Getting Mother's Body

by Suzan-Lori Parks

  Aunt June is looking at me driving and looking at my belly.

  “I guess you won’t be naming your baby Snipes,” Aunt June says.

  “I ain’t naming it nothing.”

  Every time we hit a bump, my belly almost touches the steering wheel.

  “Maybe it’ll be a boy,” Aunt June says brightly.

  “It ain’t gonna be at all,” I says.

  She’s looking at my belly, but I look evil at her, making her look at something else. She studies her map then glances out the window.

  “Claret cup cactus,” she announces, seeing some.

  “Willa Mae and me was headed out here to meet her new husband-to-be,” I say. “They had the wedding all planned and then she died.”

  “Is that so,” Aunt June says.

  I can tell she don’t believe me. I decide to do what Mother called “ice the cake”—when you put a finish on something and it don’t matter what the person watching thinks. “I was at her bedside when she died,” I says. “I was holding her one hand and her husband-to-be, the richest man I ever seen, he was holding her other hand. You shoulda seen him cry when she passed.”

  “Is that so,” Aunt June says again.

  “Believe whatchu please,” I says, steering towards a big hole and hitting it hard and watching the shock on Aunt June’s face. “Believe what you please, but I’m telling you the truth.”

  OFFICER MASTERSON

  I just pulled over a late-model red Mercury convertible going over eighty miles an hour. It’s got two Negroes in it. I can hear the people up in New York and Chicago and Warshington and Hollywood. I can hear all them talking. Calling me a white supremacist cause I done pulled over two speeding Negroes in what looks like a brand-new car.

  There’s a young one driving and an older one riding with him. I told them to both get out the car and stand with they hands on the hood and they legs spread. I radioed for assistance, but Sheriff Jim Baylor’s taking his day off, fishing.

  “I’ma have to look at your license,” I say to the young one.

  He don’t say nothing. The older one looks at him and then the young one speaks. “It’s in my billfold,” he says.

  He’s got on tight brown pants. His back pocket’s got a bump in it. I touch the bump with my baton.

  “That your wallet there?”

  “Whatchu think?”

  The older one, his hands cupped on the car hood to save his palms from the heat, turns his head a little and looks at the younger one again. “That your billfold?” he asks him.

  “Yes, sir,” the younger says, answering the older Negro, not me.

  “Go take it outcha pants,” the old one tells him and he does what he’s told, taking out his wallet and holding it in his hand with his arm out straight from his body. Usually a fella with his hand out like that under these circumstances would have his hand shaking. The young fella’s hand is firm. Almost like he’s resting his arm on something. On his innocence, or his crime.

  “I got a billfold too,” the old one says.

  “Where’s it at?”

  “In my coat pocket.”

  “Go head and get it then.”

  He reaches in slow, removing the wallet, paper-thin black leather, placing it a few inches away from his hand on the car hood.

  “Homer,” I says. The license’s got his whole name but I can’t make head or tail of the last one. Sheriff says all niggers should be named Joe Washington. Says we oughta pass a law to make it so. Negroes and Negras both. All Joe Washington. I had the stupidity to ask how then would we know one from the other and Sheriff said we can’t tell them apart now anyway so what’s the difference. He laughed and I laughed.

  “Stand here while I radio in your information,” I says. I tell Shirley back at the station what I caught and she checks through the postings but there ain’t no one looking for what I got.

  They stand with their hands still on the hood. Their heads are down. I could let them go. Give them a ticket for going too fast and let them go. I pride myself in being fair. I could just let them on their way with a speeding ticket. But Sheriff wouldn’t never let me hear the end of it. If I was to let them go there’d be plenty of laughs and talkings behind my back. I might even stop getting the days off I put in for. Things like that happen.

  “This your car, Beady?” I says, looking at the older man. Him and his son was out driving fast, and I’ll put money on them being father and son, even though they don’t got the same name.

  “Bead,” the older says.

  It’s got an “e” on the end, but I guess you don’t say it. “This yr car, Bead?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Is it stolen?”

  “I am not no thief.”

  The old man is looking up at me, the light from the hood of the car makes his face glow. He got a way about him, like he’s somebody or used to be somebody and he even looks familiar, but Negroes got a way of looking familiar when you don’t know them, especially when they’ve done something wrong.

  The younger fella looks up and smiles. “There’s a twenty in my billfold. It’s yours if you want it,” he says.

  I open the wallet and pocket the twenty. “I’m gonna have to take you both in,” I says. And they both hang they heads. I feel a little jolt, of pleasure, maybe. The hanging heads of men, any men, and the power of the law.

  Problem is I only got one set of handcuffs. I cuff one to the other and lead them both to my squad car, opening the back door and letting them get in.

  “That’s my car,” the young one says struggling a little.

  “Don’t you worry about it,” I says.

  A pickup truck drives up. Two Negras in it.

  “Teddy!” the woman yells.

  “I’m taking them in,” I says. Then I remember I’m a fair man and add, “If you like you can follow us.”

  A younger gal leans over the older one, narrowing her eyes at me. Damn if she don’t look familiar too. “Whatchu gonna do with Homer’s car?” she asks.

  “We’ll just leave it here,” I says. “Won’t no one take it.”

  I get in my car and head toward town. In the back they sit quiet like they’re made of stone. “We gonna have you spend the night courtesy of the town of Tryler, Texas,” I says.

  “Tryler? That’s what this town’s called?” the older one asks.

  “That’s right,” I says.

  We pass the sign that says the name of the town.

  Something about the town of Tryler makes the older Negro start laughing. The younger one looks mad but the older one, I’m watching him in my rearview, the older one’s laughing to hisself. Then he’s crying. Tears coming down his cheeks but a shake like laughing still jolting his body. Like I said before, Negroes is funny.

  HOMER BEEDE ROCHFOUCAULT

  His boss comes in all excited. Two caught niggers. Him with his cap full of fishing lures on his head and his big stomach hanging well over his belt. His subordinate, the one who caught us and cuffed us and hauled us in here, took just my pictures and fingerprints but put us both in the cell.

  “Where’s the stuff on the old nigger?” the Sheriff wants to know.

  “He ain’t done nothing,” the Deputy says. “It was the young fella that was driving.”

  The Sheriff leans against the bars. His belly squeezes through the metal slats. “The old nigger’s an accessory,” he says.

  “Oh, hell, Jim,” the Deputy goes.

  “He’s an accessory to the crime,” the Sheriff says again. His lips are wet and his eyes, round and pale-colored, look Uncle Roosevelt up and down. Uncle Roosevelt stands up. He’s a head taller than the Sheriff but he stoops a little. On the way into town he was crying. Maybe he’s got a record or something, maybe he’s scared they’ll find out he robbed a bank or shot somebody once.

  “Take his goddamn picture and prints or I’ma take your goddamn badge,” the Sheriff screams. The lures rattle on his head. His voice is high.

  The Deputy takes Uncle Teddy
out and walks him down the little hallway. I sit there, letting the Sheriff look at me.

  “We put out what you call an All Points Bulletin,” he says, lifting his fat hand up and fingering one of his lures. “We got you good and caught, now we just gotta find out whatchu done.”

  I want to kill him right now. I want to stand up and reach my hands quick through the bars and bring his fat lure-topped head into the cell with me and leave the rest of his cracker ass just standing there. But I don’t move. I sit. My elbows on my knees, my eyes on his.

  “You look like Martin Luther Coon,” he says.

  “My name is Homer Rochfoucault.”

  “I wish to God you was Luther Coon. That’d be a good-looking feather in my cap.”

  I want to kill him right now but I don’t move. He might want to kill me too but he don’t move either. The Negro-College-Going Youth eyeballing the White-Just-Back-From-Fishing Sheriff. If we was in a play those would be our parts. There’s plenty of times a man has, in situations just like this, forgot himself and just played his part. In the middle of the quadrangle at school there’s a little stone plaque dedicated to the memory of Randall Clay. I used to think it would be a fine thing to tell men like this Sheriff here just what I think of them and then end up killed and honored by a plaque with my name on it. Until now.

  “I haven’t been given my phone call,” I say.

  “What phone call?”

  “I’m allowed a phone call.”

  “We don’t got no phone,” he says smiling.

  The Deputy comes back to the cell and leads in Uncle Roosevelt. We sit together. Neither of us saying nothing. Both of us looking at the floor. His picture took, his fingertips, like mine, black and inky-smelling.

  The day passes. The Sheriff and the Deputy get tired of just standing there looking at us. They are waiting for the phone to ring, news of some white gal we done raped or some money we stole or some white man we shot or something. The phone don’t ring with shit.

  They both take up chairs across from the cell. The Sheriff not taking his eyes off us and the Deputy looking like we looking, down at the floor.

  “I seen them somewheres before,” the Sheriff says.

  “That’s what I thought too,” the Deputy says.

  “Especially the old nigger.”

  “He don’t got no record though.”

  “Maybe he got a brother who’s on the run,” the Sheriff says. “Old nigger, you got a brother?” he asks Uncle Roosevelt.

  Uncle Roosevelt looks up but don’t answer.

  “Answer me, goddamnit!” the Sheriff screeches.

  “He don’t got no brother, Jim,” the Deputy says.

  “I wanna hear it from him!”

  “Mr. Beady,” the Deputy goes, saying the name wrong again but at least he’s saying it.

  “Bead,” Uncle Roosevelt says softly, “you say it Bead.”

  “It’s got uh ‘e’ on the end,” the Sheriff says.

  “You say it Bead,” Uncle Teddy says even more softly.

  “Mr. Bead,” the Deputy says.

  “He ain’t no mister,” the Sheriff says.

  “I don’t got no brother,” Uncle Teddy says. “I’m pretty much the last Beede in my line.”

  We all fall silent. I’m the last one in my line and maybe the two crackers are the last ones in their lines too. And all of a sudden I’m thinking of Cousin Billy. I’m locked up in a Texas jail with crackers with guns trying to hang some crime on me and here I am thinking of how nice it would be to get with my cousin. I should be thinking of other things. More respectable things like getting my law degree or at least digging up the treasure and paying off my mother’s bills with my percentage of it or I should be thinking how one day I’ll become president and pass laws for fairness. But I’m just thinking of getting with Billy behind her nonexistent husband’s back.

  “Any word, Shirley?” the Sheriff yells.

  “You been here, you hear the phone ring?” Shirley yells back.

  They sit there a moment longer. They took my wristwatch when they took my picture. My daddy gave me that watch. If they don’t give it back I will kill them.

  There is a piece of sunlight coming through the cell window slantwise. It’s thin and yellowy, like watery soup. My father went out into the yard to check on the garden. My mother had the table laid for breakfast. We sat there waiting for him to come in and eat and he had fallen down dead in the mustard greens.

  “It’s time for my dinner,” the Sheriff says standing. The Deputy stands up too.

  “What should I do with the prisoners?” the Deputy asks.

  “Don’t do nothing with them,” the Sheriff says leaving.

  The Deputy stands there against the wall, watching his boss leave the jail and drive off.

  “Shirley, go get the prisoners some sandwiches,” he says.

  “You want to feed them, you go get them sandwiches,” she says back. When we came in I got a quick look at her. A big woman with a big tumbleweed of brass-yellow hair, arms like hams, tits like twin footballs. “It’s Sunday and I shouldn’t of even come to work today in the first place,” she says. I can hear her packing up her things to go.

  “I’m gone,” she says. The screen door slams behind her.

  “I guess I’ll get the sandwiches,” the Deputy says. He leaves the room then, coming back, grabs ahold of the cell door, shaking it, making sure we’re locked up good and tight, then goes out.

  Me and Uncle Roosevelt sit there awhile.

  “You ever been locked up?” I ask him.

  “No,” he says.

  “Me neither,” I says.

  “I got a feeling about that Sheriff, you know the fat one,” he says.

  My stomach sinks. I think of the plaque in the quadrangle at school. “What kind of feeling?” I ask.

  My Uncle’s voice is flat. “I got a feeling that fat cracker ain’t seed his own dick in many a year,” he says.

  We both laugh at that.

  There’s someone standing at the window of the cell. Standing on her tiptoes, barely able to see in. Cousin Billy.

  “You wanna bust out?” she says. “I could bust you out.”

  “The Deputy’s gone for sandwiches,” Uncle says.

  “You got a gun?” I says.

  “I got a razor-file,” she says. “It could cut the bars.”

  “We grown men, girl,” Uncle says. “If the bars was cut, no way in hell we could slip through this little window.”

  “It was an idea,” she says.

  “How’s June?”

  “Aunt June’s fine.”

  “I got a feeling we’ll be out in the morning,” Uncle Roosevelt says. “Go back and tell your Aunt June to sit tight.”

  Billy turns and goes across the road where they got the truck parked in the shade.

  “She had a good idea,” I says. My hot and wild cousin.

  “I tolt you she was a good woman,” Uncle Roosevelt says. “A good family-minded woman. Can’t never go wrong with a woman like that.”

  JUNE FLOWERS BEEDE

  We can see the window of where they locked up. It ain’t easy sleeping sitting in the seats so we laying in the truck bed now. Lucky it ain’t raining is all I got to say. Nothing we could do about the police. Billy is laying on her side. First one side then the other. I done quit talking about the baby she got. I’m pretending she don’t got no baby inside. She’s getting rid of it. The Bible says Thou shalt not kill, but by the look on Billy’s face, if me or Teddy was to try and thwart her, she’d most likely kill us too. She’s made her mind up so I gotta make my mind up too, remake it away from having a baby in the house to just being me and Teddy and her in the house like it already is.

  “Excuse me,” someone says. A white man, sounds like.

  Billy sits up quick and I sit up slow. The white policeman, the one who took Teddy and Homer in, is standing there at the tailgate with a package in his hand.

  “I brought your men sandwiches,” he says.
“It took longer than I thought to get them. I had to make them myself. I made some for you all too.” He lifts the bag towards us. We don’t move.

  “We ain’t hungry,” Billy says.

  I look at my hand. It’s reached out automatically for the food. I drop my arm, pretending like I was flicking the offer away. “Thanks just the same,” I says, trying to make my voice sound hard like Billy’s do. We’re in Tryler. I can only make my voice sound so hard.

  “We don’t got no colored ho-tel in Tryler,” the policeman says.

  “We fine right here,” Billy says. Her voice has a thick strangling sound that loops around the voice of the policeman, his voice trying to be kind, and the sandwiches in his hand, strangling the kindness out of them both. This policeman don’t know how lucky he is. He got a one-legged Negro woman who ain’t saying much and a two-legged knocked-up Negro gal who is only being disagreeable. The white policeman’s lucky that Billy ain’t doing a Willa Mae right now. She’d be cussing him out and telling him to go south.

  He leans on the side of the truck. Billy gives him one of her looks but he don’t back off. “We got two extra beds in the jail. You two gals are welcome to them,” he says.

  “No thank you,” Billy says almost before the offer clears the policeman’s mouth.

  “Ma’am?” he says, asking me directly.

  I look at Billy. When you got one leg you feel like you deserve other things. Like an extra piece of pie or a real mattress on a real bed instead of sleeping in a truck. Billy’s face is telling me blood is more important than comfort. But Billy ain’t my blood. Roosevelt ain’t my blood neither. Here I am, with my Flowers’ blood still in me, in deep with these Beedes. Instead of being lifted up over the Brazos River and carried across to the young and good-talking traveling preacher and being enveloped in his promises of better things and being nestled in the bosom of the folks he had listening to his every word, I feel like I done fell into the river of Beedes and got swept along in they thick brown water. The first months of our marriage, I swam against the Beedes. I told Roosevelt I wanted to go to northern California where my family was at. He coulda preached there. We borrowed a car and went west for about a day then he turned around. He weren’t interested in no California. He was the husband, after all. It came down to me or him. He bought me a hardcover map of the world and he built his church. It seemed all right for a while, then somehow there weren’t no God in it no more and he knew it and I knew it too. But I couldn’t just leave. I was too far downstream to just get out. Beede is more my blood now, I guess. Like I got me one of them transfusions.