It was the day before the wedding, and we were in the kitchen. My mother was stripping clothes off my baby brother after he’d had an accident. He stood tall on the counter, my painting of the tree of life behind him on the wall, and he was crying, whimpering more like. My mother dropped his dirty clothes in one side of the sink and plopped him in the other, which was full of soapy water for washing.
“Why don’t you want to go, Meryl?” my mother asked me and started sopping water up onto my brother’s baby legs. It was the rehearsal she was talking about. I was eight and the only girl my age at church. I had been in a lot of weddings, and this was to be my seventh. I didn’t need to rehearse walking down the aisle, and I said so, gently.
“I’m tired, Momma,” I said. “And besides I know what to do. I’m not even dropping petals at this one. I’m carrying a ball of flowers. I’d rather stay home with you.” But my mother was worn out and needed me gone. The reception was to be at our house, and she needed to prepare the porch and start collecting flowers for decorations.
“There are some things that are going to be different,” she said. “This one will be different from the other ones.” And she set my brother on the counter to dry him off. Mamaw came out of the laundry room with my starched and ironed dress; it was white with red flowers all over it. It stood out bright and crisp against her black arms and hair.
“Besides,” Mamaw said, “I thought you were excited for this one. I thought you’d be excited about Tommy.” He was my best friend and was the ring bearer. I said I was excited, but Tommy and I had practiced plenty.
“We like to pick the spider lilies from the field by the church and practice.” I looked at Mamaw. She had found me in the tree. Shouldn’t she know?
“Well, there will be a nice dinner after,” my mother said, in condolence.
I wanted to say I didn’t give two hoots about dinner, but I knew better than to argue. I kept my mouth shut.
Mamaw said, “Besides, spider lilies aren’t no ball of flowers.”
***
Mamaw took me up and helped me dress. I was getting a bit shy about the bruises on my chest and the first very small sprouts down below, so I told her I’d do it myself.
“All right,” she said. “Just come out and let me do the buttons for you.” I nodded and closed my door and went straight to the window and opened it up, then climbed out on the roof and took a seat on the dormer. I liked it up here, even in the summer heat. I saw my brothers running in and out of the reception tent in the yard below and then farther on, the levee and the river, where Tommy and I liked to go and hunt for treasure discarded by the pleasure steamers. Past all that, the church steeple stood tall and sharp. Most recently, Tommy and I had found an unopened candy bar buried under the mud of the riverbank, a necklace of cubic zirconium, and a liquor bottle, also unopened. We discarded the liquor bottle, and Tommy ate the candy bar while I fastened the necklace around my neck. I looked toward the river now and the steeple of the church and tried to get my nerves out. All I could think about was the large magnolia in the churchyard. I had climbed it recently and gotten stuck. We had one in our yard—in fact, they were all over town, the state flower—and I climbed that one too, but it was the one at church I kept remembering. Jeremiah had gotten me down, and I hadn’t liked that.
I heard Mamaw call for me from downstairs. I scrambled down from the roof and put on my dress, then went in the bathroom and splashed a little water on my armpits and face to get the sweat off.
“Meryl, it’s time to get on!” Mamaw called again. “Don’t make me get your momma!” She was fierce but immensely kind. She was my third grandma. I was scared of her and drawn to her all at once. When I came out from the bathroom, she pursed her lips and said, “Land’s sake, chile, did you even brush your hair?”
“It’s too curly,” I said, frustrated. She knew that. It was on account of my curls and my father’s that people joked about our relation to her. Hers were much darker and tighter of course.
“Well, that ain’t no ‘scuse,” she said. We were standing outside of the bathroom at the top of the stairs. My mother, from down in the kitchen, said, “Just do it up in a bun. It’ll cover everything up.” Mamaw fixed my hair quickly and then took me up to church.
***
Jeremiah was the groom. He was Tommy’s older brother. He was an old friend of our family’s and often came round to help my father around the house, replacing shingles on the roof or trimming the pecan tree. He was a great tease and nicked my cheek as soon as I came up the church stairs for the rehearsal.
“Rosey-cokes! Little Meryl Bear,” he said. “Blonder than a bee.” He was holding the door to the foyer open, and his dark hair hung in a manicured mop over his forehead. He resembled Tommy but lacked all his boyish features and his baby fat and softness.
“You coming in or what?” he asked and gestured inside. “Ain’t nothing in there to scare nobody, except there are some presents.” I smiled and stepped through the door. It was dark inside, and I shivered instinctively. The doors to the foyer, including the one Jeremiah held, were all made of green stained glass, and the high ceilings of the foyer trapped that dank light above us. The wedding party milled about like sticks stirring a dark soup while Jeremiah’s mother went around setting us in our places. The church had originally been built as a concert hall by a couple of wealthy benefactors in town, so the acoustics were excellent. I could hear Jeremiah’s mother whispering to Tommy to hush up and go and find me from across the little lit hall. It was like she was standing next to me.
“Ready, Meryl?” Tommy said when he reached my side. He offered me his arm like a gentleman. Jeremiah passed by us both and ruffled our hair. “You two where you’re supposed to be?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Tommy said irritably. “But I’m taking Meryl there now.”
“Good to see you treating her like a lady,” he said and gave Tommy a hard look.
“Come on,” Tommy said. “We’re first.” I said that couldn’t be. We went last, before the bride. He shook his head and said, “Nuh-uh, not this time. Special request of the big brother. Wants to see us first, apparently.” I felt my stomach do a turn but took hold of his arm anyway. I held on as he wove us through to the front of the crowd. The doors to the sanctuary were opened and a bright light came through. The room was cased with floor-to-ceiling windows of clear glass with little clusters of flowers all around the edges, magnolias and roses and some ivy all woven in. There were a few skylights in the top of the domed building, and the whole place was so bright you had to squint. The lit candles on the sill the piano playing gave the space an angelic touch. The piano started playing “For the Beauty of the Earth,” and Jeremiah’s mother nodded at us to process.
Tommy was right, and so was my mother. It felt strange to be first. So strange I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see what was ahead. I didn’t want to see Jeremiah first. He had seen too much of me first. I kept my eyes closed all the way down the aisle till I felt Tommy stop.
“Meryl,” he hissed. “Open up. We got to go up.” I opened my eyes then and we ascended the stairs to the stage and took our place next to Jeremiah.
***
The rehearsal went smoothly enough. We were spared watching the kiss. I couldn’t bear the thought of that. Pastor Stephen said, “We’ll save that for tomorrow,” which brought knowing chuckles from the rest of the party and a sigh of relief from Tommy and me. We still believed in such thing as cooties, though I was exempt from such a thing.
“You’re basically a boy,” Tommy said. There were only twelve boys my age at church, and we all got on just fine. Jeremiah heard what Tommy said and cuffed him on the ear.
“She isn’t either,” he said. “She’s a dove, a daisy, don’t you forget it.” Then he pointed to the tables. We were down in the church basement now, for the dinner. My parents were there along with Jeremiah’s and some other folks in the community close to Jeremiah. The bride was from out of town, so only a few people were there for her, her attendants and parents and a few aunts and uncles. I watched the adults move through the buffet line for a moment. Jeremiah spoke in my ear, “Look, your present’s right there, next to your name card. Why don’t you open it? Wait for the line to die down.” I went over to the table and picked up the box with my name on it. The loopy letters looked menacing despite the frills. The present was light in my hand, and the wrapping paper was covered in flowers. I opened it gingerly and found a necklace, a rosebud charm with my initial. “I had it made special to include both your initials.” My name was fully Meryl Anne, and I saw that on the necklace: MA. “Here. I’ll put it on you,” he said and took me by the shoulders and spun me gently around to face the stairs. The air kicked on just then, and a cool gust swept through the hall. I shivered and closed my eyes and tried to ignore his spidery fingers looping around my neck, but I felt them against my skin. I felt the clasp was being fastened and settled ever so gently on the nape of my neck. His hands settled on my shoulder and pressed firmly down. I had felt that firm pressure elsewhere on my body, and my skin raised under it.
“Good thing your momma put your hair up,” he said in my ear and touched my neck one more time. “No worries about anything getting caught there.”
I felt awful and looked at Tommy across the table. He had been given a pocketknife. I felt a flash of fire run through me. Why couldn’t I have one, to defend myself? I wished I did but then the thought left me sick. I ate one piece of cake with half a petal on it and no dinner.
***
That night, in bed, my mother said, “Now, Meryl, what is it?”
I lay there quietly and looked up above me. The house was quiet, filled with a rare silence since my brothers were sleeping outside in the reception tent with my father.
“The ceiling is black,” I said.
“Only right now,” my mother said. She was rocking in my favorite chair by the window. As a small child, I liked to sit in her lap and rub my fingers over the little raised daisies on the fabric cover.
I didn’t say anything, only lay there hot and shivery. The magnolia tree outside brushed against my window gently in the wind. The white blooms where like gloves in the night sky. Only the upper ones remained, as my mother had cut the rest for the reception and ceremony. Jeremiah wanted the room full of white, like the bride, he said. Other women had cut them too, all over town.
“What will happen when I grow up?” I asked, feeling very much like a child in my dark bed. “Will I be tall?” My older sister was tall like a tree, and many people said I would look like her and my father, too.
“Perhaps,” my mother said thoughtfully. If there had been light, I would have seen her forehead press and her fingers knit together. “But I don’t think you’ll be as tall as some people say.”
I saw then Jeremiah up in the pecan tree, calling down to me to wait for him. He said he would help me carry the nuts. I looked up at him and felt his towering height. I looked away and took a bucket of pecans to the garage. He came down and followed me to the garage and asked me to put my hands around his while he cracked the pecans. My hands were small and itchy under his. They were always small and itchy when he was around.
“Oh,” I said. “I want to be taller.”
“Why is that?” my mother said.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t really say why.
“How do our bones actually grow?” I asked, knowing my father would probably know better. He was a doctor.
“Slowly,” my mother said. “An inch at a time. No, less, maybe a millimeter at a time. It all happens so slow—and steady. That’s the thing you have to remember, Meryl. It’s a steady thing, growing up and going on.”
“Did you think so?” I asked.
“Not so much, not really.” I searched my mind for questions. This was the longest my mother had lingered with me in a while. I think the meditative brush of the magnolia and the stillness of the white moon had us in a certain sort of hush. I imagined the green beans in the garden quivering on their tall stakes and the okra waving its hands in the dark, as if dancing for the sun to come back. I imagined sleeping under the tent and was glad I hadn’t done so.
“Momma?” I asked, more to just make sure she was still there. I felt her slipping into the darkness, growing farther away from me into the night.
“Yes, Meryl?”
“Can I have some water?”
“Sure, Meryl. I’ll get you a cup from the bathroom.” I was grateful she offered. I hated going in my bathroom now, especially at night. He had come up to me there earlier in the summer, and now I couldn’t even wash my hands in the sink. I preferred to clean up elsewhere. The water my mother brought me was warm, just a bit cooler than a bucket left in the languishing afternoon sun.
“Can you tell me a story?” I asked, knowing she wouldn’t put the light on to read if I asked for a book.
“All right, then go on to sleep.” And she told me the story of Genesis, of Adam and Eve, and the great gushing flood. The sound of the water on my ears sent me fast to sleep.
***
“Come on, chile,” Mamaw said to me the next day. I woke up and squinted against the sun. I had been taking a nap, in the swinging bed after helping my mother gather and arrange flowers and greenery all morning for the reception. I was nervous to help. The petals seemed to drop every time I lifted a bloom. My mother noticed and sent me out to rest after lunch. It was then about midafternoon.
“Get yourself a snack and then we need to get you cleaned and ready,” Mamaw said. “It’ll be time to get on over to the church soon enough. Wedding’s no more than a couple hours away.” I went inside where my mother had set out a plate of food, chips, carrots, and strawberries. The red color of the berries looked harsh to me against the white plate, so I only ate the chips and carrots.
“Tired, Meryl?” my mother asked.
“Tired?” Mamaw said. “Can’t be. You slep’ all this afternoon. Now, come on, let’s go and get you washed up.” I asked for a bath. I hated all the showers now.
“Oh, why don’t you use mine?” my mother said. She knew I loved it. She had a jacuzzi. The jets reminded me of river rapids in spring, and I could nearly get my whole body underwater in it, like in a swimming pool. Mamaw nodded gravely. “I’ll go with her, to make sure she actually washes up.” I almost protested but didn’t bother. I hadn’t exactly cleaned up the day before. Besides, I didn’t have to fear Mamaw. We went back to my mother’s bathroom. It was through the bedroom and had high ceilings with glass windows and sky lights. The bright-red walls were the only part I didn’t like. But when Mamaw set the water to running I relaxed. I sat on the edge and watched her dip her hand in a few times to test the temperature. My mother came in with my pressed dress this time and kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll be right up front at the church. I’ll be sure you can see me,” she said and smiled.
I got in the tub as soon as it was full and shrunk my body down as small and hard as a seed under the water. I closed my eyes against the surface, and the water was gentle and filled in the space around me. It felt like a soft blanket, and I turned my head back and forth a few times to wet my hair.
“Looks like some reeds or else leaves,” Mamaw said when I came up and touched my hair. I said I liked both. “Here now, turn around,” she said and rubbed soap in my hair. I was sitting down in the tub with my body still tucked into a kernel, and she poured three cups of water over my hair to rinse it clean. “Uh-huh, silky clean,” Mamaw said, satisfied. Then she had me put my arms out one at a time for a nice scrub. They looked to me knobby and angular like limbs in winter, and I was amazed to see such dirt come off them. The grime had built up and came off now in watery shafts so that the bottom of the porcelain tub began to resemble mud at the bottom of a tree after a rainstorm. I was now relaxed and kept my eyes open in the bright light while she scrubbed my body.
“All right, honey,” Mamaw said. “Now stand up.” She didn’t help but watched me unfold myself. She said, “You grown so tall and big now. Like them trees you like to climb. I done seen you up on that roof.” I was quiet, a bit chastised. Of course, I couldn’t hide from her. Neither could he. He told me to jump and caught me in his arms and then held me to his body for far too long. I had nail marks in my skin, and he hissed at me, “You keep quiet, you hear.” There were magnolia blooms all around our feet, and the church steeple rose behind him. His whole body was hard underneath me. I knew what that meant. The other children cheered at his heroics, but Mamaw spoke fiercely, appearing out of the darkness, out of nowhere. “Jeremiah Morris, you go on and let Meryl go. She needs to go home. Her mama looking for her. Calling for her.”
Mamaw spoke to me now. “Now, that ain’t safe, Meryl,” she said. I waited and looked at my face in the bath water.
“You gotta learn to keep your feet on the ground. Ain’t you done learned yet? Down on the ground. Hear me?” She was scrubbing my back and then my legs, and then she stopped at my privates. She made me clean myself there before toweling me off and helping me step out on to the mat. “Ain’t no reason to be doing that. Ain’t no reason to be climbing so high no more.”
“But I like to be up high,” I said.
“I know you do, but you gotta stay safe now, you hear?” She helped me into my dress, a pink silk frock with rosettes around the collar and on the sleeves where they puffed. Then it was the stockings and the shoes. She set one foot on the ground and said, “Lands, why this making you look so young? You’re nearly growned now, ain’t no doll baby no more. Ain’t nothing but a big growned rose.” Then she stood me up and made me sit on a stool by the mirror, where she braided my hair and then bunned it round again, to hide the snarls. “There,” she said. “Here me now? A might grown rose.” I looked in the mirror and did feel strong, with my cheekbones out and my nose pert and strong. My mother came in one last time and put some baby’s breath in the braids, then she said, “Can you manage to walk to church, Meryl? I need Mamaw here.” I suddenly felt small again. Mamaw said, “Your momma needs me here, chil.’ All the time.” I knew what that meant. She hadn’t been invited to the wedding. He had seen to that after she found him holding me under the tree.
“You can go on by yourself now,” she said. “Now you all grown and strong.”
I nodded and then I left alone out the front door.
***
I went north one block toward church then cut west, to the levee. I knew I was meant to go straight to the church, but I wanted grass under my feet and a horizon to look at. I climbed the levee slowly and felt slowly lighter too. When I got to the top, I was glad to see the mossy trees rising out of the river and the muddy water gently lapping against the shoreline. I went on walking, scanning for discarded treasures but didn’t see anything more than a few crushed beer cans sparkling in the light. I looked out over the town next, and it seemed to me naked, the trees bare of blooms after the work of my mother and others. The heat of summer was now fully here, and the crepe myrtles and Bradford pears were bare too. The blooms in my hair had begun to wilt and drop to the ground. I felt saddened when I saw the white petals on the ground around my feet. I looked back toward the river and saw old men and women on the porches of houseboats and a few children playing with tattered and headless dolls. I sat down for a moment to rest, in the shade of a mossy tree and let my gaze roam over the quiet waters. They were too quiet, too calm. No barges or luxury steamers today. Nothing to get aboard on and float away. I reached up to my neck and felt my necklace there. Mamaw had put it on me just before I left. “Oh, Meryl,” she said as I went for the door, “Don’t forget this.” It was the one from Jeremiah, and it seemed to me something heavy and tight like a noose. I wished I could go and sit down on a porch on the river and watch it float away, down the river as discarded treasure. But, of course, I couldn’t. I felt the stinging in my cheeks. It was time to get out of the heat. I stood up and ran down the levee, my feet accelerating under me the closer I got to the bottom. The ground leveled out, but still, I ran the whole block back east to the church, which rose above me in stacks of stairs and a perched steeple. I didn’t realize how sweaty I was till I arrived on the lawn. So I sat under the magnolia tree to cool off. I looked up and saw Jeremiah in the window of the men’s room. He was framed in green but strangely small.
I heard Mamaw say, “Ain’t you done learned yet?” I felt the tree towering above me.
***
The men’s room was only a few feet away, and like the glass in the foyer doors, the windows were also made of dark-green stain glass so that everything was a little muddy and hard to see. Jeremiah was right next to the window, so I could tell he was getting ready, putting on the finishing touches for the ceremony. He was working hair gel through his long hair, sweeping through his locks with his oiled fingers and then inspecting himself in the mirror. Then he sprayed cologne on his face. There must have been laughter then because the shades around him danced in the green light, and I saw a small figure too. Tommy. I could tell they were all suited up from their darkness, and Jeremiah’s wide cummerbund and tuxedo tails were visible too in the full-length panes. I stood up and crept closer, sitting down in the boxwood bushes just under the window. The shades became clearer here—now, they were outlines of real men. I watched the groomsmen start to dancing and making strange movements with their hips. I saw clapping and heard laughing and noises a bit like animals. The smell of cologne seeped out through a small opening in the window, and I heard Tommy laughing too. The sounds and dancing grew louder and then it went quiet. It was time to line up. I heard Jeremiah’s mother say so. I waited quietly for the men to drift out and then I stood up when I thought the coast was clear. But there he was, standing above me, large this time and hard around the edges. His white shirt glared through the green light. I looked up at him. He did not wave to me but looked steadily at me. I felt the hard dirt under my feet and rose to meet him, returning his gaze just as steadily. We stood like this for several seconds. Then I turned to mount the stairs. My body was strong and tall as a rail, and I felt the sun bright against my back.
***
Tommy met me at the top. “Where you been? You missed all the preparations,” he said. I said I got ready at home. “Why’d you do that? Well, never mind, at least we’re taking pictures after. You look sort of hot and smell funny.” I told him he did too. He smelled like Jeremiah’s cologne. I could feel his gaze on me from across the room. He and the groomsmen were lining up behind the pastor, to process down the aisle on one side of the sanctuary. They were a long dark line, and I kept my eyes up on the shadowy ceiling. “What you looking at?” Tommy asked then shook his head when I didn’t answer.
“Here, we gotta get your flowers.” We went over to the table between the sanctuary doors where the bouquets were. My ball of little pink roses sat in the middle, and I picked it up by the loop of ribbon extending from the top. It was soft and cool, but the ball was heavy.
“Kinda neat,” Tommy said. I nodded, but it felt like a lead ball to me. The whole thing was too heavy—the smells, the sounds of laughing men, and the trill of the violin from inside. I was glad when Jeremiah’s mother opened the doors to the sanctuary and the men went in. Then the bridesmaids came flowing out from the ladies’ room, and suddenly the green lighted foyer was filled with shades of pink. They assembled into a line, with Tommy and I at the head. When the bride came out, my stomach sank. She was glorious, in a white gown fit truly for a princess. I had never seen a skirt so big. Tommy and I both could fit underneath, and her veil was voluminous, covering not just her face but reaching all the way to the floor in front and back and trailing at least four feet out behind her. I heard the full quartet start then along with the piano and forced myself to look down the aisle so I wouldn’t trip. I still couldn’t stomach the idea of being first, of starting the procession, and I felt Jeremiah’s eyes on me from the stage. They were hot and boring, like they were when he got me alone at home, when he said to me, “Come on upstairs, Meryl.” Tommy jerked my arm, and we stepped into the candlelit room. The audience was hushed, and my mother smiled at me gently from a front pew. I walked slowly down the aisle and shook so much the petals from my flower ball started to drop, one by one. I could hear every singular note of “For the Beauty of the Earth,” from the cello to the piano to the violin, and I felt myself growing weaker and limp as I went down the aisle. The baby’s breath in my hair was by now totally gone, and when I mounted the stairs, my newfound strength from moments ago left me. I shook when Jeremiah reached out his hand to me. I felt myself sway a bit when his hand brushed my arm. I knew I couldn’t stay there next to him. I began to move, but what I was doing was lost on me, as if I was under water. I turned and ran, right down the aisle, back the way I came, dashing around the bridesmaids and passing the bride. I ran and ran before I knew where I was going—home. Or nearby. I lost my breath and found myself back on the levee, tucked under a tree. This time, it was a pecan. I crushed the nuts under my body when I sat down, but I did not move. I trembled so greatly the last stems fell from my hair.
***
It was my mother who found me. I heard her gentle, solid steps coming up behind me.
“Meryl, honey,” she said. “What’s wrong?”
I looked at her and thought she was beautiful in the shadows. She sat down next to me. I kept quiet.
“Sure been in a lot of weddings,” she said. “But sometimes, they’re different.” The smell of the river coming up was thick and fresh, and I took my mother’s hand.
“Sometimes, things are just a bit too much for a person,” she said, and I thought she sounded like Mamaw. I nodded and said I just felt like hiding.
“Well, this is a good place for it. In the.”
“And high up,” I said.
She didn’t say anything else. We sat there for a long time. Finally, the sun hung low on the horizon like a sunflower, and in the distance, we heard the sounds of music and cheering. The ceremony must be over. In unison, without speaking, I stood with my mother. We dropped hands but walked the few blocks home side by side. I kept my eyes up the whole way, on the magnificent magnolia that rose just above the roof of our home, where I knew I would sit and watch the reception. I’d let my hair down but keep my dress on so that from afar I’d look like a very small flower, perched and delicate but strong against the night sky.
Mary Lynn Myers is by day a wife, mother, and writer who lives in Durham, North Carolina. She holds a BA in English Literature from Covenant College and an MFA from Seattle Pacific University. Previously an editor, writer, and project manager at an editorial firm, she now works at Duke Divinity School. She spends what little free time she has writing, reading, and digging in the dirt with her three daughters.