Getting Mother's Body

by Suzan-Lori Parks

  “I know the pain of losing a structure too,” June says.

  We sit there for a while. Not saying nothing. The white out-of-towners leave a cloud of brownish dust in the road.

  “It’s worth it, keeping on good terms with Candy, even if we can’t never send her nothing,” I says.

  Dill picks up my thought, “You mean cause of the treasure? You mean cause Willa Mae’s buried out there with her pearls and diamonds?”

  “No. I was thinking more along the lines of, what with Candy being your mother and you having partly raised Billy some, that makes Candy practically family to us and we should keep on good terms with her,” I says, but I am thinking about the diamonds and whatnot. I can’t help it.

  “Yr just thinking about the treasure,” Dill says, smirking at me.

  I stay quiet.

  June adds her two cents. “I’m thinking all that treasure Willa Mae got in her coffin ain’t doing no one no good,” she says. She clumps along the porch, reaching the steps and sitting down, laying her crutch by her side. There’s a blank space where her leg used to be. I ain’t never seen her with two legs. When I met her she had just the one. Folks say I was smart marrying a woman with one leg cause a woman with one leg ain’t never gonna run off. But I didn’t marry June on account of that. June’s a good woman. Today she’s salty but most days she’s sweet.

  “What you think of Billy’s Snipes fella?” Dill asks.

  “We ain’t met him yet,” I says. “She says he stays at Texhoma. We should be going up there for the wedding.”

  “We should be going to LaJunta and getting Willa Mae’s treasure,” June says.

  “Leave my sister in the ground,” I says.

  “I ain’t saying take her out the ground,” June says yelling. “I’m just saying take her treasury out the ground.” Then her voice goes soft. “Just enough to get me a leg,” she says.

  “You got a point there,” I says. I look at Dill, waiting for her say. Getting at least some of my sister’s treasure has crossed my mind more than once. Dill would tell us how to get there or we could just look at a map. LaJunta’s in Arizona and Candy’s motel is called the Pink Flamingo. That wouldn’t be no trouble. June suggested the very thing about six years ago and Dill told June that if she went treasure-hunting, she would be going against the wishes of the dead. Dill’s the one who heard Willa’s dying wish and Dill’s the one who put Willa in the ground, so to my mind, if Dill don’t give the OK and we was just to go out there and dig, it would be like stealing.

  Dill speaks through her teeth. “Yr waiting for me to say go head but I ain’t gonna say it,” she says. “Willa Mae was proud of two things. Her pearl necklace and her diamond ring. Getting buried with them two things was her dying wish. I coulda took them, I coulda stole them from her while she was breathing her last breaths, but I weren’t about to go against her dying wish. So I put her in the ground and I put her jewelry in the ground with her,” Dill says, saying “jewel” and making it sound like “jurl.” “Willa Mae wanted to be buried with her jewels and that’s what she still wants,” Dill says.

  “How you know what Willa still wants?” June says.

  “She ain’t changing her mind once she’s dead,” Dill says.

  “She might,” June says. June reads and knows things.

  “I know Willa Mae better than you and I heard her dying wish,” Dill says, making a fist and bringing it down slowly on the arm of her chair. That ends that.

  “Dill Smiles, you the most honest person I ever met,” I says.

  June says “shit” to that and gets up, with more difficulty than usual, to go clumping back inside.

  “You the most honest person I know,” I says again and Dill nods her head in thanks. Dill Smiles don’t open no mail that ain’t addressed to her and Dill Smiles don’t flout no dying wishes of the dead. Dill Smiles is the most honest person I know, even if she ain’t nothing but a bulldagger.

  BILLY BEEDE

  Mrs. Jackson stands beside me. She got a tape measure hanging around her neck and one of them red pincushions, stuck full of steel pins and shaped like a tomato, tied to her wrist. We both looking at the dress in the window, the one with the train. It cost a hundred and thirty dollars.

  “How much it cost without the train?” I ask her.

  “The train’s on there for good,” she says.

  “What if it weren’t?” I says. “How much would it cost if the train weren’t on there for good?”

  Mrs. Jackson looks at the dress then at me, sizing me with her eyes. Except for my baby-belly I’m on the narrow side. Her eyes hang on my belly and when I catch her staring, she looks through her front show window and up into the sky. It’s after five o’clock. When I came up she was standing at the door waiting for me. While I was washing up, Laz had told her I was on my way. I wiped the toes of my shoes fast across the backs of my legs, left then right, to get the dirt off. She let me in then turned the “Open” sign to “Closed.”

  “I don’t think it’ll fit you,” she says softly.

  “It’ll fit,” I says. “But all I got is sixty-three dollars.”

  “Mr. Jackson don’t like me spending all my time making these dresses then losing money by selling them cheap,” she says.

  “Sixty-three dollars ain’t cheap,” I says. I want to tell her how I’d have more money if her husband woulda bought one of Snipes’ coffins and how, since her husband keeps turning my future husband away, she owes me a deal. I want to say all this but something in me tells me to stay sweet.

  “It’s all hand-sewn,” she says. “That’s not a machine-sewn dress and it’s not some dress from the Sears catalogue. That there’s a once-in-a-lifetime dress.”

  I see something in her, something I’m not sure of at first. Something my mother might call The Hole. It’s like a soft spot and everybody’s got one. Mother said she could see The Hole in people and then she’d know how to take them. She could see Holes all the time but I ain’t never seen one. Until now. Words shape theirselves in my mouth and I start talking without thinking of what I need to say. It’s like The Hole shapes the words for me and I don’t got to think or nothing.

  “When you got married, what’d yr dress look like?” I ask Mrs. Jackson.

  The hard line of her mouth lets go a little.

  “It musta been pretty,” I says.

  “That dress is an exact copy of my wedding dress,” she says smiling. “I was fifteen. One year younger than you are now.” She looks at the dress then back at me then at the dress again.

  “You make your dress yrself too?” I ask.

  “My mother made mine for me,” Mrs. Jackson says. And then she goes quiet.

  The Hole shapes more words in my mouth, all I gotta do is let them out. “Willa Mae, you know, my uh—”

  “Your mother,” Mrs. Jackson says, saying “mother” out loud for me.

  “Yes, ma’am, well, she’s passed, but she sure woulda loved to see my wedding day, seeing how she was always jilted and never lucky enough to get married herself.”

  We stand there quiet, both looking at the dress.

  “Let’s see what it looks like on you,” Mrs. Jackson says. She hurries to get a stool then stands on it, pulling down the window shade. I take off my clothes while she strips the dummy. By the time she gets the dress off I’m ready. With the shade down it’s dark inside her store. She can see my baby-belly but not too good. She holds the dress for me and I put my hand on her shoulder and step into it. A row of seed buttons up the back. High collar and long sleeves, blind-you white satin with lots of lace. Plus the long train with a hand loop to hold it off the floor. Be small, baby, I says, talking to my baby without opening my mouth. Be small, baby, be small.

  The dress fits.

  “Look at you,” Mrs. Jackson says. Her voice is thick like she is about to cry but I can’t tell for sure in the dim light.

  I look down at my pink pumps. “I used to wear these when I worked over at Miz Montgomery’s,” I say. �
�I guess they’ll do.”

  “Pink shoes with your wedding dress will not do,” Mrs. Jackson says.

  “I can’t afford no nice ones,” I says.

  “You wear size 6?” she asks.

  “Size 5,” I says.

  She goes to the back, walking backwards and turning her head this way and that to get a good look at me. When she’s out of sight I do a slow twirl. Snipes didn’t say nothing about the rings and he don’t know what size I wear but I guess we’ll get them when I get up there. I can’t expect him to think of everything. He had his new coffins on his mind today, plus that dying old Doctor Wells.

  “The baby looks like it’s growing pretty good,” she hollers from the back.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I says. No one has said nothing about the baby but I guess, since she knows I’m gonna have a husband to go with it, it’s OK to mention now.

  “You lucky you got such small feet,” Mrs. Jackson says coming back into the main room with a shoe box. “I don’t carry many shoes but I did have these.”

  “I don’t got enough for shoes,” I says.

  “Try them on and hush up,” she says.

  I pat myself on the back for having the intelligence to wash up before I came here. Sometimes smelling good can make all the difference. Mrs. Jackson brings me a chair and I sit, trying on the shoes like a lady would. When I get them on she helps me up.

  “Look at you,” she murmurs.

  “Do I look all right?”

  “Your poor mother,” she says.

  “I only got sixty-three dollars,” I says.

  “And here it is 1963,” she says.

  I pick up my pocketbook, fish through it and hold the bills in my hand.

  “Can you promise me something?”

  “Whut?”

  “Don’t go telling all of Lincoln, Texas, how you got yrself a hundred-thirty-dollar dress and a pair of twenty-dollar shoes off of Mrs. Jackson for sixty-three dollars. People would accuse me of playing favorites.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She takes the money from me, counting it quickly, then sticking it underneath the pincushion on her wrist. “And when I say don’t tell no body I mean don’t tell no body, you hear? If word gets back to Mr. Jackson, Lord today, I won’t never hear the end of it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Now turn around and style it for me,” she says.

  I tell the baby to stay small again. It stays small. I turn all the way around one way then around the other way.

  “I look all right?”

  “You as pretty as you can be,” she says. “Just as pretty as you can be.”

  WILLA MAE BEEDE

  This next song I’ma sing is a song I wrote about a man I used to know. It’s called “Big Hole Blues.”

  My man is digging in my dirt

  Digging a big hole just for me.

  He’s digging in my dirt

  Digging a big hole just for me.

  It’s as long as I am tall, goes down as deep as the deep blue sea.

  He says the hole he’s digging is hole enough for two.

  He says the hole he’s digging is hole enough for two.

  He says he’ll put me down there in it

  And put my boyfriend in it too.

  He says he’s just pulling my leg, but I got to play it safe

  He says he’s just pulling my leg, but I got to play it safe

  I done packed up all my clothes, I’m gonna leave this big old holey place.

  Everybody’s got a Hole. Ain’t nobody ever lived who don’t got a Hole in them somewheres. When I say Hole you know what I’m talking about, dontcha? Soft spot, sweet spot, opening, blind spot, Itch, Gap, call it what you want but I call it a Hole. To get the best of a situation you gotta know a man’s Hole. Everybody’s got one, just don’t everybody got one in the same place. Some got a Hole in they head. Now, you may think “Hole in the head” is just another way of saying stupid, but “Hole in the head” means more than that. It means that they got a lack and a craving for knowledge. Not just the lack, now, but the craving too. A man could have a Hole just about anywheres: in the head, in the wallet (which means he burns his money), in the pocket (which means he don’t got no money to burn but would like some), in the pants, in the guts, in the stomach, in the heart. You offer a person with a Hole in the head some knowledge and they gonna be in yr pocket cause you done gived him the opportunity to taste what he craves, but if a person’s got a Hole in they heart and you offer them knowledge, you won’t be able to sway them none. A Hole-in-the-heart person craves company and kindness, not no book.

  MRS. FAITH JACKSON

  I’ve never seen a girl so happy as Billy Beede walking out my store right now with her wedding dress and them matching shoes all wrapped up in my white store box. Mr. Jackson can say what he likes but it’s the formal-wear business that’s about making people happy. He says the funeral business is about making people happy but I’ve never seen no one smiling at a funeral. He doesn’t think Lincoln’s got the economy to support a formal-wear store and, tell the truth, I don’t turn a profit. If it weren’t for people dying, we would be out on the street. But, seeing as how folks do continue to die, I can, every once in awhile, afford to sell a hundred-thirty-dollar dress and a pair of twenty-dollar shoes for sixty-three dollars. Seeing as how the Funeral Home is doing so well, and folks is always continuing to die, and Jackson’s is the most respected Home, black or white, in the county, which means folks come out of their way to have us help them in their time of grief, and seeing as how Billy has her dead mother buried all the way out in Who-Knows-Where, Arizona, and seeing as how her Mr. Snipes, the man Jackson says is trash, has done right and asked her to marry him, I figure I can sell my showcase dress for the price she can afford.

  Laz is gonna be broken up about it. He’s had his cap set on Billy Beede for the longest. Too long, I told him when he said he’d seen her running with Snipes. Much too long, Mr. Jackson said when we all seen Billy’s belly. Just cause you set your cap on someone, don’t mean she’ll set her cap on you.

  You have to make the best of what God gives you, that’s what I say. That’s how I live my life. Married Jackson when I was not but fifteen. I was in the family way, but not like Billy Beede. My Israel had already spoken for me, and my mother and dad both were living. I was showing but I could walk around this town with my head up. Not like Billy Beede: shoulders pinched together, her head hanging down like a buzzard.

  Me and Israel didn’t plan on getting married so early but we did. I had hoped to have a slew of girls. We had two boys. I had hoped Siam-Israel would run the Funeral Home with Israel, and Laz would be a doctor and deliver babies. That woulda dovetailed nicely, you know, cradle to grave with the funeral business we’ve already got. Nothing worked out like I hoped. Siam is doing time over at Huntsville and Laz, well let’s just say that Laz is doing his best. Doing the best with what we got. That’s the most that any of us can ask.

  DILL SMILES

  They call me bulldagger, dyke, lezzy, what-have-you. I like my overalls and my work boots. Let them say what they want. It don’t bother me none.

  I take the letter back from Teddy. We’re still waiting here on his porch for Billy. She ain’t come back yet.

  “Billy’ll be home directly,” Teddy says.

  I lean my chair, tipping it back to balance on the two hind legs, like a stallion rearing up. Then I right the chair and get on my feet. “I don’t got no time to waste,” I says.

  “I ain’t said nothing bout yr new truck,” Teddy says quickly.

  “It’s a ‘Sixty-two. It ain’t brand-new.”

  “Looks like you just drove it out the factory,” Teddy says.

  “It’s just shiny,” I says. It’s last year’s model but the fella never drove it.

  “You got all the luck, Dill.”

  “I do all right.”

  “Bet it runs good.”

  “I don’t got no time for no jalopy.”

  �
��Course you don’t,” Teddy says. “A Beede would have the time but a Smiles would not.”

  I sit back down, taking the letter out of my front overalls pocket and resting it on my lap. We sit there quiet. Waiting.

  “You gonna give me one of them new pigs you got?” Roosevelt asks.

  “You can buy one, same as everybody else,” I says. My good sow Jezebel farrowed last night. Got up in my bed to do it too. She’s spoiled.

  “Thirteen piglets and no runts. Dill Smiles oughta give Teddy Beede a free pig,” Teddy says.

  “Thirteen’s unlucky. Why you want an unlucky pig for?”

  “Thirteen ain’t unlucky for you,” Teddy says admiringly. “You got nothing but good luck, Dill, you got the luck of the Smiles.”

  “I don’t got nothing like good luck.”

  “Yes you do,” Teddy says using his greezy voice. He must really want that pig.

  “I ain’t arguing witchu,” I says.

  “Gimme a pig,” Teddy go.

  I shake my head no.

  “Hell, Dill, I’m practically yr brother,” he says.

  “I ain’t no goddamn Beede,” I says and we both laugh.

  We see a speck coming down the road. Too small and too slow for no car. It’s Billy.

  “You think she got her dress?” Teddy asks.

  “She’s Willa Mae’s child,” I says.

  “Meaning whut?”

  “Meaning by hook or crook Billy got herself a dress. Mighta got herself two or three dresses.”

  “Billy don’t favor Willa,” Teddy says.

  “Billy don’t favor me neither,” I says.

  Teddy cuts his eyes to me, getting a good look at my profile without turning his head. I’m doing the same to look at him. His pecan-colored cheek is fleshy. Gray grizzle around the chin where he ain’t shaved this morning. Willa Mae told me once that I looked like an Indian nickel. Teddy’s mouth opens a little. I’ve brought him to his limit.

  “Go head, Teddy, say it,” I says.

  “I’m just taking a breath,” he says. He coughs and puts his eyes back front. Why the hell should Billy favor Dill Smiles? That’s what Teddy wants to say, but he wants me to give him a free pig more than he wants to give me a what for.