Play It Again, Spam by Tamar Myers Read Free Book Online Page A

because of the Presbyterian's progressive ways, but because Susannah was too fancy for him. At any rate,
    divorce is not an option to the Amish, and as for remarriage-well, Susannah might as well apply to have her name legally changed
    to the Whore of Babylon.
    I looked away from Freni. "She's marrying Melvin Stoltzfus."
    "Ach!" Preni threw herself on to the nearest kitchen chair. "Elvina's son?"
    "I'm afraid that's the one."
    "Does Elvina know this?" Although no longer Amish, but a mere Mennonite, Elvina is Preni's best friend. They grew up
    together -"shared the same cradle," so they claim.
    I nodded, still not daring to look.
    "When is this so-called wedding?"
    "Wednesday morning at ten."
    "Where?"
    I turned slowly and squinted at Freni through my fingers. If she was in for a coronary, someone needed to know.
    "At Elvina's."
    "Ach du Leiber!"
    That was it. Freni didn't clasp her chest, lapse into unconsciousness, or even foam at the mouth. She sat as still as Lot's wife
    might have sat, had she not been standing at the moment of salinization.
    I lowered my hands and took a timorous step toward her. "Freni? Are you all right?"
    Her shoulders shook under the capelike flanges of her apron. Since I believed that neither of us was genetically capable of
    weeping in public, it took me a moment to figure out that this was indeed what she was doing. I looked away again, lest I be turned
    into a pillar of salt.
    "Freni, dear, Susannah's soul is not your responsibility. Mama and Papa left her in my care."
    Much to my horror she turned a tear-streaked face in my direction. "Ach, it isn't her soul! That's between her and God."
    I jiggled a pinkie in my left ear to make sure I was hearing right. Either that wax problem was back, or the magazines I saw at
    the supermarket were right - creatures from outer space did exist. But I had yet to read of an extraterrestrial posing as an elderly
    Amish woman.
    "Run that by me again, dear," I said calmly.
    "I said that Susannah's soul is not my business."
    "Quick, name all fifty states, and give me their capitals !"
    "Ach, you're talking nonsense, Magdalena, and me with my pain!"
    "What pain is that, dear? Your bunions acting up again?"
    "The pain in my heart," Freni wailed. "Susannah didn't invite me!"
    I jiggled pinkies in both ears. "You want to go?"
    "I've known Susannah since the day she was born! I knew your mother since the day she was born! Of course I want to be
    there."
    "Who were the fifth and sixth presidents of the United States?"
    "Ach, Magdalena, more games at a time like this?"
    "Either you name them, buster, or I'm kicking you all the way back to your home planet." Okay, so that remark set
    generations of pacifist ancestors spinning in their graves, but how would they feel about a Martian in Amish drag?
    Freni's eyes grew round behind her specs. "Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, in that order. Are you satisfied now?"
    I had to take her word for it. Between John Adams and Dwight D. Eisenhower, my presidential file is blank. Yes, I know
    Lincoln and a couple of Roosevelts were somewhere between those two - and a Truman, I think, but I can't name anyone
    sequentially. And I went to college, whereas Freni only graduated from the eighth grade.
    "Okay, you pass." I wiped my pinkie tips on my skirt. "Look dear, I'm sure Susannah is planning to invite you. I only found out
    about it yesterday."
    Freni removed her glasses and wiped her eyes with a corner of her apron. Funny, but without her glasses she looked ten
    years older. No doubt the thick lenses hid her wrinkles.
    "And Elvina," she sniffed. "That hurts me too. Why didn't she tell me? We're supposed to be best friends."
    "Maybe she was afraid to."
    "Afraid?"
    "More like embarrassed. I mean on account of it's Susannah's second wedding, and Melvin is - well - "
    "An ox short of a plow team?"
    I stared at her. She seemed to be staring, only half-seeing, back at me. We burst into laughter simultaneously. We didn't
    laugh for very