“Tell me where the ambulance is, Thelma, or I’ll crawl through this phone line, belly and all, and do to you what we did to that frog-oops! I’m sorry, Thelma, I really am. The Devil made me say that.”
There followed an unforgivably long pause. “I’ll forgive you, Magdalena, but only because you’re in the final stages of labor, and due to the mass poisonings at your church, there isn’t an ambulance available in the tri-county area.”
7
“This is no time for games, Thelma. Minerva J. Jay was the only victim of our pancake breakfast, as you well know.”
“You wish. After you left, twenty-three people came down with food-poisoning symptoms and we had to call in the rescue squads from Somerset and Blair counties to transport the victims to Bedford County Memorial Hospital.”
“That’s just not possible.”
“I don’t lie-like some people I know, Magdalena. Remember the time in English class when Mrs. Seibert asked you if you’d finished your term paper, and you said that you had, but you hadn’t even begun?”
“We’re all works in progress, dear. Even you. Anyway, I’m not in the final stages of labor, because I’ve only just begun. I’ll just have Chief Ackerman drive me into town.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible either. Your chief of police was pressed into service transporting the victims, but now he’s stuck on this side of the bridge.”
“Bridge? What bridge?”
“The one that spans Slave Creek. Isn’t that the only way in and out of Hernia, except for that painfully circu-uh-circu-no, it’s not circumference, uh-”
I may have lied to Mrs. Seibert, but at least I passed her course. “You mean circuitous,” I may have snapped. “What about it?”
“Goodness me, Magdalena, there’s no need to get snippy, just because you’re about to have a baby with no one but that creepy Sam Yoder to assist you.”
“I’m not about to-holy guacamole and a bowl full of chips,” I roared. The third contraction was more like a wave of contractions, each one stronger than the last, and if my language strayed from snack items, it really was not my fault so much as it was Eve’s. It was she, after all, who first bit into the forbidden fruit and then offered it to Adam. As part of Eve’s punishment, the Good Lord cursed her with the pain of childbirth.
Until now I’d never really given that particular part of the creation story a whole lot of thought, but suddenly it had relevance, and, if I might be so bold, it seemed perhaps more than a wee bit unfair. I mean, far be it from me to tell God how to structure his punishment scale, but shouldn’t Adam-and I mean this in the generic sense-also have to share in the pain of childbirth? Little Jacob got into my womb with some outside help, and if getting out of it was going to hurt so ding-dang much, then by rights my husband, Gabriel, ought to be made to share in the pain (Lord, that is only a suggestion, mind You).
“ Magdalena, are you there?”
“No,” I panted, “I’m off gathering mushrooms in the steppes of Mongolia.”
“Is that sarcasm again?”
“You think? Finish telling me about the bridge, Thelma, or you don’t get invited to this baby’s dedication.” As a Mennonite, I belong to a denomination that not only eschews, but practically abhors infant baptism. My ancestors faced death at the hands of the established church in Switzerland during the late 1500s, rather than submit to what they viewed as a senseless practice. The dedication of an infant to the Lord, however, has a sound biblical basis. Of course, Thelma needed no invitation if she merely wanted to attend the church service, but she knew that I was referring to the reception that would later be held at my house.
Thelma sighed. “Oh, all right, but you’re so bossy. Always have been. Anyway, one of the ambulances was crossing the bridge when this big truck carrying farm machinery comes barreling down the hill from the other direction. The ambulance driver-that was Rory from up in Altoona -just managed to squeeze by, but the truck jackknifed and slammed sideways into the rails. Magdalena, there’s no way you’re getting across Slave Creek unless someone carries you across in a stretcher. Even then, how will you get there?”
“Sam,” I bellowed, “get your truck!”
“I can’t,” he whined. “I tried to take my Dorothy into town last week and two tires blew. I haven’t had time to fix them.” Alas, he was probably telling the truth; the last time Dorothy had been weighed at Miller’s Feed Store, she’d tipped the grain scale at six hundred and eighty-four pounds.
“ Magdalena,” Thelma snarled, “did you just shout in my ear?”
“You would too if a watermelon was pressing down on your pelvis.”
“Aha, just as I thought. You’re a very lucky woman, Magdalena Yoder; this is one of those what I call ‘zip-zap’ deliveries. Only one in a thousand women gets to be this lucky.”
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!”
“Which is not to say that it isn’t without some discomfort. But like you said, you’re about to give birth to a watermelon. You can’t expect to get off scot-free.”
“Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!”
“Do you feel like you need to push?”
How in the Sam Hill could I answer that question when I was panting as hard as if I’d just run the Pittsburgh marathon?
“ Magdalena, did you take birthing classes? You know, like Lamaze?”
Oh, that I had! Mine has been a somewhat rocky marriage, and there have been a lot of things I’ve been intending to do but that I have put off until “things get better.” Of course, they never quite have.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Thelma said after my telling pause. “So, here’s what you’ll do-”
“Unnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnh!”
I gasped for air like a stranded carp. I had no doubt that this last contraction had done more than position Little Jacob for a “zip-zap” exit. The bugger was already on his way.
“But-I-want an-ep-i-dural!”
“It’s too late, Magdalena, even if there was a doctor standing right there. By the way, are you wearing panty hose?”
“What?”
“Oh, that’s right, I remember now; you wear sturdy Christian underwear and thick woolen stockings when the weather’s cold. Well, the good news is that the stockings can stay-”
I dropped the phone and instinctively lowered myself to a squatting position; Little Jacob had let it be known he was tired of our conversation.
“So that is how this little fella came to be born in Sam’s tawdry market, and me without a single drop of painkiller in my system,” I explained to the cluster of loved ones gathered around my bed in Bedford County Memorial Hospital. It was eight hours after the fact, and this was my bazillionth retelling of the story, but the first time that the entire bunch could assemble at the same time. The bridge had just been cleared.
If I must say so myself, Sam had done a remarkably good job of the delivery. He’d cut Little Jacob’s cord with a sterilized box cutter, cleared the little fellow’s air passages, bathed him, and swaddled him in an old apron that had been washed so many times, it was as soft as a pima cotton jersey.
My pseudo-cousin had even rustled up a semiclean set of sweat duds for me. It was the first time I’d ever worn pants. I might have been bothered even more by this very clear violation of Scripture had it not been for the fact that I had nothing on underneath them. Well, what’s done is done, right? Since then I’d been bathed by a coterie of nurses (I donated their lounge, after all) and dressed in a sex-appropriate gown-that is to say, one of my very own new flannel nighties that the Babester had brought from home.
“Nu,” my mother-in-law demanded, “you call dat a story? Mitt dis von I vas in labor for five days, not five minutes.”