The Amish Midwife (5 page)

A part of me wanted to laugh. It was so Mennonite to plan a getaway around doing some kind of service. I knew of families who spent all of their vacations in places like Bolivia and South Africa and East L.A. Even vacations had to have a purpose.

“And you think I could leave, just like that?” I asked, glancing toward the doorway to the dining room.

Following my gaze, she said, “If you talk it through with James, I think he’ll understand.” Moving closer, she put a warm hand on my shoulder
and gave it a squeeze. “I know there’s something inside of you, something incomplete. When you were a teenager—”

“I wanted my story,” I blurted, tears filling my eyes again. “I still do.”

She nodded. “Maybe God is whispering to you now.”

“Oh yeah? What’s He saying?” I asked, wiping my tears on my sleeve and thinking I hadn’t heard from God—or He from me—in a very long time.

Sophie smiled, her eyes again twinkling.

“Maybe He’s saying, ‘It’s time.’”

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?”

I
averted my eyes but knew my reddening face gave me away. “How about dessert?” I asked brightly. I turned toward the hutch and, speaking over my shoulder, said, “Mrs. Miller, your lemon meringue looks delicious.” As my guests served themselves from the top of the hutch, James shot me a questioning look. I mouthed, “Later” and turned my head away.

After dessert Sophie said she had a mother to check on and she would talk to me soon. James assured the guests that he would clean up; we both knew most of them needed a nap by now. One by one they left, telling me I was in their prayers and whispering “God bless you” as they descended the back steps, gripping the rickety rail.

That left me and James staring at each other in a kitchen full of dirty dishes.

“What’s going on?” he asked again.

I positioned the plastic plug over the drain. “I told Sophie I needed to get away, and she came up with a wild idea.” I started the water.

He pulled the plug from the drain and clutched it against his side. “You want to go away?”

“Get away. I felt that way last night.” I honestly didn’t know how I felt
today—except numb. I pointed at his hand and then back to the drain. He tossed the plug into the sink.

I inserted it again and squirted out some detergent. “And then Sophie got a phone call about a midwife this morning.” I told him the whole story as I trailed my hand through the water, stirring up the bubbles.

“Why do you feel like you need to get away?” His voice was hurt as he bent down and retrieved the wooden dish rack from under his side of the sink.

I eased a stack of china into the basin and without looking at him said, “Sophie thinks I need to find my birth family.”

“Oh.” His voice was gentle now. “Are you ready for that?” James was the one who had been studying abandonment and attachment issues. I was the one who had been trying, at all costs, to avoid talking with him about those things.

My chin began to quiver as I scrubbed a plate and lowered it into the rinse water.

“Did the box bring all this up for you?” He swished the plate around and placed it in the rack.

“I’ve wanted to search since high school.”

“You never told me that.” His voice sounded hurt.

“I feel more alone than ever.”

“You have me.” His voice was tender.

I nodded.

James and I had been partners in chemistry lab in high school. Back then, he was the bad boy, partying on the weekends, smart-mouthing our teachers at school, and teasing me about my cap and modest dresses whenever we were together. His parents divorced when he was a baby, and his dad remarried and started a new family. By high school James didn’t have much of a relationship with his father at all. His poor mother was so busy making a living that James had enough freedom to get himself in trouble on a regular basis.

Though I found him intriguing—and smart, much to my relief, given that he was my lab partner—he made me nervous with his wide grin and reputation as a partyer. Then one day, several months into our junior year, he surprised me by asking if he could come over to study. I told him no. He showed up that night anyway and sweet-talked his way into the house.
Dad helped us with our chemistry, something he’d been doing with me all semester, and when we were finished James brought up his English essay on conflict resolution. Dad was happy to help with that too, eventually explaining at length the Mennonite stand of nonresistance. Before James left, Dad asked him to go to church with us the next Sunday. Much to my horror, he accepted.