The Amish Midwife

EIGHT


According to my nearly dead cell phone, it was eight thirty. I’d had a text from James late last night asking if I had arrived, but I hadn’t heard the message alert, let alone replied. I answered now with a quick Yep, realizing as I hit “send” that it was only five thirty in Oregon, and it would be a while before he got it.

I slipped out of bed, noting that the house was completely quiet, and searched the little alcove for the box and then retreated to the first floor. It was immaculate. Not a dirty dish in the sink. Not a book or a pair of shoes or a stack of papers anywhere. There was a note in block letters on the table. Oatmeal in the cupboard, milk in the fridge. Have a good day! Love, Ella. And at the bottom of the note, in different handwriting: Prenatal @ 10 a.m. Be ready by 9:15. It wasn’t signed, but I was sure it was from Marta. For a woman who didn’t want to talk with me when I arrived, she certainly seemed to be taking me for granted now. Fortunately for her I was desperate enough for answers to put up with her brusqueness.

I searched the kitchen for coffee but couldn’t find a drop or bag or bean. I did find tea bags and made the strongest cup of tea I could manage. I drank it as I walked through the cottage, searching for my box. Zed’s room was off the kitchen, but I didn’t go in. Back upstairs, Ella’s door was open a crack and I pushed it gently. She had a twin bed with a solid blue cover, a straight-back chair, a small desk, and a dresser. The walls were bare. At the far end was a row of pegs with dresses and a coat hanging on them. The box wasn’t anywhere visible. Maybe Marta had taken it.

I eased open her door. The sunlight came in through the window over the bed, which was covered with a plump comforter and a simple quilt folded at the end. A kerosene lamp sat on the table beside the bed. The walls were completely bare, and there were no knickknacks or photos on the dresser, but there was a photo by her bed of what appeared to be a much younger Marta and a handsome early twenties-age man with blond hair.

“What do you need?”

I spun around.

Marta faced me. She wore the same dress as yesterday and the same head covering.

My face reddened and I stuttered. “I had a box with me last night.” I took a deep breath. “It’s gone.”

“No. It’s under your bed. I put there for safekeeping.” She reached around me and pulled the door to her room shut.

“Oh.” I stepped toward the alcove. “Thank you.”

“We’ll leave in fifteen minutes,” she said.

“I’ll get a quick shower and be ready.”

As she descended the stairs, I knelt down and with my hand searched the area under the bed. The box was there. Perfectly safe.

“Sally Gundy is a new mom,” Marta said. We were in her car again, making our way along a country road. “Her family is in Ohio, but she and her husband live here with his kin on their property.”

Kin. I shivered from my still damp hair. “How far along is she?” I held my camera in my hand.

“Six months.”

“Any complications?”

Marta shook her head.

We rode in silence past a one-room schoolhouse. A group of children played baseball in the yard, including girls in their dresses. “Is that an elementary school?” I asked, snapping a photo of the children’s backs as we passed by.

“It goes through the eighth grade,” Marta answered.

“Are there Mennonite schools?”

“Yes.”

“Do Ella and Zed go to one?”

Marta glanced at me quickly and then back at the road. “No. They attend public schools.”

“How old are they?”

“Almost sixteen and thirteen.” These terse answers weren’t going to get me anywhere close to the information I really wanted.

“Ella seems quite capable,” I said.

“She’s had to be.”

I’d already noted Marta didn’t wear a wedding ring, though that didn’t necessarily mean much. Most Mennonites back home didn’t wear wedding rings, so maybe the ones around here didn’t either. Regardless, I could see no reason to believe she had a husband, not even one who was away on business or something. Other than the photo in the bedroom, there were no signs of a man having been around at all, and there had been no mention by the kids of a father, past or present. It was pretty clear Marta was a single mother.

She turned onto a narrow lane. A moment later a compound of buildings appeared in front of us. Two of them were houses, and then there was a large warehouse behind them and some other outbuildings, including a barn. At least ten carriages were parked along the side of the warehouse in a row, and in the adjacent pasture a large group of horses grazed. Lined along the warehouse were sections of picket fences and planters shaped like wheelbarrows, and one even had a wooden windmill attached to it.

I slipped my camera into my bag and followed Marta across the lawn toward the smaller house. An older woman on the porch of the larger house called out, and Marta waved and said, “How are you this morning, Alice?”

“Gut,” the woman answered. Her hair had the blondish-white look of an aging redhead, and she wore a freshly starched cap. Two little girls, likely twins, slipped out the screen door onto the porch. They both wore miniature caps with thin brown braids poking out from underneath.

“Mammi,” one of them cried happily. The older woman turned and scooped up the child into her arms, and then she faced us again and smiled.

In the distance the sound of a saw hummed. A sliding door to the warehouse was open, and a cloud of sawdust billowed out.

Marta picked up her pace as she marched across the lawn. “Sally and her husband, John, live out here in the smaller house,” she explained, “though it’s going to get a bit tight once the baby comes.”

“Is that John’s mother?” I asked, nodding my head back toward the big house.

“No. His grossmammi.” Marta exhaled. “Grandmother, I mean.”

I glanced back to see the older woman now sitting on the steps, an apple-cheeked twin on each side of her. Another woman appeared at the back door and called out toward the warehouse. “Ezra Gundy!”

The sawing stopped, and the cloud of sawdust began to dissipate.

“Ezra!” the woman yelled again, louder this time. “You didn’t finish your chores!”

“That’s Nancy,” Marta whispered.

Nancy was noticeably shorter than Alice, her hair reddish with streaks of gray. A second later, when a young man strode through the open door of the warehouse, she put her hands on her hips and scowled.

The teen wasn’t wearing a hat, and his bright red hair seemed to be trimmed into stylish layers, not cut in a bowl shape like the other Amish males I’d seen, both young and old. At least his outfit of black trousers, a forest green shirt, and suspenders seemed Amish enough.

As I watched, Nancy marched down the back steps and strode briskly across the yard, her dress flapping in the breeze behind her as she went. When she reached the boy, she spoke in hushed, stern tones. Though I didn’t know either of them, I had to stifle a smile. My father had been slow to anger, but I always knew I was in for it when he summoned me using both first and last name.

“Come on.” Marta grabbed my arm, and we hurried up the steps of the little house.

Inside, two young women with dark hair and pale blue eyes, both in full Amish garb, greeted us. The older one was about nineteen, and Marta introduced her as Sally, the patient we had come to see, though the bulge at her belly barely showed in her loose-fitting dress. Sally offered to make tea, which we declined, and the younger one offered to take our coats. She looked a lot like Sally, so I wasn’t surprised when she was introduced as the younger sister, Ruth.

As Ruth hung our coats on pegs near the door, Sally gestured toward the living room, where sunshine poured down through skylights, illuminating the small sitting area. Marta and I sat side by side on a couch that had been covered with a bedspread and tucked in at the cushions. Sally and Ruth joined us on nearby chairs. Looking again at the younger one, who seemed to be about the age of a high school freshman, I asked if she had the day off.

“Off?”

“From school.”

She covered her mouth with her hand and giggled.

“Ruth is fifteen,” Sally explained. “She’s been out of school for nearly two years now.”

My surprise must have shown on my face, because beside me Marta clicked her tongue scornfully and said, “You don’t know much about the Amish, do you?”

Sally smiled. “We only go through the eighth grade.”

I couldn’t help but bristle. “No need for girls to be educated?”

“Not just the girls,” Marta said. “The boys too.”

“But why?”

“It’s about pride, mostly, which they feel often tends to go hand in hand with being overeducated,” Marta explained.

“Ya,” Sally agreed, nodding. “The eighth grade is sufficient.”

“But there’s still so much to learn!”

Sally shrugged. “The learning doesn’t end, just the schooling. We’re always learning. From our parents, the community, maybe even as an apprentice or through a correspondence course. In many different ways. Even from siblings.” She looked over at her sister and winked. “Right, Ruth?”

The girl giggled again, nodding. She was just so young!

“Are you studying a trade?” I asked her.

Ruth smiled behind her hand and glanced at her older sister.

“Ruth is spending the spring and summer working with me.” Sally sat straight.

“Like a mother’s helper?”

Ruth nodded.

A shout from the yard caught her attention, and she stood and drifted toward the window.

“What is going on?” Sally asked, also standing.

“Ezra is in trouble again,” the girl said, moving to the side of the window, a twinkle in her eye.

Sally sat back down. “I am afraid that Ezra’s behavior has been quite amusing for my sister.”

“I imagine so,” Marta said, and then she turned the conversation away from Ezra and onto Sally’s pregnancy, asking first about her diet. I couldn’t fathom diet was a problem for most Amish women.

Sally was six months along and planned to give birth here in the Daadi Haus. Her mother would come from Ohio after the baby was born and stay a few days, but she had seven children who were still at home and could only spare a short time. That was one of the reasons Ruth had come to stay.

“Will you be delivering my baby?” Sally asked Marta.

“Of course.”

“But I heard you weren’t able to deliver Barbara’s last night—”

“Oh, that was a minor complication. And Lexie was able to help me with that.”

Sally stood. “Well, God provided, didn’t He?” She called Ruth away from the window and asked her to go tell John that Marta had arrived. Then to Marta she said, “He wants to listen to the baby’s heart too.” We followed her down the hall as the front door banged shut. “I already ordered the birth kit you recommended. It arrived last week.” Sally was so small that from behind she looked about the same age as Ruth.

It seemed as if the little house had recently been remodeled, and the scent of fresh paint lingered. The simple molding was all new and unmarred, but as we turned into the bedroom it was obvious that all the furniture was hand-me-downs. An antique bed, barely a double, nearly filled the small room. On the nightstand was a cardboard box, most likely the birthing kit. It would contain a plastic sheet, bed pads, a delivery towel, and other items. Some of Sophie’s clients ordered kits for each of their births, while others gathered the items themselves. I was sure it was the same with the Amish.

As I took Sally’s blood pressure, a young man bounded into the room, his hat in his hand. His hair wasn’t as bright as Ezra’s, but it was definitely red, as was his sparsely grown beard. His brown eyes were cast down, and he nodded shyly to Marta and barely met my eyes as I was introduced. He sat on the edge of the bed beside Sally as she stretched out on the bed. I recorded her blood pressure in her chart. It was 110/80. Perfect.

“Did Ruth come back with you?” Sally asked her husband.

His voice had a lilt to it and was barely audible. “She’s sitting on the porch with Mammi.”

“Most likely spying on Ezra.”

John blushed.

Marta handed me the fetoscope, and I found the baby’s galloping heartbeat. I let John listen first and he grinned. Sally patiently waited her turn and then squeezed her husband’s hand as she listened. Next I measured Sally’s fundal height and recorded it in her chart too. Twenty-five centimeters. For looking so small she was right on target for twenty-four weeks.

John excused himself and said he needed to return to work. Sally sat up, refastened the pins at her waist, and then walked with us out to the porch. “Ruth,” she called. “It’s time to bake our bread.”

The girl waved goodbye to Alice and the twins and skipped across the grass. She smiled at me as she passed.

Alice stood, lifting one of the little girls onto her hip. She had a black cape over her dress now. The sun passed behind a cloud and the air grew chilly.

“Marta,” she said. “Did Will reach you?” The woman’s voice was soft and calm, but something about her tone gave me pause, especially when I noticed Marta’s subtle but distinct reaction, her face paling at the mere mention of the man’s name. “He had a question for you.”

Marta shook her head, her eyes giving away nothing. She opened her mouth to speak, and then she hesitated, handing me her bag and motioning toward her car. Apparently, I was being dismissed just as things were getting interesting.

“I’m seeing Hannah tomorrow,” Marta said to Alice, turning her back to me as I moved away. “Will he be working at the greenhouses?”

“Yes, he should be.”

“Good. I will speak to him then.” Though her words sounded matter-of-fact, the tone of her voice was anything but. “How is Christy doing?”

I walked slowly, listening.

“She’s here today and resting inside,” I thought I heard Alice reply.

Their voices fading out of my hearing range, I gave up and climbed into Marta’s car. I set her bag at my feet, wondering what all of that was about, and stared at the large white house in front of me. The windows were new and energy efficient. Four Adirondack chairs graced the wide front porch. A flat of germaniums sat on the front steps, ready to be planted. One of the twins ran to the edge of the porch and smiled at me. I waved and then made a silly face. She made one back, and we both laughed. A moment later Marta appeared.

She started the car in silence. As she pulled out of the lane, we passed Ezra, who was standing off to the right with a shovel in his hand. Beside him was a small tree ready to be planted. He was still hatless, and the sleeves of his shirt were pushed haphazardly up to his elbows. He caught my eye and grinned, exuding an instant charm. Though I was at least six years older than he, I had the distinct feeling that he was trying to flirt with me. I smiled back and then turned away, suppressing a laugh. He was trouble, that one.

“Who is Will?” I asked Marta, not surprised when she didn’t answer. Instead, she focused on her driving as she headed toward the highway. Her face was still so pale, I decided not to press the issue for now.

Glancing back toward the busy farm we had just left, I thought about all of the various people I had met there. Amish families were so large I wondered how anyone could keep track of their names, much less their various connections. “So tell me again how everyone here is related,” I said.

Settling back in her seat and relaxing her grip on the wheel, Marta explained that Alice was the mother of Nancy, who was married to Benjamin. “Alice and her husband didn’t have any sons, so their son-in-law runs the family business.” She went on to say that Nancy and Benjamin had one daughter and three sons. The youngest, Ezra, was the red-headed boy we had watched getting scolded. The middle boy, John, was married to Sally, the patient we had come to see.

“Their daughter, Hannah, is also a patient of mine. She’s due in May. I have an appointment with her in just a couple of days.”

“What about their oldest son? What’s his name?”

Marta hesitated a moment before answering. “Their oldest son is Will. He runs a large nursery,” she said evenly, and then she pursed her lips tightly, as if she had said too much.

“So who is Christy?” I asked, changing tactics.

Marta grunted at my persistence. “The twins’ older sister. She’s eleven.”

“And they are the children of… ?”

“Will. They are the children of Will. But they stay with their Aunty Hannah—or sometimes Nancy and Alice—during the day.”

“Why? Where’s their mother?”

Marta simply shook her head, and I could tell by the set of her chin and the grip of her hands on the steering wheel that this line of conversation was closed. She put on her blinker, slowed, and turned onto a wider road. Frustrated, I stared out of my window and counted to ten, knowing I should hold my tongue.

“So you grew up Mennonite?” Marta asked finally, breaking the silence.

“I did.”

“General Conference, then? Certainly not Old Order.”

“There aren’t any Old Order left in Oregon,” I said, explaining that the Old Order Mennonites came in the late 1880s but over time joined less conservative groups. “The little church I grew up in is now independent.” Though that church was by no means liberal, I’m sure I appeared to be, especially to Marta. Especially because I no longer even identified myself as Mennonite.

“How is it you know nothing about the Amish?” she asked.

I bristled. “Why should I? There hasn’t been an Amish settlement in our region for more than a hundred years.” I didn’t add that in Pennsylvania, the Amish and Mennonites may have been closely linked, but in Oregon they weren’t. In fact, no one there ever gave the Amish much thought unless something was in the media.

“You really didn’t know that in the Amish culture children stop school at the eighth grade?”

I shook my head, certain I would have remembered that. “So the school we passed is it? A one-room, eighth-grade education?”

Marta nodded. Despite Sally’s earlier assurance that the learning continued beyond school, I couldn’t help but think that the Mennonites were looking better all the time.

My own experience with the Mennonite religion started out well. How could it have not? I was one of the few children at my parents’ church, and I was adored. I also got the faith part early in life. Jesus loved me. God had a plan for my life. I wanted to be baptized as soon as I could. I even wanted to wear the head covering at first, although my motivation was—back then—that I wanted to wear what Mama had worn.

But the older I grew and the more I read, the more confused I became. Congregations had split over whether or not to have Sunday school and whether baptism should be by immersion or pouring water over the head. Head coverings varied from group to group. In middle school wearing a head covering set me apart, but by high school I felt like an outcast. How could wearing pants instead of a skirt seem immodest? Did it really matter whether a woman’s head covering was heart shaped or round? Had God stopped listening to my prayers once I put mine away all together?

The Anabaptist movement, of which the Amish, Mennonites, Brethren, Dunkers, Hutterites, Apostolics, and more all belonged, had begun in Switzerland in the 1500s during the Protestant Reformation. The word Anabaptist meant, literally, “second baptism” and had risen out of the belief that God intended baptism to be not for infants but instead for adults, ones who made a conscious decision to follow Christ. This position put them in direct violation of State dictates, but they stood firm on their belief, which resulted in imprisonment, martyrdom, and finally a movement that grew strong and spread and splintered and spread some more.

I sighed. If Marta expected me to learn all the ends and outs of the Amish—which I surmised probably made the Mennonites look simple by comparison—she was crazy.

“The Amish really are a separate culture, one you need to be willing to understand,” she said.

“Yeah, well…” I turned my head toward Marta and caught her looking at me.

She turned her eyes back to the road. “I’m serious, Lexie, when you work with the Amish you need—”

“Whoa!” Work with the Amish? Where did she get off assuming I was sticking around? “Listen, Marta, it’s been fun helping you out and all, but what I really need is some information. Sophie thinks you know about my biological family. She thinks… she believes you and I might even be related.” I didn’t add that judging by hers and Ella’s reaction when they met me yesterday, I was feeling pretty sure of that myself.

“How long can you stay?” she asked.

“I have a job waiting for me in Philly—”

“That’s not what I asked,” Marta interrupted, turning onto the highway. “How long can you stay?”

“I have a job waiting for me in Philly,” I repeated, my jaw clenched, “and it starts in two weeks. But there are other things I need to do first, Marta. Like find a place to live. Map out my route to the hospital.” Get to the department of vital records in Harrisburg and convince someone to let me see my birth certificate.

“I don’t think I’ll need you after a day or two. You’ll be free to go then.”

News flash, Miss Marta: I’m free to go right now. What gave her the right to be so presumptuous? I leaned my head back against the seat, wondering how this woman could be so sweet and tender with her patients and so sour with me.

“How’s this?” I said finally. “I’ll give you the two days if you’ll talk to me.”

Marta missed the turn to her house. “About?” I’d never known a midwife to play dumb before.

“My birth family.”

She didn’t respond, so after a moment, I decided to throw out a question or two to show her what I meant. Holding back on the big guns for now, I decided that my first one should be relatively benign. “Tell me what you know about the house on my box. Ella said she’s seen it before.”

Marta’s knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. “Ella’s a fanciful girl. She probably saw something like it in a picture book from the library.”

So much for holding back. I decided to go with the big guns after all.

“Who was my mother?” I demanded.

Nothing.

“Who was my father?” I persisted.

No answer.

“Are you and I related? If so, how? Are you my cousin? My aunt? My sister?”

She began shaking her head from side to side. “This is exactly why I didn’t want you here,” she hissed.

“But this is exactly why I came. I’ll stay and help, but only if you’ll answer my questions.”

She sighed loudly and then grew silent. That silence hung heavily in the air between us.

“Lexie,” she whispered finally, “it’s not my place.”

I looked away, surprised by the hot, sudden tears that sprung into my eyes. Not Lexie, I don’t know anything, or Lexie, it’s none of your business, but Lexie, it’s not my place.

I didn’t know how to reply to that. If not her place, then whose?

More tears came, and as I wiped them away in frustration, I turned toward her, ready to let her have it. Instead, I was shocked to see a single tear sliding down her check. She quickly swiped it away, composed herself, and offered no explanation. I could see she was feeling ambivalent. I was asking for information, and though she may have said no with her words, something in her wanted to say yes—or at least maybe.

Maybe, if she got to know me better first. Maybe, if I helped her out with her patients. Maybe, if we started on safer ground.

Marta turned onto a four-lane highway and accelerated. The green sign that whizzed by read “Willow Street Pike,” and it seemed as if she were driving with intention, that she had a destination in mind.

So did I. In that moment, looking out at the beautiful countryside as we flew past, resolve solidified in my chest like a fist. I had come to this place to find my story. One way or another, I’d get there, no matter what it would take.

For the moment, I just wanted to know where Marta was bringing me. “Where are we?”

“Lancaster. I have another prenatal visit.”

“I thought we were in Lancaster—”

“County. Now we’re going to the city.”

I tried to imagine the two Amish families I’d met living in a city. The road descended into a gully, and as we came out of it, parklike lawns appeared to the right with large brick houses, one after the other, at the crest of the hill. They were Federalist-style buildings, and again I felt as though I’d arrived on a living history set.

The brick houses soon gave way to row houses, one after the other, divided by alleyways and punctuated by occasional graffiti. Every couple of blocks there was a small market with a group of people gathered in front of it. A few old people sat on the stoops or in cheap plastic chairs on small porches. It was all very urban looking. I couldn’t fathom an Amish family living here.

Marta turned down an alley. “Our next visit is with Esther, who is twenty-seven. Second pregnancy. She’s at thirty-seven weeks. Her husband is a student at Lancaster Seminary.”

I raised my eyebrows. That certainly didn’t fit in with an eighth-grade education.

Marta parked at the end of the alley, and I followed her up the cracked cement steps to a row house. After rapping sharply on the weathered door, she glanced my way, the hint of a smile beginning to show on her face.