What They Found

by Walter Dean Myers

  For Spring Myers

  contents

  the fashion show, grand opening,

  and bar-b-que memorial service

  what would jesus do?

  mama

  the life you need to have

  burn

  some men are just funny that way

  jump at the sun

  law and order

  the man thing

  society for the preservation

  of sorry-butt negroes

  madonna

  the real deal

  marisol and skeeter

  poets and plumbers

  combat zone

  the fashion show,

  grand opening,

  and bar-b-que memorial service

  When Daddy first came up with the idea we just all sat there crying our eyes out. We said we would do it, but I don’t think anybody believed it at the time. He knew we were too upset even to talk about it, especially Mama. So the day I brought him tea and he asked me to sit down to talk about it, he got right to the point.

  “Abeni, you and me have always been tight,” Daddy said, sitting up on the propped pillows. “We’ve always had something special going on.”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “Look, the other day when I told your mama what I wanted, I tried to make it a little light because I knew she was going to be upset,” Daddy said.

  “It’s hard to talk about,” I said, feeling the tears welling up in my eyes.

  “I know, baby, and I know your mama wants to do the right thing.” Daddy’s hand was shaking slightly as he brought the cup slowly to his lips. He sipped the tea, took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly.

  “How you feeling?”

  “I can hold things down a little better now that I’m finished with that chemotherapy,” he said. “You know, what I wanted to do was to go over the things I said the other day and maybe tell you why I said them.”

  “About Big Joe’s funeral?”

  “Yeah, well, that was something,” Daddy said. He smiled, but his face was drawn. “Big Joe giving himself a funeral while he was still alive gave me the idea. People still talk about that funeral and that little Puerto Rican gal singing. She’s in college now, ain’t she?”

  “Out in St. Louis, studying journalism,” I said.

  “When I came to the realization that this cancer had won the last round, I started thinking it over—you know, adding up the pluses and minuses—that kind of thing.”

  “Daddy, you’re going to get me crying again.”

  “Baby, I don’t care if you cry, but I know I can count on you more than I can on your mama and Noee,” Daddy said. “Your mama wants to see me off proper, and that’s good. We’re a churchgoing family and a homecoming ceremony is what everybody expects. But like I said before, I’m a black man who loves the three ladies he’s enjoyed his life with. Noee ain’t nothing but a child— lovely as she wants to be, she ain’t got your spunk, Abeni. I guess you being the firstborn I wasn’t sure what I was doing and halfway tried to make you into a boy.”

  “I’m all right as a girl, too, Daddy,” I said.

  “Well, can you see what I’m talking about?” he asked. “Can you see that this is a kind of gift I can give to my ladies?”

  I tried to say yes but the tears were on their way and I was putting my head on his chest.

  “I’ll get it done, Daddy,” I said. “I’ll get it done.”

  A year ago my family had big plans. Mama had been working for twelve years in LaRose Beauty Salon and now the owner was retiring and my parents had put the money together to buy the business. “And we’re changing the name to the Curl-E-Que!” Mama said. “And my girls will work alongside me.”

  We were all excited about opening up the shop, counting on Daddy’s job with the bus company to keep us going while we built it up.

  Then Daddy got ill and all the joy just drained from the family. We were close. Mama and Daddy had been married forever, and people on the block said that me and my sister were the most spoiled children in the neighborhood. That’s how Daddy was.

  “You start them strong and they don’t go wrong,” he always said.

  I was strong. When I was young, Daddy, a big bear of a man, had me playing football and basketball and every other sport. I was tall like him, and big-boned. I liked to compete. Mama didn’t know anything about sports, but she didn’t mind me playing and loved to see me and Daddy together.

  “Troy Evans,” she would say, “you got the girl acting more like your little brother than your daughter!”

  When Noee was big enough to go out and play I thought we would be teammates, but she was different. Shy, big-eyed, and quiet, she was more of a watcher. Noee was happy just to be in the room with the family or, when we had dinner, to make sure that everyone had enough to eat. I had always been Daddy’s girl. I felt terrible when we learned that Daddy was dying, but I felt good that it was me he was calling on to see to his dying wishes.

  Daddy had said to us, “What I’m thinking about is the beauty parlor you’ve been talking about for so long.”

  “Troy, you don’t have to worry about that,” Mama started.

  “Honey, the best thing that ever happened to me was to have a family to worry about,” Daddy said. “You see these homeless guys hanging around the streets and some people say ain’t it a shame that they don’t have a home. What I say is ain’t it a shame they don’t have a family to take care of and be worried over. That’s why I’m asking you to go ahead with your plans for the beauty shop and then make my ceremony something that’s going to be special. If Big Joe can do something with a funeral, so can I.”

  But … Big Joe’s funeral was fake. He said he didn’t want to waste a good funeral on himself after he was dead, so he gave himself a ceremony while he was still alive. Daddy was right, people did talk about it. Some still thought it was stupid.

  “Man don’t have a bit of sense,” Mrs. Lucas had said. “He’s as cluck-headed as a one-legged chicken!”

  I liked Big Joe, and after my father told me how much he was depending on me I went to Big Joe for advice.

  “Now what does he want you to do?” Big Joe had one foot propped up on a milk crate as he sat in front of his apartment.

  “He wants us to have the grand opening of the beauty parlor and combine it with his funeral and a barbecue,” I said. “The fashion show part is my idea.”

  “And what Mama Evans saying about all this?”

  “Just what he thought she would,” I said. “She wants to have a traditional funeral for him. And I can see that as a sign of respect.”

  “Yeah, well, a lot of folks are going to be mad at you if you do like you say,” Big Joe said. “Colored folks don’t like to play around with their funerals.”

  “People in New Orleans have jazz funerals,” I said. “I know we can pull this off. What I need from you is for you to come and say a few words if we can’t get Reverend Glover to go along.”

  “You get it set up and I’ll be there,” Big Joe said. “Your father’s quality people. Not many around like him anymore.”

  We bought the shop on May 15. We had a big sign over the store and a smaller one in the window saying, UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT. We took Daddy downstairs to see and he was so pleased.

  Mama wasn’t any good with the planning. She couldn’t think about losing the man she had loved for so many years.

  “Not a lot of black men can leave their families in good shape,” Daddy said. “Me seeing my ladies with their own business, their morals intact, and three good brains between them is a blessing.”

  As Noee and I cleaned the store and painted it I could feel myself weakening, wondering if I could really make his dying a kind of celebration. When Daddy was taken
to the hospital early one morning we were sure he wasn’t coming home again.

  “Bring me some pictures of the store,” he said in the cab. “You know how to use that digital camera I bought you.”

  “He’s thinking of everything to make this work,” Mama said on the way home. “He’s always been kind of foxy that way.”

  “He’s pushing us,” Noee said.

  Yes he was, even from the hospital.

  * * *

  I called Micheline Curry and asked her if she would help with the fashion part of it.

  “A high-style funeral?” she asked.

  She wasn’t living in the neighborhood when Big Joe had his funeral, so I had to start from scratch and tell her what my father had planned. She took it all in, but she still said she was skeptical. “I know he loves y’all and everything, but I can’t imagine running a fashion show about what to wear at a funeral.”

  “That’s not the point, Micheline,” I said. “My father wants to promote the business and give us a running start. Making the connection with hairstyling and fashion is good for our image and good for you, too. How about something cheerful?”

  “Yeah, well, okay,” she said. “Let me think.”

  Daddy passed away in his sleep, quietly, on the fourteenth of June. We had a small private ceremony and then had the remains cremated. Mama was so tore up. For a while I didn’t know if she was going to survive, herself.

  “That’s the only man I have ever loved,” she said, over and over.

  When I saw her face, the anguish in it, I remembered Daddy’s eyes. I saw the same lost expression, the desperation as he knew he was going to be without the only woman he had ever loved. And I saw that what he was asking us to do, what he was trying to accomplish with this whole thing, was to reach over the boundaries and find a way of being with us.

  Yes, Daddy. I can do this thing. I can do this thing.

  I had already given the flyers to the printer. All he needed was the day and we decided two weeks after the cremation. We hired Skeeter and some of his friends to pass out the signs to the neighborhood businesses.

  We expected some opposition and we got it. Big-time.

  John Carroll called and told Noee that Sister Lucas was pitching a fit. I told Noee I would handle it if Sister Lucas brought her almost-bald self into the shop. Well, she did.

  “If this is not the most disgraceful thing I have ever seen in this life I don’t know what is!” she said, her eyes bulging and her little brown fist hitting the air for emphasis. “He was a good, God-fearing man and you sticking some advertising on his grave like he wasn’t nothing!”

  “Ma’am—”

  “Don’t ma’am me,” she said. “We only live this life but once, and each and every one of us who has lived a Christian life deserves Christian dignity.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Billy Carroll, John’s son, came in just then. “Sister Lucas, this family has a right to do whatever they want and I’m going to help them get the word out.”

  Sister Lucas puffed up like a wet hen and her eyes began to bulge.

  “And I like the ad card,” he said.

  Noee had made it and she’d done a fine job. Mama couldn’t even look at it, and I know she had her doubts.

  When the day came, I was worried. We hung streamers outside the shop, from the corners of the big sign to the pole that held the NO PARKING ANYTIME sign. I had practically begged Reverend Glover to come and he had only said that he would see what his time was like.

  “It’s Wednesday afternoon,” he said. “I have a lot of business to attend to.”

  “What he means,” Mama said, “is that he’s going to sniff around to see how the land lies before he commits. I called him and told him just that and told him if he didn’t come I would give him a piece of my mind that he didn’t know about.”

  We borrowed folding chairs from Watson’s Funeral Home and set them up in the waiting area, leaving an aisle for Micheline’s fashion show.

  Well, the first thing was that people didn’t know how to dress. Some people wore black and others wore everyday colors. John Carroll, who owned the roti shop, had set up a hot buffet at the back of the room and we encouraged people to help themselves. As they ate everybody was looking at each other trying to figure out who was wearing the right thing.

  We put on some Nina Simone, Daddy’s favorite, and tried to keep it as light as possible.

  Reverend Glover hadn’t shown up by four-thirty so Mama got up and said, “Folks, thank you all for coming out to this memorial service for my husband. Troy Evans was my husband, my only husband and lover and best friend for forty-six years. He asked us not to be sad and not to be mournful with his passing, but to hold on to and be comfortable with the love he had for us when he was alive, and …”

  Well, that was all Mama could say. She started crying and I thought that it was going to end right there with everybody quiet and whispering to each other the way they do at funerals. But then Curtis Mason asked, “Can I say something?” He was wearing his army uniform. Curtis had hit on me once or twice but nothing serious. He was his own person and I didn’t know that much about him.

  “Certainly, Curtis,” Mama said.

  He went up to the front just as Reverend Glover came in. Sister Lucas, in an old-timey hat with a veil on the side of her head, was with him.

  “Did you want to say a few words, Reverend Glover?” I asked.

  “No, I just stopped in to say hello,” he said.

  “Go on, Curtis,” Mama said.

  “Folks, I knew Brother Evans from when he coached me in Little League,” Curtis said. “He was always part of this community in important ways. All the youngbloods knew that if they needed some advice in a hurry they could always come to him and he would steer them straight. We knew he loved his family. One day I hope to be like him. I’m going back to Afghanistan and I don’t know if I’m going to be all right or not.”

  “God will be with you, son,” John Carroll said.

  “But I know my block, my Hundred and Forty-fifth Street, will be keeping me in their hearts as well,” Curtis said. “That’s important to me, because if I get in the way of danger, I want to know that there’s something I’m there for. Brother Evans was part of that. This business is part of that, too. I would personally like to thank you all for being here for Brother Evans because, in a way, I feel you’re here for me, too. Thank you.”

  They gave Curtis a big hand and Reverend Glover went up and shook his hand. Sister Lucas got a smile on her face somehow. It halfway looked like she had a gas pain, but it was technically a smile. Micheline started the fashion show and soon everybody was eating and talking to each other and saying how good it was that a new business was opening. It spilled outside a bit and some winos came in looking for something to eat. John Carroll let them each take a plate.

  When it was all over and me and Noee had cleaned up, Mama came over and gave us both a big hug.

  “Abeni, Noee, your father is something else,” Mama said. “I always knew he was smarter than me.”

  “Mama, how did you fix your mouth to get those words to come out?” I asked. “You know there’s nobody smarter than the Evans ladies.”

  “Well, that’s true,” she said. The tears were coming again. Me and Noee were going to miss our father a lot. But not like Mama would. Somewhere in heaven he knew it, too. So he had set us up with a momentum that didn’t allow too much looking back. He was okay, that man.

  what

  would

  jesus

  do?

  “You going to have a whole row of hot guys on the wall?” Cheryl McKinney turned her head sideways as Mama Evans straightened the photograph she was hanging. “You want me to bring in some pictures?”

  “Cheryl, these are all neighborhood boys, and some girls, who are in the military,” Mama Evans said. “I’m trying to get some of the church women to write to them and send them care packages.”

  “I know two of them,” Chery
l said. “That’s Randy, who used to work downtown at the blouse factory, and that’s Curtis, who got that little dimple in the side of his face. He is some kind of cute.”

  “I just hope they all make it home safe,” Mama Evans said. “This war is working my one good nerve down to a nub.”

  “You know what I was thinking of doing?” Cheryl put her face as close as she could to the big mirror. “If you look real close you can see I have a few freckles.”

  “Well, a lot of light-skinned people with reddish hair have freckles, honey,” Mama Evans said.

  “You think I should have them colored? Maybe with some henna like I saw an Indian lady do on television?”

  “Henna’s a stain, but it comes off eventually, so if you really need to enhance those freckles—how many do you have? Six, maybe seven. It could work.”

  “Nine, but one might be a beauty mark,” Cheryl said.

  “Oh, I see.” Mama Evans lifted Cheryl’s hair and looked at the ends. “You haven’t been pressing your hair with that strawberry gel you were using, have you? Because it looks a mess.”

  “No, ma’am, just touching up the ends,” Cheryl said, settling in the chair.

  “And what’s this I hear about you and Evelyn not speaking to each other?” Mama Evans asked. “You girls have been friends for years.”

  “You remember that time we were in here and she was wearing that orange jumpsuit and had her tennis racket?” Cheryl asked.

  “Yeah, I remember,” Mama Evans said, brushing Cheryl’s hair up from her neck. “That was the time you were going to change your entire style, and get back to your roots.”

  “Uh-huh, that’s right,” Cheryl said.

  “I remember you said you were going to get some African braids, too—”

  “On a Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, so they would be authentic, too,” Cheryl said. “You can get your hair done cheaper in Brooklyn but I don’t think Brooklyn is really keeping it real. You know what I mean?”

  “I guess so,” Mama Evans answered, “but then you were going to have your braids dyed blond?”

  “Uh-huh. I think those white girls in my school look so cute with their little blond African braids.”