Just Plain Pickled to Death by Tamar Myers Page B

I maintain that I am a nonviolent person, and when I closed the parlor door behind me, I put that ugly scene right out of my mind.
    I found Lizzie on the front porch, in one of the white wicker rockers I put out seasonally. She had commandeered a little wicker table and was doing her nails. Frankly, I was shocked. She was the very first Mennonite I’d seen to be thus engaged. Susannah, who barely qualifies as a lapsed Presbyterian, doesn’t count.
    I would have told Lizzie that nail polish drew unwanted attention to her huge hands, but she seemed glad for my company, so I curbed my tongue.
    “Who or what is the Bottomless Pit?” I asked pleasantly.
    Her eyes narrowed as well. “Family business, dear.”
    “Well, I am practically family, aren’t I?”
    “Yes, as a matter of fact you are. But you really don’t want to know any sooner than you have to. Trust me.”
    I nodded. I would simply ask Freni. She would know. I could afford to switch the subject.
    “Nice out here today, isn’t it?”
    “I love this place,” she agreed enthusiastically.
    “Thank you. I’m rather fond of it myself.”
    “Of course! No, what I meant was I love Hernia. It’s so peaceful here.”
    “Hernia? Is Du Bois a big city?”
    She had a cultivated laugh, the kind you would expect from a woman with platinum hair. “Compared to Hernia, it is. God, I miss it here.”
    I was both stunned and thrilled. I had never known a Mennonite woman—one still active in her church—who used the name of our creator casually like that in a sentence. I didn’t approve, mind you, but it excited me to think that there was another way of looking at things besides my own, and besides that of those folks who were obviously headed for hell in a hand basket. Like the Presbyterians and the Methodists.
    “I’ve always wanted to travel,” I said wistfully. “This year I got to go to Farmersburg, Ohio, but that’s it. And I’ve never lived anyplace else.”
    “Count your blessings.”
    That was easy for her to say. She was polishing the nails on her right hand, and her left hand wasn’t even trembling. Clearly, she felt no wrong. Heaven and nail polish too! One couldn’t get any more blessed than that.
    “If you like it here so much, why did you leave? Was it Uncle Manasses’s job?”
    She gave me a queer look. “His job?”
    “Just guessing.”
    “You guessed right. Manny was a tobacco salesman. He used to travel all the time, so we could have made his base of operations anywhere. But you know how folks around here are.”
    “Yup. Susannah claims that Hernia is the buckle on the Bible belt. Our cousin Sam, who owns the only food market, was picketed when he added wine vinegar to his stock.”
    She laughed till she shook. “Oh, shit,” she said. “See what you made me do?”
    Hopefully I hadn’t caused her to swear. Nails, I supposed, could be fixed, but Mama spinning in her coffin was a grave matter.
    “Auntie Lizzie, could I ask you some personal questions?”
    “Lizzie, please. And there’s no need to ask. That isn’t Manny’s real hair color. Or the color of his mustache either. When I started coloring my hair—I do, you know—Manny had to follow suit. He thought if I was going to look young, then he had to as well. Like I would step out on him!”
    That wasn’t what I was going to ask, but I decided to run with it. “Forgive me if this is a painful subject, but did your sister Rebecca really run off to the Poconos with an accordion-playing preacher?”
    She knocked the polish bottle over, but an oversized hand righted it again before any damage was done.
    “Who told you that?”
    “Heard it around,” I said. As much as Freni irritates me, I would rather put bamboo slivers under my fingernails than betray her. I’d even rather eat fried liver and mashed turnips, which says a lot.
    “Well, there was an accordion player, but she sure as hell didn’t run off with him.”
    “Again, I don’t mean to be rude, but how can you be