GINNY BATES: THE SOLSTICE ARRIVES

Louie Dick, Pete Quaempts, and others drummers during a Seven Drums gathering on the Umatilla Reservation in the 1970s. Photo by Buckaroo Bob

Here's another installment of my Great American Lesbian Novel (in progress), Ginny Bates. If you are new to reading GB, go to the section in the right-hand column labeled Ginny Bates to read background and find out how to catch up.

Wednesday-Saturday, 18-21 December, 2019

For dinner, Myra baked salmon a la Ginny with wild rice, gooseberries and pine nuts. Allie made cornbread, Edwina roasted beets with whole heads of garlic, and Myra assembled a pecan pie for dessert. Though the meal was of Chris's favorites, intended to spark her appetite, she ate only a few bites of each item.

“Are you queasy?” asked Sima.

“No. Just not hungry. I think maybe it's the IV keeping the juices flowing” said Chris. “Plus, I was a skinny minnie when I was on drugs, never wanted to eat.”

“You were chunky when you got out of the hospital” said Myra.

“But that was bloat” said Chris. “The meds they gave me caused that. I lost it as I detoxed.”

“I remember” said Myra. “You wore your old peacoat until it got big on you. Refused to buy a leather jacket until you were back to what you called fighting shape.”


“I remember that leather jacket” said Sima softly. “Do you still have the fedora that went with it?”

“Yeah, in a hatbox at the house” said Chris, grinning. “Listen, I'm really missing the little ones. I know it's a school night, but could we call them after dinner and have an hour of singing?”

“I love that idea” said Edwina. As Margie cleared the table, Allie and Myra turned around the couch to face the table and dialed in to Gillam's number. Ginny kept painting but sang along. Myra noticed that Lucia's gaze never wavered from Chris, although David was more focused on Sima.

She was caught off guard as they began singing “Shenandoah”. She was next to Chris and could hear her most clearly. When Chris's voice pulsed with emotion during the lines

Oh, Shenandoah
I love your daughter
Away, I'm bound away
'Cross the wide Missouri

Myra found herself crying. Chris took her hand and they all kept on.

Margie returned to the motel with Allie and Edwina when Chris took herself to bed early. Myra decided to lie down on the couch instead of going to bed alone. She asked Ginny to wake her up when Ginny went to sleep. It was shortly before dawn when Ginny shook her, eating a biscuit stuffed with salmon.

“I finished the painting. Let's go to bed” she whispered. As Myra wrapped herself around Ginny in their bed, smelling fish and linseed oil, she thought about Mimi as she was now, that age and size, roaming this wilderness like Chris had, following a creek and surviving because she kept herself from the reach of other human beings. She began shivering, and Ginny squeezed her tight though she was already asleep.

Myra slept in with Ginny, but finally got up at 10:00, leaving Ginny with the comforter tucked around her. Edwina was alone at the table. “Margie's at the motel, working on something, and Allie went with Sima and Chris” she reported. “There's potato pancakes in the oven.”

Myra made hot chocolate to go with her potatoes and a few leftover slices of beet, topping them both with sour cream. Edwina said “She smells funny.”

“Who? Allie? Is it ketones?” said Myra, suddenly frightened.

“No, Chris. And it's not ketones, but it's something chemical like that” said Edwina. “Even with all the peppermint oil we keep rubbing on her hands and feet.”

“Bernie comes this afternoon, let's ask her about it” said Myra, her stomach clenching again.

“Are you going to move Sima in with you?” asked Edwina.

“I haven't brought it up with Ginny yet, but I'm assuming we'll offer” said Myra. “Look, could we not talk about – the elephant in the room – until I'm done eating?”

Edwina went silent. After a minute, Myra said “I don't mean to shut you up. I know you're contending with more than your share of freak-out, yours plus Allie's.”

“We're not having enough time alone, enough time doing what gives us balance” said Edwina. “I mean, we'll make it, of course, whatever it takes. But it's ragged all the time.”

“I'm worried about the kids. I feel bad about leaving Jane and Gillam alone with it” said Myra. Edwina went back to her laptop until Myra was nearly done. She looked up and said “I'm almost five years older than Allie.”

“I know.”

“I need to know you'll make sure she's okay, if I go first.” Edwina's face was nakedly vulnerable.

“I'll make sure. And I ask the same of you.”

“I promise.” After a minute, Edwina said “But, of course, nothing is ever going to be the same.”

Margie arrived for lunch, carrying a leather map case and an unstoppable grin on her face. Chris ate three bites of soup and a tiny sliver of pie. After the table was cleared, Margie scrubbed it down and dried it before going to the door of the bedroom where Ginny was still asleep and saying “Mom? Can you wake up, Mama, you're part of this.”

Ginny got dressed and went to the bathroom before shambling in to sit next to Myra. Margie said “Does one of you want to do the introduction?”

Myra said “You've done all the legwork, I think you should present it.”

Margie shifted from one foot to the other excitedly. “Okay, then. First of all, Aunt Chris, we now own this house, the meadow behind it and a strip all the way to the creek. It's in my name for the time being, but we can do whatever you want with it.”

“My god” said Chris. “You bought it?”

“Wasn't hard, actually, not that part. It's being going unrented for months at a time, too far away for families but not far enough away from the antisocial, lack of TV reception – we got it at a good price. And here's my idea: We rent it out weekly or monthly as an artist retreat. Advertise in all the fancy rags as a place to come be rustic. I mean, leave it mostly as it is, except put a deck and hot tub in the back -- “

“Or sauna” said Myra.

“And, especially, replant the yard with all native plants. Restore it to what it looked like before construction tore it to pieces here. And whatever income we get from it will go to an education fund for Jimjim and Ruby. Mama says we can start getting Jimjim some private special ed right away, something that doesn't conflict with his culture and which will really help out Tina.”

Myra jumped in “But we'll keep the house available for us, your family, as well. Like when Gillam and Jane want to take the kids out of town each month, they can come here and roam the creek and mountains. Learn wilderness the same way you did.”

Chris's eyes were spilling over. “Lucia...she'll adore it here.”

“Yes, she will” whispered Myra, reaching across the table to put her hand on Chris's.

“We wanted to give you this for Chanukah” said Ginny, now entirely awake. “But we have some papers to get signed before then, and, well, news this good shouldn't wait.”

“Yeah, the cabin's not the best part” said Margie, unzipping her map case. Chris looked astounded. Margie put on white cotton gloves and carefully unrolled a sheet of the creamy vellum she used for her most elaborate maps. “Don't touch with bare hands” she cautioned. “Except you, Aunt Chris.”

It was a riot of color and shimmering leaf, living proof that Margie was the daughter of Ginny Bates. To the left was the cabin and its meadow, but beginning at bottom center and meandering up the narrow vertical was the creek. Topography was indicated by silver inlay, the water was lapis lazuli, and woods were every shade of green and brown ink. The foothills and mountain range itself had been embossed, and the spring which began it all had a starburst of gold leaf around it.

Ginny had gotten up to stand behind Margie, thumping her on the back with incoherent pride. Buried in the foliage of the woods was an occasional glimpse of wildlife, wolf, coyote, bear, cougar, raccoon, fox. Myra searched for a sasquatch, and instead found a small black-haired girl reading a compass. She pointed to it, but Chris had already seen it.

“So here's the deal, my beloved auntie: The Nature Conservancy has joined forces with us and we've purchased over 90% of the watershed of this creek. Their lawyer Elliott swears to me we'll get it all. Environmental groups have been exerting pressure locally for years to get the Kettle Range declared an environmentally protected zone, and this is a wedge they can't pass up. Plus, he says the grinding holes make it applicable under some antiquities act. All the private landowners will be reimbursed, and they'll get to keep the roads and bridges that encroach on the creek for the time being, but they can't add or even do maintenance. Eventually it will be pristine again. Open only to people on foot, and all the wildlife protected. And as part of the transfer, it's being renamed.”

Margie reached to pull away a small piece of parchment Myra hadn't noticed because it was decorated in the same color as the creek itself. Underneath lay the new name, also in gold leaf: Kash-Kash Creek.

Chris began crying and couldn't seem to stop. Margie knelt beside her, deftly avoiding the IV line, and Chris soaked her shoulder under Myra was sure Margie's thighs must be burning from the strain of kneeling. Finally Chris sat up and asked for a handkerchief. Margie stood, stretched a few seconds, and said “I'll frame and mount this for you, of course.”

“My people thank you” said Chris hoarsely. “Thirty-thousand years of us.”

“Best thing you've ever done, and that's saying something” Allie said to Margie. Margie was suddenly embarrassed, and turned to go into the kitchen. “Mama, you haven't eaten, how about I warm you up some soup?”

“Come back in here and take your glory” said Ginny. “I can feed myself.” She made a plate while the rest pored over the splendid map, asking Margie and Chris questions. She ate standing, leaned against the counter. Myra joined her after a while, whispering “I can hardly believe she's ours.”

“Oh, she's ours all right” said Ginny. “She's all of ours.”

Finally the map was put away for safekeeping, and Chris received another injection of morphine. She was about to stand when she said “You're not painting, Ginny – did you finish?”

“Yep” said Ginny, wiping her mouth. “I'll show you, but it will not live up to Margie's accomplishment and I can't tell you how proud I am of that.” She went to the easel and turned it around.

A small green plant had been uprooted from wet earth, then dropped back on its former holdfast. It filled the small canvas with leaves just beginning to wilt, a few drops of dew on the stems, and a massive tangle of pale root hairs whose yearning for the soil felt almost palpable. Tiny nodes amid the roots flashed metastatic silver. Myra thought about all the hours Ginny spent weeding, and realized killing any plant – especially the slow death of uprooting – must cause her pain.

Sima sucked in her breath and gripped Chris's hand tightly. Chris grinned at Ginny and said “They'd have burned you at the stake in the past.”

Ginny laughed delightedly. “You and me both, Kash-Kash.”

Chris went for her nap, Sima joining her. Myra suggested Allie and Edwina go to their motel for some alone time, and Edwina looked at her gratefully. After they left, she started a pot roast and a sponge for rosemary bread. Ginny and Margie pulled the map back out for Margie to discuss creative minutiae with her mother. Myra eavesdropped while cooking and intermittently sitting at her laptop to try writing.

Bernie came again at 4:00. When Myra woke Chris, she sat up complaining of nausea and a minute later began retching. Bernie tended to her, administering Compazine and cleaning the bucket. Chris managed to stop after one bout. She asked to go sit by the stove for warmth.

Bernie gave her the results of her last blood draw – there was a decided electrolyte imbalance, which Bernie wanted to address with a change in the IV fluid. She had new bottles, bags, and fluid to inject in her carry-all. When she examined Chris, she lingered over listening to Chris's chest and palpating her abdomen.

“Have you been short of breath?” she asked.

“If I do anything, yeah” said Chris. “And it hurts where you're pressing, there.”

“You've got ascites” said Bernie. “Fluid in your abdomen, leaking from your liver and intestine. It's just beginning, but it can cause loss of appetite and marked shortness of breath. I can't drain it myself, you'll need go to the doctor's office or a hospital for that.”

“Should I have it drained, then?” asked Chris, her face going pale.

“Well, if it continues to progress, you may need to. And if you want the fluid tested, but we pretty much know the cause, so testing is not essential” said Bernie. “We treat it with bed rest, low sodium, and diuretics.”

“I'm already not adding salt to anything I cook” said Myra.

Chris looked relieved at the chance to avoid going in for treatment. “If I take the diuretics, that'll drain the fluid?”

“Usually. But we'll have to monitor it closely, because you're already losing essential electrolytes. Plus albumin is secreted with ascitic fluid. We're going to need to replace your albumin, and keep a tight watch on your blood pressure. And – I think it may be time for a catheter” said Bernie.

“That or diapers, eh?” said Chris resignedly.

“I can insert a catheter” said Bernie. “It's unpleasant.”

“Which is medicalese for hurts like a motherfucker” said Chris. She began standing, saying “Let's get it over with.”

Bernie looked at Ginny. “You got trained in catheter care, yes?”

“Yes” said Ginny.

“The last thing she needs is an infection” said Bernie, pulling plastic-wrapped packages from her carry-all.

Myra and Margie stayed in the living room. After ten minutes, Bernie emerged and went to her car, returning with a telescoping rod that could be affixed to either a walker or a wheelchair. It would hold an IV bag and, at the lower level, a catheter reservoir. Myra signed the forms for this and Bernie installed it on Chris's walker when Chris returned to the living room.

Sima stood with Ginny for the detailed instructions Bernie gave them about new IV fluids and supplements. Allie and Edwina returned during this, and Allie fingered the catheter bag, already holding clear yellow urine. Bernie said she'd return after lunch the following day, but asked to be called first thing in the morning with an update.

Later, Myra would wonder if finding out she would be immortal, through the creek and its protection, gave Chris final permission to let go. From that afternoon on, she vomited every time she ate or drank, she had increasing difficulty staying warm, and she never was able to wean off the catheter.

The following morning, Myra asked to go with Sima to the creek. “It'll give us a chance to talk” she said.

They got Chris settled with her robe, her thermos, and the string-wrapped rock within reach. It was a dry day, clear with piercing cold. Back in the jeep, Myra turned the heat on full blast and said “So, are you not in love with Susan any more?”

“No. I still love her. But – it's a different kind of love. And – I don't know how to explain it, Myra. I want her, I do. And I don't blame her for the choices I made, she didn't persuade me, it was all my own doing. Still – I think love means not assisting someone in self-destruction.” Sima paused. “I ran across this quote by Margaret Anderson, where she says in romantic love, you want the other person, but in real love, you want the other person's good. I read that the day before I got your letter. It was like a bomb went off.”

Myra looked away from the misery on Sima's face. “Well -- “ She saw red flashing in her peripheral vision and focused on the bobbing scarf in the tree ahead of them. “She's signaling, something must be wrong.”

She revved the jeep ahead and left it running as they ran to the boulder. Chris gasped “It's too cold, I feel like it's crushing me.” They all but carried her to the car, Sima dashing back for the robe and thermos. At the house, everyone crowded around, making tea and building up the fire. Chris sat on the couch between Sima and Margie, and her breathing calmed slowly. After half a cup of tea, she vomited and Ginny called Bernie.

After a lunch where Chris refused to try eating, Myra called Carly and Gillam. Gillam said Thad had agreed to come stay with Jane, and Eric was going to remain in town as well. “Me and Jane don't agree about bringing the kids, so for now, at least, they're staying here.”

“We'll rent you a room at the motel. Are you coming tonight?” Myra asked.

“I don't know. We'll call you either way.”

She called Ricky and Tina as well, leaving them messages and urging them to visit. When she hung up, Sima called Leroy.

“She could use some praying” Sima said. “Yes, will you please tell Mary Angeline? Thank you so much.”

Bernie came at 2:00 and made some adjustments in the treatment but said the diuresis was working. “This is how it happens” she said to them gently. Chris's short term memory was evaporating before their very eyes, and she wanted to simply be still, with someone touching her.

Tina called after work to say they'd be out on Friday evening, as they had planned. Ginny, who had answered the phone, said “There'll be no poker, she's not up for that any more.”

“Well, I have a babysitter for Friday” said Tina. “Give her our love.”

Gillam called ten minutes later to say he and Carly were going to drive out that night because the weather was good. “Should we go straight to the motel or what?”

“Yeah, Allie says to wake her and Edwina up, they're in the room next to yours. They have cell service there, so if you run into trouble, you can call them directly.”

“See you in the morning, then, Mama.”

Sima was up several times during the night, helping Chris when she vomited or simply keeping her company as she awoke and needed to talk. Her conversation was increasingly erratic. Margie slept on the futon and got up with Sima.

Carly and Gillam came with Allie and Edwina at 7:00 a.m, everyone looking drawn and tired. The boys sat on either side of Chris on the couch while the rest of them made breakfast. Chris asked to look at the map again, and she told stories about various locations she'd roamed through as a child, pointing them out with a trembling finger.

Bernie came at 9:00 and again at 4:00. There was no question of trying to go to the creek. Chris would sleep for an hour at a time, then rouse herself and want to be on the couch with company. Sima gave her a sponge bath and Chris tried to move her bowels but could not. “Guess you can't say I'm full of shit any more” she quipped.

Bernie was still there when Ginny pulled out the shabbos candle holder and inserted two white tapers. Gillam stood to open wine, and Myra put challah on the bread board. Chris was helped to her wheelchair, and Margie set the computer monitor facing her. Lucia's face filled the screen, saying “We gonna pull in light now, okay?”

Lucia then crawled into Jane's lap and moved her small hands in unison with Jane's as they began the prayers. Beyond them, Mimi and Leah were following suit, sitting with Thad and Eric. Gillam's eyes were closed repeating the words, tears sheeting down his cheeks. Sima dipped her thumb into wine and rubbed it lightly against Chris's lips. When they all sang “Shabbot Shalom”, Chris's voice picked up, the loudest they'd heard her all day. But during a meal she did not eat, she went to sleep in her chair. Gillam and Carly carried her to her bed, and Sima lay down with her while the rest of them tried to finish what was on their plates.

Ricky and Tina arrived late and were shown in to Chris's bedroom. She wasn't able to wake up, however. Myra made plates for them, Ricky looking furious, Tina looking guilty. During dessert, Margie told them about the land purchase and Kash-Kash Creek. Tina cried then, and Ricky went outside to smoke a cigarette. They left not long after, saying they'd return the next day “When Aunt Chris is more awake.”

The rest of them sat up late, keeping the fire going and telling stories. Margie again elected to stay the night on the futon, borrowing a clean shirt from Ginny, while the rest drove to the motel for a few hours sleep.

The next morning, Leroy knocked at the door, accompanied by his dog and a tiny elderly woman introduced by Sima as Mary Angeline. Leroy asked permission to use wood to build a fire outside. Since Margie had purchased enough cords to last through the spring, Myra said use as much as they wanted. Two other pick-ups arrived as they talked, and eventually there were 11 men constructing two bonfires on the southeast corner of the house, forming a triangle with Chris's bedroom. Snow was cleared from the ground between the fires, skins laid down, and drums were set up in an arc.

Chris woke up briefly when the drumming began. She smiled and said “Mary Angeline?” The old woman came in and kissed Chris on the forehead. She whispered to Chris and Chris grinned her old familiar grin before drifting away again.

Sima lay on the bed facing Chris, holding her with both arms. Myra slipped off her shoes and lay down behind Chris. She got up briefly to eat a little lunch, and Allie took her place, but gave it back to Myra when Myra returned. Chris slept on, her breathing in time to the drumming outside.

Tina and Ricky returned, along with several of Chris's cousins and other people in the community. The house filled with people and food. Ginny kept watch on Chris's IV. Whenever the pain returned, Chris would begin moaning and Ginny would instantly add a dose to her line. She also changed the catheter bag.

In the late afternoon, Myra felt a tiny shift in Chris's body. Sima felt it too, and looked into Chris's face. Chris didn't open her eyes, but she breathed out "Sima".

"I'm here. I love you. I'll never leave you" said Sima.

There was nothing more from Chris. Her breathing was slow, now moving at half the rate of the drumming. It was not nearly deep enough for Myra. By nightfall, Chris did not seem to be having the jags of pain she'd been having a few hours ago, and Myra resented even this loss. Allie and Edwina had placed cushions on the floor and were sitting leaned against the closet door of the small bedroom. Carly and Gillam were next to them, and Margie sat at the bottom of the bed, one hand under the covers and on Chris's foot. But mostly, Myra thought, it was Sima who tethered Chris still among them. A tether the drummers were working against.

A little before midnight, Myra had to get up to pee. When she stood, Margie did also. She stepped into Myra's arms for a long hug. Myra marveled at how tall and solid her daughter was, a woman with the vibrant health that Ginny had had when they first began dating. The contrast with Chris was cruel. As Myra left for the bathroom, Margie lay down in the bed behind Chris where Myra had been.

After peeing, Myra went to sit at the table for a few minutes. Mostly it was women in the house, and they had begun singing. They were not all singing the same words or tune, but the melody wove in and out among the various singers, creating a whole. Two of the women were dozing. Myra wanted something more than praying, which looked to her like waiting. She walked out to the fires.

The wood had a smell she couldn't identify. There was a wind which blew smoke this way and that. Anywhere she stood around the blaze would, at times, drench her in smoke; she had to simply close her eyes and not breathe when the hot silver cloud enveloped her. These men, some of whom she had known since they were all boys, talked under the drumming to each other about trucks, hunting, some kind of local sports team, and, every few minutes, a story about Chris or her sister. Not big stories, just small pieces of family lore.

She could see the lit window to Chris's bedroom, a flicker from the candle on the windowsill. The sweater she was wearing wasn't enough. A low-level shiver began next to her bones, and she found herself welcoming it. The young men who were not drumming were drinking beer from a nearby cooler or, a few of them, pulling from a pint of something. All of them were big in the shoulder, thick through the middle, taller than her, and with hair painfully like Chris's once had been. Ricky went to the cooler to get another bottle of beer and brought back two, offering one to Myra.

She had not had any alcohol in at least 30 years. She looked at the brown glint of the bottle in the firelight for a minute, then took it from Ricky's hand and said "Thanks." She pulled her sweater sleeve over her hand to give her traction for the twist-off lid. The liquid was cold and alien in her mouth. But once it reached her stomach, something at the base of her spine uncoiled a little. She drank it down rapidly, then turned her back to the fire to try to warm that side of her.

After a few minutes, she was handed another beer. She faced the fire again and drank that one just as fast. Her brain seemed empty, except for a blunted longing that she refused to acknowledge. There was no point in praying, or talking. Nobody was going to help. Nobody was going to do anything for Chris.

A rectangle of light appeared at the corner of the house, meaning someone had come outside. Gillam appeared from the dark, making his way toward her. He put his arm over her shoulders and said “You're shaking.”

“Cold out here” she said. He peered into her face and said, “Are you drunk?”


“Not enough.” She let him pull her back to the house. She went to the bathroom to scrub her mouth and teeth before returning to Chris's bed. Margie stood to give her back her spot at Chris's back.

She smelled strongly of smoke and fire. She couldn't tell if Chris registered it consciously, but she knew it must be going into her brain somewhere, hitching a ride on her olfactory nerve, and Myra clung to that thread of communication.

Despite the beer and an exhaustion that defied boundaries, she was not sleepy. The song from the living room never stopped. She counted every second, like drips of water. Occasionally the obscene injustice of Chris running out of time would try to slither out of its barricade in her mind, and she would shove it back. There was no room for her grief or anger right now -- any distraction from the sensation of lying pressed against Chris was an evil she would not tolerate.

She felt it when Chris died. There was no movement from her, no sound, but something simply blinked out. She held her breath to listen, but then Sima cried "No, no" and the whole room woke up. A high, shrill keening began in the living room next door. Sima started sobbing, pulling Chris to her, away from Myra. Ginny quickly slid into bed behind Sima, holding her. Now, thought Myra. Now you can feel it. But she could not let it loose yet.

She got up from the bed, having to choose her body mechanics carefully. It wasn't the alcohol any more. She just couldn't quite remember how to move without an effort. She looked at her children, at Ginny, at Allie and Edwina, crying and rocking with each other. She walked out into the living room, where everyone seemed to know. Several of the women were praying, and it was more than one kind of prayer. She walked to the bedroom at the back of the house and lay down in the hostile cold. No one had turned on the space heater in here. The pillow was icy against her face.

After a few minutes, Allie came looking for her. She lay down between Myra and the wall and pulled her tight. "It's just you and me now, buddy" she whispered. Allie began crying again, but Myra could not. This was too much to take a chance with. She didn't think she could come back from this grief. She traced Allie's fingers with her own, turning her head and whispering "I love you for all time, Allie Billups."

After a few more minutes, Gillam arrived. He bent and turned on the space heater, then lay down in the small bed on the other side of Myra. They filled it from edge to edge, and she was between two people much taller than her, like a sandwich middle. It was enough to anchor her. She held onto her son and felt a tendril of warmth come into the room. In another minute, she had fallen asleep.


© 2009 Maggie Jochild.