“Hello!” I called cheerily.
Catherine Keim appeared momentarily behind the neatly mended screen door. “Yah?” She sounded as wary as a cat at a dog show.
“My name is Magdalena Yoder and—”
“Ach, the detective!”
“I am not a detective,” I wailed. “I’m simply asking a few questions on behalf of Melvin Stoltzfus, the Chief of Police.”
Catherine simply stared at me. I stared back. I had often seen her from a distance—riding in the family buggy, or shopping at Miller’s Feed Store—but had never been privileged to have a close-up look.
The Bible instructs us not to judge others on their physical appearance, and I try not to. We cannot help the looks the Good Lord has chosen to give us. Were that the case, I would have no room in my bra for a feline, my feet would be four sizes smaller, and no Amish man would have to stifle his desire to hook me to a buggy and yell “giddyap.”
That said, please allow me the following charitable observations about Catherine Keim. The woman is no beauty. For one thing, she is a good twenty-five pounds overweight. For another, she has teeth like a jackrabbit. And did I mention that her ears protrude straight out from the sides of her head? And as long as I’m being frank, there is the not-so- small matter of her eyebrow. She only has the one—never mind that it stretches from temple to temple.
Having said that, I’m sure it will come as a big surprise to you that virtually everyone I know talks about how beautiful the woman is. “Too beautiful for her own good,” they say.
“Gorgeous”
“Just like the English.”
“God made the rose, and then he made Catherine Keim.”
That sort of thing.
Now that I had seen her close up, albeit through the screen door, I knew for a fact that all this profuse praise was unjustified. The woman was interesting, I’ll grant you that. Exotic even. But what made Catherine so interesting was not her face, nor was it her rather lumpy body. It was her coloring; Catherine Keim was unusually dark-complected for an Amish woman. Her skin was olive, her hair almost black, and her eyes glittered under that single brow like twin lumps of wet coal.
As a result of all this unexplained pigmentation, rumors abound about Catherine’s origins. Some say her people came from the Amish community in Paraguay, where they intermarried with the Indians. Other folks claim that she is of Middle Eastern origin. Still others hypothesize that she was left behind by a wandering band of gypsies.
But it just so happens that birth records show that Catherine was born in the environs of Hernia, as were her parents and grandparents before her. No doubt we share the blood of the same limited set of ancestors, only in different proportions. Unfortunately the dark and mysterious stranger who climbed into our family tree generations ago never made it over to my limb, and I was born a dishwater blonde whose locks eventually faded to plywood brown. I’m not jealous, mind you—I just don’t think it’s fair that everyone goes around calling her beautiful.
At any rate, although I may be able to stare down a parrot, I was no match for Catherine Keim. She stared at me calmly under her brow until I, fearing that I might be late for my date with Gabe the babe, finally cracked. I looked away. “It is imperative that I speak with you.”
She remained silent.
“Well?” I said, demanding some response.
“What does this imperative mean?”
“It means I must speak to you.”
“About Lizzie, yah?”
“Yah—I mean yes!”
“Then we speak,” she said, but made no move to invite me in.
I sighed. It had been a long day and my dogs were barking. A rocking chair and a nice glass of lemonade would have been very welcome. Still, the woman was willing to talk.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, dear, but from what I understand, your relationship with Lizzie was a good one, despite—how shall I put this—some disagreements with her husband?”
“Yah. Lizzie Mast was a kind woman.”
“Were you friends?”
She nodded almost imperceptibly. “I have ten sons, Miss Yoder. No daughters. Yah, Lizzie was a friend.”
“What did you think of her husband?”
“Ach! Not all God’s children are easy to love.”
“Apparently he feels the same way. Is it true that your sons ran over some of his animals with their car?”
“Car?”
“Tch, tch, Mrs. Keim. Pretending to be innocent is the same thing as lying.”
Her olive skin took on rose accents. “It is only a temporary thing, Miss Yoder. The boys are young. This thing will pass.”
“I’m sure it will, but does the bishop know?”
The rose accents deepened. “Benjamin says it is best not to bother the bishop with such small matters.” She paused. “And one must obey the husband, yah?”
I gave her a meaningful stare through the screen. “That depends on whether or not one’s husband is right. If one’s husband is a fool, then it would be foolish to obey him.”
“Ach, Miss Yoder, you speak so plain.”
“I do tend to get right to the point, don’t I? But anyway, running over pets is no small matter.”
“Yah, I understand, but these animals—these pets—they are all over the place. They come into our fields, even our barn, and eat what is meant for our cows.”
“I see. Well, this sounds like a problem that could be solved simply by checking the zoning laws. Surely, at least the larger animals have to be fenced.”
“You think that is so?”
“Quite possibly. I could check, if you like.”
“You would do that?” The sound of hope in her voice was touching.
“No problem. Now back to Lizzie, if you don’t mind. Joseph Mast said she baked a cake—a peace cake, as it were—but that you sent it back. Is that true?” Catherine mumbled something that even these sharp ears couldn’t pick up.
“What’s that, dear?”
She mumbled again.
“Speak up, please.”
“It is wrong to say what I said.”
“Maybe not, dear. Why don’t you let me be the judge? After all, I am a Sunday School teacher.”
“Yah?”
“Every Sunday at Beechy Grove Mennonite Church. I teach the seventh and eighth grades.”
My credentials apparently impressed her. Either that, or she had an overwhelming need to confess.
“Like I said, Miss Yoder, Lizzie was my good friend, but she was—ach, how do I say such a thing—”
“The world’s worst cook?”
The screen door flew open, banging my prominent and somewhat probing proboscis. “Come in!” she cried, as if greeting an old friend after a long absence.
I stepped into the Keim kitchen. It was like stepping back into the nineteenth century. The large cast iron stove was fueled with wood. At the sink there was a hand pump that drew its water from a well. Hot water could only be had by heating a heavy cast iron kettle. Some Amish use gasoline- or kerosene-powered refrigerators, but the Keims’s sect forbids this. They had, instead, an insulated metal and wood box into which they put ice from time to time. Apparently Haagen-Daaz was not high on their list of priorities.
Catherine motioned for me to sit on a simple wooden chair, one of the eighteen arranged neatly around a massive oak table. She took a chair closer to the door, and I could see by the light that played along her face that I had been right in my initial assessment; no beauty there. But like I said, it wasn’t her fault.
“So tell me about Lizzie’s cooking,” I said.
“Ach, even the pigs wouldn’t eat it.”
We both giggled.
“But still,” I said, switching to my grave voice, “it wasn’t very nice to send the cake back. Not after you’d taken a few slices.”
Catherine hung her head in shame. “Yah, that was not the right thing to do. My Elam took it back. He is the oldest. He said Joseph was trying to poison us and was using Lizzie to do it.”
“That’s quite an imaginative boy.”
“Yah. I was not home at the time, or I would have stopped him. But then, Miss Yoder—”
“Please, call me Magdalena.”
“Yah, Magdalena. So my Benjamin whips Elam. He breaks even a buggy whip. The boy has been punished,” she said firmly.
I nodded. The Amish might be pacifist in their dealing with the outside world, but the Biblical injunction not to spare the rod is taken seriously.
“Was that the end of your friendship with Lizzie?”
“Ach, no! It was not her fault she had a crazy hu¬band. She still needed a friend, yah?”
“I don’t think Joseph’s crazy,” I said kindly. “I think he suffers from flashbacks.”
Her brow puckered like the hem on a badly sewn dress. “What is this flashbacks?”
“Bad memories, dear. Joseph Mast fought in Vietnam. A lot of those men went through horrible, indescribable experiences. For some, the experiences have been impossible to let go of. Joseph is one of those.”
She nodded again. “Yah, these wars the English make, always there is so much suffering.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, dear.”
“What is this choir, Magdalena?” The Amish use neither choirs nor musical instruments in their services.
I smiled and explained.
“Does this choir visit the sick?”
“The pastor does that. And we have teams of volunteers that see shut-ins as well.”
“And who visits the lonely, Magdalena?”
“Well, uh—anyone I guess. Why do you ask?”
“Because Lizzie Mast was very lonely and I did not see visitors.”
I should have seen that one coming. My guilt quotient soared to dangerous levels. Any higher, and I would find myself washing dishes in a Bedford soup kitchen or changing sheets in the hospice.
“Didn’t she have any visitors? Any friends besides you?”
“Two times only do I see someone visit, but I do not think they are friends.”
“Oh? Who were they?” Catherine was volunteering more than I’d hoped for.
“Gertrude Troyer—”
“Which one?” I could think of half a dozen. Catherine glanced around the room. It was a guilty look if ever I saw one.
“The one who is married to Jacob the Handsome.”
I winked. “Gotcha. And who was the other, dear?”
“Thelma Hershberger. The post office lady.”
“When were these visits?” I tried to make it sound like a casual question, but even to my own ears I sounded like the Gestapo.
Catherine jumped to her feet. “Ach, I have the manners of the English! You must be hungry, yah?”
“I’m ravenous but—”
“The supper is not yet ready but there is some shoofly pie here on the counter”—she scratched her thick dark braids with a finger the color of honey— “ach, it is gone! The boys,” she said, turning with a smile. “Jonah has sweet teeth.”
“You mean a sweet tooth.”
“Yah, at Miller’s Feed Store he wants always the candy with the English soldiers on it.”
I put my brain into high gear. “You mean Three Musketeers!”
“Yah, that is the one. Boys,” she said, as if that explained everything.
As if on cue, three little boys tumbled into the kitchen from the adjacent room. One was a toddler, the other two just barely older. Remarkable, all three were towheads.
“Mutter,” said the tallest, “how long yet until supper?” He said this in Pennsylvania Dutch.
“When the men are done milking.” Catherine turned and glanced at a windup clock on the window sill behind her. “Ach, it is time to start the beans!”
I glanced at the worldly watch on my bony wrist. “Ach!” I squawked. “It’s time to get ready for my date! From what I hear, those New York types don’t like to wait.”
Catherine’s brown eyes widened. “Yah?” She seemed quite willing to delay supper preparations if I was willing to dispense some juicy details.
“Later,” I cried, and hustled my bustle out the door.
But the second I saw my car, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. Not for a long time. Maybe even never.