by Daniel Black
“We get so many. No next of kin, no identification, no permanent address. It’s as if they never lived.”
With each stroke of the backhoe, Elisha wondered whose resting place was being prepared and if anyone would ever look for them. What a life, he thought, to die and no one ever notice.
“Did she live somewhere in the city of Atlanta?”
“Yes, sir.”
Reverend Proctor smiled sympathetically. “Then she’s here.”
Together they glanced the open field, where mounds of fresh dirt stood ready to receive the poor. Neither spoke for a while. Then, Elisha asked, “Do you see the bodies before you bury them?”
“Oh no, son. They’re in a sealed box. You wouldn’t want to see them anyway. Some are kept three or four months while the city looks for relatives. Once they’ve exhausted the search, they send the bodies here and we do the rest. They’re in no condition for viewing.”
Elisha nodded. “Is there a service of any kind?”
Reverend Proctor shook his head. “No, not officially. I always say something over them, though. At the graveside, I mean. Of course I don’t know names or life stories, but I try to imagine enough to honor them. Sometimes I make it up. It’s my way of thanking God for their lives. Every life deserves a word of praise.”
Reverend Proctor shrugged. They watched the backhoe dig deeper, deeper until, apparently satisfied, the driver looked toward Reverend Proctor and he nodded.
“We have four today. Three men and a woman. That’s all I know.”
“Is this your job? Burying people you don’t know?”
He chuckled softly. “Sure is. I don’t get paid much for it, but I think it’s my calling.”
“I suppose there’s no way to find anyone specifically.”
“Naw, there’s not. Within the last 2 or 3 years, we’ve buried more than I can count.” He touched Elisha’s shoulder softly. “I remember burying a woman one day a few years back. It could’ve been your mother. I don’t know. She was the only one I buried that day. That’s why I remember it. She’s over there.” He pointed to an area close to the back fence. “Of course I can’t promise you it’s her, but it might be.”
Elisha began to move before Reverend Proctor finished speaking.
“I wish I could tell you more.”
Without turning, Elisha lifted a hand in thanks and kept walking. He believed, for reasons he couldn’t explain, that the woman near the back fence was his mother. Even if she wasn’t, he believed she was, and that was enough. At the very least, his mother was here, somewhere among the dead, he told himself, so she’d know he’d tried to honor her.
With no headstones, graves appeared identical. Elisha chose a mound and knelt. It was more like an Islamic bow, a complete genuflection, a sacred obeisance to one whom he had loved and cherished. Slowly, methodically, his hands massaged the mound of earth, from one end to the other, like a shaman preparing a ritual space. The driver of the backhoe stared from a distance, unsure of Elisha’s purpose, but Reverend Proctor understood. In all his years burying the forgotten, he’d hoped that someone’s life had meant something to someone, that his days, months, and years speaking over dead indigents had not been in vain, and now his heart was glad. Not that Elisha reeled with pain and loss but simply that he cared so much. In a way, it was the most beautiful sight the reverend had seen in a while—a son bowing before his mother although certainly she’d not been ideal—so Reverend Proctor, without invitation or hesitation, made his way to Elisha’s side. There he, too, knelt and began to pray aloud for a woman he didn’t know and a son whose pain he couldn’t imagine. The backhoe driver frowned at what looked like two grown men on their knees, speaking to the earth. He shrugged and returned to his work. But Elisha and the preacher, like healing sages, anointed the soil with their hands and murmured things only they could hear. They moved clockwise around the grave until both had touched the entire mound. Elisha shuddered the while, unsure of what he’d do without a mother, or at least the hope for one, but more than anything now, in this solemn moment, he wanted her new life glorious. He wanted the angels to see the mother he’d dreamed of, the woman beneath the woman the world had scorned. So he spoke to her, that new woman, and when she appeared in his consciousness he sang praises as she danced freely in an unfamiliar dimension. He hardly recognized her, and he was glad. She told him she loved him but couldn’t come back. Elisha begged her not to.
Proctor never entered that realm. He spoke instead to the God he knew, the One he believed loved everyone. This God sat among people, filling empty hearts and rearranging variables in order that everyone might at least experience joy—if only for a moment. Proctor asked why some get a lifetime of it while others a mere taste, and God smiled, indicating that Proctor either knew the answer already or didn’t really want to know. A rush of anger flushed his face scarlet, and he pleaded with God to do something about human inequities. God didn’t respond. Proctor huffed. He knew God’s sentiment: That’s a human problem! he’d been told a thousand times. Yet unable to conceive a solution, Proctor had asked a merciful God to do what humans would not. God refused. His commitment was to do what humans could not. But what happens when people won’t? Proctor screeched in the spirit. He knew this answer, too: Humans suffer. He resented God for surrendering the power of life and death to the fallible. But God wasn’t moved. God had made humans in God’s image, for heaven’s sake, and until they realized that, God had nothing more to say. Or do.
Simultaneously the men rose, Elisha at the head, Proctor at the feet. Their eyes met and Proctor spoke: “We give thanks today for this life, this mother who surely did her best, gave her best for her son. Go with God.” He made the Catholic sign of the cross on his chest. Elisha mimicked although he wasn’t Catholic. Actually, he’d never done it before, the Father–Son–Holy Ghost gesture, but it seemed honorable, so he followed Proctor’s lead.
“There’s a way that seemeth right unto a man,” Proctor continued, “but the end thereof is death.”
Elisha thought to ask if that was also true for a woman, but his inquiry felt rude, so he sighed and said nothing. After all, Reverend Proctor hadn’t had to stand with him. It was solely the reverend’s personal conviction that made him support a poor, homeless black boy, right? Right. So the least Elisha could do, he believed, was listen as a stranger helped clear the way for his mother’s journey into eternity.
“Forgive her for her sins and welcome her into Your kingdom. We are but filthy rags, wretches all, desperately in need of Your grace. Be merciful, o God, and take this woman”—he hadn’t thought to ask her name—“into Your bosom and give her a home in eternity. Amen.”
“Amen,” Elisha grunted.
Proctor smiled and backed away, giving Elisha and his mother time alone. In their silence, he told her of Lazarus and how the man had loved him and fed him and kept him from danger. He also told of the other family members and the feeling he got whenever they gathered. It wasn’t a bad life, he said. Loneliness had departed and that’s all he’d ever really wanted.
He smiled and reached into his right pant pocket. The dimes, all five of them, suddenly clustered together like frightened lambs and emitted a light ring reminiscent of distant bells. It reminded Elisha of the church downtown whose chimes beckoned parishioners at 8:00 A.M. sharp every Sunday morning. Sometimes he’d rise and sit still, listening to the melodious call of the bell, examining the world he’d inherited, wondering how people rushed past him and into the sanctuary, only to hear of the importance of loving the stranger.
Slowly, intentionally, Elisha placed a dime at each corner of the grave. The final coin he lay in the center, creating an invisible matrix of triangles, which he hoped would guard his mother’s resting place. Why he’d done it he didn’t know. Something ancient, something ancestral, informed his behavior, and, without reservation, he’d obeyed. It felt right, this ritual of remembrance, this casting of coins around the life of the only person who’d promised to love him fore
ver, and now Elisha felt vindicated. He’d see her again someday, and, having glimpsed her new form, he’d recognize her. That was enough. He was satisfied. It was finished.
Before Elisha exited the grounds, Reverend Proctor stopped him at the gate. “You’re a good son,” he said. “Few come to honor their parents. Most are too ashamed. You have nothing to be sad about.”
Elisha shook his hand. “I’m not sad, sir. Not anymore.” He smiled and turned.
“By the way,” Proctor said, pausing as if second-guessing himself, “if you need anything—”
“I need bus fare if you could spare it.”
Proctor searched his pockets and produced a crisp five-dollar bill. “Here,” he said happily. “Buy yourself a drink, too.”
Elijah thanked him.
Proctor asked, as Elisha walked away, “What was your mother’s name?”
Smiling slightly with the solemnity of grief, Elisha turned and said, “Her name”—his voice faltered—“was Sorrow.”
Proctor closed his eyes and grimaced. When he opened them, the son of Sorrow was gone.
Chapter 17
A trail of dead birds led the way to Elisha’s old neighborhood. Whether from natural causes or human insensitivity, they lay about, these winged corpses, discarded in ditches and vacant lots, waiting to disintegrate or be consumed. Only Elisha noticed, wanting to bury them properly, but too consumed with the mission at hand to linger, he pressed on. The culprit was certainly no respecter of birds, as each was of a different type and size, and the brown hawk, stiff and staring as if asking to be restored to the sky, sent chills across Elisha’s arms. Still, he didn’t hesitate. His mother had left him something and he needed to know what it was.
Just before seven, he rang Harriet’s doorbell. Her car sat in the driveway and Alex Trebek’s voice reverberated through the screen door.
“Come on in!” she called from some distant place in the house.
Cautiously, Elisha entered as memories resurfaced. He remembered now. Yes. He’d been here before. It was the same brown leather sofa, worn and cracking from wear; the same glass coffee table with a bouquet of fake flowers in the center; the same beige carpet with a few more stains; the same pictures on the wall, with the exception of older versions of her son; and the same overall tidiness that contrasted with his disheveled home across the street. Yes. Familiarity lingered in the air. He saw, clear as day, two boys running through the house, playing ninja warriors and breaking a glass vase, an act for which they were only mildly reprimanded. He recalled the joy of ascending the steep staircase and sliding down on thick poster paper. He’d definitely spent time here. And it had been good.
Elisha sat on the edge of the sofa, near the middle. Within seconds, Harriet bustled into the room, wiping hands on a floral-print dish towel. She was still in her work clothes.
“It was so good seeing you today!” she practically shouted. “I just wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again. You look so good!”
Of course she was lying, but that didn’t matter. They embraced, less intensely than before, and Harriet joined Elisha on the sofa. He almost shared that he’d gone to the cemetery and found his mother and honored her to the best of his ability, but on second thought he kept it to himself. He wasn’t here to revisit Sorrow; he was here to collect whatever she’d left for him.
“Can you stay for dinner? I’m making spaghetti. I remember how you used to love my spaghetti.” She laughed so hard Elisha smiled. “You two boys would sit at the table and see who could slurp pasta from one end to the other without breaking it. Y’all tickled me!” Her chest heaved. “You played with more food than you ate.” Memory moistened her eyes.
Elisha didn’t know what to say, so he nodded along as she reconstructed his childhood.
“But your mother could fry some chicken! I never tasted anything like it. One evening I came over to check on y’all and I smelled something so good my mouth watered. I think it was the only time I remember the gas on. I asked what she was making, and she said her grandmother’s fried chicken. I stayed long enough to get a wing, and I swear I ain’t never tasted nothing like that!”
Elisha didn’t remember, but each story of Sorrow soothed the pain of her passing.
“She really was a good person, son. It’s important that you know that. I’ll never forget her. I just wish she’d had the head start most other people get.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
She touched his knee lovingly, then reclined. “And she had the prettiest skin. Not a scar or scratch anywhere. It was surprising, considering the life she lived, but it was true. I envied that flawless complexion, but I guess you can’t have everything, huh?”
“No, ma’am. I guess not.”
She stared through the window as if looking at the past. “The day your momma moved into that house it rained like the dickens. She didn’t seem to notice. Lord, she was so excited. I think she was renting, but she acted like she owned it. Her and that man.”
Elisha didn’t know of any man.
“He wasn’t your daddy. Least I don’t think so. He was gone long before you came. They seemed happy at first, but then they started fighting like cats and dogs. I called the police a few times. The last time they took him away, and he never came back. That’s when she started downhill.” Harriet shook her head. “You know everything from there.”
He nodded slowly. He didn’t know everything, but now he didn’t want to. All he wanted was whatever Sorrow had left for him.
Harriet slapped her thighs, conjuring a lighter disposition, and said, “Let me get you this package.”
She left the room, and Elisha wondered about the man. Who was he? Had he loved Sorrow? Was he Elisha’s father? Perhaps he’d tried to separate her from the demon. But she was clean back then, wasn’t she? Elisha sighed. There was no way to know.
“Here it is,” Harriet said, walking quickly toward him, extending a brown manila envelope.
Elisha received it cautiously, like one might a dreaded medical report, unsure of whether he should open it now or later. Harriet’s stare compelled him on, so he broke the seal and extracted an official set of legal papers. She resumed her place next to him, leaning in involuntarily, unable to tame her curiosity.
Several intense minutes passed, after which Elisha murmured, “Oh my God.” His bulged eyes solicited Harriet’s excitement.
“What is it?”
“The deed to the house. Momma did own it. At first she didn’t, but she must’ve bought it later somehow. She left it to me.”
“What!”
“Yeah. It’s all mine.” His pride surged. “But there’s something else, too.”
Harriet waited as Elisha’s eyes scanned the document further. Suddenly he rose. “I gotta go, ma’am. I’m sorry. Thank you for everything.” Joy radiated around him.
Harriet cackled. “You sure you don’t want dinner? I made more than enough. You really are welcome.”
Elisha said, “No thank you,” and rushed to the door.
“Okay, then take care of yourself.”
She wanted to know it all, but she didn’t want to pry. All he would’ve said had she inquired further was that he’d found the answer to help save Lazarus.
Marching down the street, he hollered over his shoulder, “Yes, ma’am!”
“And don’t be a stranger. If you need anything, and I mean anything, just let me know. I wish I could’ve done more.”
“Thank you, Miz Harriet!” he bellowed. “You’ve done more than you know.”
Disappearing around the corner, he smiled heavenward. Sorrow had delivered after all.
* * *
With each step, his confidence simmered. He’d never dreamed it would come to this, never imagined his mother would provide the key to saving his father. His real father. The only man who’d ever loved him. Now he knew the fruit of an inheritance.
He told the others everything, even the part he didn’t tell Harriet.
“It’s all mine. All of it
.”
They gawked. Legion said, “That’s some crazy shit! Damn! You lucky bastard!”
“Yeah. It’s right here.” He extracted papers. “The deed to the house and the land. I didn’t know anything about either one. The land is somewhere in South Georgia.”
Cinderella read the papers aloud until, lost in legal jargon, she folded them and said, “Wow! That’s pretty awesome. They say God works in mysterious ways. You just never know, do you?”
“No, you don’t,” Elisha said. “Momma mentioned my great-grandparents once, but that’s the only time I remember. Her mother died right after she was born, so they took her in and raised her. I never heard mention of a father. I’m not sure she knew who he was.”
Cinderella asked, “Was your mother an only child?”
“Yes. Far as I know.”
“And they left her everything?”
“Seems so. Looks like she sold some of it.” He browsed the papers again. “Still fifty acres left.”
They nodded.
“It’ll be enough for Lazarus’s bail. I’ll sell it all if I have to.”
The Comforter squeezed his hand. “You don’t have to, son. That’s a lot to ask of anybody.”
“I wanna do it.”
“Then God bless you for your willing heart. You shall prosper the rest of your living days.” She looked at the others. “All of you. Your days of lack are over. This is the promise of God.”
Heads bowed in prayer. Things were coming together. The Comforter laid hands upon each of them, reminding God to grant the desires of their hearts. Then, with arms outstretched, they formed a circle of healing, calling Lazarus’s name to the wind.
Chapter 18
Officers shuffled Lazarus into court like a defiant bull at auction. There were two of them, one on either side, and both pushed and cursed as if smelling rancid, vile garbage. The wall clock read 9:09 A.M., and already the room was packed with despondent black and brown faces. Because of the nature of his charges, Lazarus sat up front under the scrutinizing eye of the law. When the judge entered, everyone rose. He was tall and thin with faint brows and small, narrow eyes. His other features were unmistakably African—thick, shapely lips, broad nose, raised cheekbones—and Lazarus thanked God the man wasn’t white. Yet recalling his treatment by black policemen in front of the precinct, he wasn’t yet convinced the judge’s blackness was a blessing.