Hell Hath No Curry (27 page)

“Run along, dears. Shoo, shoo!” As the door swung shut behind me, I grabbed the phone. “Magdalena’s love palace,” I trilled into the receiver. “Brotherly love, of course, not the other.

Although sisterly love would be more appropriate, given the circumstances. Then again it wouldn’t apply at all, so I take it back.

So, hello?”

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227

“Magdalena, are you sitting?”

It was Deacon Leonard Kirschbaum from Beechy Grove Mennonite church. When the Good Lord created Leonard, He omitted any brain cells that have to do with humor. He did, however, receive an extra dollop of wisdom, which makes him invaluable as a church board member.

I pulled up a chair. “Yes.”

“It’s about Reverend Fiddlegarber.”

“Oh no! Not him too!”

“I’m afraid so. Even though it didn’t come as a complete surprise, it’s still unbelievable. Magdalena, what are we going to do now?”

“First catch a deep breath. Then see if Reverend Lantz from First Mennonite Church can preach at the funeral, and then—”

“Reverend Fiddlegarber didn’t die.”

“Of course he did. You just said—”

“Magdalena, he took over your church.”

35

“Jammin’ ” Gulab Jamun

For the syrup

2½ cups water

¼ teaspoon yellow food color

2¼ cups sugar

½ teaspoon rose essence or

1 pinch saffron

1 tablespoon rose water

¼ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

For the Gulab Jamun

Ghee for frying

1½ tablespoon self-rising flour

Light oil for jamun platter and for

½ cup warm milk

shaping jamun

1 teaspoon ghee (clarified butter)

2 cups Carnation milk powder or any

½ teaspoon crushed cardamom seeds

brand nonfat milk powder

¼ teaspoon crushed saffron

Yield: 8 servings

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Preparation

1. Prepare the syrup: Combine water, sugar, saffron, nut -

meg, rose water, and food color in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and bring to a boil, constantly stirring till sugar is dissolved. Raise heat and allow syrup to boil for 5 minutes, then lower and let simmer 5 minutes.

Remove from heat and set aside.

2. Prepare the jamun: In a wok or wide-mouth pan, add enough ghee to reach 2½ to 3 inches deep. Heat ghee over very low flame.

3. Set aside a platter brushed with a very thin film of light oil.

4. In one bowl combine the milk powder and flour.

5. In a separate bowl combine the warm milk and ghee; set aside.

6. Gently sprinkle enough milk-ghee mixture into the dry ingredients, mixing all the while, till a soft dough consistency is achieved.

7. With clean hands covered with light oil, separate dough into 24 equal portions. Take each portion and roll in your palm using both hands till a smooth ball shape, jamun, is achieved. Set jamun on oiled platter.

Shape remaining dough in the same manner.

8. Make sure the heat for frying is on low (you may need to raise the temperature a bit).

9. Gently lower jamun into ghee (they will fall to the bottom).

10. Very gently move the jamun with a wooden spoon to ensure even browning on all sides. This will take some time.

11. The jamun will rise; continue to cook gently as the oil temperature rises. Proper cooking should take around 30 minutes total.

12. Remove and drain jamun with slotted spoon and 230

Tamar Myers

gently lower into syrup. Allow jamun to soak in syrup for at least 1–2 hours before serving; stir with spoon to gently coat. Jamun may be refrigerated in a tightly sealed container for a few days. Be sure to warm or return to room temperature before serving. Some even like them cold.

13. Decorate with crushed cardamom seeds and a few sprinkles of saffron.

Notes

• The trick to making really nice jamun is to fry them over low heat. Be careful not to brown the jamun too quickly and be sure to cook them long enough. You may break the first fried jamun to ensure the inside is done, but after 30 minutes, it should be.

• If the jamun collapse in the syrup, fry them for a few minutes longer and try to soak again. Do not refry soaked jamun.

• Be sure each jamun is thoroughly soaked in the syrup before enjoying.

• Use only ghee or unsalted butter for frying the jamun; do not use oil.

36

Allow me to explain. Beechy Grove is not
my
church. Well, it is—

but it’s not
just
mine. True, I was dedicated there as an infant, then baptized when I supposedly reached the age of reason, and I was married there (albeit illegally), but lots of other people have celebrated their life stages there as well. Okay, so I am a deaconess, and a board member, and the church’s largest contributor, and when I say jump, the pastor usually asks me how high, but can I help it if the Good Lord chose to bless me monetarily?

“Leonard, what do you mean he ‘took over’ my church?”

“Tonight was the board meeting, remember? We were supposed to vote on which direction this congregation is going to take for at least the next three years.”

“No, dear, that’s not until—oh, my heavens, oh, my stars! I wrote it on the calendar in the wrong square, so I drew arrows down to the square beneath it—never mind. Tell me what happened!”

“Well, there are seven people on the board, as you know, and the reverend. But tonight Fred Fisher wasn’t there; he’s on vacation in Baltimore—his wife always wanted to visit someplace exotic. And Mabel Plank wasn’t there; she’s helping out her sister in Intercourse—the one who broke her hip. Of course Jimmy 232

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Spegootz is still up in Canada, trying to wrap up his father’s estate—I don’t think he’s going to inherit very much because the old man was a drinker. That’s it for our faction.”

Our
faction
. Shame, shame, triple shame on us, the members of Beechy Grove Mennonite Church, for having such things as factions. It wasn’t always this way. Under Reverend Schrock our unified flock prospered. But with his passing—if one can refer to a murder in such peaceful terms—fissures immediately appeared, and even before I hired Reverend Fiddlegarber, our congregation had essentially aligned themselves behind two ideologies. One—

the correct one, I must add—was the traditional. Believe me, there are plenty of folks like myself who believe that some of the more progressive Mennonite groups have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. The other faction was, as one might have guessed, more contemporary in their observance.

My beef with the latter is that they are free to join First Mennonite if ladies in pants, television, and waggling hips while danc-ing is what they want so badly. Why do they want to change the status quo when an alternative already exists for them? What are the rest of us supposed to do? Join the Amish? I don’t
think
so!

Big Bertha is one of my few delights in life. As an Amish woman I wouldn’t even be allowed the electricity with which to operate her. Bye, bye, Bertha; that’s what my option would be.

Unfortunately, relaxing the rules is not all the faction wants.

They want a large screen at the front of church, upon which they can project the words of the hymns, and they want the freedom to jump up and down like Holy Rollers, and they want to start bang-ing on doors seeking converts like Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Charis-matic evangelicals,
that’s what they call themselves. C.E., for short.

“Magdalena, Magdalena—Magdalena! Are you still there?”

“Of course, dear. I’m in the state of Shock, and the capital city is Dismay. So what happened at the meeting?”

“It was a slam dunk for the other side, that’s what happened.

All four of the others voted for going the C.E. route.”

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“All four? But that means Reverend Fiddlegarber—”

“That’s exactly what it means. The reverend didn’t waste any time fiddling around, did he?”

“But this can’t be!”

“Of course it can, and it is. But it’s only half of it.”

“Shall I prostrate myself on the floor for the rest of the news?”

“That might be a good idea. You see, Reverend Fiddlegarber turned out to be more of a Fiddle
grabber
.”

“You mean he sexually assaulted someone?”

“No, he hijacked the church.”

“What does that mean?”

“Beechy Grove Mennonite Church is no more, that’s what it means. He and his three puppets are now calling it the Voice of Armageddon Cathedral.”

“But that’s impossible. Four people can’t hijack an entire church.”

“Not to hear them tell it. They claim to have polled the mem-bership and that one hundred sixty-three families are joining them in what they call ‘a spiritual revolution.’ ”

“I don’t believe it.”

“You’re not calling me a liar, are you, Magdalena?”

“Of course not, Leonard. But this is the first time I’ve heard about this. Don’t you think that if they’d really polled the mem-bership, someone would have told me? You know that a Hernian entrusted with a bit of gossip is like a Cornish hen trying to hatch an ostrich egg on the sly. Sooner or later, something’s got to pop out and give the show away.”

“Yes and no. I don’t think they’ve polled everyone—certainly not me—but I have no doubt they’ve approached a good number of like-minded members. They seemed pretty confident.”

“Then I’ll sue. I have more money than a Christian has a right to have, and I’ll spend every last penny of it recovering what’s left of Beechy Grove Mennonite Church. Even if it’s just the 234

Tamar Myers

building—wait just one egg-hatching minute! The building! The deed is made out to Beechy Grove, not VAC.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Voice of Armageddon Cathedral. You just said it. Please, Leonard, stay with me.”

“Actually, Magdalena, I’m one step ahead. Before calling you, I pulled out my copy of the deed. There’s a clause that says, in effect, that the actual name of the congregation is subject to change, given the nature of Protestant churches, which, sad to say, is one of division.”

“Division indeed. How many Protestants does it take to change a thousand light bulbs?”

“One for each denomination in America.”

“So you’ve heard the joke. Leonard,” I wailed—and wailing
is
appropriate at times like this—“what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know. One option is to join First Mennonite; another is to stay and fight—I just don’t know.”

“How can we stay and fight when they’ve already wrested the church away from us?”

“We could fight from within. By that I mean fight spiritually.”

“Of course.” Leonard was free to mean anything he pleased, even if it didn’t make a lick of sense. But I knew another way to fight, and dyed-in-the-wool pacifist that I am, I’ve never been known to back down from a good fight.

“Magdalena, I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Don’t worry, Leonard. You crank up your praying machine—

there’s always room for prayer—while I drag out the big guns.”

“The big guns? I don’t like the sound of that either.”

“When I’m through with Reverend Fecklessgrabber, he’ll rue the day he stepped foot into Beechy Grove Mennonite Church.”

“May I remind you, Magdalena, that you’re the one who brought him to Hernia.”

“To say touché would be cliché. I take full responsibility for this, and I will rectify my mistake posthaste.”

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235

He sighed so hard into the phone, I could feel his breath stir the downy hairs on my forearm. “Good. I’m counting on you.

Shall we take a moment to pray together?”

“
Now?
Over the phone?”

“Yes. Believers do it all the time.”

Leonard is a world-class prayer. Once he gets started, you either have to wait it out by telling stories in your head, or take a nap. I had neither time nor patience that evening.

“I think I’ll pass, dear.”

“Pass on praying? Magdalena, what’s gotten into you?”

“Leonard, I just remembered something vitally important.”

“More important than praying?”

“God helps those who help themselves,” I said. Then I hung up and raced for my purse.

Not every church can lay claim to owning a parsonage. Some congregations simply cannot afford the expense, whilst others find it too much bother. Then again, many ministers—or their wives—

are too picky about their accommodations to settle for what the church is willing, or able, to provide.

We, the members of Beechy Grove Mennonite Church, have found that supplying agreeable quarters for our pastor allows us to pay him a much smaller salary than we would have had to shell out had housing not been provided. Our parsonage is a sprawling Victorian house in the heart of the historic district and is the envy of all who have seen it. In the past, virtually every candidate that I have interviewed for the job of minister has accepted the position by the time we are done touring the house. Many of them don’t even see the church before saying yes. Why, then, I wondered as I pushed the doorbell, was Reverend Fiddlegarber so ungrateful?

There wasn’t a single light on in the parsonage that I could tell, but the door was answered within seconds. “Reverend, it’s me, Magdalena Yoder, as big as life and twice as pretty.”

“What the heck do you want at this time of night?”

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“To come in? Tsk, tsk, dear, you really should clean up your language.”

“This is my house, and I can speak like I want in it.”

“Actually, it isn’t your house. That’s precisely why I’m here.”

“Go away, Magdalena, or I’m calling the police.”

“Yes, please call Chris Ackerman. I was going to call him myself on the way over here, but I couldn’t see the menu on my cell phone without my reading glasses. It wouldn’t do to rummage through my purse while driving at a record speed, now would it.”