I, Gracie

by Sharon Sala

  As the days passed and she began gaining strength, she gathered up everything sharp in the house, and then searched through the barn and even in the old chicken house, collecting anything that looked like a knife, then took it all up into the attic and put it in her great-granddaddy's old army trunk beneath his uniform. And still, she hadn't felt safe. So, she’d pushed the trunk into a corner and had piled it high with boxes.

  After she was finally well enough to cope, she’d begun checking out places where she could put her mother for permanent care.

  The shock came in finding out that none of the good places would accept Medicare or Medicaid. They wanted money. And lots of it. The care patients got in the ones that did accept it were on a level of horror she could not abide.

  She couldn't sell the ranch to pay for Mama's care. It wasn't hers to sell. It wasn't even Delia's to sell. It was in a trust for James, who would inherit it all upon Delia's death. Only the heir had the right to sell. Delia had the right of occupancy for the length of her life, but ownership passed down through blood to the eldest son. The one who'd abandoned them.

  Anger at the injustice of their lives had fueled her decision. She quit trying to figure out what to do with the woman who had tried to kill her and just brought her home, putting her back in her bedroom as if nothing had ever happened.

  After that, she'd cooked things that hadn't needed to be peeled or cut up. They’d eaten instant mashed potatoes, or she'd baked potatoes whole. She'd bought meat already cut up from the meat department and used bagged carrots that already peeled. When she'd needed to chop up an onion, she'd used the old grater, and when she'd wanted to dice up peppers or celery, she'd cut them up with the side of a fork, or just broke them up with her hands and cooked it. She'd slept with her door locked at night and had never turned her back on her mama again.

  The storm passed long before morning, and by the time the sun was up, humidity was at soul-suck level without a breath of air stirring. It was like trying to breathe beneath a pile of wet blankets. Flies were sticking to the screens like ticks on a fat hound. Just another hot summer day.

  Gracie opened all the windows in the house, turned on the box fan in the kitchen, and put it in front of the open window, hoping something would stir up a breeze. Then she made herself a bowl of cold cereal and a cup of coffee.

  Daphne sent her a text while she was eating to let her know they would all be in Sweetwater by Thursday and staying at the La Quinta on Georgia Avenue.

  Gracie read it but didn't answer. She didn't care where they were and wished to God she didn't have to ever look at their faces again.

  She got a text from Darlene telling her that she'd see her at the services, and then she asked, was there anything she needed.

  Gracie sent back a response.

  All I need is a hug.

  A couple of minutes later, Darlene replied.

  Count on it. Love you.

  Gracie blinked back tears.

  Love you, too, she replied, then finished her cereal and put her bowl in the sink.

  She had things to do today, but it wouldn't take all that long to pack because she didn't own much in this world. Everything in this house was part of the estate, but there were a couple of things going with her anyway: the quilt that had been on Mama's bed and the cuckoo clock from Gracie's room. Both had belonged to their grandmother, and now they were going to belong to her. She dared any of them to argue about it.

  Today was Wednesday.

  Sometime this morning, the funeral home would probably call to let her know her mother was ready for viewing. She'd have to go into town and deal with that, but in the meantime, she was thinking about her future.

  She needed a new place to be, and she was going to need a job.

  After getting suitcases from the attic, she began to pack. She didn't have a lot of clothes that she could wear anymore. The majority of what she'd brought home from college fell off her now. So, she started with her winter clothes, and as she was pulling down sweatshirts from a shelf, a piece of paper fell out from between them.

  She picked it up, unfolded it, and then frowned.

  I, Gracie, lost my mother today.

  "Oh my God. I don't even remember writing this," Gracie muttered. But she damn sure remembered it happening.

  Today was hot as hell, but the day she'd lost Mama had been cold as a well-digger's ass and promising snow.

  * * *

  It was mid-afternoon. The sky was gray, the clouds low and heavy, weighted down, like Gracie, with a burden they needed to let go.

  Delia was having a bad day. Gracie didn't know what had set her off, but her mama couldn't settle. She'd paced the house all day, refusing to eat, cranky with Gracie, and having a few childish fits of pique at being redirected from what she wanted to do.

  Finally, Gracie got her down for a nap, covered her up with the old patchwork quilt and tucked in with the heating pad on her sock-covered feet, then hoped for the best.

  As soon as she saw the even rise and fall of her mother's chest, she tiptoed out of the room and went down the hall to clean the bathroom. It took less than fifteen minutes, and when she finished, she stopped by Delia's room to peek in on her, but she was gone.

  Gracie sighed, put up the cleaning supplies, and then went to run her down, wondering where she'd gotten off to now. But her frustration soon turned to panic when Delia was nowhere to be found. Not anywhere in the house. Not in the cellar below the kitchen floor. Not in the attic above. Not hiding in a closet. Not anywhere.

  Gracie grabbed her coat and headed to the barn, running now and calling out.

  "Mama! Mama! Where are you?"

  But the barn was empty.

  The chicken house was empty.

  Gracie turned, her heart hammering as she stared off across the fields behind the house, thinking surely to God she would not go out there. She must have gotten on the road and started walking. But just to make sure, Gracie started running along the fence line between the yard and the pasture, looking for a sign that her mother might have gone that way, and still calling.

  "Mama! Maammmaa! Where are you?"

  And then she saw it...a tiny piece of blue and gray flannel caught on a hook of the barbed wire, and her heart nearly stopped.

  Mama had been wearing a blue and gray flannel shirt!

  She looked out across the prairie, and all she saw, as far as the eye could see, was a sea of brown, dead grass.

  Without hesitating, she opened the old gate between the pasture and the house, then ran for the house to get her keys. Within moments, she was in her car and flying through the gate, bouncing over dried gopher mounds, sliding across ancient buffalo wallows, trying to imagine where her mother might have gone. When she realized there were tiny snowflakes beginning to stick to the windshield, she groaned. This was not fucking happening.

  She started to call 9-1-1 but realized she'd left her phone in the house, so she just kept driving, desperate to find Delia before dark—before the weather got serious with its bad self and turned loose with real snow.

  "Please God, please, help me find Mama," Gracie cried. She was caught between weeping in gut-wrenching fear, and angry enough to curse the hard-headed, crazy-ass woman who no longer knew the difference between up and down.

  She was so far out into the pasture that she could no longer see the house, but still on their land. She drove in an ever-narrowing circle, praying she'd see her mama somewhere in the grass, when she thought she heard her Daddy's voice telling her to look up. And then it hit her!

  This was Texas. If there was a piece of flesh on the ground, there would be buzzards in the air—if they hadn't already migrated south for the winter. When she spotted a pair circling high above in the gray winter sky, she gunned the engine in their direction.

  Gracie saw the blue and gray shirt first, and then the woman wearing it, and stomped the brakes so hard she skidded, slammed the car into park, and got out running.

  Delia was lying on her side, nes
tled down in the dead grass and curled up in a ball. Her socks were embedded with stickers and grass seeds, her eyes glazed, her lips as blue as her shirt.

  Gracie thought Delia was dead, and then she blinked.

  "Mama!" she cried. Gracie dropped to her knees beside her to check her mama's pulse and see if she was bleeding anywhere.

  Delia blinked again, and then looked at Gracie.

  "Cows got out."

  Gracie groaned. "No, Mama. We don't have cows anymore. We sold them years ago."

  Delia blinked. "Tired."

  "Can you walk?" Gracie asked.

  "Tired," Delia said again.

  Gracie stood then dragged her mother to her feet. She slung Delia's arm around her shoulder and started moving her to the car, yelling and pulling her along with every step of the way.

  "Walk, Mama! I can't carry you. Move your feet!"

  "Tired," Delia kept saying.

  Gracie screamed. "I'm tired, too, dammit! I'm tired all the way down to my bones. But you're gonna walk now! One foot in front of the other! Just help me get you to the car. We'll drive the rest of the way home!"

  So, Delia walked, because Gracie was taking care of business.

  * * *

  Gracie wiped the beads of sweat from her forehead as the memory faded, then she looked back down at the paper in her hand, tossed it in the suitcase, and threw her sweatshirts in on top of it.

  She kept working until all her winter clothes were packed, and then set the suitcases against the wall in her room and went back to the attic to get more.

  She was coming down with one in each hand when her cell phone rang. She turned loose of the bags, letting them slide as they fell, and sat down on the stairs to answer.

  "Hello, this is Gracie."

  "Hello, Gracie. This is Willis Decker. We have your mama ready."

  "I'll clean up and be right there," she said, then ran the rest of the way down the stairs, picked up the bags, and carried them into her room.

  She stripped out of her old work clothes and washed up, took down her hair and brushed it again, then pulled it up into a ponytail at the nape of her neck before getting out more clean clothes.

  As she was dressing, it occurred to her that she didn't have anything to wear for the funeral. She sighed. One more detail she had to address. She was walking past the kitchen when she remembered she still hadn't taken Mama's eulogy to Brother Harp, so she dug it out of the roll-top desk in the living room and left the house.

  It seemed weird to have the freedom to do this now—to just get in the car and leave whenever she wanted. It was going to be an adjustment, having only herself to take care of, and a little part of her felt guilty for the brief spurt of relief that came with that knowledge.

  She drove with the air conditioner on and thought how good it felt to be cool. She wished she could just keep driving until she came to where she was next meant to be. But there was unfinished business here, and Gracie wasn't a woman who left anything undone.

  By the time she got to Decker's Funeral Home, she had herself as collected as she was ever going to be. This was the last thing she had to do for Mama—making sure she didn't look as crazy as she'd become. Still, there was a knot in Gracie’s gut as she got out and went into the funeral home.

  The secretary saw her as she entered the office.

  "Good morning, Gracie. Just take a seat, and I'll let Mr. Decker know you're here."

  "Yes, ma'am," Gracie said, then eased down into the pale, blue wing chair and folded her hands in her lap as the woman picked up the phone.

  A couple of minutes later, Willis Decker appeared in the doorway, neatly dressed in a light gray summer suit, with a white shirt and a red and gray striped tie. He looked like a short, en vogue version of Santa Claus, minus the beard.

  "Good morning, Gracie. Are you ready?" he asked.

  "Yes, sir," she said, and stood.

  Willis gently cupped her elbow, guiding her through the lobby then two huge swinging doors into the back, past a display of caskets and all of their accoutrements, past a couple of offices, and then into a room with a single open casket, parked right in the center of the floor.

  Willis was talking like a car salesman pitching the latest model as he led her up to the casket.

  "The white pearl casket with the pink lining is quite beautiful. The pink carnation casket spray was a good choice, but I have to mention that the dress Delia chose is unusual. I can't say as how I've ever buried someone in a wedding dress before."

  Gracie's voice shook. "Mama said she'd only worn that dress once when she married Daddy, and it seemed the sensible thing to do to get one more wear out of it."

  Willis chuckled. "That does sound like the Delia I knew. She was one of a kind." He paused and looked Gracie straight in the eyes. "I wish we'd known what a hard time you were having. I wish you would have asked for help. But I commend you for standing by your mama as her health and mind failed her. I cannot imagine all you endured, but you were a good and faithful daughter, Gracie Dunham. All those years certainly put some stars in your crown."

  "I didn't do it for stars," Gracie said, and looked down at her mother then, lying there so peacefully, her snow-white hair in the soft waves she'd favored. All the discolorations on her face and hands had been covered with makeup, and the faint brush of pink on her lips made it look like she was smiling. But it was the old white lace dress with the high neck and long sleeves Gracie loved most. She used to dream of getting married in that dress. But then she’d grown tall like her daddy and had given up her dreams to take care of mama. Now, it no longer mattered.

  Gracie smoothed out a bit of lace at the yoke of the dress, and then reached for her mother's hand. But the skin was cold, and the flesh was hard, and she pulled back.

  "She looks beautiful," Gracie said. "Thank you."

  Willis beamed.

  "Yes, ma'am, of course. So, is her appearance to your liking?"

  Gracie nodded.

  Willis signaled to two of his employees who quickly moved the casket through the halls and into a viewing room, where they quickly readjusted the casket spray and rearranged the flowers around the casket.

  "Where did all of these flowers come from?" Gracie asked.

  "They've been delivering them since yesterday," Willis said. "You can check the cards to see who they're from. I do know that the large one at the head of the casket and the two larger arrangements at the foot are from your brother and sisters."

  Gracie eyed the elaborate arrangements of cut flowers with a jaded eye. Typical that they would think nothing of spending all this money on flowers Mama would never see and ignore all her birthdays and Mother's Days that had come and gone.

  One arrangement—the one from James at the head of the casket—was made of white and yellow gladiola spears. The two at the foot were made of roses—one all white, and the other all pink. Gracie was neither impressed nor consoled by their presence.

  Willis touched her shoulder. "I'll just leave you alone now. Stay as long as you want. Come back as often as you want. I know you did not set up a specific night for a family viewing, but we can—"

  "No, sir, but thank you," Gracie said. "I'm following Mama's requests right down to the last period on the page."

  Willis nodded. "Understood. Thank you for letting us serve your family. I had the honor of tending to your daddy, Tommy, and now I have had the honor of tending to your mama's service, as well. If I don't see you before, I will certainly see you at the church Friday morning."

  And then he was gone, and Gracie was finally alone. Just her and Mama, the way it had been for the last nine years. She moved to the side of the casket, and then this time when she touched her mama's hand, she did not pull back.

  "Well, here we are, Mama. We've had one hell of a ride, you and me, and as hard as it was, and as sad as it was, I need you to know that every step of the way, you kept showing me what it meant to be strong, reminding me how tough Dunham women can be. I love you, Mama. I was lucky
to be your girl."

  Then she took a deep breath, turned around, and walked out.

  The moment she stepped out of the building, heat slapped her down, reminding her she was still in West Texas, and to get busy and finish what else she had to do before she melted where she stood. As soon as she got back in the car, she jacked up the air conditioning and headed for the Baptist church where her mama and daddy had gotten married.

  The irony was not to be missed.

  Same church.

  Same dress.

  Just different occasions.

  Chapter Four

  It was a few minutes past twelve when Gracie arrived. She grabbed the file and her car keys, then headed inside on the run.

  The interior was dark, the air conditioner laboring somewhere overhead, as Gracie walked down the hall to the pastor's office. She was halfway expecting everyone to be gone to lunch when she heard a voice and followed it.

  The door was open. She called out.

  "Hello?"

  Moments later, Brother Harp emerged.

  "Oh, hello, Gracie. I was watching the noon news. Guess I had the TV too loud."

  "No problem. I brought the eulogy," she said, and put the file folder in his hands. "There is a list of songs in there as well. I'll see you Friday."

  "Let me walk you to the door," he said.

  "No, thanks. I'm fine," Gracie said, and went out the same way she'd come in, leaving Brother Harp with Delia's last words and wishes.

  Gracie was hungry, but she didn't want to go trying on clothes smelling like French fries and ketchup, so she headed for Bealls on Broadway to get the shopping out of the way first.

  All she wanted was a little black dress and some shoes to go with it. She needed new everyday clothes, too, but she didn't have money for shopping. Maybe after Mama's life insurance policy came through. So, she drove toward Broadway with heat waves rising above the pavement like ghosts doing the shimmy on Halloween night, found a place to park, and hurried inside, heading straight to Gordman's for ladies wear.