by Dorothy West
Judy cried now, unchildishly and terribly, in regret that Uncle Eben had ever lived. She had the sharp thought: Uncle Eben’s life and Uncle Eben’s death do not really matter…. She was no longer a small child reasoning. Even her word images were mature. She was seeing deeply the tragedy of commonplace existence.
Her attention was acute now. She was keenly aware of her own absorption. The egotism that at all times swayed her was compelling her to store up impressions. She knew with bitterness that when she was older and abler, the events of this day would crowd into her mind with the utmost clearness and find release through her own particular medium of words. Only as it might serve her as a plot for a story—and the horror of this overwhelmed her—had the poor life and death of Uncle Eben any meaning.
He had left no child, nor book, nor even ennobling longings to thread into eternity the wisp of his spirit.
• • •
A big black man was shyly speaking. He called Uncle Eben a brother worker. He said that he was glad to be here to represent the Pullman company, and pointed out their unlovely flowers. He made a large gesture of introducing his wife, and sat down relievedly.
She advanced toward the casket. She was brown and buxom and soiled. Her voice was not beautiful.
“I never knew our dear brother personally, but I feel very close to all Pullman porters on account of my husband’s being one of the head ones. I tries to come to their funerals as often as I can. I am proud to say that last year I didn’t miss one.
“I’m not much on poem writing, but most people seems to like these little verses which I composed for Pullman Brother Jessey’s death in 1916. I generally reads it at funerals. With your kind indulgence, I’ll read it at this one.”
She ducked her head as a child might, and recited in an unmusical tremolo:
My tears overflow as I look down upon our dear brother.
The eyes that could open are shut.
The tongue that could speak is mute.
The feet that traversed o’er the earth are still by our Maker’s will.
We weep beside this casket, we the wife, we the children, we the sorrowing friends.
We cannot realize that this is but the shell.
Already in spirit our dear brother stands before his Maker.
And God sits on His golden throne passing judgment.
We who knew this dear man know with confidence that the gates have been opened to him.
He lived clean and died humble, and that counts.
Do not take it too much to heart, dear relatives and friends.
We all got a time to go, and some go soon, and some go late.
Just lay your burden on the Lord, and he will gladly lighten your load.
The Devil is a toad!
She went and sat down.
Judy could hear little sputters of praise. The aunts were pressing the soiled lady’s hands. Over her head the father bent to the mother and said earnestly: “Real sad and appropriate.”
The young preacher went to stand above the body. He was suddenly so wild-eyed that Judy thought he must be drunk.
He said heatedly: “This man ain’t happy. This poor brother died in despair. No undertaker’s art could smooth out all his suffering. He was worried to death, that’s what. Why ain’t he having a big funeral in some dicty church ’stead of you asking somebody you never seen before to come round here? ’Cause none of you thought he was worth a highfalutin funeral. I feels for this man.”
Judy simply held her breath. She dared not stare up at her parents, but she was aware of her mother’s nervous twitching.
The preacher went on: “I didn’t come here to preach this funeral in hopes of getting five or ten dollars. I don’t want no money. Get this straight. I wouldn’t take it. I ain’t doing a bit more for this dead brother than I want somebody, out of the kindness of his heart, to do some day for me.”
Judy thought that rather admirable.
“You all been bragging ’bout him being a Pullman porter. That’s first cousin to being a slave. Why ain’t you put it right? For twenty years our dead brother’s been an ’umble cog in a wheel.
“The trouble with our kind of people is we don’t stick together. The white man does, and the white man rules the world. We got to organize! Us that is on top has got to help us at the bottom. But what uppity Negro will? But don’t you all get me started. I never know when to stop. Jesus, guide this soul over Jordan. Amen.”
He practically leaped into his coat and came to shake hands with the mother.
“Thank you, sister,” Judy heard, as he patted her hat and passed on to the father.
Judy tugged at her mother. “Mums, why did he thank you? Oughtn’t you to have thanked him?”
“Ssh! For the money, child. Stop asking questions.”
“What money, Mums? Did you give him money?”
“Judy, I’m warning you! For the funeral, child. You got to give them a little something.”
Judy was simply struck. “But, Mummy, he said he wouldn’t take it!”
The mother whispered wearily: “They got to say something, child.”
Two efficient men came to close the casket. The father was led by the light-skinned lady to take a last look. He came back considerably stricken and leaned against Judy. She slipped her arm around him. Through her small body wave upon wave of maternal passion surged. She was no longer contemptuous. Her heart swelled with compassion.
The efficient men trundled the box out on castors. The father and the mother followed. Judy went between the aunts into the sunny street.
The casket went neatly into a wooden box in the hearse. The flowers were piled around it. The door would not shut, and the undertaker fiddled and frowned.
Judy thought in alarm: I couldn’t bear it if Uncle Eben spilled in the street….
But presently the door banged shut. Judy followed the family into the first car.
The mother immediately flung back her veil. Her lovely face was flushed and excited. The father squirmed in his shoes. The aunts tried hard to go on with their weeping, but could not.
The undertaker poked in his head. “We’re ready to start. Mister and Missus Tilly, and Missus Mamie Wicks, and Miss Eva Jenkins are following in the second car. It’ll be quite a ride, so you all settle comfortable.” He made a gesture. “That little thing there is an ashtray. Ashes to ashes.” He laughed kindly and shut them in.
The hearse started off. In a moment their motor was rolling smoothly. Judy settled back, liking it very much, and wishing she could look out the window.
“No mind that preacher was right,” said the father, loosing his laces.
“He wasn’t nobody’s fool,” said the elder aunt.
The contrary mother said smartly: “I didn’t like his talking like that at a funeral.”
“We got to organize,” the father remembered. “There ain’t no set time to preach that.”
“Funerals should be sad,” said the mother.
“God knows!” sighed the favorite aunt.
“Still,” agreed the father, “I didn’t like him flinging up to us about Eben.”
The mother voiced coldly: “Sounded to me like he was posted.”
The favorite aunt drew up her delicate body. “Then it must be your conscience. God is my witness that until that man stood in the pulpit, I couldn’t have told you he was white or black.”
“Eben died careworn and weary,” said the elder aunt. “That young man didn’t need his glasses to tell him that.”
The mother’s voice shook. “I got as much pity as anybody, but, more than that, I got a child. And that child comes close to me as God Himself! Now that Eben’s gone to glory, I can praise his virtues loud as anyone. But Eben had his faults, and I won’t shut my eyes to them. He let himself go in his blindness. He wasn’t careful. He wasn’t always … clean. I mean to bring up my child like a white child. There ain’t nothing going to sicken her little stomach. There ain’t nothing going to soil her little mind.”
She made a little cradle of her hands.
“You all didn’t hear Eva Jenkins moaning and groaning,” said the elder aunt.
The mother seemed to increase. “Carrying on like a fool!”
The father added: “I reckon she realized Eben’s bit of money won’t never come to her now.”
The favorite aunt said gently: “I think she really loved him.”
The elder aunt made a coarse joke. “Yeh, him and his money.”
“Eva Jenkins ain’t young,” said the favorite aunt. “It wasn’t love she wanted….”
“You struck it right,” the father cut in unkindly. “It was easy in her old age, and a blind old shoe what couldn’t keep track of her comings and goings.”
The mother said with definiteness: “Ever since that trouble in lodge meeting eight years ago, Eva Jenkins had it in for me. It’s my opinion she wanted poor Eben just on account of spite, so’s to take his little lump of money away from me and mine.”
“I fixed her good,” the father triumphed, “when I got my brother Eben to sign every penny over to me.”
“And you broke her heart,” said the favorite aunt. “She knew that, alone, she could never give Eben the little comforts his nature demanded.” She went on broodingly: “I guess she wonders now did we. People has got to lie flat on their backs before they find out what’s false and what’s true.”
Judy thought with pride: My aunty is good. I want to be good like my aunty. But I love my mummy best, even though my mummy tells lies. My mummy and daddy care about money. I never, never want to …
The elder aunt snapped up the back curtain. “Still at it,” she reported grimly.
“Jerk it down in her face,” the father commanded, “to show her how much she’s wanted at my brother Eben’s funeral. You got to be common with some folks before they understand.”
The aunt did so with such vengeance that one of the side shades flew up, and Judy caught a little pool of sun in her cradle, and folded her hands to shut the glare out of her baby’s eyes.
“I could eat a horse and wagon,” said the mother.
“I don’t know why ’tis,” said the father, “but funerals make me hungry.”
“I set a nice dinner back on the stove. I’ll suttinly be glad to pitch into it. There’s nothing I like more than I like chicken and rice and thick brown gravy.”
The father reminisced sentimentally: “There’s nothing I like more than I like black-eyed peas and ham and cabbage my mammy used to give us.”
The favorite aunt contributed frigidly: “I don’t see how you two can put your minds on food. All I want is a strong cup of tea and maybe a sliver of toast.”
“The dead are dead,” said the father. “The living has needs of the body.”
“The mother weeps for her child. Outside of that, I guess there ain’t much honest sorrow wasted.”
“Them as trusts God and believes in the resurrection has no need to weep. I shall meet my brother Eben in the promised land.”
Judy thought sharply how awful it must be to be old! To know that your sun may set tomorrow! She would guard her growing. She would end each day with some little delight. She would do good deeds! When she had reached Uncle Eben’s age, she must not die unhonored. But then she had the image of the baker’s wife shrieking in the back of the shop: “My baby’s dead! My little baby’s dead!” The young could die, too. Death was not the weak surrender of the old. Death was God in his heaven counting out souls.
But how could God let a little baby die? Why did he let it be born? If God is good, how can he bear to see its mother cry? People should be glad. To be glad is to be beautiful. When I am sad, my lip droops. When I am glad, I’m like my mummy. Everything should be beautiful. Why does a God let things be ugly? There is not really a Santa Claus. Can I be me if there is not a God? I wish I could ask my mummy. But my mummy tells lies. It’s wicked to lie to your little girl. When I tell lies, my throat burns, and I tremble. I’ll never, never lie to my little girl. But I’ll never, never have one. She might die. And then I should hate God. And if I could not say, “God! God!” I should want to die too….
The car had stopped. Judy peered ahead and saw the undertaker dash up a pebbled path. After a bit a bell tolled once, then again, and again. The hearse wound up a narrow road. The white slabs stood out sharply in the gathering dusk. A few fresh flowers reared their lovely heads. Green grass sprouted.
The hearse halted. Irish workmen came ambling. The undertaker again poked in his head, and said that he had got a nice plot, and that their brother was to be laid under six feet only. Judy didn’t know just why that mattered. But the father thanked him and bent to tie his laces.
They got out of the car. The undertaker shepherded them in order. The casket went perilously. Presently they stood above the open earth. The undertaker began giving crisp commands.
The mother said sharply: “Judy, go stand on that board. It’s an old saying, The cold you catch at a funeral lasts until your own.’”
Judy went to stand on the board, teetering a little.
She heard Mrs. Tilly whispering: “I hope there ain’t no long rigamarole. We got that other funeral.”
Eva Jenkins came to stand beside her. “You’re growing, Judy. I’m sorry your Uncle Eben couldn’t live to be proud of you.”
Judy stared up at the gentle-voiced woman. “I’m going to be a great writer.”
“You are going to be something that’s beautiful. And God knows there is need of beauty in this world.”
“To be beautiful is to be glad. I hate funerals!”
“To be really beautiful, Judy, is to come through pain and sorrow and parting without bitterness.”
Judy looked hard at Eva Jenkins and thought that she was beautiful.
The casket was lowered. The undertaker got a shovelful of earth and came first to the father. “Assist us in the burial of our dead,” he suggested. The father took a handful and weakly scattered it. Shortly the workmen were at it in earnest.
The undertaker fussily arranged the flowers. He detached a wilted carnation and offered it to the mother. Judy thought innocently: I guess they have favors at funerals just like at parties. But when she was passed a flower she clasped her hands behind her back and looked very stubborn. She had heard the father say, “I’ll keep mine forever,” and had not believed him, and had been distressed.
The undertaker began to shake hands all around. They turned toward the cars.
Mr. Tilly said softly to the father: “The company pays for the funeral, brother.”
The father exclaimed in gratitude: “God bless them! I’ll write them a letter of thanks in the morning. All this talk ’bout organization! Sometimes I think the Pullman porter is biting the hands what feeds him.”<
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The hearse had started. Judy watched it careen down the road in a wild dash to Mrs. Tilly’s other funeral. Mrs. Tilly, in the second car, madly followed. Their car, too, went swiftly and the driver whistled snatches of popular songs.
Two blocks away from their street, a motor swung around the corner into their fender. Their driver, who had to make Mrs. Tilly’s other funeral, too, cursed softly, halted his car, and went to make investigations.
The father, who loved excitement, followed him into the thick of it.
“Folks don’t have no respect for funerals nor nothing nowadays,” said the elder aunt.
The favorite aunt argued: “With the blinds up and the chauffeur singing, how was they to tell this was a funeral?”
The mother neatly concluded: “If we was standing on our heads, he hadn’t no right to run into us.”
They impatiently fidgeted. But they did not think it proper to get out and walk home from a funeral.
The father and the chauffeur returned in triumph. The father gave the chauffeur his card and urged him to summon him for a witness. When he was settled again, he said easily, “Looks like I lost my posy.”
Judy was glad to be home. She did not want any supper. But the aunts and the mother in fresh aprons ignored her.
The steaming supper was set on the table. They gathered round. The father said, “Do you remember how Eben loved chicken?” and tore into it. Judy, remembering, could not swallow.
The mother said impatiently: “Quit that fiddlin’ and eat your supper.”
“I’m not hungry,” Judy said faintly.
“Of course you are,” the elder aunt protested contentedly.
The father added facetiously: “All cullud children like chicken.”