The New Moon's Arms

by Nalo Hopkinson

  Ife caught up with us. “Mum? Don’t do anything to frighten Stanley, please? He might have nightmares. Mum?”

  What a way she overprotected that child!

  “Mistress Lambkin,” said Pastor Paul. He was puffing from the exertion. “So sorry for the interruption. Shall we, ahm, continue with the proceedings now?”

  He was another one who would never call me “Calamity,” no matter how much I asked him to. But he’d picked the wrong day to cross me. I nodded at him, all meekness. “Yes, thank you, Egbert,” I said in a clear, carrying voice.

  Stanley giggled. A man standing close to us hid his smile behind a cough. Egbert glanced around. Oh, yes; plenty of people had heard me. If he hated his bloody name so much, why he didn’t just change it? I had changed mine.

  Ifeoma snickered, flicked me an amused glance. Now, that was my girl; the one I’d raised. It was the same grin she’d given me that day in the grocery store, all those years ago.

  I had just started working at the library. My first paycheque wouldn’t come for another month. I’d been feeding myself and little Ife on macaroni and cheese, and we’d run out of cheese. How old would she have been then? About seven, I think. We were in the cold foods aisle. I was trying to choose between eggs and a block of cheese. I could get only one of them. I was trying not to look at the packets of chicken, of stewing beef, of goat meat. I couldn’t tell how long it had been since we’d had meat. Ifeoma loved roasted chicken legs. Suddenly my crazy girl child took it into her head to start singing “Little Sally Water” at the top of her considerable lungs, complete with the moves. I was about to scold her when I realised that people were looking at her, not me.

  “Rise, Sally, RISE!” Ifeoma had yelled, leaping up from the ground, “and dry your weeping eyes…”

  Quickly, while she was turning to the east, the west, and to the one she loved the best, I’d slipped two packets of chicken legs and one of stewing goat into the big pockets of my dirndl skirt. With all the gathered material in that skirt, nobody would notice the lumps. Only then did I order Ife to stop making so much commotion. And damned if the child didn’t straighten up immediately, smooth her dress down, and come and pat one of my pockets! And such a conspiring grin on her face! The little devil had been providing distraction so I could feed us both. I missed that Ife. The sober, responsible one standing beside me at the cemetery now was no fun at all.

  Egbert took a solemn few steps back to the graveside. “Everyone, please gather round,” he said.

  Ife, Stanley, and I moved to stand beside him. I bent and whispered to Stanley, “Don’t worry, I didn’t forget. We just have to finish this part first.”

  He gave an eager nod. Ifeoma said nothing, but she made a sour face. I composed myself for the rest of the funeral.

  “Dearly beloved,” said Pastor Paul, “James Allan Lambkin has come to the end of his life on this earth, and the beginning of his life with you. We therefore commit his body to the ground.”

  When I was nine, Dadda had shown me how to fish. But for months he wouldn’t let me bait the hook myself. He did it for me, because he was afraid I would jook my fingers.

  “Earth to earth,” said Pastor Paul.

  When I was twelve and woke up one morning to blood-stained sheets and my first period, Dadda ran to the store and brought back a big shopping bag with pads in all different shapes and sizes. He stood outside the closed bathroom door and called out instructions to me for how to put them on.

  Ifeoma sniffed and wiped her eyes. Stanley’s bottom lip was trembling. Damn, now I was tearing up, too.

  “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

  When I was thirteen and had passed my entrance exams to get into high school, Dadda took me to the big island to celebrate. We went to a fancy restaurant. He bought me ice cream and cake, and drank a toast to me with his glass of sorrel drink.

  “In the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.”

  When I was fifteen, I told Dadda that I was four months pregnant. He raged through the house for two hours, calling me nasty names and demanding to know who’d done it. I wouldn’t tell him. He stopped talking to me. He wouldn’t eat when I cooked. On the third day he ransacked my room and threw away all my makeup and nice clothes. On the fourth day I packed a small bag and moved out. Went to the big island and knocked on the door of Dadda’s sister Aunt Pearl and her husband Edward. Auntie Pearl let me know that I had shamed the whole family, but she and Uncle Edward gave me a roof and fed me, and they didn’t lecture me too often. I got a part-time job as a page in the library. Until my belly got too big for it, I worked all the hours they would give me, saved my money. It was Auntie who was with me the day I had Ifeoma. Auntie, and Michael.

  I dashed my eyes dry. Old brute. He’d had his ways, but if he thought I was going to get sentimental about him now that he was dead, he was sorely mistaken.

  “Amen.”

  “Amen,” responded everyone at the grave site.

  Pastor Paul turned to me and Ifeoma. “Now we’re going to lower the coffin into the grave,” he said. The word “grave” applied to my father was a shock. I felt it, like a blow over my heart. Dadda was in that box, and now they were going to cover him with dirt. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t make words come out.

  “That’s fine,” said Ifeoma to the pastor. “Let’s just do that.”

  Stanley was tugging urgently at my wrist. I patted his hand to let him know I understood. “We have a request first, Egbert,” I said to the pastor.

  “Yes, Miss Lambki… Calamity?”

  Good. He’d managed to force it out. “Pastor Paul,” I said as his reward—when the puppy obeys, you give it a treat—“can we open the coffin, please? I want to see Dadda’s face.” My voice broke on the last word.

  “Of course, Mistress… Calamity; of course.”

  “Oh, dear,” murmured Ifeoma. She pulled Stanley to her, wiped his face with the corner of her dress. He squirmed. She rummaged around in her handbag; one of those handwoven things made of jute or hay or something ecological of the sort. I gave Stanley a shaky wink. He looked scared and excited all at once.

  “Let me give you your asthma medicine first,” said Ife.

  “I don’t want it!” he replied, trying to wrench himself out of her hands. “It tastes like ass!”

  I snorted, pretended I was blowing my nose.

  “Stanley!” said Ife. She gave Stanley’s shoulder a little shake. “You have some respect for the dead!”

  Fine thing for her to say, Ms. Braless. Stanley scowled at her, then looked down at the ground. I whispered to Ifeoma, “It tastes like—”

  “Not so loud!” she muttered. “He hears these things on American television.”

  I chuckled.

  Pastor Paul called over the usher with the big hands, whispered to him. The usher nodded and got one of the others to help him slide back one corner of the coffin lid a little.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Ife asked.

  “Yes, darling. Stanley, are you ready?”

  Stanley started to shake his head no. Turned it into an uncertain nod.

  “Good boy. Never back down, you hear me? No matter what people say to you, always hold your spine straight and look them square in their eye. You understand me?”

  “Yes,” he said in a small voice. He was staring at the casket.

  I hoisted him up onto my hip and walked to the head of the coffin. Together, we looked inside.

  It took a while to make out Dadda’s wizened face in the darkness of the coffin.

  “What you think, Stanley?”

  “He’s all skinny.”

  “It’s true. Smoking isn’t good for you.”

  “And he’s wrinkly.”

  “Yes. He didn’t have a whole lot of flesh left on him. But he was still your great-grandpa.”

  “And he’s not a skellington,” the boy said in a rush, “and Grandma?”

  God, I hated when he called me that. “Yes, dear
?”

  “Why does he got makeup on his cheeks?”

  Ifeoma answered, “They did that at the funeral home, to make him look more natural. Don’t you think he looks natural, Stan-Stan?”

  “No,” said the precious boy. Oh, babes and sucklings. “I wanted to see a skellington. He just looks funny.”

  “Stanley!” said Ife. “Manners!”

  “Never mind, Stanley,” I said. “I agree with you. He just looks funny. You want to get down now?”

  “Yes, Grandm—”

  “Calamity.”

  “Yes, Calamity.”

  I sighed as I put Stanley to stand beside me. Ca-lam-i-ty. Easy to say. Just four small syllables, and not even so different from my childhood name. Just more truthful.

  I nodded at the ushers. They put the lid back and commenced to lowering the coffin. It was slung into some kind of fantastic contraption, a scaffolding of metal and straps, by which they winched it down. Two years I’d been the one supporting Dadda’s dying weight. Now that he had turned to earth, he was too heavy for me. This metal cradle would have to do it.

  We watched the coffin sink smoothly into the grave. People started throwing in wreaths and flowers. The man who had been standing close by turned to me. “I’m Gene Meeks,” he said.

  “Pleased to meet you.” He wasn’t bad-looking, in a “gruff black actor who always plays the honourable old-school army officer” kind of way. A little too lean on the bone for my liking.

  “You know your father used to tutor me, yes?” he said. “You were just a girl then. Maybe fourteen.”

  I stared into his face, trying to subtract the years from it. “Yes, you look familiar.”

  “Mr. Lambkin was the only reason I got into college. My science subjects, you know? I graduated secondary school with high honours because of him. He was like a second father to me.”

  “That must have been nice.” After I left home, Dadda never once asked after me, not even when Auntie told him that I had had the baby. He didn’t meet Ifeoma until she was four years old.

  The ushers escorted us to the funeral home’s reception parlour. Pastor Paul installed me in the only armchair; everyone else had to make do with the flimsy stacking chairs. Ife gave Stanley her car keys so that he could get his precious glider and play with it outside.

  The food that people had brought to share was already on the tables. The covers and lids came off, the mourners began to help themselves, and I spent the next hour enduring the slow, polite torture of the receiving line. Over by the decrepit piano, two cousins of Dadda’s I didn’t recognise—now, those were old women—belted out hymns while endless people shook my hand, told me how well they’d known my father, how much he’d done for them, how much they’d loved him. I recognised some of the ones who’d come to visit Dadda while I was looking after him. The rest were a blur. I smiled and said thank you until my teeth ached. Gene and Ife brought me some refreshment: a slice of the black cake I’d made, and in a little plastic cup, some fluorescent pink punch I hadn’t. I sipped it. My left eye spasmed against the sour-sweet chemical taste. “Jesus,” I said. “Who bring this?”

  “Me,” answered Gene. “You don’t like it?”

  He looked like somebody had kicked his puppy. I resigned myself and took a big gulp of the drink. I swallowed hard. “It’s wonderful,” I told him. “Just what I needed.”

  He beamed and patted my hand. I found myself gripping his hand back like a lifeline. I squeezed my eyes shut to blink back the sudden tears. Opened them again. With a sad smile, Gene nodded, gave my hand a firm squeeze. We stayed like that for a second or two. “You want me bring you some more?” he asked.

  I released my hold. “Of the drink? Oh, no. That was quite enough.”

  Mrs. Soledad stepped between us, neatly eclipsing Gene. For a little old woman, she knew how to take up space. She hugged me. “He on the next leg of the journey now,” she said. “One day you and he will catch up.”

  I murmured a thank you. I didn’t know how else to respond. She cotched herself on the padded arm of my chair. “Don’t worry,” she said, seeing me get up to offer her my chair. “This suit me better.”

  Mrs. Soledad had been Dadda’s neighbour. Her family had been salt farmers on Dolorosse since way back. She wouldn’t tell anyone her age. Her standard answer was “Somewhere between sixty and ‘oh God.’” She used to sit with Dadda when I was at work.

  “I guess I won’t be coming by the house so much any more.”

  “I guess so.”

  “You know what you going to do yet?”

  I shook my head.

  Mrs. Soledad went to the big island only when she absolutely had to. She had a quarter-acre salt pond on her property where she still farmed solar salt, the way she and her husband and their families used to do. No way they could compete with the Gilmor Saline factory, but Mrs. Soledad sent her specialty salts to big island on the workers’ co-op boat every few weeks, to be sold in the Cayaba tourist market. She and Mr. Soledad had sent their son to university on salt—first one in both their families to get a degree—and she wasn’t going stop now. For food, she phoned her order in to Boulton’s grocery on the big island and paid on her credit card. The grocery delivered the food in boxes to the waterbus. She would put on some of her dead husband’s working clothes, meet the waterbus at the Dolorosse docks, pile everything into a wheelbarrow, and haul it up to her house. If you offered to help her with it, she would blister your ears for you with some choice swear words. Dadda once joked that if her bark was this bad, he never wanted to feel her bite. And she was hale. Hiked from one end of Blessée to the other every day, for exercise.

  But right now, she simply sat beside me, in silence. The most settling silence I’d had all day. This was a side of her I hadn’t seen before. Hell, I’d never seen her in a dress before. In a little bit, my shoulders eased down from around my ears. I took a deep breath. “Nice hat,” I said. “Impressive.”

  Mrs. Soledad preened. Today’s confection was a smart little black pillbox with a huge peacock feather thrust through it and curling around the nape of her neck. The feather started off black at its base, and prismed to iridescent greens and purples at its tip. A scrunched half-veil in black netting completed the look. “You like it?” she asked.

  “It suits you.” I hoped she wouldn’t notice that I wasn’t exactly answering her question. Where was Gene? I tried not to make it too obvious I was looking around for him.

  Mrs. Soledad never went without a hat. “Protecting my head from the cancers,” she would say, pointing at the sun. I’d never seen her wear the same hat twice, and she liked them old-fashioned, gaudy, and extravagant. As far as Mrs. Soledad was concerned, every day was an Easter parade. She was Hindu, but that was just a minor detail.

  “Well,” she said, easing her feet down to the floor again, “I just see somebody bring out the white rum. I going over there. It’s not a funeral if you don’t knock back a dram or two. To honour the dead, you know?” Off she went, before I could thank her for everything she had done for Dadda and me.

  Gene came by. He had a plastic cup in either hand. He held one out to me.

  “I don’t want any more,” I said.

  He nodded. “I finally tasted it; the punch, I mean. I didn’t taste it when I made it. It was nasty! I just poured the rest of it down the drain.”

  That got a little laugh from me. “Then what is this?” I took the cup, looked inside. Water? I sniffed it, and gasped as the fumes went up my nose.

  “High wine,” Gene replied. Overproof rum. He poured a little of his on the floor in libation. “Spirits for the spirits.”

  I copied him, then we each knocked back the remaining rum in our cups.

  I coughed. “Thank you,” I rasped.

  “Your father was my hero,” he said.

  “Mmm.”

  “I never believed the people who said it’s he who did it. Not Mr. Lambkin. He wasn’t like that.”

  Suddenly I felt ill. Feverish. Th
e world started to recede. I grabbed for the arm of the chair. Damn. Not this again.

  There was a crash of breaking crockery. It startled me back into myself. I opened my eyes. At my feet lay the remains of a blue and white plate. Somebody must have dropped one of the dishes they’d brought to the potluck. Pastor Paul shooed people away from the shards. He shouted, “Whose plate is this?” No one answered. One of the singing cousins scurried to find a broom.

  “Hello, Mother.” My son-in-law Clifton leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek. “Sorry to take so long. My plane was delayed.” He peered into my face. “You all right?”

  “I think I going to be sick.”

  Clifton leapt right into action. He helped me up out of the armchair, put an arm around my shoulders. I was tottery on my stilettos. “She had a hard day,” he said to Gene. “She need to rest.”

  “Of course, of course.” He backed away.

  In two-twos, Clifton had made apologies to Pastor Paul for me, collected Ife and Stanley, and had gotten us out the door.

  I stopped when we were outside the building. The afternoon sun beat down on my shoulders, but it didn’t stifle me like inside the funeral home. I took a deep breath of air that wasn’t buzzing with whispered condolences.

  “How you feeling?” asked Ifeoma. She looked worried. Stanley too.

  “Never better. I just needed to get out of there.”

  “Gene was trying to sweet-talk her,” Clifton told Ife. “At Mr. Lambkin’s funeral!”

  “It wasn’t like that.” I made a mental note to check in with the doctor about those bloody spells. That was the fifth or sixth one. “I’m okay to walk on my own now. Let’s just go.”

  Clifton took his supporting arm from around me, and we all headed for the parking lot. Stanley was concentrating on the controls of his glider, making it fly on ahead of us. He tripped, but Clifton caught him by the back of his suit jacket before he fell. “Bring that thing down and stop playing with it,” he ordered. “Ife, how you could let him bring a toy to a funeral?”