The Death of Pie (18 page)

I knew for a fact that Pastor Nate was not about to let me have the last word. His jaw twitched, his Adam's apple bobbed and his lips parted. Fortunately, his insistence on the last word allowed me, the mere laywoman, to sin anon. This time I was wilfully rude; given my stilt-like legs and feet the size of jumbo jets, I was able to gallop out of earshot before his first utterance escaped him.

Once outside the church, in the fresh warm sunlight of a late summer's day, I considered what had just transpired. A young Mennonite pastor, previously presumed by me to be gay and closeted, was actually mourning the death of that awful Ramat Sreym! Talk about abominable behavior. What were the good folks of the First Mennonite Church of Hernia going to think about their Big Kahuna doing the Horizontal Hula with the hootchie-mama from Timbuktu – or wherever it was that she was from?

You can bet that they were as blind to these sins as a litter of newborn kittens. I can safely say this because within five minutes of anyone at the church becoming privy to gossip this juicy, said person will make a beeline for Yoder's Corner Market, stake a post by the cash register and remain there until everyone in town has heard the news. Believe me, this isn't malice in action that I describe; rather, it's a way of keeping the community informed, as well as a way for the gossiper to jockey for position in society – but in a gentle sort of way. At any rate, Cousin Sam would have called me immediately with news like this.

Needless to say, I was rather shaken by this smarmy revelation, not to mention my earlier conversation with my cousin's caustic wife. It is a good thing that I have long been considered a nervy woman, for many of my nerves had just been shot. So what exactly should a grumpy, gangly, galoot of a gal do at a time like that? Well, I don't know what she
should
do, but what I did was open my purse and extract a jumbo-size Snickers candy bar. The peanuts perked me up with their protein and, as always, the chocolate coating held a party in my mouth.

The identity of Ramat's killer was still a mystery, but God's in His Heaven and all is well in the world, just as long as a lady can cram an ooey-gooey and oh-so-chewy snack into her mouth and feel that sugar rush.

I
try to be the best person that I can be. When I was in fourth grade, Miss Kuhnberger drilled it into our heads that we should strive for excellence in everything that we attempted. It didn't matter if we were writing in our notebooks or tying our shoelaces. Every task was equally important, no matter how trivial. If Miss Kuhnberger sensed that we had not sufficiently applied ourselves to our respective jobs, she was more than happy to dole out a variety of punishments. Writing sentences was one of her favourites.

Therefore one can understand why I might feel the need to be
the
crabbiest woman in all of Hernia, or
the
most judgmental person in three counties, but I struggle against these temptations hour by hour, moment by moment. It is, I think, only because I own up to having these evil thoughts that I have garnered the reputation of being somewhat hot-headed and cantankerous, with a tongue that could slice through cold cheese. The truth, however, is that I'm a pussycat who, although too skinny to be cuddly-wuddly, is nonetheless in love with the fruit of her loins.

When I sailed through my back door and into my kitchen, I headed straight for Little Jacob. The love of my life was in his high chair, gumming a disgusting, salmon-colored paste. Globs of this particularly odoriferous baby food dotted Little Jacob's bib, the tray of his chair and his father's face and hair. When the Babester, the big man in my life, saw me, he practically dropped the small spoon he was using to feed our baby.

‘Thank goodness you're back, Mags! Little Jacob won't swallow; I think he hates this stuff.'

‘It's no wonder; your mother brought it over. It's something they made at the Convent of Perpetual Apathy. They want to test the market for a line of boutique baby foods. They were thinking of calling this one Babyhood Blahs. It contains liver and rutabagas.'

‘Yuck!'

‘I'll tell her it was a huge success – in the blah department. Where's Freni?'

‘Mose came by and took her home in the buggy. He said he doesn't want her coming back to work until you stop playing snoop woman. He said last time she nearly took a bullet on account of your shenanigans.'

‘
Snoop
woman? Those were his exact words?'

Gabe laughed, thus so did his son. Pureed liver and rutabagas never looked so disarming, nor yet so disgusting.

‘You know those Amish,' he said. ‘They have quite a way with words. This reminds me – speaking of wordsmiths – today is the day our own little Alison comes home from summer camp.'

My heart pounded and my mouth turned as dry as Nora Goodwin's pie crust. What kind of mother was I –
really
– if I could forget to pick up my thirteen-year-old daughter from her first-ever experience at an away-from-home camp? Perhaps all I was fit to do was to snoop – that, and maybe also fit to be tied.

‘Mags,' said my Dearly Beloved, for he was a mind-reader, as well as my stud-muffin, ‘you have had a lot on your mind. As soon as I wipe this slop off Bruiser's face we'll saddle up the horses and collect his big sister.'

Bruiser was the Babester's pet name for our cute
little
boy. It was totally inappropriate, if you ask me. Alison insisted on being called Alison; she always had. Alison had come into our lives just two years ago, but she is now our legally adopted daughter. A nosy person might ask about our daughter's origins, and if they did, they would get an earful. We happy hicks of Hernia are always delighted to speak at great length on topics of intensely personal stuff.

For instance, as I've said before, I was an inadvertent adulteress. It is, however, important that the word ‘inadvertent' be stressed. I didn't know that Aaron Miller was married, much less had a child, until long after his horse broke loose from the barn – so to speak. Even now I shudder when I recall that awful night and my first glimpse of a totally naked man. To this day I am unable to look at a turkey neck without blushing. Thanksgiving is forever ruined.

As for Aaron, after he'd had his way with me, he suddenly remembered his much younger, prettier wife that he'd left up in frozen Minnesota. So then the lying lowlife lolled lazily back up north to do the Lindy with his lass in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes. Well, one might ask, how low could two lowlifes go? The answer would be so low that they ship their only daughter off to stay on a ‘farm' with the pseudo-ex-wife of the very
inadvertent
adulterer.

Call me crazy – the list is already incalculably long – but Alison was literally dropped off in the middle of the night. She was eleven years old with a note pinned to her collar, and she was clutching a pillow case containing an extra set of clothes and the Miller family Bible. She was clueless as to where she was, or who I might be. She had been under the impression that they were driving from Minnesota to Disneyworld in Florida – a trip of over fifteen hundred miles – and suddenly she was put out of the car. ‘Here you go, sweetheart, Auntie Magdalena will take care of you for a while.'

Of course, I called the police. Back then Hernia was served by ‘Melvin the Mantis' Stoltzfus and his sidekick Zelda Root. Together they were as competent as a pair of garden slugs on tranquilizers. I called children's services in Bedford, and they asked me if I could possibly keep the child for another night – long story short, I fell in love with a spunky kid whose mouth was more than a match for my own. Sadly, the reason for that is genetics.

Aaron Miller grew up on Hertzler Lane, the farm directly across from ours. He was every sort of cousin to me – except a first which, some would reckon, made him either my brother or a member of the British Royal Family. Hence, his daughter Alison was a cousin of some rank as well, although since she was harder to force into a bath than a cat, sometimes she was just plain rank. But we got along famously – just as long as we weren't talking about boys (her favourite subject) or religion (mine). When Gabriel came into the picture, it was mutual love at first sight and when Little Jacob was born – well, Alison was over the moon with joy!

Alison slid into the role of doting big sister, even changing his dirty nappies. What truly astounded us was that rather than feeling threatened by the arrival of the baby, she seemed to feel more secure. It was as if adding an infant sibling was the cement that solidified the family. This is not to say that raising a teenybopper was a bed of roses, especially when said child was a state champion eye-roller. (Much to her shame, Alison placed only second in the Pouty Face Division.)

Now I will admit that I was disappointed when Alison decided to follow Gabe's religion instead of mine. She had been raised without any religious instruction, and perhaps I should have been happy that she accepted the idea of one God, but that's where she stopped. Try as I might, I could not coax her into believing in the concept of God in three persons: the Trinity.

‘That's
three
persons,' she said. ‘That's not
one
God. You're supposed to believe in one God.'

‘That's
three in one
,' I said. ‘That's like rain, ice, fog – they're all forms of H
₂
O.'

‘
What?
'

‘Well, if you don't believe in Jesus—'

‘Mags,' Gabe said, ‘you're better off letting her make up her own mind. You're not going to brow-beat her into your idea of Heaven.'

So that was that, I'm afraid. Gabe found a Reform rabbi who performed a
bris
– a ritual circumcision – on our son, and
voila
, suddenly this Mennonite woman of Amish heritage was now the mother of two Jewish children.
Ach du Leiber
, as Freni would say. Was this the American ‘melting pot' or what?

Of course, I hadn't a clue as how to raise a Jewish child, and if he were honest, Gabe would admit that Alison really didn't know her own mind at that stage of her life. Nevertheless, he did a little research and found a Jewish camp for ‘tweens' just outside of Pittsburgh called Camp Hora Galore. Initially, I didn't know that the hora was a Jewish folk dance (of course, the Babester knew) and was ‘
hora
-ified' when I heard the camp's name. At any rate, Gabe had signed Alison up for six weeks, and even though she claimed to be homesick I couldn't pry her out of there.

But all good things must end, even Camp Hora Galore. ‘How long is it until next summer?' Alison asked, before we'd even driven as far as the turnpike.

‘Ten years,' I said. In my defense, I thought she was joking.

‘Mom!'

‘One year, honey,' Gabe said over his shoulder, but with a wink to me. ‘Why do you ask?'

Alison sighed so hard she sent a flurry of dust motes into the front of the car. ‘Geez Louise, do I hafta tell ya everything?'

‘You do if you're going to swear, dear,' I said.

‘Never mind the bad grammar,' Gabe said.

‘Geez ain't hardly swearing, Mom,' Alison protested. ‘Ya'd know that if ya ever went out anywhere except for Mennoniteville.'

My first reaction was to reach back with a long, gangly arm and brace the baby's car seat, which was already buckled in securely, because the Babester immediately stomped on the brakes and swerved to the shoulder of the road. It's a good thing that we enforce a seatbelt rule, or else we would have instantly become a buzzard buffet, having been tossed out of the car like so many rag dolls. After our heads stopped bobbing and we'd all managed to catch a modicum of breath, Gabe released himself and turned his full attention to our daughter.

‘Now apologize to your mother,' he said.

Alison's eyes narrowed and her bottom lip projected a finger's-width in front of its companion.

Gabe waited a few seconds, but the only sounds to be heard were the purring of the engine, our continued heavy breathing and some rather noisy cicadas in the trees outside. ‘I said “apologize,” ' he said again.

Her eyes opened and rolled upwards until mostly the whites showed. ‘Oh, all right.
Saw
-reeee!'

‘Again.'

‘
What?
I said I was sorry.'

‘Now say it like you mean it.'

‘Darling,' I whispered to my husband, ‘you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.'

‘Hey! Don'tcha be calling me no names, Mom! Last time I checked it was you that had the horse's head – not me. And just so ya know, everyone thinks that ya laugh like a horse, too.'

I turned away from my dear daughter and focused my attention on a smudge of something on the dashboard upholstery. It was supposed to be fine-grain leather and it had cost an arm and a leg – well, not one of my gangly arms and legs; we couldn't have bought even a cheap plastic dashboard in exchange for one of my spindly limbs. Why, I once had a guest check into the PennDutch who owned a yacht (nothing new there). However, this gentleman's yacht came equipped with a bar, and the bar stools were upholstered with the foreskins of unborn whales. He claimed that whale foreskins were the softest leather on the planet, softer than the softest chamois …

‘Earth to Magdalena; come in Magdalena.'

‘Earth to Mom, come in Mom.'

I shook my head and rubbed my eyes. When I turned I could see that my sweet young daughter had replaced her doppelgänger in the backseat. Hair, forehead, nose, chin – they were all the same. It was only the eyes and the set of the mouth that were different, and oh what a difference.

‘Alison has something to say,' Gabe said without further ado.

‘Mom, I'm sorry that I was such a stinkpot,' Alison said, and I could feel that she meant it.