Written for Burning Man 2017 on the theme Radical Ritual

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The first time Joey crossed himself at the threshold of the church was because he saw Auntie Sue doing it. She did it smooth and ladylike so Joey felt a little self-conscious but he saw other guys, grown men, doing it and that was enough for him. When his older sister, Marie, came along with them (which wasn’t very often) though, she didn’t do it. Marie didn’t do most of the stuff that people around here did. Joey and Marie, they weren’t from around here except now they were because Daddy had gone off and left them so Mommy had moved them all back down here to the South where she grew up.

Joey kind of liked it here. Uncle Teddy took him out shooting and said he was going to get him his own rifle on his birthday, just not to tell Mommy. Joey didn’t think Marie liked it here. She didn’t have any friends in the new school they got dumped into in the middle of the year. The house they were renting was near where a bunch of Joey’s classmates lived, so even once it was summer, he had his crew. First thing in the morning, Mikey, from next door came to get Joey and off they went for the day. Mommy said she didn’t worry about it a bit. It’s how she grew up, Joey heard her telling one of her friends back in Chicago on the phone.

Joey never used to listen in on Mommy’s phone conversations; grown up talk bored him. But maybe he missed something back in Chicago by not eavesdropping, so now he listened in.

“Marie worries me, you know?” Mommy said to her best friend, Linda, whose loud nasally voice could be heard even though Joey couldn’t make out the words. Marie came by, shook her head, grabbed a Pepsi from the fridge and went to her room. Joey followed. According to the other guys at school big sisters were some kind of witches or something. Not Marie. He could come into her room just about any time and, since Daddy had left, he was there a bunch. Joey didn’t cry or anything and neither did Marie, but they talked or just sat there on her bed, looking at the wall. Her new room was bigger than the one back home.

They always went to Sunday dinner at Auntie Sue and Uncle Ted’s. Joey hadn’t picked up on it until recently (but Marie had) that there was an unvaried structure to these dinners. First, they were always late and, second, Mommy went straight to the kitchen where Auntie Sue shooed her out because everything was under control. Mommy was Auntie Sue’s older sister. Marie explained to Joey that Auntie Sue was secretly glad Daddy had done what he did because now Mommy needed her happily married little sister’s help. Joey didn’t get that, but there was a lot about girls and women that made no sense. So Sunday dinner meant too much food with two desserts and as soon as all that eating was done, Uncle Teddy took Joey out back to the Florida room to watch football.

“How come you never come in and watch football with me and Uncle Teddy?” Joey accepted a slug off Marie’s Pepsi, hearing Mommy finish up her call downstairs.

“How long have we been down here now?” Marie grinned.

“I dunno. Six months, I guess. Why?”

“You still haven’t figured out that there’s stuff that only women do down here and stuff that only men do?”

“Yeah, but that’s them. You’re different. How come you don’t watch football with us?”

“Look, retard, it’s hard enough for me around here. I can’t fight this place all the time.” The way Marie said “reeeee-tard” always made Joey laugh.

“See, that’s what I don’t get.” He shook his head at the offered Pepsi. (You couldn’t find Coke down here to save your life and Joey supposed he’d get used to Pepsi. Someday.) “What’s to fight?”

“Don’t worry about it.” She wrinkled her nose, “This shit sucks.”, setting the Pepsi down.

Joey wasn’t aware of it, but Marie had quickly picked up on the almost medieval sense of ritual down here. The people struck her as being sort of like peasants who religiously kept their place in the universe by adhering to a complex set of do’s and don’t’s that no longer meant anything. It was like the blind leading the blind except they all thought they could see things just fine.

Sundays were especially ritual-ridden (as one would expect) but every day had its rites and sacraments to be observed. Little girls were expected to wear dresses and kiss grownup’s cheeks. Little boys were expected to be out the door first thing every morning and not be back until mothers stood out on back porches and yelled. Fathers, of course, were up with the sun and in their cars to work promptly at 8 every morning. At least on this side of town. Marie, coming from Chicago, suspected that there was a very different set of rituals over on the other side of town, one that was just as strictly adhered to but about which she would never know. To go “across town” was a violation of the most sacred sacrament of all around here: segregation. The races do not mix.

Arriving mid-year in the 10th grade was a crash course in local customs that Marie felt very little incentive to participate in even as it became clear that until she got in line she was not

going to have any friends. The hostility vibrating off the other girls was almost comical and the boys just looked confused. One day just for the fun of it she left a note under a book in study hall saying that the new girl, Marie, had had to leave Chicago because she’d had a baby with some married politician who had paid to get her out of town. After that she was always on the verge of hysterical laughter in response to the looks she got in the lunch room. These kids were unbelievable!

Still, it was a relief when school let out for the summer. Joey was gone all day with his crowd of little rednecks which was kind of too bad. For a kid brother, he was actually pretty good company. Aunt Sue was just a little too pleased with her older sister’s situation and Uncle Teddy was positively creepy, the way he always was trying to touch Marie’s hair and tell her how he’d had no idea Northern girls were so pretty. At first, Marie took to walking around town and the outskirts, situating herself and seeing what there was to be seen. Not much. Then, by the middle of June, the heat drove her indoors. She had thought the summers in Chicago were bad, but this was unbearable. She and Mommy hid out in the living room reading as the window AC unit roared.

Mommy was still looking for work, but Daddy’s alimony and child support checks arrived without fail so she wasn’t looking as hard anymore. Truth was there were almost no jobs to be had around here. Most of the women didn’t work and a fair number of the men didn’t either. The days settled into a dull, comfortable pattern. Joey was gone early, so Marie and her mother would sit out on the front porch, watching nothing because there was nothing to see. No one walked around here. Occasionally a car passed and, if it was someone who knew them, the driver would tap the horn and wave.

One morning, casual as anything, Marie lit a cigarette. Mommy just looked at her, didn’t say a word and then reached out one hand. Marie went into her bag on the porch beside her, pulled out the pack, handed a cigarette to her mother and lit it. After that, the two would each smoke one cigarette, watch nothing, and then go back indoors when the heat started to get bad. Mommy would turn the AC on first thing every morning, so that there was one cool place to sit, and after that for the whole day, she and Marie would sit around reading, drinking coffee or watching TV. They didn’t talk. It’s not that they didn’t want to (badly), but neither of them knew how to start.

Now that she was back in the South, Jane reverted to Janie Lynn and she knew better than to try and get people to stop calling her that. There were other old ruts that she found herself sliding into so it was easy to just let the name thing happen. She figured that probably had something to do with her letting Marie smoke and Joey disappear all day every day with the other boys. God knows what they were getting up to, but Jane didn’t have it in her to fight anymore. She sat on the front porch with her daughter and smoked. She went on the back step just before supper and yelled with all the other mothers up and down the block. She went to church socials with her sister and took up crocheting again. And on Saturday nights, she went up the road with Angela, Toni Rae, and Sylvia and got drunk. Sundays were for

nursing hangovers in church and over at Sue’s. God help us all if Jane ever decided not to go over to Sue and Ted’s for Sunday dinner.

Months passed. The rented house Sue had found for them wasn’t bad. The kids seemed to be ok mostly. Jane thought Marie was actually in better shape than Joey, who had flung himself whole hog into the social mix with the other boys around here and had turned into quite the little church-goer as well. Her daughter was 16 and could get the hell out of here in two years maybe sooner if Jane had anything to say about it. Jane was already checking out colleges and sending Marie links to schools up North that she thought her daughter would be interested in.

One Saturday night and then the next one, Andy Callahan, who had grown up to be the town’s only insurance salesman, sat with Jane and her friends at The Shady Glen. He wasn’t a bad sort and Jane could see where things were apt to be going here. Still, he was divorced and she liked the attention. She invited him over for dinner and then the next week had him bring his kids along. His kids were all around Marie’s age or older, so Joey fidgeted until Jane told him he could go back out and play. His kids, Sonny 14, Alice Sue 17, and Andy Jr. 18, were all polite kids, at least at the dinner table. Marie behaved herself around them and Jane relaxed a little.

It wasn’t a white dress wedding; that would have been a little ridiculous, but in every other way, Janie Lynn and Andy’s wedding was as traditional as could be. Right down to the cans tied to the back of Andy’s Lexus and the reception held at the American Legion Hall on Silver Street. They were even going up to Birmingham for a long weekend honeymoon type of trip. Joey and Marie were leaving after the wedding to spend a couple of weeks with their father back in Chicago. When they came back, they’d move into Andy’s big place on Valley Road where contractors were putting on an addition. With Andy Jr. going off to college in just under two months, they’d only need one more bedroom, but Andy Sr. wanted his new step children to have nice new rooms so they’d know they were part of the family.

Neither he nor his new wife should have been all that surprised, however, when Marie decided to stay up North. And truth told, Jane wasn’t. She was relieved.

By Remington Write

From: United States

Website: https://medium.com/@tlr31

Twitter: @Remingtonwrite