Saturday was even harder than I’d imagined it would be. The procession to church was made unbearable by a dry, crackling heat. As the mid-July sun rose above us, the day was too bright, scalding at eleven AM, in flagrant contrast to the darkness I felt inside. Isn’t it supposed to be rainy and miserable for funerals? The sun felt like a slap in the face, a reminder of the heat wave that had tortured the county in my absence.
As sweat dripped down my back under my stiff black dress, my discomfort felt like a deserved punishment. And there was no hope of influencing the weather until we reconnected to the ice floe. I walked silently beside Mary, whose dark hair hung loose in a curtain across her face, braids forgone that morning in carelessness or grief. Our parents walked on ahead, oblivious to the tension still sparking between us, as the procession picked up congregants in Magda’s last parade, until almost the whole town was making their way up to the church on the hill to pay their respects to Mrs. Magda Watry-Dornen. Even though Magda had dropped Grandpa Earl’s Dornen surname when he passed, it seemed right to include it on the printed programs when she was about to lay beside him in the family plot for eternity.
As my father and his brothers and a King cousin shouldered Magda’s casket to the front of the church and Father Kevin welcomed us and started the funeral mass, the facts sat starkly in front of me: Magda’s cedar chest required a full guardian, and my half-bound heart wasn’t going to cut it. With Magda’s heart released from the cedar chest, we risked losing our magic for good.
I barely registered the first minutes of mass as I sat with my head hung low between Mary and our father in our regular front pew, mere feet from the plain red cedar casket Magda had requested. After Grandpa Earl’s funeral, Magda had written specific instructions for her own, down to the hymns. It was infuriating—she had left us written instructions for even the luncheon menu, but there were no instructions for the binding spell. She had been planning to do that herself at the equinox, but she had simply run out of time. Magda Watry had been caught by surprise. By me and my reckless insubordination, I remembered.
I paid more attention when Mary stood to give the readings. Despite the grief she had been giving me since my homecoming, she looked surprisingly calm and read in an unwavering voice. Magda had strangely chosen 1 Corinthians for the second reading, typically saved for weddings. As Mary finished the last lines, “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth,” it was all I could do to make myself mumble the appropriate “Thanks be to God” in response. Magda had a strange relationship to the truth, I thought.
I was lost in my own thoughts, plagued by guilt, as Mary slid back into the pew next to me and the cantor started the Celtic Alleluia. Was I allowed to grieve if it was my fault Magda was gone? My guilt was compounded by the confirmation from my mother: Magda was not who I’d thought she was. How was I supposed to grieve for my dead grandmother when I didn’t really know her? Then I felt terrible for having such ill thoughts about my formerly untouchable grandmother, my hero who could no longer defend herself—especially if I was to blame.
Mary, intuitive even in her anger, picked up my hand and gave a hard squeeze. For the millionth time in my life, I felt like Mary knew more than she possibly could have. I should’ve stopped doubting her, but old habits die hard. It was hard to see her as anything other than the dark-haired little girl who knew all the squirrels and birds and rabbits in the area by name. I was relieved at the temporary truce, moved by Mary’s sudden kindness, and hopeful that we would be able to move past it all.
Father Kevin had started his homily and was enumerating all of Sister Magda’s good deeds and her lifelong service to the Church. I nearly burst out laughing at his description of Magda as a “defender of the faith,” and Mary dug her nails into my palm to keep me from giggling. Mom leaned across Dad and fixed me and Mary with a look—This family has a reputation to uphold—and we both straightened up.
I was shocked to find myself racked by ugly, uncontrollable sobs when Father Kevin gave the final blessing, the organ started to play the Salve Regina, and Magda’s casket was borne out of the church on choruses of “Hail, Holy Queen.” As I stood with my family to follow the pallbearers, I couldn’t contain myself. I tried to stop, acutely aware of the mess I must’ve looked in front of the town and many folks who hadn’t seen me since that awful Solstice night, but I couldn’t. I was torn between the immense guilt and suspicion I felt toward Magda and the overwhelming knowledge that they were taking her away to put her in the ground and I would never see her again on this earth.
John found me off to the side in the churchyard after mass. Without a word, he kissed my cheek and hooked his arm through mine, and I let him.
“Thank you,” John said to the well-wishers for both of us, shaking hands like he was already a spokesman for the Watry family, like he had already reclaimed his prize. It felt strangely like any Sunday in Friedrich, except we were all baking like ants in the sun in our black.
As the crowd began to make their way over to the VFW and the family to the cemetery behind the church, my father approached us.
“John,” he growled. My father extended a hand, and John noticeably winced as they shook hands. I wondered exactly how much my father had seen the other day.
Shriveling under my father’s gaze, John dropped my arm. I spotted Annie out of the corner of my eye and waved her over.
“We’ll see you there,” I lied, exhaling gratefully as Dad gripped John’s shoulder and steered him toward the cemetery.
“How is John not madder at you?” Annie asked, watching them go walk away.
“There is something wrong with that boy,” I said, the words slipping out before I could censor myself. It was the closest I had ever come to telling Annie the truth about me and John.
I motioned for her to follow with a jerk of my head and drifted toward the side of the white clapboard church, out of view of prying eyes, and collapsed in the grass. I tried to speak, to explain myself, but only a raspy squeak came out before the tears streamed down my face again.
“Okay,” Annie said. “Okay, then.” She slid down the side of the building to sit beside me, and I leaned my head into her shoulder. “Do you want to go out to the cemetery?”
“I can’t,” I squeaked, the tears coming faster. I can’t watch them put her in the ground, I thought. Annie wrapped her arms around me, and she didn’t say anything else for a long time. She didn’t have to. We sat on the side of the church like that until everyone had made their way to the VFW.
The luncheon was in full swing by the time we made our appearance, skulking in the service entrance. I felt like I had been stamped with the scarlet letter, a pariah, but I picked up my face the best I could, straightened my back, and with the help of a nip of rum from Annie’s purse, started working the room to say hello to all of Magda’s mourners like the good Watry-Ridder girl I was. We had a reputation to uphold.