Tea with Jam and Dread

by Tamar Myers

  ‘B-b-but,’ my dearest friend, Agnes, sputtered into speech like an old lawnmower when the ignition cord is pulled. ‘M-Magdalena, I know that Daphne is not your favourite person, but you have to give your pastor’s wife credit for possessing an eye as good as yours. Like you, she can literally find a needle in a haystack.’

  The murmurs of renewed awe and support for my Mennonite nemesis were practically unbelievable. Had no one else in the congregation seen through this woman’s thin veneer of peace and love? Was I yet again the most judgemental member of Beechy Grove Mennonite Church, the only black sheep in a flock of snow white, frolicking lambs?

  ‘Why me, Lord?’ I wailed, casting an eye to the heavens.

  I’ve often heard it said that God answers prayer in one of three ways: yes, no or not yet. But apparently there is a fourth way, and this one stung my left eye and elicited peals of laughter from my supposedly pious peers.

  ‘Stop laughing at my mom,’ Alison said. ‘She can’t help it if pigeons hate her.’

  As a matter of fact, it isn’t true that pigeons hate me. And another thing: the dirty bird in question was a passing starling, one of a flock of thousands. The common starling, an alien species from Europe, made its debut in North America in 1890 when one hundred of them were released in New York City’s Central Park. It is alleged that the chairman of the American Acclimatization Society wanted to import every kind of bird mentioned by William Shakespeare. The starling was mentioned in Henry IV, Part 1. Today millions of starlings thrive across North America, and outcompete many native species for food and nesting sites. Of course, they are good for the owners of automatic carwashes but not much else.

  ‘Shame on you people,’ my doctor husband said sternly. ‘This is no laughing matter. Would you be laughing if she got an eye infection? And here I thought that you were her friends.’ Most fortunately for me, the Babester also carried a man’s white cotton handkerchief, which he immediately put to good use.

  As he dabbed gently at my eye, my handsome Jewish husband continued to lecture my Christian brethren. ‘Schadenfreude does not become you, by the way. I know that you have good hearts. I have been to your barn-raisings and served on your volunteer fire brigade. It is my firm belief that love is your guiding principle, and that is the way you live your lives – well, most of the time.’ Gabe held up his hand, the one holding the soiled handkerchief, but it was not to show that he surrendered. ‘I have just one more thing to say, and then I’ll have said my piece: there is no one here who is more loving and more generous than my wife. Yes, it is true, she does have a sharp tongue at times – some folks claim it can slice through cheese – but there wouldn’t even be a Beechy Grove Mennonite Church if it weren’t for her.’ No one laughed after the cheese remark. It seemed like no one was even breathing.

  ‘That’s two things,’ Alison said after an agonizing second or two. Thankfully her quip cut through the tension just as smoothly as my tongue can slice through cheese.

  Nothing would make me happier than to say that my fellow Hernians resumed behaving in the proper, Christian manner for which we Americans are best known and are wont even to export overseas. This was especially important to me because the benefactors of our good example would be the English-English, a morally bankrupt race, to be sure. I offer as proof their penchant for bestowing sexually suggestive names to everyday dishes. Spotted dick, indeed! Alas, however, the American immigrants among us were not quite as invested in being examples of proper Mennonite brotherhood.

  ‘We’re wasting time with this one family’s drama,’ said Daphne, who could now speak plainly. ‘If it’s really love and generosity that is important, then I suggest we start showing some of it to our guests by combing through Rudy’s field for their loved one.’ She turned to Aubrey. ‘Royal Highness,’ Daphne said, attempting a curtsy, ‘I shall personally see to it that every inch of Rudy Swinefister’s wheat field is flattened. You are not to worry; we will recover the badly mangled corpse of your beloved son in order that you may return to England with his bits and pieces in a suitably monogramed body bag. Why, I shall embroider it on myself.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ someone said. I think it was Belinda Steelwater. In women’s groups, she seconds everything that Daphne says, including her stated need to go to the ladies’ room.

  ‘Ach,’ said Joshua Koenigsberger, shaking his head in frustration. ‘If you’d only gotten here sooner, Daphne, you would have heard Toy explain everything. The wheat field is too far from the cliff, and even if the boy had sprouted wings and managed to fly that far – well, you can see for yourself that nothing has been disturbed.’

  ‘Harrumph,’ said Daphne. ‘Maybe you can see that; but not me. I am not unnaturally tall like some people I know. Setting aside your giraffe-like proportions, I think that the issue at hand here is that we have a lazy Chief of Police.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Toy. He has never been a big fan of Daphne, ever since the day that she told him, quite unprovoked, that he would probably never make it into Heaven on account of he didn’t believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus. Secretly, I have a hard time not agreeing with Daphne on that score, given that I was raised in the same tradition.

  However, to be honest, believing in that dogma presents me with a huge dilemma: if that doctrine is correct, then my beloved husband and daughter are going to burn in a lake of fire for all eternity. An ‘outsider,’ one claiming to possess a logical mind, might suggest that a simple solution would be for me to abandon my belief in the physical resurrection. I suggest that said ‘outsider’ open his, or her, Bible to Proverbs chapter twenty-two, verse six.

  I doubt if the pastor’s wife opened her own Bible very often. ‘There are two reasons that Chief Toy is content to leave Rudy Swinefister’s wheat field alone,’ she said. ‘First is because he’s chicken.’

  ‘Buck-buck-buck-braaat!’ That childish response was emitted by several people.

  Encouraged by this shameful behaviour, even Daphne’s physical demeanour changed. Ironically, she reminded me of my alpha hen, Pertelote, who occupies the tippy-top of the pecking order in my flock of Rhode Island Red chickens. Daphne’s outsized chest was puffed to its maxi-Mother girth, and her throat wattles had assumed interesting shades of pink with crimson and magenta splotches. Whereas my fowl, Pertelote, has only one yellow beak with which to peck, the foul-tempered pastor’s wife has a mouthful of yellow teeth which she bares when she grins in triumph.

  ‘The second reason that Toy won’t disturb this precious wheat field,’ she cackled, ‘is because he’s on the take.’

  ‘I’m on the what?’ said Toy.

  ‘Oh, don’t play Mister Innocent with us,’ Daphne said. ‘We’ve all seen those TV shows where the cops are crooked.’ She glanced around, seeking support from her husband’s flock. Most unfortunately, for her at least, our sect of Old Order Mennonites watches very little television, with crime dramas being at the bottom of the list.

  Toy was remarkably calm, given the demeanour of his accuser. ‘Mrs Diffledorf, until today, the matter of disturbing Rudy’s wheat field to any great extent has frankly never arisen. True, from time to time, teenagers or hunters will do a little damage, but not so much that Rudy can’t handle the problem by himself. And if he couldn’t, I certainly wouldn’t accept pay for my assistance.’

  It pains me to say this yet again, but I have a younger sister in prison. Her crime was aiding and abetting a man who has been charged with kidnapping and multiple murders. This man is my biological half-brother. I repeat all this on account of it being a strange and terrifying world which we inhabit. The scary truth is that we are all capable of bizarre behaviour under the right circumstances, but it didn’t take much more to drive Daphne Diffledorf completely over the edge.

  NINETEEN

  ‘Brothers and sisters of Beechy Grove Mennonite Church,’ Daphne said, her voice rising a full octave to where it wavered, rather like that of an inebriated cockatiel’s, although to be honest, my experience with th
is avian species is rather limited. ‘Might I have everyone’s full attention?’

  Given that her voice rose an incredible three notes even higher, there were dogs all the way down in the State of Maryland that had her full attention. In fact, the hairs on my arms were standing at attention (to be sure, they are very fine, blond and silky).

  ‘Please, wife, be brief,’ Pastor Diffledorf whispered. Frankly, it was the first time that I’d felt kindly towards him all day.

  Daphne scowled at me instead of her husband. ‘There are those in this community who wield a lot of power – financial power. They hold the purse strings. This purse opens and closes at their whim. The financial stability of Beechy Grove Mennonite Church depends on them. Indeed, the very welfare of Hernia depends on them and their disproportionate amount of wealth. Our scripture, however, tells us that it is the poor who shall inherit the earth, and that the rich will be kept out of Heaven, along with their camels.’

  The gasps I heard in response to this nonsense were disgustingly loud; far more worthy of a bedroom than God’s green outdoors. Likewise, so many heads were nodding in agreement that I felt a wave of nausea.

  ‘Stuff and nonsense!’ I cried.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Lady Celia said.

  ‘You ought to know,’ I snapped, quite unfairly. ‘It’s an English phrase, after all.’

  ‘Whatever it means,’ Pastor Diffledorf said to his wife, his voice now just barely above a whisper, ‘I don’t think that God intends to keep rich people out of Heaven. Camels, on the other hand, won’t be there.’

  ‘Harrumph,’ Daphne said. ‘I wasn’t through making my point, husband. I was only halfway there.’

  ‘Then, by all means, finish,’ Toy said.

  ‘I intend to,’ Daphne said. ‘What sort of witness would we be to these godless Anglicans, these backward Europeans, if we didn’t do our Christian duty and show them the kind of hospitality for which we Americans are so famous?’ She wagged a stubby finger at me. ‘Uh-uh-uh, don’t interrupt!’

  ‘I wasn’t going to,’ I interjected.

  ‘Nice one, Mom,’ Alison said. ‘I just wanta know if God’s gonna ban both kinds of camels. Them two-humped kinds are kinda cool-looking.’

  ‘You see?’ Daphne said. ‘Magdalena, you are a bad Christian witness, even for your own heathen child.’

  ‘She’s not a heathen,’ the Babester said. ‘She’s a teenager who is making up her mind about religion.’

  ‘Same thing,’ Daphne trumpeted. To my dismay, a number of church friends murmured their agreement.

  ‘Et tu, you band of Brutuses!’ I wailed.

  ‘Behold, Magdalena is speaking in tongues again,’ Pastor Diffledorf said. ‘Wife, maybe it is time to lay off her.’

  ‘I don’t believe that she’s speaking in tongues,’ Lady Aubrey said, coming to my defence. ‘She’s merely trying to paraphrase a famous line that Shakespeare attributed to Julius Caesar in a play, but I’m afraid that she’s forgotten her Latin declensions. Brutus was an individual, not a group of people, so one must use the plural—’

  ‘Plural shmural,’ Daphne growled. ‘Why are you interrupting? Can’t you see that I’m trying to help you? It’s your son who is lying in this wheat field, his fragile, British body all smashed to smithereens. Don’t you want to gather up the bits and pieces and tote the bloody fragments back to Westminster Abbey for a proper royal burial? Just think of how far that would go to strengthen the bond between our two countries. I mean, the funeral would be televised and we would get another chance to view those two princesses who wear fascinating table centrepieces on their heads.’

  ‘Those are not table centrepieces,’ Agnes said, not minding her business. ‘They’re called fascinators. And Magdalena’s guests are not royalty!’

  The Earl of Grimsley-Snodgrass snorted indignantly. ‘You, my dear lady,’ he said to Agnes, ‘rally have no idea what blood runs through these veins of mine. Why, most of the crowned heads of Europe have rumpled the sheets of my ancestral manor, Gloomsburythorpe.’

  ‘No doubt in an attempt to escape the bedbugs,’ Janet Ticklebloomers said. She and her trysting partner, Norman Cornbrakes, appeared to be the only members of Beechy Grove Mennonite Church not under the influence of Daphne Diffledorf, and her shockingly subservient husband. I use the ‘s’ word because our denomination, like many other conservative faiths, hold that it is the man who is the undisputed head of the household. For Christians such as myself, this teaching is thanks to an unmarried tent-maker named Paul (later made a saint by the Roman Catholic Church), who had many disparaging things to say about women, yet wrote such a beautiful treatise on love that it is often read at weddings. Go figure.

  Now where was I? Oh, yes, the Earl of Grimsley-Snodgrass was not in the least tickled by Janet’s remark. I will confess here that under less stressful circumstances I might have been tempted to stand back and watch the pair of them spar – so to speak. But the promiscuous Janet (for the record, she was a recent convert from Unitarianism) had never been my favourite person, and the earl was still my guest, so it behooved me to move the show along. Besides which, I didn’t want Alison to be asking me about sheet-rumpling because I wasn’t quite sure about the particulars myself. Let’s face it, any nation that is capable of exporting a dessert named Spotted dick, (which I can purchase in the Foreign Foods aisle of many large supermarkets Stateside), is bound to be a people without shame.

  I waved my long, spindly arms with their preposterously knobby elbows as wildly as if I was deflecting a swarm of houseflies from my jam-covered face. ‘Move it along, folks. We’re heading back to the parking lot. That means all of us: nobility, clergy, innkeepers and commoners alike! March: two, three, four!’

  But other than family, four was literally the number of people that I could coerce into marching back with me to the parking lot. They were Agnes, of course; the sensible, but adulterous Norman Cornbrakes; Janet Ticklebloomers and, quite surprisingly, Lady Aubrey of Grimsley-Snodgrass.

  ‘Magdalena,’ she confided when we were quite out of earshot of the crowd, ‘I hope you’re not offended by what I’m about to say, but—’

  ‘You hate my pastor’s wife?’

  ‘Goodness no; I’m English, Magdalena, remember? Hate is far too strong an emotion for me.’

  ‘Then perhaps you mildly disdain her actions in a genteel manner?’ I said.

  ‘By Jove, you’ve almost got it right,’ she said encouragingly. ‘Let’s just say that I’m not amused by her behaviour. I find her a bit overbearing at times.’

  ‘Ha, that’s a good one,’ I said. ‘Most everyone around here would find it easier to stand up to a division of armoured tanks than to Daphne Diffledorf.’ I was genuinely fond of the foreign woman, despite her overuse of adverbs.

  ‘That certainly puzzles me,’ Lady Aubrey said. ‘I was given to understand that you Mennonites were a very softly spoken, kindly people; most especially your sort who wear the funny white caps perched precariously atop your massive coils of braided hair. Is it true that you never cut your hair, and how do you keep it looking so healthy?’

  ‘We are so soft-spoken!’ I wailed, not caring one whit about my locks at that point. About a mile away as the crow flies, the Kuneberger’s ass, a wild species of donkey imported from the Arabian Peninsula, responded to my cry by braying piteously. The Kunebergers have this asinine idea that they are going to improve the bloodlines of their donkey herd with an injection of wild blood. Well, it may be good science, but the male donkey that they imported has taken a liking to my voice, and every time I raise it the stupid critter tries its level best to court me.

  ‘As for Magdalena and her sect’s massive coils,’ Agnes said, ‘they believe that a woman’s hair is her crowning glory.’

  ‘One Corinthians, verse fifteen,’ I said.

  ‘Well, it certainly saves time at the beauty salon,’ Lady Aubrey said and chuckled.

  ‘Really, Lady Aubrey,’ Agnes said, ‘I don’t mean to be disagre
eable, but how can you be so blasé when your own flesh and blood lies somewhere in Rudy’s wheat field, flattened as thin as a Swedish pancake. Why, if those pious women from Magdalena’s ultra-conservative church, with their funny caps perched atop their massive coils of braids, don’t stumble upon the remains of your son before dark, he is bound to become a buzzard buffet at first morning light.’

  I gasped in horror. Given that it was high summer, and we were twixt woods and crops, I inhaled a mouthful of bugs of some sort or another. Since supplemental protein is nothing to be sneezed at, I swallowed my unexpected snack gratefully. We must always remember to thank the Good Lord for small blessings, don’t you think?

  The control exhibited in Lady Aubrey’s voice proved that she was worthy of her title. ‘My dear woman,’ she said, ‘the scenario that you described couldn’t possibly happen – not in a million years. Whereas I agree with you that the bellicose pastor’s wife, along with her spontaneous search party, comprised of civilians as it is, are likely to destroy that poor farmer’s wheat field, they shan’t in any way damage one cell on my beloved son’s body. I say this because my son is not lying in that field flattened like a Swedish pancake, as you so gruesomely put it.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ the Babester said, although how he could hear was beyond me, given that he and Alison had taken the lead on the walk back to the parking lot and were at least ten yards ahead of us. Even the adulterous Ticklebloomers and Cornbrakes pair, who were walking between Gabe and us three, didn’t seem to hear Lady Aubrey’s response to Agnes.