I still don’t know if it was the impact that caused it, or if the robber was trigger-happy, but the gun did indeed go off. Fortunately the bullet barely grazed Amy, doing more damage to her blouse than her upper arm. Still, she screamed and staggered backward, eventually tripping and falling. It was at about this point that the two trash can-like guards awoke from their fear-induced coma and began to stumble about like a pair of drunks. Add to this craziness the antics of the bank manager and the two other clerks, and the lobby suddenly resembled a three- ring circus.
Apparently all this activity was just too much for the simple Amish felons, who mercifully hightailed it out of the bank without another word, and more important, without firing another shot. However, the police did not show up for another five minutes. In fact, when they did show up, it was only because I had called them on my cell phone.
“Nine-one-one,” the dispatcher said in a disarmingly cheery voice.
“Uh-there’s been a bank robbery. At the First Farmer’s Bank.”
“ Magdalena, is that you?”
“Hedda?”
“Yup, that’s me: Hedda Schnurmeister, although you used to call me Hedda Gabbler, on account of I used to talk so much, although I never did get the connection. But it’s Hedda Winkler now, and if I recall correctly, you’re no longer-”
“Shut up-please, Hedda. Like I said, there’s been a bank robbery. Put me through to the police.”
“Holy salami! Are you sure? How much money did they get?”
“Well, they didn’t get anything because my son-you never saw a braver hero in all your born days-confronted them. But they did shoot Amy Neubrander in the left arm, so make sure you dispatch an ambulance as well.”
“Hold on, Magdalena, will you? I’ve got another call coming in.”
“But, Hedda-”
I waited two minutes for her to get back on the line. In the meantime, I directed the security guards as they tore a three- inch-wide strip from the bottom of my petticoat and wrapped it like a tourniquet around Amy’s arm. As we were doing this, Little Jacob cooed to her in a mixture of Pennsylvania Dutch, Yiddish, and, of course, English. The tyke is growing up trilingual, thanks to a Jewish grandmother and an Amish cousin who are living and working in close proximity. (For the record, neither of these women is “R” deficient.)
“ Magdalena, are you there?”
“Of course. Where’s the ambulance? Where are the police?”
“Hold your horses, Magdalena; I’m about to send them. You’re not going to believe this, but there’s been an honest-to-goodness bank robbery in this town-well, an attempt at one, at any rate. That was the bank president on the line just now. He said that an incredibly brave little boy put a stop to it. And I mean a little boy too-like three or four.”
“He’s four. He can’t say his ‘R’s and he’s small for his age, but other than that, he’s completely normal.”
“Yeah? How would you know?”
“Because he’s my son, you-you-nincompoop!”
“Why, Magdalena Yoder, is that any way for a good Mennonite woman to talk?”
I am, indeed, Magdalena Yoder-I am, in fact, Magdalena Portulacca Yoder Rosen. There are those who would claim that I am anything but a good Mennonite woman, and that my apple has not only fallen far from the tree, but it has rolled out of the orchard altogether. Of course they are wrong.
A good Mennonite woman should be humble, and if I must say so myself, I am quite proud of my humility. A good Mennonite woman should be soft-spoken, never judgmental, always striving to be Christ-like. Well, let it be known that I offer observations, not judgments, and I am quite capable of whispering them. As for a Christ- like demeanor, let us not forget that the Dear Lord exhibited a great deal of agitation when he happened upon the moneychangers in the temple, and if this is the example I choose to emulate, who then are others to judge me?
Of course there remains the fact that I married outside my faith. This seems to stick in the craws of many of my coreligionists, never mind that the man I married is of the same faith as Jesus Himself, plus his mother, stepfather, and most of the disciples. The One Way contingent not only believes that the Babester will burn in Hell for all Eternity, but some of them demand that I believe that as well. A few of the more pious have informed me that I have endangered my own soul in a sort of Singe and Sizzle by Association (the Babester ’s words, not mine) theology.
At any rate, I have tried to be a good Mennonite woman, I tried to be a good big sister (at that, I did fail miserably), I try to be a good wife, and I try to be a good mother. However, when I saw my only child, that integral part of me who grew beneath my heart for eight and a half months, come so close to being murdered that day in the bank, something within me finally snapped.
The more vindictive in our community were overheard to say cruel things like “Magdalena’s gone bonkers, Magdalena ’s berserk, she’s stark-raving mad, nuttier than one of Elvina’s fruitcakes”-the list of pejorative descriptions was longer than Cynthia Bertelsmann’s abnormally long arms. Even Freni, my best friend and kinswoman, is said to have muttered, “I think maybe the little bird has flown from her clock, yah?”
Ironically, it was Freni, perhaps the least educated of my analysts, who came closest in her description. It wasn’t that I was running around foaming at the mouth whilst spouting nonsense; I was doing quite the opposite. The cuckoo had flown the clock, and since there was no one home anymore, I-as represented by the clock-was shutting down.
The first thing to go was my appetite; only Freni noticed that. Meanwhile joie de vivre seeped out of me like sap from a tapped maple tree. In short order my sex drive dried up like a cut day-lily left to wither on hot pavement; only Gabriel noticed that. It wasn’t until it became too burdensome to think, and therefore to talk, that those outside my immediate family noticed the change in my personality.
Again it was the perceptive Freni who diagnosed me first. “So,” she said to Gabe, and right in front of me too, “about our Magdalena, I have been thinking.”
“Yes?”
“She has the post-pardon expression.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Ach, not that one. The other one. The post-pardon.”
“I see.” And Gabe did. He’s fifty, and she’s seventy- six; he’s Jewish, she’s Amish; he’s a cardiologist, she’s a cook, but somehow the two of them ended up sharing the same brain wave that deals with communication.
“Yet it is clear that you do not agree,” she said.
“Freni, it’s been four years since Little Jacob was born. If it was postpartum depression, we would have seen signs of it before this. I think it is generalized depression brought on by the trauma of what happened at the bank.”
As they talked, they calmly peeled potatoes for supper. It was just as if I wasn’t there-but I was, sitting ramrod straight on a chair in the corner, because that was how Gabe had positioned me, and even slumping seemed like it was too much effort. Thank Heaven the little one was spending the day with Freni’s grandchildren on the Hostetler family farm.
“Is there a pill for such a thing?” Freni asked.
“Yes and no. There are several medications that can help, but she also might benefit from some talk therapy.”
“Yah, that one can talk.”
Gabe set peeler and spud in the sink and slid an arm affectionately around my kinswoman. Normally, that would have been twice as much contact as she might have experienced during a reproductive cycle with her husband, Mose, but the Babester has killer good looks, and Freni has had a crush on him since day one.