Butter Safe Than Sorry Read Free Page A

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