[cont.]
That was when Grandma Beulah came into the room on her way to find out which tree had been hit and saw them with their shoes up on her couch. She didn’t say a word. She picked up a hickory switch and began thrashing them. Maggie was kind of used to it. Grandma and Grandpa liked using the switch, but Jack had no clue. He saw her hit Maggie and, being older, stood to protect her which pushed Grandma into a full scale hissy fit. When he started to cry out, she told him in no uncertain terms, “Boy, you need to act like you got some raising and take your punishment like a man.” You could hear the sound of the switch hitting his skin all the way down the hall over the sound of the rain on the roof and he started screaming “stop” after the third or fourth lashing. Odessa flew into the room, saw what was happening and grabbed the switch.
“You do not beat my son. Do you hear me?”
“Spare the rod and spoil the child.” Grandma Beulah walked over to the mantel and got another switch. She had a whole vase full of them. “Children do not put their feet on my sofa and they take their just punishment quietly. They do not sass me,” she told Odessa as she moved back to hit Jack again. When Odessa stood in front of him, Grandma hit Odessa, leaving a welt across her face. Odessa didn’t speak: she grabbed the switch, broke it in half and threw it across the room. Grandma Beulah was taken aback. No one except Grandpa Billy ever stood up to her, at least not in Maggie’s lifetime. Glaring at Grandma, Odessa turned, grabbing Jack’s hand and hers. She wanted to tell Odessa that storming out like this would just mean more trouble later. And it was. Odessa left her there on the back porch next to Grandma Beulah who screamed out that Odessa was a Jezebel destined to cast her family into the fires of eternal damnation. “Don’t you ever come back here again, you hear me?” Even before their car was out of sight, all of Grandma’s rage turned on Maggie. Her back still bore the scars.
Odessa came back for family funerals and at least two weddings but she never did step foot in Grandma Beulah’s house again. The family had a big reunion the following year and Dennis came, bringing presents and a special gift for her from Odessa. But Jack never returned, not even for Grandpa Billy’s or Grandma Beulah’s funerals.
Reunions were the high point of every summer. Lots of food and her brothers had other kids to torment. There were a ton of kids in her extended family and they all pretty much ran wild. Grandma Beulah had a field day switching every child in reach, yelling that they should behave themselves. She was really talented at righteous indignation. But it wasn’t just the kids acting up. She clearly remembered one of her older second cousins taking a six pack of beer and hiding with it back in the barn behind the tractors and plows. His pregnant wife wanted to go home and he wouldn’t come out so she lured him out by throwing beer cans toward him. He’d crawl to each one and drink it and then she’d throw another a bit closer to the door. Finally she grabbed him and hauled him out covered in straw. The whole family laughed at him, children included, and reminded him of that episode at every family reunion thereafter. That’s what reunions meant to her. The opportunity to do something stupid and be reminded of it for the rest of your life. While everyone was eating watermelon, all those embarrassing memories got hauled out and displayed. She was teased about mispronouncing Mississippi when she was three years old. Dennis dropped an easy fly ball in an elementary school game, letting the opponents win. Grandma Beulah burned the sweet potato pie as she chased the pig out of her garden. Everyone had a story. No one was perfect.
Dennis didn’t come to many reunions but when he did, he was the only one who paid any attention to the children other than berating or beating them. Instead of letting the kids run through the peanut fields throwing dirt clods at each other, he organized them into oversized baseball teams. “Baseball teaches patience and team work,” he would tell them, “and there’s no better feeling than hitting a home run or catching a fly ball.”
She remembered him in madras shorts and a golf shirt with an alligator embroidered on it, standing behind each of her brothers and the assorted cousins’ kids one after another, explaining how to keep their eyes on the ball and their weight balanced. He even showed her how to throw a knuckleball. “If you can learn how to throw this, no one will be able to hit it. You’ll be invincible.” One year he even brought a bag of golf clubs for them to share but her father told him it was a sorry gift for country kids. “What they need,” he told Dennis, “are decent rifles so we can go hunting together next year.” And each year after that, he would taunt Dennis with “Where are our rifles?” Dennis would smile widely and say, “Now wouldn’t that make a fine mess at the airport?”
Dennis really was a miracle, the more she thought about it, growing up the way he had. He was such a truly gentle man. A healer. Her father had despised him so much and only received kindness in return. She’d never heard Dennis yell at anyone ever, much less beat anyone. And throwing that knuckleball in school games was the only time in her life that people had cheered for her.
Odessa came into the living room to turn off the light before going to bed and found Maggie quietly crying over the photo album.
Return on Friday for the next chapters of Just Like Suicide.
