Each Little Bird That Sings

by Deborah Wiles

  “You and Aunt Florentine were such a pair,” said Mama, straightening up and repositioning the clip in her hair. “To lose both Florentine and Edisto in the same year . . . It’s a hard blow, for heaven’s sake.”

  I swallowed and tried to remember: Death is a part of life.

  “It’s a blow for Peach, too, you know,” said Mama.

  “Please don’t make me play with him, Mama.”

  At Uncle Edisto’s funeral, Peach had fainted into the punch bowl, and that was just for starters. He had been so overwrought about everything, I almost had to strangle him and put him into the casket right along with Uncle Edisto. Only my strength of character kept me from it.

  “I thought you live to serve,” said Mama. Her voice was tired. She put an arm around my waist and pulled me to her, leaned her head on my shoulder, and gave me a squeeze. I stood there in my half muddy, flip-flopped feet, with my hair sticking out from under my baseball cap, and clutched her right back.

  “Okay,” said Mama. “You’re off duty tonight.”

  We heard Merry, awake and singing. She called from her casket, to the tune of “Jingle Bells”: “Get me up! Get me up! Get me up away!”

  I did.

  Chapter 8

  Lurleen finally came and brought Jimmie, and I escaped upstairs—above Snowberger’s, above the arriving food and gentle wishes—to a long bath with bubbles and then my lookout post in Great-great-aunt Florentine’s room. It was almost dusk, that magical time of evening just before the fireflies come out, just as the crickets start up their all-night racket. For years Aunt Florentine and I had sat together at her window and watched folks arrive for viewings and visitations and funerals. “Geography,” said Aunt Florentine as she told me stories about how Mr. Brunner wore a toupee, how Mrs. Ragsdale had married the wrong man, how I’d better not eat anything Tot Ishee brought to a funeral. I learned a lot of facts for my book, A Short History of a Small Place. I told Great-great-aunt Florentine I’d give her credit in the acknowledgments. She told me I should dedicate the book to her. Maybe I will.

  So it was from my lookout post in Great-great-aunt Florentine’s room that I saw Peach arrive. His mama, my aunt Goldie, pulled into the front parking lot in a long blue car with fins on the back for taillights. It looked like a spaceship. I could see Peach inside. He wasn’t moving. That couldn’t be good.

  Aunt Goldie was out of the car as if a bumblebee had stung her—hugging Mama, hugging Daddy, hugging anybody who would let her wrap her arms around them.

  People began to hover around the passenger side of Aunt Goldie’s car. They peered through the glass, tapped on it, gestured to Peach inside. He didn’t budge.

  “Here we go,” I said to myself.

  I sat at the window seat and peered through Aunt Florentine’s binoculars. It took three people to pry Peach out of the car. He was as stiff as a stalk of celosia, already up to his ears in overemotional shenanigans. His eyes were clamped shut, and his face was as ashen as the dead.

  I saw the concern on Aunt Goldie’s face, and I watched Mama pat on her, pat on Peach, and exchange a tired look with Daddy. Daddy shook his head as people carried Peach into the house. Then he reached for Mama, just as he always did, and Mama kissed his face, just as she always did. I flopped across Aunt Florentine’s bed, resigned to a weekend of misery.

  I lay as still as I could, as still as dead people lie when they are in caskets, as still as Aunt Florentine was lying downstairs in the Serenity Suite, waiting for family and friends to come calling at seven o’clock sharp for her viewing.

  Everything in Aunt Florentine’s room sounded slow and soft. The floorboards breathed a creaky breath. The mantel clock gave off a satisfying tock-tick, tock-tick, tock-tick sound that made the wallpaper roses look like they might nod off to sleep. Specks of dust drifted in the sifts of dusky light that came through the window blinds. The dust had no one to land on anymore; Great-great-aunt Florentine was gone. I breathed softly in and out on the bed and felt the loneliness of everything.

  I thought about the days when Great-great-aunt Florentine played old maid with me and Tidings. When Declaration spent the night, Aunt Florentine gave us egg-white facials, shared all her beauty tips, and let us rummage through her jewelry box. I stared at her bedroom door now and waited for her to come through it, with her teeth in a glass of water and her face glistening with face cream, ready for bed at five o’clock in the afternoon like always. But she didn’t come in, of course.

  I turned over. Even Aunt Florentine’s pillows looked lonesome. I could almost hear Aunt Florentine say, These are my pillows, which I have left for you. Enjoy them and remember me. So I gathered them up. I tucked one under each arm and traveled across the wide hallway to my room.

  I propped myself against my closet wall with the two feather pillows that smelled like lavender and that had belonged to Great-great-aunt Florentine. I missed Dismay, but he was a funeral dog, so I knew his place was downstairs at the viewing. He’d sleep next to Great-great-aunt Florentine’s casket for the night—that was his way. He’d already be in the thick of everything, and folks would be patting all over him. That would make them feel better. And Dismay loved Peach. Peach would be sneezing. He was allergic to dogs.

  It was cozy in the closet. I had an overhead lightbulb that I turned on and off with the pull of a long string. My small dresser was in the closet. My hanging clothes surrounded me like loving aunts and uncles telling old family stories. A big piece of carpet with a cabbage-roses pattern all over it lay on top of the wooden floor. All around the edges of the carpet, I put my Essential Equipment. First, a dictionary (I looked up the word decorum: “Good taste in conduct; dignity.” Peach and dignity would never exist side by side—what was Mama thinking?). Next, stacks of Discovering Our World Magazine. My Short notebooks. An art tablet for drawing and thinking; a mayonnaise jar full of number-two pencils (recently sharpened) with good erasers; a wooden ruler (accept no substitute); a box of colored pencils; and my crayons. I had a map project to work on for school. I was drawing a map of my closet. I opened a package of Tom’s peanuts and shook them carefully into my bottle of RC Cola. I sighed and took stock.

  One: I felt clean and organized. I wore my old hey-diddle-diddle pajamas—cats played fiddles, dishes ran away with spoons. I’d even washed my hair and combed out all the tangles. Aunt Florentine had loved to work on my hair. “Straight as a stick, thin as a lie, and tangled as a spider’s web!” she’d say. “Let me at it!” But she wouldn’t see it ever again.

  Two: I looked at my watch: 7:00 P.M. Tidings would be wearing his suit and standing just inside the big front doors of the funeral home. He would greet visitors, ask them to sign the guest book, and then direct them, like he was an air-traffic controller and they were taxiing airplanes, to the Serenity Suite.

  Three: Daddy would have put the finishing touches on Great-great-aunt Florentine, making sure all the buttons down the front of her favorite cornflower blue dress lined up just right; that her false teeth were inside her mouth; that her hair was styled perfectly; that every wrinkle was smoothed and powdered.

  As I leaned back into Great-great-aunt Florentine’s pillows, I was filled to overflowing with a longing to talk with her. I wanted to see her. I wanted to hug somebody. I wanted my dog.

  Organ music drifted upstairs—which meant that Mrs. Powell, Preacher Powell’s wife, had arrived. Aunt Goldie would be in the resting room with Peach, trying to keep him calm and get him to sleep.

  “I’ll bet she gives him knockout drops,” Tidings once told me.

  “She should knock him out on funeral days, too,” I’d said. At Great-uncle Edisto’s funeral—after he had ruined the punch bowl, after he’d spewed his lunch into a potted fern (then dribbled on Declaration’s shoes), and after he had smashed himself into the azaleas—Peach lay sobbing into the flowers, and of course, I was sent to extract him from the bushes since everyone else was busy with spilled punch and vomit.

  I couldn’t extract him from
the shrubbery without pulling on him, and I didn’t want to touch him. Great-great-aunt Florentine faced right up to the problem. She threw herself into the azaleas with Peach (Mama later wondered about the dents) and said, “Well, isn’t this a smart move! How clever of you to think of it! It’s much nicer sitting in vegetation than it is in that stuffy old house, isn’t it?”

  Peach gaped at Great-great-aunt Florentine while his nose dripped onto the pink blooms. Aunt Florentine pulled a Snowberger’s handkerchief from the sleeve of her dress and mopped at Peach’s face. “No matter what happens, Peach,” she’d said, “there will always be lots of family here to love you . . . like Comfort and me!” Aunt Florentine put the handkerchief to Peach’s nose, and he blew a loud honking blow. He nodded.

  “And, when it is my time for the heavenly hereafter, I want you to do something for me—will you?” Peach blinked. “Let’s make a pact, Peach.” Aunt Florentine had a knack for talking sense to folks. “When I go off to Glory Land . . .” Peach moaned and Aunt Florentine held him close with one arm. “You come visit me in the Serenity Suite, and I’ll know you’re there. I’ll send you loving thoughts—you’ll feel them! We’ll be as close as we are right now, here in these azaleas.” Aunt Florentine patted on her thigh for effect. “Think you can do that, Peach?”

  Now, I knew he wouldn’t even look at her casket during the funeral, but I didn’t say anything. And yet, like it was a magical spell she had cast on him, Peach nodded his skinny, pointy head and said yes.

  Aunt Florentine could fix anything. I could almost hear her calling me from downstairs. She would want me there!

  I scrambled to my feet, hung my pajamas on a peg, pulled on my visitation dress, and slipped on my funeral shoes. I looked into the mirror on the back of my closet door. There were my knobby knees, looking just like Tidings’s knobby knees, only his were bigger (and older) and one of mine was skinned. There was my crooked smile like Great-great-aunt Florentine’s; my bumpy nose like Great-uncle Edisto’s; my long ears like Daddy’s; my rosebud chin like Mama’s. I looked great. Even my hair was behaving. Aunt Florentine would be proud.

  I stepped out of my closet to go pay my respects to the dead.

  Chapter 9

  I walked across the hall to Great-great-aunt Florentine’s bedroom and peeked through her curtains to see how many folks were downstairs. The front parking lot was full. Aunt Florentine was packin’ ’em in. I wished she could have seen it!

  I took the curving back stairs to the downstairs kitchen, where casseroles lined the counters. Their foil tops gleamed and twinkled in the early evening light that sifted through the half-closed blinds. Mrs. Powell was playing “In the Garden.” Next to “Softly and Tenderly,” “In the Garden” was Great-great-aunt Florentine’s favorite hymn. It was my favorite, too. It made me want to hurry, so I scooted across the kitchen and reached for the doorknob to the hallway door.

  As I turned it, a fiery hot shriek split the serenity at Snowberger’s, as if touching the doorknob had set off an alarm. I was struck still—I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to.

  Right on the heels of the shriek was the longest, highest wail I had ever heard. And it wasn’t coming from Daddy’s office or the resting room. It was coming from the front of the funeral home, from the Serenity Suite—it was coming from Great-great-aunt Florentine!

  I’d heard about the dead sitting up in their caskets and even saying, “I’m thirsty!” although I’d never seen that happen. I’d heard about the dead calling for their loved ones in cemeteries late at night, but I’d never witnessed that, and I’d been in the Snapfinger Cemetery plenty of nights. But I’d never heard of the dead sitting up in the funeral home, at the viewing, in front of all the mourners, and wailing his or her fool head off! Aunt Florentine was calling me!

  I flung open the door and raced down the hallway. “In the Garden” had stopped. I tried to barrel through folks who were standing in the doorway to the Serenity Suite—“Excuse me! Pardon me!”—but there were too many people trying to get into, or out of, the room.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it!” said Miss Phoebe Tolbert.

  I turned around and ran back down the hall and into Daddy’s big refrigerated workroom. I didn’t even turn on the lights—I knew that room by heart. My hard-soled shoes slapped the tiled floor as I raced for the secret pocket doors. Just as I got to the doors, they slid open. Daddy was on the other side, in the Serenity Suite, saying, “Give us room, folks! Please!” He was trying to move Great-great-aunt Florentine’s casket-on-wheels through the pocket doors and back into his workroom. Tidings and Mr. Johnson were trying to help him. Dismay was turning in circles, trying to figure out what was going on. I whistled for him, and he came to me, wagging his tail and panting a look that said, This is so out of order!

  The casket was open with the top of the lid facing me, so I couldn’t see around it, but I didn’t need to see any more. I recognized that wail. It wasn’t Aunt Florentine at all—it was Peach. Mama and Aunt Goldie were plastered against the open side of the casket, bent toward Aunt Florentine. In a low, calm voice, Aunt Goldie was saying, “Peach, let go of Aunt Florentine, honey. You’re pulling her hair all out of shape. You know how she loved her hair just so.” Peach wailed again. Anger filled my throat until it was so tight I could hardly breathe. Peach!

  “We’ve got it, Bunch,” said Mr. Johnson to Daddy. Mama’s flower arrangements tumbled into the mourners or crashed to the floor as people tried to get out of the way of the moving casket.

  Daddy held out his arms to everybody in the Serenity Suite. “Forgive us, folks,” he said in his funeral director’s voice, speaking above the wail. “We’ll cut the viewing short tonight. I know you’ll understand.” Dismay panted by Daddy’s side, while Daddy quietly spoke to folks who shook his hand, patted on Dismay, and eyed the wailing casket that was moving away from the Serenity Suite and into the cold workroom. “Thank you for coming,” Daddy said over and over. “We’ll see you tomorrow at three. Thank you all.”

  Tidings spotted me—he didn’t seem the least surprised to see me. “Get the lights, Comfort,” he directed. My heart was hammering my chest. I dashed to the other end of the long room and pushed up every black switch I came to, all six of them. The workroom flooded with the bright white light of the dead. And that’s when the wailing stopped. Just like that.

  Daddy slapped shut the pocket doors. I stood at the head of the open casket, finally able to take a look at Aunt Florentine, but all I could see was a sniveling little sack of skin and bones named Peach Shuggars lying on top of my aunt. He was dressed in a baggy pea-green suit and had his face buried in Aunt Florentine’s old neck. He was crying all over her dead body, ruining the hair and makeup job that Daddy had spent so much time on, wrinkling her cornflower blue dress, holding on to her for dear life, and gasping, between sobs, “Don’t go . . . don’t go . . . don’t go . . .”

  Chapter 10

  Aunt Goldie patted on Peach as he got quieter and quieter. She kept saying, “I’m right here, Peach.”

  Daddy sat down on a metal chair next to a long steel table. He put his elbows on his knees and rested his head in his hands. Mr. Johnson scratched his neck and looked lost.

  My hands hurt, and I realized I had curled them so tightly into fists that my fingernails were digging into my palms. I had been clenching my teeth so hard, my jaw hurt. Tidings raised an eyebrow my way.

  “I don’t know what possessed him,” said Aunt Goldie. “He’s never come to a viewing before, so of course he’s never seen . . . He insisted on coming . . . Said Florentine told him to . . . This whole ordeal has been so hard for him . . .” She looked at Daddy with tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry, brother,” she said. Daddy shook his head and said nothing. Mama walked to Daddy and put her arms around his shoulders. Daddy lifted his head, and we all waited to see what would happen next.

  The workroom faucet dripped a hollow sound into the big stainless-steel sink. The room was brighter than bright and ever
ything in it gleamed.

  Jimmie was the first one to move. She had been holding Merry in her arms. She leaned in closer to the casket and took a long look.

  “Dead!” said Merry.

  “Laws, yes!” said Jimmie.

  “Well, actually, no,” said Daddy.

  “It depends,” said Tidings.

  At which point Mama said, in a brisk voice, “I’m making cocoa. Goldie, can you help me?”

  Aunt Goldie nodded. “You’ll be all right with him now,” she said to Daddy. “He’s sleeping.”

  “He sure is out,” said Tidings, looking closely at our cousin. “That stuff you gave him before he got away from you really packs a punch . . .”

  “That’s enough, Tidings,” said Mama. Then she turned to Mr. Johnson. “Plas, will you stay and help?”

  “Wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Mr. Johnson.

  I wanted to ask him if he had put my Life Notice for Great-great-aunt Florentine in his paper, but I felt like it wasn’t the time.

  Mama gave my shoulder a squeeze as she walked past me with Aunt Goldie (who hadn’t noticed me) and said, “Go to bed, Comfort. We’re all right behind you. Tomorrow will be a long day.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I was happy to be dismissed. I’d seen enough.

  I hugged Dismay good night.

  “Hug me, too,” said Daddy. I flung my arms around his neck, so glad he had asked me to.

  He squeezed me back. “Off you go,” he said. I wanted to say something to him, but I didn’t know what to say. He gave me a slow pat and stood up. Then to Mr. Johnson he said, “Okay, Plas, let’s pry him out of there.”

  I took the back stairs up to my room and my closet. It had started raining again. I drank my warm RC with peanuts. I listened to the rain ping the tin roof. I took a number-two pencil from the mayonnaise jar and opened my notebooks. I wanted to work on a write-up about Great-great-aunt Florentine’s viewing, but how could I write about that? All I could write was I hate Peach over and over. I made it big and black on the page. I drew lightning bolts all around the words. And I hatched a new plan. I would stay in my closet until Peach went home. I would refuse to leave. They couldn’t make me leave. I would sleep there and eat there and only come out to go to the bathroom. I would not see Peach Shuggars again. Not ever again.