We Are Not Like Them

by Christine Pride

  “Germs are good for you,” Lou said when she caught my jaw just about hanging on the floor. “Look at Jenny. Girl’s never sick.”

  When it was time to take a bath, I couldn’t find a washcloth. I asked Jen for one, and she told me they didn’t use them. Momma had always made it clear that a washcloth was essential to keeping your private parts “spick-and-span.”

  It all left me confused as to who was clean and who was dirty and how these things were determined.

  Here’s Momma now in her best black dress, a tattered apron tied around her waist, her head stuck deep in a cabinet, furiously scrubbing.

  “Ma?”

  When she emerges from the far reaches of the cabinet, one of the curlers in her hair gets caught on the door. “Baby girl!” She drops the wet sponge and takes me up in a hug. “I didn’t know you were here!”

  “I just got here. Sorry I’m late.”

  “Oh, baby, you’re right on time. Right on time. Here, hand me that roll of paper towels.” She picks up the sponge without missing a beat, and for the first time I think about my mother’s obsessive cleaning like my running, a way for her to feel a measure of control, or at least the alluring illusion of it.

  “How are you, Momma?” I haven’t seen her cry yet either.

  “Oh, you know, I’m fine. I’m fine. I just want to get this nasty kitchen cleaned out. We may try to finally sell this place. Your father went ahead to the cemetery. I wanted him to buy some flowers. Heaven knows where he’s going to get flowers around here, but he’ll figure it out. That man is resourceful if nothing else.”

  “Okay, well, do you need help with anything?”

  “No, no, you go get ready.” Momma waves me away with a wet paper towel.

  I leave her to her scrubbing and slip into the same black dress I wore for Justin’s funeral. I’ve worn too many sad black dresses lately. I put on the pearls last, fastening the delicate strand around my neck, turning and turning it until the center pearl, the one that is slightly bigger than the others, sits exactly where it should, right above the hollow in my collarbone. I’m ready, and yet not ready at all.

  In the back of a boxy Cadillac coupe from the seventies, thighs sticking to the cracked leather seat, my fingers return to the pearls. I stop when Momma looks at me, worried she’ll scold me for fidgeting.

  “They look nice on you,” she says, and goes back to looking out the window, twisting her own wedding ring around her bony finger. If we had that type of relationship, I would reach for her hand now.

  Finally, after snaking through a string of rural roads, we pull up to a small field. Crooked wrought iron gates frame a small sign announcing the “colored” cemetery, dating back to the 1800s. Daddy is standing in the middle of the clearing beside a minister from the local church. We don’t know him personally. His people are from Perote for generations back, and they knew Gigi and her parents. My dad and the minister are backlit by the setting sun, standing tall, proud, and solemn with clasped hands. It reminds me of a Gordon Parks photograph. I want to run to Daddy like I did when I was a little girl, have him lift me into the air and spin me around. This was before cleaning thousands of toilets left him stooped with permanent back pain. Instead, he receives me with a tight hug.

  We all stand around the casket. A bunch of flowers lie on top of it—wildflowers. My father must have picked them himself, probably right here in this field, and arranged them carefully over the shiny mahogany. His shoes are covered in flecks of red clay. My heart threatens to burst, picturing him bending over with his bad back to pull flower after flower from the dirt.

  I’ve been trying to avoid looking at the coffin, same as I did at Justin’s funeral. But there it is, not five feet away. It’s closed, though I know my grandmother is in there, dressed to the nines just like she would have wanted: her favorite hat, a floral dress, her best white silk gloves. Picturing Gigi trapped in there sends pinpricks along my spine. But it’s the hole, the giant hole in the ground, that makes my knees buckle. Shaun links his arm with mine. “I got you, sis. I got you.”

  Uncle Rod and his family stand on one side of the minister, Shaun, Daddy, Momma, and I on the other, forming a tight row. The pastor waits for the small nod from Momma indicating it’s time to begin. Shaun holds me tighter. The minister starts to recite from Psalms. His voice, higher than Pastor Price’s, is clear and strong and bounces off the ring of imposing cypress trees that surround us. Momma has asked me to read a poem. When the minister is finished, I slip the folded piece of paper, damp with sweat, from my dress pocket. My hands shake, and I’m reminded of Justin’s cousin, Malik. The poem, “On a New Year’s Eve” by June Jordan, was a favorite of Gigi’s.

  “I don’t really understand it altogether, but it stirs somethin’ in you, don’t it?” she’d said once.

  It did. It does.

  I’m suddenly self-conscious, shy, even though this is my family. I clear my throat and begin to read. “ ‘Infinity doesn’t interest me, not altogether anymore.…’ ” I’m speaking in my newscaster voice; imagining a camera in front of me makes this easier. I purposely slow down on the last line. Maybe if I keep reading forever, we’ll never get to the part where we have to put Gigi in that hole.

  “ ‘All things are dear that disappear… all things are dear that disappear.’ ”

  Not long enough. It’s over.

  Momma steps forward and hugs me. “That was beautiful, Leroya, beautiful.”

  Somehow the slip in my name feels exactly right.

  I return to my place in the circle. The minister swats the flies away from his face and recites Genesis 3:19, “ ‘For dust you are and to dust you will return,’ ” before he calls for us to bow our heads.

  After a moment of silence the pastor asks if anyone else would like to speak.

  The only sound is a rustle in the trees until Shaun calls out, “Hey, pastor, what do you call a pony with a cough?”

  The poor man looks so confused, but I’ve already broken into giggles. I holler out the answer: “A little hoarse.”

  God, Gigi loved these stupid little riddles. She had hundreds of them and would trot them out until they were as worn as old sheets.

  Daddy jumps on the bandwagon. “But son, do you know why the octopus crossed the ocean?”

  “Why no, Dad, I don’t.” Which is a lie; Shaun has only heard this one five hundred times. Gigi told it to us at the hospital just last week, when she found a reserve of energy.

  “To get to the other tide.”

  All eyes turn to Momma, expectantly.

  “Oh, y’all get out of here with this nonsense. This is not the time.” Her eyes are glued to the casket. There’s a long pause while we figure out what to do next, and then Momma’s voice, still looking at the casket like she’s talking to her mother.

  “Why do seagulls fly over the sea?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “Because if they flew over the bay, they’d be bagels.” And then she is laughing, laughing so hard tears stream down her face. “God, that woman’s jokes were ’bout the corniest I’ve ever heard.”

  We’re all laughing now. The pastor looks dismayed at first and then gives in to it, a substitute teacher who’s lost control of the classroom.

  I bring my hands to my face and find that my cheeks are wet. The tears have come. They stream down like rain; like Momma’s, they’re happy tears, or at least a mix of happy and heartbroken. I think of Gigi looking down on us right now, all of us together, laughing wildly on a small patch of land in rural Alabama on this warm December day, and I know it’s just as she would have wanted it.

  For the rest of the night we can’t stop telling Gigi jokes. It even gives Momma and Uncle Rod something to bond over. But no one pushes their luck; not an hour after we return from the cemetery, my uncle and cousins retreat to the RV. They plan to get an early start back to Memphis in the morning, so now it’s only us.

  Daddy scrounged up enough wood in the backyard to start a small fire in the fireplace and puts a
n old Sam Cooke record on the ancient record player in the corner. Shaun found a dusty bottle of homemade whiskey in the cupboard. Even Momma drinks it. I make the mistake of sniffing it before I sip, and the scent alone burns my nostrils.

  “Oh God, what is this?”

  “Whatever they made down here when they couldn’t find anything else.” Shaun shrugs and slams back what’s left in his glass.

  “I don’t know if we should be drinking this.”

  “Don’t be a priss. Bottoms up.”

  I hold my nose and throw it back. The concoction tastes like it’s made from two ingredients: gasoline and tree bark. Even after I chase it with the dregs of a nearby can of warm Coke, the noxious flavor clings to my tongue.

  I’m still furiously swishing soda around my mouth when Momma gets up and returns to the table with a cardboard box filled with old photo albums. “Look what I found when I was cleaning out the hall closet earlier.”

  There’s a tan leather one so old and dry it’s broken into a web of cracks like a desert landscape. Newspaper clippings and recipes stick to the bottom of the box. I grab a tattered index card that features the ingredients and steps to make rhubarb pie in faded cursive.

  “Can I have this?”

  “Excuse me? Why? When was the last time you even turned on your stove?” Shaun jokes.

  He has a point. I don’t think I’ve ever made anything from scratch in my entire life, but suddenly, making this recipe is important to me. It doesn’t matter that I’ve got no idea what rhubarb even looks like; I’m going to make this pie for Christmas. Why I’m suddenly seized by the urge to be some sort of Carla Hall wannabe is beyond me, but I’m desperate for any way to feel connected to Gigi. How many times had I watched her, her arms speckled with bright white flakes of flour, kneading dough or squinting over vats of hot grease she kept in a giant old tomato can that never moved from the back of the stove? How many times had I rolled my eyes as she joked—half joked—to me, “Get over here and learn to cook if you’re ever gonna get a fine man?” How many times had she rolled her eyes at my pretentious lectures about the patriarchy. “Girl, there ain’t nothin’ wrong with wantin’ a man.”

  “Putting a husband aside, cooking is history,” she once told me as she made biscuits. “Me and my momma and my momma’s momma before that have been making these ’zact same biscuits. That’s a bond, ya hear. It’s not much—some flour, some water, some salt—but it’s what we had and it’s a legacy, a connection.”

  She always said she felt the spirit of the ancestors, would have full-on conversations with them when she was in a tizzy about something or when she was in the kitchen. Kneading biscuits, dragging fat chicken thighs through flour, rolling out piecrust, it all made her feel close to them. So maybe it would do the same for me—connect me to them, to Gigi.

  Speaking of legacy, Dad flips open the ancient album, its pages creaky and cracking at being disturbed. We spot Gigi in the first picture. She must be about five years old, in a white lace dress, head full of braids, spunky grin revealing two missing teeth.

  A gangly teenager in crisp brown trousers and a white tank top revealing well-muscled arms stands beside her, his hands on her shoulders. They’re in front of the house, and it looks exactly the same as it did when I came up the drive.

  Momma turns it over and reads the handwriting on the back. “ ‘Marla and Jimmy, 1935.’ ” I grab hungrily at the picture. Jimmy’s wearing a felt hat with a feather in the side. His nose is crooked like it was broken and never healed right. It doesn’t make him any less handsome though, in fact just the opposite.

  I rub my finger over the photo like I’m reaching through time.

  “Who’s Jimmy?” Shaun asks.

  “Grandma’s cousin,” I start. “It’s terrible. He was—”

  And Momma holds up a hand to stop me, sighs into her drink. “Another time. Another time.”

  She’s right. Tonight’s a night to talk about Gigi, to reach for happy memories. So we do just that. Shaun launches into the time Gigi chased him through the house with a shoe for recording over an episode of General Hospital she hadn’t watched yet, and we pick at the spread Momma managed to cobble together from the meager options at the tiny local store—a roast that’s surprisingly tender, a big pot of turnip greens, a skillet of cornbread all brown around the edges.

  “All we need is miracle bread,” I say. “Who’s making the miracle bread?”

  The question makes me happy before it pains me. No one loved miracle bread like Jenny. I tug at the pearl bracelet circling my wrist. I’ve changed out of my dress, and the necklace is back in the box. I’m still wearing the bracelet.

  “When are you going to give it to her?” Momma asks.

  “This week, when we’re back.” I say it even though I don’t know if it’s true.

  “What’s going on with you two anyway?”

  “Come on, Momma, you know what’s going on.”

  “No, I don’t, Riley, so you’ll have to use your words.” She says it exactly like she did when I was a toddler wordlessly begging for candy.

  That’s the problem. I don’t have the words. It’s hard to pinpoint, let alone describe exactly what’s going on between us—this weird, unspoken rift. The longer we go without talking, the stranger it all feels, like we’re in an invisible fight and neither of us understands the rules.

  A loud snore comes from the threadbare couch where Daddy is stretched out.

  “I’m gonna let y’all two talk that out,” Shaun says, standing to kiss Momma, then me, before heading to the back bedroom. I’m exhausted from traveling and from the sadness of the day, though it’s nice to sit here with my mother at this sticky linoleum table full of empty glasses and crumbs. Momma must be more than a little tipsy, because she makes no move to clean up the mess. My mind swims as I consider how best to explain what’s going on with Jen, but Momma’s moved on. Her eyes are a little glassy—could be heartache, or moonshine.

  “You know, I bought Gigi a scarf for Christmas.” Her voice is small. “I was hoping she’d hang on until then. I knew even if she did, she wouldn’t last much past Christmas, and then I thought maybe we could bury her with the scarf, and then when I thought about that, I didn’t want to give it to her at all.” She tears a napkin into long white shreds. “I should’ve given her the scarf.”

  “Did you bring it down here?”

  “Nah, I left it at home. It’s in a box in the top of my closet. Maybe you’ll wear it when we get back. It’d look nice on you. You and your grandmother have the same coloring, like a twice-toasted coconut. She always said that when you were a baby.”

  “I’ll wear it. Put it under the tree for me and I’ll pretend it’s a big surprise.”

  Momma sighs. “The scarf isn’t so much the point, honey. It’s that we can’t wait. You know, there’s a lot I wish I’d said before your grandma passed. Now I’m wondering why we always wait to say things at all. It’s mighty foolish of us to wait for anything. To wait to tell someone we love them or that we’re mad as hell at them. Kevin did a terrible thing, it’s true, and a young boy is dead and he has to live with that, with that heaviness in his soul. I’m not going to weigh in on how he should be punished. That’s for God to decide. But Jenny is not Kevin, and that girl loves you, and sometimes we need to swallow our pride and reach out. Even when we don’t know what to say and we’re afraid of messing everything up by saying the wrong thing. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to talk about something. All that matters is that you try. The longer you let something go, the easier it is to stay silent, and the silence is where the resentment starts to fester and rot.”

  She stops to absently take another sip of the brown liquid in her glass. “I know, I’m a hypocrite over here telling you this. I’m not the best at reaching out. I didn’t speak to my own brother all this time. And you know why?”

  Momma releases a strange, high-pitched cackle. “I don’t even know! That’s the awful truth. That’s something, r
ight? I know we were both so mad and we said some terrible things to each other and then waited for the other to come to their senses and apologize while the years piled up. Now here we are, at our momma’s grave, like strangers. I don’t want that to happen to you and Jenny.”

  She stops again; then, instead of taking another drink, she gazes out the little kitchen window into the dark night. I wait, somewhat stunned by this turn the night’s taken. Is it the grief of losing her mother? Is she that tipsy? Momma and I don’t have heart-to-hearts. This was a woman who simply left a pamphlet about “your changing body” on my bed when I was twelve.

  “I’ll tell you something. I always wanted a friendship like what you have with Jenny. I was always a little jealous, truth be told. It’s special to have someone like that. I mean, your dad can be a doggone fool sometimes, but God knows he’s my best friend.” She stops and looks over at Daddy, on the couch, with a rare display of tenderness and affection. “It’s not the same as having a best girlfriend though. Side by side almost since you were knee-high. Y’all painting each other’s toes, telling secrets, sneaking out of the house—don’t think I don’t know you did that too. I never really got to have that with anyone.”

  It was something, the topper to a surreal day, a surreal month, to have Momma opening herself up like this, confiding she was jealous. Of me? I was never one of the girls who longed to have my mom as a best friend, chatting about clothes and boys, which she would have found laughable anyway. She always said, I’m here to be your parent, not your girlfriend. And anyway, I already had a best friend growing up. But having this moment with Momma, so sad about her own mom, unfurls something in me, a curiosity about her, a desire to know her more as a woman, a longing for a different kind of relationship. She’s always been so distant, stern, hell-bent on properly molding us, like she couldn’t allow any room for a softer side. But what if she had let her guard down more and I’d gotten to see this side of her, the side that admits to feelings? We might have had an entirely different relationship. Maybe that’s possible now that I’m back home for the first time since I was eighteen; we could go out to lunch and talk, like a TV mother and daughter. It goes against everything I know about Sandra Wilson and thirty-plus years of history, but then I remember Gigi being lowered into the ground not five hours ago—a bittersweet reminder that Momma isn’t going to be here forever—and my determination grows. I want to know, to really know, my mother as an adult, before it’s too late.