites look simple by comparison—she was crazy.

“The Amish really are a separate culture, one you need to be willing to understand,” she said.

“Yeah, well…” I turned my head toward Marta and caught her looking at me.

She turned her eyes back to the road. “I’m serious, Lexie, when you work with the Amish you need—”

“Whoa!” Work with the Amish? Where did she get off assuming I was sticking around? “Listen, Marta, it’s been fun helping you out and all, but what I really need is some information. Sophie thinks you know about my biological family. She thinks… she believes you and I might even be
related.” I didn’t add that judging by hers and Ella’s reaction when they met me yesterday, I was feeling pretty sure of that myself.

“How long can you stay?” she asked.

“I have a job waiting for me in Philly—”

“That’s not what I asked,” Marta interrupted, turning onto the highway. “How long can you stay?”

“I have a job waiting for me in Philly,” I repeated, my jaw clenched, “and it starts in two weeks. But there are other things I need to do first, Marta. Like find a place to live. Map out my route to the hospital.” Get to the department of vital records in Harrisburg and convince someone to let me see my birth certificate.

“I don’t think I’ll need you after a day or two. You’ll be free to go then.”

News flash, Miss Marta:
I’m free to go right now
. What gave her the right to be so presumptuous? I leaned my head back against the seat, wondering how this woman could be so sweet and tender with her patients and so sour with me.

“How’s this?” I said finally. “I’ll give you the two days
if
you’ll talk to me.”

Marta missed the turn to her house. “About?” I’d never known a midwife to play dumb before.

“My birth family.”

She didn’t respond, so after a moment, I decided to throw out a question or two to show her what I meant. Holding back on the big guns for now, I decided that my first one should be relatively benign. “Tell me what you know about the house on my box. Ella said she’s seen it before.”

Marta’s knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. “Ella’s a fanciful girl. She probably saw something like it in a picture book from the library.”

So much for holding back. I decided to go with the big guns after all.

“Who was my mother?” I demanded.

Nothing.

“Who was my father?” I persisted.

No answer.

“Are you and I related? If so, how? Are you my cousin? My aunt? My sister?”

She began shaking her head from side to side. “This is exactly why I didn’t want you here,” she hissed.

“But this is exactly why I came. I’ll stay and help, but only if you’ll answer my questions.”

She sighed loudly and then grew silent. That silence hung heavily in the air between us.

“Lexie,” she whispered finally, “it’s not my place.”

I looked away, surprised by the hot, sudden tears that sprung into my eyes. Not
Lexie, I don’t know anything
, or
Lexie, it’s none of your business
, but
Lexie, it’s not my place
.

I didn’t know how to reply to that. If not her place, then whose?

More tears came, and as I wiped them away in frustration, I turned toward her, ready to let her have it. Instead, I was shocked to see a single tear sliding down her check. She quickly swiped it away, composed herself, and offered no explanation. I could see she was feeling ambivalent. I was asking for information, and though she may have said no with her words, something in her wanted to say yes—or at least maybe.

Maybe
, if she got to know me better first.
Maybe
, if I helped her out with her patients.
Maybe
, if we started on safer ground.

Marta turned onto a four-lane highway and accelerated. The green sign that whizzed by read “Willow Street Pike,” and it seemed as if she were driving with intention, that she had a destination in mind.

So did I. In that moment, looking out at the beautiful countryside as we flew past, resolve solidified in my chest like a fist. I had come to this place to find my story. One way or another, I’d get there, no matter what it would take.

For the moment, I just wanted to know where Marta was bringing me. “Where are we?”

“Lancaster. I have another prenatal visit.”

“I thought we were in Lancaster—”

“County. Now we’re going to the city.”

I tried to imagine the two Amish families I’d met living in a city. The road descended into a gully, and as we came out of it, parklike lawns appeared to the right with large brick houses, one after the other, at the crest of the hill. They were Federalist-style buildings, and again I felt as though I’d arrived on a living history set.

The brick houses soon gave way to row houses, one after the other, divided by alleyways and punctuated by occasional graffiti. Every couple of
blocks there was a small market with a group of people gathered in front of it. A few old people sat on the stoops or in cheap plastic chairs on small porches. It was all very urban looking. I couldn’t fathom an Amish family living here.

Marta turned down an alley. “Our next visit is with Esther, who is twenty-seven. Second pregnancy. She’s at thirty-seven weeks. Her husband is a student at Lancaster Seminary.”

I raised my eyebrows. That certainly didn’t fit in with an eighth-grade education.

Marta parked at the end of the alley, and I followed her up the cracked cement steps to a row house. After rapping sharply on the weathered door, she glanced my way, the hint of a smile beginning to show on her face.

C
ome in!”

I could hear the woman’s accented voice before I saw her. The door swung open wider and a little boy pushed against it. His skin was dark and his hair curly. In two chubby hands he held an orange that he dropped onto the stoop when he saw Marta. He raised his arms and she lifted him up in a swoop of motion, her cape flapping a little as she did. I bent down and retrieved the orange, and as I handed it over I couldn’t help but notice that Marta was smiling broadly for the first time since I met her.