Mary's Ribbon

My sister Mary was 12 and I was 7 on the first day of summer vacation, out of school for just a day. Mary was finally going to be allowed to walk the two blocks down to Burke’s store all by herself — something the rest of the kids in our family accomplished by the time we were 6.

With her nickel, Mary was going to buy us lollipops. Mamma wrote a note for Mary to give to Mr. Burke, telling him what she was to buy with her nickel. If not, Mary might fill a bag full of lollipops without knowing she shouldn’t do so.

Today, even the smell of a lollipop makes me sick.

That June day was full of sunny promise. I remember looking at Mamma as she washed the lunch dishes, the strings of her apron hanging loose around her waist. Daddy had just planted his usual kiss on the top of her head before leaving for work. He said he could not begin his shift unless he kissed his sweetheart first.

I heard the snap of the screen door as it slammed shut and the creak of the third step off the back porch that Daddy never got around to fixing. Daddy’s whistling as he walked to the car is as clear to me as if it happened today. The clink of the dishes, the scrape of food into the garbage pail, the billowy softness of mamma’s yellow curtains are as vivid to me now as then.

Mary was so excited, and not just about going to the store, either. Summer meant the end, at least for a while, to her waving goodbye from the porch as I walked to school with our brothers.

It meant that we could be together every day.

Mamma watched her skip down the sidewalk, her long pigtail captured in a red ribbon to match her shorts. Mamma said she watched her go into the store. I asked for a glass of orange juice and Mamma got it for me.

My two brothers came in making a commotion, pretending they were flying planes in the war or something like that. The baby started crying and Mamma went to pick her up. When Mamma went to the front porch and called for Mary, I was thinking Mary was playing in the backyard. I went out back to look, but she wasn’t there. Mamma said, “Sarah, go on down to the store and fetch your sister.” That was fine by me, since I was getting impatient.

She wasn’t at the store either, and only her red ribbon on the sidewalk marked her place. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. She wasn’t anywhere. Mary made me mad now, even though we knew we weren’t supposed to get mad at her. She didn’t know what she was doing.

Until you know for sure what has happened, and even when you do, everything is regret. Blame and loss hang over everyone like a thick fog. Should someone have gone with her? Should we have noticed sooner that she was gone? If we had called her name just once, would she have heard us and come running? Did we take too long to call the police?

Life went on the way it does. I had one dream of Mary where she told me she was OK and she told me not to worry. That made me cry because it was the only time Mary had ever spoken. For the rest of her life, Mamma would weep for no reason: at least no reason I understood until I had children of my own.

I keep Mary’s red ribbon, now frayed and faded, in my jewelry box. There are rings and trinkets in there that shine and twinkle but are not nearly as precious to me as that one piece of fabric.

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Story by Pamela Tyree Griffin

Published by "Ophelia Street" October 2008
Photograph/Graphic by Lola Rodriguez

MOTHER LEFT

She donned her coat, her hat, her gloves
and waved goodbye the mourning doves
nested in the willow tree
and last of all said goodbye to me.

Where she went I did not know.
When she’d return was a mystery so
I gave her a hug and a hug some more
and watched her leave through our front door.

Down the street in a sort of prance
that was her simple farewell dance.
A twirl, a skip, a jump, a hop;
no pause to turn or even stop.

Before I knew it she was gone
around the corner and beyond.
I’ve watched for her daily from our gate
for forty years and still I wait.

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Poem by Pamela Tyree Griffin

Photo by Elke Oerter

(For more stories and poems click "older posts"! or the links at the end of the page)

Left At The Altar

Dressed in a simple white gown with little pink flowers embroidered along the hem, I waited at the altar.

For how long doesn't matter. I do know I was alone-nobody was there to meet me at the end of the aisle. I had no bouquet and no attendants. Heck, my parents weren't even there.

It was the winter of 1957 and, I am told, it was particularly cold. By November, the trees surrounding Lake Fortune were completely bare and the children in town were ice skating on Thanksgiving.

On December 12, sometime in the afternoon, I was found in a box on the altar of the Cathedral of St. Francis. Father James had just finished the last mass of the day and was resting in his sitting room with his usual cup of tea. "I heard something," he said at the time. "I thought it was a kitten.

I took up my cane and went toward the sound which was coming from a cardboard box." Expecting to see a small kitten, he instead found me. Absent though was any indication of who I was or my age.

The newspapers reported that I was a pretty,brown eyed redhead in excellent health. I was clean and well fed. There was a stack of clean cloth diapers and two more tiny dresses in the box - one blue and one red. Present also was a silver locket which, when opened, was empty and all efforts to trace it,unsuccessful.

I was adopted and raised by the childless and long married Millicent and Harold Lewis. In honor of the church and the priest who found me, I was named Frances James Lewis.

Mine was a happy life. Each year I had a nice birthday party. My house was always full of friends and extended family. I never once felt like I didn't belong.

Every December 12, my parents brought me to the church. Perhaps they thought my birth parents would be there and would see what became of me. Whether they ever did, we never knew.

Every time I'd see a woman anywhere with red hair I would wonder-are you...?
Five years after my father passed, my mother also died. I buried her with the little locket. Inside I placed a picture of myself as a happy, smiling baby seated on the lap of the only mother I'd ever known.

In 1983, St. Francis caught fire. I cried as if my family home had burned down. For years, until an apartment complex was built there, I returned to the massive expanse of bare ground where the church had once stood.

###

Story by Pamela Tyree Griffin
Photograph by : Gavin Mills
(For more stories and poems click "older posts"! or the links at the end of the page)

Indescribably Malicious

Here they come looking for ghosts again. With their electronic stuff, their television cameras, their sensors and fancy lights — all that crap. The fat one hides a cross in her purse but she tells the others that she’s not religious or superstitious. What a load. Why the people who watch the TV show don’t keep a BS detector on at all times for the likes of her I’ll never know.

They come when it’s dark because it makes it more dramatic for TV and they think they can hunt better that way. I’m here all the time, day or night — doesn’t matter to me. They want to see a ghost, they really do. They see flares and orbs and all this other crap. They don’t see anything except what their feeble minds tell them to see. I can stand right in front of them and they see nothing at all. Won’t give them the satisfaction.

Trudging through the weeds that used to be my front yard, past the little plot where Ann had her flower garden and where I eventually planted her, they trespass. They think nothing of it since nobody lives here now. I won’t let anyone live here.

They call themselves professional ghost hunters or spirit detectives. Professional, my butt. If one of them farted on tape, they’d replay it over and over, convinced someone is saying, “Help Me!” or “Get Out” or some other such nonsense.

If they really were professional, they wouldn’t come in here tonight, though. There’s something here besides me now — something that came with the darkening sky last night. It’s a big evil. Bigger that what got hold of me when I killed Ann and then slit my own wrists in 1991.

I can see it and it can see me. It follows my every step, peering on the windows, marching around on the roof above me and making the walls shake. And for the first time since I died, I want to leave. It’s been glaring at me through the windows, murmuring nonsense, scratching on the back porch and hammering on the front door since last night. I don’t think it can get in unless someone lets it in.

They’re getting close now, hiking up to the house with paraphernalia in tow. I’m waiting, just waiting, because I’m sliding out the door as soon as it opens.

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Story by Pamela Tyree Griffin

Previously published in Bewildering Stories
Photograph by Mike Swope
(For more stories and poems click "older posts"! or the links at the end of the page)

The Namecaster

The village has waited three seasons for this day.

Bent like watsonias blowing in a field, she comes down from the mountains on the winding path. Her arrival is announced in whispers which travel from hut to hut until knowledge of her presence reaches the ears of everyone.

"Crack! Crack!" says her walking stick against the ground. The dirt and dust dance at her bare feet. The villagers sing, shake their shiny kalloos, and beat their drums in her honor. Like tiny white seeds, her teeth appear. She is pleased with the reception.

The village is silent as she stops in front of the hut of Tamubu and his family. She circles it four times, chanting the familiar words:

"The moon and the stars

have called out to me!
The sun and the clouds
have called out to me!

The ground and the seas

have called out to me!

The lion and the ant

have called out to me

The ancestors and gods

have called out to me

and they have told me your names!"

Tamubu's wives bow before her then run to slaughter five goats for the ceremonial feast. Four goats for each of the child's names and one goat for the Namecaster.

Tamubu throws more wood upon the fire. He puts a newly woven mat nearby so the Namecaster will be comfortable when she reads the flames and receives his son. Tamubu bows low and averts his eyes as she enters the hut.

After three season's wait, she is here and the young son of Tamubu will receive his names at last. And Tamubu bows again and again before her; his heart beating in welcome and in happy anticipation.

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Story by Pamela Tyree Griffin

Excerpt from the upcoming book of fiction:

"The Namecaster and Other Stories of Traditional Superstition"

Photo by Sofia Henriques

A Lifetime

After thirty years of marriage, raising three kids, burying a lifetime of pets in the backyard and making ends meet, the day has arrived.

But...

It has arrived not adorned in the selling of this house to buy another in Florida for our retirement.

It has arrived not sadly as we kiss goodbye the grandkids.

It has arrived not even twirling in hilarity as I don a bathing suit that hangs slack around my ample breasts out of proportion to my body...

Instead...

It has arrived with you in a wheelchair, not knowing where we live.

It has arrived with you staring puzzled at a picture of your own children.

It has arrived with your sudden fear of any water even in the sink or bathtub.

So...

After thirty years of marriage, raising three kids, burying a lifetime of pets in the backyard and making ends meet, the day has arrived.

I know I said ‘till death...But whose death were we talking about?

Surely widow’s weeds would have been better than this.

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Poem by Pamela Tyree Griffin Previously Published in Salome
Photograph by Craig Toron

(For more stories and poems click "older posts"! or the links at the end of the page)

Then All Was Oblivion

His cape afloat behind him, the man stumbled down the street a mumbling, incoherent hulk. He didn’t know what time it was though the autumn evening allowed just enough moonlight for him to see.

His head ached and his chest burned-or was it the other way around?

Usually his body, containing a given amount of absinthe, reacted so sweetly. Thus, he concluded, he was not full of the drink. and why he had not taken a carriage home, he didn’t know. Why had he made the supreme error of walking on legs as uncooperative as the laces on a woman’s corset?

He decided to sit on the curb for just a moment before laboring on. In response, his stomach revolted and sent out an abundance of foodstuffs eaten hours before. He felt better. Try as he might though, he could not stand.

A blurry someone approached him, saying something he couldn’t understand. He fainted again and began to commune with the occupants of his expansive and tortured dreams.

He vowed to never leave them.

The October 10, 1849 issue of the Baltimore Clipper newspaper devoted an entire column to the death of the writer Edgar Allan Poe who had been found unconscious on the sidewalk days before.

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Story by Pamela Tyree Griffin

Previously Published in Doorknobs and Bodypaint

Photograph by: José A. Warletta
(For more stories and poems click "older posts"! or the links at the end of the page)

THE ENDING

This is my undoing, my ending.
My mouth will no longer say anything- let alone goodbye.
I know that your hand grasps mine as does your heart.
That I do not move or speak, means nothing.
I know you are here. I know you are with me.
Soon, I will escape this prison.
I will be a big part of what you remember and a big part of what you may want to forget.
My love for you is a great as the sky and just as beautiful.
My thanks to you is bigger than any world, and just as beautiful.
I will know you always. This goodbye is only temporary.
I will be waiting joyously.
I will be waiting - just to say hello to you again.

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Poem by Pamela Tyree Griffin

(From My Hospice Experience)
Photograph/Graphic by Asif Akbar
(For more stories and poems click "older posts"! or the links at the end of the page)

Fare Thee Well

In southern bound undulation,
they float on unsteady breeze -
their black wings
stretching to the horizon.
Their path

lengthy

and
rising

and
dipping,
then rising again...
Chased to the far beyond
by frost and damp and inner
timepiece.
Their disappearing cries beg us believe
that as surely as the sun will rise again
they too shall return -
on the other side
of winter.

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Poem by Pamela Tyree Griffin
Photograph by Brandon Bankston
(For more stories and poems click "older posts"! or the links at the end of the page)

"MAXWELL"

Amelia and Helen got ready.

“We can’t be late,” said Amelia who rustled about like a bag of shredded paper. ”I’m sure he’s expecting us.”

Helen nodded in complete agreement while adjusting the festival of feathers that was her hat. “He always liked this hat,” she said.

Elsewhere a man sat up in bed. “I’m leaving today,” he said to the empty hospital room.

Across his bed, slivers of sunlight were created by the half closed blinds. Yet from that window he could see marigolds, roses and tulips. Their colors spoke to him of spring and beauty and life.

Amused by the silly and curious chatter of the squirrels, his whole body was a convulsion of chuckles. The birds, he didn’t know what kind they were, settled on the bird feeders. He could hear their staccato pecking at the food.

He reached one gnarled hand up to his weathered face and wished he’d gotten a shave beforehand. “Too late for that now,” he thought as he inserted his gleaming false teeth. His hair was a perfection of grey snarls – too late to do anything with that either.

At least he was clean. Clara, his home health aide, had always seen to that. She was a great lady, making trips to the hospital even though she didn’t have to and was not paid for such. She came every few days if only to visit with him. He would miss her.

He loved to hear her shuffling footsteps coming down the hall and seeing her ample frame squeeze its way through the doorway. She was like a locomotive slowing down for the next stop She was not just an employee - she was something more but just what it was, he could not name.

He never heard his Aunt Amelia and Aunt Helen, his favorites, come into the room. They were just as he remembered. When he saw his Aunt Helen’s hat, he was as gleeful as a little boy. His giggles belied his 92 years.

“Aunties – I knew you were coming. I dreamed of you both – so I knew.” The sound of his voice startled him. After the stroke, speaking had not been possible-yet here he was doing just that.

“Good dear. You’re ready then.” Helen said. “Everybody is waiting to see you.”

Maxwell rose from the bed and, taking their hands, began to dance to a waltz not played in more than fifty years and heard only by them. And then they were off, spinning and spinning some more, upward to and through the clouds like butterflies set free.

Their laughter rolled over the gardens and reached the birdies and squirrels. The flowers saluted them with gold, maroon and yellow petals which danced on the waves of the wind before fluttering back to earth.

Maxwell was going home.

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Story by Pamela Tyree Griffin
Published in Pond Ripples September 08
Photograph by: Nat Arnett
(For more stories and poems click "older posts"! or the links at the end of the page)