Because of Blood

Chapter Seven

Ganny’s Gardening Diary

May 18

 

The gourd vines  need a few days of heat and sunshine to start trailing up the back porch poles. I don’t want to do anything with them this year, but Warren says Carlene would like to have some. She’s making bowls, going to sell them in some craft fairs. She can have all of them she wants. I just like to watch a gourd grow. Those big old leaves like elephant ears, the way the spiky tendrils shoot out and try to find something to wrap around. How they will grow a foot overnight when you’re not looking.

 

Like Geri. She looked so grown up in her purple dress. My heart hurt when she walked out. She  looked to me like she was walking out the door forever to her own life, not just going to a silly dance. She’s growing on the inside now, matching up to her outsides. It’s hard for her. I hope I can stick around long enough to help her figure things out.

 

            The entrance to Morgan’s Cemetery was littered with fresh glass clippings, as if the gardener had been dragging bags of them across the gravel, and they burst open and settled there among the rocks. They stuck to Geri’s tennis shoes, and she wiped some off. Then she looked through the gate at the shining, closely-trimmed sea of grass spread out among the tombstones and realized how pointless it was. Ganny was already way ahead of her and seemingly heedless of the wet grass clinging to her red Keds.

           

Geri stopped at a baby’s grave covered with fine white pebbles and an assortment of plastic toys. A yellow tow truck looked new because it stood out from the others, the fire truck faded to a dull pink, a metal car missing two wheels.

            “Wait up, Ganny!” Geri yelled. She had never been to the cemetery before and had been embarrassed to admit to Ganny that she didn’t even know what Memorial Day was. Readjusting the two baskets of flowers she was carrying, Geri moved down the middle of the dirt road that ran through the cemetery.

            Ganny slowed down after getting to the far northwest corner where a gnarled tree with pink blooms falling and dotting the ground arched across several graves.

            “Who all is buried out here?” Geri asked, curious for the first time about Ganny’s family. Geri’s father had never told her anything about them. Since Ganny had been her mom’s grandmother, he had never even taken her out to see Ganny. Her dad’s own family lived in Texas, and she didn’t know any of them either.

            That was another thing that set Matt apart from her—he had relatives all over the county and she was sure he found it odd that she had no one, just Ganny.

            Thinking of Matt made Geri’s heart sink. There had only been a few phone conversations since the disaster of prom night a few weeks before. Geri was still embarrassed about throwing up and angry about being called a tease. He had apologized profusely, but Geri couldn’t let it go. She had to figure out where she wanted to go from here.

            Geri had been spending a lot of time with Ganny. She felt safe with her—watching TV at night and eating popcorn, helping her tend the garden, and now, going with her to the cemetery to pay her respects. Ganny said she knew more dead people than live ones nowadays.

            “Ma and Pa here,” Ganny said, pointing to two old and weathered stones side by side.

            “Wow, she lived a lot longer than he did,” Geri said, noting a twenty-year difference.

            “A just reward,” Ganny said shortly.

            “What do you mean?” Geri asked as she straightened. A mockingbird flew from the barbed wire fence directly behind the graves and over their heads.

            “Pa was no picnic to live with.”

            The way she said it kept Geri from asking more, though she was certainly curious.

            “This here’s Aunt Ruthie,” Ganny said as she moved away from her parents’ graves. “She was my favorite, always had somethin’ special for me when she came over, always hidden somewhere’s so that I had to find it. Once she had a silver yo-yo stuck just beneath the dirt in this plant she’d brought over to Ma. She knew I’d spy it.”

            “A treasure hunt,” Geri whispered.

            “That’s right,” Ganny said, looking surprised. “Aunt Ruthie was always good for a treasure hunt.”

            Ganny had Geri put one basket of flowers on Aunt Ruthie’s grave. Then Geri set the other down right between the two graves of Ganny’s parents, but Ganny said, “No, put it over here on Stephen’s grave. He was my Ma’s baby brother, a wonderful human being,” Ganny said. Geri was surprised but did as she asked. Then Ganny walked around in the plot a bit more, pointing out a few other long lost relatives.

She stopped at another grave and then set down the roses she had picked that morning from the bush at the side of the house. Geri came up behind her and looked at the stone. Harmon Satterfield was written on one half of the tombstone with his birth and death dates. Mabel Satterfield was on the other side with her birthdate and a hyphen separating the date from a vast space on the right edge.

“Is that you?’ Geri asked, vaguely recalling how a few old people they’d seen at the grocery store called Ganny “Mabel.”

“Yep.”

“Isn’t that kind of creepy already having your name on a tombstone?” Geri asked.

“Nah, hell. I’m closer to death than life at my age anyway,” Ganny said with a lightheartedness she might have felt but Geri sure didn’t. Fear, anxiety, guilt all crowded into her brain in one burst. What would happen to Geri when Ganny died? She didn’t want to think about it. No more foster homes, that was for sure.

“You’re gonna live a lot more years, Ganny. You know you are.”

The silence lengthened and Geri shivered. The day was only getting warmer, but she didn’t like this mood that had come over Ganny. Anyone so comfortable with the idea of death meant she’d come to terms with it. She didn’t want Ganny accepting it. It was like she was already leaving her if she did that.

Ganny turned toward Geri and her expression changed. She seemed to make a transition back into the world of the living.

“What’s the matter, girl? Ya think I’m ready to die? I’m not, ya know. I might be a little slow in the git-along sometimes, but I ain’t leavin’ ya yet.”

She squeezed Geri’s arm above her elbow. Her fingers were long and bony, but the grip was strong. A few strands of Ganny’s hair escaped from her braids and flew above her head like wings.

“You better not,” Geri said, trying to laugh. “I’m notorious at the DHS; I imagine there aren’t any foster homes left that would take me.”

“Oh, come on. Ya was never as bad as that,” Ganny said, releasing her hold on Geri’s arm and waving away the idea.

Maybe not, Geri thought. She had never thought of herself as “bad.” She was acting out of instinct—doing what she felt compelled to do when her options got limited. She hadn’t become a drug addict or a whore or a thief—not bad in that way. But there were still plenty of things she had never told Ganny. Never told anyone. She could never tell Matt, but she was afraid her body would. That is what had stopped her that night. It wasn’t just the champagne making her sick. It was the knowledge of who she had been and what Matt would think of her if he knew, too.

She wanted to change the subject. Sometimes she could feel confessions brimming up in her, threatening to leap out when the time was right. School counselors and psychologists would have loved to catch her in such a condition. They had always tried to get her there, but she never felt the need in their offices.

Ganny seemed to be done with the graves, and they were out of flowers. Geri stepped closer to the fence to look at a small, weathered stone that Ganny seemed to have purposely ignored. It was tilted, most likely from the roots of the redbud close to the surface.

            “Well, let’s head back, did what I wanted to do,” Ganny said with an air of finality. Geri noticed that she was worrying the sides of her dress with her right hand.

            “Wait a minute, who is this one?” Geri asked, knowing somehow that Ganny didn’t want to talk about it.

            The last name was the same as was on Ganny’s parents' grave: Merrimam. Ganny’s maiden name. A reclining lamb was chiseled on the stone, covered by small patches of moss. Louise Merrimam it said. 1914-1930. In heaven there is one angel more.         

            “Let’s get on back. Warren will be wanting to get to town and we can’t be holdin’ him up,” Ganny said. Warren had dropped them off and would be back any minute.

            Geri hadn’t wanted to come to the cemetery. School was out, and she longed to dribble the basketball in the green grass around the barn. It was a warm day though the breeze was almost cool because of the rain the night before. She and Ganny sat on the front porch for a long time that morning, Ganny slowly drinking decaffeinated coffee and Geri an orange juice. They watched a little wren making his nest in the gourd Ganny had painted, drilled a hole in, and hung from the eaves of the porch.

She had been shooting baskets that afternoon when Ganny asked her to go to the cemetery with her. Geri hadn’t wanted to. The team was starting a summer league soon and though it wasn’t for any kind of competition, she wanted to do her very best. She would be playing with the high school now, and the stakes were even higher.

Ganny indicated her parents’ grave again. “I don’t put flowers on theirs because it don’t fit the purpose.”

“What do you mean?” Geri asked.

“Memorial Day. Memorial. Memory. It’s for rememberin’ and memorializin’. Now I know it was intended for rememberin’ soldiers and though Harmon did his service in the great war, that ain’t the reason I put flowers out for him. Memorial Day now is for rememberin’ others besides the soldiers. It’s for honorin’ the dead, the ones who died honorably. Ya might even say, who lived honorably.”

Ganny’s breath was getting a bit ragged. But if she wanted to give a definition of Memorial Day, Geri wasn’t going to stop her.

“I can’t honor them that I didn’t find honorable. I suppose that’s unchristian of me—forgive and forget and all that. But I can’t help what to me is a natural feelin’. And seems to me that God would understand that. Seems to me he’d approve of my reasonin’. It ain’t somethin’ I take lightly. Not at all.”

All kinds of horrid thoughts about Ganny’s parents began circulating in her head. What kind of past had Ganny had?

“Don’t mean I’m goin’ to spit on their graves or any such thing of the like. Just means I’m reservin’ the celebration. That’s what Memorial Day’s about—celebratin’ the way these folks” she said with a sweeping gesture “lived their lives.”

“Did you used to put flowers on their graves?” Geri asked.

Ganny’s face registered surprise and then she chuckled. “You’re a smart one. Matter of fact, I did. Just on Ma’s though. Never on his.” She paused as though needing to get the mention of her father clear out of her head. “And then after a while, I started to think that she was as much to blame as him”—

“Blame for what?” Geri asked, a bit impatient.

“Because I just don’t put no stock in this victim thing—not someone being a victim their whole blamed life,” Ganny finished, ignoring Geri’s question. “It seems to me that after so many years on this earth, after a time, that everybody should get some degree of sense. If ya’ve been rotten-potato stupid your whole life, somewhere down the line, maybe way off down the line when you’re approachin’ the death bed, ya get some little hint of common sense. I don’t understand how a person can live her whole life without gettin’ one single clue about what’s of meanin’ in it. It just don’t figure.”

            A plane flew overhead and Ganny stopped talking. Her mouth was tightly closed, fine wrinkles stretching away from it and disappearing under her chin. Her dress was wrinkled up down one side where she had been wadding the material in her fist.

Still, she made no move to head toward the entrance, though Warren had driven up a few minutes before and was waiting on them as he leaned on the hood of his truck.

            “Who was Louise?” Geri asked, looking at the moss-covered lamb on the stone again.

            Ganny slowly turned toward Louise’s grave. Something relaxed in her posture. The wrinkles around her mouth smoothed out.

            “Louise,” she said softly. A redbird chirped from atop a gravestone several yards away, and the bird seemed to be accompanying Ganny. “Louise was far from an angel,” Ganny said, indicating the line on the marker. Then she gave Geri a look that made her heart skip, an expression both deeply troubled and full of love at the same time. “Louise was you.”

 

Geri’s Diary

            What I like most of all is the sound of it. The way it hits the dirt with a hollowness. Like someone getting the wind knocked out of her. Or like your heartbeat when you put your hand over your chest. You’ve been running hard, long and hard and fast.

            And then I like the feel of it, too. Smooth, only slightly bumpy, as you twirl it in your hand, hold it against your side. Planning the approach to the basket and then following through with that plan.

            Wind in your hair when playing outside. The way it rustles up your shirt. How your collar starts to stick to your neck with the sweat. And the ball smoking up dust with each dribble. You’re in a cloud but steady and focused, like the eye of a storm. Like a tornado intent on its streamlined, one-track purpose.

            Sometimes at night I come out and keep company with the moon. If no one bugs me, I can get that feeling. The one where the world starts collapsing around you and the moon expands until it fills the whole sky, not the sky above you but the whole sky and everywhere you look is moon. Till there’s nothing but you and the moon, round and close and obvious. A part of you.

 

 

            “Louise was my twin sister,” Ganny said, when they got home. She had refused to talk about it in the truck with Warren, and so all the way back, Geri’s imagined all kinds of scenarios to explain Louise. Ganny had never been so close-lipped about anything before. She was a straightforward person, which is what Geri liked about her.

            “Nobody ever talked about twins in our family,” Geri said, not that she knew much family gossip. “Why did she die so young? Those years on the tombstone, she was only sixteen or so, wasn’t she?”

            “We lived out here then. In fact, if ya go back behind the barn in the woods a ways, you’ll find what’s left of the foundation of the old house. Louise used to love to go to the creek—just like you.”

            Ganny scowled and got up from her comfortable chair to stare out the window.

            “So what’s the story?” Geri asked quietly. She was afraid to push her but afraid not to in case she never heard what it was. And her interest was piqued. She wanted to know all about Louise.

            “It’s why I regretted Warren puttin’ that goal up for ya, knew right from the start that it was a damn bad idea,” Ganny muttered, still looking out the window.

            Geri was getting more confused. First, here was a sister that had died when she was only a teenager, and then something about the creek, and then how was that connected to the basketball goal in the back yard?

            Geri started to ask another question, but didn’t know how to phrase it. She had never known Ganny to be reticent about anything. Ganny was always quick to tell a story, give an opinion about Geri’s friends and Matt, veto or allow certain groceries when they were shopping, turn off or shout down a stupid TV show or personality. Maybe it was best to wait and let Ganny come to it at her own speed.

            Which is what she eventually did—sighing and turning away from the window and returning to her chair.

            “Would ya get me a cold Pepsi?” Ganny asked, her voice suddenly small.

            Geri hustled into the kitchen, filled a glass with ice and poured the Pepsi on top to within a half inch of the brim, just like Ganny liked it.

            Ganny took a big swig and then told Geri to sit down.

            “It’s this thing about basketball. Back in our day, it had just started spreadin’ like wildfire, and some girls had taken it up and just loved it. We’d play anywhere we could find a spot, and we’d have tournaments in meetin’ halls and basements and the like. I played, too, but didn’t love it like Louise.”

            Ganny paused to take another drink, and Geri said, “I had no idea they played basketball back then.”

            “Well, it wasn’t quite the Dark Ages,” Ganny said with a hint of a smile, “But you’re right, basketball hadn’t been around a long time, but it was a fun game. We worked so hard back then, that when we got a chance to do somethin’ fun, we’d jump at it. Course, now, ya remember this was back when girls wore dresses ‘bout all the damn time, even playin’ basketball. Til somebody decided that these bloomer things would work just fine. Three or four yards of material in each leg of them thangs—but it was better than wearing a skirt!”

            “I’d like to see a picture!” Geri said, caught up in Ganny’s sudden enthusiasm.

            “Ah well, I might have one somewheres. I’ll look sometime.”

            As quickly as Ganny’s enthusiasm came, it seemed to fade. She set the Pepsi on the table next to her chair and sunk back into the cushions, as if preparing for a nap.

            “So what happened to Louise?” Geri asked.

            “Louise was single-minded,” Ganny said after a pause. “She was always like that from when we was little-bitty. She’d get fixated on somethin’ and just wore it down til it was nothin’ anymore. And then she’d move on to somethin’ else. Did that with her dolls—got crazy over dolls and had to have all different kinds with all different kinds of clothes, and she’d talk Ma into buyin’ her some of them, and then she schemed up this plan to sell blackberry jam to make money to buy some and that’s all she’d ever ask for on a birthday or at Christmas. And then after that, she got all hung up on playin’ blackjack. Ma cursed Pa for ever teachin’ her how to play because she wanted to do it every time ya turned around and then she started winnin’ and playin’ with money and had left every boy and half the men in the county with empty pockets when she could snag them into a game. Just a kid too—she was just a kid then.”

            Ganny reached over for her Pepsi and took a long drink. Geri pulled her legs up under her and sat cross-legged on the couch, afraid to say anything now that Ganny was opening up. Something bad was going to happen in this story; she just knew it. It was hard for her to focus on the fact that it was true. She just wanted to know what the heck Ganny had meant by saying at the cemetery, “Louise was you.”

            “And then basketball came along, and ya never saw a girl more crazy about playin’ that game. And she was good too, practiced so much, challenged anyone—man, girl, woman, or boy—played outside by the barn, just like this one here, until it was so dark she couldn’t hardly see what she was doin’ and Ma would make her come inside and go to bed.

            “The school got a team up and so did a lot of other schools around, and pretty soon, it was a big deal and the teams travelin’ around to different games. Didn’t take but a few years til they had a state tournament goin’ and for some reason, the girls’ games were even better attended than the boys.”

            Ganny paused, and Geri added, “That’s kind of true now, Ganny, cause the Fishinghawk girls always have a better team than the boys do.”

            “Ya’ll been playin’ a lot longer than them girls from the cities. It was like us. But lots of things were different. We didn’t particularly have a court, for one. We used to play on anything we could find. Not a lot of schools had good wooden floors. We might just play outside on the dirt or on concrete. I remember one game in the basement of a church. In the middle of the floor was two stovepipes and when ya were goin’ around them, ya had to be extra careful so ya didn’t wind up burnt to a lick!”

            “Wow, I guess we got nothing to complain about—with air conditioned gyms and everything.”

            “Got that right. Now mind ya, I wasn’t that great a player, but I liked it. Ya know anything to get ya out of the house once in a while.” Ganny winked. “And when ya got to go out of town for a game, now that could be right fun. Dependin’ on what the local boys were like. Louise and me called them game dates. We had some good times before or sometimes after the games, that is if the coach would let us or our parents weren’t corrallin’ us soon as the last whistle blew.”

            Geri tried to visualize Ganny as a teenager. It was hard to do. She had only known her with shiny gray hair two braids wrapped about her head. A few times at night after she had a bath, she would ask Geri to help her comb it out. Her hair came down almost to her knees, and she had to stand up as Geri crouched behind her trying to get the comb all the way through.

            “Another big difference was the outfits. Ya didn’t see no tank tops and shorts showin’ all this leg. Nope, them things ya’ll wear now would ‘bout go over like a screen door in a submarine in our day. The girls had to wear these big shirts, usually long-sleeved even, and bloomers—wide pants that pretty near covered your whole leg. The shirts had those wide sailor collars and a tie. Ya had to wear tights under your bloomers so your skin wouldn’t show. Folks thought the sight of a little skin around a girl’s ankle would cause a person to pass out, I expect.”

            Although Geri was enjoying Ganny’s descriptions, she was impatient to learn about Louise.

            “Did you and Louise practice together all the time?”

            Ganny thought for a moment and took another drink of the Pepsi. “Like I say, Louise was single-minded. Basketball for me—I could take it or leave it. But Louise was determined to be a world champion or somethin’. They had a national tournament, ya know, even back then. And then . . . everythin’ went bad.”

Ganny looked out the window across from her chair, and Geri thought she had lost her. The story was probably not going to continue, not tonight anyway. But Ganny surprised her.

“Here’s somethin’ you gotta know first. In those days, when it was your time of the month, ya weren’t allowed to play. People, even the doctors, thought that your insides would get all banged up or somethin’ and ya wouldn’t be able to have babies or some such nonsense,” Ganny said, her voice trailing off.

“That’s crazy! I can’t imagine them telling us that nowadays.”

The thought of Coach Thorpe talking to the team about their periods was ridiculous. Geri remembered the time last year when the whole starting team was on their period at the same time. She’d heard that girls and women who worked together a lot got their cycles synchronized. They had all made jokes about bleeding on the opposing team. The mother of one of the girls had to go to the Quik-Trip at halftime to get a box of Tampons so they could make it through the game.

“Well doctors have gotten a lot smarter now. I was readin’ the Ladies Home Journal a while back and they even said playin’ sports durin’ your time would reduce the cramps. Imagine that! Most mothers, I was guilty, too, told their daughters not to lift things or even run cause we thought it would hurt ‘em. Why . . . I don’t know why I still said things like that after all that happened.” Ganny’s forehead wrinkled, and she pressed her glass to it, rubbing the coldness against her skin. “Girls are smarter these days and grow up a lot faster. Ya can’t tell them stupid things about their bodies that don’t make sense.”

Geri had a sudden image of her nine-year-old self in the IGA scanning the shelves of feminine products. Overwhelmed, unsure of what any of the products were or meant and with no one to help her figure it out. A stranger could have told her some story about her body then, and she would have believed it.

“Ya were supposed to tell the coach when ya were menstruatin’ and couldn’t play and that would be that”—

“Did you all do that?”

“Pretty much. We didn’t much think to lie about it. Course, none of us were that gung-ho that we just had to play. Well, none of us except Louise. And then, ya know, most of the girls thought the stuff they were bein’ told was true. They wanted to have babies someday. They didn’t want to hurt their insides.”

“What did Louise think?”

“Louise was goin’ to play come hell or high water. We was nearin’ the end of the season and were ‘bout to go to the first ever state tournament for girls in Oklahoma. The big game was comin’ up, and Louise got her period.”

Ganny rattled the ice cubes in her glass. The Pepsi was all gone.

“And?”

“And . . . she had heard this rumor that if you walked into the creek up to your waist when ya were on your period that ya would stop the bleedin’. The cold water did somethin’ to freeze your blood flow or reroute it, I don’t know. It was a stupid rumor. It was February, a brutal one at that, so cold the milk froze comin’ out of the cows. But she went down to the creek anyway”—

“This one? You mean the one just down the road?”

“Yes, a lot of families lived out here, even then. It was the night before the game. She walked straight in, stood there until her legs gave out, then managed to get back to the bank. But she couldn’t get on the horse she’d rode down there; she didn’t have the strength to get her foot up in the stirrup. Besides it felt like, she told me later, like a knocked-over tree stump, both her legs did. They found her right there on the bank next to a bunch of cedar trees after the horse came back without her and we went out searchin’. She was unconscious. We put her in bed and got her as warm as we could, but it was too late. She died three days later of pneumonia.”

Ganny indicated she was finished with the story by getting up and walking into the living room. “I’m so tired I’m cross-eyed,” she mumbled.

Geri’s stomach felt like she had swallowed a pillow. Her period had started the day before, and she felt over-full and bloated. She wanted to know more. And she didn’t. She remembered she had a date with Matt that night. It would be their first one since the prom. He had finally talked her into it. 

But the thought of Matt disappeared as quickly as it came. Louise’s story was heavy in her mind. She hated the ignorance of it, losing your life to play a game, losing your life because of fear . . . fear of a girl’s body—that was it. They didn’t know enough about how we worked, and look what happened.

I don’t know enough about how I work. The thought made Geri sigh. She uncrossed her legs on the couch and looked down at the body that she sometimes thought would always betray her. Why couldn’t she be a bean pole? Why not have straight lines like a boy? She would probably be an even better ball player, more streamlined. Why not just be a boy? Then, she wouldn’t have the pesky periods.

But I don’t want to be a boy.

            Ganny was standing in the doorway and had said something to Geri.

            “What?”

            “I said, I’m goin’ to bed. I know it’s early, but that walk in the cemetery done tuckered me out.”

            Geri knew that it wasn’t just the cemetery walk. Telling the story had drained Ganny. Was there more to it that she hadn’t said?

            “Okay, remember Matt and I are going out.”

            “I remember, and don’t think I won’t know it if ya aren’t back here on time.”

            “I’m sorry about Louise.”

            Ganny’s face crumbled a bit. Then she recovered quickly and pasted on a slight smile. “It was ages ago. I missed her for a long time afterwards and then . . . one day, I didn’t think about her much anymore.”

            “Why did you say that she was me?”

            “I said that?”

            Geri nodded.

            “Well ya both were rabble-rousers, that’s for sure. But I guess I was thinkin’ ‘bout how driven ya are. Ya don’t cut yourself any slack. That’s how Louise was. Anythin’ holdin’ her back was a wall to knock down or jump over. Or in your case, to run around!”

            “I’ve stopped that.”

            “We don’t ever stop bein’ who we are.”

            Before Geri could protest, Ganny raised her hand as a kind of farewell and turned to her bedroom. She moved slowly, favoring her right leg, and Geri let her go.

            Geri had played basketball from when she was four years old. It was what she did to get out of a house with screaming people. She couldn’t remember much about her mother Denise, not much more than her voice when she was drunk, which seemed like every night. Later, when her dad and his wife Sheila didn’t want her around or when they were making such a racket in the bedroom, she stayed in the back yard dribbling the ball, shooting it through the rusted hoop that threatened to fall from its hinges.

            Geri checked the clock. It would be two hours before Matt was supposed to be there. She went outside and grabbed her bike and set off for the creek. Ganny had said that there was still a line of cedars in the place where Louise had gone in. She thought she knew which line that was. She rode furiously down the road, unsure of what she hoped to find or learn, but knowing she had to see the place where her twin, as she was now thinking of Louise, had walked into the freezing water because of blood.