by Kris Radish
“Mom, what did you see those times, you know, when it was so crazy inside of your mind?”
“Mostly it was just this overwhelming feeling of sadness. I could look at you or your sister or dad, all people whom I love so much, and I would see or feel nothing wonderful and good. Only this terrible, terrible feeling that I was ruining everything and there was no hope.”
Mattie grew quiet, and I saw her fourteen-year-old wheels turning, and she was squeezing my hand so hard I thought she might bruise me.
“Was it hard to stay, Mom, did you just want to go away and leave us?”
“Lots of times, sweetie. I thought you might be better off without me, and I prayed, and your grandma, oh your grandma, she always stood by me and kept you safe. She made it easier for me to stay. Otherwise, yes, I might have left and who knows what would have happened?”
“We read about this homeless lady in social studies and then we saw a film about her. She had a family and a good job, but she was schizophrenic and she couldn't find the right medicine. She ended up living in a box in New York. That made me so sad, Mom. I thought about you and about how weird my life would be without you and everything.”
“Honey, so many people loved me and helped me. Your daddy, he always loved me even when he knew I was sick, and he helped me. And you and your sister. I knew that no matter what I did, you would love me too, just like I'll always love you.”
“Mom, if you ever get sick again and because you know, because Grandma isn't here anymore, well, I'll take care of you. I can do everything like she did, and make sure you are safe and everything. Just so you know, Mom, just don't go away, even if I'm mean and act like a teenager. Don't ever go away, Mom.”
That talk with Mattie would have made my own mother so proud and happy. If she could have seen how bright and happy and sensitive the girls have turned out, she would know that every single painful thing we went through was worth it. She would know that her spirit and her heart and her caring and never giving up have helped create an entire generation of young women who will change the world.
That is what I believe with all my heart. Even when the girls act like little jackasses and throw stuff out their bedroom doors and pout because I won't let them do stupid things like rent a hotel room the night of the prom or drive to Fort Lauderdale for Easter break, even then I know that they have hearts as strong as their grandmother's. They will always love me, and if they had to, they would hold me back from that dark abyss.
But there is still so much to put behind me, and I have to sort out what to save and what to throw away. There may be a time when I will be able to read all those notes my mother kept. Chris seems to think I should use them to write something to help other people. She thinks I have undersold my abilities with my English degree by working part-time at a video store. She wants me to get a teacher's certificate and work with high school kids, and maybe I'll be able to do that when I figure out how to get beyond the same guilt that consumed my mother.
I can also smell that soapy scent of hers, and I can feel her hands touching against my face. The way she studied me when she thought I was not looking still makes my heart skip to a fine rhythm that must be the music from her own heart. I can see her eyes filled with such kindness and love for me that it is as if she is right here with me on this great walking adventure.
If she is here, if she is still watching out for me and the girls and Paul, I would want her to know that I have never been finer, that I am on to something glorious, and that I am ready to try a few new things in my life.
With every step I take out here, I seem to feel lighter, seem to see more light, seem to feel a strong pulse of life beating through me. I think this light has the chance to overtake any darkness that might try to sneak up on me.
I'm betting that my mother could look into my eyes and see that my soul is healing, and because she held on to me with such fierceness, she saved my life.
Maybe when I am finished, and my mother knows that she is here inside of my beating heart, maybe she will finally fly free herself and rest quietly. She will know that she was wonderful and made me wonderful too, and whole and happy.
CHAPTER NINE
GAIL PUSHED HER LEG against the side of J.J. and tossed a huge oak log into a campfire that was already the size of a small barn. “Oh man,” she said, inclining her head toward the rising flames. “I haven't had this much fun since Girl Scout camp.”
Not surprisingly, Chris had a different memory of Girl Scout camp. She quickly launched into a story about losing her virginity on the floor on an old platform tent with an assistant cook. According to Chris, this young stud had the perfect recipe for making his customers happy campers. A huge scar that launched at her right hip and moved into the upper part of her thigh was definite proof of her positive first night of lust and love.
“The tent floor?”
“Yeah, you remember those big old wooden tent floors and that smell of moldy canvas and the assistant cook? My gawd, didn't anyone have guys at camp who worked in the kitchen or as the handyman?”
The women had gathered up a huge pile of wood from the miles of trees surrounding them. Mary set them up on her brother-in-law's uncle's farm, with sleeping bags and shiny blue tarps spread out under this seventh starry night in a row. Coolers of beer and wine called to them seductively. Everyone agreed that Mary deciding not to walk was doing wonders for their appetites. Still, they missed her at the campfire and when they talked for hours into the night.
“It was hard to tell the girls from the guys at our camp, especially if they were counselors,” quipped Sandy, relating back to the story about the night Chris lost her virginity to the naughty cook. “If I only would have known then what I know now, I wouldn't have bothered trying to seduce that little twit stable boy. There were plenty of attractive girls now that I think about it. They were all most likely sleeping with each other.”
“The tent floor,” begged Alice. “Let's get back to the tent floor.”
“The cook was young but very beautiful, and he had me fooled he was a virgin himself. I think he was crazy about me.”
“Oh sure, he liked you,” laughed Susan. “Have your breasts always been this large?”
“I remember that he liked me and that's what I'm stickin' to, you smart-ass.”
“Go ahead, lie to yourself, but just finish the story.”
“The sex wasn't anything really spectacular, but from what I've heard from you ladies, it could have been a hell of a lot worse. We got into some heavy petting on his bunk bed, rolled onto the floor, and when I flipped off my jeans, he got a little too excited and tried to drag me right onto him. This chunk of wood from the old floor lodged itself right inside half my body.”
“Geez, didn't that sort of put a kink on the moment?”
“Actually, he bent over me, his long hair fell across my large breasts and the way he touched me as he pulled out the splinter was so erotic I almost didn't wait for him.”
“Chris, that's about the sweetest story you ever told us,” moaned Janice. “Of course every single story you do tell us has something to do with blood or guts or gunfire, so you should have known way back then about your exciting destiny.”
The camp stories from everyone flew like bullets then. Stories of burning down buildings; the summer the lifeguard got pregnant and someone finally had to sit her down and get her to a doctor; the next year when the entire vanload of female counselors drove into town. They picked up every single man they could get their hands on, and partied until the sun came up.
Alice took out the marshmallows and lined up little pieces of chocolate on top of graham crackers. When the women huddled around the fire to make s'mores, Alice said that she was glad they were camping one last time because she had never been to camp.
“Well, Alice, we ain't driving into town to pick up guys tonight,” said Sandy. “So you'd better keep your little hands on that stick there.”
“What did you mean by calling this the last time
camping, Alice?” asked J.J.
Alice lifted her eyes, and in the light of the campfire she looked so incredibly beautiful that J.J. wanted to lean through the flames and touch her face. Her gray hair framed her face, and her wide eyes were glowing in the light of the campfire.
“Well, it's almost time to stop, you know.”
Susan stood up then, shifted her weight from one foot to the other and then walked around the fire. She stopped behind Alice and rested her hands on Alice's shoulders until she grounded herself in the cool earth. Then she slowly pushed the hair out of her eyes.
“It's me,” she said softly into the crackling wood. “I need to get to a doctor and get on with everything. I'm not sure I want to wait much longer, and Alice, Alice is starting to have a little problem with her knees. All those years of pulling weeds out of the garden, huh Alice?”
Alice smiled but she didn't turn around. She covered the top of Susan's hand with her own.
Chris looked up and saw that Alice and Susan looked more like mother and daughter than simple friends who loved each other. She knew that Alice would go to the doctor with Susan, and then take her home and sit with her through the night. She also knew that for the rest of their lives, Susan would be the daughter that Alice lost.
“It's going to be better than you think,” Chris finally said, breaking the silence. “When, Susan? Tomorrow, the next day, how much longer?”
Susan sighed, looking relieved to have said what she needed to say.
“I don't even know what day it is. I can walk a little more, it's just that I'm scared, and I don't want to wait to have an abortion. I feel strong about this, and if I wait, I don't know. I just don't know.”
When some sparks cracked and flew out of the fire, Sandy jumped to mash them with her feet, then walked over to Susan and kissed her on the cheek. “Two more nights? Can you handle tonight and then just a little more walking and then one final night?”
Susan nodded in agreement, and Alice shifted her weight, and then Gail jumped up and started passing out beer, hugging each one of her friends as she handed them a drink. “I love you,” she whispered six times. J.J. suggested that they forge a plan for leaving the following day.
The stars shifted then, and the brilliant spring sky looked like a dark, singular blanket that had been placed in just the perfect spot, miles above the campfire over a small Wisconsin forest where the whispers of a group of women were lifted high into the night air. Whispers filled with bonds of love and abandoned sorrow, and the hopes and wishes of these women with the courage to plow ahead through the challenges of their lives into the destinies they would fashion beyond that point. Whispers that spoke of love and loss and of circling hearts within the hot fire of friendship. Whispers that floated onto thousands of window ledges where other women were waiting for permission, for the moment when they could rise up through the dark and begin walking themselves. The whispers floated through Wilkins County and out across the Great Plains and through cornfields that were just beginning to rise up above the ankles of all the farming women.
Those women craned their necks into the night air as they walked toward the barns, and saw the flickering lights jumping back and forth between the windy whispers. These farming women who rarely rested, stopped suddenly and felt a breeze, as warm and comforting as the hot baths they dreamed about, float through their bones. The women smiled and they walked on and they felt a push at their hearts that would stay with them for a long time.
The whispers glided across the mountains that separate the east from the west, and all the women who were poised with their heads toward the hills—those women felt the last of the day's sun change from hot to cold in just a moment, in just the time it takes to blink. All those mountain women who often forget in their busy days to look west before Aspen glow, before the bright orange sun blazes a mellow, moody light on the rocky cliffs, all those women were suddenly unable to keep their eyes off the mountains. They stood quietly with their hands dangling at their sides, and watched as their day melted quickly into night. They took in breath-tiny particles of the whispers, and they felt stronger and eager to stand alone and think about the joys and sorrows of life and all the possibilities that can straddle a hungry soul.
Near the oceans and the green, lush forests along the coast for hundreds of miles, all the women who were driving home from work and picking up their children from soccer practice and dance lessons and science club, all those women were amazed when out of nowhere a warm, lusty breeze—like a lover's urgent whisper—made them stick their hands out of their car windows. These women separated their fingers and let the powerful wind move inside of their skin and into the muscles and fibers and molecules that formed their hearts and souls and every ounce of them. When the whisper of a breeze stopped as suddenly as it began, the women who had felt it gained a sudden charge of life and love. Those women smiled, and they knew that whatever they made happen next in their lives would be amazing.
The whispers picked up strength then, and floated from one country to the next, dipping down here and there when a woman stood alone or seemed frightened or unsure of which direction to turn. The whispers breezed across China and into the mountains, where beautiful women stood holding baskets full of the green leaves of a tea called The Elegant Gathering of White Snows. As these women gathered the leaves, they stopped suddenly, every single one of them, when they felt something as warm as a burning fire push across their sweaty faces. They looked from one side of the mountain to the other. They raised their eyes toward the heavens, and then they looked at each other. They were moved to tears just to know that someone else, another woman, had felt the moving wind, the whisper of this warm breeze. They cried, yet their tears were warm and soothing, and the women who were gathering the tea leaves would always remember how the warm wind stilled their hearts and made them happy for those moments on the beautiful, steep mountain.
In all the other countries, in the places where women were watching their own babies die and where sons and daughters would disappear and in all the places where soldiers carried guns and the world was always dark, even in those places there was a hint of a breeze that night. Women felt they could look up and catch the eye of a female neighbor or another woman who was headed toward the river. Without a word or a gesture, they would smile and laugh and circle their arms around each other, touching hands and hearts. In a second and then another two or three, when the whisper had moved on and the pop of a gun or the crack of another heartbreak would bring them back, they would always remember the whisper and how that woman on the street held her to her breast and felt so warm and so alive.
The force of the whisper was unknown in Wisconsin, where the women had joined their energies to create a night of love and laughter. Occasionally, one of the women would turn her head away from her friends and look into the dark night sky just to make certain that everything was real, that it really was a spring night and that everyone was actually sitting right there by the roaring fire in the middle of nowhere.
There were at least one hundred stories yet to tell, and who would go next? That was the question always, and what would they save for next time? Would there be anything left?
Alice told them about taking a bath in the barn while Chester held a lamp above her, watching for thirty minutes as she washed her face, her arms, her breasts, her small legs. “If I could do that again,” Alice told her friends, “I would make Chester put the lamp on the box and take off all of his clothes. Then I would get on top of him, all wet and soapy, and I would make love to him until he howled.”
“Alice,” said Chris, placing a hand across her friend's wrist like a doctor checking for a pulse, “you can still do that! You don't ever have to wait for anything again.”
“But the barn is gone now,” said Alice in all seriousness.
“I can get you a barn,” laughed Chris, who had almost always believed that anything and everything is possible. “I can get you a barn and a tub and I can bring you Chester, Alice.
You can count on me.”
“Oh, do you think?” said Alice. “I have thought about that so many times. I can't even believe I am telling you this but Chris, could you really find me a barn?”
“Honey, I'd build it myself if I had to. I'll get you a barn. You can bet on that.”
Everyone closed their eyes and imagined Alice as a young and beautiful woman in love with a clumsy man who could never bring himself to tell his wife the secrets of his heart. They watched Alice drop her skirt and roll off her stockings and dip first one foot and then the other into the tub of steaming water. They watched as Alice ran her hand down her arm and across her beautiful breasts and then down, down into the water.
“Alice,” said Susan. “You are still a very beautiful woman.”
“Thank you, sweetheart. I've never quite felt this beautiful in my whole life.”
Then Janice talked about how she was ready to rest her heart, finally and forever in one place. “I'm tired of all this ridiculous shit that I've put Paul and the girls through. Pretty damned tired,” she told her friends as she swigged down her fourth beer. “You know what, I'm also getting a little bit crocked out here, and I feel great.”
The women laughed, and the laughter rolled from one mouth to the next, as if in the end there had just been one laugh and one mouth and one woman sitting beside a fire in the middle of the rolling Wisconsin hills.
Sandy didn't need to say it, because everyone already knew, but she did anyway. She said she had developed a severe case of the hots for Lenny Sorensen and for the first time since she had lost the true love of her life, she felt as if she might be able to love again. “The minute I saw her, standing out there like that on the lawn, my entire world pretty much dropped to a spot that lingers just below my belly button. My fingers tingled, my breasts tilted sideways, I had this sudden desire to lie down right there and shout, ‘Take me!' I kissed her, you know.”