In Memory of Junior (12 page)

She was hit between the eyes too, she said, knocked down to her knees. She told me that she could not walk away and not love me, there in the clean little community way down there in North Carolina, away from the commerce, chaffing, haggling, swapping, bartering of New York. But she couldn't ask me to go with her.

And she couldn't ask me not to go with her.

That day at the wedding, she had walked out into the front yard where others were gathered. I had followed.

“This is hot weather,” she said.

“It is, isn't it.”

“Did you grow up around here?” she asked.

“Down the road a ways. It gets bad in the summertime, especially July and August.”

“I think I rather like it in a way,” she said. “It's very human somehow. No, that's not the word. It's very . . . something.”

“It's pleasant in the mornings, after a night rain.”

“Do you have a family?” she asked me.

“I've got two boys and a hundred in-laws.”

“Do you ever get away?”

“No.”

“Do you ever want to?”

“Yes.”

We stopped along the road and had some sandwiches made and put them in a white paper bag—Honour kept white paper bags—and then we drove until we found a dirt road and then a field with a cart path. We took a blanket
out and sat under a tree, eating sandwiches and drinking cold orange juice, fresh squeezed and smelling good, and the june bugs were popping in the field and the boys weren't hanging all over me—for the first time, it seemed, in my life. The boys weren't in my face, between my legs, at my elbow, and the pull deep inside me—for my children—was relieved by the popping of the june bugs, the sight of Honour sitting there on the blanket, already unbuttoned some. I forced everything that was wailing and rearing up to a place behind me. I forced it all down, though it did, at times, rise up and overcome me. Honour was always there to help me regain myself.

You see, don't you, that my husband Glenn had never, ever told me that he
loved
me. Do you see what I was up against, what I was in? But Honour could talk about love. She could flat talk about love. She quoted Shakespeare, Song of Solomon, and others.

And I knew that if Honour disappeared, even for a minute, I would be draped, suffocated in a black guilt. And I knew that as long as she was there, I would have a happiness that rode herd on all that back there behind me where those two boys would get more attention—surely they would—than they could handle. And surely they'd have a chance to live on that farm. Even though they were my blood, they were their blood too, and somehow all of it back there hadn't quite took. I hadn't took to it. I'd been repelled by it, and I never knew that until Honour came.

I decided that the boys would take, in time, to all those aunts and uncles and their grandma and grandpa. They had already took. They wouldn't miss me so much. I remembered, and have remembered over and over again,
the Mama-Papa-Glenn-Bette-Ansie-aunts-uncles-cousins glob of mudclayglue. In the glob are the two small diamonds that are my boys. But I keep them covered. If they are about to shine through I run my fingers over the mudball, shaping it so the diamonds are covered again and again.

And Glenn was such a baby. Such a baby.

Sunday mornings I don't come in until ten. Relieve the teenager. Last Sunday morning, Mrs. Fuller drove up same time I did. She was on the way to church, stopping by to check on Miss Laura. Time we got in the door, we could hear Florida saying “Nut 'N Honey” over and over. I liked him better with his mouth shet. The teenager was out the door like a cat. She always that way.

While I put up my things, Mrs. Fuller, with her handful of Kleenex, kind of dawdled into Miss Laura's room, where she stay about fifteen seconds, then she come shuffling out like a trotting mule.
“Lord”
she say.
“Lord almighty,”
she shout,
“she's dead, she's dead! Lord gosh almighty.”

It had happened. I stopped at the phone, picked up the receiver, and pushed 911. “We got a mergency,” I said. “Somebody passed. Turner Road, first driveway on the right past the Antique Mart.”

They want to know how long she been dead and who I was.

I said I didn't know, and that I was the practical nurse.

That teenager. Marsha What-ever. I knew it. She supposed
to check in on both of them at bedtime, in the night, and next morning. I bet she ain't done none of that.

Well, finally. This look like it mean them boys was going to get the place, when all this time it been looking like it gone be just the opposite.

I was already checking the wall list for Faye's number.

“Miss Faye, it look like your mama have passed,” I said.

She say, “What?”

“Passed away.”

“Is this Gloria?”

“Yes'um.”

“She's what, Gloria?”

“
Dead
. She just
died
.”

“Oh no.”

“Yes ma'am, a few minutes ago. That's what Mrs. Fuller say. I'm real sorry.”

“Was Mrs. Fuller with her?”

“No ma'am. She was in there by herself. We called mergency and they're sending a amulance.”

“Does Mr. Bales know yet?”

“No'um, we ain't tole him but I imagine he heard the racket.”

Then I called Faison and Tate but neither one of them home. I was stalling, hoping Miss Wilma had gone in to tell Mr. Glenn. Lord have mercy, I hated to do that.

When I hung up, I looked toward Mr. Glenn's room. Mrs. Fuller stood there in the door with her back brace up against the doorjamb. She start sliding down to the floor, real slow. A tissue drop from her hand, then another one. Time I got to her she was sitting in the floor, with her head tilted back. She was fully fainted, passed out. Gone.

Mr. Glenn, see, he was dead too.

As soon as I got off the phone with Gloria, I drove to Summerlin. I realized as I drove that I was less prepared, emotionally, than I thought I was. The farm would, of course, go to Faison and Tate. Well . . . I could turn that loose. But Mother deserved something other than her meager final rewards. She took care of Glenn so long.

I walked into a houseful of visitors—all just out from church, I'm sure. As soon as I got into the hallway I stopped, brought my hands to my face. A dark lead blanket had dropped over me.

Mrs. Fuller walked up and put her hand on my shoulder, then hugged me. I hugged back. I almost loved her for a minute.

Then I stood there thinking, Why can't I just get in and get out? Why can't I just get in and sign a paper and get it over with, have the funeral, get back to Charlotte, back to work, and remember what my mother and real father and life were all like when I was growing up. Why can't I just grieve alone, and not have to put up with those boys, those aunts, and all that. It was enough knowing that Tate and Faison would end up with the whole place.

“Oh, Faye,” said Mrs. Fuller, “she was such a wonderful lady. We're all going to miss her. But I know none of us will miss her like you do.” She tried to hand me one of those Kleenex tissues. I refused it.

“And we ain't got no way of knowing which one died first,” she said.

“What? When?”

“First.”

“First what? I didn't . . .”

“Died.”

“Do you mean . . . Are you telling me that Mr. Bales died too?”

“No. What I was telling you was we ain't got no way of knowing which one died first.”

“Who?”

“Your mama or Mr. Bales.”

“Mr. Bales died too?”

“You didn't know that?”

“NO.”

It was as if the room suddenly started spinning. Two deaths had occurred in the same night. My own dear mother and this man, her husband. Besides all the immediate, complex confusion was the fact that I was suddenly in the middle of some kind of inheritance nightmare with those Bales brothers.

I had to sit down and get my breath.

They must have died at the same time. That teenager is no-count. Of course, both of them dying like that, something fishy could have been going on, but I ain't going to mention that unless somebody else does.

Faye was right distraught, of course.

It all took my breath. I fainted. But that ain't the first time. Someday I'm going to sit down and write down all the times I've fainted.

I just discovered them—one, then the other. I walked
into Miss Laura's room and there she was sitting up, dozing, I thought, leaning a little to one side, you know, like she sometimes got when we was visiting. Me or Harold used to push her back up straight. She looked just exactly like she was asleep. Then I walked over there to the bed and said, “Miss Laura, Miss Laura, are you asleep?” Well, of course she didn't answer. She had gone to her reward. And Florida saw it all, bless his heart. I moved him out in the hall so he wouldn't have to be in there with her.

Next, I made the announcement, see, to Gloria. About Miss Laura. Gloria got on the phone and I went in to tell Mr. Glenn of course—I hated to—and Lord almighty, he was dead too. I declare if I didn't think he was sleeping hisself, but I said to myself as I walked over to the bed that for sure . . . I said Lord have mercy this could not happen twicet in the same day, lightning striking twicet. But, bless his heart, he was stone dead. And before I knew what was going on, Gloria was fanning me in the floor and Lord the rescue squad had to split up and work on both of them at the same time I reckon—I couldn't look . . . What do you reckon they do when somebody is already dead? I guess they relax. Slow down a little.

I sat on the porch while they was in there, and then that Murphy fellow, Percy Murphy's boy, youngest, called the funeral home—the boy that got his foot cut real bad in the county lawnmower that time at the schoolhouse—told them to bring two cars, that lightning had struck twicet.

Poor Faye. She was in such a tizzy. I have never really deep down liked her all that much, but those kinds of feelings just can't count when somebody loses their mama. I don't care if they're in prison, even. There's something
about losing your mama that makes the kind of person you are not count at all.

I told Faye not to worry at all about food. I'd made a few phone calls and the chicken and cakes and pies were already rolling in.

I asked Faye what she thought we should do with Florida. Maybe give him to Gloria? But she couldn't think about Florida right then, she said, and of course she was right. And right then Florida whistled and then said, “Harold, that's not so.”

He says some of the funniest things. Harold says he sounds just like me. I say he don't. He says he does. Once that bird got well he started talking up a storm. Says anything he hears on TV—or anywhere else—that he decides he wants to say. I heard him say “Toyota” one time. They got more commercials than McDonald's.

Course the big question everybody is going to be asking I suppose, once all the grief dies down, is
who died first?

I knew all about the funeral arrangements so I explained to Faye as carefully and gently as I could. The arrangements were for Mr. Glenn to be viewed there at the homeplace, and Miss Laura up at the funeral home. Then I wondered while I was talking if I had it backwards. But I told her, and I'm sure she knew this, that it
was
Claremont. And they are the best. Mr. Simmons had said for Faye to give him a call. He'll tell her who's going to be where.

Anyway, after the embalming, they were to deliver one back to the homeplace and leave the othern up there. With the circumstances like they are with the boys and all, I think where who wanted to be viewed had been planned
out that way some time before. But with lightning striking twicet there would be, you know, hundreds of visitors. At least they were both in on the prearrangement plan, thank goodness.

We had Mr. Glenn's room for sitting since it was closest to the door. We aired it out—moved his bed out on the back porch. I bought a can of Pine Fresh. I told Faye that after all was said and done, her mama's room did smell better than Mr. Glenn's. I think she needed to know that. She said she appreciated it. I said I'd do it for anybody.

Me and Harold thought a lot of Miss Laura.

Nobody could get in touch with the boys, we thought, but then we figured out they had been notified, because Bert Talmadge said he'd seen them out at the graveyard with somebody—some old man, he said—checking out the burial plots. Mr. and Mrs. Bales have had a footstone already out there for a long time, so that won't be no problem. It pays to think ahead. I was glad the boys were taking care of that.

Faye got her a room at the Holiday Inn. Of course she couldn't stay in the homeplace under the conditions. One of the most embarrassing things I have ever encountered was right before she left. I have never. It would have been okay if it had happened after she left, but no, it had to happen right before she left, while she was standing there. That bird. He whistled, then this is what he said. He said, “Git yo ass on the pot, Miss Laura.”

This was the place. Yes. I looked at my gravesite. It looked nice. There was green grass. The footstone. The big brass plate. “It meets my approval,” I said.

I took a deep breath, relaxed. The boys were quiet. I looked around, over at the church. I remembered Anna's eyes when she stood beside that wood post that was in the cabin that was . . . “Where did that cabin used to be? The church cabin. Wadn't it right there under them trees?”

“I don't know,” said Tate. “It was torn down before I was born, I guess.”

“You never saw the church cabin?” I asked him.

“I think I remember it,” said Faison. “It was right there.”

Tate's boy was with us. Morgan.