The Amish Midwife

TWENTY-FOUR


I held the phone to my ear, peering into the darkness. The other hand was on the steering wheel, and my lights were on high beam, but still I couldn’t see the road Ezra was telling me to turn on.

“It’s right past the shed, the white one.”

I wanted to scream. How many white sheds were there in Lancaster County?

I could hear Ella crying in the background.

“Past the trees,” Ezra said. They were on the northeast side of town, past Sean’s house, along a canal. Or at least that was the landmark Ezra had given me. He couldn’t believe I’d never heard of it before. It sounded as though they were at a regular old kegger, the kind I’d avoided, but James had thrived on, during high school.

I saw a grouping of trees and then a shed. I made a sharp right turn onto a dirt road, nearly dropping the phone. “Found it,” I said.

“Okay, we’re about a half mile down the road.”

I wouldn’t have had a hard time finding the group from a helicopter. The field was lit up like a sporting event by the headlights of cars circled around. Music was blaring, and a group of kids were dancing in the middle. Closer, a couple of boys were throwing a football back and forth. To my left a group of girls—two wearing dresses, aprons, and caps, and the rest dressed in jeans—were crowded around the open door of a pickup, all with cans of beer in their hands. I parked my borrowed car where no one could block me in and called Ella’s phone again. After a few rings, Ezra picked up. In a moment I spotted him, the phone to his ear, his hand on Ella’s back, his motorcycle parked nearby. She was bent over. I made my way toward them, stepping around piles of trash and clumps of weeds and brush.

“I told her to stop drinking hours ago.”

I gave him a mean look. He never should have brought her out here.

“I didn’t want to put her on my bike. I was afraid she’d fall off.” He took a deep breath. “And I didn’t really trust anyone here to see her home.”

“Good thinking,” I said to him, my heart softening a little. “Ella,” I said her name softly. “We need to get you back to your house.”

“Don’t tell Mom.” She reeked. Of course Marta needed to know, but there was no reason to tell Ella that now.

“I’m parked over here.”

As the three of us made our way toward my car, several of the girls I’d seen earlier called out Ezra’s name. “Come on,” one of them said. “We’re not drunk like your little friend. You can still have some fun tonight.” Several of them giggled.

Ezra didn’t respond but kept his arm tightly around Ella’s shoulder. When we reached my car, he opened the door and helped Ella inside. “I’ll follow behind you,” he said.

“No,” I said, annoyed. “Wait until you’re okay to drive.”

“I only had one beer,” he said. “Hours ago.”

I tilted my head. “Well, you can’t come in the house.”

He nodded. “I just want to make sure you get her safely home.”

As I left the field and bumped back onto the main road, Ella muttered that she was sorry. “I don’t know what happened.” Her words were slurred.

I didn’t answer. In a minute a single headlight was behind me as we jolted up the rutted road. By the time I reached the highway, Ella was saying she didn’t feel well. I pulled over to the side of the road and Ezra stopped behind me.

As Ella staggered to the bushes with his help, I debated taking her into the ER. I had no idea if Marta had medical insurance. Probably not, but alcohol poisoning was nothing to mess with. It was a good thing she was throwing up, but she still might need her stomach pumped.

I looked off to the houses to my left. One of them was Sean’s. He’d worked late tonight. He was still at the hospital at eleven when he’d last texted me. I pulled out my phone and flipped it open to my keyboard. Are you home? Awake?

He answered immediately. Yes & Yes. What’s up?

I explained the situation.

Bring her by, he wrote back. An OB doc and nurse-midwife should be able to figure this out, right?

Thx. Her Amish boyfriend’s coming too. I winced at my words.

For the first time since I’d met Ezra, he seemed hesitant as he and I, practically holding our noses, dragged Ella up to Sean’s porch. He had the door wide open before we arrived and guided us down the hall to the bathroom. He looked awfully alert for having worked twenty hours straight. “I’ve actually had more experience with this than I should admit,” he said. “Undergrad school. But like any good doctor, I decided not to just rely on personal experience, so I googled it. How much do you think she had to drink?” he asked Ezra.

“I’ve seen a lot worse,” he said. “It wasn’t that much, not really. But it hit her fast and hard.”

We got her to the bathroom, and she sat down on the toilet lid.

Sean took a look at her eyes and asked her if she’d rather go to the hospital. She shook her head adamantly and then began to cry. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

“Why don’t I get her cleaned up?” I said. “Do you have an old pair of sweatpants she could borrow? And a T-shirt. Then we can decide.”

Helping a drunk undress was never fun, but taking care of Ella was much more bearable than my previous experience when I volunteered at a detox center for community service hours in college. Regardless, I loved her. The emotion didn’t totally surprise me, but pulling her socks off her sweaty feet at one in the morning as I held my breath confirmed my feelings of endearment for her. I had never felt the part of the big sister—as much as I had longed to—but tonight I did.

As I helped Ella into the warm tub, there was a knock on the door and I opened it a crack. Sean passed through a small stack of clothes without speaking: a pair of sweats, a T-shirt, and sweatshirt, all neatly folded, all smelling freshly laundered with a hint of his cologne. I thanked him and then held them to my nose for just a moment.

By the time Ella was out of the bath, her long hair combed out, she was feeling better, though completely embarrassed. “I can’t face them,” she said. “Can’t we just run to your car and go home?”

I shook my head.

“Ezra must think I’m awful.”

I found a box of small garbage bags under the sink. “He’s the one who took you to the party.” I dumped her smelly clothes into the bag and knotted the top.

Her voice trailed off. “But it was my idea…”

I opened the door to the scent of coffee and Ezra sitting on the floor of the hall, his back against the wall. “How is she?” he asked me.

“Stupid,” Ella answered before I could, following me into the hall.

Ezra scrambled to his feet.

“I’m sorry,” Ella whispered, leaning her head against his chest.

I kept walking down the hall toward the kitchen, their quiet voices behind me.

Sean sat at the nook table, his hands wrapped around a cup. He stood and stepped toward the counter, pouring me a cup. “How is she?”

“Mortified.”

He smiled. “I remember nights like that.”

“But you were homeschooled,” I teased.

He shrugged. “Well, I was pretty wild by college, and then my younger siblings figured things out a whole lot younger.” He hushed as Ella and Ezra came into the room and poured them each a cup.

We all crowded around the table and stared at each other for a moment. Finally, Ella said to me, “Are you going to tell Mom?”

“No. You are.”

She groaned. Sean’s blue eyes lit up over the rim of his cup. I liked that we were a team in this—and I liked it that we made a good one.

All Ella had for breakfast the next morning was coffee, and I could tell that the sunshine coming through the window hurt her eyes, but besides that it wasn’t obvious she’d been drunk the night before. Marta declined going to church again, saying she didn’t want to be a distraction. I found this odd but didn’t say so.

As soon as we pulled onto the main highway on our way into town, Ella groaned and closed her eyes. “Never again,” she whispered.

“Never again what?” Zed asked from the backseat.

Neither of us answered.

“What’s going on?” Zed’s face filled the rearview mirror.

“Nothing,” Ella barked, too loudly.

I smiled and caught his eye in the mirror. “Later,” I said.

Esther and David weren’t at church, which didn’t surprise me. Between David’s schoolwork and having a new baby, it was much better for the young family to take it easy than to be pushing themselves. Afterward, Ella didn’t want to stay around and chat, and I didn’t want to answer questions about Marta, answers I wasn’t sure of myself, so we hurried out of the foyer and headed home.

I’d told Ella that if she hadn’t said anything to her mother about getting drunk by Monday morning, I would. I listened closely Sunday afternoon to their interactions, and from what I could tell, Ella hadn’t uttered a word.

Sunday evening I sat on the bed in my alcove contemplating my immediate future, including how to tell Marta the next morning about Ella’s drinking. But there were other things I needed to sort out too. How long would I stay in Lancaster? What had happened to my desire to live in Philly? Had all that changed with the discovery that my birth family didn’t live in Montgomery County, that I had merely been born there?

My ties to Ella and Zed were growing tighter. Both had offered me their rooms, individually, when we’d arrived back home after church. I was touched, but I’d declined. For some reason I liked the alcove. You would think, considering I was an only child, that I wouldn’t be able to tolerate a life without privacy, but I liked being part of a family, being in the middle, hearing everyone’s coming and goings, knowing when Marta got up in the morning and when Ella went to bed at night. The alcove was an in-between place and that’s where I was—in between Portland and Philly, in between Ella and Marta, in between Ada and Klara, and in between Giselle and the truth.

My cell rang. It was James. Yes, I was in between him and Sean too. I leaned against the wall. After we chatted for a moment, I told him about my trip to Harrisburg and then Norristown, and how I’d felt like a disgruntled adoptee as I searched. “It’s not that I’m ungrateful toward Mama and Dad.”

“I know.”

I told him the rest of the story, and then he asked about Marta, Ella, and Zed. I didn’t tell him about Ella’s escapade the night before, but I did say that I was growing to love my cousins. Then I told him about seeing Ada last Thursday and about how alike we looked, how I was thinking again that Alexander might be my birth father.

“Wow, Lex. How does that make you feel?”

“It’s really amazing how much we look alike—”

James interrupted me. “But how did you feel?”

I sat up straight on the bed, rolling my eyes for no one but myself. “How was your retreat?” I asked.

He sighed. “Good, thanks. I’m not sure I want to make troubled youths my future, but I’m learning a lot.” We chatted about his schoolwork for a while longer. He told me he was working on a project for his Issues in Counseling Class. “I’m doing it on adoption,” he said.

“Oh, how’s the orchard?” I asked, desperate to change the subject, once again. “Sophie said you’d done some work out there. Isn’t the caretaker keeping up with things?”

“I like it down there, that’s all.”

“Even though you have so many other things going on…”

“Even though—Hey, there was a Realtor snooping around.”

“Darci?”

“Yeah, I think so.” He paused. “Yep, she gave me her card. Who told her she could—”

“I did. I talked with her before I left.” I inched across the bed until my feet were on the floor.

“You’re thinking about selling?”

“Maybe,” I answered. Honestly, I was thinking about it more and more.

“Well, she sounded like she might have someone who is interested in looking at the place.”

“Really? She hasn’t called me.”

“They’re from California—and coming up this week.”

“Oh.” I stood, stepping to the window and bending down to look out into the darkness, imagining my orchard.

“What are you going to do about Ada? And Alexander?”

I had been thinking about asking Ada to take a DNA test, but I wasn’t going to tell James that. “I don’t know.”

“Does it make you feel—”

“Hey, I’ve got to go,” I said.

“Lex.”

“I’ll call soon.”

His voice sounded raw as he said goodbye.

That night I dreamed about the orchard. People were hiding behind the trees. Dad. Ada. Mama. James. Ella. I knew they were there but I couldn’t see their faces. Others too, but I had no idea who they were. Just nameless figures partially attached to the brim of a hat, the hem of a dress, the tie of a cap blown out from behind a trunk. Sean was there too, leaning against a tree. I could see his face, and then he turned around and started walking off, toward Baltimore.