Chapter Nine

Geri’s Diary

 

I’m a little freaked by how I was coming down to this creek, by how I was coming down here and sitting and thinking about my life. And all this time, this was where Louise had died. I might have been sitting right on the spot where she collapsed. I went down there the last time to find the place where she must have gone into the creek. The trees are so thick down the eastern edge of it, but it wasn’t hard to find the clump of cedar trees Ganny talked about. I doubted that trees could survive that long, but Ganny had said that cedars might die out but more would grow right back in their place.

 

On one side of the creek bridge, the water is deep and blue, and on the other side it is clear and shallow, the side where mothers bring  their kids. The blue side is where the teenagers and adults go.  No one was there when I walked down and started tracing the shore back into the woods.

 

When I came to the line of cedar trees, I went into the water. It was very cold, so cold, it made me stop breathing. It wasn’t very deep, just to the top of my thighs, even in the middle where I managed to walk to stiff-legged and freezing.

 

Ganny said they found her on the bank right next to the cedar trees, but the trees were at least thirty yards away from where I was. I moved into the center of the creek and looked  back into the woods but didn’t see any other cedars. I walked out of the creek and toward the cedars, went around them, and came out on the other side.

 

The cedars were at the top of what used to be a creek bank that curved down to a dry bed. It must have been dry for years because small trees had grown up in it. At some point erosion or beavers must have created the new creek bed and this one dried up when the water was rerouted. This was the one Louise had walked into.

 

I sat down on a large flat rock and noticed some black shale pieces mixed in with white bleached rocks beside me. I picked up a white rock and one of the pieces of shale and began marking on it. I wrote my name. I wrote Louise’s name on another one. I made a tear drop on another. I put out a whole line of stones with black shale markings on them. Then I took all of the stones and hid them under the cedar trees, back in the darkness where only the snakes and rabbits would see them. I would be back.

 

* * *

The date turned out to be much better than Geri had expected. The distance they put between the disastrous prom night and this night helped. It was almost like a first date, getting to know one another . . . again. They went to a movie and to Log Cabin Pizza afterwards, where a few other friends joined them. They told Matt about a party out at the lake, but he turned it down before Geri could do the same. He brought her home promptly at 11:00. They kissed on her porch, barely brushing lips, but he held her for a long time. And then he was gone. The whole night seemed like a dream to Geri. She wasn’t sure what she liked better—Matt falling all over himself in lust for her or Matt treating her like a glass doll. Wasn’t there something in between?

            Summer swept in and proved to be a busy one. Geri got a job at Redbud Trails Marina, working in the restaurant mornings, Friday through Sunday. And the summer basketball league got into full swing. She and Matt went out most Saturday nights, and things had heated up a bit more, and again, she didn’t know where they were going. She often thought she truly loved him and wished she could see him more. She wished she could be with him the way he wanted her. And . . . something held her back.

            The job was a good thing. Bird’s aunt was the cook at the restaurant, and she and Bird worked the morning shift together. Bird’s mom drove them to work and her aunt took them home. The tips were pretty good, although a lot of the younger people who came out to launch their boats and ski were cheapskates. Fishinghawk was only an hour away  from Tulsa, and many of the people who kept boats at the marina were rich city businessmen and their families. Geri and Bird fought over those customers.

            The summer league started the first week in June. It was an odd way of playing basketball. They weren’t really practicing, but the games they played didn’t mean so much either. No trophies, no win/loss record (not officially anyway), no crowds coming to watch. Geri figured it could be a fun way of playing the game if Coach Thorpe could let it be. The guy just didn’t know how to relax.

            “You’re going to be the star player next year, Tang. Start showing us what you got,” he told her one day before a game was getting ready to start.

            What aggravated her more than his persistence was her determination to please him. She couldn’t figure out why she did it. Even though she harbored resentment against him for how he rode her all the time, she knew she wanted to please him, wanted to be good for him. If he smiled at her at the end of a game, she felt good for days.

            “You had a great game yesterday,” Bird told her one day at work.

            It was around 10, the lull of the morning, when the swimmers and fishermen had eaten breakfast, and it was too early for anyone to think about lunch. The two were standing at the counter rolling silverware.

            “It’s never good enough.”

            “Only because he’s a maniac.”

            “Yeah, something like that.”

            “What did Beth say to you in the locker room afterwards? I saw her come up to you with that evil look on her face.”

            Geri shrugged. “Something stupid. I don’t remember. She doesn’t seem to realize that I’m not trying to take her place. I’ll play wherever Coach wants to put me. Or for that matter, what’s wrong with the two of us trading off—keeps us both fresh.”

            “Oh that’s rich. You know Beth doesn’t want to share her spot with anyone. She’s as bad as Johnna.”

            “Well, Johnna’s set. Nobody is as good at center as she is.”

            “You could be.”

            “Not tall enough.”

            “Doesn’t matter. You can jump higher than Johnna can.”

            “No way.”

            “Yes way. You always beat her when there’s a jump ball.”

            Geri thought about it. “I don’t want to play center. Not enough moving around.”

            Bird sighed. “Whatever. I just wish I had half your talent. I’ll be sitting on the bench the whole darn season.”

            “You can start for JV.”

            “Woopie doo.”

            Geri gave Bird a friendly pat on the back and put the piles of silverware into the rubber trays below the counter.

            “So word is that you and Matt are on the outs,” Bird said tentatively.

            “That’s some word,” Geri murmured. “Where’d you pick it up?”
            “Danny said something about it.”

            Danny was Bird’s older brother, the same age as Matt.

            “It won’t be long before he goes off to college. I guess we’re both thinking of that,” Geri said. She would have liked to confide in Bird, tell her about prom night, but it embarrassed her.

            “Yeah, I guess. It’s just that . . .”

            “What?”

            Bird was looking out the big plate glass windows that overlooked the marina. She wouldn’t meet Geri’s eye.

            “Well, the other night I saw Johnna and him at the movies. I mean, I don’t know if they were together or anything, but they were talking to each other before the show started. We were coming out and they were going in for the late movie. I don’t know if they were together, I just . . . well, I just thought you ought to know.”

            So the usually smug looks Johnna had been giving Geri lately probably did mean something. Geri had chalked it up to overplaying her on the court. Geri’s heart sunk. She had already resigned herself to losing Matt when he went off to college, but she didn’t want it to happen now—and not to Johnna.

            “Aren’t you mad?” Bird asked.

            “Yeah, but what am I gonna do?”
            “Confront the bitch.”

            The uncharacteristic cuss word coming from Bird surprised Geri. She smiled and bumped shoulders with her.

            “That’s exactly what she’d like me to do, you know. Besides . . . you don’t know if they were really together, do you? It might have been nothing.”

            But both knew Geri was making excuses.

            Later, after the lunch rush, Bird was in the kitchen helping her aunt prep for dinner. The dining room was quiet, except for a young family at a table by the window and a man nursing a cup of coffee at the counter.

            Geri wiped down the pop machine and daydreamed. The thought of Matt and Johnna together, especially the two of them together now, now while she was still seeing Matt, while Matt was still touching and kissing her, was making her stomach churn.

            “Hey, sweetie, how about a refill?”
            Geri shook herself out of her trance and noticed the man at the counter staring at her.

            “Sorry, here you go,” she said, jerking the coffee pot off its burner and pouring a fresh cup for him. She automatically reached in her shirt pocket for some cream.

            “No cream, thanks. Black’s fine.”

            “Do you want anything to eat?” For some reason, the guy gave her the creeps, and Geri hoped he wouldn’t linger over yet another cup of coffee. This was his third.

            “I don’t think so. Let me think about it, okay?” He smiled. He had a big round face and thin brown hair cut like you would if you put a bowl on your head and trimmed around it.

            Think away, Geri thought and went to the cash register at the end of the bar. The young family had finished their meal, and she took their money. When she went to clean their table, she heard the squeak of the man’s bar stool. He had swiveled around and was probably watching her. She tried not to bend over. Her blouse was an old-fashioned polyester one with pockets and buttons down the middle. It was a size too large, though her breasts still strained the material. She wore black jeans that were a bit tight in the seat.

            “How about another refill?” the man said, when she went back to the counter. The cup dangled from his finger, as he waved it at her.

            “Sure,” Geri said, tight-lipped.

            “You know, I think I am kind of hungry. But not for much. How about a piece of that pie there. Is it coconut?”

            “Yeah, I’ll get it.”

            Geri set the coffee pot down on the counter, and the man took hold of her wrist. She stopped and stared at her arm. His fingers were stubby and had curly hair all over them. She silently prayed that Bird or her aunt would get the hell out of the kitchen just then. Or that another customer would come banging through the door.

            “Is it fresh? When was it made?”

            Geri tried to pull her arm away, but he held on.

            “Let go of my arm, and I’ll tell you.”

            “Oh, sure, sweetie. I was just trying to get your attention.”

            He looked at her like he hadn’t meant anything. Dried white spittle caked the corners of his mouth.

            Geri got him the pie and tried to turn away before he said anything else.

            “You work here long?” he asked.

            “Not really.” Eat your pie and get out of here, guy.

            “You married? Got some man waiting for you back home?”

            Geri sighed, feeling her chest tighten, her stomach begin to hurt. She wished she could just ignore him. Why couldn’t she? Why did she feel she had to answer his questions?

            “I’m not married.”

            “Go to college, do you?”

            “No.”

            “Just a working gal, huh? Say, when do you get off?”

            “Sorry, I have to check something,” Geri said, quickly pushing the kitchen door and coming through. Bird and Aunt Geneva looked up, startled. They weren’t ever supposed to leave the front room unattended.

            “I have to go to the bathroom,” Geri said. “There’s one customer out here.”

She didn’t wait for a response but stalked past them to the back door and went outside. The bathroom was right behind the restaurant’s back door in a separate building so the swimmers and boaters could use it without tracking in water to the restaurant.

            She didn’t need to pee. But she stood inside the bathroom a while and tried to calm down. Flies buzzed all around the toilet and the trash can. She took a deep breath and came out, then decided to take the long way around to the front door, give her some time to cool off. She hoped the guy had left.

            Instead, she ran right into him as she turned the corner to the front door. He was just coming out.

            “There you are,” he said. “Hey you know,” he said quietly, moving over to her. “I was just wondering if you want to screw.”

            Geri couldn’t believe she had heard correctly, and then he added, “I’ll pay you for it.”

            She opened her mouth and nothing came out. He was standing between her and the front door. She forced her legs to move and she turned and fled the way she had come, bursting through the back door and making Aunt Geneva jump about an inch in the air.

            “Lord, girl! What are you thinking bursting in like that?”

            Geri ignored her and went on through to the dining room. Bird was waiting on a couple of men in fishermen hats. She raised her eyebrows at Geri and Geri forced a weak smile before moving the man’s pie plate and coffee cup, and picking up a rag and furiously wiping down the counter, rewetting the rag in the ammonia water and erasing every trace of him.

 

Ganny’s Gardening Journal

June 18

Too tired to mess with those cucumbers today. They need to get pickled, and I just couldn’t do it. Maybe Geri will help me in a few days. I hate to ask. She stays so busy. She’s out there right now pounding that basketball into the dirt. I hear it clunk the backboard or clink as it goes through the chain net. Over and over and over. She’s worn such a pattern in the dirt that Warren said he would have to haul a load in to build it back up. I told him to do it.

 

The corn this year is too tall. I can barely reach the ears. I guess that chicken manure I got from Old Henderson did the trick. Geri will have to pick it for me. It’s about ready. I love the taste of a fresh corn on the cob, even if my old rotten teeth have to struggle with it nowadays.

 

I wish I hadn’t told her about Louise. Seems like she’s changed since I told her. Goes down to the creek a lot. Has gotten awful quiet. Or maybe, it’s just that a lot is on her mind. Basketball. This job. Seems like her and Matt are breaking up. He’s going to college. Good thing. He was too old for her. She may look ready to be a woman. But looks are deceiving. I should have learned that from Louise. She never told me what she had planned. We told each other everything, and she didn’t tell me that.

 

           

Geri’s Diary

            I know it was months ago, but I keep thinking about that fight with Johnna. I think if she hadn’t said that about my tits, I would never have gotten so mad. It always pisses me off to have somebody try and humiliate you based on something you can’t do anything about—the color of your eyes or skin, your parents, the clothes you have to wear, where you have to go to school. How many things do kids get to decide? Why do you have to make fun of what they can’t do anything about?

            People have always looked at my body. Since I was eight or nine, I’ve always looked older than I am. I started my period just a few weeks before my ninth birthday. All that blood. Didn’t know anything about it. Was living with the Robinsons then. Mrs. Robinson, what was her name?? Susan, I think. She had six kids of her own and two fosters. She liked that extra money. The tampons hurt but she wouldn’t buy any pads—said her other girls used tampons and she wasn’t going to splurge on pads just for me.

            Lord. I used to use folded up toilet paper instead. But the blood was so heavy sometimes. I kept ruining my underwear, and she wouldn’t buy anymore. Well, shit, I don’t want to write about this.

            My head hurts. I wish I had gotten that guy’s tag number. I should have turned him in, even if all he did was proposition me. It’s still wrong. It’s still wrong.

I miss Matt. I don’t think he’s the same anymore though. And I guess I’m not either.

 

            At the next summer league game, Geri watched Johnna for any signs she and Matt had been together, though she had no clue what to look for. A mark? A nod? A strange smile?  Of course, the easiest thing to do would be confront Matt about it. But was she going to do that?

            Geri did notice that Johnna was more than usually reserved toward her, backing away when she could have egged her on, not getting in the last word. At one point, Coach Thorpe took Johnna out and replaced her with Geri, who hardly ever played center, and Johnna didn’t made a single comment about it—then or after the game.

            “I guess it’s true,” Geri told Bird after the game in the locker room. They were the two youngest ones on the team and usually self-separated themselves from the others by moving as far away as possible.

            “Maybe,” Bird said.

            “You don’t have to spare my feelings. I can’t believe she’d be acting like that to me if Matt hadn’t told her to keep her trap shut about it or to leave me alone.”

            “Well, maybe that’s all he did—tell her to leave you alone.”

            “Right! Why would she though? The only incentive is if she was getting him that way.”

            Beth glanced over at Geri, whose voice had gotten louder than she intended. Beth smirked and then whispered something to Johnna. Johnna turned her deep brown eyes toward her, tossed her hair, and just smiled.

            “Well, even so,” Bird said. “There are plenty of other guys ready to take up right where Matt left off.”

            “I don’t think anyone would date me if they thought they would piss off Matt.”

            “I’m not talking about Fishinghawk guys. I mean your fan club, you know the one waiting outside.”

            Geri laughed. Generally, no one came to watch the summer league, but some of the Bixby football team had been coming in to watch after they had practiced for the day. A few of them cheered Geri on and hung around trying to get her to talk every time there was a break.

            “That one with the blonde hair and the silly smile—he’s kind of cute,” Bird said.

            “I hadn’t noticed.”

            “Oh come on, you’re not blind.”

            “I haven’t been looking.”

            Geri felt a pang. She realized that Bird didn’t know how much Matt meant to her, how much she thought about him when he wasn’t around, how much she wanted to be with him, how scared she was of her feelings for him. She didn’t care about any other guy just then. She didn’t know when she would.

            It occurred to her that she was thinking about Matt in the past tense. She sighed. It was just as well. August was almost here, and with that, he would be gone.

            In the van on the way home, Geri and Bird slumped in the seat as Bird thumbed through a Seventeen magazine and Geri watched the back of Coach Thorpe’s head as he drove east on the expressway from Tulsa and toward home. Like Johnna, Coach Thorpe’s fixation on her had seemed to let up. He wasn’t driving her near as hard. She didn’t know if that was because it was summer and the games didn’t count or if she had improved enough that he didn’t need to be breathing down her neck all the time.

            She was surprised to feel that she missed the attention.

            “So, are you going to ask him about it?” Bird said, not even looking up from her magazine.

            “I think I’m just gonna break up with him.”

            “You’re trying to make her happy?”

            “It’s not about her. It’s about him and me. Besides . . . next month he’ll be across the state and both of us will still be here in Fishinghawk, at the good ole high school.”

            “She has a driver’s license. She could drive to Stillwater and see him.”

            “I don’t care.”

            “Fine. Go ahead. I give up. Aunt Geneva and Mom both think he’s too old for you anyway.”

            “They can join the crowd with Ganny.”

            After a silence, Bird asked, “Do you think he’s too old for you?”

            “Not a bit,” Geri said, without hesitating. “I’m too old for him.”

            Bird was the only person who knew exactly how rough Geri’s past had been in the foster homes. She didn’t need an explanation.

 

Geri’s Diary

I’ve got a line of rocks with black markings on them at the creek now. I’ve hidden them all under the cedars that line the dry creek bed, Louise’s creek bed. Death bed. Morbid. I’m writing this entry right here on the rocks, looking at the rocks, feeling the dry rocks around me. It’s so hot, hasn’t rained in a month.

 

I feel as dry as these rocks. Like stone, smooth and hard, no feelings. I’m drying  up inside. Like I did the time before when . . . I didn’t ride my bike down here. I ran all the way. I’m getting that feeling again, the need to run, take off, get out of here, get out of myself. So far, I have only run to this point. So far . . .

 

* * *

           

            “I wish I could take that night back,” Matt said.

            “This isn’t all about that night. It’s about a lot of things, and none of it is your fault. Or mine. It’s just what it is.”

            “Yeah, whatever. I just know that everything changed after prom night. So you can say what you want about it, but that’s what I know.”

            He was standing on the edge of the porch, and Geri was in the porch swing. They had been driving around aimlessly and had come back to the house early. Sitting on the swing, she told him that it was over between them.

            “I shouldn’t have pressured you,” he said, his back to her.

            Geri wanted to go to him and put her hands around him. His dark blue t-shirt waved slightly in the hot breeze.

            “Or called you that. You know I”—

            “Will you stop? I said it wasn’t your fault. You weren’t pressuring me.”

            “Yes, I was. I knew what I wanted to happen when I rented that room.”

            Geri pressed her hand to her forehead. This was too hard. Why didn’t he just accept her decision and leave it alone. She didn’t want to keep talking about it or explaining herself or ignoring how she felt. Before she could stop herself, she asked the question.

            “Do you know what you wanted with Johnna?”

            He tensed and swung around, his eyes narrowed.

            “What are you talking about?”

            “You know.”

            She felt her shoulders droop. He wasn’t going to bother to deny it. She wished he would.

            “Dammit, Geri. Is she what this is all about? You know she means nothing to me. She’s just . . . I just needed to”—

            “Stop explaining, please! I really don’t want to hear it. It’s okay. I’m sure you all gave each other what you needed”—

            “Oh come on. This is crazy.”

            “Hey listen, I don’t need protection. I don’t.”

            “I’m not trying to protect you.” He ran his hands through his hair and took a step toward Geri, then stopped. “Well, maybe I am. I knew you were only fifteen when I asked you out that first time, but you were so damn gorgeous and smart and you always seemed so sure of yourself. You were such a turn-on. I don’t know, I just kept forgetting how old you were. I kept”—

            “I’m not a virgin.”

            There. She had said it. It was out.

            He took a step back, and in that instant, Geri knew that it was really over between them. She realized that he had been harboring an image of her as his sweet, innocent girl with the woman’s body that no one but him had ever touched. That’s what he wanted. And she had never been that. Her stomach sank, and her heart beat rapidly. She had wished it weren’t so. She had wished for so much more.

            She had wished from the time she was nine that she didn’t look like she did. Maybe it would have kept that first foster father away from her . . . and the brothers of the other family. Maybe she wouldn’t have been approached by men thinking she was an adult when she was barely thirteen. Men propositioning her just because she poured them a cup of coffee. Did she look like she wanted to screw? She couldn’t help that. She couldn’t stop her body from becoming what it was. Why didn’t anyone understand that?

            Matt tried to recover and appear like he wasn’t too shocked. He did a poor job of it. And Geri was so thankful when Ganny came out on the porch and asked them if they wanted some lemonade.

            “Matt has to go, but thanks for asking,” Geri said.

            She walked him to his car.

            “We’re not done talking about this,” he said.

            “Yeah, I think we are.”

            He turned to her and took both her hands in his and looked at her closely. Geri tried not to see disappointment in his eyes. She really didn’t know what was there. Pity? That was even worse.

            “I know you had a really tough time before you came to live here.”

            “I don’t want to talk about that,” Geri said.

            “Okay, but someday you should.”

            A prickle of irritation ran down Geri’s spine. She pulled her hands away from him.

            “It’s still early. If you leave now, you might have time to pick up Johnna and still make a night of it.”

            It hurt to say the words and to see his reaction. She spun away from him and practically ran to the front door. Running. The need to run again.

            The next morning, she ran to the creek. She sat near the cedars and drew with the black slate on rock after rock—symbols, marks, words, names, letters. Drops of blood in black. Tears. She placed them all under the trees and looked at some of the old ones. If it ever rained again, the water would probably wash away the black shale marks. That was okay. Nothing was permanent anyway.

 

Ganny’s Gardening Journal

 

August 12

 

Well, it’s that time of year again when the garden is brown as cricket legs and about as dry. Ain’t no song accompanying it though. No need to keep trying to make anything grow at this point. One dinky little rain since June and no amount of watering is going to keep anything alive. The gourds love the heat at least. Warren has harvested a truckbed full of them. That will keep his wife busy til next year at least.

 

He brought in some dirt for the basketball court. Now Geri’s hard at it, working it back down again already. School started back up and she’s bent on working herself into the ground with that basketball. Or working something out. Don’t know which.

 

Good thing that boyfriend is gone. Something went bad there. I tried to talk about it, but hell, I’m an old woman. I don’t know what I think I can say to her or what she might want to say to me. Sometimes I wonder if it was a smart thing to take her in like I did. She would have been better off with someone younger. Course, no one was offering. Not even that layabout dad of hers. I wonder if she knows he still lives here, just a few miles up the road.

 

I canned the last of the cucumbers and just let the vines die. They weren’t putting out any more blossoms anyway. I made some sweet relish that Warren really likes. Geri likes real tart pickles. I made her some of them.