And you wouldn’t believe how many different kinds of funerals there are. Hood funerals, like Dante Brown’s, where all of his friends showed up in all red, and dropped red bandanas, big heavy gold chains that looked fake, and crew pictures in his casket. It’s weird to know when people have guns in church. Makes it hard to close your eyes when it’s time to pray. The Bloods stood all along the back wall of Cornerstone Baptist. Each one wore sunglasses, tattoos peeking from under the collars of their T-shirts, permanent frowns on their faces. I stood along the side wall. I mean, I didn’t think anything would happen to me if I stood in the back with them, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. Plus, the side wall gave a better view of Dante’s mother and girlfriend, sitting in the first pew, holding each other face-to-face, their tears mixing. The sound of them crying and shushing the cries of Dante’s newborn baby boy at the same time is one I’ll never forget.
Or the funeral of Marie Rogers, a happy funeral. Marie passed away in her sleep three days after her hundredth birthday. She was a New York City school teacher for forty years, and after she retired, decided to travel the world with her husband. Then, once Donald died, she decided to become a painter, and had a pretty good career the last thirty years of her life, as an artist. So her funeral was pretty cool. A lot of people got up to say how she influenced them. Even some of her old students, who were now almost eighty years old. That was wild. To hear an eighty-year-old talk about how he had been affected by this woman seventy years ago was amazing. She outlived all of her family, including her only child, Bernard, who didn’t have any kids himself. So as you can imagine, the church wasn’t too full.
Of all the people who got up to talk about Mrs. Rogers, there was one person who got up there and then couldn’t say anything, who just couldn’t get the words out—Mrs. Rogers’s helper. Her name was Ola. And Ola, out of everyone who was there, was the only person crying. She had spent the last ten years with Mrs. Rogers, looking after her, talking to her, driving her around. She was the closest to her. And though this wasn’t a sad funeral, what Ola was feeling, nobody else could.
And, yeah, there were funny funerals. The funniest was Glendale Price’s. Mr. Ray told me that Mr. Price was a friend of his from way back. He said my mom might’ve even known him, because he was an actor who mainly did theater work on Broadway, and had gone to the same school as my mother when she was chasing her acting dream. Mr. Ray said Mr. Price was pretty successful, but refused to leave the hood. He said Mr. Price used to always say, “I was born here, and I’m gonna be buried here.”
He had lung cancer, something else Mr. Ray made it a point to say.
“Yeah, he was my buddy. He’d invite me and Ella to his shows—this is before he was doing Broadway—and we’d all go out afterward and run through a pack of smokes like it was nothing.” Mr. Ray half-smiled and half-frowned, probably thinking about his own cigarette habit that he couldn’t kick, even after cancer. Twice.
Mr. Ray went on to tell me that when Mr. Price found out his lung cancer was terminal, he started working on what he thought would be his best role ever. To play himself, at his own funeral. The only catch was, he only wanted the play to be seen at his own funeral.
I’ll tell you, it was like no other funeral I had ever been to. People filed in and were handed a program as they took seats. On the cover there was a picture of Mr. Price, and it read: THE FUNERAL OF GLENDALE PRICE, A COMEDY. The program listed a cast of characters, and of course when it got to his name it said, GLENDALE PRICE, AS HIMSELF.
So you’d think it’d be all sad, especially since they left the casket open the whole time, but actually the play was pretty funny. It was about this guy, Glendale, who spent his whole life playing different characters on stage, and how when he died, all those characters showed up at his funeral to talk trash about him. It was like one of those roast things celebrities have, but better. It was like clowning on the block. The only character I recognized was Hamlet, who went off on Mr. Price in Shakespearean talk. Hilarious. Mr. Grovenor probably would’ve loved it.
Everyone was laughing, holding their guts and their sides as these actors gave Mr. Price his final wish, and acted out his funeral play, a comedy, at his funeral. At the end of it all his wife got up to speak. Her smile was big and you could tell that she had had quite a laugh herself.
“And the award for best actor goes to,” she called out, then she looked down at the casket, “Glendale Price!” Everyone laughed and stood and clapped for Mr. Price, lying there stiff as a board in his burial box. There was no smile on his face. No final bow. Nothing. Mrs. Price’s smile faded a little. Just a little. Most people probably didn’t catch it because they were too busy clapping. But I caught it. She never broke down, but that split second when the truth of the matter flashed across her face was all I needed to know it was there.
Besides the happy, sad, and funny funerals, there were the super quick in-and-out funerals, or as Robbie Ray called them, drive-bys. There was also what they called “reunerals”—funerals where people showed up who the rest of the family hadn’t seen in years. A reunion. And not only did long-lost members of the family show up, but they usually turned the whole service out with screaming and hollering. One time I even saw a woman try to climb in the casket with the dead person. One of her family members damn near had to put her in a headlock to get her to sit down. Mr. Ray said it’s always when people die that we start thinking about the wrong things we did to them, and that reunerals were the funerals where the guilty came to apologize.
Then there were the disorganized funerals. These were the worst, only because they usually lasted the longest for no reason at all. Nobody ever knows who’s supposed to read the obituary. The little girl they chose to read the scripture can’t read. The old choir members are having a hard time remembering what song to sing. Nobody knows who the pallbearers are. Just a mess. During these funerals Mr. Ray would usually just take charge and get it done. No matter how crazy or boring the funeral was, it didn’t matter. As long as I could spot the person hurting the most, I could feel the warm buzz filling me up inside, like a hit to a junkie. And to be honest, I didn’t feel like such a creep about it all like I did when I first started sitting in. Don’t get me wrong, I still knew it was weird, but as long as I got out of there before the repast—as long as I could disappear before anyone started asking questions—I was cool. No repasts. Ever. That was the rule.
But of course, like all rules, there was one time—and one time only—that I broke it. November twenty-fourth. Two days before Thanksgiving, three months after my mother’s death, and two months after my father’s accident. I went to the rehab place to see him early that morning. His jaw was all back to normal by then, the wires out, his ribs were healed, and the casts were off, but the leg exercises they had him doing—the ones I saw—looked painful as hell. He basically had to learn how to walk again. Dr. Winston was there as usual, even though he wasn’t the rehab doctor. The rehab doctor was Dr. Fisher, who wasn’t really as funny as Dr. Winston, but she was nice. Dr. Winston was just there to make sure everything was going smooth—and to crack some early-morning jokes.
“Okay, Mr. Miller, we gotta work out these legs. But listen here”—Dr. Winston leaned in a little—“today it’s not gonna just be machines. Today we’re going to actually get you upright, and I’m not gonna lie, it’s gonna hurt like hell. And to top it off, you’re going to have on a hospital gown, which means your ass is gonna be out. And I say this to add, don’t cry. No one wants to see a grown man with his ass out, crying like a baby. Trust me.” Dr. Winston smiled.
“No, you listen, Doc,” my dad said, joining in on the joke. “I’m gonna cry if I feel like it. And if anybody got a problem with that, well, my ass will already be out for them to kiss.” Then my father glanced at Dr. Fisher, who just stood there looking at them both like they were two teenage boys. “Not you, Dr. Fisher,” he said, smiling.
Then Dr. Winston burst
into laughter, shaking my father’s hand. And I realized that my dad sounded like himself again. He sounded like Daisy Miller’s husband.
Once we left, Mr. Ray told me he was having a hard time building up the courage to ask the receptionist lady—her name was Melissa—out on a date. See, even though my dad was transferred to the rehab, Mr. Ray would still pop by the main hospital part to see her while he waited for me.
“I just can’t seem to do it,” he said, palming the steering wheel. “If this was twenty years ago, I’d a already married her.” He gave the poor steering wheel a pound. Mr. Ray had no problems opening the door, but he just couldn’t close it, as my dad would say. This was the one area Mr. Ray’s too-smooth brother, Robbie, had over him.
“What you scared of ? She sure likes talking to you,” I said. Not that I had any good advice to give. Talking to girls wasn’t that easy for me either, and now I told myself that if I saw Renee again, I would take a shot. It might be a bad shot, but still a shot. But Mr. Ray was . . . Mr. Ray. The man. He had money, a job, and was the nicest guy in the world if you asked me, or anyone else in my neighborhood.
“Scared?” His face suddenly tightened up. “How long has it been since I been talking to her up there?”
I ran through the dates in my mind.
“About two months.”
Mr. Ray looked at me, surprised at how fast two months went. He slammed his hand down on the steering wheel again.
“A’ight, I’m gonna do it. Soon. I got to. This is crazy.” Then, like usual, he turned the radio up and headed toward my school.
“So who we got today?” I asked Mr. Ray, casually. I always liked to know ahead of time whose funeral it was, just because every now and then it was somebody I knew. And if it was, then I could relax a little because it was easy to fit in to a funeral of a person I actually knew, and then I didn’t feel like as much of a weirdo.
Mr. Ray turned the music down. “A woman named Gwendolyn Brown. You know her?”
Gwendolyn Brown. Gwendolyn Brown. I thought for a second to see if the name rang a bell. “Nope. Didn’t know her.”
“I did. She was a good lady,” Mr. Ray said. “Everything’s pretty much taken care of. All you have to do is make sure the repast room is ready to go with food on the tables and all that. Oh, and of course you need to set up the flowers, which I know you love to do.” He was used to me ranting about flowers, how they were a total waste of money and all that. “Other than that, you can”—he paused and flashed a slight grin—“y’know, do your thing.”
I was pretty sure that the grin meant that he knew I had a thing for these funerals, but he would never say anything about it. He probably knew since the first time I asked to sit in on one. I wasn’t sure if he understood it or not. But he didn’t mind.
“What time?” I asked as he pulled in front of the school. I reached in the back and grabbed my backpack.
“Early. Church doors open at twelve thirty. Service starts at one.”
“But I don’t get out of here until noon,” I explained, slipping out of the car. I grabbed my suit jacket off the back of the headrest. Mr. Ray taught me that. It keeps it from getting wrinkled.
“I know.” He smiled. “That’s why I’ll be right here to pick you up. Twelve on the dot.”
In New York it’s pretty hard to see something you’ve never seen before. No one trips about anything because most of us have seen it all. But at noon, when that hearse pulled up outside and I went and got in, the fifty or so students who could leave early like me were definitely confused, and I knew there would be a new rumor boomeranging from lunch table to locker about how I ride around in death-mobiles.
“The hearse?” I asked, quickly ducking into the car. “You had to drive the hearse?”
“Well, how the hell else were we gonna get Ms. Brown here to her big event?” Mr. Ray laughed. “Now you’re really the coolest kid in school.”
Great. I had finally gotten people to stop staring at me for being the kid whose mom died, and then for being the boy in the black suit, and now I was the boy in the black suit whose mom died and who rides around in a hearse. Perfect. I was officially weirder than the goth kids. Even better, I was the kid the goth kids wanted to be.
“We got ten minutes to get to the church, so strap up,” Mr. Ray said, mashing the gas pedal and whipping the car around the corner like it was a go-cart.
As we zoomed down Brooklyn streets, I looked out the window and stared at New York in the fall, the only time everybody realizes that there are way more trees in the city than we think. Normally you never pay attention to trees here, or even recognize them, but then November hits and every step you take, crispy leaves crunch under your feet, and you’re forced to notice trees are clearly everywhere. But we never seem to see them. Maybe even they get drowned out by the madness.
When we pulled up to the church, the steps were covered in brown and gold and red leaves that blew around in clusters.
“If it wasn’t so windy, I’d ask you to sweep,” Mr. Ray said, killing the engine. “But ain’t no point.”
Robbie Ray was already sitting on the top step, his gold chain gleaming in the sun, the blowing leaves slapping him in the face, driving him crazy.
“I kinda like the wind, actually.”
I checked my cell phone. No missed calls, of course. 12:17.
Thirteen minutes. I had my instructions. Set up the repast room and take care of the flowers.
First the flowers. Usually they’re sitting right in the front, five or six bouquets. But this lady, she had flowers galore! I mean, fifteen or sixteen bouquets of all these crazy-ass flowers I had never even seen before, in pots and vases just as wild looking as the plants. I didn’t even know where I was going to put them all. I lugged each one up to the front and began putting them around the casket. By the time I was done, Ms. Brown looked like she was lying in a rainforest. And I looked like I had just run through one, I was sweating so bad. Some of those bouquets weighed a ton!
After that it was on to the easy stuff. Repast setup. I went to the basement of the church and laid all the cold food out on platters. The hot food, I had to put in pans that sit propped up on braces. They all come with these little cans, like jelly candles. I had to light the can-candles and put them under the pans of food to keep them hot. Nothing to it.
Next and last, tables and chairs. Mr. Ray said they were expecting it to be a pretty big repast. Like fifty people. So I set up ten tables, five chairs each. While unfolding the brown chairs and sliding them under each table, I could hear the people start to come in upstairs. Someone started playing the organ, but I don’t think it was a specific song. Just something to set the mood. Something sad, not like organs in churches can make another kind of sound other than a sad one.
I finished setting up, then tiptoed up the steps and slipped in to where the service was going on. It was a pretty good turnout. Almost full. Mixed crowd. Some old folks, some young folks, some middle folks. The usual funeral line was moving down the aisle, only a few people left to take one last look at Gwendolyn Brown. I took a seat in the last row of the church, and as soon as I sat down, someone was right there to hand me a program.
“Thanks,” I mouthed to the old usher lady, her hair a weird purplish gray color.
She nodded with a tight face and quickly stepped back to her post along the wall like a soldier. Ushers had a way of being like that.
Gwendolyn Brown. The picture on the program was of a caramel woman with an afro, wearing an orange suit and big gold hoop earrings. I knew it must’ve been an old picture because she looked much younger than the woman in the casket. Plus, the afro and the orange suit. Seventies all the way.
The inside of the program was filled with other pictures. One with her playing cards with some other old people. One with her in the kitchen holding a spoon to her mouth, cheesing. Some of the photos were of her holding kids
.
I skimmed through the obituary as the choir sang. She ran a homeless shelter for forty years. Loved playing cards and bingo. Never married. Survived by one granddaughter. Loved God. Loved music. Loved cooking. Loved flowers, obviously. And loved taking pictures.
I flipped the program over. One last picture took up the whole back of the program. It was her arm in arm with what I figured was the young granddaughter, but I couldn’t really tell because the photo was so blurred, and basically looked like a thousand little colored squares.
“Ladies and gentlemen, family and friends, saints and sinners, old and young,” the minister started. His voice vibrated, like he was singing, like he was some kind of bootleg Dr. King. “We are all here today to celebrate the home going of sister Gwendolyn Brown. We don’t come in sadness. No, we come in joy, for sister Brown is finally at peace with the mighty King of Kings.”
Blah, blah, blah. Heard it all before. I was used to almost every church funeral starting this way, and it killed me because I knew that the truth is that people do come in sadness. As a matter of fact, I don’t think anyone comes in joy. It’s a funeral.
The preacher continued explaining that it would be a short service because “it ain’t no point sitting around pouting,” and “sister Brown wouldn’t want no whole lotta tears.” He explained that the entire funeral would just be a few of Ms. Brown’s favorite songs, and a few words from her granddaughter, Love.
The Boy in the Black Suit Page 10