Tamar Myers - Batter off Dead

“My parents were squished.”

“Cool-I mean, ouch! I’m sorry.”

“Alison, what are you doing under your brother ’s crib?”

“It’s comfortable down here.”

“It is? But you hate the floor; when you have sleepovers-”

“Okay, if I tell ya, will ya promise ya won’t get mad?”

“Did you wet your bed? That’s all right, dear-two words, of course-although you have been reminded a million times that the last thing you should do before retiring for the night is use the little girls’ room.”

“Ya see, Mom, you’re already mad, ain’t ya, and I ain’t even had a chance ta tell ya.”

I prayed silently for patience and understanding. This is my least answered prayer. Then again, it is, perhaps, the one into which I put the least amount of effort.

“I’m not mad, dear. Nor am I angry. I’m tired, and in the mood for an I told you so. But I’ll try to hold back now, I promise.”

Alison can tell when I’m calling on divine help, and sometimes she even tries to cooperate. “Ya know that picture ya have on your dresser of that mean old woman?”

“Grandma Yoder?”

“Yeah. Well, she was here.”

“A cold cliché just ran up my spine,” I said.

“What?”

“A chill. You saw a ghost.”

“What else is new?”

“You’ve seen her before?”

“Lots of times. That old lady-I mean Great-Granny Yoder-is all the time coming in here and checking on me. She gets really mad if I don’t put away my stuff. And sheesh, you should see how much she hangs around Little Jacob.” She rolled out from under the crib and sat facing me cross-legged. “Ain’t ya seen her, Mom?”

“I have, but not for a long time. Not since I discovered that the Yoders weren’t my birth parents.”

“Yeah, but aren’t your real parents the ones who raise ya?”

I smiled. “That’s right, they are. I’ve sort of been forgetting that in my case.”

“There ain’t such a thing as sorta, Mom; that’s what you’re always saying ta me. Either something is, or it ain’t.”

“From the mouths of babes, dear.”

“Hey! I ain’t no baby!”

“That’s for sure; you’re a very wise teenager-when you’re not trying to date. So anyway, do you find that hiding under a tent works?”

“Oh, it ain’t the tent so much; it’s that lavender bath junk I sprinkled on top. I read in some book that ghosts don’t like lavender, so they plant it around castles on that account.”

“I thought something smelled good.”

“Ya ain’t mad that I used it?”

“Alison, I don’t have mad cow disease-or rabies. Do I fly off the handle at everything?”

She shrugged. “Pretty much, but ya ain’t too bad, Mom. Ya ain’t never hit me like Lindsey Taylor’s mom. Lindsey’s always covering up for her, but I seen the bruises. Making excuses, ya know.”

I jumped to my feet. “That’s terrible! We have to do something about that.”

Alison jumped to her feet as well. “But Lindsey will get in a lot of trouble; her mom will just hit her harder. And Lindsey will hate me.”

“It sounds as if they both need help. If I notify the right people, Lindsey’s mother can get counseling-in fact, they can both get counseling-and in the meantime, Lindsey can be put in a protective environment where she won’t be abused.”

“Ya mean like an orphanage?”

“No. I happen to know a family-the Kreiders-who’ve been approved as foster parents, and they’re the kindest people I know. They’ve also raised seven children of their own. Why don’t I ask them how to go about this? They can tell me who else to call.”

“Ya mean it? Ya’d do this for Lindsey, even though ya don’t know her?”

“But I know you, and I love you.”

Although I am not Alison’s biological mother, thanks to the genetic web that the Amish, and those Mennonites descended from them, inherit, the child and I are fifth cousins six different ways, and only once removed. Math has never been my forte; nonetheless, by my reckoning, if you divide the five into the six, you get the number one, plus a remainder. Drop the remainder to make up for the once removed, and Alison and I are, in effect, first cousins. Thus what happened next was practically off the charts in its remarkableness.

Simultaneously Alison and I threw ourselves into each other’s arms. Whereas we should have repelled each other like black-and-white Scottie magnets, we maintained a loving hug position for almost thirty seconds, without so much as a back slap. Of course it was emotionally exhausting, and we were both panting by the time we mutually agreed to disengage.

“Just so ya know,” my teenager said, “I don’t usually go in for all this mushy stuff, on account of its too weird and all.”

“Yeah, like, really,” I said.

“Mom! That was weird too.”

“Sorry.” I yawned. “Well, dear, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to push this little feller ’s crib back into my room and topple into bed. It’ll be time to get up and get you off to the bus before you know it.”

“Ya know, I think I could get myself ready for school; I am capable of fixing my own cold cereal.”

“Yes, but on mornings when Freni’s not here, I make you cinnamon toast as well.”

My beautiful pseudo- but almost-daughter rolled her eyes. “Ya toast the bread, ya butter it, and then ya sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on it. Duh. How hard is that? It ain’t like ya gotta follow a recipe.”

The promise of more than two hours of sleep was too tempting to pass up. “Thanks, dear.” And despite Alison’s loud protests, I kissed her on the top of her head.

I didn’t get to sleep in as late as my body would have liked. After just one hour Little Jacob woke up and demanded to be fed. I was able to coax him back to sleep, but approximately three hours later my telephone rang a thousand and one times. I didn’t exactly count the rings, but they were woven into the fabric of my dreams.

“Scheherazade speaking,” I said when I at last picked up. “I’m fresh out of stories.”

“Miss Yoder, I’m sorry to disturb you so early, but I need your woman’s intuition.”

“Which is worth two facts from a man.”

“Miss Yoder, are you listening?”

“I don’t have the energy to do anything else, dear.”

“The sheriff just called. He said that a small steamroller-suitable for home landscaping-was checked out from Rent-a-Dent. That’s the home supply store all the way over by Somerset. The individual renting it paid cash in advance for two days’ use of the roller, but supplied their own flatbed truck on which to haul it. Although that too may have been rented-but from somewhere else.”

My heart sank as a lightbulb went off in my sleep-deprived brain. “Does the clerk remember this individual?”

“Unfortunately that clerk started vacation today. He’s on a flight to Cancún, Mexico, as we speak; his flight left Pittsburgh at two thirty this morning. Apparently it was a last-minute deal. Tell me, Miss Yoder, what are the odds?”

“I believe it’s called synchronicity-it’s not compatible with my belief system, and ergo does not really exist, but I must say it does seem to happen with astonishing frequency.”

“You’re truly a puzzle, Miss Yoder.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, dear. So tell me, what exactly is it you need from me?”

“To be honest, just about everything at the moment: a warm shoulder, a tender heart, a sympathetic ear-oh, catfish, that didn’t come out right.”

“Then give it another shot. I am, if anything, the epitome of patience.”

To his credit, he barely snickered. “No argument there, Miss Yoder. And just so you know, the longer I live here, the deeper my understanding is of what an invaluable resource you are-a veritable font of information, as they say.”