EDIMGIAFAD
As I begin my ‘new’ life in Boca Raton, I’m constantly thinking back to the ‘old’ life I had in Georgia. Atlanta was my secondary home, but the majority of my time alive has been spent in Warner Robins. As boring as that place sounds, it is where I grew up and almost all of my fondest memories are located within its setting. But the place is boring, there’s no getting around it. Their unofficial town motto is EDIMGIAFAD, pronounced Eh-Dim-Ghee-Ah-Fad This seemingly nonsense word stands for Every Day in Middle Georgia is Air Force Appreciation Day. Every day? My family was not part of the Air Force community. Only a few distant relatives even worked on base. So my experience of Warner Robins was odd. The rare times I got to go on base were for special events like cosmic bowling birthday parties and Sacred Heart Middle School Graduation Ceremonies; I was valedictorian of my class of ten students. Yet this slogan has had an odd influence on me. So much so that I’ve decided to base my entire master’s thesis around the idea of EDIMGIAFAD and the people who inhabit Warner Robins Georgia.
Although she didn’t live in Warner Robins, my grandma Ruby was a huge part of my life and I’ve decided to feature her as a recurring character throughout my stories. As you can see in the picture above, she was a vibrant personality. She was a real Southern woman, if those can be said to exist anymore. She was always in her garden, sweating and sometimes cursing. She cooked us fried chicken, collard greens (which I never liked), and, a family favorite, yellow rice. Even though it’s been two years since she died, she still has this tremendous hold on me and I feel the only way to really honor her is to try to put her down in writing. And although my portrayal of her is fictional, it is largely based on how she really was.
Anyways, I could ramble about my grandma all day, but what I want to share on this first post is something new—part of a story I’m working on for not only a graduate workshop, but, hopefully, as part of my master’s thesis. This excerpt is from a 15+ page, unfinished story. I say 15+ because that is the requirement for the workshop. The story is called Throw Down Your Heart and it it based around the life of a strange eleven-year-old boy, Curtis, who is being raised by his Grandma Ruby. This bit that I’m sharing is a flashback to when Curtis is just a baby and Grandma Ruby is an activist in the booming town of Warner Robins. Again, the events are fictional, but the character is based off of my own Grandma Ruby as is the setting of her trailer which was north of Warner Robins in Byron. This is unpolished work and obviously needs editing, but I’m enjoying what I have so far:
Ten years earlier, when Curtis was just a small, red, wriggling, screaming thing, Grandma Ruby organized a petition to fight the expansion of highway 41 which threatened the well-being of the row of forty-year-old crape myrtles that sat on the back edge of her property.
A man from Atlanta had knocked on her trailer door one June morning and Ruby answers it with a wet, naked, Curtis propped on her hip.
The man was young and beginning to sweat through his tailored suit. He immediately started speaking, “Good morning, ma’am.” his supervisor had told him to call the women ‘ma’am’ and the men ‘sir,’ especially the older ones because they respected manners. By the time he finished those three words, Ruby knew he was a little shit. “I’m here representing the Georgia Department of Transportation…”
“If you’re here about that goddamn expired license, I already told the police…”
“No ma’am,” the young man raised his voice and a bead of sweat dripped from his nose, “I’m here to explain the highway 41 expansion project to you. You have heard about the project, haven’t you, ma’am?”
“No,” Ruby said. Baby Curtis just stared at the young man who noticed that something appeared to be wrong with the baby’s eyes—one looked like it was a good quarter inch out of line with the other,but then it could have been the way the old woman was jiggling the baby on her hip. He shook it off.
“Well, ma’am, if you’d invite me into your lovely home, I could explain it to you. It’s a bit complicated.”
“Fine, but I ain’t got no sweet tea,” which was a lie, “you’ll have to take plain tap water, no ice cubes either,” another lie.
Ruby backed away from the door and let the young man into her home which began with the dining room and kitchen.
Ruby bounced the still-naked Curtis on her knees as the young man explained how Warner Robins, “otherwise known as The International City,” was growing rapidly due to the steady influx of people coming to work at the Robins Air Force Base, young people, couples, who liked to have babies. He gestured at Curtis whenever he mentioned babies. And he talked about how more people and more babies meant more cars and more minivans and more SUVs. And how more cars and minivans and SUVs meant more roads were necessary, more lanes, wider lanes for wider cars. And highway 41, even though it was nowhere near the Air Force Base, was one such road that the Georgia Department of Transportation had deemed it absolutely necessary to expand the lanes by two feet on each side. Because, even though highway 41 was nowhere near the Air Force Base, the area was quickly filling up with subdivisions full of identical pinkish brick houses with no backyards so all the new people and babies would have somewhere to sleep at night. “The suburbs,” he called it.
“And?” Ruby said when the young man stopped to catch his breath. Ruby never got him that glass of warm tap water and his esophagus felt as if it were coated in half-dried glue.
“And? Oh, and this means that the four foot expansion of the road will require some concession on your part, of course, the Department of Transportation is willing to give you monetary compensation for your troubles.”
Ruby understood money and she understood trouble.
“What kind of trouble are you talking about?’ She asked, knowing that the little shit was up to no good.
“Well, ma’am, if we could take a stroll in your backyard I could show you what I’m talking about.”
“Alright, but let me put a Pamper on the baby so he don’t pee on me.”
Ruby and a freshly diapered Curtis led the young man through the sliding glass backdoor, onto the screened backporch that Uncle E.L. had built, down three rotting wood stairs, and onto a square of concrete that served as the only reminder of human existence in Ruby’s garden.
