by Lori L. Lake
Lynch’s syndicated column, “The Amazon Trail,” has run nationally since 1986. She is a recipient of the Golden Crown Literary Society Trailblazer Award, the Alice B. Reader Award for Lesbian Fiction, and was honored with induction into the Saints and Sinners Literary Hall of Fame in 2006. In 2010 she received the James Duggins Mid-Career Award in Writing, and, for Beggar of Love, the Lesbian Fiction Readers Choice Award, the Ann Bannon Popular Choice Award, and Book of the Year Award from ForeWord Reviews.
The Awakening
Fiction by Lee Lynch
Sun splashed against the porch screen as summer breezes lifted the leaves and branches of the wide old tree outside. Every afternoon Momma sat sleepily on the large, thickly cushioned rocker with her two daughters on either side of her, Lillian stiffly on the edge of her straight-back chair, darting forward at each sound in the street, while Nan rose more slowly to witness and judge Lillian's observations.
"There she goes now," Lillian exclaimed, her index finger a stiff extension of the thin hard line of her body. "I told you so. Can't spend a day without him. Like a drug addict. Has to see him up at the corner every day or she thinks he won't come to see her at night." She finished sarcastically, "A lot she'd be missing if he didn't."
Nan raised her limp, heavy form off the flowered cushion of her rocking chair, looked at the figure hurrying through the schoolyard across the street, and sat again, exhaling like an inflated pillow whose plug has been pulled. She shook her head and chuckled. "Can't get enough of him, can she, Momma?"
Momma, her short white hair neat under its matching net said, "Tsk, tsk," and smiled with pleasure.
"Momma always appreciates a good joke, don't you, Momma?" Nan asked approvingly.
"But this is no joking matter," Lillian protested, and snapped her cigarette case open. "Not at all, not at all," she repeated, tapping a cigarette against the arm of her chair. She jabbed the cigarette between her lips before she continued. "The neighbors are all up in arms! Madge Daugherty with her poor sick mother is beside herself with what goes on there weekends. She doesn't want her two girls to get the wrong ideas, you know. That's an impressionable age, the early teens, I well remember."
Nan and Momma looked away as one from the retreating figure in the schoolyard and looked defensively toward Lillian. "Nothing we did, I hope," Nan giggled.
"Certainly not." Lillian snapped past the cigarette that jumped on her lower lip as she talked. "Shut up, Alexander," she called suddenly to a caged blue canary which had begun to sing from the corner of the porch. She adjusted the gauzy pink scarf that surrounded her pin curls.
"None of those goings on in our family," Momma asserted.
Nan shifted her weight more comfortably and pulled her dress down over her knees. "If it was just one, I'd understand better. But it seems like a new one every year."
"Doesn't it, though?"
"And she had a perfectly good husband."
"Drove him away, they say."
"Needs a lot of men."
"Do you think so?" Nan asked thoughtfully, finishing with her dress and picking up a Reader's Digest to fan herself. "Do you think it's her body that needs them? Or just her mind?"
Alexander sang again, briefly, until Lillian glared at him. "It's all in her head, of course," she replied, stabbing the ashtray with her blackened cigarette butt. "No one needs that much you know what," she ended in a hiss.
"I guess she thinks she's no good unless a man wants her. Otherwise why would she need them all?"
"Nanette, that worthless bird my boys never clean, what makes it sing? There's something in her. She was brought up just as good as us. Her poor mother would be mortified."
"Devil made her do it," Momma chortled slyly, rubbing the few stiff white hairs on her chin.
Lillian darted forward. "Let me pluck those for you, Momma," she demanded, examining them.
Momma waved her away with a fleshy pink hand. "Don't bothering me, you," she admonished. "God put them there for a reason."
"God maybe has a reason for her to carry on like that," Nan suggested.
"Who, Momma?" Lillian wanted to know. "Who?"
"That little trifle we're talking about. Maybe we need women like that to keep the men amused so the rest of us can have some peace." Nan let her head drop to the back of her chair. Her hair was bleach-blonde and thin, wisps of it escaping the pink curlers around which it was rolled. Always touching and poking. They can't think of anything else, it seems."
"Except betting away the money," Lillian added.
"The horses," Momma said, rocking and nodding. "The horses and the drink."
"Speaking of the drink, there goes poor old Frank."
"Poor old Frank," Momma echoed.
Lillian craned her neck to see Frank stumble down the street. "Disgusting," she said as she stared at the disheveled figure. "To think you were his girl once."
"That was before I even met Ned, Lily. I never did intend to marry that old drunk."
"There but for the grace of God go I," Momma nodded to herself. The daughters nodded vigorously in agreement while the bird began a new chorus. Lillian turned to chide him—until her eye was caught by the man's cautious approach to a tree in a secluded corner of the schoolyard. “Oh, no," she whispered in horror.
"What?" Nan asked, excitedly pulling herself forward the screen. "He's not, is he, Lily?"
Lily glanced threateningly at Nan, shushing her and pointing her chin at Momma who was absorbed in straightening the doilies under her forearms and re-pinning them. Nan and Lillian sat back slightly in their chairs, but kept their eyes on the man.
"What is it?" Momma asked, alert.
"Nothing you want to see, Momma," Lillian answered evasively. "There, it's over, you can look now." She lowered her voice. "He relieved himself over in the schoolyard.”
"Do you believe it?" Nan asked and suddenly began laugh nervously. "Momma could have seen! If school was in session the little girls...!"
"Never mind the girls, they'll have to put up with that kind of thing all too soon when they're married. But what about an example to the boys! My boys."
"They'll be like that soon enough anyway," Nan observed.
"Not my boys. If I ever catch them doing a thing 1ike that, I'll skin them alive. My boys will not be rummies like old Frank or lose their paychecks as soon as they get them. You'll see."
"Glad I only have the little girl. I don't have to beat any of that piggishness out of her."
"Well, mine won't grow up piggy. You can mark words."
"All alike they are," Momma said, shaking her head. "They're all alike, every last one of them."
Nan smiled and lifted her chin while Lillian sat stiffly furious and looked down the street. "I'm raising my two boys to make their wives happy. They'll be different. I don't care what anybody says," Lillian complained, tears in her voice.
"Look, look!" Nan cried proudly, spotting something before Lillian did, "It's the honeymooners," she giggled, "fighting again." A man and woman walked together down the street, glaring straight ahead, not touching.
"Fighting this early in the morning. My, my," Lillian whispered loudly, distracted from her mother's criticism and ready to return to her post. "Why she puts up with him I’ll never know."
"They say it's for the kids."
"All six of them," Lillian sneered.
“Once with him should have been enough, I'd think." Nan looked slyly at Lillian over Momma's head.
“She can't possibly get any pleasure from it," Lillian concluded.
“It’s hard enough with a man who doesn't hit you."
They craned forward again to hear as the couple passed under the porch. "The language!" Lillian breathed, outraged. “To his own wife!"
“Words I've never heard before." Nan winked at Lillian who did not spare her a glance.
“Shhh," Lillian admonished. "They're fighting about him going to work. He's telling her to go to work if she needs more money," she whispered.
N
an clucked. "The nerve. Why, that's all men are good for is bringing home the bacon."
“And their troubles."
“Not a drop of good in any of them," Momma added, leaning heavily on the arms of the chair as she struggled up. Her stockings were rolled around thick ankles and spilled over black shoes. The dark flowered housedress had bunched behind her girdle and the silky material eluded her stiff fingers as she tried to grab and pull it into place.
“Here, Momma," Lillian offered as she rose and jack-knifed behind her mother to help her.
“Here," said Nan, simultaneously flailing for a hold on the dress from her chair. "Why you still wear these girdles I don’t know. You're old enough to relax."
Momma winked. "Maybe the boyfriend will come by today.”
“Boyfriend my foot," Lillian ridiculed her.
“What would you do with a boyfriend, Momma?" Nan wanted to know.
Lillian stood in the doorway calling after her. "Where are you going? Use my bathroom down here. Don't walk up all those stairs to your place." She went back on the porch muttering to Nan, "Embarrassed, I suppose, to use anybody's but her own.”
“Do you blame her? After all those years living with Poppa? She finally has a little privacy. A bathroom all her own. A bed all her own. An apartment all her own except when you can't stand it down here and go up to her. You must spend half your life up there."
Lillian relaxed and sat down after she heard her mother finish climbing the stairs. "Thank goodness I have it. My little refuge. When he," she lowered her voice, looking around the porch, "when he starts the drinking you don't know what he'll do. He doesn't bother the boys. They've started protecting me, young as they are. But there's nowhere else I can go. Last night, Nan, he smashed my fresh baked pie on the floor. Ruined it. Then when I cleaned it up he wanted to you know what."
"I don't understand them, I just don't."
"Don't tell Momma."
"No, no, I never do. I don't want her hearing about my fool of a man either. I'm sick of the horses. He found my refrigerator money yesterday. The money I've been saving for a new one. I think Sheila deserves something better than mushy ice cream, poor little girl."
"To the betting parlor?"
Nan laughed. "Where else? Right down to old man Reilly's cigar store. But I couldn't say anything, you know. He won."
"Did he now?"
"He's buying the refrigerator and school clothes for Sheila. Taking her shopping himself," Nan boasted.
"Trying to win her favor after all the meanness."
"He doesn't fool her, though."
"Good for her."
"She says she doesn't want new clothes," she whispered. "No plaid skirts like all the little girls are wearing, no little patent leather shoes. I must admit, I don't understand the child, Lily. All she wants is another pair of those flannel lined jeans like we got her last year out in the country when we visited his folks."
"Do you suppose it's a stage?"
"I don't remember any stages like that when I was eight. Do you?"
"No. Momma always dressed us in the prettiest little white starched dresses no matter how little there was, didn't you, Momma?" Nan asked as her mother stepped onto the porch. She leaned over to smooth the afghan on Momma's chair.
"He did his best, poor soul," Momma said as she sighed into her seat. "Did his very best." Her eyes twinkled. "Wonder what his worst could've been." She chuckled.
The daughters laughed loudly. "Momma, you're a scream," Nan heaved, recovering from her laughter.
"He was your father, though. You must respect him. Respect the dead."
Lillian straightened indignantly. "After how he treated you?"
"He couldn't help it. He had a hard time of it."
"He didn't have to take it out on you, though, Momma."
"Who else did he have?"
Nan shook her head. "No one, I suppose. Poor Poppa. He should have been rich. Being poor drove him to drink."
"Like it drives some men to gamble." Lily looked significantly at Nan.
"Or to hit their wives."
"It all comes of trying to raise a family and keep a home together."
"Forgive and forget," Momma advised.
"Still," Lily mused, "sometimes I wonder if we'd be better off without them."
"Don't be ridiculous," Nan scorned her. "Of course not. How could you raise two boys alone? How could I take care of Sheila right?"
Lillian stubbed out another cigarette. "And our lovely flats."
"My nice new refrigerator." Nan beamed.
"Grin and bear it," they agreed in unison when Momma started to say it again.
"Would you like some lemonade?" Lillian asked.
"Sounds delicious," Nan said. "If it's not too much trouble. And I can bring out those lovely fresh cupcakes Sheila picked out on the way over."
"Won't take me but a jif. No, Nan, now sit and rest your old bones, I'll bring it out."
"You'll need help carrying it," Nan insisted, righting herself on her short wide legs. "No more argument. I'm helping."
As the sisters went into the house, Lillian quickly and purposefully, Nan following slowly, Sheila at last let herself open her eyes. From the porch cot where they had instructed her to nap while they visited, she gazed at her Grandmomma's back. She never could sleep through their talk, though they always thought she did. She wondered what Grandpoppa had done to Grandmomma. Was it just the same old stuff her father and uncle did to her mother and aunt? She hoped it wasn't worse. Quietly, she sat and looked up at Alexander the canary. He blinked at her. She winked at him. "Why do they live with men?" she whispered to Alexander. He blinked again and flapped his blue wings. "I ain't going to, bird. You can bet your sweet tailfeathers on it."
Momma turned her slow bulk toward Sheila. "Awake, rascal?" she asked.
"Um-huh," Sheila answered, pretending to rub sleep from her eyes and stretching noisily.
"Cupcakes coming. And lemonade," Momma offered warmly, opening her arms. Sheila blundered over to her still feigning sleepiness. She walked between her Grandmomma's open legs and let herself be enfolded by fleshy arms, against a soft breast. Sheila sighed. She had no intention of leaving Grandmomma's arms. Ever.
***
ABOUT SUSAN X MEAGHER
Susan X Meagher was born in East St. Louis, Illinois, and now lives in New York City with her partner, Carrie, with whom she has shared her life for 34 years. Susan says, “My father loved to learn about people and their lives. He taught me to pay attention to the small, simple things that make everyone unique.”
Susan has published ten installments of her series “I Found My Heart in San Francisco” featuring the life and times of Ryan O’Flaherty and Jamie Evans, seven novels and has short stories included in eight anthologies. Her latest novel, Smooth Sailing, will come out in June 2010 from Brisk Press.
That Way
Fiction by Susan X. Meagher
GRACE JENSEN PUMPED her legs, gaining purchase on the small hill at the edge of town, determined to be the first to the top. The boys were all a little taller and a little stronger, but she weighed less and had as big a will to win as any of them. Panting, straining, feeling the sweat trickle and twist down the middle of her back, she leapt onto the small plateau, beaming with pride when she hit it with her left foot just before Jerry Swenson swept past her. “I’m the king!” she crowed, jumping up and down, ebullient in victory. The gangly boy with the dust-brown hair — styled with the aid of a cereal bowl — and beady, close-set eyes gave her a push, dispatching her onto the seat of her shorts. But Grace didn’t care. She’d won! She’d won, fair and square, and she lay on her back, taking in the cloudless, unspeakably blue hue of a summer sky in North Dakota.
She put her hands behind her head, then crossed an ankle over her raised knee. Jerry, Tommy White, Eric Torgerson, AJ Schmidt, and Bobby Nymoen all sank to the ground, mimicking her. The others had all slowed down when it was clear the race was between Grace and Jerry, but now that it w
as over, there wasn’t a word spoken about it. All six kids lay on the ground, letting the still-cool earth diffuse the heat of their small bodies.
The sun was so warm and so blissfully welcome — they were all grateful for its comfort and the freedom that came with its return. It had been a brutal winter, the worst one Grace could recall, even though she really couldn’t recall much at all, being five-years-old. It seemed the bitter cold had come early and stayed late, with more days than she cared to remember spent sitting in the small house on Prairie Street, watching the snow drift across their small yard. None of her friends could go out during a blizzard either, but she knew it would just take one generous adult to allow one child to go outside, and all of the others would follow.
Not, of course, that she was the leader of the group. That title belonged to Eric, the oldest, tallest, and coolest of the clique. Eric had been just one week short of the cut-off for first grade this past year, and he had much older brothers — giving him a depth and breadth of knowledge the other kids couldn’t dream of matching. He even had a brother who smoked — the coolness of that alone was awesome — not to mention giving him ready access to the matches his brother always hid between his mattress and box spring. As soon as the tall grass was dry, they had plans to start a fire — something Grace spent nearly every night dreaming about. She could just imagine the orange and red flames whirling and surging across the prairie and feel the nearly constant wind from the northwest whip it into an inferno that would burn for miles and miles and miles.
Bobby, his black, tightly curled hair cushioning his head from the damp earth, was obviously thinking the same thing. He asked no one in particular, “How much longer till we can set the fire?”
