Page 18 - The Geography of Women

4 Jack Fritscher

see, Mizz Lulabelle became the new-painted Missus part of
MR & MRS HENRY APPLE on the mail box which was
on my Daddy’s rural route, him bein about the best U.S.
letter carrier up aroun Jacksonville in southern Illinois
where the Ferris Wheel was invented, close by Canter-
berry where we all lived.
Anyway, Jessarose left off beatin the poor dog. It was
a black-an-white excuse for a animal an ran off with its
tail between its legs an hid in the ivy next to the pump
house. Jessarose was two years older n me as I said that
summer, an Mizz Lulabelle was seven years older, so I
kinda studied both a them like mysteries to see which one
might be what, how they might be the same or be differ-
ent, an which one I might grow to be like. To me they
both a them was women, grown women, an I was curious
about women because that day a the county fair when my
Daddy came home with his accordion an his blue ribbon
to find me born, he found my angel mama dead as life,
an the midwife shakin her head, an my Grandma Mary
Kate O’Hara bawlin, wearin her valuable white cap from
when she was a Red Cross volunteer nurse durin the First
World War.
Somehow sometimes I think I actually remember all
their yellin an whinin that first day when I made my big
entrance durin the high-noon hour a the first day a sum-
mer, the longest day a the year. Maybe I just remember my
Grandma told me over an over she vowed never to let my
Daddy, her own son, ever forget he was gone away when he
was needed, like his bein there woulda made some life-or-
death difference, but all those women back then wouldn’ta
let him within ten miles of a birthin. Anyway, outa spite,
that’s why my Grandma named me Laydia Spain, outa
spite, just as a constant reminder to Big Jim, who was her

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