Slow Funeral

by Rebecca Ore

  “I suppose so, but you can’t come in.”

  “How are you going to keep me out?”

  Maude closed the door, locking herself on the outside with Betty. “I’ll see you to your car.”

  “Give me the key.”

  Maude shook her head. She felt the key in her hand and crossed her arms over her breasts, the hand with the key tucked in her armpit.

  Betty reached for her. Her aunt’s hand seemed to take days extending, the joints mechanically unfolding, the tendons and ligaments turning to steel wire under the skin. The nails, dead protein, touched Maude’s left wrist.

  “Why, Maude, you have some talents, but you’re hurting me. And yourself. And Partridge.” The fingers squirmed.

  “We’re all just biological machines.”

  “Give me the key, Maude.”

  Maude shoved Betty back with her right arm. Betty became a blur of figures, one Betty falling to the ground, another lurching back but keeping her balance, others wringing their hands. “Could you live with breaking my hip, Maude?”

  Maude couldn’t tell which was the real Betty. She reached out to see what she could feel. Fingers grabbed her wrist again. She twisted free of them, but dropped the key. The blur of figures cleared. The only real Betty reached for the dropped key. Maude decided the frail body was an illusion and shoved Betty back hard. Couldn’t break her hip for trying.

  Just as Maude grabbed the key, sprawling down on her hands and knees, she heard two cars slowing down to pull in the driveway. Are they real cars’? She looked up through her hair to see Betty smoothing her gloves and smiling.

  Esther came in with Doug. He has his car, but now I can’t leave, Maude realized. As long as Partridge is alive, I’ve got to defend her against Betty.

  Betty said, “Maude’s being paranoid again.”

  “She can’t come in. Partridge doesn’t want to see her.” Maude smoothed back her hair and looked at her muddy knees. “You sure found a car quick.”

  “We been all day,” Esther said. Maude looked up then and noticed that the sun was in the west. All day?

  “Maude postpones things. It’s her vice,” Betty said.

  “Maude, you mustn’t be doing that,” Esther said.

  “I’m sorry, but she can’t come in,” Maude said. She wondered again what happened if a witch went insane.

  “Maude, I’ll try another day then.” Betty looked at the others as if to say, what a rude girl “You seem to have lost your manners. And we’ve always been so kind to you.”

  “You polite’ed on me. Manners in the South frequently conceal ruthless rudeness.” She looked at Esther, wondering if the black woman would rebuke her for saying such a thing, but Esther moved slightly toward her. Doug, on the other hand, seemed bewildered.

  “I’ve got to go check on Partridge,” Maude said, her voice finally as collected as Betty’s. “We’re really busy right now.”

  “I understand. I’ll be back later.”

  “Well, we won’t see you in, then,” Esther told her.

  Betty said, “Maude, you’re filled with ambivalence. Consider what might happen if you did lose your mind.”

  Neither Maude nor Esther said anything as Betty walked back to the Essex. Doug said, “If I’m in the way, I’ll move my car.” Maude saw that Doug’s new car, an Asian subcompact sedan, sat beside the Essex.

  Betty said, “My car can manage.”

  As Betty pulled out, Esther said, “A mean sucking bitch with a mean sucking car. Check the oil before you drive it again, Douglas.”

  “What was that all about?” Doug asked. “I don’t think she’s a bitch at all.”

  “We got to keep Maude’s grandmomma safe from soul suckers.”

  Maude said, “She was in pain.” They went in the house and found Partridge sitting up in bed, her eyes wide open, blinking slowly. Very slowly.

  Esther reached for Partridge’s wrist and said, “You make things go slow or was that Maude?”

  “I hurt,” Partridge said. “I hurt. Get me bicarb.”

  “Now, I don’t know if bicarb’d be good for you.”

  “It hurts.”

  Maude said, “She tried to pass her bowels…” Her mind’s eye threw her the image of her grandmother straining at the toilet. “But she couldn’t.”

  “I can give her an enema. Doug, why don’t you take Maude for a little drive.”

  “No, I’ll stay here.”

  Partridge said, “Don’t hurt me.”

  “Call her doctor,” Maude decided.

  Esther said, “I tangled with that doctor on another case. He lets old people die without fussing over them. But I’ll try.” She went to the phone in the kitchen and called.

  Maude, sitting by her grandmother, heard Esther say, “I don’t know if more pain pills is really what she needs.” Then Esther came back and reported, “He says he’ll phone in a prescription for painkillers.”

  Maude said, “I wonder if I should talk to him. I’ve never met him.”

  “He says the trouble with her is she’s dying.”

  Maude agreed with the doctor, but wasn’t as happy with his detachment as she wanted to be. “I could pick up the prescription.” She looked at Doug and said, “If you’d drive me.”

  “Sure.”

  Esther nodded. Partridge’s eyes were glassy and unfocused. Maude asked, “Can you keep Betty away?”

  “With the Lord’s help,” Esther said.

  Maude wondered, then she remembered how Betty had gone when Esther came back to the house. She didn’t really think an omnipotent entity helped Esther but rather Esther’s own strength of mind, formed as it might have been around an illusion. Maude knew she’d never been strong-minded because she saw so many mental strengths founded on illusions. Perhaps the illusions have nothing to do with the strength? She backed two steps away from Esther, then turned to walk away with Doug.

  Night had come. Maude got in the passenger seat and stared out beyond the headlights.

  “You have to tell me where we’re going,” Doug said. “I’d have thought you knew the county perfectly by now,” Maude said. “I don’t even have a car anymore.”

  “I can help you.”

  “But you hate weak people.”

  Doug didn’t answer for a mile. Then he said, “I don’t like working out ways, technical ways, to empower stupid people. Maude, I’m not responsible for your financial state or your being here, but I have offered to help.”

  “Sorry. I’m worried about my grandmother. It makes me bitchy.” Maude knew she said that to distract him.

  “I’ve decided I’m going to work for Follette’s research institute. The other job sounds like Big Brother wants to wire the workers so he can get maximum effort out of them.”

  “But is the pay at the assembly plant good?”

  “What?”

  “If the pay is good, then the good workers want the boss to know they’re working hard.”

  “Have you ever been a factory worker?”

  “No, but I’ve talked to them.”

  “Maybe they just tell you what they think a middle-class person wants to hear.”

  “I was on welfare at the time.” Maude remembered she was now dependent on a dying woman. “I don’t want her to die so quickly.”

  “You are worried about your grandmother.”

  “Yes. Turn at the hospital. The pharmacy is in the office complex behind it.”

  Doug turned, found the building, and parked. Maude went in and saw, above the counter, cases of radio parts—glass tubes, wax-covered resistors, cylinders with thin wires, speaker cones. She said, “I’m here for Partridge Roar’s prescription. What are those?”

  “The history of radio in parts.” The pharmacist looked through a file, found the prescription, and went to the back to fill it.

  Maude looked at the radio parts and wondered if the man was celebrating the development of radio or dismembering radios in hostile acts. “Do you like radios?”

  The
man came out with the prescription. He said, “My grandfather said the world has never been through such a change as from the time he was a boy to now.”

  “But is it a good change?” The pharmacist looked as though he didn’t want to offend Maude. She added, “Ideas spread faster.”

  “Sometimes lies spread faster.”

  “How much is the prescription?”

  “Your grandmother has insurance that covers it.”

  And I didn’t know that. Maude said, “I’ll probably be back.”

  “We’ve been serving your people for a long tíme,” the pharmacist said. Maude wondered if he also sold herbs and quicksilver for charms and alchemy. He handed her the pills and she signed the receipt, then left.

  When she got back in the car, Maude said, “Everyone knows my people here.”

  “Shall we go home now?” Doug asked. Maude thought he said it to be polite because as he spoke, he turned the key in the ignition.

  Maude stretched her legs out as best she could in the small car. As they pulled back onto the highway, Betty’s Essex glided up behind them. Doug’s car backfired, then lurched ahead. He fought the steering wheel.

  Doug said, “I can’t believe all witches are bad, but maybe you’re right about her.”

  The Essex dropped back, then turned off to the left. Maude knew that back roads paralleled the highway. The Essex could beat them to Kobold. Neither she nor Doug spoke until they saw her grandmother’s house. The Essex wasn’t there. Maude twisted her torso to ease the muscle tension. But as soon as she opened the front door, the wall phone in the kitchen began to ring.

  “Hi, Maude, this is Terry. I understand Partridge wants to be buried in the family plot.”

  And Terry lives on the family farm, beside the family graveyard. “Yes,” Maude said.

  “We’d like to come over and talk to her.”

  “Who?”

  “Aunt Betty and me.”

  “She doesn’t want to see Aunt Betty.”

  “Can you put her on the phone?”

  “She’s sleeping,” Maude said, not bothering to check. “I’d hate to think Betty and Partridge couldn’t be reconciled before Partridge dies.”

  “Perhaps you could come to the hospital,” Maude said.

  “It seems cruel to take your grandmother to the hospital to die when she could go comfortably at home, surrounded by people she knows. The doctor could prescribe pain pills.”

  Maude heard Doug and Esther talking in Partridge’s room behind the kitchen. She listened for Partridge’s voice, but only heard water from the bathroom sink, then that stopped and Esther murmured something. Someone, probably Partridge, swallowed.

  “Partridge is taking a pill, isn’t she?” Terry said.

  “Your phone is awfully acute.”

  “Please, if I come over by myself, could I talk to Partridge and find out why she doesn’t want to see Aunt Betty before she dies?”

  “Let me ask her,” Maude said. She lay the phone down on the counter and went back to Partridge’s room. Partridge lay propped up against pillows, her face looking as though she’d been swimming and was only half dry. “Terry wants to see you.”

  “I must be dying.”

  Esther said, “We’re with you.”

  Doug asked, “Is Terry a problem?”

  Maude nodded but said, for the sensitive phone and the listeners behind it, “It’s the rest of Partridge’s life, so whatever she wants.”

  Partridge shook her head. “I’ll see Terry later,” she said. She moved her hips and winced.

  Maude went back to the kitchen phone and said, “Probably now isn’t a good time, Terry.”

  “Tell Partridge she’s being selfish,” Terry said. “Maude, you ought to consider the feelings of the people who’ll be alive after Partridge passes on.”

  “Sorry, Terry, but it is the rest of Partridge’s life I’m protecting.”

  Terry hung up. Maude put the phone receiver back in its cradle and wondered why she was so determined to protect Partridge. The woman had been an active witch.

  Esther said, “We ought to take her to the hospital.”

  “Let’s wait to see if the painkiller we brought back helps,” Maude said. “I don’t want to move her at night.” We’ve been serving your people, the pharmacist had said. She sat down by the bed and touched her grandmother’s head at the hairline, feeling the skull. “What is this all about anyway? Maybe…” Maude almost said, I should give her to Betty, when Partridge’s eyes opened.

  “Let me be a ghost to help you,” Partridge said.

  Esther came over and took Partridge’s pulse. She said, “No better, no worse.”

  “Please keep Betty away,” Partridge said.

  “Terry, too?”

  “Her, too. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

  “You’re going to leave me to them.”

  “Is that what’s tempting you?” Esther said. “Doug and I will be with you.”

  “Doug’s more tempted by them than I am.”

  Esther asked, “Is that true, Douglas?”

  Doug nodded. “I can’t believe all magic is bad.”

  Esther said, “And you an engineer.”

  “Luke has plans for him.”

  “I do hate being witness to these witch things.”

  “Aren’t you a witness to warn others?”

  “If it comes to that,” Esther said.

  “Betty wants my soul, too. She’s offered to train me.”

  “If you have good people who love you around, they keep off the witches,” Esther said.

  “But Betty’s still trying to get to see Partridge.”

  Esther didn’t say anything then. She looked away from Maude, looked at Doug, and went to her purse. Out of it, she pulled a small New Testament. She opened it and began moving her lips silently. Maude wondered why she put any trust in a woman who moved her lips while she read. Superstitious, ill-educated, perhaps not even that bright.

  “Shame brute power, don’t surrender to it,” Esther said. “I’ll stay with you tonight.”

  “You’re sure you don’t have some magic?”

  “No, Maude, I don’t. And I know white people tend to look down on folks who read moving their lips. But it shapes the word for me.”

  Maude was embarrassed.

  Doug asked, “Does someone have to be awake with her at all times?”

  “Yes, you go get a nap now. Maude, you too, if you can sleep from worrying.”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “You ought to try. I’ll be up with her.”

  “I’m afraid to lose consciousness.”

  “Do they get you in your sleep?”

  “I’m afraid they will.”

  Doug said, “Well, I better sleep then. Someone needs to be able to drive in the morning.”

  Maude found a straight hard chair to sit in and turned on the radio to a PBS station. Doug went to the bathroom, then left them by Partridge’s bed.

  Esther’s lips moved over her New Testament. Maude wondered if Esther was as protected as she thought. She wondered why she was pitting herself against Betty and Luke when they seemed to really want to train her in their ways. She nodded in her hard chair. Esther came over and said, “You might as well sleep lying down as to be jerking your neck in that chair.”

  Microsleeps. As open as long ones. Maude nodded and got up. She saw the room through sleep green and the graininess of eyes that had almost shut down to the outside. “Wake me if anything happens.”

  17

  * * *

  MACROSLEEP

  I’m paralyzed, Maude thought, dreaming.

  Betty materialized, first her clothes, then the bones inside the clothes, then the face. Betty said, “If you won’t talk to me in the air, we’ll talk here.”

  Is this the Betty I made inside my head or is this really Betty, inserted into my head? Maude remembered that she should look at her dream hands when in a dream that seemed frightening. According to som
ething she’d read in Berkeley, this was supposed to give the dreamer control of the dream. She tried to look at her hands, but was distracted. She and Betty were riding on a Berkeley bus. “I’ve got to go home,” Maude said.

  Betty in the dream took Maude’s hands in her own. Oh, there my hands were all along, Maude thought, but Betty’s looking at both pairs of hands, too.

  “All I’m asking is that you let me say good-bye to Partridge. I’ll help you find your way home then,” Betty said. “Remember, we’re kin.”

  “She asked me not to,” Maude said.

  “She can’t be sanctified this late in the game. You wonder if she ate your mother and father. Or failed to protect them.”

  Maude thought Betty should have known for sure. This was her own Betty-side.

  Betty said, “Or is it? Do you really think I know everything?”

  “If you don’t know everything, we can win, then.”

  “Who? You and Partridge? Or you and me.”

  Maude got off the bus. She was dressed in a satin miniskirt, boots, and a low-cut blouse. As she walked, teenaged boys of all races began to follow her. I’ve got to get home, she thought. In the dream, she lived in a rented apartment. I haven’t been there long and I don’t remember exactly.

  The boys made her feel naked in her whore gear. Betty had disappeared when the boys showed up, but Maude only realized that dream minutes later. “I’m trying to find my way home,” she told a Chinese boy in a black leather trench coat. The city around them looked vaguely like San Francisco, not New York. The blocks of streets were set at angles to each other, interrupted by expressways and business deserts.

  “We’ll help you,” he said. But none of the boys seemed to know where Maude should go.

  Maude walked through a campus building that seemed to be the interface between a good neighborhood and a bad one. She vaguely recognized the college. It was rumored to be near where she lived.

  The street numbers twisted into new configurations. The teenagers following her seemed slightly less menacing. “Are you lost?” a white boy asked.

  “Yes,” Maude said, firmly in the dream.

  “Don’t you have an Aunt Betty who lives around here?”

  “No,” Maude said. The boys seemed threatening again. She looked up and thought she saw her block ahead, slightly uphill. “She doesn’t live here. She lives in Virginia.”