The Amish Midwife

THIRTEEN


We rode in silence. I slowed for a buggy. A car behind me honked. I ignored them. After a while Ella said, “I think you can pass.”

I realized the car behind me was long gone and we were on a straight stretch. I sped around the buggy.

“Are there parents listed for Alexandra?” I was practically whispering. “In the Bible?”

“No father, just a mother.” Ella looked straight ahead. “Giselle.”

“Do you know who she is?” I tried to concentrate on my driving.

“I’ve never heard of her before, but—” she stopped.

“Ella?” I tried to catch her eye.

“She’s listed as a sister to Klara and Mom. Their maiden name is Lantz.”

“We have another aunt?” Zed asked from the backseat.

Ella ignored him. By his lack of protest, I gathered he was used to it.

I locked my eyes on the road. Giselle. My birth mother’s name was Giselle. She was a sister to Marta and to Klara. A fifteen-year-old had accomplished in a few minutes what I wouldn’t have been able to do in weeks or months—maybe even years. “Was there a birth date for her?” I was choking on my heart.

Ella exhaled and then spoke quietly. “Klara was coming in through the back door, so I had to stuff the Bible back behind the puzzles.”

“Did you see Mammi?” Zed leaned forward.

She shook her head. “Klara said she was sleeping. She said I should ask Mom anyway about the family history—she knows as much as anyone. She says Mammi isn’t very talkative now.”

I shivered. Was she dying?

Even without seeing her grandmother, Ella had done great. “Thank you,” I said, patting her leg. “Have you thought of a career as a detective? Because you’re amazing.”

Ella smiled, clearly pleased with my praise.

The sun was setting now, streaking the fading blue sky with lemon yellow, pale lavender, and creamsicle orange. Ahead, a windmill was silhouetted against the scene. My heart lurched. This information challenged everything I’d ever fantasized about my birth family. I glanced down at the Coach purse on the console. My birth mother wasn’t a professional woman living in Philadelphia or Manhattan. She was, most likely, a shunned Amish woman living who knew where. It was as if both she and I, together, had been scrubbed clean from her family. Our family. I shivered.

I had a friend in middle school who used to say, “God gives us our relatives; we choose our friends.” She came from a big Irish Catholic family and was related to half the county.

I thought of her saying that now. Never, in my wildest dreams, would I have chosen an Amish family from Lancaster County. But why would an Amish family in Lancaster County not choose me? If my mother couldn’t keep me, why wouldn’t my grandmother? I’d seen how much the Amish loved their children. I couldn’t imagine Alice, and she was a great-grandmother, ever giving up Rachael, Melanie, or Matty when they were babies. I think she would die first.

“Are you sure you’ve never heard of Giselle?” My voice broke the silence.

“Never,” she said. “And I’ve never heard of a cousin Alexandra—of you, right?”

“I think so,” I whispered.

“How old is your mom?” I asked.

“Thirty-eight,” Zed answered from the backseat.

“And your Aunt Klara?” I glanced into the rearview mirror.

Ella shrugged. “I don’t know. But older, that’s for sure.” She sat up straighter. “I’ll go back and look at the Bible again.” She reached over and touched my hand on the steering wheel. “I’ll do whatever I can.”

“Thanks,” I said, choking.

“So we’re cousins then, right?” Zed’s head was between the seats.

“Somebody’s slow.” Ella took her hand away from mine, reaching behind her to tousle her brother’s hair.

“But Mom doesn’t know?” Zed’s voice was full of confusion.

Neither Ella nor I answered him. Of course Marta knew, but I didn’t want to be the one to confirm Zed’s suspicion about his mother.

By the time we reached the covered bridge, dusk was falling. I eased onto the wooden slats carefully, releasing my anxiety with a sigh when the car rolled back onto the pavement on the other side. By the time we reached the cottage, though, my angst was gathering steam again, but Marta was nowhere to be found. I marched out to her office, ready to confront the woman whom I now knew was my aunt.

“You’re right,” she said, calmly, after my rant. “I am your biological aunt. We share some of the same DNA. That’s all.” She sat at her desk. “I am very sorry that you came out here to find this out. I did my best to stop you once I suspected who you were.” She looked up at me. “I was told, all those years ago, that your adoptive parents had renamed you. Clearly they didn’t, and that caught me off guard.”

“Please tell me what you know,” I begged.

“There’s nothing to tell. I haven’t seen Giselle in over two decades. I haven’t had a letter. Not even a postcard.”

“And no one else has heard from her?”

She shrugged. “That’s not really my business to tell.”

I stared at her.

“Alexandra,” she said. I shivered. It was the first time she’d called me by my full name, and the way she said it sounded as if she’d said it before. “Some things are better left alone,” she added.

I crossed my arms. “I would like to meet my—” I stopped, about to say “grandmother,” but instead I used the more familiar term, mostly to see how it would feel on my tongue, but perhaps also to get a rise out of Marta. “Mammi. I want to meet Mammi.”

Marta winced. Bull’s-eye.

“And Klara,” I said, feeling emboldened. “And Ada. And even Alexander.”

She looked as if I were throwing darts at her, aiming at her narrow eyes. “That’s not a good idea,” she finally said. She stood. “We were raised to forgive and forget. It’s offensive to us for you to come rushing in here, asking questions and stirring up the past.”

I felt as if I’d been slapped.

She continued. “I don’t know how they do things in Oregon, but this isn’t how we do things here.” Her hands were flat on her desk, and she leaned forward. “I appreciate your help with my practice, but I do not appreciate you involving my children in your schemes.”

My phone beeped.

“As far as tomorrow,” Marta said, sinking back down into her chair, “you have four prenatal appointments here in the office in the afternoon. You’ll have the morning off.”

I didn’t respond. How could she expect me to keep helping her?

“I have more work to do now,” she said. “Please go.” She folded her arms atop her bare desk.

As I left, she lowered her head to her arms on the desk. I closed the door and stood for a moment in the darkness. The evening breeze whispered through the pine trees. A car whizzed by on the road. I thought I could hear the sound of the creek down the hill where it rushed under the bridge. Was the last sound, the one I couldn’t quite identify, Marta’s muffled crying behind the door?

The new text was from Sean, asking about dinner again. I walked over to the pine trees and stopped at the base of the largest in the small grove. I couldn’t handle Sean and dinner, not tonight.

Light from the dining room window illuminated the side yard as I sank down to the damp ground. They had rejected me as a loveable newborn. What had made me think they would accept me now?

Years ago when I was teenager, after I’d decided to wait to search for my birth family, I came across a book about adoption on Sophie’s desk. The title was The Primal Wound. I skimmed the book. It scared me. Put me on edge. I’d never imagined that adoption was so complicated. The premise was, being abandoned by one’s birth mother left the worst wound possible, one that would really never heal. Later, as an adult, I came across the book. I’d remembered it from before as being four or five hundred pages at least, but it wasn’t. It was actually a small volume just over two hundred pages. When I saw the book as an adult, I wondered if Sophie had been reading it all those years before or if she had left it for me to find. My gut feeling was that she had been reading it, but with me in mind. She was never one to meddle—until now.

My phone began to ring. It was James. I tripped over my words as I spilled out what had happened.

“Wow. How are you feeling?”

How did I feel? Anger swept over me. He’d known all along they would reject me. “Why did you let me come?” I demanded.

“Lex. What’s going on?” His voice was annoyingly patient.

“What’s going on?” My voice was shrill now. “Marta is my aunt. Her sister Giselle is my birth mom. That’s what’s going on. But she won’t tell me any more than that.”

“Who won’t tell you any more?”

My anger surged. “Marta.”

“Maybe she will if you give her some time.”

I sat up straighter against the tree, the jigsaw bark of the trunk against my back. More time? Maybe James was dating someone else. Maybe he didn’t want me to come home. “I don’t want to find my birth mom only to be rejected by her too.”

“There are worse things than being rejected.”

“Like?”

“Not being loved.” His voice was low and deep.

“Aren’t they the same?”

He was silent for a moment, and then he said, “No.”

I thought about that. I didn’t agree. “I’ve got to go.”

A minute later I texted Sean: Are you still available for dinner? Let me know when and where.

Where was a Thai place in downtown Lancaster not far from the hospital. When was eight thirty, but before I met Sean I cut across to the Lincoln Highway and stopped at a coffee shop whose sign advertised free wireless Internet, a place called the Morning Mug. I had ten minutes of Internet time before they closed. I turned on my laptop and ordered a cup of herbal tea. Immediately I logged onto the adoption site where I’d registered before I left Portland. I was supposed to get an email if anyone responded to my post, and so far I’d had nothing. First I clicked on to “Lantz,” now that I had a name, to see if there were any postings concerning me, but still there was nothing.

“We close in five minutes,” the barista called out to me. I was the only customer in the shop.

I ignored him and clicked into my account. A second later a posting box was in front of me. I’d skimmed my previous posting with my birth date and location. Now I wrote: “Birth mother’s name is Giselle Lantz.” I hesitated. Should I add that Giselle was Amish?

“We’re closing,” the barista said, standing at the counter with a bar towel in his hand.

I added, Birth mother’s family is Amish and from Lancaster County, PA, hit “publish,” backtracked to the Google home page, and then typed in whitepages.com. I quickly typed in Lantz, Giselle, PA. There was one match, located in the town of Emmaus. No address was listed, but I jotted down the phone number.

“We’re officially closed.”

“Thanks.” I slipped my computer into my case and grabbed my tea.

Downtown Lancaster wasn’t exactly hopping on a Friday night, and I found a parking place without any trouble. Sean met me at my car and gallantly opened the door for me. He must have showered at the hospital because his short hair was still damp and he smelled of cologne. He wore a blue dress shirt that complemented his eyes, a tailored jacket, nice jeans, and leather shoes. I slung my Coach bag over my shoulder, and as I stepped from the car, he placed his hand on my elbow and kept it there as we walked. I liked that.

Over spring rolls, red curry, pad Thai, and hot tea, I told him about my day. He listened attentively, nodding in sympathy. I ended by saying I had no idea what I should do, if I should flee to Philadelphia or go back home.

“I hope you don’t go back to Oregon. Not when we’re just getting to know each other.”

“You probably say that to all the midwives who stumble into your hospital.”

“Probably.” His eyes danced playfully.

He asked me about Marta, and I said as far as I knew the autopsy report hadn’t come back yet, and that it seemed to be what was holding up the grand jury.

His eyes brightened even more. “Ooh, an autopsy.”

I understood his interest. It would sound absolutely morbid to the average person, but just as James obsessed about the motivations of the mind and psyche, we medical people couldn’t get enough about why a body would do what it did.

“Have you ever seen an autopsy?” Sean leaned back in his chair, his blue eyes sparkling.

I shook my head.

“They’re fascinating. I remember the first one I ever saw, back in med school.” He went on to say that the corpse was a twenty-eight-year-old male whom his buddies had found dead after a weekend of partying. “So it was assumed he’d overdosed.”

The autopsy itself had taken more than four hours, and preparing all of the samples took another few days, but the toxicology testing of the blood and urine didn’t come back for weeks.

“That’s probably what’s holding things up now,” Sean said. He took a drink of tea and then went back to his story. “Because the coroner suspected an overdose, he took specimens of the liver and brain too.” He paused. “I wonder if they would do that with an Amish mother.”

I had no idea, unless they thought Marta had given her some sort of drug, illegally.

“The really cool thing was when he opened up the body. He made this big Y-shaped incision.”

I was beginning to wonder if Sean should have been a surgeon.

“And then pulled all the organs out.”

I smiled.

“It was obvious as soon as he was opened up that he’d had a massive bleed. It was his heart. A ruptured aorta.”

“What did the toxicology show?” I asked.

“Nothing. He’d had a few beers. That was it.”

I shivered. “What happened next?”

“The coroner put everything back in. The family had an open casket. No one could tell the difference. But at least they had their answer.”

Obviously Lydia hadn’t had a ruptured aorta or the investigation would be complete. I hadn’t thought of her funeral. Would they have had an open casket? I thought of Melanie and Matty and their sister, Christy. Would the children have gone to the funeral? I thought of Will telling his wife goodbye.

“What do you know about the case?” Sean asked.

“Not much. Sounds as though Lydia had high blood pressure. And at some time during labor Marta said they should go to the hospital, but Lydia refused. I know Marta called 911, but it was too late.”

“Did she do CPR?”

“I’m assuming so.” I couldn’t explain to Sean how hard it was to talk to Marta.

“And how about the baby?”

“It sounds as if it asphyxiated. They did a C-section at the hospital…” I looked into his eyes.

“I was off that night.”

I nodded. I assumed he was. “But the baby was already dead.”

He leaned back in his chair. “What a nightmare. It’s these rare cases that really make me balk at home births.” He smiled. “No offense.”

“None taken,” I said. I had malpractice insurance, but the risk of losing a baby weighed heavily on me no matter what. It did in a hospital setting too. I was always aware of the possibility. But it was worse at a home birth without suction devices and a C-section suite down the hall. During a home birth, it all seemed so natural, so right, but before and after and in the middle of a sleepless night, I scared myself with thoughts of dead mothers and babies.

We chatted a little bit more about Lancaster County. Sean agreed that the Amish horses that pulled the buggies were beautiful. I told him they reminded me of racehorses.

“Some of them are,” he said. “Retired race horses.” He told me about his neighbors in Vermont who had horses and how he grew up riding and doing a little bit of jumping. “I would love to have a horse someday,” he said. “Maybe when I settle down.” His eyes danced again. He asked me about growing up in Oregon, and I told him about the hazelnut orchard and the creek along our property and the view of Mount Hood from the top of the hill. I didn’t tell him about Mama dying or Dad’s recent passing. Those details would have to wait until we were closer—something that, as we sat across from each other, seemed imminent.

He ordered dessert—mango custard that tasted as if it’d come straight from heaven. Later, I sat back as he signed the bill, thinking how nice it was to go on a date with a man who didn’t have to worry about money.

He walked me to my car and took my hand as he said, “Could we do this again sometime soon?”

I hesitated, fighting back a twinge of guilt even as I reminded myself that James and I were officially on a break. I was allowed to see Sean, given my current status.

“Yes,” I answered as he opened the door to my Taurus. “I’d like that.” As I pulled away from the curb, I whispered, “Tomorrow couldn’t be soon enough.” For at least half of the dinner, I hadn’t given my birth mother—or James—a thought.

But on my way home, I parked my car directly in front of the now dark and closed coffee shop, located their wireless signal, and logged on again to do a quick check of my email. It could happen, right? She could have responded already. Maybe she felt my angst, felt my need. But there was nothing.

I could call the number in Emmaus, but it was late, already past ten thirty. I would call first thing in the morning.