No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk by Tamar Myers Page B

of that. In the meantime I needed to find Freni and give her the news from home.
    I found Freni in the kitchen slicing pies and cakes. The woman never went beyond the eighth grade, and any fractions she may have learned in school have undoubtedly been forgotten, but nobody east of the Mississippi can match Freni when it comes to dividing a dessert into even portions. Her eye-knife coordination is truly a wonder, and when I found her she was surrounded by a cluster of admiring women. Of course, being Amish, they were careful not to praise her, lest she become proud, but I could see the admiration shining in their eyes.
    “Ach, there you are,” she said when she saw me. “Why weren’t you at the funeral, Magdalena?”
    “Well—uh—it wasn’t in English, was it? Anyway, Susannah and I went to the burial.”
    “I didn’t see you.”
    The women dispersed to allow us some privacy. “I was there, Freni. I was standing near the gate.”
    “Late again, Magdalena?”
    I struggled to curb my temper. It is Susannah who is habitually late, not me, and Freni should know that. “No. And I want to talk about something else. I called home this morning.”
    Freni laid a knife dripping blueberry filling on a cake with white icing. I said cutting was her specialty, not overall neatness. “Did you speak to Mose?”
    “No, I spoke to Aaron.”
    Freni gave me one of her “aha” looks. “And?”
    “And we can’t go back to Hernia tonight. Western Pennsylvania is snowed in. In fact, it looks like we might be stranded here for a couple of days.”
    The corners of Freni’s mouth began to twitch. “Several days? Why, that’s too bad.”
    “You don’t look heartbroken to me, dear.”
    Freni’s mouth had contorted into a rare smile. It was one of the few times I’d seen her teeth when she wasn’t yawning. “Of course I miss Mose and all but if you ask me, Ohio is the place to be. Hard work gets appreciated here.”
    I was stunned. Not only do I pay Freni well, but I am not shy with the compliments. Well, at least I don’t intend to be. “Just what is that supposed to mean?”
    Freni sliced the white cake, leaving a smear of blueberry on the first several pieces. “Maybe instead of me going back, Mose should come here. We could retire here. Sarah needs someone to help her with the chores, now that Yost is gone.”
    Freni may have sliced through my heart. “What are you talking about? How can you retire here and expect to fill in for a young man at the same time? Are things so bad in Pennsylvania? Am I that hard to work for?”
    Without wiping the knife, Freni began to work on another blueberry pie. “Our son John could come too. He’s young and strong.”
    “And married!” I said. Freni’s daughter-in-law Barbara is a sweet girl whose only discernible flaws are that she comes from Iowa and that John loves her.
    “Well! At least people here see my side of things. At least here people care. Unlike some, who don’t seem to care at all.” She pointed the knife at me for emphasis. Globs of blue and white goo clung to it precariously.
    I successfully resisted my urge to shake the little woman. The dress I was wearing was still quite new, and I didn’t know how easily it would shed icing.
    “Freni, you can’t pull up stakes and move to another state—especially at your age—just because you don’t get along with your daughter-in-law. Have you considered family counseling?”
    I might as well have asked her if she had ever considered a career as a belly dancer. Freni began gasping and puffing. She reminded me of Susannah that one time I held her head underwater too long at Miller’s Pond. Let me hasten to add that I was a child then, and cannot be held accountable for those intentions now. At any rate, I knew that it was time for me to scoot out of the kitchen. Three hundred years of pacifism have not altered our genes to the point that a full-fledged pie-and-cake fight is out of the question.
    Harriet from Goshen was