“Mr. and Mrs. Fischer?” Tall and lean, and dressed in white slacks and a pullover top covered in colorful zoo animals, the technician motioned them back and waited at the door as they passed into the back office. “Find a seat, Dad. Mom, please get on the table.” The woman smiled at both of them.
Sarah looked at the metal table covered in paper in the middle of the room and fought the urge to run. A gown lay folded on the paper. Would she have to get undressed in front of Mose?
Preparing the machine, the technician scurried around, moving things on and off. “I’ll let you change into the gown. Just leave the door open a crack when you’re ready.”
Sarah looked at Mose and then the exiting nurse. “I...”
Mose turned his back to her and faced the wall. He murmured, “I’ll keep my back turned.”
Sarah complied, her dress flying off and then her slip. They lay in a crumpled pile on the chair next to the table as she pulled on the gown, leaving the thin cotton open at the front but pulled tightly closed against her body. With difficulty, she sat on the edge of the table and covered her legs as much as the short gown would allow. She wiggled her toes, not sure what to do next. “All right,” she murmured. “Open the door.”
Mose did as he was directed and sat in the chair at the back of the room.
“Is this your first sonogram, Mrs. Fischer?” The technician hurried in and shut off the bright overhead light. The room was bathed in a gray glow. She sat down in a swivel chair and turned knobs and flicked levers on the strange machine next to the table.
Fascinated with what the technician was doing, Sarah almost forgot to answer. “Ya. My first.”
The woman pushed buttons, opened a drawer and took out a tube of some kind of cream. “If you’ll lie back, we’ll get started.” She smiled reassuringly at Sarah and then glanced over at Mose. “You’ll need to get closer, Dad, if you want to see the baby.” She opened the gown just enough to see Sarah’s stomach.
Sarah jumped when cold liquid hit her skin.
“Sorry, I should have warmed that with my hands.” She began to rub an extension of the machine on Sarah’s stomach. With her finger she pointed to a screen. “You’ll both want to be looking here.”
Sarah saw strange wavy images and movement. A sound filled the room, its rhythmic beat fast and steady.
“That’s your baby’s heartbeat.”
“Oh...” Emotions she’d never felt overwhelmed her. The beat sounded strong, but fast. “Is it normal for the heart to beat so fast?”
“Sure. New moms always ask me that.” She moved the apparatus around Sarah’s stomach again and more images appeared. She pointed to the screen. “There’s a hand and that’s the baby’s spine.”
Sarah blinked, not sure what she was looking at, but determined to see her child’s image.
“Look, Sarah. There’s the face.” Mose’s words came from the end of the table.
The woman pointed and suddenly the image became clear. A face, with closed eyes, a tiny button nose and bowed mouth became clear. Then the face disappeared and Sarah felt deflated. She wanted to see it again but there was more to see. Slender legs squirmed and kicked, floating in and out of view, a tiny foot with five distinct toes flexed.
“Do you two want to know the sex of your child?”
“Nee,” Sarah said. She longed to know, but knowing would take away some of the thrill of birth, and she’d have none of that.
“Better turn your heads away then.”
Sarah looked away, longing to look back.
“Okay, let’s see if we can find the head again and take some measurements. Then we’ll be through.”
Sarah looked back at the screen and saw what looked like a head full of curly hair. The screen went blank, and Sarah drew in a deep breath, holding back tears of disappointment. She wanted to see more, much more.
“Looks like everything’s fine.” The technician wiped the jelly off Sarah’s stomach with a paper towel. “Your about 30 weeks pregnant, even though the baby is a bit small. I’d put your due date around six weeks from now, give or take a day or two, but the doctor may change that a little when you see her. You have an appointment with her, right?”
“Ya.” Mose cleared his throat.
“Good. You did really well for a first-timer, Mom. You can both rest easy. Your baby appears healthy.”
“Danke,” Sarah murmured, pulling the gown closed as she watched the woman leave. Mose gave her a hand up and she sat still for a moment, letting everything she had seen and heard sink in.
“Danke for letting me be here.” Mose’s emotion deepened his voice and moved her to tears.
Sarah held the gown closed with one hand and wiped a tear away with the other. “Nee, Mose. I should be thanking you for coming with me. This Englisch way of checking the baby had me afraid, but now I wish they could do it all over again.”
A silly smile played on Mose’s lips. “Ya. I wish that, too.” His look was different. Almost as though he was in a daze.
They had shared the wondrous moment together, but then Mose faced the wall once more. “Time to get dressed, I guess.”
“Ya.” Sarah dressed quickly and touched Mose’s arm. “Okay. I’m ready.”
Mose took her by the elbow and led her through the hall. They passed the technician and stopped as she called out to them.
“I almost forgot to give you these.” She handed over a white office envelope and scurried away.
“What is this?” Sarah pulled out stiff pieces of paper. She looked down, right into the face of her child. “Mose. It’s pictures of the bobbel.”
* * *
Mose gave Sarah a hand up into the old furniture delivery truck. He waited until she’d buckled her seat belt and tucked her skirt under her legs before he shut the door. A quick maneuver around two golf carts vying for his vacated parking spot, and the truck merged onto Bahia Vista Street. The slow-moving traffic wove through the quaint town of Sarasota, sweltering in the late spring humidity.
Quiet and still, Sarah held on to the envelope of pictures, her fingers white-knuckled. “Hungry?” Mose asked as he shifted gears. The engine strained, making an unfamiliar noise. He shifted into third and sped up.
Sarah tucked the pictures in her white apron pocket and patted the spot. “Not really.”
“I’ll bet the baby could use some eggs and bacon with a side of cheese grits.” He grinned at her, trying to keep the mood light. “He or she could use some meat on those tiny bones.”
“You’re right. I need to eat more. I just don’t have much of an appetite lately.”
Mose felt guilty. He’d used the baby as a reason for her to eat. Sarah looked thoughtful. Was she thinking it was her fault the baby was a bit undersized? He kept his voice easy and calm, knowing she was stressed. “How about Yoder’s? We ate there when we first got into town. They always have great food and you can get another look at the only buggy you’ll see around here for miles. Kind of a reminder of what you’re missing.”
Sarah smiled at his last remark. “I don’t miss those hard seats, Mose Fischer. Not one bit.”
Mose pulled into Yoder’s parking lot five minutes later and parked between a seldom-seen shiny black BMW and a couple of beat-up tricycles so common-place in Pinecraft and Sarasota. After opening Sarah’s door, he offered her his hand and smiled when she took it and squeezed his fingers tight. Her pregnancy was obvious to anyone who looked her way now. She glowed in a way Greta never had, her hair shining in the bright sun, her complexion rosy and smooth. He felt a sharp pang of guilt at the thought. It was wrong to think such things. He marched up the driveway, Sarah at his side, his mood suddenly soured.
* * *
Sarah forced down toast and scrambled eggs, not even looking at the glass of orange juice she would normally down in one long gulp. The juice gave her heartburn now, and she avoided it like a poison. Linda often teased her the baby would have lots of hair because of her stomach issues. The scan of the baby proved her si
ster-in-law’s theory correct.
“You’re deep in thought. Something troubling you?” Mose scooped up a spoon full of grits and shoved it in his mouth as if he was eating orange ambrosia, her favorite desert.
“We need to talk, Mose.” Sarah nibbled on her last slice of dry toast and washed it down with a sip of cold milk. “Seeing the baby on the scan made this pregnancy so real to me.” She pushed back her glass and looked into his eyes. “I’ve finally awakened from my stupor. I have just over a month before the baby comes, and I haven’t made diapers, much less gowns and bibs. Plus, we haven’t mentioned the baby to Beatrice. She has to be told. There’s no telling what kind of reaction we’ll get from her.”
“You’re a worrier. Worriers get wrinkles. Didn’t anyone ever warn you about that?”
Hormone levels sending her mood into overdrive, Sarah flung her triangle of toast on her plate and glared at him. “I’m trying to have a serious talk with you about important issues and you want to joke around. Seriously! Sometimes you are one of the most infuriating men I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet.”
Mose looked across at her, his sparkling eyes holding her gaze as he sipped coffee from a big white mug. He sat the mug back on the table. “In time you’ll realize nothing is going to change, no matter how much you fret. The baby will be born. It will have clothes to wear, even if we have to buy them from an Englisch store. And the girls will love the baby because that’s what kinder do. They love bobbels.”
With one quick swipe Sarah wiped her mouth, threw the red cloth on her plate and stood. “I’m going to the bathroom, and while I’m gone I’d appreciate it if you’d pay the bill. I’d like to go home now.”
“Sure. I can do that, or I can wait for you in the truck and take you to the fabric store for supplies. It sounds like you’re going to need piles of material for all those diapers and outfits.” Mose grinned as he walked to the front of the café.
Chapter Seventeen
The sunny, late-spring morning started off rough. Beatrice crawled out of bed grumpy and demanded she be allowed to wear her new church dress. Sarah’s calm insistence finally prevailed and peace was restored. The sounds of two active kinder laughing and tearing through their playroom rang through the house and put a content smile on Sarah’s face.
She flopped in an oversize chair in the great room for a moment of rest and put up her swollen feet on the matching ottoman. The breakfast dishes were washed and put away, and the last load of baby clothes gently agitated in the washer. A month of Florida living had calmed Sarah’s troubled spirit. Life was calmer, more serene.
A shrill scream rang from the back of the house. Sarah sprang up and ran, her heart lodged in her throat. “What’s happened?” At the door of the playroom she relaxed and chuckled as she took in the situation.
Beatrice lay sprawled on the carpeted floor on her stomach, her healthy little sister’s chubby legs straddled across the middle of her back, a hand full of her curly hair wadded up in Mercy’s tugging, pudgy fingers. Mercy jerked with all her might. Beatrice wiggled and tried to dump her sister off her back. Her legs pummeled the floor as she wailed, “Make her stop. Get her off me.”
Sarah had known the day would come, when Mercy could hold her own and pay back her older sister for all the times she’d been pushed or forced to play with toys she didn’t want.
“Mercy. You mustn’t hurt your big sister.” Sarah lifted the younger child off Beatrice’s back and pulled the silky strands of golden hair from her fingers. “Beatrice won’t want to play with you if you hurt her. You have to be kind to your big sister.”
“Nee,” Mercy shouted, using her new voice, her words still not crystal clear, but getting better every day. She grabbed her doll from Beatrice’s hands and smiled. “Mine.”
“Did you take her doll and give her yours?” With difficulty, her protruding stomach getting in her way, Sarah bent over Beatrice and gently combed her fingers through the child’s snarled hair. Strands of pure gold went into the trash container, the remnants of the sister’s fight over the doll.
“Yes, but she likes my doll. I wanted to play with her doll, but she yelled at me and pulled my hair.”
“We’ve talked about you taking your little sister’s toys before, right?”
Beatrice glared at Mercy playing across the room. “Yes, but...”
“You have to allow Mercy to have toys of her own, too. You like having your own special babies, don’t you?”
“Ya.”
Sarah handed Beatrice her favorite doll and smiled as it was swallowed up in the older child’s warm embrace. “You love your doll and sometimes you like to be the only one to play with it. Mercy loves her doll, too, and she doesn’t want anyone else to play with it. Do you understand?”
Head down, Beatrice nodded.
“Gut. In a minute I’ll talk with Mercy about not pulling your hair anymore.”
Beatrice began to gather up the plastic dishes scattered at her feet. “I’ll make pretend juice for Mercy and me. We can have a party.”
Offered an opportunity to talk with Beatrice without her being too distracted, Sarah helped the child place tiny cups and saucers on the round table Mose had made for them just weeks before. He had agreed she’d be the best person to break the news to the kinder about the bobbel. She had waited and prayed for a time just like this. “How would you feel if you and Mercy got a real bobbel to play with?”
“Do we have to keep Mercy?” Beatrice pretended to pour tea into a tiny cup.
“Of course, silly girl. We would never send your sister away.” Sarah pulled over a sturdy wooden stool and sat, waiting for more questions.
“If you have a baby, will you go to live with Jesus like my mamm did?” Tiny blond brows furrowed as she placed pretend cake on several little plates and handed one to Sarah.
“Nee. What happened to your mamm doesn’t happen very often. Something went wrong and your mamm got very sick.” Sarah was not sure what she should say about Greta dying. How much the child should be told. She prayed for wisdom and allowed Gott’s love for this child to direct her. “A new baby is always a blessing, Beatrice. Like you and Mercy were when you were born.”
“Mercy’s mean. I don’t like her sometimes.” Beatrice knocked the dishes on the floor. The troubled child’s shows of temper came less frequently now, but still had to be handled with care.
Sarah dropped to her knees in front of Beatrice and held her gaze. “Throwing down dishes doesn’t solve anything. It only gets you in more trouble. Maybe together we can think of better ways to express your anger with Mercy, like telling her how it makes you feel when she makes you angry. You’re her big sister.”
“But I don’t like being her big sister today.” Beatrice looked at Sarah defiantly. Her lip puckered and tears rolled down her flushed cheeks.
“I know you don’t like her right now, but remember when you two were on the swings yesterday? You had so much fun together. You laughed a lot, and it was fun to have a little sister then, right?”
Beatrice looked up through tear-soaked lashes, her eyes sparkling. “Ya, it was fun.”
“Well, Mercy needs you to help her grow into a nice young lady. She’s going to be a big sister, too, when the baby comes. Someone older, like you, has to help Mercy be a good big sister. Do you think that someone could be you?”
Sarah watched the play of emotions flit across the child’s face. She finally smiled a dimpled grin. “I could teach Mercy to be nice to the baby when it comes. I’m the oldest, and she listens to me...sometimes.”
“That’s right. You’re the big sister.” Sarah took Beatrice’s hand and placed it on her protruding stomach. The baby had been active all morning, and it seemed the perfect time to introduce the unborn child to Beatrice. “Did you feel the baby kick?”
Like it was planned, the baby kicked hard under Beatrice’s hand, putting a glowing smile on the child’s face and a sparkle in her blue eyes. “Ya, I felt him kick.”
“I
bet you did. You know, we have to think of a good name for the new baby. What do you think we should call her if she’s a girl?”
Beatrice looked up, smiling, but serious. “It’s a boy. I know it is. We have to call him Levi.”
Shaken, Sarah tried to stay calm. Levi had been Joseph’s daed’s name, a name she had already considered for a boy. “Why Levi, Beatrice?”
“Because Jesus told me my brother would be named Levi and that he’d grow up to be a good man, like his daed.”
Sarah pulled the little girl close and hugged her, tears swimming in her eyes. “Then Levi it will be, liebling.”
* * *
After church the next day, Linda carried a tray of salt and pepper shakers over to the extra deep counter at the back of the church kitchen and put it down with a bang.
“That Sharon Lapp makes me so mad.”
Used to Linda’s rants, Sarah smiled her way. “What did she say?”
Linda slid onto a kitchen stool and braced her feet under the slats, her protruding stomach bullet shaped.
“It’s not what she said. It’s how she treats me. She acts like I should just sit in a chair and wait for the pains to start just because I’m overdue. It’s not some kind of sin being two weeks late. The baby’s just lazy like his daed.” She laughed at the remark as if it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. “And now she just told me I can’t help with clean up. Who is she to tell me anything? I’m not bedridden, for goodness—” She broke off her words and let two women pass before she restarted her private rant with Sarah. “Besides, I feel great and have so much energy.”
“I think she’s right. You look ready to pop at any moment. Maybe Kurt should take you home and let you put your feet up. Church lasted a long time today with all the new preachers showing off. You’re bound to be tired. I know I’m ready to get off my feet.”
Linda’s scalding glare wrinkled her forehead and put a twist to her lip as she spoke. “Your feet might be hurting you, but I feel fine and I’m not...” Eyes wide, Linda’s expression turned from anger to opened mouth horror. “Ach! Gott help me, Sarah. I think my water just broke.”
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