“
Nu
,” my mother-in-law demanded, “you call dat a story? Mitt dis von I vas in labor for five days, not five minutes.”
“Actually, it was closer to twenty-five minutes from start to finish. Once he poked his head out and looked around, Little Jacob seemed to have second thoughts.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, “and that’s when I had to—”
“But all’s well that ends well, right, Little Jacob?”
As if on cue, my seven-pound, two-ounce bundle of joy simultaneously mewled and yawned. Of course this indescribably cute response elicited oohs and aahs from everyone in the room, but as well it should. I’m not prejudiced, mind you—a fairer woman was never born—but Little Jacob was the single most perfect and harmoniously formed newborn I had ever seen.
“Mags,” my sister, Susannah, said, “are you going to breast-feed?” The poor dear not only has a deficit of bosom, but she is able to, and does, carry a pitiful pooch named Shnookums around in her bra.
“Oh, gross,” my pseudo-stepdaughter, Alison, chimed in. “Mom, ya don’t mean ya really are going to feed him with your—I mean, that’s disgusting!”
“
Going
to? I’ve already nursed him three times; your little brother is a bottomless pit.”
“Ya mean
that
too?”
“You better believe it. If Lake Erie was breast milk, he could drain it dry.”
“That’s my boy,” the Babester said proudly.
“No, Mom,” Alison said, and there was an unusual sense of urgency in her voice. “I mean, like, is he really my little brother?”
“Listen, dear,” I said, “you’re my foster daughter now, right?”
“Right.”
“But more than that, you’re the daughter of my heart. So, therefore, Little Jacob is your brother. Case closed.”
Alison beamed. “Mom, you’re the best!”
Freni Hostetler, who is both my Amish cook and a mother figure, nodded vigorously. Due to the fact that she lacks a neck, her stout body rocked back and forth like a spinning top about to topple over.
“Yah, Magdalena, I am very proud of you. And to think that you had this baby with only Sam Yoder as a midwife! Ach, it was a miracle.”
“Amen,” Freni’s husband, Mose, intoned.
“But tell me, Magdalena,” Freni continued, “how soon will you have the brisket?”
“I guess that all depends on when you smuggle it in. And the sooner the better, I say. I’m famished.”
“Hon,” the Babester said, “I think she means ‘bris.’ ”
“What’s that? A little brisket?”
“Ach,” said Mose, stroking his beard, “I think maybe someone should tell her.”
“Tell me
what
?”
“Hon,” Gabe said, but his eyes were not on mine, “a bris is a ritual circumcision. We talked about that, remember?”
Dare I admit that I had? But the conversation had occurred ages ago, and it had been theoretical, when Little Jacob was still just a little heartbeat who might never develop a whatchamacallit. Besides, I’d given birth to a human being just eight hours ago. How could I be expected to remember
anything
at the moment?
“Maybe vaguely,” I said. “But since we have thirteen years to go before that’s an issue, I don’t think we need to talk about this further now. We don’t want to give our little precious nightmares, do we?”
“
Oy gevalt
,” my mother-in-law, Ida, said. “Now she’s
shikkur
.”
“Ma,” Gabe said with surprising sharpness, “Magdalena is
not
drunk; she’s just confused.” The Babester then turned to me tenderly, this time making eye contact. “Hon, thirteen is when you get bar mitzvahed. You get circumcised when you’re eight days old.”
“What?”
“What’s circumcision?” Alison said.
“Snip, snip,” Susannah said crudely.
“Ach,” Freni gasped.
“Snip, snip
where
?” Alison demanded.
“Down below,” I said meaningfully. It was the only term my adoptive parents had ever used for genitalia, male or female,
and
, I’m ashamed to say, Alison knew exactly what I meant.
It was her turn to gasp. “All of it?”
As long as gasping seemed to be the thing to do, Ida wouldn’t be left out. “Such an imagination dis child has. Tell her, Gabeleh.”
I gasped. “
Now?
In mixed company?”
“It’s in the Bible,” my sweetie said. “Starting with Abraham—although he was circumcised when he was an old man. But Jesus had his bris when he was just eight days old.”
“Oh, all right,” I said, “you may as well explain. You’re a doctor, after all.” The truth is that every time Gabe, who is
not
a Christian, brings up Jesus to score a point, he wins a point.
My husband, the doctor, wasted no time. “It’s called a foreskin. Think of it as a hood of skin that extends over the end of the penis. During a bris—which is a ritual circumcision—the skin is surgically removed.”
Much to my amazement, Alison appeared neither shocked nor titillated by the information. “Doesn’t it hurt?”
“Put it this way,” Gabe said. “For a year after my bris, I couldn’t talk
or
walk.”
Freni’s hands flew to her cheeks.
“Ach, du leiber!”
“It’s a joke, dear,” I said. “Most babies don’t talk or walk—at least well—until they’re a year old.”
Ida beamed. “My son the comedian. Und to tink dat Shoshanna Rubeninger let dis von go.”
Susannah stamped a long, narrow foot. “Well, I think that circumcision is a barbaric and outdated custom.”
“Actually,” Gabe said, sounding not in the least bit perturbed by the outburst, “there is evidence now that suggests that circumcised men are not only less likely to get cancer of the penis, but also less likely to contract AIDS.”
Alison turned to me. “So, Mom, whatcha ya think? Maybe it’s a good thing.”
“But he’s so tiny,” I wailed, perhaps not altogether unlike a baby myself.
The Babester leaned over and silenced my anguished cry with a kiss. “If we do it now, hon, he won’t remember a thing. Honest.”
“Bullhockey,” Susannah said and stamped her slender foot harder.
That’s when the Babester started humming “If I Were a Rich Man” from the musical
Fiddler on the Roof
. As I don’t go to movies, I hadn’t seen that version, but we had driven into Pittsburgh and watched it performed onstage. I must admit that I’d been a reluctant participant in this worldly pursuit. But as soon as the character Tevye started to sing about tradition, I was hooked. Tradition is, after all, what we Mennonites and Amish excel at, and I mean that in the humblest of ways.
“If you can find a mohel who will perform a bris on a baby whose mother has every intention of raising him as a Christian,” I said, “then have at it.”
Ida clapped her hands to her face in sheer amazement. “She said mohel, Gabeleh! Since vhen does dis von learn to speak Jewish?”
My husband kept right on singing and snapping his fingers, even as tears of joy began to course down both cheeks.
8
The bris of Yaakov Mordechai (Jacob Mordecai) ben (son of) Gabriel Rueven (Rueben) v’Magdalena Portulaca (and Magdalena Portulaca) was the single best-attended event in all of Hernia’s history. I’d issued a general invitation to the townsfolk, expecting maybe a few of the more curious souls, certainly not everyone and their cousins in surrounding counties. In fact, we had to change the venue four times, finally settling on the Augsburgers’ barn, which is by far the largest in this area.
Although the mohel wore thick glasses, he was steady of hand, and I am pleased that Little Jacob did not suffer any additional loss. Of course I fainted during the actual cutting part, but I’m told that such a strong reaction is not too unusual, especially for one who was not raised in the tradition. And, of course, Little Jacob did feel pain and screamed his head off, but after fifteen minutes he cried himself out and fell asleep.
Just as I was beginning to relax a bit, and actually think about getting a bite to eat—something I hadn’t done since the day before—young Chris Ackerman pulled me aside.
“How are you doing, Miss Yoder?”
“Fine. Now, I ask you, Chris, doesn’t he look like he belongs on a jar of Gerber’s baby food? I mean, a more perfect baby you’ve never seen, right? And I’m not just saying that because I’m his mother.”
“I must admit that he’s very cute, Miss Yoder—even though I don’t do babies.”
I recoiled in shock. “You don’t like babies?”
“No offense, Miss Yoder, but they’re kind of icky.”
“
Icky?
Pus is icky, Chris, and so are boiled turnips, and half-naked parboiled people at the beach, but not babies.”
“Are you saying they’re all cute?”
“Indeed I am!”
“Even that Schultzendorfer kid who looks exactly like a possum?”
“Okay, so maybe the Good Lord made one exception.”
“Aha! So you see it too—the marsupial thing he has going on?”
“I’m not blind, Chris.”
He shrugged, happy to be validated. “Who knows, maybe the kid will grow out of it.”
“Or not. Melvin Stoltzfus was born looking like a praying mantis and he never grew out of—oh, my Land O’ Goshen! I’d completely forgotten; Melvin is Little Jacob’s uncle.” I threw myself into young Chief Ackerman’s strong, but entirely safe, arms and began to sob.
“There, there,” he said as he patted my back. “From what I’ve heard about the man, I don’t think he’d hurt the boy—not unless he felt threatened by him directly. I mean, isn’t Melvin’s strong suit murdering adults?”
“It’s not that, you idiot—oops, did I say that? If so, a thousand pardons. My point is that an innocent little boy may have the genetic predisposition to grow up looking like an insect with eyes that swivel independently of each other.”
“Is that all you’re concerned about? Then fear not, oh inbred one. You obviously inherited the good-looking genes in your family, and as for your husband—woof; you can’t get any handsomer than that.”
I pulled free from my shameless embrace. “Uh, down, boy; the Babester is already spoken for.”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry.”
“Look, dear, did you drag me away from my dear Little Jacob, not to mention the food, just to talk about babies?”
“No, ma’am.”
Suddenly the straw that littered the barn floor became intensely interesting. “Miss Yoder, you know those twenty-six people who got food poisoning the day Minerva J. Jay died?”
“I am
not
responsible, Chris. Just because I am the most senior deaconess,
and
in charge of a new search committee for a new pastor, does not make me culpable for what happens at the Brotherhood breakfast. I was helping out only because they needed an extra pair of hands; I most certainly did not have an ax to grind.”
That pipsqueak from California had the audacity to laugh. “Miss Yoder, you’re a hoot when you get all wound up. Anybody ever tell you that?”
“Who are you kidding?” I said, and wagged my finger in his face, presidential style. “I’m a hoot
and
a holler, but I’ll have you know that my sex life is none of your business.”
Poor Chris didn’t know what else to do but laugh. Fortunately it is something he does very well.
“No, no, Miss Yoder. What I mean is that—well, never mind that just now. What I brought you in here to tell you is that nobody got sick that day except for the deceased.”
I sighed impatiently. “Of course they did. That’s why the ambulances were all tied up and I had to wait so long to get to the hospital. Why am I telling
you
this? You were there, for crying out loud!”
“Yes, but, Miss Yoder, I got their lab reports today along with Miss Jay’s autopsy. The reports show that none of those twenty-six people had food poisoning.”
“Why, that’s impossible! They all had to have their stomachs pumped, and some of them were in the hospital for days afterward. Irene Sprunger is still in the hospital, too weak to make it to the toilet on her own.”
“Miss Yoder, it was mass hysteria. There was nothing wrong with any of them that could be attributed to your pancake breakfast.”
“
What?
Are you sure?”
“As sure as I am that Little Jacob is one cute baby boy. Apparently this kind of thing is not all that uncommon. As for Miss Sprunger, as long as she sincerely believes she was poisoned, there is a good chance that her body will continue to respond that way.”
“And Minerva J. Jay?”
“There were enough drugs in her bloodstream to kill an elephant.”
“Oh, really?” Shame, shame, shame on me for feeling even a second’s worth of schadenfreude, although, in my defense, it was only because hearing this news vindicated my intense dislike of the abrasive and gluttonous Minerva. (Even more shame, I think, should go to the Germans, who felt enough schadenfreude to have deemed it necessary to invent such a word.)
“Yes, but the strange part is that they were a weird cocktail of drugs, not something you’d normally find in the system of someone who was trying to get, or maintain, a buzz.”
“A buzz?”
“I forgot. You’re not a drinker and you’ve probably never even taken—”
“I
get
it,” I said. The sad truth is that I’d been buzzed by an entire hive of bees on three separate occasions, but all of them inadvertent, to be sure. How was I to know what a mimosa was? Or a hot toddy? Not to mention hard cider. In my opinion, if the Good Lord intends for us to stay away from alcohol, He shouldn’t allow it to be served under such beguiling names. Then again, mine has always been the minority opinion.
“Yes, well, the drugs included prescription sleeping pills, tranquilizers, and antidepressants. Given that Miss Jay was herself on antidepressants and tranquilizers, the addition of this combination proved to be lethal. Despite her size, she didn’t stand a chance.”
“Are you officially declaring this a murder case?”
“Yes, I am.”