The Amish Midwife - By Mindy Starns Clark Page 0,64

that to herself? Would Giselle have known?

I had to go back to Klara’s. I would pack my things tonight, go by the house in the morning, and then head to Harrisburg. By tomorrow I’d be back in Philly.

Giselle. The mystery mother. There hadn’t been anything posted on the registry when I checked the day before.

My thoughts bounced around as I listened to the heartbeats of the babies and took the blood pressures of their mothers, recording each detail in their charts. Most of the women asked about Marta. I told them she needed to take some time off. That was all. Now that I had examined close to fifteen clients, I began to try to figure out the connections between the women, guessing at who might be sisters or sisters-in-law. But the women would lower their eyes and not respond. Finally the last patient of the afternoon, a woman in her late thirties named Peggy, told me, gently, that Amish women didn’t talk much about pregnancy.

I was dumbfounded.

“Why not?”

She shrugged. “It might be a little bit superstition. Also, we don’t draw attention to ourselves.”

“But how can women who live so close to each other not talk about the most important thing in their lives?” I draped my stethoscope over my shoulder.

“Well, we have our husbands and our other children and our work to keep us busy. We have plenty to talk about.”

That was true.

She checked the position of her bonnet with her hands. “It’s just the way we Plain folk do things,” she said. “That’s all.”

I nodded, even though I could barely comprehend what she was saying.

I glanced at the clock on the desk. It was four thirty. “Will you still have to fix dinner when you get home?”

“Oh, no,” she answered. “My oldest daughters are doing that.” She slung her black cape over her shoulders. She’d just told me her oldest child was twenty and her youngest was four. She had seven in between. “I’m going to stop by the big box store.”

“The what?” My voice cracked as I tried to imagine the woman at a Costco or Sam’s or BJ’s.

“Ya, it’s not too far out of the way.” She spoke in a lighthearted, carefree manner.

She was eight and a half months pregnant. I imagined her lifting cases of cans into her buggy. But cans of what? Wouldn’t she put up fruits and vegetables herself? Maybe she bought toilet paper and laundry detergent.

Or maybe she just browsed. Soon she would have baby number ten, and it might be a while until she got out of the house by herself.

“We’re having services at our house come Sunday,” she explained. “And I’m also stocking up for when the baby comes.” She fastened the top hook and eye of her cape.

I couldn’t help myself. “What do you buy there?”

“Everything. Frozen pizzas. Lasagna. Canned goods. Soups.” She smiled. “Paper products. Socks. Towels. Whatever it is I need. The prices are good.”

She tied her black bonnet under her chin as I walked with her to the door. Dark clouds had blown in during the afternoon. “Drive safely,” I said as she climbed into her buggy, trying to shake off another misconception I had of the Amish.

“Ya,” she said. “I always drive carefully.”

Ella had told me several buggy crashes occurred every year. Collisions with cars. Nighttime wrecks. Even an accident involving a snowmobile last winter.

I waved and watched the woman pull onto the highway, her horse practically prancing as he gathered momentum on the blacktop. Peggy smiled and waved. In a second she was gone.

The front door slammed and Zed appeared, a hoodie in his hands. He glanced at me but didn’t speak. He shoved his arms through the sleeves of the sweatshirt as he made his way around the side of the house. The air had grown damp and chilly. As I walked back to the office, the sound of an ax rang out from the backyard. The front door slammed again, and Ella came out with the scrap bucket for the chickens.

“Hello,” I called out to her.

She waved and then veered away from the path to the coop and toward me.

“What’s up?” I asked.

She wasn’t wearing her bonnet, and strands of hair had come undone from her bun. “Mom wanted some peace and quiet. She had a phone call and now she’s upset.”

“Oh.”

“She said she needed time on the computer and we needed to go outside.”

I’d been hoping to check if there was a registry message on Zed’s computer, but it looked as