Folklore feels like summers spent in your hometown, wandering barefoot with your best friend all day, coming home to sweet tea set on the porch. You slouch in a deck chair, watching the sun set, your grandmother's soft voice rising and falling beside you.
She tells stories, histories of the people you see everyday, Old Man James and his Betty. James and Betty, Betty and James who'd been together so long everyone thought of them as two halves of a single unit, a living breathing forevermore. But Grammy remembers...there was once another girl. A girl, with startling green eyes and a heart of fire and desire. A girl, shamefully wronged, disregarded, brushed under the carpet with all the lint, lost socks and cardigans, things we wish to forget. The girl everyone remembers and no one mentions.
And you listen in wide eyed silence, trying to reconcile the image of the bluff honest old man with that of a dark haired philanderer, trying to picture Mrs. Betty- who still looks at her husband like she sees the 17 year old boy she fell in love with- huddled under the bleachers as Mrs. Inez (that old bat?!) confirms that the rumours are true, trying to imagine what the woman would've looked like, this Rebekah, who'd been able to steal a man's eyes from 'Betty the Beauty' and coming up with a blank because some things simply defy imagination.
"How?", you whisper in a strangled voice
"How can she bear to even look at him?"
Grammy smooths a hand over your tousled head and smiles at how young you are, how black and white the world you live in, how innocent.
Because invisible strings tie us to our fates. Because Betty knew the other girl and the shitty hand life had dealt her. Because James had been 17 and hadn't known a single thing. Or maybe, it was something as simple as a sorry at the right time by the right person for the right reasons.
And the other girl? You want to ask. But it feels wrong somehow, after all these years, her memory still tainted, her grave still fresh, her presence always felt.
Grammy hears the question anyway-she always does. Her voice grows softer, her words come out hoarse and laced with bitterness. And she tells you, about a runaway who had left home by moonlight with a twenty dollar bill and the clothes on her back, how she slept her way through bus stops and shady motel rooms, greedy fingered old men who had breathed in her desperation like it was the finest of perfumes. About a lost girl who didn't know better and the men who should have. How finally one summer, she had stumbled into a sleepy little town, 1989 miles away from where she had started, a ghost town she'd thought, marvelling at the silence. And then...him. They had talked politics and got drunk under the streetlights, spent weekends together and he'd made her feel special, kissed all her aches better, really truly saw her. For the first time she felt like she could maybe put down roots, here where the grass was green and the skies purple pink and blue, here where she had been happy for the first time. And then, when the wind turned and the evenings grew longer, he'd finally touched her and it had felt like a goodbye. When she woke up twisted in the empty bedsheets, she was alone. All of August slipped away into a memory .
The school year was a knife to the chest, her love had relegated her to the shadows, abandoned her to the whispers and side eyes. They called her a bad girl, a mad woman, a whore, nothing she hadn't heard before but nothing ever really prepares you to hear it again.
"What happened to her?" you ask in a hushed voice.
She left. The day of James and Betty's wedding, the whole town and it's cousins were at the church, no one missed the freak. She went back to the city she'd run from, back to that house of horrors, the demons had long since died but their ghosts remained in the walls. But she knew what it was to live with ghosts. She wasn't one to fear things that couldn't touch her.
She worked her way through med school, threw herself into her work, reckless, passionate, determined and burned like a star in a sky full of streetlights.
Then came the great war of men, what your history textbooks called the second world war.
"You were there too?" you whisper in awe.
Yes. I was posted with the 104th infantry. It's where I met your grandfather.
She speaks of the guns and the smoke, the trenches of blood and broken men, the white curls darken and the wrinkles fall away, you see your soft Grammy, but also the steely young nurse she had once been.
She speaks of a young soldier, Bill, and a love set to a soundtrack of artillery fire, uncertainty and prayers. A love neither easy nor inevitable, that they had fought for tooth and nail because it was all either of them had.
She tells me of their early days, back when Bill was just one among a thousand struggling young men,the times she almost ran because it was the only thing she knew. How after a particularly vicious fight he had come after her to find her stood on the cliffside, angry, unsure, screaming at him to give her one fucking reason. How he had slowly unpicked the messy knots in her head where love and lies were so entwined she couldn't tell one from the other. How she'd warned him of the storms that lived within her and he'd weathered through them all. How she had finally found it in herself to believe again.
And then the homecoming, the city life wasn't for them and Grammy had missed the sea. So they'd packed their bags, said goodbye to St.Louis by moonlight. Then the house on the beach, parties straight out of Gatsby, card games with Dali. The quiet moments in Grandpa Bill's arms. Their new neighbours, James and Betty who had moved back home to raise their family. How James would sometimes look at her like he was seeing someone else or maybe a reflection of the man he could've been. How whenever that happened Betty's lips would tighten imperceptibly. How he always snapped out of it. Every single time. He always went back to his Betty. Bill would tell a joke to smooth over the tense silence, the moment would pass. Everything would come back to normal. Then she had your mother, your uncle, your other uncle, their dog, Benjamin, Grandpa Bill's heart-attack, the stories start running together and before you know it gentle arms are carrying you to your bed, a soft I love you goes unanswered, summer ends, it's time to go back home.
When you come back next, the porch is empty, no sweating jug of sweet tea on the table. The house is crowded and smells of roses- Grammy hated roses- and expensive perfumes. There's too much black everywhere- Grammy hated black- you search for a familiar face in the sea of weeping strangers and find none. You huddle close to where Grammy lies. She looks so peaceful. Just like you remember from the last day of summer. People come up every few minutes, mumbling words of comfort to your mother as your uncles stand by stoically. No one says a word to Grammy, which is pretty rude you think considering she's the reason they're all here. They hover uncertainly, then attempt to drift away inconspicuously. Mrs. Betty and Old man James are among the last, you look up curiously trying to see beyond the ill fitting suit and the balding grey head, but whoever James had been at 17, was long gone. He stands for a long time, his head bowed, tears slowly dripping down the tip of his nose. He doesn't say a word to your mother. He doesn't say a word to anyone. But from where you sit you can see his lips moving, the same word again and again, like a prayer, Betty, Betty, Betty. You wonder why he'd be talking to his wife right now. But then you see Betty's mouth tighten.
