Each Little Bird That Sings

by Deborah Wiles

  Let’s talk about the deceased. The deceased lies, all dressed up, in the open casket (which is a nice word for a coffin), with his hair combed better than he ever combed it when he was alive. During the viewing, which happens the day before the funeral, people wander up to the open casket and stare at the deceased and say things like, “He looks so natural,” which is silly, because he doesn’t look natural—he looks dead. But that’s okay; he’s supposed to be dead. But don’t say, “He looks so dead”; that’s not a good idea. Some people are queasy about looking at the deceased. Don’t worry about it. He doesn’t mind.

  A visitation, which happens right before the funeral, is a time for folks to visit the family and to offer them comfort. The casket is closed during the visitation; so if you don’t want to see your dead one laid out in the open casket, just come to the visitation and not the viewing. People who come to the viewing, visitation, and funeral are called the mourners (that’s you). The folks who are related to the person who died are called the family. (They are also mourners.) In Snapfinger this can be most of the folks in town. Be nice to the family and talk to them. At the viewing they are usually standing next to the open casket (where the deceased is lying) in the Serenity Suite and wishing the deceased would sit up and talk with them, but of course the deceased isn’t talking, so you have to do the talking. Here’s what to say to the family during the viewing, visitation, and funeral time: “I’m so sorry.” That’s all. Then move on. Don’t say, “He’s gone to a better place,” or “You must be relieved,” or “That shirt doesn’t go with those pants.”

  This is not a good time to remind the family that the deceased owes you money.

  You will find boxes of Kleenex stationed all around the visitation room. At Snowberger’s, there are also handkerchiefs available. Don’t fake your crying like some folks do—it’s impolite and people can tell. On the other hand, don’t genuinely sob so much that you call attention to yourself (you know who you are). The visitation is also a good time for laughing and remembering funny stories about the deceased. A visitation is sort of like a sad party, with the deceased being the center of attention.

  Take all arguments and fistfights outside to the parking lot.

  Here’s the order of events on the day of the funeral: One: Visitation at the funeral home for an hour before the funeral service. Two: Funeral service at the funeral home. Three: After the funeral service everybody gets into their cars and drives, in a long line, to the cemetery. (You can walk it, but nobody feels like walking on a funeral day.) Four: Then there’s a graveside service at the Snapfinger Cemetery. Go to the bathroom before you get in your car to go to the cemetery, in case Preacher Powell gets long-winded at the cemetery.

  Order flowers from Snowberger’s Flowers next door, and they’ll be at the funeral home before you are, where they’ll dress up the Serenity Suite. The family appreciates it (they don’t feel like decorating at a time like this), and they’ll keep the little cards of sympathy that come with the flowers. All the visitors (that’s you) will walk around in the Serenity Suite and read the cards that come with the flowers, to see whose flowers are the prettiest, whose are the biggest, whose are the best smelling. It’s kind of like a contest. If you don’t send flowers, everybody will notice. Don’t send balloons or candy or presents. This isn’t a birthday party; it’s a funeral. Just send flowers.

  Bring a covered dish of food with you to the funeral home. At Snowberger’s there is always a covered-dish dinner back at the funeral home after the graveside service. Favorite dishes: chicken casseroles and Jell-O molds of all colors and descriptions, anything with mandarin oranges in it, Vienna sausage and Ritz cracker trays, pimiento-cheese sandwiches (cut into triangles), and dog treats for Dismay, Funeral Dog Extraordinaire. Nobody eats the asparagus or brussels sprouts, and I don’t know why folks would bring those to a covered-dish supper (unless they’re just so depressed that they need to bring depressing food). So those of you who bring these unpopular dishes, please stop. Also, just a gustatory note (as Florentine Snowberger would say)—you can never have too many brownies. Bring your recipes, too. The recipes for all these dishes and more will be printed in the forthcoming Fantastic (and Fun) Funeral Food for Families and Friends by Florentine and Comfort Snowberger.

  Remember that death is a natural thing—it’s all around us, as Edisto Snowberger always said. Don’t try to hide death from kids. If Grandpa has died, don’t say, “We lost Grandpa,” because little kids will want to know why you don’t go look for him. Just say, “Grandpa died.” Don’t say, “Grandpa passed,” either, because we’ll wonder what grade he was in. Just say he died. We get it. Kids are better at death than grown-ups give them credit for, unless the kid is Peach Shuggars. Discourage Peach Shuggars from coming to your funeral. Discourage Peach Shuggars from visiting Snapfinger, Mississippi. Discourage Peach, period.

  Chapter 6

  Dismay and I went home the way we’d come. It had rained for so many days that Snapfinger Creek had swollen to a good-sized stream. Dismay twirled and splashed in it, cooling himself.

  I walked my bike to the shade of a chokecherry tree and watched my dog. The ground was spongy, and my toes felt deliciously wet and cool in my flip-flopped feet. When Dismay spotted me watching him, he plopped himself down in the creek, just like that. The water came to his shoulders and almost covered his back, so that he looked like a dog-headed Viking ship on a mighty river. He looked at me with bright black eyes, his pink tongue hanging out of his mouth, and a panting grin that said, Come on!

  “Come out of there, Dismay!” I called to him. “We’ve got to get home!” Right out of the water he came, friendly and happy. As soon as he got close to me, he gave himself a giant shake and peppered me with Snapfinger Creek water.

  “Dismay!” I shouted. He barked, and wagged his tail, and I had to laugh. “Let’s go!”

  I avoided any possibility of seeing my cousin Peach as we traveled home. Whenever I heard a car coming, I steered my bike smack into the cornfield and let the corn silks tickle me while I waited for it to pass. Dismay thought this was a good game, and he squeezed right in with me, knocking me into cornstalks, sniffing for rabbits as he pushed himself into each row. He was a good corn trampler.

  I hatched a plan as I pedaled into the front parking lot. I would go right to my closet. I wouldn’t go to the family supper before the viewing—in fact, I’d skip the viewing, too. That way I wouldn’t have to see Peach at all until the next day. I’d fortify myself with a stack of peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches and my notebooks for A Short History of a Small Place. (I called it Short for short.) I put all my Life Notices into Short, and also my “funeral geography,” as Aunt Florentine called it—notes about who came to each funeral and what folks said and whose food they didn’t eat. Ever since I could write, I’ve kept a record of every funeral I’ve attended—I’ve been to 247. Great-great-aunt Florentine would be number 248.

  Yes, the closet. That’s where I needed to be.

  Chapter 7

  Mama was walking across the freshly mowed grass from the funeral home to the flower shop when she saw me snake past the corner of the shed. “Comfort!” she called. She waved a gloved hand at me like she was the beauty queen of the garden club. Her smile made the air shine. “I need you!”

  Mama said something else, but her words were drowned out by Tidings, riding the tractor back toward the shed. He had his shirt off and his fishing boots on. He glistened with sweat and was concentrating like he was Michelangelo sculpting the statue of David (Discovering Our World Magazine, issue 47). Dismay ran in front of the mower, barking and spinning.

  “Give him some water from the hose!” I yelled at Tidings.

  “Give him a bath!” Mama called. “He’s working tonight!”

  Tidings saluted us. Mama disappeared inside the shop, and I followed her. She smiled at me with teary eyes and gestured around the shop.

  Lavender. It was everywhere. Great-great-aunt Florentine had stuffed lavender spr
igs in her pockets and in her pillows, in her drawers, in her hair—she had been a walking lavender bush.

  “I’ve been cutting and arranging lavender all day!” said Mama, dabbing at her eyes with a Snowberger’s handkerchief. “Oh, it brings back memories! Sweet memories. Your aunt Florentine would have loved all this, wouldn’t she?” She sniffed a ladylike sniff and quickly stuck her handkerchief into a pocket.

  Before I could think of what to say, Mama picked up florist wire, kitchen shears, and a bucket of pink tea roses and scooted past me. “Can you help me tote these buckets of flowers next door? I’ll arrange them in the downstairs kitchen. Lurleen can’t get here to help me for another hour, and I’ve got more orders than I can shake a stick at.”

  “I live to serve,” I said valiantly.

  Mama looked right into my eyes and smiled a genuine smile that showed all the sadness around her mouth and behind her eyes. It made me love her a lot.

  Mama was the picture of poise. She had been “Little Miss Magnolia” of Aurora County when she was six years old, and she was the most beautiful homecoming queen Snapfinger High School had ever seen—folks still said so. She made a florist apron full of pockets look like a regal robe, with presents peeking out for everyone. She put her armful of supplies into an enormous red wagon that sat in the middle of the shop. It was brimming with buckets of orange lilies, purple stock, yellow spray roses, red carnations, baby snapdragons . . . and lavender, lavender, lavender.

  “Merry’s taking a nap in the casket room, so we’ll want to be quiet when we pass her. She’s all worn out,” Mama said.

  I envisioned Merry curled up inside an empty open casket, lying on smooth white satin and clutching her blanket to herself, snoring her little-girl snores. “Why is she in there?”

  Mama pulled on a pair of gloves. “Well, your aunt Florentine can’t watch her anymore on funeral days, of course, so I’ve got to keep her close while I work. Maybe you can play with her when she wakes up . . .” She reached for a bunch of baby’s breath.

  “Oh, Mama . . .”

  “Just make her a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich and let her play in the dress-up box. She’ll be plenty happy.” Mama kissed me on the nose. Everything Mama did felt like it had great purpose to it, even a kiss on the nose. “And when Lurleen comes, she’ll bring Jimmie, and Jimmie can watch Merry while she helps in the kitchen—deal?”

  A nose-kiss had sealed the deal.

  “Can I skip the viewing tonight?” I asked, as together we balanced the buckets and hauled the wagon across the yard to the funeral home.

  “That’s not like you.” Mama caught a giant magenta clump that tumbled from the wagon. “Isn’t this the most glorious celosia? My gardens have been beautiful this year, even with all the rain.” Celosia reminded me of enormous celery stalks with a mass of red brains on top.

  “I have a lot of homework,” I said.

  Now, I didn’t have a lot of homework, but I’d find some if it meant I didn’t have to see Peach. I love homework. I do homework when I don’t have any homework to do. It’s calming to read about Egypt and then to draw up your own plan for a pyramid just because you feel like it. I had recently drawn a map of Snowberger’s, just because.

  Mama tucked the celosia stalk under her arm. “You don’t want to see Peach.” She wore a straw hat that protected her face from the sun. She looked at me with her head cocked to the right, her eyebrows raised, and that half smile she wore when she knew she was right.

  I sighed and wiped my hands on my lime green shorts. “Yes, ma’am . . .”

  “I can’t say as I blame you.” Mama went back to work, pulling the wagon across the grass carpet. I pushed. “But he won’t come to the viewing,” she said. “After supper we’ll put him to bed downstairs in the resting room, like we did when Uncle Edisto died, and he’ll sleep right through it.”

  The resting room was next to Daddy’s office. It’s where folks had a little lie-down if they got overwrought during a viewing or a visitation (it happened), and it’s where Daddy napped if he got tired during the day. It held two twin beds and a nightstand between them; nothing else. It was a good, simple room.

  “Peach won’t even know you’re there,” said Mama.

  “Yes, he will,” I said. “He’ll see me at supper, and then he’ll pester me all night!” I put on my best tinny, puny, scrawny Peach voice—“‘Comfort! My drink’s too cold!’ ‘Comfort! I need my softer pajamas!’ ‘Comfort! This story is too scary!’”—and then I went back to my own voice. “And you’ll make me stay with him and play crazy eights in the resting room all evening, and I’ll miss the whole viewing . . . Like you said, Great-great-aunt Florentine can’t help anymore . . .”

  “You know,” said Mama, “he adores you, Comfort, he always has—”

  “I don’t want to be adored!”

  “—and he’s lost the people he adored most.”

  Whenever Peach and Aunt Goldie visited us from Adanta (which was too often), Peach would race into Uncle Edisto’s arms, overjoyed, shouting (depending on the occasion), “It’s Easter and I’ve come to see you!” And Uncle Edisto would catch Peach and swing him high (before his arthritis got too bad) and say, “Well, come see me, then!” After Uncle Edisto died, Peach shouted the same thing to Aunt Florentine. “It’s summer and I’ve come to see you!” She’d fold him into her apron, wrapping him in a cloud of lavender, and say the same thing—“Well, come see me, then!” And Peach would cry from happiness.

  “Death is hard for Peach,” Mama said. “He’s only eight . . .”

  “Oh, Mama! I went to funerals when I was eight!”

  “Funerals are an occupation for us, darling, you’re used to them. Peach . . . isn’t. Uncle Edisto’s funeral was Peach’s first experience with death. And he’s very sensitive; that’s just the kind of person he is.”

  “I’m sensitive! You said so yourself when Tidings teased me about sitting in my closet.”

  “You’re a different kind of sensitive, Comfort. You sit in your closet—you’re sensitive inside. Peach cries—he’s sensitive outside. That’s all. We each do something to cope with our feelings when life feels overwhelming—Tidings mows grass.”

  I thought about that. “Mowing grass is useful! And sitting in the closet never hurt anybody! But Peach cries and carries on and makes everybody miserable!”

  Mama stopped pulling the wagon. I pressed my case. “I couldn’t go fishing with Uncle Edisto whenever Peach visited. His screaming scared away the fish— ‘This boat’s rocking too hard!’ and ’Don’t hurt that worm!’ I don’t know how Uncle Edisto could stand it!” I took a breath.

  Mama dabbed at the perspiration on her neck and spoke in an even voice. “Uncle Edisto loved Peach.” She regarded me with a cool eye. “He had infinite patience.”

  I pretended to study a caterpillar in the grass at my feet.

  “Uncle Edisto was the closest thing Peach ever had to a daddy,” Mama said. “His death devastated Peach.”

  “He ruined Uncle Edisto’s funeral!”

  “For whom? For Uncle Edisto? If he had been able, Uncle Edisto would have worked hard to comfort Peach.”

  I began to feel as low as the caterpillar.

  “You might give him another chance,” Mama said. “The only way he will learn some decorum is by practicing.”

  I wanted to have the last word, but I didn’t know what decorum was. I crouched back down in my wagon-pushing position. “All I can say is, we’d better have a lot of Kleenex ready.”

  Mama smiled. “Let’s get out of this sun—I’m melting out here and so are my flowers!” We wrestled the wagon through the side door of the funeral home and made our way down the cool, quiet hallway. I knew Daddy was busy with Great-great-aunt Florentine. We passed the casket room and Mama said, “Stop.” She checked on Merry. “Still sleeping.”

  We pulled the wagon into the cavernous downstairs kitchen, where the air-conditioning made the room so cold, I could imagine what Admiral Byrd felt li
ke as he reached the South Pole (Discovering Our World Magazine, issue 17)—only he didn’t have a long table full of funeral food standing ready for guests. We studied it, in a moment of silence.

  “There’s Mrs. Elling’s chicken-and-potato-chip casserole,” I said.

  “Folks have been bringing food all day,” said Mama. She removed her gloves and with a sigh looked around her. Great-great-aunt Florentine had always been in charge of the downstairs kitchen on funeral days and I’d been her assistant.

  “You want me to help with the food?” I asked.

  Mama shook her head. “Jimmie can do that just fine when she gets here.” She sat down at the kitchen table and sagged a little. Mama rarely sagged. She put her elbows on the table and clasped her hands together and leaned one soft cheek on her hands and looked at me sideways. “Will you eat tonight if you don’t come to the viewing?”

  I brightened. “I promise.”

  Mama paused and then said, “You’ll have to see him sooner or later, you know.”

  “I know. Later’s better than sooner.” Then I remembered. “Declaration says she’ll come tomorrow, too.”

  Mama lifted her head and gave me a quizzical look. “Really?”

  “Really. She told me so at Listening Rock just now . . .”

  “Come here.” Mama took two fingers and tucked wayward strands of my hair under the brim of my baseball cap. “This hair . . .” She patted my cheek.

  “I’ll wash it.”

  She cupped my chin in her hand and whispered, “How will you stay away?”

  I blinked at her and shrugged.

  Mama looked deep into my eyes. “Are you okay?”

  My heart fluttered into my stomach. “Why?”