Before all that began, before the onslaught of death’s details, I lay there rocking back and forth, Daddy’s shirt my pillow, and replayed Selena’s soft voice: You were everything to him.
But was I enough?
Mama showed up.
As people strolled in to view Daddy’s body, she walked up to me where I stood beside the casket.
“Wow, Rae, you’re so tall!” she whispered. It seemed improbable to me that her voice could remain the same all those years and her face could change against it. The skin around her high cheekbones was puffy, and beneath her eyes lay permanent dark crescents.
As I stood at my father’s funeral, staring at my mother whom I hadn’t seen in eight years, my brain kept saying, Remember this. Remember this, terrified that I wouldn’t. I took her hand. Age spots covered the back of it, and her palms were rough to the touch.
She licked her perfect full lips and took a deep breath. “This isn’t easy for me. Being here,” she said. “Just to have to be in Detroit at all is hard. But I wanted to do this, for you.”
That she had done the hardest thing imaginable, for me, caused the protective skein I’d grown back across my heart to slacken. Suddenly, I wanted to tell her about the pregnancy, hoping she’d invite me back to Louisiana—where we’d hire some auntie to help raise the baby and all live together family-style.
I moved near her. “Mama, let’s talk after the service, okay?”
“Cyril and I are not staying. Our plane leaves at two.”
“But I want to discuss something with you.”
“Rae, please don’t ask me if you can come back with me.” She shook her head. “It’s just not the right time.”
I stared at her, stunned by her mind-reading ability but more so by her bold rejection.
She inched a little closer. “We tried; it didn’t quite work out. Let’s just do the best we can now, okay?”
“The best we can?” I repeated.
She sighed, as though disappointed that more explanation was needed. “What I’m trying to tell you, Rae, is I can’t risk it again. I cannot risk getting close to another child who might die on me.”
“But what about now, while I’m still alive?”
She met my eyes with her own. “I feel bad that I don’t feel bad.”
Someday I will be grateful to my mother, for that gift of liberation she gave me. Someday I will accept what she told me to be true and understand that life had reduced her to taking Valium from the edge of a king-sized bed. But in that moment at Daddy’s funeral, I could only swallow my fantasy and try not to choke on it as I pressed a palm against my belly, silently telling the unborn baby this: You are lucky you will never know the sting of sudden good-bye.
“I’ll call you,” she said, like it would be the most natural thing to pick up again with our telephone relationship. She moved to take her seat among the mourners.
“Mama?” Her black suit was swimming on her bony frame. She turned to me. I was dry-eyed, dressed in a brand-new sapphire blue silk dress, the only piece I owned not a hand-me-down. I’d worn my dead sister’s clothes for so long, I didn’t know my own style, didn’t know what I might have become on my own. I held her gaze. “I won’t be home tonight.”
Mama looked away before focusing her pooled eyes on me. She nodded, turned, and slowly walked not to her seat but to the exit, right out of the funeral parlor door.
They are all the same. Orchestrated torture dressed up to look solemn and respectful. Cloying words about the loved one being back in God’s arms, God who knows best and never makes a mistake. The sight of cheap red and white carnations, the rows and rows of mourners—some in respectful black, others in bright colors meant to suggest a celebration of life amid the obvious end of one. Gut-wrenching sobs of regret and sorrow. Wobbly organ music played out of tune. A dead body in a box, its lid closed dramatically at the end. The slow march to somber chords out the back door. Torture.
At the cemetery, just as the minister ended his ritual of “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” Selena stepped away from the small crowd forming an arc around the grave and tossed a white flower onto Daddy’s metallic blue casket, whispered to him, then walked my way. The narrow heels of my pumps sank into the late summer soil as I watched her coming toward me, strands of coifed hair escaping their bobby pins, swelled breasts all but peeking out from where the flower had just been. She moved closer to hug me, and her grasp was strong and warm and soft, like it had been that day when I was a little girl and she had offered me her yielding flesh. I regained my balance, the smell of apple candy hovering.
“Thank you for coming,” I said.
Eyes rimmed with empathy, she said, “Do you know about your sister, Rae?”
I nodded. The fading Polaroid of Josie and me was now in my car’s glove compartment. The kind-faced nurse had handed over Daddy’s meager possessions, and I’d dug hungrily through his wallet, finding a worn love letter I’d written to him when I was seven, his disability papers from GM, and the peeling photo.
“He didn’t want to keep it a secret,” she said. “That was my idea.”
I shrugged, deliberate in my indifference. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not like I ever really knew her.”
“I was wrong,” she said. Then she grabbed my hand and placed into my palm a folded piece of paper, closing my fingers around it. “I was wrong,” she repeated before turning away. I watched her leave, remaining hypnotized by the sway of her soft wide hips until Mr. Alfred came up to me, blocking my view.
“JD looked mighty fine,” he said. “You put him away nicely.” He stepped back, shaking his bowed head, looking down at his deacon-in-church shoes. “I’m gonna miss him something awful,” he said in a low voice, his best buddy in the ground. “Something awful.” I patted his hand as my eyes searched for her. She was gone.
Later, I sat exhausted in the back of the limousine. I rolled down the window, and as we moved away from Daddy’s fresh grave, I craned my neck to stare at the soft, dark earth surrounding his plot, little mounds piled high like rich black coffee grinds. Aunt Essie, face streaked with wet grief, placed her hand firmly on my thigh, holding on as we moved along the cemetery road. I looked at the rows and rows of somber tombstones and thought how comforting it would be to crawl into that grave with him, curl atop his back. But then I realized that was impossible, as Daddy had been buried faceup.
When I ventured to read Selena’s note, we were already on Seven Mile Road, crawling through the red light at Fairfield, the limo’s headlights bouncing off the midday sun. I squinted and slowly opened the little piece of paper. There I found penmanship so small and fluid it stung my eyes.
That night, Aunt Essie and I sat at the dining room table as she rubbed her swollen knees, sipped her Lipton tea. I couldn’t help thinking of her infested bowlegs, of the sneaky, invisible blood clots that lay in wait to travel languidly to her heart. Daddy had left us both the house, which Mama had long ago signed over to him. “I’m thinking, I been here all these years, no count in my going back down South. Nothing left for me there really,” said Aunt Essie. “Thinking what with this big place, all these rooms, I might take in boarders. Help me out, what with Mr. Bingham’s pension check being so meager.” She referred to her long-dead husband seldom and each time with a courtesy title of mister. “It’s your house too, Darlin’, so what do you think?” she asked.
“I think that’s fine,” I said. “I’m leaving, anyway. First thing in the morning.”
“Leaving? Where to?”
“To drive cross-country like me and Daddy were planning to do,” I said with incredulity in my voice, like it should have been obvious.
“You going with Kevin?”
“No.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know about that now. You got to be careful out there on the road, a young girl in a fancy car,” she warned. “Something could happen.”
“What could happen?” It seemed to me the safest place
I could be was on a stretch of tarmac in the driver’s seat of a new car, automatic door locks clicked, seat belt fastened.
“You know,” she said.
“Know what?” I snapped, impatient with her forewarning, needing her to just say it.
“Accidents happen, Darlin’. We both know that.”
“Not if you’re careful,” I said. “And a good driver.”
Aunt Essie stared at me. “Some things can’t be avoided.”
“And some things can.”
“Darlin’,” she purred. “Listen to me. It’s too soon. Why don’t you wait a little while? We can comfort each other through this—”
“Daddy and I planned this trip. I’m going like we planned.”
She sighed. “What you hoping to find out there? Your daddy is not down the highway somewhere, waiting for you. He’s gone.”
I pushed back my chair, absorbing the impact.
She tried to put a warm compress across my grief. “Well, if being on the road is what you want, why don’t you drive down to Louisiana and visit your mother? She left so fast, you didn’t really get to spend much time with her, did you?”
“That’s not in my itinerary.” I said. Twice was enough. I was never going to be abandoned by mama again. Of that I was certain.
“No?”
“No. Anyway, I’m like Daddy. There’s nothing the South can do for me.”
“Oh.” Aunt Essie’s mouth stayed pursed in that O for an eternity. “Well,” she finally said. “Family is everything, Darlin.’ Don’t I wish my two little brothers had lived?” Her eyes filled. “I wouldn’t be alone right now, would I? No next of kin.”
“I’m your next of kin,” I said, kissing her square on her forehead. Then I left her there, her tea grown cold.
The double stench of cigarette butts and sweet carnations hung above us as Kevin thrust himself into me, my buttocks melting into the den’s deep red shag carpet. I arched my back and moaned quietly. We were compatible, ever in sync lovers. But tonight especially the sex felt raw and urgent and perfect. In her room above, Aunt Essie snored softly; in the room beside hers, an old army buddy of Daddy’s named Sam lay his tired body across my father’s bed, and in the living room his sons slept across makeshift pallets on the floor—the guest room’s mattress deemed too soft for their backs. Above us, a door creaked open and heat rose through my body. As I wrapped my legs tighter around Kevin’s, my mind’s eye saw only a huge dark blob—not unlike the raised hood of Daddy’s new Oldsmobile, flown open as I’d driven the car down Roselawn a day before. Suddenly unable to see in front of me, attracted to a danger I could only feel, I kept moving. Covering each other’s mouths, we came together. For the first time. It shocked me, the way physical pleasure had broken through my numbness, without my permission.
Kevin and I slid out of each other’s sweaty grasp. Despite the sanctity of Daddy’s den, I felt surrounded by remnants of the occasion—dishes seldom used on lamp tables, ashtrays overflowing, bouquets of flowers reeking. I dozed off with semen dripping from my thigh, awoke hours later—the morning upon me, my tongue heavy, cum dry and crusty. I wanted to have sex again, just to be entered and filled, but that was impossible. Kevin lay beside me flaccid and dead asleep. The house would soon be swelling with watchful, waking visitors, and I needed to slip Kevin out before Aunt Essie found him. Besides, I had an appointment to keep, the road to hit.
I woke up Kevin, nudging him gently. “You have to go,” I whispered.
He nodded, groggy. He had given me a fruit basket with yellow pears and shiny apples by way of condolence. And himself.
I walked him to the door. He kissed my cheek, demure given where his lips had just been the night before.
“Send me a postcard or two from the road,” he said, joking but meaning it.
“Sure,” I said, meaning it back, wishing he could come and not wanting him to.
“You really should’ve let me hook up a CB radio in your car, so we could talk while you’re on the highway,” he said.
“Next time,” I promised.
He nodded, smiled at me. “Next time, Lady Sunshine.”
We kissed good-bye. A real deep, tongue-thrusting kiss. I didn’t understand really why I was leaving. Compelled to go and already longing to be back.
I cooked breakfast, using one of Daddy’s gleaming, black-handled kitchen knives to slice vegetables for omelets. I cut the red peppers and scallions with precision, thinking how many times I’d watched him do this. As the sautéed peppers sizzled, I threw in the scallions and thought about these sharp knives with their smooth, worn handles. I knew I would cling to them with outsize attachment, like Kimmie’s old clothes. It startled me anew, that recognition that possessions can far outlive their possessors.
Daddy’s old-time buddy and his sons rose, bathed, wandered one by one into the kitchen. Sam coughed a lot, his chest filled with emphysema, asked for coffee only, please. Aunt Essie took care of everyone, ushering them in and out of the kitchen as soon as they’d devoured their eggs.
Once the men had eaten, said their good-byes, and piled into a long, old car en route to Kentucky, I headed for my room. There I took from under my pillow Daddy’s Demerol pills I’d found stashed in his end table drawer. I wanted to feel mellow, vaguely aware of my own sadness but not riveted by it—like I had felt as a child when Kimmie was newly dead and Daddy sang to me about little green apples. I swallowed a pill dry and headed toward the kitchen, where I found Aunt Essie staring out of the little window over the sink, washing dishes. Her gray hair was parted down the middle, two thinning plaits pinned on each side. I would miss her, she who had stepped in and raised me when my mother stepped out; she who had told me “You can’t miss what you never had” as a way of warning against sex when I entered adolescence; she who had concocted a tea of ginger and yarrow and sage to help bring down my stolen menses. All these years I had relied on Aunt Essie even as I secretly tried to resent her for ripping me off Daddy’s back. I now understood what she had done for me. Made this moment possible.
“I’m about to go,” I said.
She turned to me, drying her hands on a dish towel. “You sure about this?”
I nodded.
She squinted at me. “You call me from the road, now.”
I hugged her thick body as she wrapped her arms around my waist, her head barely reaching my chest. “I just hope he knew I loved him,” I said into the top of her head.
She squeezed me tighter. “How could he not, Darlin’? How could he not?”
“I just hope he did.”
She rubbed circles into my back and whispered, “God be with you.”
I finally let go. “I love you, Aunt Essie.”
Her face contorted as she waved me off. “Go on, now. Call me. And be safe, you hear me?”
I walked out of my childhood home and slipped into my new convertible Mustang, where it sat waiting in the driveway. It was so beautiful, humming beneath me with power and grace. Aunt Essie waved from the kitchen window, and I waved back. Daddy had taken out a special insurance policy that paid for the new Olds in the event of his death. “He bought that car for two reasons,” explained Mr. Alfred. “One, to try to get back some of the good feeling he had when he bought that first Olds way back when, and two, to make sure you had a little extra something just in case things didn’t work out as he planned.” Dr. Corey was in on it too. He’d approved the necessary medical forms Daddy needed to qualify for the insurance. They all expected me to sell the Cutlass and use the cash for college. Instead, I bought this creamy-white Ford Mustang. Daddy would call it “sporty and low-riding.” I felt no guilt over my betrayal of brand loyalty to GM, because I knew Daddy had once been equally disloyal. This impulse purchase marked my entrée into a world of individual choices made without consideration for loved ones—a place filled with exhilarating unaccountability. After I drove it off the lot, Mr. Alfred immediately rust-proofed my new car against erosion and time. “That job will last you a good m
any years,” he predicted.
I bought all new clothes for this trip, took nothing old with me, save a few talismans of protection: Kimmie’s charm bracelet, the ecru-toned hankie Mama long ago gave me, and one of Daddy’s billowy white shirts. Since the funeral I’d taken to wearing as household slippers his old shoes with the backs down. On impulse, I threw those, heavy and worn, into my suitcase too. My packed bags sat in the trunk, beside the spare tire.
I pulled into the clinic’s parking lot, suddenly realizing I’d forgotten the homemade music tape full of Daddy’s songs. I quickly glanced over my shoulder, hoping to find the tape in the backseat, and in that time another car, a painfully lime green–colored Pinto I never saw coming, cut into a parking space before me. I rammed into its tail, my car’s front end up against its mammoth rear window. Nothing moved for a few brief seconds, the hushed sound of metal against metal drifting like a bad rumor through the air. Upon impact I felt a tremor run through my body, spine-tingling in its pursuit, causing goose bumps to sprout across my arms and a quiver of deliciousness to escape between my thighs, my mind a broken record as I burst into a silent chant of Eyebrows up. Eyebrows up. Eyebrows up. My hands gripped the steering wheel, and I suddenly, irrationally longed for Aunt Essie and her succor, for her own talisman against misfortune: salt. She had sprinkled it around the house, left it in a bowl of water on Daddy’s nightstand, and when need be tossed it over her shoulder. Once she read in Ebony magazine that salt was a culprit of high blood pressure in black folks, and she decided with alacrity that keeping it away from Daddy would keep him alive. She solicited my help, and together we threw away the blue Morton box with the little girl in the yellow dress holding an umbrella, and hid the saltshaker from the kitchen table. She stopped cooking with it. Daddy railed that his food was “bland as all get out,” and he didn’t believe that medical nonsense anyway. He made me sneak into the kitchen and retrieve the saltshaker, bring it to him in the den at night, where he ate his meals with stealth after Aunt Essie was in bed. He swore me to secrecy.
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