Getting Mother's Body

by Suzan-Lori Parks

  “They’re gonna cement the ground on Thursday,” I says.

  “Course, I won’t get as much money for them as I hoped,” Dill says, thinking all about her pigs and not listening to me. “Yr uncle wants a piglet, and he can’t pay. That’s gonna cost me.”

  “Willa Mae wouldn’t of wanted me to have this Snipes baby,” I says.

  “That’s likely,” Dill says.

  “She woulda wanted to help me out.”

  “Who knows,” Dill says, her face going blank.

  “Me getting the treasure would help,” I says.

  “Ten times ten is a hundred,” Dill says.

  “That’s the plan I’m thinking,” I says.

  Dill looks in her book, reading down the rows of figures and talks like the words she’s saying is written down.

  “If yr mother had wanted you to have her pearl necklace and her diamond ring she woulda gived them to you before she died,” Dill says.

  “She didn’t know she was dying.”

  “She laid there breathing her last breaths and when she passed you clapped yr hands together and said ‘good riddance.’ ” Dill says.

  “I was talking about that baby she didn’t want, not about her.”

  “That’s what you say now, but I heard you with my own ears. You was thinking what I was thinking. And I was glad to see her go,” Dill says. She turns the pages of her book like I’m not there. “You figure you just gonna waltz out there and dig her up and get rich.”

  “I need the money.”

  “She wanted to take her jewelry with her and it’s bad luck to go against the wishes of the dead, ain’t it?”

  “Maybe not,” I says.

  I look at Dill who has looked up from her book to stare at me. She got a face shaped like a skull with skin, blacker than mine, stretched over it tight. Mother said that Dill, even though she weren’t really a man, was the most handsome man she’d ever met. But Dill weren’t never handsome to me.

  Dill crosses the room and sits in her big yellow-covered recliner, flipping through the pages of her accounts book. I stand by her desk, not moving. She closes her book and closes her eyes, leaning her head back, her long body folded in half by the chair.

  “I sleep here cause Jez got the bed,” she says. “It ain’t bad, sleeping in a chair.”

  Her ring of keys is on her desk. One of them keys is to her new truck.

  “I can’t loan you bus fare. You should stay here, have the Snipes baby and make the best of it,” Dill says advising.

  I cross the room as quiet as possible, opening the screen door and gulping in the night air. The air loosens up the pig smell.

  “I’ma go to LaJunta and get that treasure,” I says.

  Dill don’t say nothing for a minute. It’s like she’s looking at me through her closed eyelids. I go out on the porch, letting the screen door slam behind me.

  “Suit yrself,” Dill yells through the screen. “Suit yr goddamn knocked-up self.”

  DILL SMILES

  I miss her. Willa Mae. Much as I hated her. Much as I was glad to see her dead. Much as every shovelful of dirt I dug up for her grave made me smile, much as I enjoyed that fool Nestor, the undertaker with his bundle of measuring strings, pulling a string from her head to her foot and glancing at his wife who would say “got it,” then a string measuring her thickness, lingering a little too long around the body so that while I didn’t say nothing, I didn’t think it was my place to say nothing, I didn’t think it was my place to say, “You undertaking fool, get your dirty string from round her breasts,” his wife coughed and he eased the string off. Then folding her arms to her chest and a string to measure her hips.

  “We got a coffin that’ll fit her,” Nestor goes.

  “Praise God for that,” his wife says. “On account of the heat,” she adds. They had the coffin delivered by the end of the day. The wife washed the body and he watched. He drained the stomach and she watched. A plot at the cemetery cost more money than I had so Ma said it was OK for me to bury Willa right on her land. I dug the grave myself. I dug it myself and every shovelful of dirt made me smile. Willa Mae Beede was finally dead. And I was glad.

  Folks in Lincoln heard I buried her and sorta stepped back from me after that. I became the one who had buried Willa Mae Beede. I became someone who had dug a grave and lowered their woman down into it. When a person do something like that, who knows what else they gonna do. Don’t start nothing with Dill Smiles. Dill Smiles’ll kill you with a look. Stuff like that, that’s how the talk went for a while and I didn’t mind. I mighta kilt her if she hadn’t run off. I was gonna kill Son, but he ran off before I could get around to it.

  His name was Son. Son Walker. Billy’s daddy. The first man Willa ran around on me with but not the last. She met him in the jail in Lubbock and he drove her home to me then he stayed for a week. He had three trunks full of clothes. They’d go at it night and day. Then one day he drove off and she walked around the house like she was gonna die.

  “Where you think he’s at, Dill?” she would ask me.

  “You got to put him out yr mind,” I said.

  “You think he loves me?” she asked. I didn’t say nothing to that, I just leaned more over my calculations books. There was, as there’d been the year before, more loss than profits.

  I’m sitting here in my chair. One lamp on in this room and another one down the hall where Jez and her piglets are. Billy walked out the house slamming the door just like Willa used to leave. Before Billy was born, she would leave by herself, going all the way to Brownsville and calling me to wire her money cause her car had four flats. I took the bus down, fixed the flats myself and we’d drive back together. Then she got put in the Lubbock jail for drinking and cursing. When she came home from Lubbock, she had a man called Son Walker driving her car. He drove the car, Willa, and me right into the ground.

  In my mind Willa’s standing in my front yard, wearing her tight red dress. She says her car’s broke and I look under the hood then turn the key. It starts.

  “You got a way with automobiles,” she says.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I says. I don’t tell that her car didn’t have nothing wrong with it, that it was just overheated. We go driving. Driving all day long and in my bed at my house that night.

  “You love me, Dill?” she wants to know.

  “Hells no,” I says.

  I put her in the ground cause she asked me to. And she asked me to bury her with her favorite things. Her ring and necklace. But I didn’t. I took them and I weren’t wrong to take them. I took them and I sold the pearls one by one, for a hell of a lot more than ten dollars a piece, to keep myself afloat and I weren’t wrong to sell them. And when I need to sell the ring, I’ll sell it. Until then, I’ll keep it in my pocket. And I’m not wrong to keep it in my pocket. Willa owed me the right to sell the necklace and she will owe me the right, when I need it, to cash in the ring. The bitch ran around on me and disrespected me in the street. The way I see it, me taking the fast-running, no-count, trifling bitch’s goods is only fair. Still. I miss her.

  LAZ JACKSON

  I walk around at night cause I get my best thinking done when I’m walking in the dark. Also in the dark, there’s people in they houses with they lights on and I walk by sometimes looking in, seeing what I can see. I see them eating dinner, or listening to the radio or watching the TV. Sometimes I see them at it. There’s no one on the road most nights, except cars, going by fast, with they lights blaring in my face. Tonight, just past Dill’s, there’s someone.

  “Halt, who goes there?” I says, trying to sound like Errol Flynn do in the pictures.

  “It’s me,” Billy says. “You out peeping and creeping?”

  “I’m just walking. People keep they lights on, it ain’t my fault,” I says.

  Billy got something shiny and jingling in her hand. I hear it jingle and look towards it but she hides her hand behind her back before I can see.

  “Whatchu doing out walking?” I ask her.<
br />
  “I was over to see Dill. She got new piglets.”

  “Thought you was going to LaJunta.”

  “Tomorrow on the bus,” she says.

  “The bus don’t run Sunday,” I says.

  “I know that,” she says, but I can tell she’d forgot.

  I look her straight in the eyes and she looks down at the ground. “Snipes weren’t worth yr time,” I says.

  “I ain’t studying no Snipes,” she says. Her voice is just a little sad. She looks down the road towards the filling station. There’s one light on, the big sign that says Sanderson’s Gas. She walks away from me backwards so I can’t see what she got hidden behind her. I follow her and we walk down the side of the road like that. Her walking backwards and me walking forwards, in her face.

  “If the moon wasn’t out I wouldn’t be able to even see you,” she says.

  “You as black as I am,” I says.

  “No I’m not,” she says.

  We keep walking.

  “I’m twenty years old and I’ll inherit my father’s business,” I says.

  “So whut,” she says.

  “Let’s you and me get married,” I says. I wanted the words to come out sounding more debonair, but they didn’t. I stand there, but she keeps walking, she don’t stop. I ain’t never asked nobody to marry me before and the words are hanging in the air like a clothesline between us. The line is getting longer and longer. I start walking again, kind of trotting to catch up.

  “You hear what I said?” I go, not wanting to resay it.

  “I heard you,” she says. She turns her heel, almost tripping, then getting her balance back quick.

  “I can be yr baby’s daddy,” I says.

  “My baby don’t need no daddy,” she says. Her voice sounds mean but her face is smiling. I don’t know how come she’s smiling but I smile with her. She stops walking.

  “You know what I need? I need me some money.”

  “You need a husband looks like to me.”

  “I need money.”

  “How much?”

  “One hundred dollars,” she says. She rests one hand on her belly and rocks back and forth on her heels.

  “Thought you was gonna go get yr treasure,” I says.

  “I am but that’ll take time. Gimme the hundred and I’ll pay you back.”

  “Whatchu need a hundred dollars for?”

  She’s quiet, still rocking back and forth. The moon makes her face look like patent leather. “I can’t tell what for,” Billy says.

  I take a step forward, towards her. Letting her breath get close to my breath, like she is breathing in the air that I’m breathing out.

  “I give you the money what’ll you give me?” I ask her. I fish in my pocket like I’m gonna pull out the cash.

  She just laughs. “You scrounging in your pocket, hell Laz, you don’t got no money on you.”

  “I do so.”

  “Yr folks won’t let you carry money cause you eat it,” she says.

  Once some tough boys wanted my wallet. I ate a five instead of giving it up. I guess I’ll never live that down. “I’m my own bank,” I says.

  She laughs and starts walking again. I don’t walk. The line of words hanging between us gets longer and longer and sags.

  “You marry me, I’ll get the money for you,” I say, yelling now.

  “I got other plans,” Billy says, laughing and walking away.

  I stand there watching her go. Watching the light that says Sanderson’s. Not turning to walk home until I figure she’s safely reached the filling station, got inside the office, and taken out her pallet from underneath the counter. She tells herself the plan she’s got is a good plan, and then she goes to bed.

  JUNE FLOWERS BEEDE

  Me and Teddy are sitting in the dark of the office when she comes in.

  “I’m leaving in the morning,” she says, taking out her pallet and fixing it.

  “How much Dill give you?” Teddy asks.

  “Plenty for bus fare,” she says, laying down behind the counter so we, sitting in our two chairs, can’t see her.

  I poke Teddy in the side with my elbow, getting him to ask again.

  “How much is bus fare?” he says.

  “Dill gived me thirty dollars,” Billy says.

  “I stand corrected,” I say.

  “Yr Aunt June spent the evening cussing out Dill Smiles,” Teddy laughs.

  “I was calling her every name in the book. Now I stand corrected,” I says. I would stand up, to truly be standing and corrected, but I figure they know what I’m talking about without me getting out of my chair.

  “I’m leaving in the morning, and I’ll be back by Wednesday,” Billy says. It’s like she’s a haint, talking from her pallet underneath the counter where we can’t see her, her voice rising up out of what looks like the cash register.

  I give Teddy another poke in the side.

  “I don’t want you traveling alone,” Teddy says.

  “I’ll be all right,” she says.

  “It’s one thing for you to be going just to Texhoma. Going all the way to LaJunta, Arizona, is a whole nother story,” I says.

  “It’s just a bus,” Billy says.

  “This is 1963,” Teddy says. “It ain’t safe you going all the way out there all by yrself.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Billy says. “Willa Mae and me used to go all over, just us two.”

  “It ain’t safe,” I says. “Especially with the baby.”

  “You don’t want me going?” Billy says. Now she’s raised herself up, just her head over the countertop.

  “We’re going with you,” Teddy says. “Me and June both.”

  “We’ll use the money Dill gived you for bus fare. One-way tickets all around. We’ll cash in the treasure to pay our way back home,” I says.

  “You got it all worked out,” Billy says.

  “All sorts of things can happen these days to a young girl on the road,” Teddy says. “Just the other day Aunt June read in the paper where that gal down in Corpus—”

  “I’m heading out at four,” Billy says.

  “Bus don’t leave on Sunday,” I says.

  “Be ready at four A.M.,” Billy says and ducks her head back down underneath the counter and goes to bed.

  Teddy and I call good night to her, but she don’t answer. It’s like her head hit the pallet and she went to sleep.

  Teddy gets up and rubs his knees. “I’ma go tell Gonzales. They can watch the place until we get back,” he says.

  “Sanderson’s coming on Wednesday for his inspection,” I says, reminding Teddy of what he don’t need to be reminded of. When Mr. Sanderson drives up once a month from Austin, everything is spit-polish and me and Teddy stand like army soldiers and Sanderson walks back and forth with his great granddaddy’s riding crop underneath his arm and looks everything over. Then him and Teddy go over the month’s receipts. Then Mr. Sanderson and Teddy go out onto the porch and Sanderson smokes one of his fancy cigars and Teddy dips his snuff and Billy goes to get some ice and I bring out tall glasses of lemonade. If everything’s square, Sanderson gives us the privilege of pumping his gas for another month. He likes to go month to month. It keeps things at a certain level of responsibility, he says. Keeps me and Teddy walking on eggs, I say, though if Sanderson kicked us out, I don’t know what we’d do or where we’d go.

  “We’ll be back in plenty of time for that Sanderson,” Teddy says smiling. “It takes a day to get there and a day to get back and it ain’t gonna take but a few hours to dig.”

  He goes out into the dark, a quarter of a mile down the road from us, to wake up Mr. Gonzales. Inside the filling station office it’s dark, but outside it’s darker. Inside there’s something, although there ain’t much. Outside there’s nothing, or everything. Behind the counter Billy snores. Haw Hee Haw Hee Haw Hee Haw.

  ROOSEVELT BEEDE

  Me and June’s standing on the porch in the morning dark. We got one suitcase, neatly packe
d, between us. A change of shirt for me, a clean dress for June. You leave town you never know who y’ll meet. June got her big patent leather pocketbook, a gift I gived her when us two’d been married ten years, stuffed with peppermints and those heavy paper napkins she likes.

  “I got my map of Texas and I got my map of New Mexico and I got my map of Arizona too,” June says.

  “Billy said be ready at four,” I says squinting into the dark.

  “It’s four and we’re ready,” June says.

  I turn around to look through the screen door at Gonzales and his wife and they three children, all washed and ironed, with wet hair neatly combed. Gonzales and the two older sons got on Sunday shirts buttoned to the collar. The wife and the little girl got on frilly dresses, like what you’d wear to a party and they hair’s in braids with the ends tied with ribbons.

  June watches me watching Gonzales. “We’ll be back by Tuesday at the latest,” she says. She reaches her free hand out and, finding my hand, gives it a squeeze.

  “He wants to run this filling station,” I says.

  “We’ll be back in plenty of time,” she says. “Gonzales wanna run a filling station he gonna have to run one someplace else.”

  “Whatchu got underneath yr arm?”

  “Just my crutch.”

  “Looks like a book,” I says.

  “It ain’t nothing,” June says.

  “Looks like your map of the world,” I says.

  “You never know,” she says.

  “We only going to LaJunta,” I says.

  “You never know,” she says. She turns a little bit so I can’t see the book. Figuring if I can’t see it no more, I won’t think about it no more. My wife has brung her favorite thing and she is ashamed for bringing it. Cause she ain’t brung it thinking we gonna travel the world, she has brung it thinking there’s a chance we ain’t coming back.

  “Where the hell’s Billy at?” she mutters.

  “Maybe she left without us.”

  “Bus don’t run Sunday.”

  “Maybe she’s paying Laz to drive us,” I says and we both laugh.