Mt. Moriah's Wake

by Melissa Norton Carro

  Do I feel cheated? Certainly. Especially in the early years. I think people expect orphans to fall apart—to become bitter and hostile. The fact is, I was angry—with God and my parents. I cried, often and hard, taking refuge in my stuffed animals and Barbies, creating a make-believe kingdom that no one could enter. Sinking deeper and deeper into books, into writing stories, I was by myself for hours.

  All the time, Doro watched. And waited. Perhaps she was waiting for me to fall apart, but I suspect she was instead waiting for me to pull together. Hers was a deep, abiding faith—not only in God, but in man. Even man in the form of an eight-year-old girl with a wet pillow.

  Perhaps she knew of a strength I didn’t know I had. Or perhaps she put it there. Regardless, when I saw Doro in the hospital waiting room, when she took me home and brushed my teeth and held me, I had no choice but to follow.

  It was the end of one life and the beginning of another.

  3

  SPRINKLERS

  INSIDE THE WOODBURY PARLOR, I moved from person to person—or rather, they moved around me.

  “You’re in Chicago, right?”

  “JoAnna, I’m so sorry.”

  “Doro was the best of us.”

  After their hugs, people inevitably looked past my shoulder—hoping for a glimpse of, an introduction to, my husband.

  “Oh, he had to work unfortunately,” I said to the inquiring eyes.

  I imagined my husband flipping on the switch in his office and listening to my voice mail. The truth was, I had hoped he would answer his phone—so I could give him the news in person. It would have been the first time we had talked in days. An argument had kept him at his friend’s apartment. An argument had stood in the way of his accompanying me to Mt. Moriah.

  He had left me, and I didn’t know if he was coming back.

  So instead I left a brief message: Doro has died. I’m going to Mt. Moriah. I will be okay. I love you. I did love him. But I did not want him here.

  Doro was not all I came to Mt. Moriah to bury.

  At the front of the room, between two ornate wall sconces, was the casket. My feet moved toward it as if in a dream, people parting around me to clear my path. Doro, Doro, Doro. Surely that wasn’t her in the casket. Surely this wasn’t real. The door would open, and she would appear, those painted lips parted for the laughter to roll out. Where are you, Doro? I leaned in and brushed her cheek with my lips. Between her and me were so many memories that no casket could hold them.

  And between us the one secret that was now destined to be buried forever.

  At Woodbury it seemed I said the right things, smiled at the right times, and responded appropriately. My hands were shaken and my shoulders embraced until I felt almost dizzy. Yet I moved and spoke and smiled and hugged as if in a dream.

  At one point, leaning in to kiss Donnie Rapasco, the butcher, instinctively holding my breath against last night’s garlic, I caught a glance out the front window. Across the street two little girls were skipping back and forth through a sprinkler. The arc of water captured colors from the late summer sky, and crepe myrtle petals danced at the girls’ wet toes. In my head, I heard the voice of my best friend, Grace Collins.

  “Oh my gosh, Jo, look.”

  We were running through the sprinkler cascading Doro’s vegetable garden. It was August 1984, the hottest on record since Kennedy. We were racing to see who could run under the spray and not get drenched. But it became too hot for games; what we wanted was to be dowsed.

  Then Doro appeared. She watched us, hands on hips for a minute, then slipped off her Kelly green espadrilles, hiked her skirt up, and raced into the spray. She darted through the water five times before stopping in the middle, soaking herself and twirling her torso in a slightly inappropriate sideshow.

  “You just don’t know how hot that kitchen is!”

  Crippled with laughter, Grace and I held each other up.

  “Just think, Jo Jo. That’ll be you and me one day … old ladies dancing in a sprinkler!”

  Nodding, I continued to laugh at my crazy aunt.

  Oh, Grace, I thought, watching the girls out the Woodbury Parlor window. We will never be old ladies together.

  “JoAnna!”

  Although she had aged twenty years in the four since I last saw her, I knew the voice and face of Genia Collins instantly. Grace’s mother, Genia was a pruney bitter shrew of a woman. She and Grace shared a monogram and strawberry blonde hair and big brown eyes. And nothing else.

  I smiled and leaned into the hug she offered. Feeling small sobs starting, I pulled back.

  “Dorothea was a good woman,” Genia said. Then, brushing my hair out of my eyes, “I wasn’t sure you would come.”

  Not come because Chicago is in another country? Not come because I’m a hateful person? What must Genia think of me.

  She went on to explain. “Well it’s just that I know you are married and Chicago is a lifetime away.”

  “Chicago is so far away,” Grace said. We were sitting on the edge of Doro’s bed, watching as Doro crammed girdles and corsets into her Samsonite. We had turned twelve, and Doro was taking us to Chicago to celebrate. My writer’s imagination captivated by big cities, I wrote stories about a girl who lived in Chicago. “Hmmm,” Doro mused, reading one of my stories. “I think it’s time you see the city you’re writing about.”

  I had packed days before and was counting down the hours. Grace was less convinced. “My mom says it’s a lifetime away,” said Grace.

  Doro stopped packing for a moment and looked at Grace. “Fiddle faddle. Nothing is far when you can get there by plane, Gracie.”

  “I don’t think my mom likes to travel. Anyway, she said I should call every night.” Grace chewed on the place where a thumb nail should be. Anxiety was obviously something easily passed on in lactation.

  “We will call your mom, Gracie.” Doro paused, hands on her hips, surveying her room to inventory how much more could be crammed into her suitcase-that-would-never-close. “But you just remember that life is an adventure … and God intends for us to live it!”

  “I got a good flight, Mrs. Collins.” I pulled my hands from Genia’s bird-like palms. “So how are you?”

  “I’m alright, considering. Touch of arthritis in my shoulders and a knee replacement last year.” She instinctively touched her right kneecap. “But that’s nothing next to my heart …”

  “Your heart? Oh I didn’t know there was something—”

  “No, no, child. My heart is broken. Seeing you reminds me of my dear Grace …” She bit her trembling lip. “A woman just shouldn’t outlive everyone she loves.”

  The tears began then, as befitting the over-active, on cue tear ducts of a Southern lady. Genia’s shoulders were hunched as if toting a backpack of stones.

  As, indeed, they were.

  4

  HIGHEST POINT

  ON THE DAY OF GRACE COLLINS’ FUNERAL, Mt. Moriah’s fifty-day record drought acquiesced to a gentle, soaking rain—a gift for which the farmers and garden clubs had been praying. Yet no one seemed to notice or care, for Mt. Moriah was in shock over Grace’s murder. It happened on the Point, Mt. Moriah’s highest tabletop of land that made a perfect picnic spot except for the steep climb up to it. Access to the Point was by Windy Hill Road which, aptly named, was a one-mile stretch of asphalt curves with a grade that took your breath away. At the end of Windy Hill Road was a guardrail and the entrance to the Point marked by a wooden sign, erected by the local Boy Scout Troop, with hand carved letters: “Climb Here to the Point.” The path to the Point was another mile.

  As children, we were not allowed to hike to the Point alone. Several times our Girl Scout Troop had gone on expeditions up there, holding hands buddy style. The view from the top was stunning. Standing at 200 feet, in all directions the vantage point offered you a view of the four corners of Mt. Moriah down in the valley. Deep tree roots served as footholds and one spring the town council installed railroad ties, driven with stakes into th
e dirt, to provide additional steps. Holding vigil in the center of the grassy meadow was a single birch, its chalky limbs soaring forty feet into the air.

  The day Grace died, torn ropes were found at the base of that tree, and toward the edge of the meadow, the police found Grace’s body, one shoe missing and one shoe on, red wallet on the ground. Rope burns on her wrists, Grace had obviously broken free, the police noted, because she was found on her back near the edge, a rope dangling around one leg, a single pristine bullet hole in her forehead.

  The murder was never solved. There were no witnesses, at least that the town knew of. That such violence could come to a town shaken even by gossip of adultery or bankruptcy was unspeakable. And so most people shuffled in stunned silence into First Methodist Church on that Tuesday in June 1997.

  I sat on the back pew, with Doro. I should have been down front, near Grace’s mother Genia, but I could not. I remember Doro’s hand on my elbow, leading me in, leading me out. During the service I had the unsettling feeling that I was hovering above, watching a play be played out.

  As if I were the one dead.

  We left almost as quickly as we came in, ignoring friends as they approached us.

  “Jo needs to go home and rest. She’s in shock,” Doro whispered as a mantra to anyone we passed.

  I have since regretted that I cannot recall anything said at my best friend’s funeral—that I didn’t take part in remembering her. And my guilt goes even further than that: The day of the murder I was to accompany Grace on her hike to the Point. I was anxious to tell her about my potential job. After college graduation and months of submitting my resume to advertising agencies in Chicago, I had gone on an interview for an entry-level position. Grace had something she wanted to tell me too.

  “I have news, Jo Jo! A big secret, you might say.”

  “Me too! Want to eat Mexican? Or take a hike?”

  “Both!” Grace giggled. “I’ve been missing you bad!”

  I never got the chance to tell Grace about the job prospect. A freelance project I was working on made me call her and cancel. I never told Grace about the job, never heard her news.

  Perhaps it was divine intervention, the hand of Fate, or just sublime irony, but on the afternoon we returned from Grace’s funeral, the phone rang. I heard Doro answer downstairs, and then her footsteps on the hardwood steps.

  “It’s the company, Jo. Get the phone.”

  Lying on my bed, still in my dress and pantyhose, I turned on my side. I knew what the call was. It didn’t matter.

  “Jo, you’re going to take this call. You. Are. Going. To take. This call.”

  Never had I heard Doro more emphatic. And like a little child, as I had been doing since I was eight, I didn’t question Doro. I rose and went to the phone.

  “Yes. Yes, ma’am. August tenth. Yes, I understand. Yes. Thank you. Yes. Goodbye.” I don’t know what my voice sounded like to the people who had just hired me, or if they could detect the tears that were dripping onto the phone. But I do remember Doro’s face when I replaced the receiver and said, “Doro, I can’t go.”

  Her face spoke of the agony Doro felt—it said how much she wanted to lock me in my room against the bad forces in the world. Doro’s countenance mirrored my own fear and grief—and revealed that she herself couldn’t bear the thought of my leaving.

  “You’re going.” There were tears in Doro’s eyes, but her thick, soft hands held each of my cheeks firmly. “You have two months. You’ll be ready, Jo, and you can do this.

  “Go be a writer.”

  All I could think was that Doro didn’t understand—not the fear, not the grief, not the emptiness inside that would never go away. But she was Doro, and she was mine, and she was finally wise enough to say the one thing that could make me go.

  “Grace would want you to.”

  Six weeks later Doro put me on an airplane with two heavy pieces of luggage and two thousand dollars in traveler’s checks—amassed from her savings and my part-time job—to use for room and board and to buy a bed and sofa in my first apartment.

  She would see me soon, Doro said, and it was something she believed, that I would return for visits and the wounds would be healed, the grief softened.

  But she was mistaken. For the fleshy grief in my heart was quickly replaced with hardness. I blamed God for letting Grace die. I blamed Mt. Moriah because the town continued—laundromats operated, banks did transactions, families took vacations—while for me it seemed that time had stopped.

  Most of all, I blamed Doro for giving me false courage. For sending me away for my sake. For thinking me strong and not letting me be weak.

  As we waited for me to board the plane to Chicago, Doro noted Kenny G’s music in the airport. “Oh, that music’s so wonderful, don’t you think, Jo?”

  We had become fans of his music when I was in high school. At that moment my boarding was announced, and I turned away. I didn’t look back after the quick perfunctory kiss, nor did I answer her question.

  A silly question, really. Didn’t Doro understand there was no wonderful music because there was no wonderful any longer.

  The music had been silenced.

  I think our lives are like tops.

  The broadest part of us, the heavy compilation of all we’ve done and seen and felt—drives the tip on which our lives spin. Too hard a spin, too many revelations, and our top can spin itself off the table edge. Likewise, too small a spin can leave our top warily revolving, traveling nowhere, inhaling the same air it breathed out.

  I see people as the tops they are: spinning their lives into a maze of haphazard patterns like Doro, or quietly circling the block, like Genia Collins, waiting resignedly for the force to end.

  Yet some tops beat the odds. A top spun vigorously trips and almost bounces, dizzy in its speed, heading certainly toward the edge of the table and the precipice below. Yet it does not fall; rather it seems to bounce back from the edge, only to spin some more.

  Then there’s the more circumspect top, barely moving, and yet the few inches it travels make it spiral downward. Why, when care was taken? Why is one top drawn to and the other away from the fall?

  Why did Grace have to die?

  It was the lucky top that made that other high school senior, not your child, collide head-on. It was a lucky top that made the lump in your breast a benign cyst.

  And yet do we really believe in luck?

  And what of faith?

  Are we created and set in motion like millions of tops, bumping into each other, sliding toward the abyss, some of us pulled back and some freefalling into nothingness? Is there no secret formula for avoiding the precipice?

  Perhaps this is not a question but rather the answer.

  I had never believed in the freefall. Perhaps I got that from Doro. I suspended myself in treaded waters, holding my breath. If I could just keep circling, slowly, gently, all that I am, all that I love, would remain perched high above me. In safe arms I could never see but knew were there. Blindly. Knew. That’s what Doro taught me.

  And then Grace died, and with her the faith of Doro—the faith of my childhood.

  Grace’s was a fire dance of joy, and sparks of energy shot from every part of her pirouette. Yet nothing pulled her back from the edge. Nothing saved that shining top from cascading down.

  A prayer was screamed, but no one heard.

  When Grace died, everything changed for me. I felt completely alone, irrevocably so, it seemed. There was no power above me, and no power within me, to prevent such a fall.

  On the day Grace died, so did my faith in the divine. Life became random.

  Aboard the plane to Chicago, I stared out at the clouds floating around me. I strained to look up, knowing with complete certainty that there was nothing there. No one there.

  Free fallers we are. Freefalling through life.

  Four years later, I am steadfast in my disbelief.

  5

  WIND

  CHICAGO IS EXACTLY 423 M
ILES FROM MT. MORIAH, and each of those seemed significant on the day my flight landed in August 1997. When I deboarded the plane, I knew Chicago would be everything I needed it to be: specifically, not Mt. Moriah. I was twenty-two years old; my best friend had just died; and I sought refuge from my grief and my memories.

  I sought refuge from myself. From the streaked window of the cab taking me to my hotel in midtown, I looked out at the blend of old mom-and-pop establishments and gold card stores. I took strange comfort in the horns and the voices and the guttural rumbling of the el. And the people: thousands and thousands of faces I didn’t know. Who didn’t know me. It was anonymity I wanted, and those 400-odd miles erased who I was.

  It was up to me who I wanted to be.

  My first home in Chicago was a long-term hotel off Wooster Avenue. One of the perks of Sandalwood & Harris Advertising was that new college grads could rent a room for $750 per month, with the price doubling in six months. I had the option of spending less if I took a roommate but alone was what I wanted.

  What I was.

  “It will give you time to get settled and find an apartment,” said Doro in early July, bringing into my room a bevy of heavy plastic coat hangers. Her nervousness for me—and quite possibly for herself when I left—manifested itself in weekly shopping binges. At the bottom of my cavernous suitcase were enough hangers to outfit a family of four.

  I checked in at the front desk of the hotel and got the key to Room 504. Riding up in the shaky elevator, I caught a reflection of myself in the mirrored brass above the door. Who was that girl? Not me. Not JoAnna Wilson.

  Did she yet exist?

  When I arrived, the door was open across the hall where two lanky girls perched on one of the two beds, painting each other’s toenails. They introduced themselves as fellow Sandalwood & Harris newbies. They smiled at me and in those smiles I knew we would never be friends. Not really. I read in their eyes and felt in their limp handshakes that they already had a best friend.