Getting Mother's Body

by Suzan-Lori Parks

  It’s like Zeke was born with a full set of teeth the way he pulls. Like he got fangs or something. And Moses-or-Esther always kicking.

  It’s around four in the afternoon when this gal, dark-skinned and on the narrow side, comes up into the yard. She just walks right through the gate towards the house. She’s carrying a dirt-colored suitcase with the same color pocketbook swinging in the crook of her arm. She’s carrying a big white box on her head. When she sees me on the porch she stops, setting down the suitcase and switching the box from her head to under her arm. She walks back to the gate, where we got the mailbox with the house number on it, then turns and heads at me again.

  “How you doing?” I ask the girl. Esther-or-Moses kicks. Daniel shies his head away from the strange gal and Zeke bites down hard.

  “I’m doing pretty good,” the gal says smiling. She got a sweaty face from walking. She puts her pocketbook down next to the suitcase, and reaches her free arm up, swiping it across her temple, then licks the sweat off her upper lip with her lower one.

  I figure she needs a coffin, but she don’t look like she can afford one.

  “You looking for Snipes?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “He ain’t here right now.”

  “I’ll wait,” she says. She looks at the porch toward the long square of shade where I’m sitting. There’s a rocker there, Clifford’s chair, but something in me don’t want her sitting in it.

  “He’s away all day,” I tell her.

  “Away doing whut?” she asks. Her hand tightens around her white box.

  “You want a coffin you gonna have to come back tomorrow,” I tell her. She narrow, like I said, but there’s something fat about her. Something swole around her middle. I know what it is and don’t want to know.

  She stands on one foot, scratching her leg with the other. “Clifton tolt me to come Thursday,” she says.

  “His name ain’t no Clifton, it’s Clifford,” I tell her. I switch Zeke to my other tit.

  “I call him Snipes most of the time,” she says.

  “Call him what you want, I’m telling you he ain’t here.”

  The gal holds her hand up to her forehead, taking the sun off her face. She got a wide nose and mouth, but pretty eyes.

  “You his sister Alberta?” she asks.

  I don’t say nothing to that.

  “He tolt me to come today,” she says gently. She comes up toward the steps but I cut my eyes at her and she stops coming. Now there’s a worry in her voice. “I’m getting married tomorrow,” she says.

  “Not to my husband you ain’t,” I says.

  She don’t move.

  “Get yr narrow dusty hussy ass out my yard,” I says.

  She don’t say nothing, but a look comes into her eyes. A look of—I’m not sure what. She walks away from the porch, with a bounce to her walking that she didn’t have when she first came up here. When she gets to the gate she takes what looks like a wedding dress out that box, fishes around in her pocketbook and, before I know anything, she goes and lights the dress on fire, standing there, looking at the little flame it makes, watching it burn. Daniel moves to the edge of the porch to watch the fire too. Then, as quick as she starts it, like she done changed her mind, she stomps on the dress, putting the fire out and stuffing the dress back in the box. She yells something at me that I won’t repeat and then she’s gone.

  Ruth, Joshua, Adam and Eve, Daniel, Ezekiel, and Esther-or-Moses. And me, Alberta, and him, Clifford. My husband is a good-looking man. What I mean is, this ain’t the first time something like this has happened. I could mention it to him when he comes home, but me and him would just get to yelling and whatnot, so I ain’t gonna say nothing. Hopefully he’s gonna bring me home something nice, and something nice for Daniel too.

  That gal had a funny look in her eye, and to burn up that dress—she’s gotta be crazy.

  Plus she never did say what her name was neither.

  FAT JUNIOR LENOIR

  She come in here about an hour ago, asking if she could use my restroom. Went in there wearing a green housedress and come out in this red-colored one. Waltzed out of here and down the street like she was going to a party. Now she’s back, standing at my counter. Don’t look like the party went so good.

  “How much it cost to get to LaJunta?” she goes.

  “You done visiting us in Texhoma?” I ask her.

  “Just tell me how much it costs,” she says. She looks square at me, trying to hurt me with her eyes. She got a white box with a rose on it, held tight under her arm, pocketbook and et cetera, plus a belly with a baby in it, I’d bet, and no ring on her finger neither. Looking at her makes me wanna scratch my itch.

  I look through my book. “I don’t got no listing for no LaJunta, Texas,” I tell her.

  “It’s in Arizona, almost to California,” she says.

  I take out my other books, taking my time thumbing through the pages. I turn a page, look at her and smile. She pulls back the sides of her face, not really smiling, just aping me. She got the shape of mouth I like, nice and broad, plus a big gap tween her front teeth.

  “You gonna have to go to Midland or Dallas and catch a bus going west—”

  “How much?”

  “Around nineteen dollars,” I says.

  “Shit,” she says.

  Alphonse Chumley, bent in two over the hard candy, stands up, looks her up and down, then bends back to the candy case.

  The gal goes outside and sits in the sun.

  “Whatchu want, Chumley?”

  “I want a young gal who know how to cook,” Chumley says.

  “How bout a half pound of mints?” I says.

  Me and Chumley watch the gal through the screen door. She got her face turned to the sun like a flower.

  “Think she know how to cook?” Chumley says.

  “Gal like that?” I says, “all a gal like that can do is burn.”

  “Gimme a pound of horehounds, fatso,” Chumley says.

  “You never get no pound of nothing,” I says.

  “Put it in two sacks,” Chumley go. I sell him what he wants and he goes outside, making conversation with the gal, or trying to at least. He gives her the sack of cough drops but she don’t give him the time of day. He walks off and she comes back inside.

  “I wanna go to Gomez,” she says.

  “I feel sorry for LaJunta,” I says. I laugh but she don’t join in.

  “How much to Gomez?”

  “Gomez is fifty cents,” I says.

  “To Gomez ain’t no fifty cents.”

  “You don’t like me giving you a break?”

  “Depends on what you want for it,” she says.

  “Gimme a smile,” I says and she smiles, cheesing up her whole face, for real this time. “That’ll be fifty cents to Gomez,” I says writing up the ticket.

  “Shit.”

  “Don’t you got fifty cents?”

  “I don’t got shit,” she says.

  Like I said, she makes me wanna scratch my itch, so when she say she don’t got the fare and only wants to go to Gomez, which ain’t but an hour or so down highway 19, I tell her I’m on my way there anyhow and offer her a ride.

  I got a 1958 Buick Roadmaster. It’s a sky-blue four-door but the radio don’t work. I’m a little on the large side so when she wants to sit in the back, I don’t mind. I sing to her. I got a good voice.

  “What kind of songs you like?” I ask.

  “I like the radio,” she says.

  “I know all the hits by heart,” I tell her. I sing “It’s My Party” for her. When I get done with the song, I’m perspiring pretty steadily. I look in the rearview, hoping she likes me a little.

  “Yr radio work?” she asks.

  We ride in quiet the rest of the way.

  There ain’t nothing in Gomez. She tells me to pull up to this little white house with a cross on it. Like a church. She gets out my car taking her box and the rest of her things with her, and I wait even t
hough she don’t ask me to. About five minutes later she comes out. Carrying nothing but the box, just carrying it flat out in front of her like it’s a white sheet cake. She gets back in the car and looks over her box at me.

  “You wanna buy what’s in this box?” she says.

  “It’s a little burnt-smelling,” I says. Maybe she made a cake and cooked it too long.

  “Something real nice is in it,” she says, smiling, showing me her big teeth with the gap between them as wide as my little finger. I turn around in the seat as best as I can to get a better look at her. Her dress got one of them shoulder-to-shoulder necklines, and she got collarbones that poke out. Skinny. And a baby inside her and no ring.

  “How much you want for yr box,” I says smiling back.

  “One hundred dollars.”

  I whistle.

  “It’s real nice inside,” she says.

  I had me a wife, Mozelle. She ran off with another fella. “One hundred dollars is about a hundred more dollars than I got, girl.”

  The gal is watching me. Her smile gets a little bigger. I put my hand in my lap to hide myself so she won’t see nothing even though I got the feeling she knows all about what I’m thinking and all about Mozelle running out on me and all about me working in my store and eating more candy than I sell.

  “You must got money,” she says. “You got that nice store and you got this nice car.”

  I lift up and grab at my billfold, still looking at her the whole time.

  “What’s inside the box?” I says. I’m breathing pretty hard.

  “For me to know and for you to find out,” she says, smiling a little bigger. How she know I like her teeths, I don’t know, but I do like them.

  “I’ll give you ten for the box,” I says.

  She holds her hand out for the money. A flat palm with long fingers and small fingernails. Dark on the skin side and light on the palm side. My hands is colored the same way but not so pronounced.

  She gets out the car leaving the box on the backseat, and comes around to talk to me through my window, leaning down good and letting her dress gap a little so I can see her fronts.

  “That’s my husband who lives in there,” she says. “You better go.”

  As she walks to the house I take off, watching her in the rearview as I head back home. I can’t take no chances. Her fool husband who don’t care enough about his pregnant wife to give her a ring might come out the house with a gun and the next thing I know, I’d be dead. I got too much to live for to be taking chances like that. Buying that box from her was chance enough. I pull over to look at what I bought and wouldn’t you know it: there weren’t nothing in there at all.

  DR. PARKER

  It’s after five and my clinic’s empty. Irene, who answers my phone and doubles as the nurse, has gone home. Throughout the day, my patients come in. Mexicans mostly, coming in here for vaccines and stitches. I’m the only doctor around who gives them service. I got three rows of books in my office full of their names. They pay me when they can and I’m pretty much well-liked because I treat them like people and I speak some Spanish. I’m eating my early dinner, a cheese sandwich, when the pregnant colored girl comes in.

  She just stands there not saying anything. She’s hasn’t even closed the door. Finally she speaks.

  “Myrna said you could help,” she says.

  I walk past her, looking out the open door. There’s a light blue car waiting.

  “Is that your boyfriend?”

  “He’s just a ride,” she says.

  I close the door. I try looking her in the eye but she looks around the waiting room, eyeing my shiny green cement walls and mint-color plastic chairs bolted in place to the matching floor.

  “You gonna help me?” she says.

  “I charge one hundred dollars,” I tell her.

  “I don’t got nothing like that,” she says.

  “I’m sorry,” I says, heading back to my dinner.

  “Wait,” she says. She takes what looks like a wedding dress out of a box, shoving the dress quickly into her suitcase then taking the empty box outside. In a minute she’s back. It isn’t until she’s in my examining room, naked but covered to her neck with a sheet, that I got a look at how much money she had. Two fives.

  “I can’t help you,” I tell her.

  “Myrna Carter said—”

  I glance at my degree on the wall. I graduated with honors. “I’m a certified medical doctor and you’re five months gone,” I say and leave the room.

  She comes out, all dressed, a minute later. I’m sitting at my desk looking over some papers. She says she’s sorry for asking me to work for cheap and puts one of her five dollar bills on my desk and has me write her a receipt. She says she will be back in a couple of days with the ninety-five.

  She’s got what looks like a pearl earring on a string around her neck.

  “That’s a nice pendant,” I tell her.

  “It’s just a earring.”

  “Where’s its twin?” I ask.

  “Lost,” she says.

  Plenty of people come through my clinic needing help and short of payment. Over the years I’ve developed a pretty good eye for handsome jewelry.

  “I’ll give you ten dollars for the earring,” I say.

  “It ain’t worth that much,” she says, then she looks like she wants to kick herself, but it’s too late so she goes ahead, speaking the rest of her mind. “It ain’t no real pearl,” she says.

  “It looks real to me,” I tell her. “It’s worth about ten dollars.”

  She yanks at the string, giving me the pearl and stuffing the key that she was wearing with it into her pocketbook.

  I write her out a receipt for fifteen dollars and tell her that she has to be back by the end of next week or else she’ll be too far gone for me to help her. I do the best I can for people, but I’m not a baby-killer.

  JUNE FLOWERS BEEDE

  She left Thursday morning and by Thursday night she was back. She crept in here, not saying nothing. It was late. Me and Roosevelt was in bed.

  “Someone or something’s in the office,” Teddy says. He whispers it to me. Most nights we sleep in our own beds. He got his bed on one side of the trailer and I got mines on the other. We both think it’s more comfortable that way. Tonight I laid down in his bed. We ain’t doing nothing except laying here but it’s nice.

  “It’s a possum or a raccoon or a turtle,” I says.

  “That ain’t no turtle. It’s some fool looking for what he can steal.”

  “Let em steal,” I says. “Don’t put your life on the line for Mr. Sanderson.”

  We lay there breathing together. Each of our beds is underneath a window. I look out Teddy’s window and see a half-slip of moon. It lights up the bed making us both look bluey.

  “I’ma go see who the hell is in my store,” Teddy says.

  “They could have a gun and shoot you,” I says. I take ahold of his hand. Pulling him back down into the bed as he goes to get up. He kisses me quick, right on the mouth, before I get a chance to close my eyes.

  “You gonna miss me when I’m gone?” he asks.

  “You ain’t going nowheres.”

  “I’ma go see who the hell’s in my store,” he says, shaking loose of my hand and leaving the bed. He opens the trailer door yelling, scaring the robber and myself. I hurry to get up. He’s already in the office with the light turned on.

  “Who the hell is it?” I yell.

  “It’s Billy,” he goes.

  All I can see from the trailer is Teddy standing alone in the middle of the office. Him and Billy are talking low. Blood-to-blood talking.

  “You hungry?” I yell to her.

  She don’t answer.

  “I’m hungry,” Teddy says.

  “I ain’t ast you, Teddy, I ast Billy.”

  It’s quiet for a minute and then the light goes out in the office and Teddy comes back through the doorway, cross the planks and back up into the trailer.

&
nbsp; “She’s laying out her pallet,” Teddy says.

  “What happened?”

  “She’s gone to bed.”

  “We gonna go to Texhoma tomorrow?”

  “I don’t think so,” Teddy says.

  That was Thursday. Thursday night. Now it’s Saturday morning and she’s been laying on her pallet behind the counter for one whole day. Not saying nothing.

  “Maybe he meant for you to come next Thursday,” I tell her. But she turns away to look at the counter’s underneath.

  A customer comes inside and I stand at the cash register making change. It ain’t easy. I gotta stand there and count money and be pleasant and pretend Billy ain’t laying underneath the counter at my foot. When the customer’s gone I talk to her.