The Amish Midwife (43 page)

“You can say that again,” Alexander mumbled.

“Anyway, around here things only got worse, not better. Personally, what I hated most was all of the gossip. It just about drove me nuts. Everyone wanted to know who the father was, but even though there were plenty of rumors, Giselle would never confirm or deny any of them, not even to her own sisters. At some point the church leaders got involved. They started coming here and trying to talk some sense into her. Like
Mammi
, they wanted Giselle to confess and repent, to put an end to her reckless
rumschpringe
, and to join the church. They suggested she get married—to someone Amish, of course—and let him raise the child as his own, regardless of the actual paternity. To that end I know she had several prospects, but she wasn’t interested. Instead, she dug in her heels, told everyone to leave her alone, and turned her back on God and the church.”

Marta sounded bitter, but as she spoke I felt pity surging within me for the poor, pregnant Giselle. She had made some very bad decisions, yes, but I just kept remembering that at the time she had only been all of nineteen. Who at nineteen hadn’t done some stupid things? All of that scrutiny must have served to only magnify the problems.

“Of course, the bigger Giselle’s stomach grew,” Marta continued, “the
more insanely jealous Klara became.” Looking at her sister, Marta added, “I was never quite sure if Klara was really angry because she suspected Alex was the father or simply because her sister had gotten pregnant even though she herself hadn’t.”

I glanced at Klara, surprised to see that her cheeks were wet with tears. So the woman had a soul after all. James seemed to notice the tears as well, because he held out a hand to Marta and addressed Klara instead.

“I have a question for you. Would you say that your father was a good man?”

Klara sat up, looking uncomfortable, but at least she answered.

“No. Not by anyone’s definition.”

“Have you known many good men in your life?”

She squinted at James, silently asking what he was getting at.

“Just go with me for a minute. Have you known many good men? And by good, I mean men who are kind, dependable, trustworthy…”

Klara shrugged.

“There are some in the church like that, I suppose. The bishop. A few of the deacons.”

“How about at home? Are there any good men in your home?”

Klara stared at James for a long moment before understanding slowly began to creep across her face.

“Why, Alexander, of course,” she whispered. “He is good, through and through. He is very, very good. To me. To everyone. He is the most
gut
man of all!” At that, much to my amazement, Klara burst into tears.

To his credit, her husband didn’t even hesitate in his response. Instead, he simply slipped from his chair to his knees and took Klara in his arms, holding her tightly and patting her back as she wept.

“I think sometimes when we grow up with a parent who is deeply flawed,” James explained to us as Alexander and Klara remained locked in their tearful embrace, “we learn, subconsciously at least, to expect the worst from everyone else as well. Given the kind of man her father was, no doubt at some level Klara believed that all men were bad. Even with Alexander, whom she loved, she would have had trouble accepting that his goodness was genuine, or at least that it would last. When Giselle started spewing her lies, Klara’s natural suspicions were confirmed, and she was more than ready to believe them. It’s sad, and it’s wrong, but it’s certainly
understandable.” After a moment, he added, “Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that way forever. We can all learn to see with new eyes if we try.”

I was dumbfounded at what had just happened, and I looked at James with respect. Though this certainly wasn’t the most pressing issue of the day, he had spotted an opportunity for healing and had gone with it.

Seeing with new eyes, indeed.

“So who can tell us why Lexie was born in Norristown rather than here?” James asked, taking the conversation back to the next logical question.

No one spoke, so after a moment, Ella shyly raised her hand.

“Yes, Ella?” James said.

“I wasn’t there, obviously, but I bet I can guess. Lexie probably can too.”

At the moment I wasn’t interested in hearing theories, but James regarded her with interest.

“With all of these people ragging on her all the time, Giselle probably just had enough one day and took off out of here.” Glancing at her mother, she added, “Sometimes we all need space, to catch our breath and maybe calm down and get some perspective.”

“You are partly correct,”
Mammi
interjected, and I was relieved to hear her finally rejoin the discussion. “She did take off after a particularly bad argument with Klara, but Giselle did not just need some air. She was leaving for good. Like many of the
youngie
on
rumschpringe
, Giselle had purchased a car. Once she drove off in it, I thought she was long gone and I might never see her again.”

“What happened to her?” I whispered, leaning forward to take in every word.

“We learned later that she headed east, but she only made it as far as Exton before she felt a contraction. Determined to press onward, she drove for another half hour before she finally had to admit to herself that she was in labor and needed to get to a hospital, so she drove herself to the nearest emergency room which happened to be in Norristown. She was determined to get through the entire labor and delivery all by herself, but as the night wore on, her resolve weakened. Finally, she called a neighbor here and asked if they could get word to us about where she was and what was happening. The moment they told me I hired a driver and had him take me straight to Norristown Hospital to be with her. I made it just in time to see you come into the world.”

I expected
Mammi
to burst into tears at the very thought, but instead a broad smile broke out on her face.

“You were so perfect, Alexandra. So beautiful. At that moment, I knew it didn’t matter who your father was or what Giselle had done in the past. You were here, and that was enough.”

As I wondered what happened to derail that thought,
Mammi
continued, glancing at Klara before she added that there was just one problem.

“Giselle was very hurt by Klara, not just from the angry words they had exchanged but also from the fact that Klara had declined to come with me to the hospital. So she did something out of spite—something I know she eventually lived to regret.”

Even before
Mammi
said it I knew. As a final stick of the knife both to Klara and her husband, my mother had decided to name me Alexandra.

My sympathies dimmed for the helpless Giselle as I thought how absolutely cruel and wrong that had been. No matter how hurt or angry she was, what had given her the right to do something as awful as that?

“Of course,”
Mammi
continued, “once she and I brought little Alexandra back home, things went from bad to worse. Klara and Giselle could hardly bear the sight of each other. Poor Alexander was angry and embarrassed, especially when church members began speculating about the reason for the child’s name. Thank goodness Alexander had involved the bishop from the very beginning, telling him everything, or the church might have eventually taken action to have him excommunicated and shunned.”

I looked over at Alexander, who was back in his chair now but holding on to Klara’s hand. I felt terribly sorry, even complicit somehow, and I wished there was some way I could apologize on behalf of my mother.

“What kind of mom was she?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“In spite of everything, Giselle loved you very much,”
Mammi
replied, “but she had no idea how to take care of an infant, and she did not seem interested in learning. She left the hard parts to Marta and me and spent most of her time either resting or quietly playing with you.”

“Sounds like she may have been suffering from postpartum depression,” James interjected. I had a feeling he was right.

James and I both looked back at
Mammi
.

“Whatever was causing it,” she continued, “at that time all I could do was wring my hands and pray for patience and try to prod her into action.”

I nodded, trying to picture it, knowing that must have been a difficult time for everyone. No wonder they had eventually given me away. Sick, my own mother thought I was too much trouble to bother with.

“Given that Giselle is Ada’s mother too,” James said to
Mammi
, “I assume that at some point she and Burke Bauer rekindled their affair?”

“Worse than that,”
Mammi
replied. “They ran off together.”

Ada and I looked at each other in surprise.

“At first Giselle tried to stay away from him. She focused on the baby and helped around the house—when she was not resting. Mostly, she withdrew into herself. But one day, when Alexandra was about six months old, Giselle got the notion to go into town. We had sold her car, so she strapped up a horse to the buggy, took Alexandra, and left. I do not know what her intention was at that point. She said she only wanted to do some shopping, maybe visit with some friends. But I think perhaps she was lying, that what she really intended was to go straight to Burke Bauer and show him his daughter.”

“She did not come back?” Ada asked breathlessly.

Mammi
shook her head, blinking away fresh tears.

“That night several young men from the nursery brought back the horse and buggy, along with a letter from Giselle. It said something about how she and the baby were fine but that they were not coming home. I was not to worry because, as she had written, ‘We are a family now.’ Can you imagine that? This man with a trusting wife and a young son and a successful business threw it all away to go off and play house with his mistress and their love child.”

“Believe it or not,” Marta added softly, “one of those young men who came here was Burke Bauer’s own son. He had no idea what was in the letter, of course, nor that his father had taken off with Giselle. He was just doing as Daddy had requested, delivering a horse and buggy to a local Amish family.”

For some reason, the pain of that thought shone clearly in Marta’s eyes. I agreed that what Bauer had done was awful, using his son as a pawn in his scheme, but I didn’t understand the depth of her emotion.

“How long were they gone?” Ada asked, impatient now to hear about the circumstances of her own birth.

“More than a year, maybe thirteen, fourteen months. By the time they came back, Alexandra had really grown. She was a toddler. And Giselle
was a different person. More mature. Almost repentant. Dedicated to caring for Alexandra. She never spoke much of the time she had been away, but the relationship must have run its course because eventually I realized that it was truly over. I also realized that, once again, she had managed to get herself pregnant.”

“Bauer’s son was just a year younger than I was, and he and I had become friends by then,” Marta interjected, “so I was able to find out more of the inside scoop from his point of view. Giselle didn’t want us to know any of it, but
Mammi
and I were both glad to hear that Bauer was trying to put his real family back together again. We were especially relieved when his wife finally forgave him. As for the son, he tried to give his dad a chance too, but he was quite emotionally fragile, and the wound of his father’s betrayal ran deep. We
never
talked about my sister’s new pregnancy. That would have just made things a thousand times worse.”

I sat back, realizing that was a period of my life that I would never really know about. Given that I had been in the care of both mother and father, at least for a short time, I supposed I had been kept safe and warm. On the other hand, the sudden appearance and disappearance of my birth father from my life could only have served as the first chink in my many abandonment issues.

“So Giselle came back pregnant with me,” Ada said, clearly impatient for
Mammi
to get on with the rest of the story.

“Yes. She was also depressed and overwhelmed and very afraid of being a single mother of
two
children. She and her sister eventually found a sort of peace, and by the time Giselle was in her ninth month Klara offered to take the baby and raise it as her own. If she and Alexander could not conceive a child, which was becoming more and more apparent, well, then at least it seemed God was providing another way. When the baby was born, we all knew it was the right choice.”

“Lexie, I already told you that you were with me when Ada was born,” Marta said. “I was the one who snipped the lock of your mother’s hair and then your sister’s. I tried to cut a lock of yours too, but you wouldn’t let me.” She smiled. “I tied the strands with black ribbon and gave them both to
Mammi
. Then Klara came and took the baby.”

We all turned and looked at Klara then. She was tightly gripping her husband’s hand, her face flushed and eyes still fixed firmly on the floor.

“What was the condition?” I asked suddenly, my voice sounding pinched and foreign to me. When no one replied, I added, “The condition, Klara. You said earlier that when Giselle got pregnant the second time, you agreed to take the child, on one condition.”

Finally, Klara met my eyes with her own.

“I was still afraid that Alexander had fathered you,” she said, the desperation clear in her voice.

“Of course you were,” I retorted sharply. “But, given the timing, there was no way he could be the father of this new one. So you decided to take it and raise it as your own. What was your condition? Go ahead. We all want to hear it.”

After a long moment of silence, Klara whispered, “That Giselle go away forever and take you with her.”

My mind reeled.

“I begged Klara not to hold her to it,”
Mammi
cried. “I told her that even if Alexander was the father—which I knew he was not—she must forgive and forget. I reminded her that we believe in delayed justice, in
demut
. I said if her suspicions were true then God would judge Giselle and Alexander someday.
God
would. Not us.”