Today's Reading
GiGi was like that, a Southern granny trapped in a Great Lakes grandma, warm and cold all at the same time, dispensing tough advice and homespun wisdom as easily as she did certain books to folks she believed needed to read them.
A flame red maple leaf scooted by in the wind, and I grabbed it on the fly.
It looked just like a leaf I picked up as a girl with GiGi not long after I found that acorn with her. I can still remember placing that leaf in the novel I was reading—a novel by GiGi's favorite author, S. I. Quaeris—as a bookmark.
I could even remember what GiGi was wearing that day—a gold turtleneck that matched the lake in the autumn sun and an L.L.Bean fleece jacket that was as white as her hair—just as clearly as I can recall the passage I was reading from her favorite author.
Family is often defined by many of us as some ethereal power, God if you will, a sort of otherworldly super-being that has control over our lives no matter how much time has passed. But which God is it? The one who loves us unconditionally and protects us from the world, or the one who seeks revenge?
I'd used that quote in many a lit class term paper about family.
I placed the leaf in the book I was currently reading, wondering if I would remember this particular moment and passage as well.
"Is it any good?"
Gin and Juice nodded at my book and flopped down beside me under the Tappan Oak, dappled sunlight making them look like the old paint-by-numbers portraits GiGi favored in her cottage.
"It certainly fails the Bechdel Test," I said. "How did Marcus Flare become the world's preeminent romance novelist? Listen to this." I grabbed the novel and read out loud. "'She needed me. Every woman needed a man. Otherwise, her puzzle would never be complete. I grabbed her, hard, kissed her even harder. Women were all emotion after all, raw, feral, but they kept it buried most of the time. Men were the only ones with the power—and equipment—to uncover it.'"
They threw their heads back and screamed in disgust.
"It's true, Angels!"
Niko Miller, a fraternity guy from class, stopped in front of us.
"And I'm the best plumber in town."
We all audibly gagged.
"Haven't you learned anything in class, Niko?" I asked.
"Yeah! I've learned this Flare dude is a great writer."
I shook my head, and he jogged off.
The four of us were in a class entitled Women in Literature and Popular Culture, and we had been pleasantly surprised (read: shocked) by the number of men taking it.
Many of our classmates referred to me, Jen and Lucy as "Charlie's Angels" because we were inseparable. Many, we also realized, called us that because we were two fair-haired white girls and Lucy was Asian American.
It was all vaguely racist and misogynist. Michigan was a highly diverse university, filled with students of every race, nationality, ethnicity and sexuality—but boys, especially frat boys, will always be boys.
Not to mention my friends were anything but angels. I called them "Gin and Juice," nicknames born after the pair partook of a few too many cocktails at the local bar the first week of freshman year and then got busted using misspelled fake IDs.
"Has anything changed in life or literature?" Juice asked. "I mean really changed? Look at what's popular today in fiction. Look at how guys still talk to women."
She shed her Michigan sweatshirt and sat on it like a blanket.
"But, despite that, Charlie's Angels would still pass the Bechdel Test even though you wouldn't think it would, right?" Gin asked.
I considered her question and nodded.
"Three women. Kicking Ass. Taking names. Having all the dialogue. Yep."
...
