Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush

by Virginia Hamilton

  “You … gone live here? In my brother’s room?” Tree moaned and cried but there were no more tears. She clasped her hands and unclasped them. She didn’t know how M’Vy could do this to her, giving Dab’s room away.

  “Look. I got you dinner ready,” Miss Pricherd said. “Vy have to go over to the funeral parlor. Taken the boy’s suit and things. We put his clothes all in a pile in Vy’s bedroom till she know what you want to save and what not.”

  “I … want … want his light shoes. Don’t throw ’em … away.”

  “I ain’t throwin nothing out, baby. We gone keep it all, don’t worry bout it. Listen, I got stew and corn bread and green beans with a strik-o-lean—how’s that? And that left over Chinese food … Lemme go fetch it fer you, then we’ll talk some more.”

  Tree let her go. She was too sad, too weak, to care.

  Taken Dab’s room! Guess they be soon movin me out.

  “Whyn’t you taken my room?” Tree said when Miss Pricherd returned. “I’m leavin soon.”

  “Now. Now. Here. Let’s have some food.” She sat a tray of food on the coffee table and moved the coffee table up close to the couch. The tray looked nice. There was a napkin. There was hot chocolate and stew and good-smelling beans. And a bowl of chicken and noodles, mixed. The sight of corn bread with butter melting into steaming cracks made Tree weak all over, hungry weak. Saliva ran in her mouth. She swallowed and got shakily to her feet.

  “Where you gone to, hon. Listen.”

  “I be right back,” Tree whispered. She went to Dab’s room, to the closet. She saw that all his clothes were gone. And went to M’Vy’s room and saw the pile of Dab’s things in one corner. There wasn’t much. She found his shuffling shoes at the bottom of the pile. Picked them up and held them close.

  Tree put the shoes on, Dab’s shoes, outside the living room. She let their little lights shine. Always be light on your feet, she thought, and went in.

  “So that’s how they look when they on,” Miss Pricherd said.

  Tree sat down on the couch, letting the shoes light up when she moved. She ate the food. It was delicious.

  Miss Pricherd sat near, watching her. She looked bright and alert in her new uniform. She had her hair done up in a net so that it was off her face.

  Keep her face from getting hair oil on it. She lookin not so old, dressed nice, Tree thought.

  Miss Pricherd turned on the TV and adjusted it to the Carson show. She didn’t turn it up so that it would bother conversation. She looked at Tree eagerly. Somewhat shy now, she smoothed her hands over her uniform. She had on white stockings, Tree noticed, just the way the women in the hospital had them.

  “Now,” said Miss Pricherd. “Lemme tell you. Vy given me a room to stay in here. And I do everythang but buy the food. She do that or she tell Silversmith to do it. Them two thinkin about tyin up, I bet. He brang in a whole supply of food. You should see the bunch of bananas that man brought up. Shoot. And lots of good meat. I be careful. Ain’t gone fool with nothin you don’t want me to prepare.”

  “You gone cook for me?” Tree said. “I’m the one cooks for me and Dab.”

  “I been cookin for peoples my whole life,” said Miss Pricherd. “Ain’t the food you eatin now good?”

  Tree had to admit it was.

  “Well, then,” Miss Pricherd said. “And I’ll tell you what else. I’m gone take care of all the housework. I’m gone wash everythang and iron everythang. Even Vy will bring her thangs to me and I will wash an iron ’em so she don’t have to worry bout nothin here.”

  “You mean you gone do it all?” Tree asked, incredulous.

  “Girl, all you gone have to do is eat, sleep, watch TV and do schoolwork. Vy say to be sure you study. And no boys in this house. Well. She right, I guess. But you gettin older. They gone be boys sometime.”

  “How you gone do all that work!” Tree said. She couldn’t get over it. She didn’t believe it

  “I did it once a week,” Miss Pricherd said. “Now, with me here ever day, I can do a little at a time. Cook, do laundry. It easy. I’m so glad to be here. And Tree. Teresa, I don’t mean to be takin nothin away from you mourn your brother. Please, I wouldn’t do that. I had no place else to go but the street where I been. And Vy see a way she could help you and help me, too.”

  Tree was astounded. Suddenly she remembered all the dirty work she had always done. Washing Dab’s dirty clothes. Cleaning the hard, dirty ring from around the tub. Mopping and sweeping dirt and dust.

  “What she gone pay you?” Tree said. She had eaten all the food. Now she sipped the wonderful hot chocolate.

  “Don’t pay me nothing fo a while, until she gets her bills paid. What I need? I’m here, sheltered and not hongry no more. That’s good. I’m safe off the street. She pay me when she can, what she can. It all right with me.”

  Tree got up. Miss Pricherd wouldn’t let her take the tray. Tree went to her room, and Miss Pricherd came in when she had finished in the kitchen. She stood rather formally in her sparkling uniform, just inside the door. “See you got all your things together,” she said. “Vy tole me you might be goin.”

  “Yeah,” Tree said. She looked at Miss Pricherd, then away. “What’s it like out there?”

  “What?”

  “The street,” Tree said softly. “What it like to live out there?”

  “Well,” Miss Pricherd said. She came in quietly and sat down primly on the edge of Tree’s chair by the bed. She looked around her like she was afraid of messing things up. “Best you never know,” she told Tree.

  “You lived out there,” Tree said.

  “Unh-uh, no I didn’t. That no kind of living. I survived. I was just lucky. I coulda been dead.”

  “Why come?” Tree asked.

  “Well, many a time, I wake up, they done stripped me. Strip my coat and dress off. Shame! I so ashamed, bein all open like that! Taken my bags of food and clothes.”

  “You mean, you slept in the open, they could take your clothes off and you don’t feel it?”

  “Not in the open. I didn’t sleep in the open,” Miss Pricherd said. “They always a hall or a doorway. And you can be real sick and tired and you don’t wake for nothin. Once, I had me a room. But it wasn’t nothing like your room or you brother’s. People see you old, they bust right in. Be sleepin and they walk in, take what you got on the chair.” Her voice shook. She clutched at her hands, twirling her thumbs ceaselessly, the way Tree had seen other old people do.

  “Don’t go out there, Tree,” Miss Pricherd said. “Young girls fall into down time, all kinds of trouble.”

  “Like what?” Tree asked.

  “Best you never know. You thinkin bout leavin tonight?”

  “I’m thinkin about it,” Tree said calmly.

  “Don’t do it. Wait least till they buries the boy. Do that much for you muh. I’m tellin you, this is breakin her.”

  “Really,” Tree said.

  The rain was coming down. Back in the living room, Miss Pricherd and Tree sat, listening to it across the quiet, formal space between them. The television flickered its light.

  “It rainin hard,” Miss Pricherd said.

  “I hear it,” Tree said.

  “Wait least till mornin.”

  When Tree said nothing, Miss Pricherd spoke again. There was a kind of hard glinting, like flint, out of her eyes. “They gone tear up that nice bundle you made. They gone tear you up, after that. Wait until mornin. I fix you a nice breakfast. Then you have the whole day. Wait.”

  “Maybe I will,” Tree said.

  Chapter 17

  TREE THOUGHT OF funeral homes as places you went by on your way somewhere else. She never thought she would ever have to go inside one. She had passed them on the bus sometimes, riding with Dab and M’Vy, peering out the window at the manicured lawns. But she never thought of anyone in her world dying and having to be taken to one of those places.

  She stood at the foot of wide cement steps that were covered in immaculate green outdoo
r carpet. The steps led to a sweeping colonnade with tall white columns. The home looked richer and more stately than any church Tree could have imagined. It looked like a Southern plantation house.

  “Who’d think it some funeral parlor?” Tree said, in awe. “You sure this place is where Dab is at?” she asked M’Vy. “It lookin like somebody’s Hollywood mansion.”

  “Come on, Heart,” Vy told her. She took Tree’s hand, urging her up the steps. “They only given us so much time.”

  “They not gone run us out?” Tree asked. M’Vy didn’t take the time to answer but hurried on. Silversmith and Miss Pricherd, who had decided at the last minute to come, were right behind them.

  Tree saw a tall gentleman dressed in a very business-like gray suit standing at the entrance to the funeral parlor.

  “He the guard? Is this some white funeral parlor?” Tree whispered to M’Vy.

  “They do all kinds in this one, that’s why I pick it,” M’Vy whispered back. “Just you money have to be green. That man is one of the attendants. Don’t worry about nothin, Tree. It gone be fine.”

  Tree wasn’t sure. She hadn’t expected the funeral place to be so grand. It made the hurt somewhat less, that she hadn’t gotten her way concerning Dab. No church funeral, no fine clothes for his burial.

  Tuesday had been a day of death. Tree got through Tuesday night and had not run away. It had rained on and off the whole night. There had been lightning and thunder; not even a runaway fool would have gone out in such weather, was Tree’s opinion.

  On Wednesday, she wouldn’t talk to M’Vy on the phone. She let Miss Pricherd do the talking, instead. The old lady did everything else, as well. Cleaning and ironing, cooking. And continually checking on Tree to see that she’d eaten, that she was feeling all right. Tree didn’t have to do a thing but lounge around watching the soap operas. Sometimes she would forget and rush to Dab’s room, as if she thought he was going to be there. Then she would find it wasn’t his room anymore, and that made her cry more than once.

  When Silversmith came to check on her Wednesday evening, she locked herself in the bedroom, jamming the chair under the doorknob. “Why come she send you all the time?” she hissed through the door. “She ain’t got one care for me.”

  He did not answer her. He talked to Miss Pricherd, quietly, in the living room, out of Tree’s hearing. It was Miss Pricherd who now knew everything and pretended she didn’t. Tree knew nothing. Only that her brother was gone.

  Poor Dab, too, she thought now.

  The gentleman in gray at the door nodded politely to them. He didn’t smile, exactly, Tree was quick to notice. He did hold the door open for them; he didn’t seem upset at having them there. They went inside the softly lit place. They were in a foyer. There was a young man in a dark suit and an older man, dressed in a suit, also. Tree saw a tall woman wearing a navy blue dress that had a white collar and white cuffs.

  She knew right away that the young man belonged to Silversmith. He looked like Silversmith, except he was younger, not as big and tall. He carried himself just like his father, and his hair was dark and curly.

  “My boy, Don,” Silversmith said. “This is Teresa Pratt and Miss Cenithia Pricherd.”

  Don extended his hand to Tree. “Glad to meet you, Teresa,” he said, shaking her hand. “I’m sorry.”

  She knew he meant her brother. “Thank you,” she said. He then greeted Miss Pricherd.

  “How you doin, Don?” M’Vy said.

  “I’m doin all right,” he said. “You feeling all right?”

  “Better,” Vy said. “Been so busy, haven’t seen you in so long.”

  “No, Ma’am,” Don said.

  “We thinkin takin everybody out to lunch afterwhile,” she told him. “They just the few of us—will you come, too?”

  “Yes, Ma’am, sure. Be glad to,” he said. He glanced at Tree and smiled.

  Tree thought Don had good manners. He looked to be eighteen or nineteen. She found that, right now, she couldn’t smile at him. She was holding herself in for what was to come.

  “Will you all sign the register,” the woman said. She indicated a small blue book that had a silk cover and rested on a stand. The book was open. M’Vy signed in the book, writing her name in bold black script. “Sign it, Tree,” she said. “We keep it so we can see afterward who come.”

  “We know who come,” Tree said. “We all right here.” But she was wrong. There was a name above M’Vy’s on the first line. Mrs. Cerise Noirrette.

  “M’Vy, it’s my English teacher,” Tree announced to M’Vy. Tree asked one of the gentlemen about it, and he explained that a Mrs. Noirrette had come earlier for the viewing. He had told her that the family would be having no viewing.

  “Thank you kindly,” M’Vy told him, and turned to Tree. “Nice of your teacher to come,” M’Vy added.

  “Why come no viewing?” Tree asked her.

  “Buh-cause I thought it would be easier on everybody concerned if we left the casket closed,” said M’Vy.

  “No,” Tree said. Carefully she wrote her name in the nice book. Finished, she gave the pen to Don, who stood behind her. She went up close to M’Vy and said, “I want to see Dab.”

  “Tree.”

  “M’Vy, don’t do this to me.”

  “Tree, I’m not trying—” Vy stopped abruptly and explained to the gentleman standing by that they would have a short viewing.

  Tree didn’t bother to thank M’Vy. Anger seemed to be her most constant feeling next to her sadness over Dab. She felt drained. There was a cloying scent of flowers everywhere.

  Then the gentleman was directing them to follow him. He had sandy hair, Tree noticed. It was neatly cut and trimmed along his collar. He smelled of cologne.

  What it like to know you always gone walk around in a suit every day? Tree thought.

  Under her feet was a carpet that was wall-to-wall plush gold. There were chandeliers, and pedestals with ferns in pots at intervals along the hallway. There were many closed doors. They were directed to enter the one door that was open. The gentleman stood at the door as they entered. Then he closed it behind them.

  At the far end of the small room was the casket. There were three tall baskets of flowers, one at each end of the casket on gold pedestals, and one on a stand before it.

  Tree sucked in her breath. The flowers made a breathtaking scent. “M’Vy!” Tree whispered, feeling the sanctity of the moment. “It’s all just beautiful!”

  They all came forward then. M’Vy had her arm around Tree. Miss Pricherd was on Tree’s other side. An attendant came, and the casket was opened. Half of the top lifted up. It was metallic bronze, as was the whole casket. Inside was a tufted, silky fabric of sky blue. Lying on the blue was the form of Dab. He was dressed in his blue serge suit. There was a dark blue velvet pillow under his head.

  There was no movement, no sound other than their breathing. Tree was so close to the casket, she could touch it. She did put her hand on it. There were lights coming down on Dab. Tree knew she would never forget this moment. She would ever after remember the sweet funeral smell and would forget it for long periods, only to remember it again at odd moments. Dab had his hands in his lap. His eyes were closed; his mouth, shut. His hair was not the way she had seen it last. It was trimmed neatly.

  Did they take him to a barber?

  Suddenly she knew something she had never suspected. Once dead, you were no longer yourself.

  “Don’t he look nice? Just like hisself,” M’Vy said.

  “Like he sleeping,” Miss Pricherd whispered. “He a good-looking boy.”

  For the first time, Tree smiled; smiled down at the casket and then up at M’Vy.

  “Do he look all right, Tree?” M’Vy asked.

  Tree nodded.

  “It’s a nice casket,” Silversmith thought to say, from behind them. “Everything lookin very nice.”

  “I think so,” M’Vy said. “You think so, Tree?”

  “It all right,” Tree final
ly said, not unkindly. She said no more.

  For it was not her brother lying there in Dab’s good suit. It looked hard, cold under the lights, whatever it was lying there. It looked painted; its eyes were sealed shut—were they sewn shut? Its mouth was closed tight —did they wax it closed? What it was had no sweetness of Dab, no warmth of Dab. It had no moaning, unh-huhing, yeah-yeah, sing-a-little-song, of Dab. Who put the blusher on his cheeks?

  Who color his lips like that, so he look punky?

  It was a lifeless corpse. A dead body. Dab was gone. Tree was grateful that he had left this weak, suffering form behind.

  The casket was closed again. They stepped back and bowed their heads. Tree leaned on M’Vy; it was comforting to do so. Vy had her arms around her. Silversmith put his arm around M’Vy. Miss Pricherd and Don reached over and clasped Tree’s hands together with theirs. They were all touching or holding her and M’Vy. Tree could feel their heat flow together. They trembled; they were alive, holding on.

  The minister opened his bible and read. Tree caught some of it:

  “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul, the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple … He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life … Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new …”

  M’Vy was shaking, crying silently. The ceremony did not take long. Tree knew it was over when they let go of her to stand separately. Silversmith still had his arm around M’Vy. In a minute, Don came up and took her arm. But she was all right.

  “I’m all right,” she said to him, quite clearly.

  “Good,” he said.

  They removed the casket, which was on a metal platform with wheels. Attendants wheeled it out the back way. They took away the flowers, too.

  “They taken it to the cemetery,” M’Vy explained. “We can set down a minute, and then we’ll go.”

  There were seats along the wall. They all sat down, not saying much. Vy took off her black gloves and put them in her purse. Tree had white gloves in her purse but she did not feel like wearing them. After ten minutes, they went outside. They saw the silver hearse pull away. It held the casket and the flowers.