Ballad for Jimmy Ray
by
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I’m a full-grown woman when my brother agrees to share the stars with me in the middle of the wide but treacherous Susquehanna. I’ve wanted to go ever since he told me how being alone on the water under the stars made him feel insignificant yet mighty. I wanted a piece of that awe, too. One peaceful moment we are marveling at the stars smearing the Milky Way, the next the world turns upside down. All is black, my chest seared from inside out as gulps of water fill it. The top of my head bounces against the inverted keel, and–panic stealing strength--I can’t kick out from under. I’m sure I hear “Becky!” Maybe it’s just my wanting to hear a rescuer, just as I hope the rest of my life will scroll before me before I go under the last time. When your plane is in free fall, you may have time to review the life you’ve been privileged to live. That’s not the case when you’re drowning. Only the smell of fear grips your heart. Jimmy Ray and I had rolled with the canoe, over the gunwale portside, as we tried to grab Sheba. Between us, midcraft, she’d suddenly jumped up, put her forepaws on the side, and crouched to heave her stiff hind legs–all in one motion. In an instant we knew she’d not survive a swim with those dysplastic hips, and we both dived to retrieve her. Water is the only element in my universe this moment. I’d taken a gasp of air the moment I felt us capsize and just before my head went under, but already water has infused my being. From somewhere comes the strength to give a mighty kick. I duck free of the ribbed prison where I’d been captive for half a lifetime. I gasp for air, sputtering, arms and legs flailing. Though my chest is still exploding, I calm a bit as dry air reaches my lungs. Treading water, I grab something and haul myself to the canoe’s side. While clinging to the keel, my brother splashing toward me, a thought strikes: I’ve been saved and I didn’t even pray. Then another: I’ve still not confessed to Jimmy Ray. Is that why the Lord saved me, so I’d get around to telling my brother what really happened at the schoolyard twelve years ago?
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About the Book
In this fictionalized account of the author’s only sibling, born crippled and with soft bones, many fractures and illnesses cause Rebekah to become her brother’s nurse, as Mama has to work because Papa died when the children were young. Jimmy Ray disdained going to doctors and hospitals after failed surgeries to correct his deformities and never told Mama how ill he was one summer with a high fever and sore throat. Rheumatic fever left him with a heart murmur discovered years later. When he marries sickly Betty Lou and has a son, he assumes the burdens of housework and baby care. He has worked in the refrigeration room of a dairy for 25 years before it closes, causing his heart to enlarge. Freezing temperatures plus rheumatic fever contributes to severe mitral valve prolapse. Realizing his chances are slim, he consents to surgery even though his white blood count is extremely low. The siblings reminisce about their childhood, but when Jimmy goes into cardiac arrest, Becks knows she can’t tell him Mama had a stroke and died, nor what really happened in the schoolyard forty years ago. After Jimmy dies, while she is visiting his tombstone following a church service, she realizes he would have forgiven her years ago. Now she must forgive herself.
About the Author
A retired reading and learning specialist, Mary Elizabeth Burgess has authored a study skills manual, a children’s book, Victoria, and Once Upon a Time...Two, Poems and Tales of her two sons, Scott and Tom. Also numerous articles have been published in The Lutheran and educational journals. She won poetry prizes in 2009 and 2011 for “Grocer’s Picnic, 1959" and “Grand Canyon Sunrise.” Her short story, “The Flowerbed,” won the WITF contest in January, 2013.