Mississippi Flyway

Acknowledgments

First and foremost I would like to thank my dear friend and mentor, Meg Jensen, who taught me how to write a novel and guided me through the maze of what to do with it after it was written. Also, thanks for being so gentle with the first draft.

Immense thanks to Sue McGhee, Susan Pasarow, Andres Berger-Kiss, Linda Chaplik, Elizabeth Bunker, Ellen Saunders, Stephanie Baldridge, Darlene Key, Pearl Wright, Mel Parks, Olga Anderson, Darlene Harkins, Beverly Bean, Pam Patrie, Robin Lawton, Aline Bradford, Pat Wagler, Margaret Rand, and Bill Rand for reading the manuscript in its many incarnations and providing thoughtful critiques. Thanks to Jan Brattain for her artistic efforts. Thanks to Ben Tucker for rescuing my manuscript when the computer ate it for breakfast, and to Norm Duncan for all of his technical help setting up my website, and being there when my computer took on a mind of its own. Thanks to the research librarians, Linda Minor and Carolyn Gates, at the Forest Grove library, and to all the librarians at the Banks library for putting up with me. Thanks to George and Pearl Wright for keeping a roof over my head in such sylvan style. Thanks to all of my friends and family who encouraged me to stick with it.

Finally, thanks to all the gracious people who displayed such an abundance of southern hospitality on my trip back home: Sandra Robine, Pat and Jerry Piper, Frieda and Larry Rickman, La Quita Fox, Phyllis Wagner, and Mary Barlow.

The reprint of the verse from Rainer Maria Rilke, Ah, Not to Be Cut Off is reprinted from The Enlightened Heart, an Anthology of Sacred Poetry, edited by Stephen Mitchell, published in 1989 by Harper&Row, page 144. The reprint from the poem Renascence, by Edna St. Vincent Millay, was published as Collected Poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1956, page 13, published by Harper&Row.

Chapter 1

Ah, not to be cut off,

not through the slightest partition

shut out from the law of the stars.

The inner—what is it?

if not intensified sky,

hurled through with birds and deep

with the winds of homecoming.

—Rainer Maria Rilke—

—Owl, Cairo, Illinois, 1948—

I could run as fast as the wind or fly like a bird, and it wouldn’t make a whit of difference now. I’m going to be late for Mass no matter what. Sweat stings my eyes and lips. I grab my book bag by the leather strap and sling it over to the other side. The stitch in my side eases up a little as I stop to catch my breath. I’m going to bypass purgatory and go straight to hell.

You ain’t going to no hell, Owl, just quit cryin’, comb your hair, and start runnin’, I could hear Rose say. She murders the King’s English the way Tiny and Louise do because she hates English class and always skips it. It’s my favorite class. I could diagram sentences and parse verbs till the cows come home, and I love to learn new words and use them right away in a sentence. I love words about as much as I love the birds that follow the river on their endless migrations. Rose never seemed to worry much about being late for Mass. Half the time she never even goes. She doesn’t have to worry about it now. She’s a sophomore at Cairo High public school, where nobody makes you go to church. Next year I’ll be there with her.

I light out again when the stitch goes away. Almost there. I see the steeple of the Sacred Heart Church, its sharp metal stabbing up into an innocent slate of blue. As it mounts the sky, the sun hounds out the subtle yellows and pinks of sunrise, the time of day I love most, except for nighttime.

Owls fly at night and they’re my favorite bird. Tiny started calling me that when I was little ‘cause he said I was wise and never missed a thing, and the name stuck. Everybody but the nuns calls me by my nickname. If the Indians were right about us being animals before we were humans, then I was an owl.

I once called a great horned owl out of hiding, in broad daylight. I’m not proud of what I did, but I tricked a female into thinking I was a male, and that there was a juicy mouse to eat over where I was hiding behind the willow tree up on the levee. I made muffled squawking sounds that tried to hide my excitement about finding food, and then, starting way down at the back of my throat, I let out a breathy sound that rounded itself through the tunnel of lips, and out came a whoo-hoo-ho-o-o in a low deep voice. And, sure enough, the female answered the call with a higher pitched whoooooo-hoo-hoo. She flew over close to me and stared with big, phosphorescent, disappointed eyes. I felt ashamed of myself for having tricked her and stopped calling owls after that.

To my left, behind Commercial Street, a low fog rides the surface of the river like a surfer hell-bent on staying with the wave. Flotsam and jetsam of yesterday’s flood upstream rushes by on the swift current like gray ghosts, the river impatient to dump its contraband into the sea.

I can make out what looks like an old baby carriage drifting in an eddy close to shore, and then the current catches it again and heads south. I hope to jiminy the baby isn’t still in it, hope it’s been rescued. I sigh at the thought of being a sweet baby again, untouched by the taints of this imperfect world. It’s too late for me. The best that could happen would be for me to sink like a rock down to the quiet bottom of the muddy Mississippi and bury my sins in the cool sludge, never to resurface, a more tolerable solution than burning in eternal hellfire.

I stoop to pull up my knee socks that have pooled down around my ankles during my marathon run (a good three miles). The weight of the book bag nearly topples me head first when I bend over.

I begin the final sprint to what for sure is trouble I don’t need from others: I’m an expert in the art of self-torture. I can still hear Father McDill through the screen of the confessional blowing his nose and making those scolding noises, like an old blue jay about to bother some poor bird. He’d made a bigger deal about being late for Mass than about what I told him that Tiny and I did together.

The sun, hot on my back, chases me up the wide stone steps. Sweet relief as I retreat into the perennial twilight of the foyer. The holy water is cool on my fingertips and forehead. I wish I could throw my whole body into the big marble font and swim around there until time for English class. I make the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in a mumble, invoking the all-powerful male trinity. You can never understand…never forgive me. I cup both hands into the basin of water and let the cool water drip down my face.rub it on my lips and swallow some as if to erase the blasphemy in my heart. God have mercy on my soul. To make things worse, I started my period yesterday. Louise called it the curse and sent me to Rose to deal with it. I can tell Rose anything. Well, almost anything.

Am I really cursed? I asked.

No, you ain’t cursed. Don’t listen to a word Louise tells you. She don’t know nothin’. Every woman, (she called me a woman) starts doing this about your age. It’s just natural. Ain’t no curse from God or nobody else. She gave me some Kotex and an aspirin for the aching and after school let me hang out with her and her friends at Poppy’s. She even bought me a chocolate ice cream soda, and she and Wilma and Darlene lifted their Coca-Cola glasses and toasted my womanhood.

Now that I’ve caught my breath, I put on my head scarf I had stashed in the book bag and tie it under my chin in a double knot as I grit my teeth and launch myself down the long central aisle. Sunlight sifts through the tall stained-glass windows, throwing kaleidoscopes of rainbows in cross sections along the rows of wooden pews. The familiar smells of frankin cense and myrrh waft up the aisle from the sanctuary, sweet smells filled with images of far away lands, invoking not the triune God for whom this church bell tolls, but antediluvian kin, gracious parliaments of feathery beings for which I am named.

Along the stone walls, cradled in giant egg-shaped niches, stand life-sized statues of saints and angels, hands pressed together in prayer, with eyes turned toward heaven. The angels sport great white carved wings. If only I had wings.

It’s Monday, and the church is deserted except for the nuns, the students, and the usual scattering of bent, devout old women with black scarves covering their heads. In a way I admire the old faithfuls their constancy, and wish I could just jump headfirst into belief in something greater than myself. I guess the things I have the most faith in are birds, words, and music. I have silly daydreams of being a concert pianist. I like to sit at Granny’s old player piano with my hands hovering over the old yellow ivories as they dance up and down to piano rolls of Scott Joplin rags and Sousa marches. With low E and high C missing, the keyboard looks as if it’s grinning. I pretend I’m playing for the queen of England, who rises in applause and pronounces me the world’s greatest pianist. I haven’t felt much like playing in the last few weeks though, ever since Tiny left.

The nuns are on their knees, a row of blackbirds perched in the front pews. My eighth grade classmates are directly behind them, girls dressed in white blouses and navy skirts, boys in knee-high navy pants, white shirts, and bow ties. All are wearing navy socks that end mid-calf, exposing adolescent kneecaps, reckless prompts that the human body is not to be taken seriously. Running legs in the playground look like sock puppets with bulbous heads, laughable, skeletal reprimands against vain thoughts. The only empty seat is mine. I can feel all eyes on me as I genuflect and slip into the pew, causing a noticeable shuffle of bodies like dominoes falling. I push the book bag under the pew.

Father is already into the Offertory. The congregation kneels.

The little altar bell rings softly three times. In his robe with gold brocade, Father McDill is transformed from the red-nosed, beer-drinking priest who goes fishing with Tiny out on Kentucky Lake into the magician-priest of the Mass as he consecrates the bread and wine. He raises the gold chalice high above his head and leans toward the statue of the crucified Christ hanging above the altar.

"Hoc est enim Corpus Meum. This is my body, he chants in Latin. Whosoever eats of my flesh will have eternal life."

I strike my sore breasts hard with my fist three times, reciting the prescribed words of repentance. With clenched teeth, Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. The round flat wafers inside the gold chalice are transmuting into the body of Christ.

The striking of the breast is repeated with the chalice of wine.

"Hoc est enim Calix sanguinis. This is my blood," the priest chants. He looks directly at me.

Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault, I repeat, in chorus with the other participants, as he holds up the communion chalice.

The alchemy is complete.

I rise on wobbly legs with the other students at the nod from Sister Lothaire to proceed to the communion rail. I kneel and try to keep my fluttering eyelids closed so I don’t have to look into the face of my confessor, open my mouth, and stick out my tongue. Father McDill had absolved me in the confessional last Friday so that I would be able to receive communion, but I feel unredeemed. He had given me a penance of reciting twenty Our Fathers and fifteen Hail Mary’s. He’d even interrupted my confession and told me it was a family matter, that I should not place temptation in Tiny’s way. I shouldn’t dress provocatively. Men were highly excitable about those things. And besides, since there had been no penetration, he’d said, I was still intact: a virgin. Then he’d made a big deal about me being on time for Mass.

I pretend that the dry, thin, sour wafer that sticks to the roof of my mouth is peanut butter. I wonder how many calories are contained in the body of Christ as my stomach growls. I forgot to bring the hard-boiled eggs and apple I’d packed to eat after communion. The nuns always had cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate ready for us after Mass on communion days, ever since Betty Lou keeled over at the communion rail from lack of food, as it was a venial sin to eat before receiving the body of Christ. Louise had told the nuns not to feed me anything because I was on a special diet. She’d have me starving to death if it were up to her. She’d gotten a prescription from Dr. Snyder for dextroamphetamine for both me and Rose, so we wouldn’t get fat like Tiny. Louise had been horrified when Rose started developing breasts. It’s not natural for a young girl to mature so quickly, she’d said.

Well, hell’s bells, I’m a girl ain’t I? I got titties, and they ain’t gonna disappear no matter what. Rose was good at sassing back at Louise. At the first hint of pubescence, I just took the pills to get her off my back. To tell you the truth, at first I sort of liked the jolts of energy they gave me, the way my pupils dilated, making my eyes look dark and mysterious, the hunger pains, an affirmation of my existence. But now I just want to be done with it: the sleepless nights, frazzled nerves, and constant hunger.

We walk back to the pew with bent heads, eyes directed downward. After communion, the priest places the silver and gold chalices away in the sacristy, above the marble altar. He genuflects, turns to the congregation with arms outstretched, gestures a symbolic cross in final blessing.

All stand as he plows down the torso of the church, swinging his ball of smoking incense as if to clear his way of any earthly trash as he exits, with an altar boy at each side and one behind.

A drift of silvery smoke from the passing incense finds me and nestles in the crescent of my ear, cooing dovelike, in a language that I almost, but not quite, remember. I cup my hand over my left ear to capture it as I lean down to pick up my book bag. We stand and face the central aisle, my row last to file out to form impeccably straight lines, the girls behind the boys, as we march out into the blinding brilliance of a sunny April morning.

* * * *

Alone in the classroom, the smell of cinnamon rolls twists up like strong vines through the floor register, fierce tendrils wrapping around my body, squeezing the breath out of me. My mouth puckers, and my stomach growls like a hungry lion being teased with raw meat. I keep going out to the fountain in the hall to fill my empty stomach with water and to get away from the creaks and moans in the classroom that sound like poor souls crying out from purgatory. When I hear marching feet on the stairs, I run back into the room and open my catechism.

The students scurry to their seats and stand at attention as Sister Mary Lothaire follows them into the room. I begrudge them their full bellies.

Good morning, Sister. In singsong voice with the others, I stand, and the room starts a slow spin around me.

Good morning, class, you may be seated. I watch Sister walk. She looks hobbled in her shiny black Oxfords. I cringe at the memory of a newsreel I’d seen at the Tivoli last Saturday about women in China limping around on bound feet. Sister Lothaire is a shadow shrouded from head to foot in folds of heavy black muslin. The presence of a real body beneath the copious drapery seems dubious. Does she get the monthlies like other women? There is an astringent smell about her, like the witch hazel Louise puts on my chigger bites in the summer when the buck grass grows tall enough to harbor the almost invisible, jumping red dots of fire. Sister’s pumpkin face, swollen and choked by an ill-fitting wimple and bib, changes colors like a chameleon, betraying her moods. She blushes the color of Granny’s prize roses, nervously fingering the polished black beads of her rosary whenever Father McDill pays unexpected visits to the classroom. When she is angered by incorrigible (one of her two favorite words) behavior from her students, her face puffs up all green and bruised. Even while seated she appears to be in constant motion, looking in all directions at once, a mythical Janus, guarding unseen gates against any blasphemy (her other favorite word) that might emerge in the classroom. Her lips forever recite silent prayers as she fingers her rosary. Her jaws chew nonexistent gum. She has troubles with her dentures. They fell out one morning during choir practice. The getaway teeth rolled under a pew, and we all laughed, relieved to see that Lothaire was human. Billy Buxton crawled after the fleeing chompers, an unexpected adventure in an otherwise long and tedious day.

Billy Buxton is a bad boy. Louise warned me to stay clear of him. She said he has a dirty mind and a filthy mouth and would never amount to anything. She would have a fit if she knew that Rose used to hang out with him, but he got held back three years in a row and didn’t make it to high school with her, so that put an end to it. He got in trouble last week and was sent to Father McDill for writing F-U-C-K on the sidewalk of the playgrounds with red chalk. Joan Marie said he tried to look up her dress once.

The cooing in my ear starts up again as the shuffling of students taking their seats reverberates like an ocean wave, first crashing, then soft. I just want to get up and run…get away. Wish I were up on the levy counting snow geese, watching them land like patches of snow in the marshes down by the river. I’m a volunteer bird counter for the Audubon Society during peek migration seasons, a job I take very seriously.

Now, pupils, you may take out your catechisms and turn to page sixty-four.

Sister Lothaire’s voice sounds like a rapidly receding train whistle. People are shuffling pages, dropping books, and slamming desk lids in order to delay the inquisition for a few minutes. The central aisle that separates the boys from the girls opens up like the river, a saving oasis, rolling wide with hot chocolate, foamy with melted marshmallows. I dive down deep to the bottom and gorge myself. Objects and people in the room take on a blue hazy glow when I surface.

Thank God. Sister is beginning the daily interrogation on the boys’ side of the room.

John Paul, what is the Holy Trinity? I can barely hear Lothaire’s question over the persistent cooing in both ears now.

It’s warm for April. The window is open to the smells of freshly cut grass and the constant river, oily and fishy, in its perennial migration. The smells are the river’s way of saying, Hello! I’m here! I can’t imagine life without the presence of the river smell—of decay, hinting of our mortality, binding us as one in that certainty.

I give myself over for a moment to the pull of the cooing and the other birds singing in the big oak tree framed by the window. I know almost every song I hear. I earned a Girl Scout badge in bird song identification when I was ten.

The Holy Trinity is three divine persons in one divine substance. John Paul’s voice is changing. It starts high, and then cracks into a husky croak that makes for muffled giggles around the room.

The monotone voices spitting back rote answers to Catholic dogma are now in female voice.

Jacqueline, what is the Paraclete? The petite Italian girl’s desk sits directly in front of mine. Jacqueline rises to her feet with a fleetness. She always has the right answer.

The Paraclete is the third person of the Holy Trinity…the Holy Ghost, the Holy Dove sent on earth to comfort us and ease our sorrows.

It’s my turn. I struggle to stand on noodle legs. I can’t feel them beneath me. I barely hear Sister’s voice through the outraged roars in my stomach and the sweet trilling in my ears. I never have the right answer. Suddenly my new secret power kicks in, and I don’t even care anymore. Recently, I discovered the ability to shrink people and even make them disappear. I used it on Tiny before he left. Maybe I made him disappear for good.

Ellie Mae! Wake up child! And stop grinning like a Cheshire cat! I squint, and Lothaire shrinks to the size of a cat.

Ellie Mae Moon, I’m talking to you! The nun’s feline face turns strawberry red and then purple. Her voice sounds like a record playing at slow speed.

Betty Lou sits behind me and whispers the question to me. What is the attitude we take toward the Blessed Virgin Mary?

We adore the Blessed Virgin Mary, I say out loud. I’m thirsty. My parched voice sticks in my throat.

A heavy silence fills the room, like a blow from Lothaire’s pointer. I hear only the singing in my ears as my winged suitor courts me away from the world.

The outraged vulture with the pointer flies at me.

You incorrigible child!

I feel the sharp sting on my bare legs and across my back and shoulders only for a moment. Then the pain is gone. I hear the swishing, but it no longer hurts as Lothaire delivers the blows harder and faster.

Blasphemy! We never adore anyone but God the Father, the nun shrieks. We only venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary.

I reduce Lothaire to the size of a tiny black ant and wonder why she is so angry about words that hold no meaning. The hollow tenets of a religion that haven’t helped me at all with my problems are perplexing. I, who have tried so hard to arrange my life into separate little boxes marked before and after.

I feel only the soft tingling that starts in my toes and undulates upward, taking away my hunger: warm waves in harmony with the love song my suitor sings full voice.

The shrill siren sounding recess startles Lothaire into self-composure. The pointer drops limply to her side. I restore her to her full size.

For your punishment you will go to the church instead of taking recess this morning. You will recite ten Hail Marys and fifteen Our Fathers. Lothaire looks old and tired after the tirade. She takes out a handkerchief from her sleeve and wipes the sweat from her brow.

At her signal we all rise and form two perfectly straight rows, one for each gender. I’m behind Jacqueline as we march out into the glaring mid-morning sun.

Weightless, I float across the playground and into the shadow of the church, feeling my face tighten into a smile.

This is my body. This is my blood, the voice insists as I climb the wide stone steps. The world is wrapped in a radiant blue. I fly into the protection of the dark. It is, after all, my natural habitat.

The altar bell rings three times, swelling in crescendo, exalting me.

Strong currents of energy wash over me.

As the song of the dove takes form, the alchemy is complete.

I hold tight with my fledgling wings to the feathery back of the Paraclete, as he extends his great wings to full span and flies with me high above the rafters to a place deep within the forested canyons of Ellie Mae’s mind—to a place where no one can touch me anymore.

Chapter 2

—Ellie, St. Louis, 1967—

In the dawn’s light the old sycamore tree in the backyard throws its shadow onto the lace curtains that hang over the long, south-facing window. Its limbs are gossamer dancers, reflections that will be lost as the sun rises. The tree towers the four-story brick house.

I plant myself here at my desk every day at daybreak to drink the cherished first cup of coffee and listen to the multitude of birds in the sycamore tree sing the sun up. The robins are in good voice this time of day. They ask vital questions in four/four time of all who would listen. Throaty sparrows and chattering wrens sing duets amidst a background of other birdsongs. Finally, as the sun mounts the sky, the scolding jays and cawing crows join the chorus, drowning out the melody. I surprise myself at times by singing with the birds in their own songs, a skill I learned as a child, although I don’t remember the learning of it. I can be myself around the birds. I don’t have to aim to please anyone. It seems I’ve spent most of my life trying to do that. With the birds, it’s like stepping through a looking glass where everyone speaks a universal language, one I was fluent in since birth, and no one stands in judgment.

Owl: You once conversed with rivers as they flowed to the sea, breaking the code of impervious reefs, and soothing in hushed voice the fires of molten volcanoes. You chanted with stony meteorites, soared and screeched with birds of prey, and chattered with gentle sparrows. You prattled on and on with bees and were spokesman for majestic forests. You keep the memories deep within you, forgotten..

There was an urgent pungency to the smell of overripe tomatoes carried in from the garden on a slight breeze, mixed with a hint of jasmine and mint, awakening my senses to the start of a new day. I’d special-ordered the jasmine from a nursery in Atlanta, a night-blooming, intensely fragrant variety. A moment after the sun infused the sky with coral glow, the exotic flowers closed their petals in protection from the heat of another muggy day in the city. Smart plant. Wish I could do that—just close up against all irritants.

In the promise of a new day, I feel almost safe here, even a bit smug. I gather my bare legs and feet up on the oversized Stickley oak chair, a steal I’d found at a garage sale, and hug myself. This is the largest room in the house, with a high, oak-beamed ceiling and an oak-paneled fireplace, a corner room with long windows facing out on the north, south, and west. It is a privilege, a victory, to be sitting here in my study. I’d fought and elbowed my way here, through my ex-husband’s surliness and my mother’s tyranny.

Since Ted’s departure last spring, my one decisive act has been to move my desk from the cramped, dark, upstairs guest room down here into the library that he had claimed as his without discussion. This one room was the main reason I wanted to buy the house three years ago. I knew I could write here, sustain a focus, make a plan of action, and follow through with it. There was a sense of diligence about the space, as if someone had courted the muse on a daily basis here, over the better part of a lifetime, perhaps. I once read about a village by the sea in Ireland where all the women made lace. In the province of Manabi, Ecuador, were special caves where craftsmen wove, by hand, fibers of dried palm leaves to create the first Panama hats—the environment playing a crucial role in excellence of craft. Perhaps repetition of the practice of an art or fine craft in a particular place chinks away at stone walls of resistance; perhaps it makes an easier passage for the creative to enter.