The Amish Midwife

THREE


I leaned against the counter, wiping away my new tears with the cool cloth, and then pressed it against my face again. A car door slammed and then another.

“Would you at least pray about it?” Sophie asked as she started toward the back door.

“Pray about what?” James stopped in the doorway, holding the cup he’d left earlier on the coffee table.

“Nothing, really,” I whispered as Sophie opened the door for the elderly crowd gathering in the driveway, carrying casserole dishes, pies, and baskets of rolls. As they flooded into the kitchen, Sophie took their food, James took their coats, and I took their hugs and the women’s holy kisses. They were as eager to help as they were somber. In no time the table was spread with food, and they stood with their hands folded in front of them, waiting for someone to pray.

James cleared his throat. “I’ll say grace.”

I let out a sigh of relief.

His voice was a notch deeper than usual. We all bowed our heads as James thanked God for my father’s life, asked God to comfort me, and then prayed He would fill the void left in all of us by Dad’s passing. Tears welled in my eyes again. James blessed the food and then said amen and motioned to Mrs. Glick, the oldest person in the room at ninety-three, to start the line. She pushed up the sleeves of her simple dress and snatched up a china plate. Her cap covered all but the front of her snow-white hair. Most of the women still wore head coverings, although at the other Mennonite church, the one on the other side of the interstate, no one did. By early high school, I wanted to belong to that church.

Mrs. Glick motioned to James to cut in behind her, but he shook his head, his eyes dancing. Widow that she was, she and nearly all of the other ladies had a crush on James. Through the years he would go to church with Dad now and then even while he was in college, driving down for the morning and staying for lunch. As it turned out, he made a much better Mennonite than I, although he hadn’t joined the church. I had—but then I’d left.

Sophie and I filled coffee cups and punch glasses. Our group of seventeen seemed to be a little messy, so I hunted for and found more napkins in the top drawer of my mother’s antique hutch. I paused for a moment, my hand flat against the cherrywood, wedged between two pies. Would I keep the hutch? It wouldn’t fit in my apartment. Would I sell it? I couldn’t imagine.

As James followed me around the table, heaping his plate with food, I tried to take a small spoonful of everything. I overheard Sophie tell Mr. Miller I’d found a document written in German. “Do you think you could translate it?” she asked him.

“Say what?” Mr. Miller shouted, leaning forward.

Mrs. Miller halfway cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “Lexie needs you to translate something.” Sophie motioned my way. Every eye in the room landed on me.

“No need to do it now,” I said, stepping toward him and making sure he could see my lips. “I can bring it by your house later.” I marveled at Sophie’s audacity, butting in about my letter and turning my wanting a little vacation into a search for my birth family and possible involvement with a midwife who was in trouble.

Mrs. Miller stood. “We’re getting ready to go to Boise. To visit our son.” She was always to the point.

“Let’s take a look at it now.” Mr. Miller smiled as he handed his empty plate to his wife and she headed to the kitchen. He was a happy man and always eager to help.

James settled onto the far end of the mauve sofa, beside Mrs. Glick. I stood for a moment, frozen, not sure I wanted all of these people to know what the letter said. Mrs. Miller returned to the room.

“Go on, Lexie,” she said. “We don’t have all day.”

I put my plate on the coffee table and headed down the hall. Every eye in the room was no longer on me when I returned. They were all on the carved box in my hands.

“Oh, my,” Mrs. Glick said.

“I’ve never seen anything like it.” Mrs. Miller plunked back down into the chair beside her husband.

I pulled out the letter and handed it to Mr. Miller.

“Let me have a look at that box.” Mrs. Glick abandoned her plate on the coffee table too and was inching her way to the edge of the sofa, her arms outstretched. I handed it to her.

“Isn’t it amazing?” James asked.

Mr. Schmidt, who sat beside Mrs. Glick, ran his hand over the carved top. “Looks like sycamore wood.”

I’d wondered what it might be.

“But it must have been carved when it was green.” He squinted at the box. “Years and years ago. You don’t see work like this anymore.”

“Look at the turrets.” Mrs. Glick spoke loudly. “And the waterfall.” She pulled it away from Mr. Schmidt and held it so she could see the front. “And the flowers. They’re edelweiss.”

Mr. Miller kept his eyes on the document as he spoke. “Edelweiss? Are you sure?”

Mrs. Glick was too enthralled with the box to answer. I wanted to take it from her but turned my attention back to the letter. “Can you read it?” I asked.

“Most of it.” Mr. Miller paused. “It’s to an Elsbeth. From Abraham, her father.” He squinted. “He says he’s leaving her a place called Amielbach when he dies in hopes she will return home someday.”

A place called Amielbach. That must be the name of the house, the one carved into the lid of the box.

“Does he mention anything about Pennsylvania?” Surely that was where the house was.

“No. He doesn’t say where the property is.” Mr. Miller stretched his back. “The letter is written in high German, mostly. That’s what I learned as a kid. But there are some odd phrases like…” He read words that sounded as if they were German to me—wie and der. Then something like Esel am Berg. He lifted his head. “It means being perplexed by an unexpected situation. But the phrase isn’t high German. It’s considered a Helvetism, a colloquial saying in Swiss German, which is technically an Alemannic dialect.” I must have looked perplexed because he started to speak slowly. “It’s a dialect similar to what’s spoken by a group of Amish in Indiana. It originated in Switzerland, but it’s evolved over the years. And the language the Swiss Amish use today is oral, not written.” For a minute I thought he was going to dive into a full-fledged lecture about the development of German dialects, but then he stopped abruptly as if he remembered he wasn’t teaching.

Sophie’s head swung around, and she looked me straight in the eye. It was a knowing look, but I had no idea what it meant.

“It is from Switzerland.” Mrs. Glick hugged the box. “I knew the flowers were edelweiss.”

Mr. Miller extended the letter. “He goes on and on about being disappointed that Elsbeth is giving up her dream of being a teacher and her opportunity to work as a tutor. Sounds like it was for a wealthy French family. But that’s pretty much it.”

“Does it say why she gave up her dream?” I asked.

Mr. Miller again skimmed the pages. “No, just that he’s sorry she did.”

“Thank you.” Disappointed, I took the pages from him. The analysis of the language was interesting, but I was hoping for more information. Next I reached for the box, but Mrs. Glick hugged it tighter.

I stretched out my arms and then clapped my hands together, as if I could command the box to come to me. “I didn’t know there were Amish in Indiana,” I said, hoping to distract her.

She stood, the box still in her arms. “They came with the last wave from Switzerland, more than a hundred years after the first group of Amish.”

“You could stop by Indiana on your way to Pennsylvania,” Sophie said softly as Mrs. Glick finally relinquished the box. “You might find some information there.”

James half stood and then sank back onto the couch, his plate lurching backward with the movement, his roll tumbling to his lap. His eyes met mine. “Pennsylvania? Lex, what’s going on?”