The Funeral Dress

by Susan Gregg Gilmore

  Emmalee picked up a piece of the thick red fabric and held it in her hands. She set it aside and picked up another, and one more. Every stitch already pulled taut through the fabric was uniform and perfect. Although Emmalee did not know what a slipcover was, she imagined these unfinished pieces were what the woman in the olive-colored suit had wanted. No matter what Leona had or had not done, she had not deserved those woman’s harsh words. Had she not flown off the side of Old Lick, Leona would have finished the sewing as she had promised. It would have been ready, sitting in a cardboard box, first thing this morning. Emmalee knew that for certain.

  The baby slept sound in her cradle box, and even though Emmalee was tired and wanted to sleep, too, she stepped back into the kitchen and pulled the old potato peelings from the drain. She filled the sink with hot, soapy water and placed the dishes there to soak. Emmalee would make a dress for burying, but she would start in the morning. First there was cleaning to do. Leona would not want anyone to see this mess. Only when everything was neat and tidy would she head back down to Red Chert.

  EMMALEE

  RED CHERT

  “Hey girl. Get up,” Nolan hollered from the front room. “Preacher’s here to see you.” Emmalee yanked the pillow over her head, but Nolan’s yelling only grew louder and sharp. “Get out here! Preacher ain’t got time to waste on you.”

  Emmalee held the pillow tighter to her ear.

  “You hear me, girl?” A loud knock followed at her door. “Preacher’s got business with you, and he’s got more to do today than to sit out here staring at me. Get your butt up out of that bed!”

  Emmalee dragged herself from underneath the covers and oriented herself in her tiny room. She had returned from Old Lick late and fell asleep listening to her baby whine. She did not want Nolan waking her.

  “Come on, girl.”

  “Damn it, Nolan.” Emmalee scrambled to her feet and tucked the quilt around the tiny lump in the middle of the bed. She tossed her coat over her shoulders and stumbled through the bedroom door, swaying from side to side like a drunk, although she had never once touched a drop of her father’s alcohol. “I heard you the first time,” she said, talking gruff to her father.

  The preacher stood in the middle of the room. His chin, blistered with white-tipped pimples, left him looking more like a high-school boy than a full-grown man responsible for others’ salvations. He toted a black-bound book in his hand and rocked back and forth from his heels to his toes.

  Nolan took the chair by the wood-burning stove. He held a plug of chew in his mouth, locked between his cheek and gum. He fixed his eyes on the preacher as if he were a cat playing with a trapped mouse.

  Nolan rarely opened the door for anyone, other than Mr. Fulton or the sheriff, and Emmalee was particularly surprised to find the preacher standing there in front of her. Nolan did not care for any of the church men in Cullen, especially those who had come to pray over his Cynthia Faye when she lay dying in the back room. He called them liars. All of them. He said they marched into his house and dropped to their knees and begged God for his wife’s healing. They promised God could work a miracle, even in Cynthia Faye’s withered body. The very next day they claimed her death was part of God’s great plan and Nolan needed to accept her passing.

  “They ain’t to be trusted,” he had told Emmalee.

  He pushed his chair back on its rear legs and stared cold at the young man standing in front of him. Emmalee pulled her coat farther across her body.

  “Good morning, Emmalee. I’m Brother Herd.” The preacher cast his eyes toward the ground as though he had already seen too much of her. Emmalee slipped her arms inside her coat sleeves and pulled her arms together, struggling to hide her body from view. “I need to talk to you, child. I understand you’re wanting to make a dress for Mrs. Lane.”

  “I ain’t a child, and I ain’t wanting to make a dress. I am making a dress.” Emmalee spoke her mind as fierce as Nolan when need be.

  “Yes, I heard that,” the preacher said, keeping his voice calm and steady. “Why don’t you sit down. That little baby of yours must be wearing you out.” The preacher directed Emmalee toward the sofa. “I’m curious why you want to do such a thing, a young girl like yourself? Especially with a new baby and all.”

  “Leona needs a dress, don’t she?”

  “Yes. And I’m sure you do beautiful work. No one’s questioning that.” The preacher paused and glanced about the room as if he was searching for the right words. “It’s just that, uh, why don’t you make Miss Leona one of those crosses. You know, like all the others down there on that oak by the road?” He slipped his right hand in his pants pocket and jiggled some coins together. “That would be such a lovely gesture.”

  Emmalee shook her head. “I don’t want to.”

  The preacher shifted his weight from his toes to his heels. “Let Mrs. Fulton pick out this dress since she’s a grown woman and all, more Leona’s age. And you make a cross—”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “We could place it on the casket during the service at the church. You could hang it on your tree later. You can make one for Mr. Curtis too?” The preacher talked faster, not pausing long enough for Emmalee to interrupt. “So what do you think, Emmalee? You’ll make two crosses for me?”

  “This ain’t about me or my cross-making. And it ain’t about you either.” Emmalee tugged on the coat, hoping to cover her bare legs. “My friend needs a dress. A special dress. Not one that half the other women buried in Cullen are wearing.”

  The preacher pressed his palms together and lifted his index fingers to his mouth. Emmalee wondered if he was praying, and she wondered if she should bow her head or if that was only something you did inside the church building.

  “I guess you know Leona and Curtis were headed to Wednesday-night supper when the accident happened,” the preacher said. “You can imagine their church family has taken this loss real hard.” The preacher squatted on his heels in front of the sofa. “Curtis did so much for us. He just cut a huge load of wood for the fellowship hall earlier in the day. He was a great man of God, and his heavenly crown is surely heavy with jewels. I really do think the stars shined brighter in the sky last night since he left this world for his eternal home.”

  “How come you think them same stars ain’t shining for Miss Leona?”

  “Oh, I’m sure they were. All I’m saying is that Curtis was a man of deep commitment to the Lord. He was what my mama called bitterstrong in his faith.”

  “So,” Emmalee said, tucking her legs underneath her and stretching her T-shirt over her knees.

  “You see some of the women at Cullen Church of Christ would feel a lot better about all this if you left the dress selection to Mrs. Fulton.” The preacher stood and looked to Nolan. “This church is really all the family they got.”

  Emmalee had not been raised in the church like most of the others in Cullen. Sometimes she believed it was her absence from the church rolls that left her feeling more like an outcast in this town than the fact she was Nolan Bullard’s child. If her mama had lived, Emmalee figured she would have been a churchgoing girl, too. She was sure of it. All she really knew about God had come from those beautiful stories her mama told her before she died. In Emmalee’s mind, God had a long white beard and sat on a golden throne. His son sat beside him. His hair was brown and fell past his shoulders. He was kind and spoke sweetly to the little children.

  Emmalee did not know scripture like Brother Herd, but she was certain she believed in God as much as he did. Sometimes she even felt Him blowing past her neck when she was out walking in the woods. Her mama had told her God was everywhere. She said He’d whisper to you like that if you stopped and listened, opened your heart to his calling. But Emmalee didn’t understand what her Sunday attendance had to do with her sewing a straight seam.

  “I liked Mr. Curtis. But Leona was my friend,” Emmalee said. “And I want her wearing something real nice. When a woman goes to being buried, she ought
to be wearing a dress that’s got some meaning.” Emmalee thought back to her mama and wondered what Nolan had dressed her in, if he even considered putting her in something special. Emmalee quickly pushed away the thought of her mama in rags and stared back at the preacher. “Leona deserves a dress made by hands that knew her and loved her.”

  The preacher exhaled, loud and frustrated. He bowed his head and clutched his hands tighter around his Bible as if he was choking the Holy Spirit straight out of it. Emmalee thought he might be praying again, talking to God in the middle of her own father’s house. She glanced at Nolan, whose cheek was fat with chew.

  The preacher raised his head. “You know, child, I can tell you care for Mrs. Lane, and her dying surely is upsetting you. But sometimes the Lord works in ways we can’t comprehend, that’s for sure.”

  “I ain’t looking for an answer,” Emmalee said. “People die every damn day. And I’m no more a child than you.”

  Nolan raised his eyebrow and spit a full load of tobacco juice near the tip of the preacher’s polished shoe. Brother Herd clenched his jaw and sidestepped the watery mess on the floor. He turned his back to Nolan.

  “You see, girl, the Lanes didn’t play at church like some people do. Curtis read the Bible every day. I think he had it memorized. He tithed regular. He even adopted a little black girl in Haiti, sent money to her every month. That girl’s going to grow up a Christian, rescued from her heathen ways.”

  Nolan laughed. “Haiti,” he repeated it as though the name sounded funny.

  “True. I don’t know Mrs. Lane as well. But I know she did good things people here don’t know about.” Emmalee pulled on her hair, gathering it into a ponytail and letting it fall against her neck. The preacher talked on. “Every year she bought the graduation gowns for at least four or five seniors over at Cullen High who couldn’t otherwise afford one. Not sure Curtis even knew about that. She swore me to secrecy. And I do know of two or three times she sewed a girl’s prom dress, stayed up past midnight to get it all done. And she made a Christmas box every year for one of Cullen’s less fortunate families.”

  Emmalee had never known Leona to gush about anything she did for others. She kept to herself even though she stopped at the end of most every day to show Emmalee a new hand stitch or to help correct the ones she was learning. Emmalee had watched Leona come to work in tattered sweaters and worn housedresses. She ate tomato sandwiches on white bread and never splurged on a cold Coca-Cola from the machine at Tennewa. Leona said that machine robbed you blind and you’d only pay half that amount for a bottle of Coca-Cola down at the corner store. Water was free. Even Emmalee dropped her change in the drink machine now and then. Truth be told, Emmalee was shocked when Leona had asked her to come to Old Lick.

  But Emmalee had seen the trailer. She knew Leona had worked hard to ready her home for her and Kelly Faye. Emmalee had seen it firsthand—the crib, the diapers, the rocking chair. It was all perfect. Leona had done it all for her and Kelly Faye, never once talking about God or heavenly crowns.

  “I ain’t meaning to be ugly, Preacher, but I don’t see what all this has to do with my sewing a dress.”

  The preacher closed his eyes. “Nolan, what do you think of your daughter making this dress?”

  Nolan pushed the chew against the side of his mouth.

  “Look, I know you’re not a churchgoing man, Mr. Bullard,” the preacher said, his voice sounding tired. “But surely you can appreciate that Mrs. Lane’s burial garment should be made by someone who at least seems to have some understanding or some respect for the Lord’s commandments. Not by a girl who’s just had a baby out of wedlock.” The preacher nodded toward the back room where Kelly was starting to squeal.

  Nolan shot another wad of tobacco juice on the floor, this one landing even closer to the preacher’s shiny black shoe. A thin line of juice stained his stubbled chin, and he leaned forward in his chair as if he was contemplating spitting again. The preacher took another step from Nolan.

  “So what bothers you most is Emmalee got herself a baby before she got herself a husband,” Nolan said. “Seems to me the girl can do what she damn well pleases whether it’s making a baby or making a dress.” Nolan wiped his mouth with the back of his shirtsleeve. “Mr. Fulton said it was okay for Emmalee to make Miss Leona’s dress, and his word’s the only one that matters to me. He’s the one dressing the bodies.”

  The preacher pulled his Bible to his chest. “Yes, but this is one time Mr. Fulton and I do not agree. He doesn’t go to the Church of Christ. He’s a Baptist man.”

  “Yeah,” Nolan said.

  The baby’s cries grew stronger. This time Nolan held a tin can to his lips and let some spit fall into it.

  The preacher turned toward the door but glanced back at Emmalee. “You really think this is what your mama would want? You raising a baby without a daddy and without God. From what I’ve heard, I can’t imagine she’d be happy with the ways things are.”

  Nolan jumped to his feet and landed in front of the preacher. With his finger, he poked the preacher in the chest, pressing harder and harder as he spoke. “I don’t want you talking about Emmalee’s mama. You hear me? The girl’s done answered your questions. Best you get on your way.”

  The preacher’s lips quivered as he reminded Emmalee she was the one responsible for her child’s salvation. He raised his Bible over his head and reached his free hand out toward Emmalee. From the way the preacher stretched his body, Emmalee grew scared he might be placing a hex on her. Even Nolan tilted back from the preacher’s reach.

  “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord!” The preacher looked up to the ceiling as he spoke. When he was done talking, he stepped backward out the door and returned to his church and a more compliant flock.

  “What the hell did that man say?” Nolan asked and spit another load of tobacco juice in the can. Kelly was screaming fierce, and Emmalee could feel her milk starting to wet her shirt.

  “I don’t know. Baby needs feeding.”

  “Hold on there, girl.” Nolan’s voice was firm. “Look a here, Emmalee. I don’t like no one talking about my blood, especially a preacher. I wouldn’t of let him in here, but he said he’d been talking to Mr. Fulton.”

  Emmalee pulled her bangs down in front of her eyes.

  “You know I don’t care to see you hauling that little one off to some church just ’cause he brings your mama’s name into this. But it’s time you tell me who this baby’s daddy is. You got knocked up. You ain’t the first girl, but I want the daddy’s name. He needs to do right by you. You hear me?”

  Emmalee pushed her hair to the side and eased off the sofa. “I got to feed the baby.”

  “Girl, believe it or not, I’m trying to help you here. Now tell me his damn name.”

  “Are you? Are you trying to help me? ’Cause I ain’t looking for you to do nothing.”

  “Girl, you are making it so damn hard.” Nolan bounded toward Emmalee, but she did not back away. Sometimes Emmalee wished he would go ahead and wrap his hands around her neck and choke the breath right out of her, instead of dragging her through this life slow and painful. “Preacher’s right about one thing,” Nolan said. “Your mama wouldn’t care for what’s going on here.”

  He spit on the floor before walking straight out the door. He took to his truck and sped out of the holler, leaving Emmalee to tend to the baby alone.

  LEONA

  CHRISTMAS

  1962

  Leona spooned the remainder of the batter into a second loaf pan, careful to allow room for the gingerbread to rise as she had with the first. She set both pans inside the hot oven and checked her watch. She scraped what was left of the thick brown mixture from the sides of the yellow bowl and licked the spatula clean. She dropped the bowl and spatula into a sink of soapy water and rinsed her fingers, drying her hands on the apron tied around her waist.

  Her calves ached from standing in the kitchen most of the
day. She longed to sit for a minute but instead kneeled in front of a large cardboard box straddling the linoleum floor and thin green carpeting. Scattered around the box were piles of canned vegetables and meats and tins of baked cookies and biscuits, even a fresh pineapple upside-down cake wrapped in aluminum foil.

  Leona was eager to finish her Christmas box. She had promised the women’s mission at church she would have it delivered by early evening. Most any other time of year, she was tight with her pennies, saving every one of them for something she could no longer name. She kept her money hidden in a shoebox in the back of her closet and added a few dollars to it every week. She once thought she was preparing to send a child or two to college. Later she thought about taking a trip around the world, but Curtis never wanted to travel farther than Nashville or Birmingham. Now Leona figured she saved the money out of habit more than anything else; just knowing it was there seemed reason enough. Curtis said his woman could stretch a dollar all the way to West Tennessee, and Leona knew this to be true. She spent some when the cause called to her, but she never did tell Curtis about the money stashed behind her slippers and his old work boots for fear he’d give it all to the church. She’d find a purpose for it someday.

  Leona spent most of the week baking sugar cookies and sweet potato biscuits, loaves of pumpkin, banana, and gingerbread. She shopped for canned goods and a five-pound box of Russell Stover’s assorted chocolates from the drugstore. She even gathered enough pecans from underneath a tree on the outskirts of town to a fill a cloth bag and sent Curtis to the backside of Brown Chapel Mountain to fetch one of Mrs. Haygood’s fresh cured hams.