We believe in Orange Juice. We have many beliefs, and orange juice is one of them. And plane crashes. On the morning of the day that Uncle Willie died, he came back from his car to the kitchen three times.
The first was to tell his wife that he loved her.
The second was because he had thought he forgot something.
The third was to say that orange juice was so good for us, and we should have a glass every morning with breakfast.
So now, because this was his parting advice before flying a small commercial plane into another small commercial plane on takeoff and landing, respectively, we believe in Orange Juice without questions or doubts. Because Uncle Willie was a man of God.
We believe in shadows that can run on sidewalks. After Oma Treu died, her daughter Lene, my Oma, carried a bag of groceries to the house and thought she heard the sound of her mother’s particular footsteps, the timing of the gait between her legs. Lene turned and saw nothing but a shadow.
Lene was confused, at first, because she thought it was her own shadow, but then she realized her hair was not up like that. She was not wearing a dress. She turned and walked to the house, still hearing Oma Treu behind her.
Lene was setting the groceries on the kitchen counter while she stared out the window and saw that same shadow, her mother’s shadow, run through the front gate and up to the door. Lene spilled her groceries all on the linoleum floor and ran to meet her mother. But Oma Treu was gone.
But we all believe she was there.
We believe in spilled groceries. Oma Treu herself had spilled groceries half of a century before she caused her daughter’s to fall. When Oma Treu was not an Oma at all, just a mother of five young children in a German Settlement in the Ukraine, she knew something. She was putting away her own groceries but then she knew something so quickly that she hadn’t known the very second before.
She started to shake and cry and said, Frederick, something has happened. My God. We must go now. She said this all as she dropped the cans and bread off the table onto her own floor. Though it was made of wood. And he believed her and they went in their motorcar but before they got to any place, an officer pulled them over and told her of her brother’s death. Buried under sand and rocks at the quarry. How could you know it? The officer asked. She only raised her hands and screamed and wept.
But we believe she did know it.
We still believe in plane crashes. Decades after Uncle Willie told us to drink orange juice, his own son became a pilot. Not knowing the son’s beliefs, it is hard to say what he did or did not question. He flew. Just weeks after he outlived his father. He flew in a thunderstorm and the plane, faith fulfilled, crashed into a mountain.
At the son’s funeral, his wife spoke about just one belief inside the church his father helped build. The son, like his father, believed in God.
Sometimes, I do not feel so sure about God, but I believe in Orange Juice.
Mary Thorson lives and writes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her short story, “Book of Ruth,” was included in Best American Mystery & Suspense ‘24, edited by Steph Cha and S.A. Cosby. Her short story, “Casadastraphobia,” was included in Best American Mystery & Suspense, ‘25, edited by Steph Cha and Don Winslow. Her work has been nominated for Best American Short Stories, a Derringer, and a Pushcart Prize. She hangs out with her two feisty daughters, the best husband, and a dog named Pam when she isn’t teaching high school English, reading, or writing ghost stories. She is represented by Lori Galvin at Aevitas Creative Management. Her debut short story collection A Woman’s Guide to True Crime is out with Rock and a Hard Place Press. She is currently working on a novel. Find her on Instagram @mfranzen88