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
“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.
“I know of a top-notch facility in the Poconos. She’ll have round-the-clock supervision and all the talk therapy she can handle-plus, since she’ll be in a safe environment, they’ll be free to experiment with her medication levels.”
Freni nodded, which took a bit of effort, seeing as how she has no neck. “So this is the Clooney bin of which they speak?”
“Of which who speaks?” Gabe demanded, his brown eyes flickering.
“Ach,” Freni squawked, “folks!”
By “folks” she meant just about everyone in our tightly knit community of Mennonites, Baptists, Methodists, and yes, Amish, all of whom shied away from seeking help for so-called mental illnesses. The Lord was supposed to be able to fix what was wrong with us. Sometimes, however, the Devil got such a strong hold on a person that he or she was unwilling to shake his- or herself loose from demonic possession, and again turn to the healing power of Christ. Only then, and this happened very rarely, did one of our own get shipped off to a loony bin somewhere, and usually those folks never returned.
“The word is ‘loony,’ ” Gabe said sadly, “not ‘Clooney’-although our Magdalena -at least the one we used to know-is very found of George. Anyway, Freni, we don’t call them loony bins anymore; it isn’t PC.”
“Personal computers, yah?
“Me either,” said Gabe, his voice breaking.
I spent three and a half months in the West Pocono Home for the Emotionally Challenged. There I was deconstructed, reconstructed, and instructed in the basics of good mental health. But although I recovered to the point that I could be engaged in meaningless conversation, I felt as if I had yet to recover my oomph.
“We need to help her find a way to get her mojo back,” my Beloved said on one of his weekly visits.
“Ya,” my Jewish mother-in law said. “Dis von needs her mo-Jew.” Although Ida was born Jewish, she is now Mother Superior to a convent operated by the Sisters of Perpetual Apathy.
“Ma,” said the Babester, “do you think you can help?”
Believe me, I heard the words. I was just incapable of protesting. When one is in the deepest of depressions, taking any action, even one as simple as speech, is an intense struggle. To step once again into a head-on confrontation with the mother-in-law from you-know-where (Manhattan) was flat-out impossible. My mouth simply refused to take directions from my brain. I may as well have been encased in Plexiglas; at least then I would have made a very comely coatrack.
“Of course, bubbeleh,” Mother Superior said to her son. “Zee sisters und I vill vait on her hand und giant foot. She vill be vell taken care of. Een zee meantime you take wery good care of mine grandson-zee leetle pisher-ya?”
“Thanks, Ma, I’ll bring her right over.”
And he did-just as soon as he was finished retying himself to his mother’s apron strings. In all fairness, gratitude will do that to one, just as much as desperation. I’m sure that if our roles had been reversed, I too might have thrown myself gratefully into the hands of a ready-built support system-or, more accurately, thrown my spouse. Somewhere. I’d rather not say where.
3
The Sisters of Perpetual Apathy operate the Convent of No Hope, which is located directly across the road from my bed-and-breakfast, the PennDutch Inn. The purpose of this new quasireligious order is to haphazardly assist others in their search for a life of meaningless existence. Complete and total apathy is the depth to which they all aspire to sink. Why make any effort, they preach, if life is just going to kick the manure out of you? In fact, why even care that it does? Just exist! Want nothing, feel nothing, care about nothing and no one, and you will be blessed with an abundance of pain and disappointment, but perhaps not quite as much as if you’d invested any hope in your life. Hope-now
Given the disastrous downturn of the economy beginning in ’08, and the vast number of home foreclosures, a shell-shocked public welcomed the opportunity to go numb. “Novocain for the masses,” one pundit observed, coining a brilliantly original phrase. At any rate, the Sisters of Perpetual Apathy became a huge movement with chapters in all fifty states, and even spawned a corresponding men’s movement called the Brothers of Eternal and Abject Disillusionment.
The convent building is an old farmhouse where my pseudo- first husband grew up. The house was added to several times, and finally the barn was torn down and a huge dormitory wing was built. Because my current, and
One day Sister Distemper was particularly cross with me on account of the fact that I accidentally dribbled marinara sauce down the white starched bib of my guest apron. After lunch, instead of taking me back to my room for my usual nap, Sister Distemper sat me out on the patio to wait until Sister Disarticulate took over from her at the four o’clock shift change. Frankly, this state of affairs pleased me-that is to say, as much as anything could. By then it was late spring, so the weather was pleasant and the air was filled with birdsong.
Just minutes before the good sister was supposed to take over the new shift, a very large pigeon flew overhead and dropped its enormous deposit on top of my head. The back of my head was covered by an organza prayer cap, but the bird’s black-and-white offering landed toward the front; in fact, the more liquid aspect of this unwanted gift had begun to dribble down my forehead and channel into my deeply etched frown line.
That precise moment, the passage of the passerine and the passing of its poop, was like a switch being flipped in my brain. Just like that, I went from a near-vegetative state to the tart-tongued endearing old soul I used to be. I rose from the wicker rocker like a modern-day Lazarus from the dead, threw off the hideous turquoise-and-slime green afghan that had been wrapped around my shapely shoulders, and shook a slim fist at the son of a squab.
“You come back here, you rat with wings!”
Sister Disarticulate was temporarily at a loss for words. “You-you’re back!”
“As big as life and twice as ugly,” I said.
“Whum?” she said.
“Nothing. That’s just something my first husband used to say-except that he wasn’t legally my husband, which meant that we were cohabitating without the bonds of matrimony-oh dear, this must shock you, you being a nun and all.”
“I’m not here at noon. I’m merely a cistern.”
I ran that through my awakening brain. “But nuns, sisters-they’re all the same, right?”
“Gracious, no. I’m not Catheter, nor even Despicable; I’m a Pigeon.”
I pointed to my head. “Nonsense, dear.
