The Death of Pie (15 page)

1 unbaked 8-inch pie crust

1 cup brown sugar

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Dash of salt

1 12-ounce can evaporated milk

2½ tablespoons butter

Ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. With your fingers, mix the brown sugar, flour and salt directly in the pie shell. Spread evenly. Slowly pour the evaporated milk over the mixture, but do not stir in. Dot with lumps of butter and sprinkle cinnamon liberally over the surface. Bake for 50 minutes.

The filling is supposed to be gooey. The pie is best eaten at room temperature.

M
y investigation got off to a late start because I believe that a good wife should be subservient to her husband, as it is written in the Book of Ephesians. I served rather well, if I do say so myself. But even a meek and mild-mannered woman, such as me, is bound to have an opinion from time to time. That said, I am somewhat rankled by this particular chapter in Ephesians. I mean, the apostle who wrote this book was a tent-maker named Paul, a man never married, and who elsewhere comes across as misogynistic.

Yes, I know, the Bible was inspired by the Holy Spirit, and the Apostle Paul was just the scribe, and
yada
,
yada
. That's what my minister says, at any rate. However, the Gospel According to Magdalena is the following: occasionally the earthly scribes were unable to sufficiently turn down the volume of their mind's chatter enough to enable them to hear that small, still voice that is God's. This explains why certain customs peculiar to biblical times feel instinctively wrong to good Christians of today. I do not, for instance, own slaves, nor would I put Little Jacob to death should the day come that he curses me.

Ach, but just like the Bible, I have wandered again in my telling of what proved to be a harrowing tale. After servicing my husband, serving my child and swerving to avoid my mother-in-law, I headed back towards Hernia. Our village doesn't have a proper ‘downtown,' but it does have a Main Street. Along this street, in the approximate center of the village, one will find an intersection fronted by the following four buildings: First Mennonite Church, Hernia Police Station, Sam Yoder's Corner Market and Miller's Feed Store. We have stops signs, instead of a stoplight, and hitching posts for horses instead of parking meters. The speed limit is fifteen kph because most of the traffic is horses and buggies.

I have found from a lifetime of experience that the best way to enter my cousin's store is via stealth. Yea, I am a homely woman. When I brush out my long brown mane each morning I am sorely tempted to rear up and neigh at the image reflected back in my full-length mirror. There is no way that I can objectively deny that fact. But is that truly how others see me? If so, how can I explain the fact that I have a drop-dead gorgeous husband over whom every other woman in Hernia drools and that I have both a widower, and a married man, chomping at the bit to get into my knickers – er, so to speak.

Main Street offers precious few parking spaces, so I parked in the lot behind the First Mennonite Church (
not
my church, by the way) and hoofed it over to Sam's little grocery store. Because this is the only place in a twelve-mile radius where the Amish can buy staples and not have to worry about having their horses spooked by trucks and speeding cars, the market does a brisk business. Sam was thoroughly distracted at the register, which suited me fine because I had business in the ‘back room' – an office/lounge/storage area that took up nearly a third of the downstairs level of the two-storey building.

It was here that Sam had delivered my son, Little Jacob. I have been the recipient of many blessings in my life – too many to enumerate – but one of the greatest blessings bestowed upon me was that I experienced an extremely brief, albeit painful, delivery. At any rate, it wasn't memory lane that I wished to visit now, but Sam's cantankerous Methodist wife, Dorothy. In Ramat Sreym's scandalous book she'd been described as weighing seven hundred pounds. That was an out and out lie. Everyone in Hernia could vouch for that: at her annual weigh-ins, which took place at the stockyard and were well attended (entrepreneurial Sam sold snacks) the poor woman never,
ever
tipped the scales at more than four hundred and ninety-six pounds.

Dorothy is an extremely bright woman, who could converse on any number of subjects, if she wasn't always in attack mode. Perhaps this contentious personality is the reason why Miss Sreym chose to exaggerate my cousin-in-law's weight; perhaps the two women had
words
. Or, it could be that the witless writer was simply prejudiced against folks with fluffy flesh. However, in all fairness, Dorothy, being a liberal Methodist and
not
a Mennonite, was secretly flattered by being described as a ‘strumpet without a trumpet' and a ‘trollop who packed a wallop.' I know this because Sam told me in confidence, and what is a secret if not something to be shared?

Dorothy also has the ears of a kit fox (my Gabe watches National Geographic), and could probably hear a fly sigh at fifty paces. Then again, she might have smelled my approach, given that some have dubbed me Yoder with an Odour, and suggested that I have the bathing habits of a European – possibly someone of French, or even Belgian, nationality. Oh how I resemble that remark! In any case, the Methodist menace met me at the door to the back room, where she'd apparently been waiting for me.

‘What took you so long?' she said.

For the record, despite her bulk, Dorothy has the voice of a nine-year-old girl who has just discovered a nest of spiders in her pudding. Over the years I've trained myself not to show the slightest reaction to this anomaly. My training methods have involved prayer, tongue-biting, pinching my arm, pinching someone else's arm, biting someone else's tongue – you name it. Trust me, Dorothy's voice has got to be heard to be believed. The fact that Ramat Sreym made no mention of it in her novel was, to say the least, a puzzling thought.

‘What's the matter?' Dorothy continued to squeal. ‘Has the cat got your tongue?'

A little bit of irritation goes a long way to stopping the giggles. ‘My pussy is at home in our barn chasing mice,' I said coolly. ‘How is
your
pussy?'

Dorothy scowled, creating furrows on her brow deep enough in which to plant corn kernels. ‘You have a filthy mind, Magdalena.'

‘Why I never,' I protested. ‘Well – maybe just that once – although I'm not sure what we're talking about. It isn't nail polish, is it?'

‘Oh, for heaven's sake, you blithering Mennonite idiot,' Dorothy squeaked like a shrew on steroids, ‘stop wasting my time and come in.'

She lumbered aside, allowing me to slip past her to claim my cousin Sam's chair, which is one of those sinfully comfortable babies that reclines at the push of a button. I realize that this might be a bit picky of me to feel this way, maybe even a mite sacrilegious, but when I get to Heaven, if my new digs don't have a recliner like that, I might ask to be shown to another room. Anyway, Dorothy's customary seat was the sofa – a very large daybed, really – that sagged to the floor in the middle. By the time she'd satisfactorily ensconced herself in the giant cup of broken bedsprings, she was no longer squealing. Instead she sounded rather like a bull sea lion on a mating frenzy (again, it was that ding-dong National Geographic channel!).

Normally, by then I would have already surrendered myself to the Devil by arranging my gangly limbs along the length of the heavenly recliner.
Normally
. However, on that particular visit, when I glanced down at Cousin Sam's much-coveted place of reposition, what did I spy but a pair of Dorothy's bloomers, laid out like the sails of the S.S.
Santa Maria
, the
Pinta
and the
Nina
combined. I half expected to see a miniature Christopher Columbus waving up at me.

‘Go on, sit,' Dorothy said.

All right, but where? Surely she didn't mean on her floor. I try not to entertain mean thoughts in my head, given that I am a kind Christian woman, but truly, even germs wouldn't sit on Dorothy's floor.

No one likes to be yelled at, not even if that person has broad (albeit bony) shoulders like mine, and not even if the yeller has the voice of a nine-year-old. Folks think that I'm tough just because I'm quick-witted and sharp-tongued, but I have feelings too. What brains I have I got from God, and the sharpness of my tongue comes from having to bite down on it so much in order to keep from speaking what's
really
on my mind. That is to say, my poor tongue has been sharpened like a sword's edge against a whetstone, so what comes out of my mouth is really not my fault.

Allow me, therefore, to briefly meander this one time. I was born and bred in Hernia. I am a deaconess in Beechy Grove Mennonite Church, the conservative branch also known as Old Order Mennonite. I am related by blood to virtually every Mennonite person of Amish ancestry in the world, and every Amish person in the world. The branches of my family tree are so tangled that I have to share a shadow with my sister. On account of that,
plus
the fact that I am the best listener you may ever hope to encounter – and I say this with all humility – I am the gossip
maven
of Hernia.
Maven
, by the way, is a Yiddish word that I picked up from the Babester, and it literally means someone who is knowledgeable.

The things that I know about many a fine pillar in our community would light fires under the gossiping old biddies in Hernia. Thumbs would fall off willy-nilly from all that texting, especially in the case of Martha Gerber who really was born with ‘all thumbs.' Even John Swartzentruber, with his extra pair of ears, will not have heard the tales that could be spun from my thin, colorless lips –
if
I was ever pushed too far, that is. And tales is not the right word, either, because my gossip is all
based on the truth
. It is rather what the Anglicans believe the Bible to be, although every
real
Christian knows that the Bible should be read literally, word for word. At any rate, when I gossip, I simply embroider the facts to make them more interesting, and leave out the boring parts.

Take Sam and Dorothy's marriage, for instance: it would have ended years ago, had it not been for—

‘Sit!' Dorothy squeaked.

‘I would, but your unmentionables are on the recliner.'

‘Then move them, silly.'

‘Uh – no offense, dear, but I am not about to touch something so personal.'

‘Good heavens, Magdalena, what are you, a wuss or a woman?'

‘I'm definitely a wuss.'

‘Harrumph.'

‘Again, I mean no offense, but the timbre of your voice does not lend itself to harrumphing.'

‘Cuckoo, cuckoo,' Dorothy said, doing a fairly good imitation of a Black Forest clock. ‘I guess you'll just have to stand while putting the screws to me.' She laughed, sharing another of her vocal inadequacies. ‘If I were you, Magdalena, I'd get right to the point. As you know, one of the Yoder family traits is having ankles as thick as Redwood trunks. You, however, have legs like rubber bands dipped in plastic sauce. If a frog farts all the way over in Philadelphia, you just might topple over backward.'

I gasped. ‘How dare you use the
F
word?'

‘Get real or get out, Magdalena.'

‘In that case,' I said, ‘I would like to know why
you
weren't upset by the million extra pounds that the wretched interloper ascribed to you, yet Sam was?' Do you see how well I can exaggerate?

‘Oh, that!' Then Dorothy's laugh reminded me of the sound of a dentist's drill, as heard from an adjacent room. ‘How far was she off? Ten, fifteen pounds? Who's counting?'

‘Three hundred pounds, and
I'm
counting, since I'm the person assigned to investigate this case.'

‘That certainly explains your crazy get-up. I was thinking that either it's Halloween again or Cousin Magdalena is back to playing Miss Marple amongst the maples.'

‘For the record, dear,' I said, ‘I am your cousin-in-law, not your cousin, and what I am wearing is a genuine facsimile of a pseudo-policewoman's uniform, as per the regulations of the Hernia's Helpers Handbook, written by none other than the very generous citizen who pays our Chief of Policeman's salary.'

‘A policewoman's uniform, no matter how well it is tailored, does not flatter a bean pole.'

‘That hurt my feelings,' I said.

‘I bet it did,' Dorothy said.

‘No, really, it did. Besides, this really isn't a genuine facsimile of a uniform; it's a cobbled together hodgepodge of my own things to suggest a
uniform
.'

‘Then perhaps that explains what's wrong with it. Listen, Magdalena, you will never in a million years convince me that a pipe cleaner like you minds being teased about her weight – or in your case, lack of weight and absence of shape. You know absolutely nothing about discrimination, or having your feelings hurt.'

‘I'm Yoder with the Odour, or didn't Sam tell you about that?'

Dorothy snorted derisively, but given the timbre of her voice, that sound was surprisingly pleasant. ‘You didn't think that we heavy people have our own problems with that?'

‘OK, I capitulate,' I said. ‘You have had a much more difficult life than I, which is really my point, dear.' I paused just long enough to let her swim up to my baited hook – metaphorically speaking, of course. ‘I can totally understand why you decided to poison that awful woman with a piece of homemade fruit pie. I might have done the same thing if I was in your boat-sized shoes – then again, who am I to talk, considering that my sturdy brown brogans have been certified as sea-worthy vessels?' Rest assured that I would never kill another human being. We Mennonites, unlike Dorothy's Methodists, have been pacifists for over five hundred years.