The Amish Midwife's Hope

by Barbara Cameron

  When she shook her head, he picked up the reins and, after checking for traffic, signaled for Tom to get moving again.

  “You’re still coming for supper, aren’t you? Lizzie asked me before she left for schul this morning.”

  “If you still want me to.”

  “Rebecca, of course I want you to.”

  “Then I’ll be there.”

  “I hope you like spaghetti and meatballs. It’s one of the few things I can cook.”

  “Sounds gut.”

  Relieved, he dropped her off at her house a few minutes later and headed home.

  He thought about their conversation on the way home. Although pregnancy wasn’t discussed much in the community, he’d heard of women having miscarriages and going on to have bopplin. And his own mudder had had several miscarriages.

  He’d known her job wasn’t an easy one. If he’d had any doubt, it would have been quickly dismissed after being around her. Today’s discussion just reminded him that she was courageous. He hoped they’d have more kinner if they married, because he could tell she wanted them and he wanted her happy. But he’d meant it when he said that if they didn’t, that would be fine. He loved how she and Lizzie got along and was looking forward to sharing her with Rebecca.

  This dating…it really was so different from when he and Ruth had begun dating. He’d known her so well he had been able to predict what she’d do before she thought to do it. That had been comforting. But discovering who Rebecca was as a person was exciting.

  Well, they had a lot of time to discover if they were indeed meant for each other. While the marriage season wasn’t yet over, neither of them was ready to make a sudden decision. So they had plenty of time before next year’s harvest season ended and the cycle began again. In their community, marriage was forever, until death do us part. No one should enter into it quickly.

  He stopped by Hannah’s to pick Lizzie up. Lizzie had been told to walk home with Jacob because Samuel didn’t know if he’d be held up in town running some errands and delivering his first furniture order.

  “Is Rebecca coming for supper?” Lizzie asked the minute she was inside the buggy.

  “You asked me that this morning before you left for schul,” he reminded her. “The answer is the same. Ya.”

  She beamed and then began regaling him with stories of her day at schul. She’d earned a perfect score on her vocabulary test. Naomi, her best friend, had fallen down during recess and hurt her knee and it had bled so much. John Zook had pulled her braid and Teacher Mary Liz had seen him and scolded him.

  “I think he likes me,” she confided. “He gave me a cookie from his lunch.”

  Did boys start noticing girls this early? Samuel wondered, feeling a little concerned. He didn’t think he’d been interested in girls this early.

  “I’m starving,” she announced as they pulled into the driveway.

  “You can have an apple from the bowl on the kitchen table. No cookies.”

  “Really, really starving,” she said, clutching her stomach.

  Where had she gotten this sense of drama? As he unhitched Tom and fed and watered him and Willow and the other horses, he tried to remember if Ruth or Hannah or any of his other schweschders had behaved that way at Lizzie’s age. He shook his head. He didn’t think that they had.

  He headed into the house, opened the door, and stopped dead in his tracks. Lizzie had pulled a chair over to the sink and knelt on it as she washed the breakfast dishes Samuel had left.

  “What are you doing?”

  Lizzie gave him a look. “Silly Daedi. I’m washing the dishes. You didn’t do them this morning. You’ll have to dry them and put them in the cupboard. I can’t reach that high yet.”

  She put the last bowl in the drainer, then got down from the chair. “I’m going up to clean my room. I want to show it to Rebecca later.”

  His eyebrows shot up. She wasn’t a messy kind but he usually had to make her straighten her room. And this was only the second time she’d ever washed dishes.

  Maybe having Rebecca over for supper was an even better idea than he’d thought.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rebecca was finishing up her chart notes after morning office hours the next day when the office door opened.

  Emma walked in. She looked like she’d lost weight in the week since Rebecca had seen her. Her thin face was pinched with worry.

  “Have you got a minute? I couldn’t come earlier when others were here.”

  “Of course. Sit down. How are you doing?”

  “I went to the hospital and took the test like you wanted me to. I did it a little early. I couldn’t wait. I was just so nervous. Rebecca, I’m…I’m pregnant!” She burst into tears.

  Rebecca reached for her hand.

  “It’s been hard. I talked to—” She stopped. “I talked to the father like you said I should. It was awful, Rebecca. The last time we talked he said he’d marry me, but I didn’t want a marriage to start by having to…having to get married. But at least I thought he’d do the right thing. Now he’s saying he’s not ready to get married.” She blew her nose. “I don’t think he wants the boppli.”

  Tears rolled down her cheeks. “He said he’s enjoying his rumschpringe and he might not even join the church.” She took a deep breath. “Well, it’s not coming at a gut time, but I want the boppli whether he does or not.”

  Rebecca pushed the box of tissues she kept on her desk toward her. “Have you talked to your familye?”

  “I can’t. I’m too embarrassed. And what if they throw me out?”

  “I can’t see your eldres doing that, Emma.” But she knew it had happened to other young women in the community. “Maybe you should ask the bishop to talk to the dat.”

  “I don’t want anyone forcing him to marry me. What kind of marriage would we have? I thought we loved each other. I wouldn’t have…I wouldn’t have been with him otherwise. I know what I did was wrong—”

  “You weren’t the only one there,” Rebecca said firmly. She reached for Emma’s hands. “Listen, it’s time to think about taking care of yourself and the boppli. It’s not gut for either of you to have you so upset.”

  Rebecca stood. “Come on into the exam room with me. I want to check your blood pressure.”

  Emma followed her and climbed up on the exam table. Rebecca took her pressure and frowned. “It’s a little higher than I’d like to see. We have to be careful about that since you’re pregnant.”

  She reached for a pamphlet on the subject from a rack on the wall and handed it to Emma. “I’m going to start a chart on you so we can track it. Let’s get your weight today, too.”

  After she recorded Emma’s weight, they sat in the office area again while Rebecca asked questions about her medical history and if she knew anything about the dat’s.

  “Do you have any questions?”

  Emma shook her head. “I’m just feeling overwhelmed.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “I don’t know how I’m going to pay you.”

  “I don’t want you to worry about that. We’ll work something out. Come on—let’s go into the kitchen and have a cup of tea. I don’t want you leaving so upset.”

  As they talked over the tea, Rebecca urged her again to speak to the bishop. “Even if you don’t want him to talk to the dat, maybe he can help you with your eldres.”

  “He’ll think I’m terrible. That I’ve sinned.”

  “I know that he’s talked to others in the same position,” Rebecca assured her. “But if you don’t feel you can talk to anyone else, you know you can always come here. Anytime. I mean that.”

  Long after Emma drank her tea and left, Rebecca sat with her cup of tea sitting untouched on the table before her. She wished she could make Emma’s path easier but she couldn’t. That wasn’t her job. A wise older woman in her church had once said worry was arrogant, that God knew what He was doing.

  So she prayed. Then she rose and went about fixing hersel
f some lunch before she went out for her afternoon checks on her mudders in their homes.

  Her last stop was just a few houses from her own mudder’s house. Realizing she felt a little unsettled, she pulled into the driveway and popped in.

  Miriam was standing at the stove stirring the contents of a big soup pot. She greeted Rebecca with a smile and a hug. “Perfect timing. Can you stay for supper?”

  “I didn’t stop by to invite myself to supper.”

  “Of course you didn’t. But can you stay? I’ve made bean-with-bacon soup and corn bread.” She pulled a cast iron skillet from the oven and set it on a trivet on the table.

  “Sounds wunderbaar. It’s nippy out today.” She shed her jacket and hung it on the peg by the door. Then she stood there, staring at her mudder. How blessed she’d been to have her in her life. If she’d been in the situation that Emma was, she felt like she could have talked to both her eldres and received support. And she didn’t know how she would have survived if it hadn’t been for her mudder after Amos had died. She’d not just been her mudder—she’d known what it was like to be a widow since Rebecca’s dat had died eight years ago.

  She walked over and wrapped her mudder in an embrace. Miriam’s arms came around her and she hugged her back.

  “Rebecca?” she murmured. “Something wrong?”

  “It just occurred to me how blessed I am.” She eased back but didn’t let go. “I have a patient who’s in trouble. I told her to talk to her eldres. But she’s afraid to.” She sighed and walked over to sit at the table. “She’s worried they’ll kick her out. I was thinking about her on the way here and it occurred to me that I always knew I could go to you and Daed and you’d be there for me.”

  “I’m glad you know that.” She frowned. “I’m sorry your patient doesn’t feel her eldres would support her.”

  Rebecca went to the kitchen cupboard and got out plates and silverware and set the table while her mudder ladled soup into big pottery bowls.

  “I told her to talk to the bishop. And to come back and see me if she needs a shoulder. I…just hope she doesn’t make herself sick worrying or do anything rash.” She shook her head. “Nee, I’m not going to worry like that. She’s upset but she says she wants the boppli.”

  She walked over to sniff at the soup. “This brings back memories. It was Daed’s favorite.”

  It was such a comfort to sit in her childhood home and eat a simple meal with her mudder. They caught each other up on what had been happening since the last time they’d seen each other. She told her about Elizabeth’s new boppli and Miriam said she’d stop by with a casserole the next day.

  “So, have you seen Samuel and Lizzie lately?”

  “I had supper with them yesterday.”

  “And?”

  “Samuel makes really gut spaghetti and meatballs.”

  “Rebecca! You know what I’m asking.”

  She chuckled. “Mamm, he’s a freund. Who has an adorable kind. I’m enjoying getting to know them.” She stopped and took a breath. “I care very much about both of them.” Then she looked at her mudder. “Mamm, I told him about my miscarriage. I felt he should know before things got serious.”

  Miriam studied her, her expression serious. “Rebecca, you know better than anyone that having a miscarriage doesn’t mean you can’t have another boppli.”

  She met her mudder’s gaze. “I do. But I felt he needed to know that about me. It might or might not be harder for me to have a boppli. And if I didn’t tell him and he found out later, how would that make him feel? Better to share now.”

  “I suppose.” Miriam began eating again. “How did he take it?”

  “Really well. Said it’s up to God.”

  “Samuel sounds like a wise man.”

  Rebecca smiled. “Ya.”

  * * *

  Samuel glanced at Rebecca. She always looked pretty, but today she looked extra special in a new dark-blue dress, and he told her so.

  “Danki. You look very handsome,” she told him, smiling.

  He glanced down at his Sunday-best suit. “You schur this is fancy enough for an Englisch wedding? I hear they can be pretty elaborate.”

  “Cassie says it’s a small wedding. They wanted to get married before Christmas. We’re not expected to dress as they do. I’m glad you could attend. I think you’ll like Cassie. I haven’t met Steve yet. I met her one day not long after I lost Amos,” she said, staring out the window. “My freund who owns a quilt shop in town asked me to fill in teaching a class one day. Cassie was sitting on the bench outside the quilt shop crying. I was so lost in my own grief that I wasn’t schur I had anything left in me to offer comfort to someone else. But I sat down and introduced myself and asked if I could be of help.”

  She glanced down at the skirt of her dress and smoothed it over her knees. “Turns out her mann had died a few months before. She’d thought she was doing all right, but that day she said when she walked up to the shop and saw the bench, she just broke down in tears.”

  “Seeing the bench made her cry?”

  “We started talking and found out that whenever we went to town and our husbands came along, they sat on that bench. I don’t know why men feel they can’t walk into a quilt shop.”

  She turned to look at him. “I bet you never went into one with your fraa.”

  He chuckled. “Nee.”

  “Just exactly what is it you men are afraid of?” she asked.

  “That you’ll ask our advice. Do you like this color of fabric? What do you think of this yarn?” He shook his head. “Once—just once—I asked why she was buying more fabric before she used all that she had at home.”

  “Ah. Men never understand that we need to have more fabric on hand than whatever we’re sewing or knitting at the time.”

  “And she’d get annoyed if I mentioned she’d started something and didn’t finish it.”

  Rebecca nodded. “UFOs.”

  “Aliens?” Baffled, he stared at her.

  “Unfinished objects. Projects. You know—clothes, quilts, knitting. Life happens. Sometimes we start something and then we have to put it down for various reasons. Have you ever started something—a piece of furniture or whatever—and had to stop?”

  “Not often.”

  She gave him a dubious look. “Schur. Well, life gets busy, especially if you’re a mudder. Things change. Needs change. Eventually most of those UFOs get finished or traded with another woman.” She fell silent. “Did you have to get rid of Ruth’s UFOs after she died?”

  He nodded. “I gave them to Hannah. I did save a quilt she’d been working on for Lizzie. I thought she might like to finish it when she gets older.”

  “I think Lizzie will like that.” She glanced up the road. “This is the church coming up.”

  He was kind of sorry that they had arrived. He’d been enjoying talking to her. He hadn’t been entirely comfortable with the thought of walking into an Englisch church and not knowing a single soul. But Cassie was important to Rebecca, so she was important to him. He wanted to make Rebecca happy.

  Inside, they were greeted by ushers and escorted to their seats in a wooden pew on the bride’s side. Samuel felt the polite stares of a number of people as they sat down. He glanced around at the stained-glass windows and the altar decorated with flowers and listened to organ music. The church filled with people, and after everyone was seated, he watched the groom walk in with his best man.

  The organist began playing something that signaled the people around them to stand and look to the back of the church. A little girl walked down the aisle and tossed rose petals. Then the maid of honor and bridesmaids followed. In their community the attendants were called newehockers, but they never wore such fine fabrics as silks and satins. Even some of the flowers the bridesmaids carried were exotic looking and unfamiliar to him.

  Rebecca gasped. “Oh, here comes Cassie! She’s just beautiful! And she looks so happy.”

  The woman walking down the aisle on the arm of a
man who Samuel assumed was her dat was beautiful, Samuel supposed, but not as much as Rebecca. She wore a fancy long gown of some white shiny fabric and her hair was covered with a length of floaty white material.

  He looked toward the front of the church and saw the groom beam as his bride approached.

  “He looks happy, too,” he leaned over to whisper in Rebecca’s ear.

  She nodded and he watched her eyes fill with tears. “He does.”

  Samuel handed her a handkerchief, and she smiled at him.

  He found himself remembering the day he and Ruth had been married. They’d held the ceremony and reception in her home and had walked to the minister together. Their friends and family had lifted their voices in song but there had been no organ music. Clothing was Sunday best and the bride had not carried flowers. Friends and family members had served as newehockers and dressed in a similar manner. In all, it was a plain and simple ceremony.

  But the words spoken over this couple, the vows they exchanged, were just as solemn and meaningful as what he and Ruth had experienced.

  The couple were pronounced husband and wife and they kissed. As they walked back down the aisle, Cassie spotted Rebecca and beamed at her.

  Afterward, guests walked into a large adjoining room and were seated at tables covered with fancy cloths and crystal glasses. The buffet table was loaded with food, but it was different than what he was used to.

  “That’s caviar,” Rebecca whispered to him as they made their way down the table lined with silver platters. “You know. Roe. Fish eggs. Some people like them as an appetizer.”

  He decided to pass on that and chose some olives. Next to them was some kind of fluffy stuff that didn’t quite look like rice. When he stood there for a moment puzzling over it, the woman on his left told him it was couscous.

  “It’s Mediterranean. You should try it if you’ve never eaten it. A lot of us vegetarians like it.”

  Creamed celery had been recommended at an Amish wedding and he’d found it…tasteless. But he was willing to try any food, especially if he didn’t have to cook it.

  A man wearing a chef’s hat carved him some roast beef, and Samuel filled the rest of his plate with vegetables. He nodded with satisfaction as he carried his plate back to their table. He liked food he recognized. Several waiters roamed the room with bottles of wine, but one swiftly brought glasses of iced tea at Samuel’s request.