I seem to remember they held some funerals early in the morning because everybody would still be asleep in the apartment and I would be wearing my pajamas.
To get at the funerals I had to roll up a window shade that was particularly difficult for my dexterity to handle, but somehow I managed it and then pulled a chair over and stood on top of it and watched the funerals.
We moved into the apartment late one afternoon and the next morning while everybody was still asleep, I got up and wandered into the front room. I looked sleepily under the window shade and there was my first funeral as big as death.
The hearse was parked maybe thirty feet away. Can you imagine how big that hearse seemed? That's very close for a hearse to be to a five-year-old. It seemed to me to be the size of a movie that for some very strange reason they had painted black.
That's when I first went and got the chair and pulled the window shade up after quite a struggle and moved the chair into a very good funeral-viewing position and climbed on top of it.
I did this all very quietly because I didn't want to wake anybody up in the house. Adults always like to disrupt what kids are doing, no matter what it is except if it's something the kid doesn't like. If the kid doesn't like it, the adults will let him keep on doing it forever, but if the kid likes it...
The hearse was filled with flowers.
There were so many flowers in the hearse that ever since then flowers have always made me feel uneasy. I like flowers but sometimes I feel uncomfortable being in their presence. I've never let it get out of control, but I've had it ever since that morning in 1940 when I watched my first funeral.
For a while the hearse and all its flowers were just standing there alone except for two men dressed in black who seemed not to be in a hurry, just waiting. They could almost have been flowers themselves: some kind of black daffodils.
One of them was smoking a cigarette. He had smoked it down so short that it looked as if the butt were going to set his hand on fire. The other one kept stroking a long very black moustache that looked as if it had jumped off the hearse and right onto his face, but it didn't seem to bother him.
You probably want to know how I knew I was watching a funeral if I was only five years old and I had never seen this sort of thing before and nobody had told me about such goings on. The answer to this is very simple: I saw one in the movies, just a week before and figured it out for myself.
After a while the two men who were waiting beside the hearse went into the funeral parlor and then people started coming out. The people were all very somber and moved appropriately. They seemed to be in slow motion. Though I was close to them, standing on my chair, it was difficult to hear what they were saying.
This was becoming very interesting.
I could hardly wait to see what would happen next.
The two men in black came back out with some other men carrying the coffin. They put it in the back of the hearse. Actually, they had to sort of stuff it in because of all the flowers, but somehow they managed it and the two men got into the front seat where the living travelled.
The mourners walked very s l o w l y and started getting into parked cars. The cars all had one-word signs on their windshields, but I didn't know what the word said. It would be years before I figured it out.
Pretty soon everybody was gone and the street was very quiet in the wake of their departure. The first thing I heard after they were gone was a bird singing just outside the window.
I got down from the chair and went back to my bed. I lay there staring at the ceiling and digesting what I had just seen. I stayed in bed until everybody else woke up.
When I heard them moving around in the kitchen, I got up and joined them. They were still sleepy and making some coffee to begin the war of another day.
They asked me if I'd had a good night's sleep.
For an unknown reason I pondered their question, which really didn't even need a reply. I mean, I could have said any little thing and that would have been OK, but I stood there, thinking hard about it.
They continued what they were already doing and immediately forgot that they had asked me something. People aren't really interested for any length of time if a five-year-old had a good night's sleep, and that's what was happening to me.
"Yes, I did," I finally said.
"Did what?" they asked.
"Had a good night's sleep."
"Oh," they said, looking at me curiously because they had forgotten what they had asked me. Adults are always doing that with children.
Anyway, I got up early and watched the funerals after that. There of course wasn't a funeral every morning and I was disappointed when there wasn't one. I went back to bed and hoped that there would be a funeral the next morning.
There were other funerals going on during the day but I didn't care about them very much.
I was strictly a morning funeral child.
For the first two weeks I did that, everybody stayed asleep in the apartment. Then one morning somebody got up early and found me standing on a chair in the front room, with my pajamas on, looking out the window at a funeral.
They came up quietly behind me and looked at what I was watching with total attention, so much so that I didn't even hear them come up.
I must have been a very strange sight.
"What are you doing?" they asked, but they could see what I was doing, so in a way, it was a wasted question.
"Looking out the window," I said.
"Looking out the window at a funeral. You're a weird kid."
I have to agree that observation was right on the money.
They said that they wanted to have a serious conversation with me later on, but they forgot about it and so the serious conversation never took place.
The undertaker had a wife and a little daughter. They lived in the funeral parlor along with the dead people. The daughter was a year older than I. She was six and had very cold hands. I guess living in a funeral parlor gave a person cold hands.
I wondered what her life was like in there with dead people coming and going like somber wind. When we played we always played outside. I didn't ask her if she wanted to come into my house and play be cause I was afraid she would ask me to come and play in her house.
Once I asked her if she was ever afraid of having dead people around the house.
"Why should I?" she said. "They're dead. They can't hurt anybody."
That was one way of looking at it, but it was not mine.
I also once asked if she ever listened to Inner Sanctum. I thought it would be very terrifying to listen to Inner Sanctum in a funeral parlor. It would be one of the worst experiences a person could ever have because listening to Inner Sanctum was scary enough but inside a funeral parlor! How could you stop from screaming or ever get to sleep again.
"Sure," she said. "But my favorite program is Grand Central Station. I like the sound of the trains and the people coming and going. They have interesting stories."
"What about Inner Sanctum ?" I said, returning to the subject of Inner Sanctum which was the most important thing on my mind. At a time like this who wanted to hear about Grand Central Station ?
"Inner Sanctum is..." she said, pausing, "... corny."
CORNY! INNER SANCTUM. CORNY!
I was stunned.
"Corny," she repeated, almost whispering it to get a certain dramatic effect.
If Inner Sanctum was corny, then how in the hell did she get such cold hands. Where did they come from? A Cracker Jack box? So when I played with her, I always avoided games that required hand holding.
She had long blond hair, but her hair wasn't cold, only her hands were cold and I treated them like the plague. Once she wanted to play ring-around-the-rosy, just the two of us, holding hands. I told her my mother was sick and I had to go get her a glass of water.
"I didn't know your mother was sick," she said. "You didn't mention it until now. How come?" The undertaker's daughter was too smart for her own good.
> I was hard pressed for a reply.
If my mother had really been sick, that's the kind of thing kids tell each other right off the bat. A sick mother is a newsworthy topic. I kept thinking as hard as I could. Meanwhile, avoiding her cold hands by putting my hands safely in my pockets and taking a couple of steps backwards toward my house.
But I couldn't think of a God-damn thing to say.
I just stood there like an idiot with an imaginary sick mother who didn't need tending to.
"I've got to get her a glass of water," I finally said, desperately and ran into the house.
Someday I would be six years old, too, and be able to come up with fast questions, too.
"What are you doing in here?" my mother said when I came into the house. "It's a beautiful day. Go outside and play."
"I have to go to the toilet," I said.
"Oh," she said, rapidly losing her interest in me. "Well, go to the toilet and then go back outside and play. I don't want to see you in here. It's too nice a day."
I had no plans to stay inside. It was only a last ditch stand to keep away from the hands of the undertaker's daughter. I started toward a meaningless and unneeded pee-pee when there was a knock at the door.
My mother went to answer it.
Though I hadn't the slightest idea who was there, I knew that somehow it did not bring good tidings.
My mother opened the door.
I was sort of half-hidden on my way back to the toilet, watching my mother answer the door. Perhaps, I only thought I was hidden. I may have just been standing there without any attempt at camouflage.
It was the undertaker's wife.
She was surprised to see my mother standing there, looking so healthy.
"My daughter told me that you were sick," she said. "And I came over to ask if I could help out any."
"That's nice of you," my mother said. "But I'm not sick." I knew that my mother looked puzzled, though I could not see her face.
The undertaker's wife was looking directly at me, standing somewhere behind my mother, trying to be hidden. The expression on her face did not make me feel comfortable.
"My daughter told me that your son told her that you were sick, so I came right over. Obviously, you're not sick. I'm sorry to disturb you."
The undertaker's wife took a couple of steps backwards.
"I appreciate your coming over, but I'm not sick. Would you like some coffee?" my mother said.
"Oh, no," the undertaker's wife said. "I've got something on the stove."
Though suddenly I felt like a sinking ship, I still had enough curiosity to wonder what the undertaker's wife was cooking in the funeral parlor.
I had never really thought about them eating in there before, but of course they had to eat, and to eat you need to cook and she cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner in a place where dead people were briefly stored before something permanent was worked out for them.
I wondered how bacon and eggs tasted in a funeral parlor. I wondered how difficult it would be to eat ice cream in there. I didn't think there would be a big problem with it melting, even if it were a hot day.
"Well, I'm sorry that you came over for nothing," my mother said. "I'll have to get to the bottom of this."
She did.
I was already there waiting for her.
All she had to do was turn around.
The next morning for my funeral-viewing pleasure, they held the funeral for a dead child. I was up bright and early and standing on my chair.
The funeral unfolded like the petals of a flower whose ultimate blossom was a small coffin coming out the door of the funeral parlor and on its way to the hearse and that final place where the hearse would take it and come back empty and the child wouldn't need its toys any more.
I of course had no idea that it was the funeral for a child until they brought the little coffin out; except for that one occasion I never knew who was being buried. I had no way of knowing if it was a man or a woman or a young person or an old person or just a person inbetween who had gotten unlucky.
The coffins were always closed and I did not know the specific nature of their contents. All I knew was that somebody dead was inside.
So I was stunned when the little coffin came out. It only needed two pallbearers. They carried the coffin as if it were a feather of death. I suddenly felt very uncomfortable because the coffin was my size. I didn't know if there was a dead little girl or a dead little boy inside. I know that this may sound horrible, but I half-wished that there was a dead little girl inside because a dead little boy was too close to home for me.
When the full impact of the child's funeral had modified itself into an unwholesome curiosity and interest in detail, I looked around for child mourners that were my age and the size of the coffin. There were none. There was not a single child.
That seemed very strange to me. Didn't the kid have any friends? God, what a poor kid, I thought, not a single friend. I could imagine the kid with no one to play with. I shuddered twice: once because the kid was dead and a second time because the kid was friendless.
There were about thirty people out there watching the small flower-bedecked coffin on its brief journey to the hearse which took care of the child ever having the possibility of a friend.
I was suddenly very sad because the child had never gotten to play hide-and-go-seek or kick-the-can or statues. The child had only played games that you play by yourself like playing with its dolls or the little boxed games that have animal heads you hold in your hands with two empty holes where the eyes should be and you roll two little silver balls around and around until you think you're going to go crazy before you give the animal some eyes or perhaps the child went on solitary tricycle rides past other children playing together who would have nothing to do with this dead kid.
I didn't know what fate was back, then, but if I had known I would not have wanted that kid's fate, not for all the tea in China, which was something people said all the time in 1940, but you don't hear it very much in 1979.
If you were to say, "Not for all the tea in China," right now, it would attract a lifted eyebrow, but back then it meant something. You were communicating.
I was really disturbed by the total lack of child mourners. I made a vow that I would be nicer to people, especially kids. I would start off that very day dedicating my energy to the gathering of many new friends and the instant renewal and replenishing of old friendships.
Under no conditions did I want to end up like that poor hapless child with nobody but adults at its funeral. Today I would be as friendly as I could with the undertaker's daughter.
I would even ... I would even touch her hands. The worst thing in the world would be if I were to die and she wouldn't come to my funeral. That would be the final blow. Too bad it wasn't winter, so I could wear mittens. No, I shouldn't think like that. I promised myself that I would somehow hold her hands, so that she would come to my funeral.
They put the little coffin in the back of the hearse and placed around it wreaths and bouquets of flowers that seemed to swallow it whole. If you were alive and playing hide-and-go-seek, the back of that hearse would be a good place to hide. No one could find you in all those flowers.
WHERE WAS THE UNDERTAKER'S DAUGHTER? suddenly hit my mind like the first whack of a spanking. She wasn't at the funeral, but then I thought she obviously hadn't been a friend of the dead kid or she would be out there in a tiny black dress, dabbing a moon-white handkerchief to her eyes.
After the hearse had driven off and all the mourners had followed in its shadow like the morbid tail of a black kite, I thought some more about the undertaker's daughter and the child just on its way now to the cemetery where it would stay after everybody else came back. I didn't know the full dimensions of forever, but I knew that it was longer than waiting for Christmas to come.
I knew that forever was longer than 39 shopping days until Christmas.
Yesterday when I was playing with the undertaker's daughter and eve
ntually fled the touching of her hands, that dead child must have already been in the funeral parlor getting ready for today. While we were playing outside, they could have been taking the blood out of that child and replacing it with embalming fluid.
I wondered if the undertaker's daughter had seen the dead child when it came in, and if the dead child had been a girl, she'd thought: Well, here's somebody I'll never play dolls with or she already knew that the child had no friends and so she didn't think about playing with her at all.
That's an awful thought, isn't it? but that's what I thought about while still standing on my chair perch staring at the sudden emptiness that had once been the funeral of a child.
I wondered why the undertaker's daughter wasn't afraid of dead people and then I thought somebody who prefers Grand Central Station to Inner Sanctum was capable of anything.
When I heard somebody stirring in the house a little later on, I got off my chair and pulled the window shade down. I put the chair back where it belonged. I didn't want anybody today criticizing my interest in funerals.
I was going back to bed and think all over again what I had seen today, but when I thought about that dead child lying in a coffin hidden by flowers and on its way to the cemetery, going back to bed did not seem like a good idea at all. I decided to spend as much time as possible the rest of the day standing on my feet, just to keep in practice.
A few months later, we moved and I never saw the undertaker's daughter again. She probably grew up, went to college and got married, then kids, etc. Maybe her hands even got warm.
I should probably think about her more often than I do. Actually, this is one of the few times that I have thought about her in years, maybe even longer.
The whole time that I lived beside the funeral parlor and watched the funerals like garden parties where I was always the uninvited guest seems to me now like a dream.
The undertaker's daughter has become a character in that dream. Did I really stand on a chair in my pajamas and watch funerals for pleasure? Did we really live in an apartment that had once been an active part of a mortuary? Did I dream the undertaker's daughter and her hands which were like white daisies growing on top of Mount Everest? Did I really hide from them until one day I saw the funeral of a dead child who had no friends and, not wanting to end up that way, courted her hands as if they had the desirability of warm mittens on a freezing winter day?
Revenge of the Lawn, the Abortion, So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away Page 25