Getting Mother's Body

by Suzan-Lori Parks

  “She’s a good girl,” Roosevelt says.

  “Of course she is,” I reassure him. My son Homer is in the living room talking with June. “Homer,” I call out, “show your cousin Billy to the silverware and plates, please.” Homer excuses himself from June and shows Billy around. I watch my son. Both his eyes are on Billy’s belly. Roosevelt watches them talk too.

  “Homer’s all growd up,” he says. “He comed to the door, I thought he was his daddy.”

  “He takes after his father in every way.”

  “We woulda liked to come to Walter’s funeral.”

  “He went so quickly.”

  “Earlier this year, was it?”

  “Last summer. Over a year ago now,” I say. Roosevelt eyes the black dress I’m wearing. I sewed my own mourning dresses but they look like they were purchased in Atlanta. My black stockings and black shoes are from Dallas. There are little speckles of flour on the dress skirt from where I’m cooking.

  “Still wearing yr blacks,” he says.

  “Walter was the best of men,” I say and he nods his head agreeing even though he knows my husband never did think much of Roosevelt or any Beede.

  The breakfast is ready and we assemble at the table. Myself and my son sit on one side, and the three Beedes, with Billy in the center, sit on the other. The head of the table, my husband’s place, stays empty. I invite Roosevelt, being the most senior man, to serve. He piles food on each plate, running out of eggs before everyone is served, so we have to adjust. “God is great,” he mumbles into his folded hands. I wait in vain for something more eloquent. The Beedes begin to eat. Homer waits for my go-ahead.

  “For the nourishment of our bodies we eat this food in Jesus’ name,” I say, allowing Homer and me to begin.

  “Lovely house you got,” June says.

  “Walter worked hard all his life,” I tell her. “I could have taught school, but we didn’t need the income. Homer and I’ve never wanted for anything. Walter made sure of that.”

  Homer looks at me. He wonders if I will mention the bill collectors who call on us with admirable regularity. I will not.

  “The china is from England, and the napkins are Italian,” I say.

  The Beedes look down at their plates.

  “All this sure is nice,” June says.

  “I’ve risen above my Beedeism,” I say.

  The three of them smile, as if they understand what I have said, but that would be like having a pig understand that one day he will wake up from a dream to discover he’s actually a man. June and Roosevelt and Billy will never rise above their Beedeism. They will always be Beedes, which is to say that they will always be grubbing in the dirt.

  “Bet you got a good job,” Roosevelt says to Homer.

  “Homer is enrolled at Harper College,” I say.

  “It’s just a junior college,” Homer says.

  “Morehouse accepted Homer, but Harper College is not but ten miles away. Especially after the passing of his father, I find my son’s nearness a great blessing,” I tell them. I reach out for my son’s hand, giving him a gentle squeeze. When men from Levenson’s Furniture visited, intending to reclaim the very table we’re eating on, Homer willingly skipped a semester so we could make the payments.

  We eat in silence. Billy shoveling her food, Roosevelt and June eating more slowly, Homer dabbing his grits with his biscuits. He has his elbow on the table. I look at him and he removes it.

  “How’d the biscuits turn out?” Billy asks him.

  Homer, with his mouth full, just smiles. But the biscuits are not good.

  “Will you need to spend the night with us?” I ask.

  “Oh, no,” June says smiling, “we’re—well, you could say we got things to do and places to go to.”

  I take a breath of relief. If they were to stay over they would smell up my rooms and spit in my sinks.

  “Where are you all headed to?” Homer asks them.

  I cough.

  “To where are you traveling?” my son asks again.

  The Beedes trade quick looks, then Roosevelt sits up very straight in his chair, puffing out his chest. “Willa Mae left us some treasure when she passed and we’re on our way to collect it.”

  “Marvelous,” I say.

  “Is it in a bank?” Homer asks.

  “Don’t talk with yr mouth full, son.”

  Homer chews and swallows quickly. “Safety deposit box?”

  “Willa didn’t trust banks,” Roosevelt says, puffing bigger and getting prouder. “My sister buried her treasure in the ground.”

  The air escapes my mouth so quickly that I find myself scoffing at them even though it isn’t polite. Treasure in the ground. That’s Beedeism for you.

  DILL SMILES

  White boys stole my truck.

  I like to look at it first thing in the morning when I get up and here I am standing here looking at where it should be and I am standing here looking at nothing. White boys stole my goddamn truck.

  Oh, they ain’t gonna get away with this. I’ll tell everybody I know. I’ll wake up Joe North to get him to take me to Midland and we gonna tell the police. No. The white police ain’t gonna do nothing about no nigger-lezzy’s truck stolen by some white boys. White boys probably they sons or cousins. Or maybe they theirselves stole it. They got it halfway to Dallas by now, planning on repainting it and reselling it. Or they was drinking when they stole it, they stole it on one of them dares they always doing. White folks is crazy. They always getting drunk and then daring each other to do stuff. I knew a man, a nice man too, Brunson. Brunson was a good old boy, you know, a red neck with a red face to match. But he was fair. Went drinking with his friends one night and they got to doing them white dares and he jumped off the roof of the First National Bank in Midland. His head popped open like a goddamn cantaloupe. I heard his friends stood around laughing. That’s how drunk they was. How’s that joke go? What’s the most often last words of a redneck? Hey y’all watch this.

  White folks.

  One of them probably riding in my truck right now, driving it too fast. Going from first to second, from second to third, his drunk white hands all over the wheel and the dashboard and the gearshift. His drunk white face and the goddamn faces of his drunk white friends, all crowded in the cab and some in the bed, just along for the fun. Admiring the ride. Hitting every hole in the road and laughing. Cause it ain’t their expense. It’s just a nigger’s truck. A nigger who’s doing well for herself. A bulldagger nigger who got a sow with thirteen new nigger-sow piglets. Woulda stole the piggies but the nigger-lezzy Smiles, she sleeps with a shotgun. Oh, but you shoulda seen what nigger-lezzy Smiles used to sleep with. A white gal. Hells no. The lezzy didn’t have no white gal. Sho. The nigger lezzy had yr sister. I’ma stop this truck and kill you. The lezzy’s gal, she was colored. I heard her sing once. She looked white. So do you. Cut that out, that ain’t funny now. I’m telling you the lezzy’s gal looked white. Well she weren’t. If she was white, the bulldagger woulda been hanging from every tree you can see. I never lynched no bulldagger. I ain’t neither but I bet it’s all right. Let’s run this truck into a ditch. Let’s run it into a tree and jump out fore we hit. Let’s take it to Austin. I know a fella’ll buy it off us for top dollar and no questions asked. He’ll pay more if he knowd we stold it from a nigger. Wish I had a chance at that gal Smiles had. I had a chance at her. I had a chance at her too. You all lying. She woulda gived you a chance if youda asked. She was fast as this truck. Hell, she was faster than this truck, she was fast as lightning. She was white. She was colored, I’m telling you. She had a baby black as my shoe. Colored folks is funny. That’s cause you ain’t drunk enough. Pass the bottle.

  Somehow them white boys got my truck. They got in the house somehow—

  Shit.

  Billy Beede.

  And right then I know it weren’t no white boys stealing nothing. It was goddamn Billy stealing it. Stealing my ring of keys that I couldn’t find this morning, then stea
ling my truck while I’m sleep. I stand right in the middle of the road where I’m walking to town and turn back, hurrying the other way towards Sanderson’s. The living reminder that Willa Mae ran around on me has run off with my truck. Good. It’s good Billy Beede stole my truck. Good, cause I’ma kill her for it and the law will not severely punish a colored when a colored woman gets kilt. Good, because if white boys had stole my truck they could be anywhere with it, but Billy Beede stealing my truck has only gone one place. She has gone to LaJunta and now all I got to do is go out there and kill her. She will get to LaJunta before me. Ma will show her the grave. And she will dig. She will come back this way and I’ll be on the Monday bus heading out there and she will be coming back here empty-handed and sad and I’ll see her in my truck and I’ll stop the bus and shoot her as she speeds on by. I’ll kill her good and dead and the law will look the other way.

  WILLA MAE BEEDE

  This song’s about, well, I’ll sing it to you, then you’ll know. It’s called “Hatchet Tree Blues.”

  I buried my hatchet but it hatched out the ground and growd.

  I buried my hatchet but it hatched out the ground and growd.

  I laid it deep down in the dirt

  And it come up like a bean along the row.

  It growd leaves it growd branches, my hatchet tree’s got a trunk four arms wide,

  It growd leaves it growd branches, my hatchet tree’s got a trunk four arms wide,

  It got roots clear down to China, it gives shade to the whole countryside.

  My hatchet tree’s giving fruit, big old hatchets ripe and ready on the vine,

  My hatchet tree’s giving fruit, big old hatchets ripe and ready on the vine,

  The one I loved, he cripple-crossed me

  He gonna taste some of my hatchet this time.

  HOMER BEEDE ROCHFOUCAULT

  We could use the money.

  Roosevelt is my uncle and Willa Mae was his sister. I am their nephew and so that makes the treasure my aunt’s.

  “How about I come along with you?” I ask.

  Mamma tries to give me one of her looks but I keep both of my eyes on Uncle Teddy.

  “We was gonna ask you the very same thing,” Uncle Teddy says, looking pleased.

  “We need help digging,” Cousin Billy adds.

  “Oh Good Lord,” Mamma says.

  “I hope I’d be entitled to a percentage of the profits,” I say.

  They get quiet. Aunt June narrows her eyes and Billy works her neck.

  “We already decided Billy’s getting the lion’s share,” Uncle Teddy says.

  “How much are we talking about?” I ask. I’ve got a good head for figures. Professor Yardley wants me to get my degree in mathematics. He says I could work with the space program but I got my sights set on the Congress or the Senate.

  “We don’t know how much exactly,” Billy says, “but you won’t be wasting your time.”

  “My son does not need to be digging like some n——,” my mamma says. She don’t say “nigger,” though, just the “n” part.

  We all sit quiet. Aunt June traces the lace edge of her napkin. Billy eats another one of her rock biscuits. Uncle Teddy is smiling, trying to make peace.

  “I didn’t mean to say that,” Mamma whispers into her plate.

  “You stopped yrself just in time,” Uncle Teddy says.

  “I haven’t been myself since I lost my husband,” my mamma says.

  I look out the living room window. My Mercury Park Lane is still in the driveway. I glance out there about a million times a day, and get up in the night to go look at it, expecting it not to be there. I had good grades—not straight A’s but quite a few. My father talked his friends into giving him enough for the down payment and he surprised me with it a month before he died. I’ve had to work two jobs to keep it. It runs real good but I’ve never driven it any further than Harper College. “A treasure hunt sounds cool to me,” I say.

  “There is nothing cool about it,” my mamma says.

  “Yr right about the weather,” Uncle Teddy says. “It’ll be hot.”

  “That was not my meaning,” Mamma says. She went to Spelman College. She graduated at the top of her class. My father was a Morehouse man.

  “What we meaning is, we could really use Homer’s help,” Aunt June says.

  “I’d like to be a part of what I see as an interesting prospect,” I say.

  “There is nothing interesting about going all the way out to some place in Arizona to dig who knows where in the dirt on a whim,” my mamma says.

  The Beedes are quiet. They eat and we eat. When they eat they make sounds. Mamma and I eat but we don’t make sounds. I know what Mamma’ll say when they’ve gone. She will say they eat like animals.

  I take a good look at Billy. She’s left-handed and she holds her fork in her left fist, like a yardman would hold it, and she don’t got no wedding ring on and she got a need for a wedding ring. I wonder how many times she done it. I wonder if my cousin’s one of them hot and wild gals. Over at Harper we got a gal like that. Cousin Billy sees me looking at her and puts her fork down. She puts both hands in her lap, hiding the no-ring. For a minute I think she will lean her head down into her plate and eat the rest of her breakfast like Chance, my daddy’s dog, eats. But her right hand, the one with no ring that isn’t supposed to have a ring, comes up. It picks up the fork slowly. The fork wobbles cause the right hand, the hand she isn’t used to eating with, is guiding the food to her mouth. At the last minute the eggs fall and she makes a little snap motion with her neck, as the eggs miss her mouth. They fall into her lap. But that doesn’t stop her. She picks the eggs gently up, returning them to her plate, then shovels at the eggs again and this time she gets it. Then she picks up a biscuit, chews hard, swallows, then speaks.

  “Willa Mae Beede was buried with a long pearl necklace and a big diamond ring,” she says.

  “Where’d she get stuff like that?” I ask.

  “Her—her husband. He gived them to her,” she explains. She was about to say something other than “husband” but she said “husband.” Professor Clarke over at college would of said Billy was about to make a Freudian’s slip. But she caught herself just in time. Aunt June and Uncle Teddy are smiling pleasantly, letting Cousin Billy unfold the story, not contributing any information other than the silence. Me and Mamma lean in a little. Talking about “treasure” is one thing, talking specifics like diamonds and pearls is something else.

  “Your mother got that jewelry from your father?” my mamma asks.

  Billy smiles big. There’s a little piece of grits on her lower lip. “Mr. Carmichael was her first husband,” she says.

  “I don’t approve of divorce,” my mamma says.

  “Me neither,” Uncle Teddy says.

  “Willa Mae was married to Huston Carmichael the Third, he gave her the jewels, then he died. After years of mourning, she married my daddy. They had me, then he left her a widow,” Cousin Billy explains.

  My mamma touches her hand to her chest. “I know that kind of sadness,” she says. She is talking about the sadness of having the man you planned to get old with walk out into the backyard one morning to look over the vegetables and falling down dead of a heart attack. And she is talking about the sadness that goes with that. Of thinking you were having one kind of life, the kind of life with no worries and plenty of money and a son on his way to his father’s alma mater college, and then, overnight, your life turning into bill collectors visiting you and marks on the carpet where certain prize pieces of furniture used to sit, and a son in junior college and not even really being able to afford that.

  “If your dear husband, by some mistake, had been put into his grave with a treasure that he meant for you to have, me and Uncle Teddy and Aunt June would do what we could to help you get it,” Cousin Billy says.

  “She was buried with the treasure by mistake?” I ask.

  The Beedes stay quiet.

  Billy goes into her pocketbook,
taking out a photograph and passing it across the table to us. I lean in to look. There’s a white woman, or what looks like a white woman, standing in the middle of the desert right next to one of them big prickly man-shaped cactuses. In the picture, there’s also the shadow of the man taking the picture.

  “She’s beautiful,” my mamma says, the words jumped out of her mouth like she didn’t want to say it.

  “She’s got on the necklace and the diamond ring,” I says. You can see them in the picture plain as day.

  “And she and your stepfather meant for you to have them?” Mamma asks.

  “That’s right,” Billy says.

  Uncle Roosevelt coughs. Aunt June moves her food around on her plate. Mamma told me a few things about Willa Mae Beede, but she didn’t mention her jewlery or her looks.

  Billy reaches to take the picture back. By instinct, she reaches with her left hand. No ring. Mamma raises her eyebrows.

  “My dear husband, Mr. Clifford Snipes,” Billy explains quickly, “he refuses to buy me a ring until he can afford the best. From the looks of your house, Aunt Star, I bet Big Uncle Walter treated you just like that too.”

  “Big Walter Rochfoucault was a Morehouse man,” Mamma says.

  “So you know what I’m taking about,” Billy says.

  Uncle Teddy looks at our grandfather clock. They’ve been here for two hours. “We could use your help, Homer. We need to get out there quick and dig quick,” he says.

  I look at Mamma. When she couldn’t pay the bills and took me out of school I was ashamed. Mamma gives me her nod of approval.

  “All right, then,” I says, getting up to pack my things.

  “I’ll fix some food for you to take along,” Mamma says, “and you better call me right when you get there, too,” she adds and it’s all settled.

  ROOSEVELT BEEDE

  Homer’s got a fancy car.

  “Plenty of automobiles come by our filling station on any given day but I ain’t never seen one as nice as this one here,” I tell him. We’ve turned off his street and onto the main road that will lead us back to the highway. West west more west then we’ll be there. Homer turns around, taking his eyes off the road, and giving another flurry of waves goodbye to Star, who has gone around the side of the house to catch a last glimpse of us. We go down the main road and she vanishes behind a low concrete garage, but Homer keeps waving anyway.