No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk by Tamar Myers

would have if I had wrested that pillow from Susannah and smothered her. As proprietress and principal chambermaid, I work twelve-hour days at the PennDutch Inn. Meanwhile, Susannah sleeps, smokes, and slithers through the lobby in search of male guests with strong libidos and weak morals.
    “Well, I never!”
    “Then don’t you think it’s about time you did? Use it or lose it, I always say.”
    I clamped my hands over my ears to protect them from further defilement. “Susannah Yoder Entwhistle! You should be ashamed of yourself. For your information, I am saving myself for the right man, and when he does come along it is going to be very special.” Although from what little Mama had told me, and from what I’d picked up from my female friends, it was just a little less tedious than rolling up one’s hair. And apparently far messier.
    “And anyway,” I continued, my hands still clamped tightly over my ears, “I wasn’t going to tell you this, but now I think I will. Your rich new boyfriend lied to you, because he never even planned to go to work today. In fact, according to the plant manager, he’s off for the rest of the week.”
    I paused to let the information sink in. Even with my ears covered I could hear some of my sister’s response, so I had to resort to singing hymns. I can set a mature example, you know. Fortunately Susannah ran out of energy before I ran out of hymns, so I was able to get the last word in.
    "Schteh uff, ” I said in Pennsylvania Dutch. “Get up and get dressed. This afternoon we’re going over to cousin Sarah’s house to see how she’s doing. And don’t even think about wiggling out of this. You do want your allowance this month, don’t you?” I immediately began singing that old favorite hymn of Mama’s, “Work, for the Night Is Coming.”
    I know that threatening my thirty-five-year-old sister with withholding her allowance might sound punitive, but unfortunately it is my prerogative. If she would get a job like everyone else, or at least help out at the inn on a regular basis, she wouldn’t be in that position in the first place. Being on the dole has its consequences, you know. While I don’t mind doling out dollars to destitute derelicts who decidedly deserve it, I do mind shelling out shekels to a shiftless sister who shirks work and shies away from responsibility altogether.
    Susannah must be a closet Republican, because even though I couldn’t hear her reply, I could read her lips loud and clear. However, I stood my ground, and when I drove off to Sarah’s house a half hour later I had my shiftless sister and her shaggy Shnookums safely stashed in the backseat.
    Either Sarah had kept her children home from school or the little Amish school down the road had let out for the day. At any rate, the yard was again full of towheaded youngsters, all of whom bore an uncanny resemblance to old photographs of Susannah and me. Seeing Susannah (she was wearing a purple jumpsuit topped by a fake leopard-skin cape made out of the finest polyester), they began to giggle. Dutifully I stomped my foot at them and called them hammerheads in Pennsylvania Dutch, but they laughed harder, so I grabbed a fake leopard-skin glove and whisked my sister into Sarah’s house unannounced. We are family, after all.
    We found Sarah in the kitchen kneading bread dough. Freni does that whenever she is upset about something as well. There is something very therapeutic about punching and pulling a good elastic dough, and I would recommend it as something to try before one sees a psychiatrist. It is certainly a lot cheaper. Of course, in some cases a therapist is in order from the get-go, while in others bread-making can become somewhat of an obsession. But I won’t be mentioning any names here.
    “Ach, but you startled me,” Sarah said. Our sudden appearance had resulted in floured hands flying to her face.
    “The children told us to come right on in,” I said. Truly, it was more a