Getting Mother's Body

by Suzan-Lori Parks

  Son Walker taught me this trick. We would pull it together. When Billy came along and got old enough, Son was long gone but me and Billy would pull it together with whatever man we could find cause you need at least three people to do it. Dill ain’t never pulled it with us cause she believes too much in hard honest work.

  Like I was saying you need three folks, not counting the man who runs the filling station. You need a lady, a man, and a third person. The lady plays the Rich Lady, the man plays the Driver, and the third person plays what’s callt the Finder. The Rich Lady’s gotta be played by a gal who’s got the airs of sophistication about her. She gotta look like money, even though she don’t got a dime. It’s best if she’s flat broke cause that’ll put the fire in her belly and makes her the best Rich Lady she could be. I would always play the Rich Lady. Now the Finder can be a man or a woman or a child. They got to be real honest looking. The Finder was always Billy’s part. Getting a man to play the Driver wasn’t never too hard. There’s plenty of men who can drive a car.

  After you pick your Place and get yr three people, next you need a Ring. Use one that looks real but ain’t.

  Then you need a Car.

  The Car’s gotta be good-looking. If you don’t got one that belongs to you, go head and “borrow” one for the purpose. You only gonna be using it for a quick minute. It’s worth it.

  So you got your three people and you got yr Ring and yr Car and you got your Place all picked out. Say yr planning to pull yr ring trick at a filling station. We call the man working the filling station the Grease, short for Grease Monkey. OK. So the Rich Lady gets in the backseat, and her Driver, he’s wearing some kind of suit or something and a cap, he drives her up to that filling station. He stands by the car and he waits. The Rich Lady goes to the restroom or the water pump or what-have-you, saying she got to freshen up. Make sure the Grease sees her go to freshen up. Make sure the Grease sees her go back to her car. The Rich Lady sashays away, and when she comes back to the car she’s all flustered. Make sure the Grease sees all that. She tells the Grease she done lost her diamond ring in the restroom or by the water pump. Her and her Driver look around for it. She looks flustered and her Driver looks more flustered than she do. The Grease might help look he might not. The Rich Lady tells the Grease that, should he find her ring, she gonna give him a five-hundred-dollar reward. If yr playing the Rich Lady make sure you looking right at the Grease when you say “five hundred dollars.” Say the money like there was more where that comed from. Say it slow. Make sure he hears you. Look him right in the face when you speak. Look right into the Hole you know he got in his pocket. Say “five hundred dollars” like it ain’t nothing to you. You might have to practice this bit before you get it right. Say “five hundred dollars” and try to sound bored. Don’t suck in your breath or suck your teeth when you say the money. Breathe the green of them greenbacks out to the Grease. Make him feel like that money is already in his own pocket. Then you write down your phone number for him. I always tolt them Hollywood, California, or New York City or Chicago. You gotta learn the exchanges of these places by heart. Write the number on a slip of paper and remind him that, if he should find the ring, there will be a five-hundred-dollar reward. Then you hit the road.

  When yr pulling out, turn around and watch him. He should be looking around for the ring as you go.

  Next thing that happens you don’t see but you know how it happens cause you planned it. Your Finder comes up to the filling station. She just a poor scrawny thing walking up out of nowheres looking down at the ground as she walks.

  Lo and Behold.

  The Finder done found the ring. Now of course that ring wasn’t never lost cause the Rich Lady only just pretended to have it and to lose it and the Finder done pretended to find it but had it with her all along, you know. So the Finder done found the ring. And she makes a big deal of it. Maybe she got to holler cause the Grease is most likely as not in the toilet scrounging every inch of the place for that very ring, so your Finder got to holler and jump around and make a scene. Make sure yr Finder ain’t shy and quiet. So the Finder hollers and the Grease comes out and he works like a mule to get the Finder to give him that ring. He’s thinking of that five-hundred-dollar reward money in his pocket, the things he can buy with it, the stories he gonna tell his friends, maybe he already in his mind done quit his job pumping gas, maybe he already in his mind is on his way to the Big City and is in the middle of a long and satisfying five-hundred-dollar reward-money drinking-and-whoring spree complete with cards and dice and a young gal who’s the spitting image of Jean Harlow. Your Finder’s holding up a ring she just found, holding it up to the sunlight and saying something bout the twinkling of the diamonds and your Finder’s got the Grease’s whoring-and-drinking spree twinkling in her hand. And he gotta get that ring, see. And them guts that he never had to steal and that Hole in his pocket work together and push an idea up into his head.

  The Grease tells the Finder that he gonna give her money for the ring. No he ain’t gonna split the reward money with her, he don’t even mention no Rich Lady’s reward. He just goes to his filling station cash register and opens it up and gives the poor dumb-looking Finder all the money he got in it. He ain’t thinking of what his boss or his wife gonna say when they find the till empty. He’s hearing them dice and them whores talking. He got a Hole in his pocket that needs filling. He cleans out his own till, giving it all to the Finder in exchange for that ring. What the hell. The Rich Lady will send him his reward. He knows it. The Finder grins big, real happy to get the maybe thirty or forty dollars out the cash register, and the Grease is laughing cause he got real money coming his way. The Finder takes the money, gives the Grease the ring and heads off. Now the Grease got the ring. He calls the Rich Lady’s house. He don’t expect her to be there yet but he figures he gonna talk to one of her servants. The phone number don’t go through. The Rich Lady don’t exist at all. The Finder is long gone and meets up with the Rich Lady and the Driver in they agreed-on meeting place and there they are, for the cost of a costume jewelry ring, thirty or forty dollars the richer.

  Like I was saying. Me and Billy used to pull that one together quite a bit. We never got caught once. Well, we got caught once or twice but it was worth it. My Billy’s got promise. She was the best Finder I ever seen. She’s got what you call a Natural Way, and if she moves to a big city like Chicago or New York she could do pretty good for herself.

  DILL SMILES

  We pass an old sign.

  Two sign painters are up there, crawling on the sign like ants, sprucing the lettering up.

  “We almost there?” Laz asks. I nod yes.

  A minute later we get to LaJunta.

  There’s five buildings crouched along the edge of the highway.

  “LaJunta,” Laz says. He’s looking at me now. I nod my head. He drove real good. I thought he was gonna fall asleep and steer the hearse into a ditch or a tree or something but he drove as good as I woulda.

  Laz slows the hearse as we pass through the town, squinting at the little buildings. All of them cement, all of them sand-colored. A building with a flag out front. The law and post office combined.

  “You grew up here?”

  “Hells no.”

  “It’s smaller than Lincoln,” he says.

  This early in the morning there’s just a few people on the street. All of them whites. No Mexicans. None of us. They stare as we go by. Some of the men take off they hats.

  “They don’t know the difference between a funeral and a hearse that’s just driving around,” Laz says. He rolls down the window, looking at a man as we pass. A rancher-fella with an unshaved face and a sagging mouth and his hat across his heart, looking like he is about to weep. “No one died,” Laz says to the man, but the man don’t seem to hear. Laz slows down even more.

  “I don’t want to miss the motel.”

  “They got a big sign out front, you won’t miss it,” I says and we pick up speed again, leaving the little
crowd behind us.

  About a mile beyond town proper we see the big pink flamingo, standing on one leg and framed in neon. When Laz sees it his mouth opens up and it stays open until we’ve pulled up in front. Four little pink buildings with windows like patch pockets. All arranged in a half circle around the parking lot and the empty swimming pool. The building on the end’s got a sign saying “Office,” the others got numbers on them 11, 22, and 33. Each one got a new coat of pink paint.

  “They know we’re coming?” Laz asks.

  “They will in a minute,” I says.

  I knock on the office but there ain’t no answer. The door is freshly pink-painted plywood with a little doorknob, brass metal under a thin layer of pink paint. I stand there knocking for a good while. The thin screen is hot, the door behind it warm to the touch. After a while I kick the base of the door with my boot. But I don’t kick too hard. Behind me, Laz, out of the hearse, stands in place, stretching his back, his arms, his sides.

  The first time Willa Mae was here, I brought her. It was Christmas and she’d been living with me for three whole months. I wanted to show off the gal I was planning to marry.

  There’s a screeching sound as the screen from number 33 opens. A tiny walnut-colored woman wearing cowboy gear stands in the doorway. Her arms piled high with dirty sheets. She pats a space down in the middle of the pile, getting a good look at me.

  “Hey, Ma,” I says.

  BIRDIE

  Co-inky-dinky. I read about it in my National Geographic. A car pulls up. Fancy. Same kind that was here before but not. That’s whatcha call a co-inky-dinky.

  Rude is standing at the pumps crying about how his cherry pie got stolt and did I see anybody come up and steal it and I don’t say nothing cause I did what I did with that Negro boy. He couldn’t of stole it. And his wife he was with or his cousin or whoever the hell he said she was, she was pregnant and honest-looking and she didn’t steal it. So Rude is standing there going on and on about how he’s gonna get another gun to protect us and I ain’t saying nothing cause something in my head thinks he’s gonna get another gun so he can shoot me with it cause he knows what I did with that Negro boy. He is trying to smoke me out by talking about his cherry pie, but I ain’t falling for it. I was crazy enough to marry Rude and I was crazy enough to put his name on the sign up there with mine and I’m crazy enough to cheat on him but I ain’t crazy enough to tell him what I do.

  I ain’t the only one who cheats. I only started cheating cause Rude started cheating. Rude’s short for Rudolph. The reindeer not the movie star. But none of that don’t got nothing to do with the car that pulled up while he was going on and on about his pie.

  A fancy car. And the same model and color like the one them colored cousins was driving or my name ain’t Birdie. Only this one ain’t theirs. It couldn’t be. This one’s got different folks in it. A white lady. Rich as the day is long and her Driver. They just glide off the road and up to the pumps like they’s riding on air.

  “Get the hell across the street,” Rude says to me in his do-what-I-says-or-I’ma-hit-you voice. I head across the road to the diner. We both know that, by the look of the Rich Lady, she gonna give him a big tip if he does a good job and he wants me to go cut out so he can get the whole tip for himself. I go across to the diner all right and I sit at the counter reading my National Geographic. They got a story in there about the Indians of India and how when they die they get cremated.

  Across the street I watch them. Rude giving them full service and the Driver opening up a black umbrella so the Rich Lady can get protection from the heat. That’s what you call living. The Rich Lady’s living while Rude’s scurrying around, pumping they gas and checking and double-checking they oil, double-washing they windshield. I can see his arms pointing and waving and his mouth going as he talks to the Rich Lady. I can’t hear what he’s saying but I can see how he’s saying it. Stooping his back and working and running his fingers through his hair, making sure it’s neat, probably using his gimme-a-big-tip voice. He polishes her headlights. We been married two whole years. This was my daddy’s filling station and diner until he got too sick to run it so I ran it and when me and Rude got married I let Rude put his name up there with mines and that kilt my daddy pretty much. “Birdie and Rude’s Texaco, Birdie and Rude’s Eats,” even though my daddy told me I was crazy. We been married two whole years and I ain’t never seen Rude polish nobody’s headlights. We don’t see eye to eye, but that don’t mean I like watching him beg. He’s over there begging for a big tip and I would rather read about the Indians of India.

  Getting cremated must hurt on some level but if you ever done anything you regret, I think it’s the only way to go. Cremating’s gonna be the way I choose. It would burn up all the evidence of what could be called my indiscretions. Talk about burning yr bridges. My body tracked-over with all the fingerprints of other men other than Rude. Those fingerprints will turn to smoke as my body burns.

  I like reading National Geographic cause when I’m reading about faraway places time passes faster than when I’m reading about familiar things. When I look up from my magazine over a half an hour has gone by like it was nothing. Rude is in the office, from where I’m at it looks like he’s on the phone. The fancy car’s gone and what looks like a gal, in a big straw hat, is walking away fast down the road.

  CANDY NAPOLEON

  I don’t run no Taj Mahal but I can say that, through hard times and good times, I’ve kept this Pink Flamingo running.

  “You got the manners of a gentleman,” I says to Mr. Laz Jackson. We’re sitting out at the picnic table in front of Room 11. He’s eating my baked chicken and is working fast through his third helping of my legendary cornbread dressing.

  “It’s kind of you to feed me,” he says.

  “You got manners enough to eat what’s in front of you,” I says.

  “I’m hungry for sure,” he says. “Dill wouldn’t let me stop except for when it was necessary.” He pulls his knit cap down on his head low, covering his eyes and thick eyeglasses, but he keeps eating.

  “Dill’s been funny all her life,” I says.

  “You oughta know, you being her mother and all,” Laz says.

  Dill, my own flesh and blood, don’t want nothing but coffee. She’s sitting out there on the grave with her gun. I got another daughter, Even, my only child with Big John Napoleon, the King of the Cowboys. Why do I call her “Even”? I didn’t really want her but the good Lord got even with me. She turned out good, though. Still lives at home.

  “You all come out here to dig up Willa Mae?” I ask him.

  “I think we come out here not to dig, ma’am,” he says.

  “Ain’t you hot in that wool cap?”

  “No, ma’am,” he says.

  When he finishes his dinner I take him to see the rooms. They’re all the same and the outside color scheme is continued indoors. Pink bedspreads and curtains. Pink end-tables with matching pink lampshaded lamps.

  “How long you gonna be visiting?” I ask Laz.

  “That’s up to Dill,” he says.

  The way he says Dill’s name makes it sound like they got a bond of some kind but I know enough about Dill to know Laz ain’t her sweetheart. I offer him Room 11 to sleep in. He pets the bedspread then lays down, looking at the ceiling then at the walls. There’s a photograph of me riding Trigger, one of John Henry’s horses. It was the first rodeo where I showed off my standing-in-the-saddle act. Laz gets up from the bed to take a closer look.

  “That you?”

  “A long time ago.”

  “Standing up and riding in the saddle,” he says. He looks from the photograph to me. I had style then. Now I got more style. My mail-order wig with my hair cascading down to my shoulders. My straw cowgal hat. My hot green western shirt with the silver fringe. My pressed dungarees and red snakeskin boots. I got a gold necklace in the shape of a horseshoe. Turned to the side the horseshoe makes a C. John Henry gived it to me. Horseshoe for luck and C for Ca
ndy. I smile at Laz showing him my two front teeth, gold like my good luck charm.

  “I could ride bareback too,” I says.

  “I’d like to see that,” he says.

  Each room’s got windows in the front and back. I part the curtains on the back. We see Dill, looking at the grave site with her head hung down. I open the front curtains. “In the morning you can wake up and look at the pool,” I tell Laz.

  “There ain’t no water in it,” he says, as politely as he can.

  “Lemme show you our horse,” I says and we go around back.

  The crickets hiss at each other. A baby rabbit wallows in the cool dirt underneath a little soaptree yucca. “Feels like we walking around in a oven,” Laz says.

  “Radio says it’ll be a hundred and ten degrees today,” I tell him and he looks impressed.

  Buster’s got goat-milk-colored skin and eyes green as spinach and a swayback. We tether him up to the clothesline. He can run back and forth as much as he likes and a clothesline’s cheaper than a fence. Laz pets Buster then fans his hand slow in front of Buster’s face, moving the flies away. I look over at Dill. She’s moved away from the grave and walked to the far edge of the field. She stands there looking at the single tractor, property of Rising Bird Development. The tractor’s tires are right on the edge of my already-sold property line, ready to start plowing the land and making that supermarket come Thursday.