Getting Mother's Body

by Suzan-Lori Parks

  “I’m getting married on Friday,” she yells out to everybody, to no one. “Billy Beede’s marrying Clifton Snipes!” It would be nice if she yelled out how she was gonna be marrying Laz Jackson.

  Now I don’t hear nothing. No more clopping.

  I could get up but don’t. Billy’s on her way towards me and I’m gonna lay here till she passes by. Her man left her on the side of the road and now she’s walking home. But I don’t hear no more clopping. She got off the road and is walking in the dirt or she took her shoes off and her feet on the hot ground must be burning up pretty good about now.

  I can smell her coming: 12 Roses Perfume, sweat, hair grease and something else. A thick smell: the smell of almost-milk. Now her smell is right on top of me. Pressing down against my smell of sweat from running from the rock Snipes threw. He hit me on the back of the head. It hurt but it ain’t bleeding. I keep my eyes shut but I know Billy’s standing right above me looking.

  “Whut the hell you laying there for?” Billy goes.

  “I’m dead,” I go.

  “No you ain’t,” she goes.

  “Am too,” I go. “Laz Jackson is dead and you oughta be crying.”

  “If you dead how come you running yr mouth?” she goes.

  I open my eyes looking up at her. In one hand she’s holding her shoes, pink-colored pumps against her blue housedress. Her other hand’s holding her dress tight to her leg so the wind don’t lift it up.

  “Your feet hurt?”

  “No,” she says.

  “They look like they hurt,” I says.

  She bends down, putting her shoes back on, her eyes holding on to mines, making sure I don’t look up her skinny black legs and see nothing. She stands on one leg while she puts the first shoe on, then, balancing hard, she puts on the other shoe.

  “I’m getting married Friday,” she says.

  “To me?”

  “Hells no,” she says. Then she looks to Midland. “Clifton and me been planning our wedding for months now.” She says it loud, like she’s saying it to me and to Snipes too.

  I sit up, rising from the dead. If I had me a car and was sitting in it, the way I’m sitting would be towards Midland. My car’d be faster than his, as black as his is yellow. I’d go down there and run him off the road. Who bigged you? I wanna ask Billy but I know who: the one she calls Clifton Snipes.

  “You think yr mamma’ll give me a good price on a dress?” Billy asks me.

  “You gotta ask her yrself,” I says.

  She looks down the road, towards Midland again, then she looks towards Sanderson’s filling station where her and her aunt and uncle stay at. They run the filling station and live in a mobile home out back. Sanderson’s ain’t theirs though, they just run it.

  She starts walking, in her shoes again. Clop clop clop clop. I get up and walk after her. I seen up her smock. Where yr panties at? I ask her. Not out loud, just in my head.

  “I was reading in the Encyclopaedia Britannica that there’s more dead in the world than there is living,” I says out loud.

  “So whut,” Billy says.

  We come up on the station. Four hundred yards. She throws her shoulders back and lifts up her chin. Someone on the porch, her Uncle Roosevelt, is standing there with Dill Smiles. They wave at us but Billy don’t wave back.

  “There’s more Negro in the world than there is white,” I go but she ain’t listening.

  “I want that wedding dress your mamma’s got in the window. The one with the train,” she says.

  “That dress is high.”

  “Snipes is paying for it. He gived me enough money to get any dress I want. Plus shoes.”

  “Mamma closes up around five,” I says.

  She glances up at the sky. It’s after four.

  “Shit,” she goes and takes off running towards the filling station, as fast as her shoes and belly lets her, one hand still tight down at her hem, the other hand balled in a fist and working like a piston.

  I keep walking, taking my time, looking at the sun, at the dirt, towards Midland, towards Sanderson’s. My fly is buttoned wrong. I button it right. My glasses are dirty. I clean them. Without my glasses on everything is a blur like I’m standing still and the world is moving. I got six different suits. Snipes, he got one or two but don’t never wear them together at the same time. He comes around every month to show my daddy his sample book and him and my daddy talk. It’s always the same.

  “We don’t know nobody who wants to be buried in no coffin that looks like a banana,” my daddy tells Snipes.

  “I got an appointment with Doctor Wells over in Midland. Doctor Wells says he’d like to be buried in a doctor’s bag,” Snipes says. “And look here, I got Cadillacs, guitars, Egyptian styles, and this here’s an airplane,” Snipes goes, turning his picture pages. “I made each one myself,” he says.

  My daddy can’t be moved. “Jackson’s Funeral Home ain’t the most respected in Butler County for nothing. White or black, we the most respected. You seen the sign out front. ‘Established in 1926.’ We’ll be fifty years come ‘Seventy-six,” Daddy tells him.

  Snipes got on a yellow shiny shirt to match his face. He’s wearing a suit jacket that don’t match his pants. That’s his style. His shirt is dark with sweat and when my daddy turns him away he will fold up his sample book and stand outside at his car, taking a clean shirt out and tossing the sweated shirt in the trunk. I seen him do it last time he came through.

  “Jackson’s Funeral is gonna be fifty in twelve years,” Snipes says smiling, still trying to make a sale. “That’s a heritage to be proud of.”

  “Thirteen years,” I says, correcting him. So far I ain’t said nothing but that.

  “You all planning for the future,” Snipes continues, not embarrassed by his wrong adding. “Custom coffins is the future, I’m telling you.”

  “You talk like you know it all but you can’t even count,” I says.

  “We thank you for stopping by,” Daddy says, shaking his hand and Snipes goes. I know where he’s headed. He’s going over to see Billy Beede. She won’t give me the time of day but she’d fly to the moon for Snipes. I watch him go.

  Ten years ago, when I was ten years old, my mother and dad told me all the facts of life. They divided life into its two basic parts, Life and Death, and each took a part, explaining it all while we ate dinner. Mother took death, Daddy took life. They’d took the opposite parts when they’d explained it several years before to my brother Siam-Israel, but Siam-Iz went bad, so they switched around their parts when they got around to telling me. Neither of them went on too long. The whole of it was through before Mamma got up to get what was left from the night before’s pecan pie.

  Roosevelt’s on the porch with Dill. I can see them both good now. Dill is holding a letter, working it like a fan.

  “Billy oughta want to hear this letter,” Dill says.

  “June’ll read it when Billy gets back,” Roosevelt says.

  “June oughta read it now,” Dill says.

  “She says to wait,” Roosevelt says.

  I stand there looking at them. I tip my hat to both. “Mr. Beede. Miz Smiles,” I says.

  “How do, Mr. Jackson,” Roosevelt says.

  “Ain’t you hot in that wool hat?” Dill asks.

  “I’m all right,” I says.

  “Billy’s out back washing up. She says she’s gonna pick out a wedding dress,” Teddy says. Roosevelt Beede goes by Roosevelt and he goes by Teddy too.

  “She marrying you, Laz?” Dill asks but Dill knows Billy ain’t marrying me so instead of saying nothing I just give her the finger. She makes her hand into a gun and pretends to shoot me dead.

  “Yr ma might close her shop before Billy gets there,” Teddy says.

  “I’ll hurry home and ask Mamma to wait,” I says.

  “We thank you,” Teddy says. And I walk on.

  I got six suits. Snipes got that yellow car. I got Billy’s panties, though, in my coat pocket. I move them up to
my breast pocket, letting them poke out just a little, like a handkerchief.

  “Oh, Laz, why was you born, why was you born, Laz?” I ask myself.

  “To find Billy Beede’s panties by the side of the road,” I says.

  JUNE FLOWERS BEEDE

  I never seen Billy wash so fast. Come running up in here, standing out back, pumping water into the tin bucket.

  “Get me my special soap,” Billy says. That’s easy for her to say, but I only got one leg. Billy’s got two. I crutch inside the office, getting down on my only knee to reach a little shelf underneath the counter where she keeps her soap, her perfume, and her small tin box. All her treasures lined up there. Right underneath the shelf is where she stores her pallet every morning. The tin box got a lock on it. Billy wears the key around her neck.

  When I crutch back outside, Billy got all her clothes off and is hunched over the bucket, splashing her face and armpits.

  “I’ma get me that dress in the window. The one with the train,” she says.

  “How much it cost?” I go.

  “I dunno but I’ma get it,” she says.

  “Don’t go stealing it,” I says. She stops her washing to look at me, cutting me in two with her eyes.

  “Snipes gived me more than enough money,” she says lathering on the soap, using too much even though she’s in a hurry. The white soap against her vanilla-bean skin makes her look like a horse that’s been running.

  “Your mother woulda stole it,” I says.

  “I ain’t no Willa Mae,” Billy says. She lathers soap on her face then rubs it off hard with a rag. She don’t favor her mother. Couldn’t be more different looking. Willa Mae was light and fine featured. Billy is dark. But on the good side, Billy got a way with hair and could make a living at it if she wanted whereas Willa Mae didn’t never amount to nothing.

  “You went out with your Snipes and you forgot about my hair,” I says.

  “I’ll finish it after I get my dress.”

  One side of my hair is nicely pressed and the other side’s still wild. Billy’s hair is nice on both sides.

  “Your mother woulda loved to see your wedding day,” I says.

  “Why you gotta keep bringing her into it?” Billy says. She wipes herself down with her dirty housedress as I hand her a clean one, one of my castoffs, green and faded, but clean and with a good zipper up the front. I’m a size or two bigger than her but the dress fits her tight, especially around the middle. Willa Mae had plenty of “husbands” but weren’t never really married, and now here’s her one child, Billy, only sixteen with a baby inside her and no husband yet. When I was sixteen I lost my leg. I’d like a new leg, but even if we could get the money together for it, I ain’t yet seen one in my color. Me and Roosevelt don’t got no kids. Billy’s soap smells like roses.

  “The apple don’t fall that far from the tree,” I says, just to bring her down a notch.

  “I ain’t no goddamned apple,” Billy says.

  ROOSEVELT BEEDE

  “I used to be a preacher but I lost my church. God is funny,” I says.

  “Sounds like you preaching now,” Dill says.

  “You gonna give Billy her letter?”

  “She’s in the back washing,” Dill says. Just then Billy comes running outside. Dill waves the envelope at her.

  “A letter for you,” Dill says.

  “Let’s read it when I come back,” Billy says, jumping over the two porch steps and going down the road.

  Me and Dill watch her go. She left a smell of soapy roses. June is out back. I hear the bucket splash. She’s watering her flower garden with Billy’s wash water.

  Dill holds the letter up to the sun, trying to get the news through the envelope.

  “You know that letter ain’t to you,” I says.

  “The letter’s from Candy and Candy’s my ma,” Dill says.

  “It still ain’t to you,” I says.

  Dill’s voice gets sharp. “It’s addressed to Billy c/o me but in all these years these letters been coming I ain’t never opened one yet,” Dill says. Dill’s long-legged and coffee-colored with Seminole features and soft hair cut close. Straw hat pulled down low and always wearing mud-speckled overalls and a blue work shirt and brown heavy boots. Dill’s a good head taller than me and a bulldagger. I wouldn’t want to fight her.

  “Candy’s probably just asking for payment like she always do,” I says.

  “Probably,” Dill says.

  I dip some snuff, holding out the tin to Dill after I’ve had mines. Dill don’t dip but I offer it anyway. Dill don’t never ever dip and Dill don’t hardly ever drink. Willa Mae’s buried in Candy’s backyard so Candy writes asking for money to keep up the grave. She sends the letter to us by way of Dill. Candy’s Dill’s mother but she don’t never write Dill nothing.

  “Ma could be saying something new this time,” Dill says.

  “I doubt it,” I says.

  “You never know,” Dill says.

  “Sounds like you do know,” I says.

  “Yr saying that I opened it,” Dill says. Her left arm goes stiff, with her hand making a fist. She knocked down someone with that fist once. They didn’t get up for two days. My sister. But for what I can’t remember.

  “I’m just running my mouth, Dill, I don’t mean to mean nothing,” I says.

  She shakes her fist free of whatever made her want to hit me.

  “I coulda opened it and read it seeing as how it’s partly addressed to me and I can read. But I ain’t,” Dill says.

  “Course you ain’t.”

  “I’ll bet you on what it says in here,” Dill says.

  “I don’t got shit to bet with,” I says. It’s funny but neither of us laugh.

  “Let’s bet you’ll take up preaching again,” Dill says.

  I don’t say nothing to that.

  We sit there watching Billy turn into a speck as she hurries down the road to Jackson’s Formal. Mrs. Jackson sells dresses and together with her husband Israel they run the Funeral Home too. Laz helps out. When people start they lives they ain’t nothing more than specks. And when Billy came into our life, coming up the road in Dill’s old truck, coming back from LaJunta and the tragedy, she weren’t nothing more than a speck on the road, and then a truck, and then Dill in a truck and then Dill in a truck with little Billy. We thought Billy was gonna live with Dill like her and Willa Mae did when Willa Mae was living, but Dill didn’t want Billy around no more so Billy’s been living with us since she was ten.

  “LaJunta, Arizona,” Dill says, reading the postmark. I hold my hand out for the envelope and she hands it to me. A circle with some lines running through it and some marks and a stamp. Below that some marks that say “Miss Billy Beede c/o Dill Smiles, Lincoln, Texas.” But the lines could say “Mr. John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, Warshington, D.C.” for all I know. I never did learn to read. June and Billy read good though. Dill reads pretty good too.

  June comes outside. Her crutch tapping the floor like someone’s knocking. She looks at Dill’s truck, a shiny blue Chevrolet, parked off to the side of the pumps.

  “That yr new truck, Dill?” June asks.

  “Bought it with pig money,” Dill says.

  “We could read this now,” I says, fanning the envelope, “it would spark up the day.”

  “We’ll wait,” June says. “It’s addressed to Billy so it’s only right to wait for her.”

  “Like Billy gives a crap,” Dill says. “She was glad when her mother passed, said so herself.”

  “She didn’t mean it,” June says.

  “You and Roosevelt don’t got no kids and Billy’s your niece, that’s how come you think that way, but I’m telling you Billy was glad when Willa passed. Billy said ‘good riddance’ and clapped her hands. I was there. I heard and seen it all,” Dill says, retelling us the tragedy.

  We sit quiet. If I could give June children I would. If June could give me children she would.

  “Candy’s got the
grave to keep up plus she runs that motel,” June says.

  “How much money you think Candy’s gonna want from us this time?” I ask.

  “Do it matter?” Dill says. “You can’t send her none nohow.”

  “But we always write her back polite,” June says. “And Candy always finds a way to hold on.”

  “She don’t ask me for money cause she knows I won’t send her none and I won’t write her back polite neither,” Dill says.

  “The bank’s gonna take her motel one of these days,” I says. I should know. I had a church, a nice church over in Tryler before me and June comed here. It was the most beautiful church you ever seen. And the bank took it.

  “Ma always finds a way to hold on,” Dill says.

  “Plus she got Even helping out now,” June says. Even is Candy’s daughter. Dill’s sister but by a different daddy.

  “Ma always finds a way to make do,” Dill says.

  “How come she asking us for payment, then?” June asks.

  “She’s what you call resourceful,” Dill says.

  June says “huh” to that.

  A car comes up, out-of-towners. White. I give them two dollars worth of gas.

  “You got a restroom?” the lady asks.

  “No, ma’am, we don’t.”

  “We shoulda stopped at a Texaco,” the man says. And they go on.

  “You all should build a restroom,” Dill says.

  June says “huh” to that too. If we could get the money together to build a restroom June would be the one to clean it. It would be Billy’s chore but Billy ain’t as timely at her chores as June is, even though June only got the one leg.

  “Ma asked you all for fifty dollars payment last time,” Dill laughs, “this time she’ll probably ask for sixty.”

  “Candy can ask all she wants,” June says. “I got a whole dictionary full of words I can say no to her nice with.”

  “I know the pain of losing a structure,” I says. When the bank told me they was gonna take my church I went to the bank and got down on my knees.