RITA KATHERINE VISITS BOISE
The rain that day had come in shaggy bursts, unlike the steadfast downpours she was accustomed to in New Orleans. This time twenty-year-old Rita Katherine had landed in Boise, where she now plaited her hair in a French braid, wore Henleys, jeans, and cowboy boots. In Boise, the people were friendly enough, had taken her in without too many questions, as if she were some fallen angel, some winged creature who’d slipped from the tip of a crescent moon, ablaze with doubt, full of questions like an interminable foreigner in sacred territory. What brought her here, they’d asked in a way that lent itself more toward politeness than genuine interest, figuring she was just passing through.
They listened carefully when she told them she had heard rumor of a woman in the area who’d built a labyrinth based on a dream she’d had where the Virgin Mary appeared and had dictated precise instructions on the pattern for the maze. Accustomed to frequent travelers with this same request, the locals had asked her if she was from California, and when she’d told them hell no, they seemed to warm up to her a bit. That was ten days ago. In Red’s Café. But as of this minute, no one had yet to disclose the whereabouts of the labyrinth to her.
She let them know that she’d grown up in New Orleans, Louisiana, two blocks from the house that touted an historical marker for the John Kennedy Toole home. She was impressed that they knew who he was and was about to inquire for directions to the labyrinth when they started up with questions about Hurricane Katrina. She considered spinning one of a hundred gruesome stories she’d heard, either directly from the mouths of her friends who had endured the storm or secondhand tales from documentaries, interviews on television, and in magazines.
Rita Katherine toyed with the idea of telling them she’d had to sleep on her roof with her dog, Charlie, who’d leapt into the swirling water when a cat tumbled by—a dog is a dog when he sees a cat, she’d tell them, and then she could make up something about reuniting with Charlie fifty-five days later when she sat on the porch sipping a beer with neighbors in the pitch dark of night with no electricity.
She could tell them that. Or make up something else altogether and nobody’d be the wiser, but instead, she took a deep breath, told them she wasn’t even in New Orleans when the storm had hit, that she was in Colombo, as in Sri Lanka, ascending Sri Pada, their holy hill of a mountain, and that she lived in the Garden District near Audubon Park in New Orleans, which was on high ground, safe from the fractured levees, and she considered herself lucky. Or rich, they’d replied.
Then she apologized. For what she didn’t know. Maybe from the unrelenting shame of having it all. It was just where she’d been born, and there was no escaping it, she’d told them. Rita Katherine sighed, and knew from the looks on their faces that she’d overstayed her limit; but as she slid her chair back to get up and leave, they noticed how delicate and earnest she seemed and gave her directions to the labyrinth, and for the first time in over a year, she felt as if her life had some purpose. What that purpose might be fled her imagination, but at least on that particular day, Rita Katherine knew where she was going, and maybe that was enough to get her through another day.
PUDDLE JUMPING
Nothing of much significance ever seemed to happen in the life of Beryl Maguire, a solid, stable man with a white-collar job at the local bank, where he was an officer and held final approval over loans for the farmers on the outskirts of Independence and their hardworking families whose kids collected eggs for breakfast before breakfast, then walked a mile to catch the bus for school. Beryl had seen to it that a covered area was built for those farm kids to wait under on rainy days. Snow fell on Independence about once every seven years, which was cause to close the schools and certain roads. Almost everything shut down, even the churches. People from up north couldn’t get over it. Shutting down the town because of a little snow? Unheard of to them. And one more reason for them to think people living below a certain line were ignorant. Didn’t really matter to the people of Independence though.
Beryl went to Yale on a full scholarship. His wife had graduated magna cum laude from Hollins College over in Virginia. They had one daughter, Rita Katherine, who was nine and named after her grandmothers on both sides, and both of whom had a known propensity for feistiness. Maybe this had marked his girl, who was, perhaps, the most inquisitive child he’d ever come across. What is the point of having separate libraries, she’d asked him one day when she was only six or seven years old, for white and colored? It just makes more sense to combine all the books in one set place; then there’s more for everybody, she’d told him. Beryl would tell her that it was a complicated matter. Why, it is not! she’d snapped back at him, stomping her right foot with her hand cocked on her hip, her elbow crooked out. It’s not at all complicated, Daddy, and you know it, she’d answered him prissily. He’d told her that there were things she didn’t understand about the nature of people, that change was slow but would just take some time and the deliberate effort of people who were willing to perceive the right of things through their hearts. He pointed at a huddle of trees over in the field across the street from their house and asked her if she thought they looked strong, and she’d answered him with a yes sir in the way she’d been taught and then he asked her if she knew why they looked strong.
“Of course I do!” She laughed as she twirled around and skipped off, happy enough, jumping puddles left by the mid-morning shower, Zen yapping after her. He tried to smile at the sight of his girl safe in the world he and her mother and grandmothers were building for her, but it broke his heart to think of the day it wouldn’t occur to her to skip over mud puddles after a good rain, and it would be here all too soon.
The rain that day had come in shaggy bursts, unlike the steadfast downpours she was accustomed to in New Orleans. This time twenty-year-old Rita Katherine had landed in Boise, where she now plaited her hair in a French braid, wore Henleys, jeans, and cowboy boots. In Boise, the people were friendly enough, had taken her in without too many questions, as if she were some fallen angel, some winged creature who’d slipped from the tip of a crescent moon, ablaze with doubt, full of questions like an interminable foreigner in sacred territory. What brought her here, they’d asked in a way that lent itself more toward politeness than genuine interest, figuring she was just passing through.
They listened carefully when she told them she had heard rumor of a woman in the area who’d built a labyrinth based on a dream she’d had where the Virgin Mary appeared and had dictated precise instructions on the pattern for the maze. Accustomed to frequent travelers with this same request, the locals had asked her if she was from California, and when she’d told them hell no, they seemed to warm up to her a bit. That was ten days ago. In Red’s Café. But as of this minute, no one had yet to disclose the whereabouts of the labyrinth to her.
She let them know that she’d grown up in New Orleans, Louisiana, two blocks from the house that touted an historical marker for the John Kennedy Toole home. She was impressed that they knew who he was and was about to inquire for directions to the labyrinth when they started up with questions about Hurricane Katrina. She considered spinning one of a hundred gruesome stories she’d heard, either directly from the mouths of her friends who had endured the storm or secondhand tales from documentaries, interviews on television, and in magazines.
Rita Katherine toyed with the idea of telling them she’d had to sleep on her roof with her dog, Charlie, who’d leapt into the swirling water when a cat tumbled by—a dog is a dog when he sees a cat, she’d tell them, and then she could make up something about reuniting with Charlie fifty-five days later when she sat on the porch sipping a beer with neighbors in the pitch dark of night with no electricity.
She could tell them that. Or make up something else altogether and nobody’d be the wiser, but instead, she took a deep breath, told them she wasn’t even in New Orleans when the storm had hit, that she was in Colombo, as in Sri Lanka, ascending Sri Pada, their holy hill of a mountain, and that she lived in the Garden District near Audubon Park in New Orleans, which was on high ground, safe from the fractured levees, and she considered herself lucky. Or rich, they’d replied.
Then she apologized. For what she didn’t know. Maybe from the unrelenting shame of having it all. It was just where she’d been born, and there was no escaping it, she’d told them. Rita Katherine sighed, and knew from the looks on their faces that she’d overstayed her limit; but as she slid her chair back to get up and leave, they noticed how delicate and earnest she seemed and gave her directions to the labyrinth, and for the first time in over a year, she felt as if her life had some purpose. What that purpose might be fled her imagination, but at least on that particular day, Rita Katherine knew where she was going, and maybe that was enough to get her through another day.
PUDDLE JUMPING
Nothing of much significance ever seemed to happen in the life of Beryl Maguire, a solid, stable man with a white-collar job at the local bank, where he was an officer and held final approval over loans for the farmers on the outskirts of Independence and their hardworking families whose kids collected eggs for breakfast before breakfast, then walked a mile to catch the bus for school. Beryl had seen to it that a covered area was built for those farm kids to wait under on rainy days. Snow fell on Independence about once every seven years, which was cause to close the schools and certain roads. Almost everything shut down, even the churches. People from up north couldn’t get over it. Shutting down the town because of a little snow? Unheard of to them. And one more reason for them to think people living below a certain line were ignorant. Didn’t really matter to the people of Independence though.
Beryl went to Yale on a full scholarship. His wife had graduated magna cum laude from Hollins College over in Virginia. They had one daughter, Rita Katherine, who was nine and named after her grandmothers on both sides, and both of whom had a known propensity for feistiness. Maybe this had marked his girl, who was, perhaps, the most inquisitive child he’d ever come across. What is the point of having separate libraries, she’d asked him one day when she was only six or seven years old, for white and colored? It just makes more sense to combine all the books in one set place; then there’s more for everybody, she’d told him. Beryl would tell her that it was a complicated matter. Why, it is not! she’d snapped back at him, stomping her right foot with her hand cocked on her hip, her elbow crooked out. It’s not at all complicated, Daddy, and you know it, she’d answered him prissily. He’d told her that there were things she didn’t understand about the nature of people, that change was slow but would just take some time and the deliberate effort of people who were willing to perceive the right of things through their hearts. He pointed at a huddle of trees over in the field across the street from their house and asked her if she thought they looked strong, and she’d answered him with a yes sir in the way she’d been taught and then he asked her if she knew why they looked strong.
“Of course I do!” She laughed as she twirled around and skipped off, happy enough, jumping puddles left by the mid-morning shower, Zen yapping after her. He tried to smile at the sight of his girl safe in the world he and her mother and grandmothers were building for her, but it broke his heart to think of the day it wouldn’t occur to her to skip over mud puddles after a good rain, and it would be here all too soon.
