The Amish Midwife (19 page)

“How do I look at what I’ve taken?” he asked, and I realized that for all of his big words, he possessed mere knowledge, not practical experience.

I clicked the view button and showed him how to flip through the photos. He kept going past his and on to the ones I’d taken of Lancaster County. “Wow.”

I looked over his shoulder. He’d landed on a photo of the back of an Amish man plowing his field, the hooves and backs of his four mules partially blurred with the movement. I’d taken it with my zoom a good hundred yards away.

I couldn’t fathom living life without a camera. “How about when you went to Ethiopia? Didn’t you have a camera then?”

He shook his head. “But I remember everything and I wrote it all down. All about the people, the little kids, the food, the cities, the countryside, the colors, the textures. I won’t ever forget it.”

Was that why I took photos? Because I didn’t want to forget? Did I feel forgotten because there weren’t any photos of me as a baby?

“What do you want to do when you grow up?”

He shrugged and handed the camera back to me.

“Come on, Zed.” I draped the strap around my neck. “I bet you’re the kind of kid who knows.”

He smiled.

“Out with it,” I teased.

He looked down at his shoes. “Well, I kind of want to make movies.”

“Movies?” I tried not to sound surprised, certain if cameras were on Marta’s list of “the forbidden” that movies would be too. “Have you ever seen a movie?”

He blushed. “I’ve seen clips online. And I saw
Shrek
at a friend’s house when I was little.”

I kept myself from smiling. “What kind of movies do you want to make?”

“Movies about people. I have an idea for one set in Ethiopia, about a kid in a camp—”

My cell began to vibrate in my pocket. I remembered I hadn’t read the one from Sean. I dug out my phone. The immediate one was from Ella:
Come get me!

“Let’s go.” I clicked to the text I’d missed from Sean as I hurried to the car.
Dinner tonight?
My heart jumped. I’d have to deal with that one later.

I thanked Zed for coming along as we waited for Ella. He smiled but didn’t say anything. She was coming up the lane, practically running. Behind her a woman operated the pulley that the wash line was attached to. Dresses and pants lurched forward and then back, like puppets in a show. I wondered if the woman could see us because we could see her, but she appeared to be focused exclusively on the laundry in front of her and didn’t turn her face in our direction.

Ella did run the last hundred feet to the car, glancing over her shoulder one last time as she opened the door.

She was barely out of breath. I backed out of the lane.

“It’s the same mansion as the one on the box,” she said. “It’s an illustration with the date 1873 in the corner.”

“What about the Bible?” I asked, turning onto the highway.

“I found it in the same place, behind the puzzles. Aunt Klara went out to check on
Mammi
to see if I could visit.” She paused.

“And?” I didn’t mean to sound impatient.

“In front were all sorts of names and the dates for births and deaths.”
She turned toward the backseat. “Our names are in there, Zed, and our births.” She giggled. “And Ada’s.”

“And?” Now I did mean to sound impatient.

“A girl named Alexandra.”

“When was she born?” I felt as if I were underwater again and my voice was garbled, the words coming out as bubbles, bobbing to the surface.

I could barely hear Ella as she gave the birth date, the very same as mine.

W
e rode in silence. I slowed for a buggy. A car behind me honked. I ignored them. After a while Ella said, “I think you can pass.”

I realized the car behind me was long gone and we were on a straight stretch. I sped around the buggy.

“Are there parents listed for Alexandra?” I was practically whispering. “In the Bible?”

“No father, just a mother.” Ella looked straight ahead. “Giselle.”

“Do you know who she is?” I tried to concentrate on my driving.

“I’ve never heard of her before, but—” she stopped.

“Ella?” I tried to catch her eye.

“She’s listed as a sister to Klara and Mom. Their maiden name is Lantz.”

“We have another aunt?” Zed asked from the backseat.

Ella ignored him. By his lack of protest, I gathered he was used to it.

I locked my eyes on the road.
Giselle
. My birth mother’s name was Giselle. She was a sister to Marta and to Klara. A fifteen-year-old had accomplished in a few minutes what I wouldn’t have been able to do in weeks or months—maybe even years. “Was there a birth date for her?” I was choking on my heart.

Ella exhaled and then spoke quietly. “Klara was coming in through the back door, so I had to stuff the Bible back behind the puzzles.”

“Did you see
Mammi
?” Zed leaned forward.

She shook her head. “Klara said she was sleeping. She said I should ask Mom anyway about the family history—she knows as much as anyone. She says
Mammi
isn’t very talkative now.”

I shivered. Was she dying?

Even without seeing her grandmother, Ella had done great. “Thank you,” I said, patting her leg. “Have you thought of a career as a detective? Because you’re amazing.”

Ella smiled, clearly pleased with my praise.

The sun was setting now, streaking the fading blue sky with lemon yellow, pale lavender, and creamsicle orange. Ahead, a windmill was silhouetted against the scene. My heart lurched. This information challenged everything I’d ever fantasized about my birth family. I glanced down at the Coach purse on the console. My birth mother wasn’t a professional woman living in Philadelphia or Manhattan. She was, most likely, a shunned Amish woman living who knew where. It was as if both she and I, together, had been scrubbed clean from her family.
Our family
. I shivered.

I had a friend in middle school who used to say, “God gives us our relatives; we choose our friends.” She came from a big Irish Catholic family and was related to half the county.

I thought of her saying that now. Never, in my wildest dreams, would I have chosen an Amish family from Lancaster County. But why would an Amish family in Lancaster County not choose me? If my mother couldn’t keep me, why wouldn’t my grandmother? I’d seen how much the Amish loved their children. I couldn’t imagine Alice, and she was a great-grandmother, ever giving up Rachael, Melanie, or Matty when they were babies. I think she would die first.

“Are you sure you’ve never heard of Giselle?” My voice broke the silence.

“Never,” she said. “And I’ve never heard of a cousin Alexandra—of you, right?”

“I think so,” I whispered.

“How old is your mom?” I asked.

“Thirty-eight,” Zed answered from the backseat.

“And your Aunt Klara?” I glanced into the rearview mirror.

Ella shrugged. “I don’t know. But older, that’s for sure.” She sat up straighter. “I’ll go back and look at the Bible again.” She reached over and touched my hand on the steering wheel. “I’ll do whatever I can.”

“Thanks,” I said, choking.

“So we’re cousins then, right?” Zed’s head was between the seats.

“Somebody’s slow.” Ella took her hand away from mine, reaching behind her to tousle her brother’s hair.

“But Mom doesn’t know?” Zed’s voice was full of confusion.

Neither Ella nor I answered him. Of course Marta knew, but I didn’t want to be the one to confirm Zed’s suspicion about his mother.

By the time we reached the covered bridge, dusk was falling. I eased onto the wooden slats carefully, releasing my anxiety with a sigh when the car rolled back onto the pavement on the other side. By the time we reached the cottage, though, my angst was gathering steam again, but Marta was nowhere to be found. I marched out to her office, ready to confront the woman whom I now knew was my aunt.

“You’re right,” she said, calmly, after my rant. “I am your biological aunt. We share some of the same DNA. That’s all.” She sat at her desk. “I am very sorry that you came out here to find this out. I did my best to stop you once I suspected who you were.” She looked up at me. “I was told, all those years ago, that your adoptive parents had renamed you. Clearly they didn’t, and that caught me off guard.”

“Please tell me what you know,” I begged.

“There’s nothing to tell. I haven’t seen Giselle in over two decades. I haven’t had a letter. Not even a postcard.”

“And no one else has heard from her?”

She shrugged. “That’s not really my business to tell.”

I stared at her.

“Alexandra,” she said. I shivered. It was the first time she’d called me by my full name, and the way she said it sounded as if she’d said it before. “Some things are better left alone,” she added.

I crossed my arms. “I would like to meet my—” I stopped, about to say “grandmother,” but instead I used the more familiar term, mostly to see how it would feel on my tongue, but perhaps also to get a rise out of Marta. “
Mammi
. I want to meet
Mammi
.”

Marta winced.
Bull’s-eye
.

“And Klara,” I said, feeling emboldened. “And Ada. And even Alexander.”

She looked as if I were throwing darts at her, aiming at her narrow eyes. “That’s not a good idea,” she finally said. She stood. “We were raised to forgive and forget. It’s offensive to us for you to come rushing in here, asking questions and stirring up the past.”

I felt as if I’d been slapped.

She continued. “I don’t know how they do things in Oregon, but this isn’t how we do things here.” Her hands were flat on her desk, and she leaned forward. “I appreciate your help with my practice, but I do not appreciate you involving my children in your schemes.”

My phone beeped.

“As far as tomorrow,” Marta said, sinking back down into her chair, “you have four prenatal appointments here in the office in the afternoon. You’ll have the morning off.”

I didn’t respond. How could she expect me to keep helping her?

“I have more work to do now,” she said. “Please go.” She folded her arms atop her bare desk.

As I left, she lowered her head to her arms on the desk. I closed the door and stood for a moment in the darkness. The evening breeze whispered through the pine trees. A car whizzed by on the road. I thought I could hear the sound of the creek down the hill where it rushed under the bridge. Was the last sound, the one I couldn’t quite identify, Marta’s muffled crying behind the door?

The new text was from Sean, asking about dinner again. I walked over to the pine trees and stopped at the base of the largest in the small grove. I couldn’t handle Sean and dinner, not tonight.

Light from the dining room window illuminated the side yard as I sank down to the damp ground. They had rejected me as a loveable newborn. What had made me think they would accept me now?

Years ago when I was teenager, after I’d decided to wait to search for my birth family, I came across a book about adoption on Sophie’s desk. The title was
The Primal Wound
. I skimmed the book. It scared me. Put me on edge. I’d never imagined that adoption was so complicated. The premise
was, being abandoned by one’s birth mother left the worst wound possible, one that would really never heal. Later, as an adult, I came across the book. I’d remembered it from before as being four or five hundred pages at least, but it wasn’t. It was actually a small volume just over two hundred pages. When I saw the book as an adult, I wondered if Sophie had been reading it all those years before or if she had left it for me to find. My gut feeling was that she had been reading it, but with me in mind. She was never one to meddle—until now.

My phone began to ring. It was James. I tripped over my words as I spilled out what had happened.

“Wow. How are you feeling?”

How did I feel? Anger swept over me. He’d known all along they would reject me. “Why did you let me come?” I demanded.

“Lex. What’s going on?” His voice was annoyingly patient.

“What’s going on?” My voice was shrill now. “Marta is my aunt. Her sister Giselle is my birth mom. That’s what’s going on. But she won’t tell me any more than that.”

“Who won’t tell you any more?”

My anger surged. “Marta.”

“Maybe she will if you give her some time.”

I sat up straighter against the tree, the jigsaw bark of the trunk against my back. More time? Maybe James was dating someone else. Maybe he didn’t want me to come home. “I don’t want to find my birth mom only to be rejected by her too.”

“There are worse things than being rejected.”

“Like?”

“Not being loved.” His voice was low and deep.

“Aren’t they the same?”

He was silent for a moment, and then he said, “No.”

I thought about that. I didn’t agree. “I’ve got to go.”

A minute later I texted Sean:
Are you still available for dinner? Let me know when and where
.

Where
was a Thai place in downtown Lancaster not far from the hospital.
When
was eight thirty, but before I met Sean I cut across to the Lincoln Highway and stopped at a coffee shop whose sign advertised free wireless
Internet, a place called the Morning Mug. I had ten minutes of Internet time before they closed. I turned on my laptop and ordered a cup of herbal tea. Immediately I logged onto the adoption site where I’d registered before I left Portland. I was supposed to get an email if anyone responded to my post, and so far I’d had nothing. First I clicked on to “Lantz,” now that I had a name, to see if there were any postings concerning me, but still there was nothing.