The Hand that Rocks the Ladle (21 page)

“You know, Magdalena, you’re welcome to come with me to my church.”

“The First and Only True Church of the One and Only Living God of the Tabernacle of the Supreme

Holiness and Healing and Keeper of the Consecrated Righteousness of the Eternal Fire of Jehovah?” I said it in one breath.

“That’s Flame, not Fire, and I think you’re making fun of me.”

“Well, you have to admit it is an awfully long name.”

“There’s much more to a church than its name. Worship begins at nine sharp. Do you want me to pick you up, or can you make it on your own?”

“I don’t need a ride,” I said honestly.

“Good, because Samuel has dropped.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He’s assuming the birth position. I know these things, Magdalena. I’ve been through it many times. Our gift to the Lord will be born any day now.”

She hung up.

Ms. Virginia Wilcox’s Chicken Nectarine Salad

♦

(I did not serve this to the demanding Moregold twins)

3 cups cooked chicken

1 ½ cups sliced celery

3 nectarines, sliced

1 ½ cups dark sweet cherries

1 tablespoon sliced green onions

½ cup toasted almonds

Dressing:

1 cup mayonnaise

2 tablespoons vinegar

2 tablespoons honey

1 teaspoon lime juice

½ teaspoon curry powder

¼ teaspoon salt

Toss all ingredients except for almonds. Sprinkle almonds on top and serve.

Serves eight.

Little Freni made it quite clear she couldn't hold out until I had a chance to buy litter. Fortunately I have a huge potted geranium on the front porch. Actually, only the pot is large. The geranium itself is a spindly collection of half-shriveled, almost-leafless stems. I know potted plants need to be watered from time to time, but a life like mine makes ornamental horticulture a low priority. At any rate, the soil in the pot was lose, and relatively free of parasites. Little Freni was more than willing to make that her pit stop.

“You good to go, dear?”

The kitten meowed confirmation, so I plucked my petite pussy from the pot and tucked her back in my bra. Of course I got potting soil down my bosom, but that comes with the territory of being a new mother. At least there were no diapers to wash.

We headed out to the Zook farm. It’s in the opposite direction of Sam Yoder’s Corner Market, but my potted geranium had bought me some time. And since what comes out must first go in, I had thoughtfully brought along a small zip-top can of chunk white tuna I found in the pantry.

This time there was a good deal more visible activity going on at the Zook spread. Two small boys, one towheaded, one dark, were playing with a large, partially deflated ball on the front lawn. The bespectacled grandmother was sitting on the front porch, her gnarled hands folded on the apron of her lap. She appeared to be asleep. Inside the open barn a thick-shouldered man in black pants, blue shirt, and a straw hat was doing something to the hoof of a horse. He was facing my direction, and had to have seen me drive up, but he gave no indication that he had. Between the barn and the house I could see Rebecca Zook. She was hanging sheets on a clothesline, her back to me. Either she didn’t hear my BMW, or more likely, she’d been trained to turn a deaf ear to the world, confronting it only when absolutely necessary.

The children were a different story. They allowed their ball to roll down into Dead Man’s Curve, and chased my car to the shade of a sugar maple. I parked and got out.

“Who are you?” The towheaded boy demanded in Pennsylvania Dutch. He was the smaller of the two boys, and because of his blond coloring, I assumed he was not of these Zooks. No doubt he was a neighbor child come to visit.

“My name is Magdalena Yoder,” I said in English. “Who are you?”

The boy looked bewildered and turned to his dark companion.

“He does not yet speak the English,” the older boy said, “but he is Zachias. My name is Elias.”

“Good to meet you, Elias.”

“I am eight years old. Zachias is only six years old. How many are you?”

“That’s none of your business, dear.”

Elias was undeterred. “Why do you come here?”

Elias spoke in a heavy German accent, a fact that did not surprise me. Like most Amish children his age, his only exposure to English would be school. There he would spend a total of eight years, taught by Amish teachers for whom English had also been virtually a second language, and whose education had also been terminated in the eighth grade. As he grew older, and had more exposure to the world, his accent would improve, but without the influence of radio or television, he would most likely always speak in a way that outsiders would find quaint.

“I came to see Rebecca Zook. She is your sister, right?”

“Yah, she is my sister. Why do you want to see her?”

“Really, dear, this isn’t any of your business.”

He scratched his head. “Are you the mother of that English man?”

“I’m no one’s mother, dear,” I said, and then felt guilty for denying the furry babe asleep against my bosom. “And just which English man are you referring to?”

“Ach, that man who made my sister—what is the word?”

“Pregnant.”

“Yah. Pregnant.” He giggled.

The towhead said something in Pennsylvania Dutch that I didn’t understand. I asked Elias to translate.

“Zachias wants to know if Rebecca will have a baby or a colt.”

“What?”

“Papa called the English man ass. That means horse, yah?”

I glanced at his papa, whose attention was no longer on the horse, but on me. “Same genus, different species,” I said flippantly.

The Zook boy nodded solemnly. “I hope it’s a colt. Papa said I could have my own when I am this big.” He held his hand about a foot above his head.

“That’s nice, dear.” I tried to move past them, but Zachias had another probing question.

“He wants to know,” the Zook boy said, “if Santa Claus is real.”

The Amish celebrate the birth of Jesus, but ignore entirely the cult of the fat, bearded elf. Still, their children cannot help but be familiar with the character. Every time an Amish family goes to town in the months of November and December, their senses are assaulted by Santa and his sleigh. Santa’s sleigh, incidentally (along with his beard), has provoked many an Amish child to ask if the jolly bearer of gifts is in fact of their own faith.

“No, Santa Claus is just a story,” I said.

“But he was here. Zachias and I saw him.”

“When did you see him?”

“Today.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible, dear. It’s July. You don’t see any snow for the sleigh, do you?”

“Ach, no.”

“And did he have a red suit and a big bag of toys?”

“No, but he had a white beard and was fat.”

“Well, dear, no offense intended, but that describes a dozen Amish men I know.”

“Yah, but this man had a top beard.”

“A mustache?” The Zook boy was extremely perceptive for his years.

“Yah, a mustache. And he spoke English.”

During the seventeenth century, mustaches were in vogue among European soldiers, and the pacifist Amish came to equate hair on the upper lip with the willingness to commit violence. Today, while virtually every adult Amish male sports a full beard, mustaches remain forbidden.

“Well, he wasn’t Santa Claus.”

I started walking toward Barbara but Elias stepped boldly in front of me. “Then who was he?”

“I don’t know, dear.” Strictly speaking that was the truth. I did, however, have a hunch.

“Elias! Zachias! Leave the English woman alone!” The boys abandoned me and ran down the drive to retrieve their ball. Rebecca’s father was striding toward me at a curiously un-Amish gait. In the meantime Rebecca seemed to have disappeared, perhaps behind a flapping sheet. Even Grossmudder had gone inside. I stood my ground.

“Miss Yoder, yah?”

“Yah—I mean, yes.”

“Miss Yoder, you will leave now, please.”

“But I came to see Rebecca.”

He shook his head. “That will not be possible.”

“Why not?”

“She is not here.”

“Of course she is. She’s hanging laundry.”

“There is no one hanging laundry.”

“Maybe not now, but there was a minute ago. Look, dear, you know as well as I do that lying is a sin.”

“Ach!”

“I’ll only take a few minutes of her time. And given her condition, she could use a rest, right?”

“Rebecca does not want to speak to you.”

“Says who? Says you? Look, she’s an adult. Doesn’t she get to make up her own mind?”

“I am her papa.” That said it all. Had Rebecca been sixty-five, unmarried, and living at home, she would still be obliged to obey her parents.

“Very well. Maybe you can at least tell me if a Dr. Bauer has been by today.”

He said nothing, but his eyes had the look of a spooked horse.

“Ah, so he has been here.”

“Miss Yoder, please leave. Now.”

“Just one more question, if you will.”

But Rebecca’s father had lost his patience. He didn’t strike me—that would have been unfathomable—or even push me. Instead, he acted as if I were no longer there.

“Elias,” he called. “Zachias. Bring the ball up to the house. There is work for you to do inside.” Without another word he returned to the barn.

I may be pushy, and sometimes rude, but I am not mean-spirited. I might well have been able to barge into the house, or if Rebecca had been hiding among the flapping sheets, confront her there. To my credit, I held my head high, and climbing into my red BMW, drove calmly away. Only after exiting Dead Man’s Curve, while on a rare straightaway, did I press the pedal to the metal. I mean, what good is it to have a brother-in-law for police chief, if one can’t take a few liberties with the law?

“Dang,” I said to Little Freni. “Dang.”

Little Freni purred her sympathy.

When I was quite through venting and had slowed to the legal limit, I tried to make sense of the day’s events. Dr. Pierce, by all accounts a good man, lay dead in Bedford’s morgue. Dr. Bauer, on the other hand, had made a house call to the Zook farm. Somehow that didn’t seem to be his style. Still, it was a considerate thing to do—if he thought Rebecca would need his services shortly. But if kindness was his motive, why did Rebecca’s father seem so upset?

“Sweetie,” I said to Little Freni, “you wouldn’t mind terribly if we made a little detour, would you? The store doesn’t close until five, and I have that can of tuna in my purse.”

My pussy didn’t object, so I made a left on Schlabach Lane instead of continuing straight into Hernia. A right on Kurtz Street and a left on Troyer, and we were at the hospital before you could say “rubber baby buggy bumpers” five times—well, at least say it correctly five times.

In the hospital parking lot I put Little Freni on the passenger side front floor, opened the can of tuna, and let her chow down. The fish was packed in water, but that mite of a kitten ate every last bite and licked the can clean. When she was through with her supper she looked like a furry baseball with add-on appendages. Sort of a Mr. Potato kitten.

A loud wail alerted me to the fact that she needed to use the parking lot, but once that was over she was quite content to crawl back inside my bra and settle down. By the time I reached the hospital door, she was fast asleep.

Now, I may have feet the size of continents, but I have been known to sneak up on people at times. Just ask Freni. Those are her hairs stuck to the plaster of my kitchen ceiling. But getting past Nurse Dudley is another matter altogether. That woman has the ears of a bat, and if the rumors I spread about her are true, had a seismograph surgically implanted in her buttocks. On cat’s feet or not, fog couldn’t sneak past her.

“Yoder!” she bellowed, without even looking up from her paperwork. “Get out of my hospital!”

I kept walking. “This isn’t your hospital, dear. Besides, it’s visiting hours.”

“So?” My nursing nemesis looked like she’d been sucking lemon juice through a rhubarb straw.

“So, I have a legitimate reason to be here.”

Nurse Dudley was on her feet and headed my way. “Ha! We don’t have a psycho ward. Not yet, at any rate.”

“Very funny, dear.” I walked faster.

Nurse Dudley changed tactics and headed for the corridor door. She is a big woman, even larger than Mama was. With her hands on her hips, the woman’s elbows touched both doorjambs.

“Ha, you can’t get past me.”

“Is Dr. Luther here?” Thank heavens I had suddenly remembered the director’s desire to get Gabe on the staff.

Dudley’s face darkened. “So, you’re going to go whining to him, are you?”

“I’ll whine him and dine him. Whatever it takes. Now, get out of the way.”

“You think you’re such hot stuff,” she hissed. Much to my horror, Little Freni hissed back. “What was that?” Dudley demanded.

“That’s just delayed sibilance. It tends to echo.”

“You really are nuts, you know that?”

“Takes one to know one, dear.” I cupped my hands to my mouth. “Dr. Luther, are you there? Dr. Luther?” Nurse Dudley’s arms dropped to her sides, but she didn’t vacate the doorway. She merely turned, so that in passing I had to brush against her enormous bosom. Little Freni hissed again.

“Thibilance,” I thaid, and squeezed past.

I found Jonathan sitting in an armchair next to Barbara’s bed, an infant in his arms. Barbara was sitting up in bed, nursing the other baby. Had it not been for the kitten in my bra, I would have been intensely jealous.

“Well, well, such a happy family,” I said with forced cheer. Forcing cheer is an acquired ability, at which I have become rather skilled.