The Amish Midwife - By Mindy Starns Clark Page 0,31

a simple quilt folded at the end. A kerosene lamp sat on the table beside the bed. The walls were completely bare, and there were no knickknacks or photos on the dresser, but there was a photo by her bed of what appeared to be a much younger Marta and a handsome early twenties-age man with blond hair.

“What do you need?”

I spun around.

Marta faced me. She wore the same dress as yesterday and the same head covering.

My face reddened and I stuttered. “I had a box with me last night.” I took a deep breath. “It’s gone.”

“No. It’s under your bed. I put there for safekeeping.” She reached around me and pulled the door to her room shut.

“Oh.” I stepped toward the alcove. “Thank you.”

“We’ll leave in fifteen minutes,” she said.

“I’ll get a quick shower and be ready.”

As she descended the stairs, I knelt down and with my hand searched the area under the bed. The box was there. Perfectly safe.

“Sally Gundy is a new mom,” Marta said. We were in her car again, making our way along a country road. “Her family is in Ohio, but she and her husband live here with his kin on their property.”

Kin. I shivered from my still damp hair. “How far along is she?” I held my camera in my hand.

“Six months.”

“Any complications?”

Marta shook her head.

We rode in silence past a one-room schoolhouse. A group of children played baseball in the yard, including girls in their dresses. “Is that an elementary school?” I asked, snapping a photo of the children’s backs as we passed by.

“It goes through the eighth grade,” Marta answered.

“Are there Mennonite schools?”

“Yes.”

“Do Ella and Zed go to one?”

Marta glanced at me quickly and then back at the road. “No. They attend public schools.”

“How old are they?”

“Almost sixteen and thirteen.” These terse answers weren’t going to get me anywhere close to the information I really wanted.

“Ella seems quite capable,” I said.

“She’s had to be.”

I’d already noted Marta didn’t wear a wedding ring, though that didn’t necessarily mean much. Most Mennonites back home didn’t wear wedding rings, so maybe the ones around here didn’t either. Regardless, I could see no reason to believe she had a husband, not even one who was away on business or something. Other than the photo in the bedroom, there were no signs of a man having been around at all, and there had been no mention by the kids of a father, past or present. It was pretty clear Marta was a single mother.

She turned onto a narrow lane. A moment later a compound of buildings appeared in front of us. Two of them were houses, and then there was a large warehouse behind them and some other outbuildings, including a barn. At least ten carriages were parked along the side of the warehouse in a row, and in the adjacent pasture a large group of horses grazed. Lined along the warehouse were sections of picket fences and planters shaped like wheelbarrows, and one even had a wooden windmill attached to it.

I slipped my camera into my bag and followed Marta across the lawn toward the smaller house. An older woman on the porch of the larger house called out, and Marta waved and said, “How are you this morning, Alice?”

“Gut,” the woman answered. Her hair had the blondish-white look of an aging redhead, and she wore a freshly starched cap. Two little girls, likely twins, slipped out the screen door onto the porch. They both wore miniature caps with thin brown braids poking out from underneath.

“Mammi,” one of them cried happily. The older woman turned and scooped up the child into her arms, and then she faced us again and smiled.

In the distance the sound of a saw hummed. A sliding door to the warehouse was open, and a cloud of sawdust billowed out.

Marta picked up her pace as she marched across the lawn. “Sally and her husband, John, live out here in the smaller house,” she explained, “though it’s going to get a bit tight once the baby comes.”

“Is that John’s mother?” I asked, nodding my head back toward the big house.

“No. His grossmammi.” Marta exhaled. “Grandmother, I mean.”

I glanced back to see the older woman now sitting on the steps, an apple-cheeked twin on each side of her. Another woman appeared at the back door and called out toward the warehouse. “Ezra Gundy!”

The sawing stopped, and the cloud of sawdust began to dissipate.

“Ezra!” the woman yelled again, louder this time. “You didn’t finish