Read Online The Amish Midwife by Mindy Starns Clark, Leslie Gould - Free Book Online

kept. Sitting in my room, I looked at the photos again as I waited for him, flipping back past them in iPhoto to the previous photos too. Baby after baby. Some asleep; some bright eyed. A few yawning; a few screaming. Some with a shock of dark hair; some with no hair. Some with curly hair; some with straight. Some with fine hair so light it was transparent; two with red hair so bright it looked like flames.
    I didn’t have any baby pictures of myself. Not one. In fact, I only had a couple of photos from my childhood. One of me as a distant two-year old in the garden under the windmill. Another on my first day of school. Three with Mama the year before she died. One with Dad in the orchard when I was eight. It seemed to me that my parents only used one roll of film over a span of ten years. When I started working for Sophie, I saved up and bought a camera. It was my first big purchase.
    The intercom buzzed, and I pressed the button to tell James I would be right down. As I closed my laptop and gathered my things, I thought about our relationship and my urgent need to get away.
    Anyone else in my position, feeling this isolated and alone, would probably be trying to reel James in about now. So why wasn’t I? If one is feeling kinless, why not start a family? I knew other adopted girls who always had to have a boyfriend, who always wanted to be needed, who always needed to be wanted. That wasn’t me. Once I finally got through my ugly duckling phase and started dating, I would break up when the guy became too serious.
    James told me I did that because I was protecting myself. He said this happily at the time because we had been dating for six months, and he thought I’d made it past that phase with him. He wasn’t as happy now. Now he said I was pushing him away because I was afraid he would leave me, because I’d been traumatized by Dad “leaving” me. He was correct that I was pushing him away, but regardless of the reason, I was tired of his constant analysis. More than once, as he patiently outlined my actions in light of my damaged psyche, I was tempted to return the favor, telling him that his compulsion to practice psychology without a license was likely a natural defense mechanism against his own latent abandonment issues. Take that, Dr. James Nolan!
    I met him on the sidewalk under a flowering cherry tree that rainedpink petals on his head. He smiled as he brushed them out of his curls, but it was a melancholy smile with a hint of fear.
    We walked around my neighborhood, strolling along the sidewalks. I stopped to window-shop; James grew restless and shuffled his feet. I was hoping to eat at the Asian Bistro on Twenty-third Avenue, but we ended up at Pepinos for their five-dollar special. James refused to let me pay when we went out.
    “Tell me about Pennsylvania,” he said, unpeeling the foil from around his burrito. He knew I’d applied for the traveling nurse position; he knew I wanted to look for my birth family. In fact, I’d already posted my name, date of birth, and place of birth on the Pennsylvania adoption search site, hoping that someone from my family was looking for me too.
    I told him about Sophie’s phone call and my change of plans. “I’ll work for a week or two in Lancaster County and then go to Philadelphia for four months.” Chances were, even if I put the house and orchard on the market before I left, it wouldn’t sell before harvest. I had to be back in case anything went wrong.
    “Four months? Lexie, that’s a long time.”
    I nodded.
    “When were you going to tell me?”
    “Nothing’s certain yet. It’s just looking like this might be how it all plays out.”
    As he tilted his head, a pained expression passed over his face.
    I rushed on, telling him the midwife worked with the Amish.
    “So you’re going to be an Amish midwife?”
    I smiled, thinking how odd that sounded. “Well, technically I’ll be a midwife
to
the Amish. But just for a week or two.”
    “Is Marta