As the World Churns (3 page)
“I’d save you both. I’m a good swimmer, thanks to all those summers I spent at
“Ya, but if you had to choose?”
“Then I guess I’d save Magdalena.”
“For this I come to live in Hemorrhoid?” Ida Rosen stabbed repeatedly at her enormous bosom with a make-believe knife.
“Oy, the pain.
The pain.”
“It’s Hernia,” I said, and grabbing her by equally ample shoulders, steered her over to the bed.
“And if you insist on dying now, dear”-I gave her a gentle push-”then do it here.
You’ll be much more comfy.”
She allowed herself to topple back onto the mattress, which was surprisingly soft, and proceeded to moan about her multiple injuries, both to body and soul. Gabe, who wasn’t at all fooled, turned his full attention to me.
“What do you want to do first, hon?”
“Besides get your mother on that slow boat bound for Fiji?”
He nodded.
“I’ll call Susannah and break the news to her. I’m also going to tell her to get over to the PennDutch pronto. Meanwhile you call Freni at the inn. Tell her to make sure Alison’s inside, and then lock the door. Then someone needs to call Doc Shafor- Oh shoot! What about Barbara and the triplets?”
My new husband pulled me to his chest and held me tightly, seemingly oblivious to his sputtering mother on the bed. I’m only human, ergo I should not be judged too harshly if I gently maneuvered him so that Ida could see my smile. But just to be clear, we weren’t dancing.
“Don’t you worry about a thing,
Magdalena
.
They’ll locate Melvin any minute, and I bet dollars to doughnuts that they find him
inside
that maximum-security prison. And even if he did manage to make it outside, I won’t let him hurt you.”
I wiggled my way to freedom. “Me? I’m not worried about myself, dear; I’m worried about you.”
But two weeks had passed, and the menacing, murderous mantis had neither been seen nor heard from. It would have all seemed like a bad dream, were it not for the fact that PennDutch was filled with relatives. There was Freni and her husband, Mose, who are both some sort of cousin to me-in fact, in so many
ways,
it is possible that they qualify as my siblings. Then there was their son, Jonathan, and his wife, Barbara (although from
Oops, I forgot about Alison. She’s only a pseudo-stepdaugh-ter, but she has Miller blood trickling through her persnickety teenage veins. This means she too is my cousin, possibly even my aunt-but most probably not my mother. At any rate, such is to be expected in a community as inbred as ours.
As a matter of fact, prick anyone in Hernia whose family has local roots going back two generations, and you’ll be bled on by one of my kinfolk. I advise you not to do it. But do try living with this bunch underfoot, whilst maintaining the cheerful Christian visage for which I am so well-known. It is not humanly possible.
Now throw into this chaotic mixture the smell of fear, the needs of newlyweds, and the mother-in-law from Gehenna, and what do you get? A Magdalena Yoder who wakes up screaming at the top of her lungs.
“Hon!
Wake up, you’re having a nightmare.”
“What? What? Who’s there?”
“Apparently Melvin.
You’ve been thrashing about shouting his name.”
“Oh yeah.
I dreamt I had him in a headlock, but his head came off, and the inside was filled with cheese.
Limburger cheese.”
“Do peace-loving Mennonites often use the headlock maneuver?”
“Well-we can’t be responsible for our dreams, can we?”
“Keep answering a question with a question, and you’ll automatically turn Jewish. That’s a proven fact.”
“Says who?”
Like Solomon wooing Bathsheba, my beloved began planting kisses on . . .
“Oh my stars!”
“Already?”
I threw off the covers. “The first Annual Hernia Holstein Competition begins next week. The first guests will be arriving today and I’m nowhere near ready.” I hopped out of bed, threw on my robe, and paced the room in circles like a chicken in a crate. The bird noises I made were instinctual, but not intentional.
“Babe, calm down. You’re practically hyperventilating.”
“Buck, buck, buck, brack.
Buck, buck, buck, brack.
Buck, buck-”
“That’s what I thought you said.”
“-and what am I going to do about my rooms that have been taken over by family?”
“How about we put them up in my house?”
“But they’re paying through their noses to stay at the infamous PennDutch. These folks have had reservations for over a year.”
“No, I mean that we put the relatives up at my house, so that the guests can stay here.”
“You mean that?” It was, of course, the perfect solution. Gabe still owned the house just across the road. It was empty now, because Ida hadn’t wanted to be alone with a convicted murderer on the prowl, but if the whole shebang moved over there with her, she wouldn’t be alone anymore, would she?
“Of course I mean it. And don’t worry, I’ll take good care of them, so you’ll be free to look after your guests here.”
Why is it that we women can read between the lines, whereas most men can’t even tell when the lines have been crossed? I could see Ida’s handwriting all over this page.
“You’re going to be staying at your house, aren’t you?”
“It’s only temporary.”
“So is appendicitis.”
“Take it easy, hon.
There’s
no need to get all worked up about this. I’m less than two minutes away. For all intents and purposes, it’s just like being here.”
“Hmm.
You’ve got a point. Why didn’t I think of that? I’ll move over there too. It’ll give the guests more freedom that way.”
“Yes, but-I mean, there isn’t enough room.”
“Sure, there is. I’ll be sleeping with you, silly. I know
,
it’s hard to get used to the fact that we’re married. Now we can do anything we want-except have sex standing up.”
“Because it might lead to dancing?”
“Bingo.
The worst of sins.
Dancing, that is. Although bingo is a sin, too, if it’s for money, because then it becomes a form of gambling-”
“There won’t be room because Ma will be bunking with me.”
I jiggled pinkies in both ears to make sure they were working properly. “
What
did you say?”
“We have to double up, hon, or there won’t be space for everyone.”
Is it truly just as bad to think nasty thoughts as to say them? And if that is the case, wouldn’t it be healthier to say the bad thoughts aloud, thereby venting steam and lowering one’s blood pressure? And since it seems unlikely that a person would be punished twice for essentially the same sin, I must conclude that giving voice to one’s nasty thoughts-an action with clear health benefits-is less of a sin, and bears fewer consequences, than keeping them bottled up. That said
,
I chose the lesser of two evils.
“Will hedge shears be sufficient, or do you need to see a surgeon?”
“Pardon me?”
“To cut the apron strings, dear.”
“I don’t need this,” my beloved said, and strode away.
3
The first annual Hernia Holstein Competition was Doc Shafor’s idea. He’d been a veterinarian and knew something about cows, and he’d lived long enough-Doc claims to have played with Johnny Appleseed as a child-to see that our dear little town was on the verge of losing its identity.
We’d always been a farming community but, more and more it seemed, we were becoming a bedroom satellite of Bedford, just twelve miles away. Young couples were discovering that it was cheaper to buy a house in Hernia than in Bedford. Also, our school system is small and the teachers are excellent. Crime in Hernia is negligible-just as long as one doesn’t count murder. (We have more than our fair share of that, but the victims are invariably adults, so it is still safe for children to play in our streets.)
At any rate, if we Hernians wished to preserve our heritage, it was incumbent on us to refocus on agriculture and animal husbandry. Doc had been to other dairy cow competitions, and seen what a boost they were to both the morale and the economy of the host community. He suggested that we concentrate on Holsteins, since that particular breed appears to do better in our microclimate than it does in just about any other. In fact, were it not for the fact that the majority of us are humble people of Mennonite and/or Amish descent, there would be a lot of bovine bragging going on in these parts.
Frankly, I thought a cow competition was a little “lame,” as Alison might say, but I didn’t want to hurt Doc’s feelings, so I played along. Boy, was I ever surprised by the response we received with regard to our ad in
Milk Monthly
, in which we depicted “Hernia as the Holstein capital of the world” and the competition as “
the
most coveted event of the century.” Calls came in from as far away as Japan. Even if we built a tent city on one of the local farms, and utilized every motel room in Bedford, our infrastructure would still not be able to handle the number of would-be participants, let alone the spectators.
The only way to deal with this problem, we quickly decided, was to set an exorbitant entrance fee for each cow, as well as charge the public an arm and a leg to watch the proceedings. We also set a cut-off date for registration that eliminated all but the wealthiest and most on-the-ball
Milk Monthly
subscribers.
Although I jacked up my room prices to even more obscene levels, they were invariably booked immediately. In defense of my greed, it must be said that I tithe my income,
and
that for the duration of the competition, my room charge included a stabling fee for cows. The latter was not something most motels in Bedford were able to offer.
Freni’s husband, Mose, and son, Jonathan, built five partitions in my pasture and five in my barn. Four of these were for guests’ use, and one was for my two cows, Matilda Two and Prairie Queen. Both these gals-my cows, not my guests-were Holsteins as well as very productive milkers. Matilda Two was exceptionally well equipped, with teats as long and smooth as uncooked wieners, and an enormous udder-one that was wrinkle-free where it attached to her barrel and virtually void of unsightly veins. Had I not been one of the event’s organizers, I would have undoubtedly paid a king’s ransom to enter her in the contest.
The guests were scheduled to arrive as much as a week in advance, in order to allow the
cows
sufficient time to recuperate from the stress of travel. Not surprisingly, the guest who had the farthest to drive was the first to show up. I could tell by the license plate that he was from