The Amish Midwife - By Mindy Starns Clark Page 0,39
began to contort her features told me what I wanted to know. I had already guessed her age and done the math, realizing that she had been a preteen when I was born—old enough to fall in love with the infant of a sibling or a cousin or a neighbor. Old enough to remember, all these years later, when that infant had been whisked away, never to return.
“Right now I’m not asking you the name of my mother or father,” I persisted. “I’m not asking you to spill someone else’s deep, dark secrets. All I’m asking is for you to tell me about you. When you were a little girl. Did you ever see me in person?”
Though we were nearly back to the house by that point, Marta surprised me by putting on her blinker and pulling over to the side of the road. After the car bumped to a halt she put it in park, buried her face in her hands, and quietly wept. Between her problems with work and my persistence in my quest, I realized the poor thing was practically at the breaking point. As tough as she seemed, I had to wonder if she was in danger of being pushed too far, if in fact my presence here had already put more on her than she was capable of handling right now.
A part of me wanted to reach out to her, to pat her on the shoulder, to tell her never mind, that it was okay, that I would stay and help regardless. But instead I sat perfectly still and waited to see what would happen next. Finally, she dug a tissue from her pocket, wiped her eyes, and blew her nose. When she had managed to pull herself together, she sat back against the seat and looked off into the distance, sorrow radiating from her red, swollen eyes.
“The first time I held you, I counted your toes,” she whispered, which brought on a fresh round of sobs.
The first time I held you, I counted your toes.
As she sat next to me and cried, I blinked away tears of my own and tried to let her words sink in. She had known me. She remembered. It wasn’t much, but it was a piece of my story.
Heart suddenly surging with joy, I waited for more, but after she pulled herself together again, she put the car in drive and eased back onto the road. Obviously, that was all she was going to give me for now. I decided that was okay. If nothing else was forthcoming from her right away, I could always try more deliberately later with Ella.
“Thank you for telling me that,” I said, reaching out to give her arm a squeeze. “In exchange, I believe you just earned yourself one day’s worth of midwifery.”
The next afternoon, after I finished the last prenatal appointment of the day, I filed the folder into the metal cabinet and then turned my attention to Marta’s desk. There were a couple of handouts on nutrition and exercise that clients hadn’t taken with them. I filed those too and then locked the cabinet, slipping the key into the pocket of my jeans.
It had rained all afternoon, but as I closed the door to the little office the drops stopped, and a few rays of sunshine streamed down through the pine trees. Marta had instructed me to tell all of her clients that she was taking the day off; that was all I was to say—nothing more and nothing less. It was clear, both yesterday afternoon and today, from the responses of the women, that Marta had never taken a day off before.
I turned the knob to the front door of the cottage, eased the door open slowly, and stepped inside.
“Loser.” Ella stood in the archway to the dining room, her left hand making an “L” with her thumb and index finger, scowling at Zed, who sat at the desk, his hands on the keyboard of the computer. “You can’t do this to me. I have homework to do!”
“What do you think I’m doing?” Zed didn’t look at her as he spoke but kept his gaze ahead on the screen and his hands on the keyboard.
“I think you’re instant messaging.”
He turned toward her, his face red. “Yeah, I am, about homework.” He flicked his bangs away from his forehead.
“I wish mom had never brought you here!” Ella planted hands on her hips.