by Tamar Myers
Instead of getting off the phone, Sam stared at his watch while talking louder. “Yes, that was her. Look, you’ve got to send someone out; I can’t do this alone.”
The hairs on the nape of my neck stood up as I, true to form, assumed the worst. “Do what?”
“But I’ve never birthed a baby before,” he all but shouted into the phone.
“And you won’t now! Give me that dang thing!” Normally, given his strength, playing keep-away with Sam would be a losing proposition for me. But by leading with my belly (sorry, Little Jacob) I was able to unnerve him to the point where I could have grabbed a million dollars in cash from his register. Wresting the phone from him was child’s play.
Nonetheless, Sam had to catch his breath. “You don’t want to know, Magdalena.”
“Yes, I do,” I hollered into the receiver. “What is going on?”
The person on the other end of the line swore at me for shouting but caught herself after the third invective. “Why, Magdalena Yoder, is that you?”
“Thelma Liddleputt?”
“Indeed it is. I don’t believe we’ve spoken since the tenth grade.”
“And there’s no time to speak now, dear, unless it has to do with the situation at hand. Where is the ambulance, and what is all this about Sam birthing my baby?”
“Uh-I take it he didn’t tell you?”
“No, we’ve been too busy having tea and crumpets. Of course he didn’t tell me-he just got off the phone!”
“ Magdalena, sarcasm does not become you; it never did. Remember that time in biology class when we were lab partners and we had to dissect a-”
“Tell me where the ambulance is, Thelma, or I’ll crawl through this phone line, belly and all, and do to you what we did to that frog-oops! I’m sorry, Thelma, I really am. The Devil made me say that.”
There followed an unforgivably long pause. “I’ll forgive you, Magdalena, but only because you’re in the final stages of labor, and due to the mass poisonings at your church, there isn’t an ambulance available in the tri-county area.”
7
“This is no time for games, Thelma. Minerva J. Jay was the only victim of our pancake breakfast, as you well know.”
“You wish. After you left, twenty-three people came down with food-poisoning symptoms and we had to call in the rescue squads from Somerset and Blair counties to transport the victims to Bedford County Memorial Hospital.”
“That’s just not possible.”
“I don’t lie-like some people I know, Magdalena. Remember the time in English class when Mrs. Seibert asked you if you’d finished your term paper, and you said that you had, but you hadn’t even begun?”
“We’re all works in progress, dear. Even you. Anyway, I’m not in the final stages of labor, because I’ve only just begun. I’ll just have Chief Ackerman drive me into town.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible either. Your chief of police was pressed into service transporting the victims, but now he’s stuck on this side of the bridge.”
“Bridge? What bridge?”
“The one that spans Slave Creek. Isn’t that the only way in and out of Hernia, except for that painfully circu-uh-circu-no, it’s not circumference, uh-”
I may have lied to Mrs. Seibert, but at least I passed her course. “You mean circuitous,” I may have snapped. “What about it?”
“Goodness me, Magdalena, there’s no need to get snippy, just because you’re about to have a baby with no one but that creepy Sam Yoder to assist you.”
“I’m not about to-holy guacamole and a bowl full of chips,” I roared. The third contraction was more like a wave of contractions, each one stronger than the last, and if my language strayed from snack items, it really was not my fault so much as it was Eve’s. It was she, after all, who first bit into the forbidden fruit and then offered it to Adam. As part of Eve’s punishment, the Good Lord cursed her with the pain of childbirth.
Until now I’d never really given that particular part of the creation story a whole lot of thought, but suddenly it had relevance, and, if I might be so bold, it seemed perhaps more than a wee bit unfair. I mean, far be it from me to tell God how to structure his punishment scale, but shouldn’t Adam-and I mean this in the generic sense-also have to share in the pain of childbirth? Little Jacob got into my womb with some outside help, and if getting out of it was going to hurt so ding-dang much, then by rights my husband, Gabriel, ought to be made to share in the pain (Lord, that is only a suggestion, mind You).
“ Magdalena, are you there?”
“No,” I panted, “I’m off gathering mushrooms in the steppes of Mongolia.”
“Is that sarcasm again?”
“You think? Finish telling me about the bridge, Thelma, or you don’t get invited to this baby’s dedication.” As a Mennonite, I belong to a denomination that not only eschews, but practically abhors infant baptism. My ancestors faced death at the hands of the established church in Switzerland during the late 1500s, rather than submit to what they viewed as a senseless practice. The dedication of an infant to the Lord, however, has a sound biblical basis. Of course, Thelma needed no invitation if she merely wanted to attend the church service, but she knew that I was referring to the reception that would later be held at my house.
Thelma sighed. “Oh, all right, but you’re so bossy. Always have been. Anyway, one of the ambulances was crossing the bridge when this big truck carrying farm machinery comes barreling down the hill from the other direction. The ambulance driver-that was Rory from up in Altoona -just managed to squeeze by, but the truck jackknifed and slammed sideways into the rails. Magdalena, there’s no way you’re getting across Slave Creek unless someone carries you across in a stretcher. Even then, how will you get there?”
“Sam,” I bellowed, “get your truck!”
“I can’t,” he whined. “I tried to take my Dorothy into town last week and two tires blew. I haven’t had time to fix them.” Alas, he was probably telling the truth; the last time Dorothy had been weighed at Miller’s Feed Store, she’d tipped the grain scale at six hundred and eighty-four pounds.
“ Magdalena,” Thelma snarled, “did you just shout in my ear?”
“You would too if a watermelon was pressing down on your pelvis.”
“Aha, just as I thought. You’re a very lucky woman, Magdalena Yoder; this is one of those what I call ‘zip-zap’ deliveries. Only one in a thousand women gets to be this lucky.”
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!”
“Which is not to say that it isn’t without some discomfort. But like you said, you’re about to give birth to a watermelon. You can’t expect to get off scot-free.”
“Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!”
“Do you feel like you need to push?”
How in the Sam Hill could I answer that question when I was panting as hard as if I’d just run the Pittsburgh marathon?
“ Magdalena, did you take birthing classes? You know, like Lamaze?”
Oh, that I had! Mine has been a somewhat rocky marriage, and there have been a lot of things I’ve been intending to do but that I have put off until “things get better.” Of course, they never quite have.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Thelma said after my telling pause. “So, here’s what you’ll do-”
“Unnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnh!”
I gasped for air like a stranded carp. I had no doubt that this last contraction had done more than position Little Jacob for a “zip-zap” exit. The bugger was already on his way.
“But-I-want an-ep-i-dural!”
“It’s too late, Magdalena, even if there was a doctor standing right there. By the way, are you wearing panty hose?”
“What?”
“Oh, that’s right, I remember now; you wear sturdy Christian underwear and thick woolen stockings when the weather’s cold. Well, the good news is that the stockings can stay-”
I dropped the phone and instinctively lowered myself to a squatting position; Little Jacob had l
et it be known he was tired of our conversation.
“So that is how this little fella came to be born in Sam’s tawdry market, and me without a single drop of painkiller in my system,” I explained to the cluster of loved ones gathered around my bed in Bedford County Memorial Hospital. It was eight hours after the fact, and this was my bazillionth retelling of the story, but the first time that the entire bunch could assemble at the same time. The bridge had just been cleared.
If I must say so myself, Sam had done a remarkably good job of the delivery. He’d cut Little Jacob’s cord with a sterilized box cutter, cleared the little fellow’s air passages, bathed him, and swaddled him in an old apron that had been washed so many times, it was as soft as a pima cotton jersey.
My pseudo-cousin had even rustled up a semiclean set of sweat duds for me. It was the first time I’d ever worn pants. I might have been bothered even more by this very clear violation of Scripture had it not been for the fact that I had nothing on underneath them. Well, what’s done is done, right? Since then I’d been bathed by a coterie of nurses (I donated their lounge, after all) and dressed in a sex-appropriate gown-that is to say, one of my very own new flannel nighties that the Babester had brought from home.
“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.”