by Tamar Myers
‘Susannah, bonannah, fofannah!’ Wanda cried. ‘Yinz supposed to be talking about me, you idiots. Me, me, me! I’m the one who killed Ramat Sreym, remember? It was so easy to add poison to the pie. She wrote about everyone in Hernia in that dreadful book of hers, except for me, the one person in this place who is at all interesting.’
‘Yeah?’ Alison said. ‘What makes you so interesting, Auntie Wanda?’
‘Hush, dear,’ I said. The poor girl was a newcomer to the area; I didn’t want her to stir the pot of a crazy woman, especially one who’d just confessed to murder.
‘For one thing, your mom dangled me by my feet down into a well, so that a little girl could climb out by holding on to my hair. Actually, it was a pair of twins: Hans and Gertrude. It was covered by all the news channels. I’m surprised you didn’t see it. Isn’t that true, Magdalena?’
‘Baloney,’ I said. ‘Yes, you lowered your hair – under great protest, I might add – but it was at a sinkhole, and it was a killer who climbed out on your locks of dread.’
‘Just the same, smarty,’ Wanda said. ‘I was a heroine; I was the toast of this crumby little town. In fact, Entertainment Delights devoted a segment to me, and one of the late-night comedians even put me in a joke.’
‘It wasn’t you; it was Hernia. We were the butt of the joke for having such an unusual name. The supposedly funny host asked if we would be willing to change our name to Haemorrhoid.’
Alison chortled.
‘Sweetie,’ I said, ‘do you know what a haemorrhoid is?’
‘Nope. But it’s gotta be funny if that guy said it was. They pay those TV dudes like millions, ya know. Yinz guys are always yapping about how we young folks are going to move away if this town don’t have more to offer us. So, here’s yer chance ta shake things up a little.’
‘Ha,’ Wanda said, ‘your sassy-mouthed kid is on to something.’
Even Mennonite blood can boil if one’s child is maligned. ‘Don’t you call my daughter names, you whackadoodle – dear. And as for Butter Safe Than Sorry, that novel was literature,’ I said. Yes, I confess: I said it just to be cruel, and I didn’t stop there in my taunting. Once the Devil gets hold of your tongue it’s hard to shake him loose. ‘Anyone who was anyone was featured in that great American novel.’
‘Trash, trash, trash!’ Wanda yelled, pounding the genuine Formica with both fists. ‘Don’t you ever say that again, Magdalena, or I’ll have to kill you, too.’
Suddenly I could feel Alison’s warm, skimpily-clad body pressed up against my left side. ‘Mom, is she – like – serious? You guys aren’t just joking around anymore, are ya?’
‘I’m deadly serious, sister,’ Wanda said. ‘It isn’t fair, I’m telling you; why does my life have to be so damn hard but yinz get it so easy? Huh? Tell me that!’
I try not to be a judgmental person, but there are at least three things with which I’ll hold no truck. These things are: people who text while driving, people who spit their gum out on sidewalks, and people who make snap conclusions about my life.
‘Come again?’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’
‘Oh, yes you do, Miss Money Bags. Look at me, working my butt off running this grease pit, married to a broken-down, impotent, flat-footed bald lush who could take out half of North Korea with his morning breath, while here you are, married to a handsome Jewish doctor – and everyone knows that Jews are rich – who is so fertile that he knocked you up when your womb was as dry as the Gobi Desert – your words, not mine – plus you’re plenty wealthy on your own, what with that brilliant idea you had of turning that picturesque farm your parents left to you into a thriving bed and breakfast, which continues to attract Hollywood celebrities as well as high-ranking politicians from Washington, although, frankly— Now, where was I?’
‘You’re here in your greasy spoon, plumb exhausted, after delivering that record-setting run-on sentence, dear,’ I said.
‘Ha! There, you see, Magdalena? That’s why I love you as well as hate you. You’re as tart as a not-quite-ripe cherry. You’re the kind of cherry that’s too sweet to discard, but if one adds enough sugar then it’s all right for pie.’
‘How about some mud for your eye,’ I said drily. ‘That might help improve your vision, because Lord only knows that the romantic picture that you’ve painted leaves out all my back-story.’
Alison must have been feeling calmer on account of all our jibber-jabber, because she pulled away a fraction of an inch. ‘Like what, Mom?’
‘Hmm. Well, like the fact that I, like you, was adopted. However, I didn’t even find out about my adoption until I was in my forties, and that was only after my birth brother threatened to kill me.’
Alison shivered. ‘And then what?’
‘Well, dear, obviously he didn’t kill me.’
‘Oh.’
‘Anyway, the people who adopted me were kind but very strict. I loved them very much, and they loved me. Mama – your grandma – gave birth to your Auntie Susannah, and I loved her too. Then one day, when I was twenty years old, your grandparents were killed in a car accident. It happened in that mile-long tunnel under Allegheny Mountain. The car that Grandpa was driving got rear-ended by a milk tanker, and they were pushed into a semitrailer truck carrying state-of-the-art running shoes. As a result they were squished to death, flatter than a plate of Swedish pancakes.’
‘Gross,’ Alison said. ‘Now I’m never eating pancakes again!’
‘I should sue,’ Wanda said.
‘Hush,’ I said, not unkindly. ‘My point is that you’ve not been the only one of us to have a difficult life. Alison has had a hard life as well; her birth parents abandoned her, shipping her off to live with me.’
‘But Mom,’ Alison said, ‘that was a good thing! You and this dad are a million, gazillion times better than my other parents.’
‘Who cares?’ Wanda snapped. ‘You’re just some rug-rat from Minnesota, yet you still got mentioned in that awful book.’
Alison beamed. ‘Yeah, that was sweet. That gorgeous Ramat lady wrote that I was a college graduate with a handsome husband, and Mom left us to run the PennDutch Inn while she sailed off to the antidotes.’
‘You mean “Antipodes,” dear,’ I said.
‘Yeah, whatever,’ Alison said.
‘Shut up, both of yinz,’ Wanda said.
‘Mom,’ Alison said, ‘I thought ya weren’t gonna let her talk to us like that no more.’
‘She is a mite rude,’ I agreed. ‘Wanda,’ I said, removing a pair of genuine, stainless-steel, police-issue handcuffs from my oversized handbag. ‘Hold out your knobby wrists, Wanda, because I am hereby conducting a citizen’s arrest of your person, Wanda Sissleswitzer Hemphopple, for the murder of the late Ramat Sreym.’
Alison gasped. ‘Give me yer phone, Mom. I gotta get me a picture of this!’
Wanda, however, hardly blinked. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t blink at all, given that reptiles seldom do.
‘Ha! The joke’s on yinz,’ she said. ‘Before either of yinz makes a move, yinz might want to consider the fact that one of my knobby wrists is connected to a stubby-fingered hand, which is holding a gun, which is pointed directly at your daughter’s hoo-ha under the table.’
‘Now that is rude,’ I said.
‘Mom,’ Alison said, ‘I don’t want to die yet. I didn’t wash my hair last night when I showered, and I’m pretty sure my lipstick got all worn off at breakfast.’
‘I don’t blame you, dear – about your hair, I mean – but you know how I feel about you wearing that color lipstick at your age.’
‘Yeah, I know. “Only harlots and starlets wear scarlet.” Something like that.’
‘Excellent,’ I said. ‘Now, another one of my clever sayings that you may wish to commit to memory is this: “Only the hapless wear strapless.”’
‘Stop it!’ One of the cords in Wanda’s short, bullish neck started pulsating; that’s how angry she was. With her free han
d she retrieved a smart phone from between the depths of her compact yet ample bosom and placed a call. About that same time I could barely hear a phone ringing through the kitchen doors behind her.
‘Leroy,’ she said, ‘I assume that you still want that raise you’ve been nagging me about. Yah? Here’s the thing: I’ll give you double that amount, but only on the condition that you take everything off the griddle, no questions asked. I said no questions, Leroy. I don’t care. Just throw it all in the trash. Then exit through the back door and take the rest of the day off.
‘Yes, Leroy, don’t be such an idiot; of course you should turn the stoves off. And remember to exit through the back door. I’m right here in booth fourteen, Leroy. If I see you walking past me, you don’t get any raise. In fact, you get a pay cut. Is that clear? And Leroy, don’t tell anybody about this, because if you do, you’ll be fired.’
At this point, what could I do but pray? The Bible tells us that God hears all our prayers, and clever preachers say that He answers all of them – although perhaps not always in the way that we want Him to. But make no mistake about it, when there was a gun pointing in the direction of my daughter, I wanted not only an immediate response, I wanted action. I’ll even go so far as to confess that this lifelong pacifist, with five hundred years of nonviolence inbred into her genes, had temporarily gone around the bend – so to speak.
‘Oh, Lord,’ I prayed aloud, ‘if it please Thee, may the roof of this greasy establishment crash down upon the head of a certain murderess, rendering her incapable of committing yet another heinous deed.’
‘Harrumph,’ said Wanda, much to my surprise, ‘at least I’m included in that stupid prayer.’
I felt my hackles rise. How dare that pagan Presbyterian label my prayer – or any prayer – as stupid? If only her neck weren’t too stout, and corded, to wring. Well, if being included was of paramount importance to her warped little brain, then that’s what I would give her.
‘But Lord, on the other hand, Thou knowest that no one can serve up pig parts like Wanda, even though Thou hast forbidden us to partake of them in Thy word, forever and ever, amen. Thus it would be a shame if indeed this pigsty – oops, poor word choice – should disintegrate, and cause the death of our dear sister, Ms Hemphopple, née Sissleswitzer. Therefore, Lord, I ask that you give this woman the courage of Joshua and Caleb, whose story we read in the Bible last Sunday – at least in the Mennonite Church.’
‘Mom,’ Alison whispered, ‘ain’t this an awful long prayer?’
‘Shut your trap, kid,’ Wanda said. ‘It’s about me, isn’t it?’
It’s been said that the best defense is a good offense, and I can be as offensive as the best of them. ‘Did you hear that, Lord? Wanda Sissleswitzer deserves to sizzle you-know-where, although of course I don’t make that call, sir; you do. But what I was about to say before she got super mean and slapped down one of your little lambs, is that Alison and I might be persuaded to forget about today’s little misunderstanding if the foaming fruitcake here puts her gun on the table and her hands in the air.’
Neither Alison, nor God, nor the Foaming Fruitcake, made a sound for an unbearable length of time. We were, however, serenaded by a swarm of flies, whose musical repertoire was disappointingly monotonous given the size of their wings.
‘Ding, dang, dong, dab nab it,’ I said at last, having been reduced to swearing like a drunken sailor. ‘How about it, Wanda? Do we have a deal?’
One positive thing that I can say about my erstwhile friend is that she certainly has chutzpah. Her response was to call Swivel Hips on her cell.
‘Swivel,’ she barked, ‘we’re closing. No, and it’s none of your business why. The kitchen’s already closed, by the way – Leroy’s already been sent home so don’t go back there bothering him.’ She paused, and her face contorted like a rag mop put through a wringer. ‘Well, then give them their stinking money back. I don’t give a rat’s hind end what they say. And I want you to get the hel-met out of here, too.’
To be honest, Wanda, being one of the more liberal types of Presbyterian, used language much stronger than that. Then again, if one is a confessed murderess, I suppose that one might not feel the need to hold back when it comes to language. I know that if I were ever to commit murder, which I would never, ever in a trillion light years do, I think I might experiment with the entire gamut of sins.
And why not? I could be like the Roman Catholics in those Mafia movies: I could commit a sin and then I could go to confession. Just as long as I could get to that little wooden booth before my number was up, I could have it made in the shade! Why, I could cavort, carouse, and I could even cuss while doing cartwheels in a carnival.
‘Magdalena!’
It was that bothersome Wanda, always intruding on my imaginary sins. ‘Get a hold of yourself, Magdalena. You look like you’re daydreaming again. Just like you used to do in Algebra II class. This’ – Wanda waved a short muscular arm – ‘is supposed to be all about me. This is my crime, so it’s my time.’
‘Well, it is, dear,’ I said. ‘I’m just trying to help you with planning some of the details.’
‘Details?’ she asked coyly. ‘Of what?’
Her mocking smile made me want to do something very un-Mennonite to her person. ‘I am helping you to plan the details of our murders, dear. Already Alison here is the size of a small adult woman, and you could fit the entire village of Hernia in just one of my shoes. My point is that you are going to need to know how to dispose of us when we go to that final judgment in the sky.’
‘Are we really going to die, Mom?’ Alison said. She sounded eerily calm.
‘You can bet your bippy that we’re not,’ I said. ‘God will take care of us. Remember the story of Abraham and Isaac? God sent a ram just in time, before Abraham could sacrifice his son.’
‘I’ve always hated that story,’ Wanda said. ‘No father should ever be willing to sacrifice his child. Besides, that would have broken several of God’s commandments right there.’
‘Just like you’re about to do,’ I said. ‘Wanda, if you reconsider your plans, I could make you a very rich woman.’
‘Yeah,’ Alison said, ‘my mom’s rolling in dough.’
‘Just like Scrooge McDuck,’ I said.
‘Huh?’ Alison said.
‘Scrooge McDuck was a comic book character when we were growing up,’ I explained. ‘I wasn’t allowed to read comics, but when I had sleepovers at Wanda’s house we would spend hours reading the stacks of comics that her older brother left behind when he joined the army.’ My hope was that this childhood reference would jog a fond memory from back in the days when we were best friends all of the time.
‘I didn’t know that you had a brother,’ Alison said. ‘There ain’t no Swizzlesticks going ta my school.’
‘My maiden name was Sissleswitzer,’ Wanda hissed, ‘and my brother died in Vietnam.’
‘Oops,’ Alison said. ‘My bad.’
‘Say you’re sorry,’ I hissed. We must have sounded like a nest of disturbed snakes.
‘I did,’ Alison protested. ‘I said “my bad.” What more do you want?’
My eyes couldn’t help but stray from our captor to my distraught daughter, and given that the Good Lord has blessed me with phenomenal peripheral vision, I noticed for the first time that Alison was holding her new cell phone under the table where Wanda couldn’t see it, and that she was texting away like nobody’s business. What a Dumkoph I was! Here I’d been, worried about the kookaburra sitting across from us with her supposedly loaded gun, when all along I should have been trusting in the Lord, like I was supposed to do. In the biblical story, the Angel of the Lord interceded with a ram to save Isaac’s life, but in my story it was Isaac – er, Alison – who was interceding with a cell phone. All I had to do was to continue to stall the whacko with the wobbly French twist until the sheriff arrived.
‘Wanda, dear,’ I said, ‘you must have loved your brother very much. Tell us all about him.’
My nemesis recoiled so fast that her teetering tower of doom nearly toppled. ‘You ignoramus,’ she said. ‘How could you have forgotten? You must have a brain like a lump of overcooked noodles. Gilbert was a sadistic bully; he was the meanest brother who ever lived. Our parents doted on him but I danced a jig of joy the day he left for the army. You, especially, should remember that, Magdalena, because on one of your sleepovers at my house he ripped the head off your favourite doll and stuck it on a wooden stake. Gilbert claimed that he was a head-hunter and that your doll was a dead missionary. You bawled your eyes out after that for days.’
‘Ga-waw, Gilbert,’ I growled softly. Sometimes it is merciful to forget.
‘So,’ Wanda said brightly, having noticed my discomfort, ‘shall we discuss the time that I stuck the “Yoder with an Odour” sign on your back in Senior High School and you went home crying?’
Alison stopped texting. ‘Mom, you didn’t!’
‘Boo-hoo,’ Wanda said. ‘Your precious Mom was a world-class cry-baby.’
‘The entire school was laughing at me,’ I said. ‘I have feelings too. Besides, the next day was when I— Uh, never mind.’
‘When you what?’ Wanda said.
‘I forget, dear. But my, don’t you look good in turquoise today, Wanda! You always did, you know. That color suits you to a tee; it really plays off your green eyes.’
‘My eyes are brown,’ Wanda snapped. ‘Beady brown, you’ve always called them. Now get up, both of yinz, and move your lazy butts off out of my booth. We have someplace to go.’
‘But we have yet to eat, dear,’ I said quite reasonably. ‘I realize that you sent the cook home, and that we’re stuck here without a passable cook between the three of us, but couldn’t we at least have some toast with jam and butter? And I’m speaking of real butter – not margarine, or some hybrid of the two, which in my opinion are worse for one than the good ole fashioned kind. Oh, and a nice hot pot of tea would really hit the spot. Again, I’m not speaking of those worldly herbal teas – their very names are meant to stir one’s imagination and possibly even one’s loins – but something Christian and sensible, like Earl Grey.’