Ginny
2001, Illinois
I stood frozen and stared at the framed picture in my hand. I could feel a pulsing in my ears as my heart raced. I was aware of every vein in my body. It was almost as if I could feel the blood coursing its way through every artery.
This couldn’t be. It was too much of a coincidence. I remembered how Grizz had asked me to give Mimi the middle name of Ruth. After Tommy told me about the early part of Grizz’s real childhood, I’d suspected maybe Ruth was the name of his little sister, though I couldn’t confirm it. I also had no proof he was raised in Florida.
But I did know he had a real love for Rottweilers and that he’d owned a bar named Razors. My head was spinning with possibilities.
“What’s the matter, child? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Sister Mary Katherine said as she watched me.
She guided me by the elbow to a comfortable chair. I sat without taking my eyes off the picture.
“Sister Agnes, where is Macon’s Grove?” My voice cracked.
“Oh, it was so small it’s probably been swallowed up by some bigger city by now. It’s right smack dab in the middle of Florida. Nothing but orange groves as far as the eye could see,” she said.
By now my hand was shaking, and Sister Mary Katherine grabbed the picture from me before I dropped it.
“Guinevere?”
I swallowed thickly and took a deep breath. “I’d like to come back after Sister Agnes’s nap and ask her some more questions about this picture. That is, if you think it’s okay and if she’ll remember.”
“I can hear you, you know?” came the small voice from the bed. “And I may be blind and infirm, but I can tell you the license plate number of my first car. All of a sudden, I’m not so tired after all.” I could feel her blind eyes swivel toward me. “What do you want to know about Ruthie and Razor?”
I looked at Sister Mary Katherine. She nodded for me to continue.
“Everything. Please, sister. Tell me everything you remember about them and why you still have this picture.”
“Well, it didn’t start with Ruthie and Razor. It started with another child. A baby boy.” My heart thudded. Sister Agnes sat up straighter. “It was 1947, and I was just twenty-two then. I’d lost my husband in the war and was aimlessly wandering from relative to relative in the hopes of finding myself. I was so lost then. I was visiting an elderly aunt who lived near Macon’s Grove. She didn’t live near it since it was in the middle of nowhere, but she lived close enough that she was sought by a man whose wife was in labor. My aunt had a decent reputation as a midwife, and she was closer than a hospital, so when he showed up at her door, she grabbed her supplies and took me with her.”
She paused and asked Sister Mary Katherine for a drink of water. After she sipped her water, she continued.
“It was sad. So sad. This little house in the middle of some orange groves. The poor woman was almost delirious with pain by the time we got there. I will never understand why the man just didn’t drive her to a hospital. Anyway, she gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. He was a big one, too. Came out screaming at the top of his lungs. My aunt handed him off to me to get him cleaned up. I brought him into the kitchen to wipe him down. I can still see his round little face.”
I gulped and wondered if she could’ve been describing Grizz as a newborn. My head became thick with the sound of my blood pulsing. I watched as Sister Agnes’s expression turned wistful.
“When I brought him back to his mother, I could hear my aunt telling her husband she was concerned. The woman was bleeding more than normal, and my aunt thought she should be taken to a hospital. The man left to drive to the closest neighbor and call an ambulance. I guess we thought an ambulance would’ve brought medical help quicker than if we tried to load her up in a car and drive her ourselves. My aunt would later tell me it didn’t matter. Her blood loss was so quick and so heavy it was doubtful she could’ve been saved.”
The holy sister took a big breath. “While the husband was gone, the mother regained consciousness and asked for her baby. We placed him in her arms and watched as she kissed his little head and spoke to him in a low voice. She looked up at my aunt then and in her very weakened state told us she wanted someone to know the truth about her baby.”
I sat up straighter in my chair. Sister Agnes’s voice was like a drug. I couldn’t hear the next word fast enough. I was taking in every syllable, every inflection in her voice, every detail. My heart was thumping so loudly I was certain the holy sisters could hear it beating in my chest.
“She told us she was raised in a little tiny town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She’d been in love with the same boy since first grade. They’d made plans to be married when he was called away in the final draft for World War II. The same war I lost my husband in. She found herself pregnant and alone.” Sister Agnes sighed. “She lived with an elderly uncle, a nasty old man who would’ve kicked her out without a second thought. She’d written to her fiancé, and never received a reply. Neither she nor his family could find anything out about his whereabouts and before too long, her pregnancy would be noticeable.
“Well, back then, ‘nice girls’ didn’t have unmarried relations. At least, they weren’t supposed to. She was ashamed and embarrassed. In hindsight, she wished she’d have risked the shame and stayed there. Wished she’d confessed to his parents she was carrying their son’s baby. When the man who’d later become her husband passed through her town as part of a logging crew and showed some interest, she jumped. Even after she explained her situation, he didn’t care. I could understand that. She was a real beauty. She left with him and never went back.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I knew Grizz’s real mother had died in childbirth and that the man who’d raised him wasn’t his biological father. Could this be Grizz’s mother Sister Agnes was telling me about? Was I hearing about Grizz’s birth?
“How did the picture of Ruthie and Razor, which would’ve been taken years after this baby’s birth, come to be?” I was almost bouncing in my chair.
“I’ll get to that, child,” Sister Agnes said softly. “After she told us this story, she kissed her baby and, with her last breath, told us to tell her husband what she wanted him to be named. Although, she asked us not to tell him why. She wanted his first name to be her mother’s maiden name. It would be the only connection to her home and family that she could leave her baby boy. She died while holding him in her arms. I cried myself to sleep that night.
“I stayed with my aunt a little while longer after that and found myself driving out to the lonely farmhouse on occasion to check on that baby boy. When I finally decided what my calling was, I left my aunt, but asked her to keep checking on the family. She did for a while. I remember getting a letter from her telling me the baby had grown into a robust toddler with the brightest green eyes she’d ever seen. Brighter than the greenest grass on a spring morning.”
Grizz. I gasped then, and Sister Mary Katherine looked at me, eyes filled with concern. I respectfully shook my head.
“I’m sorry, Sister Agnes. Please finish.”
“Well, my aunt also said she had a bad feeling, that maybe the child was a bit neglected, but she hoped things would get better when he finally remarried. My aunt died, and I never went back to that farmhouse.” She paused. “That is, until 1956.”
“I’d joined the Catholic Church by then and taken my vows and had been living in different states. When I found myself back in Florida, I made it a point to visit that little house in Macon’s Grove. That’s when I came upon Ruthie and Razor playing in the front yard. I remember Razor growled at me as I approached, but little Ruthie shushed him. I asked if her mother was home, and she said she was in the back yard. I asked who she lived there with, and she told me she had a daddy and a brother. I’d wondered if her brother was the baby I’d delivered all those years ago. I asked his name, but Ruthie just called him Brother. She was a beautiful child, but there was something sad and distant in her eyes. It was only when I asked more about her brother that her little face lit up.
“Anyway, I always carried my camera, and I started taking pictures of them playing in the grass. Then her mother, who wasn’t a very nice woman, came barreling around the side of the house and told me to mind my own business. I tried to explain that I’d been to this house years earlier, and I was just checking to see how the family was doing. Well, she told me in words that a nun and a child should never have to hear what I could do with myself. And what business did I have taking pictures of her child? I apologized and said that if she told me her address, I would be sure to send her a picture after I had my film developed. Which I did. It was a picture similar to the one you’re holding. I mailed it off to her as soon as I had it developed.”
She sighed then. I could tell the story was wearing her out, but I wanted her to finish. As if sensing my desperation, she continued in a voice laced with sadness.
“To make a long story short, I was sent to India right after that. Many, many years later I came back to the states and found myself in Macon’s Grove once again. I found the house, but all traces of the family were long gone. I asked around town, and people said the family packed up and left town without telling a soul.” She shook her head. “Ruthie and Razor have been on my unanswered prayers table ever since. I guess I think of them as the only connection to the baby I once held. He didn’t have green eyes when I held him right after he was born, but I’ve been haunted by them nonetheless. I guess I was living off a memory that belonged to my aunt. That baby boy, that little girl, and her dog, they’ve all left an imprint on my soul that won’t go away. They are most definitely one of my unanswered prayers.”
A few silent minutes passed as what she’d told me sank in. I was waiting for the elderly nun to continue when I heard soft snores and realized she’d fallen asleep. I turned to Sister Mary Katherine.
“Sister, can I come back after she wakes up?”
“Of course, Guinevere. May I ask why?” she asked as we walked arm-in-arm to the door of Sister Agnes’s room.
I stopped and looked into her lined and intelligent face.
“Because I’m not sure, but I think you might be able to add Ruthie and Razor’s picture to Sister Agnes’s answered prayers drawer.”