Getting Mother's Body

by Suzan-Lori Parks

  “I’m good right where I’m at,” I tell the policeman.

  He pushes against the side of the truck as he leaves. “If you change yr mind, I’ll be right there in the office all night. And don’t you worry about yr men folk. It don’t look to me like they done nothing but speeding. They’ll be out first thing in the morning,” he says.

  “It’d be nice if they could get out now,” I says.

  “I gotta do my job ma’am,” he says. He stands there, several feet away from the truck, looking up and down the length of it, then sighs and turns to walk back into the jailhouse.

  “If you want to take one of them beds, I’ll be all right out here by myself,” Billy says. “Willa Mae got me locked up more than once, that’s how come I ain’t too partial to them, you know.”

  I wanna tell her that a bed would be good for her baby, but she don’t got no baby, she and me have agreed on that much. “When me and my family was on our way to California we used to sleep outside all the time,” I says.

  We sit there in the quiet. It gets dark. There are stars out. My Daddy knowd the names of some of them. Venus. Orion. Big Dipper. North Star.

  “You miss your family?” Billy asks.

  “Yes and no,” I says.

  “I know whatchu mean,” she says. “Sometimes I miss Willa Mae. Sometimes I don’t. I mean I miss that she ain’t alive but I don’t wish she was here. If she was here, me and her’d be in the jailhouse and I’d be listening to her either cuss that Deputy out or sweet-talk him into bringing her some Lucky Strikes. She got a Sheriff to bring her a bottle of champagne once.”

  It’s dark. No moon. She can’t see my face and I can’t see hers.

  “How come you call her Willa Mae?” I says.

  “That’s her name,” Billy says.

  “Don’t be smart with your Aunt June, now.”

  Billy lets a heavy breath out. “She liked being called her name,” she says.

  “You liked it too, I guess,” I says.

  “Look at all them stars,” she says.

  “Big Dipper’s right there,” I says pointing, but I can’t tell if she’s looking or not.

  “I callt her ‘Mother’ in my head, but not out loud,” Billy says. “That was the way she wanted it.”

  I can’t hear Billy breathe or move or nothing. I let out a long sigh but she stays quiet. I move toward her, sliding slow across the ridges of the truck bed. If I move too fast she may run off. I get close enough and put my arm on her shoulder. She lets it stay there for a minute then shrugs it away.

  “This town is Tryler,” I says. “It’s a hard town.”

  “Every town’s hard,” Billy says.

  BILLY BEEDE

  We was in the jailhouse in Abilene. We was in the jailhouse in Frenchburg. We was in the jailhouse in Sweetwater. We was in the jailhouse in Wildarado. The Galveston jailhouse caught Mother, not me. I stayed in the car hiding underneath the seat for a whole day. Brownsville jailhouse. The jailhouse in Santa Anna. A jailhouse in a place called Alice. Others I can’t remember. I think it was Greenville where Dill came to get us out. They got Mother’s fingerprints on file all over. She said she was running out of places to go. The beds all smelt like bad luck and piss and sweat. We was locked up once and Mother did something with a man and he turned the key. She didn’t think I knew what she did, but I knew.

  We was in Santa Anna. She told me she’d been locked up for stealing, but the way the men was looking at her, I knew she’d done something else. They locked me up too cause I was crying outside wanting my mother. The lady who worked at the desk looked at Mother sleeping in the jail then looked at me. “She your real mother?” the lady wanted to know. “Whatchu mean?” I asked the lady. “Your mother’s the one you came out of, silly,” the lady said, laughing, thinking I didn’t know that much. I just let her laugh. “I ain’t come out of nobody,” I told her and that made her shut up. I been in the jail from Abilene to Galveston. Mother would sing that. I can’t recall how it went exactly. I been in the jailhouse from Abilene to Galveston. I seen the Gulf of Mexico, through the jailhouse walls. It went something like that.

  WILLA MAE BEEDE

  I been in jail.

  From Abilene way down to Galveston.

  I seen the Gulf of Mexico through the jailhouse wall.

  I wore my chain gang stripes digging ditches by the road

  But I swear to you I never did much wrong.

  They locked me up,

  They thrown away the key.

  They tell me that I’m never going home.

  They got me wearing stripes and digging ditches by the road

  The bad they do’s worse than the bad I done.

  I went begging to the Sheriff

  I went pleading to the Judge

  I swore on a stack of Bibles miles high

  Still they put me on the chain gang

  Still they threw away the key

  Guess I’ll live in this great prison till I die.

  ROOSEVELT BEEDE

  The Deputy comes to my cell just before the light comes up. He’s got his keys in his hand.

  “You can go now,” he says, unlocking the bars.

  “The boy’s still sleep,” I says, looking at Homer.

  “I’ll unlock the cell anyways,” he says letting the door yawn open. “Leave when you like.”

  “The Sheriff wants to keep us,” I says.

  “I’ll take care of the Sheriff,” he says. “You all go on your way.”

  “I’d like to take a walk around the town,” I says. He nods, giving me the OK, and I cross the threshold and walk down the steps. I’ve heard men say that free air smells and feels different from the air of bondage. It’s true. There is a lightness to it and a crispness and a willingness of the air. In the cell the air is hard like the cell is hard. The first breaths They breathed when They was set Free, back in the day, that musta felt different too.

  If it’s where I remember it to be it’ll be standing just around that bend there, past the cluster of thin pines. The pines are thicker than they was when we was here. I used to be able to see my church in between them as I walked up but I don’t see nothing now. I will see it soon though, it’s just around the turn.

  And then I get there, standing where it used to be. Used to be. Standing where it is. No. It ain’t there no more. There is a space of land. A clearing. And a sign, with seven letters spelling out some writing, posted in the lot. Nothing else. Not even the markings on the ground showing something used to stand here. The dirt-clumped grass is green, it ain’t even flattened or worn. I stand there slapping my hand against the side of my leg, thinking if I slap myself hard enough or suck my teeth long enough I will suck and slap my church back into sight.

  A fella comes up walking to work with his lunch pail. I can see him out the corner of my eye. A white fella. He stands a few feet behind just watching me look at the blank space on the land and not saying nothing.

  “That land’s FOR SALE,” he says. “You buying it?”

  “No,” I says.

  “You lost?” he asks.

  Yes. That’s it. I am lost.

  I talk without turning around to look at him. “There is a church here,” I says. I can’t say “was” because my church is still in my head.

  “It was tore down,” he says.

  “It was tore down,” I says repeating.

  “It makes an interesting story,” he says kindly. “A crop duster hit it by accident. No one, not even the pilot, was hurt. After Best crashed into it, funny enough, that was the crop-dusting fella’s name, colored fella too, you know, just trying to make his way, so Best, who I guess weren’t the best of pilots, crashes down. Nothing suffered but the old raggedy church.”

  “The old raggedy church,” I says.

  “You musta seen it when it was up,” the white fella says. “It was all bowed wood. We used to bet money on when it was gonna come crashing down. It was whatchu call an eyesore.”

  “It was a church,�
� I says.

  “I don’t mean no disrespect,” he says, “but it were an eyesore, I’m telling you.”

  “An eyesore,” I says repeating.

  “And after it got crashed into, well, the fella who owned the land at that point, I forget his name, some bigshot from Dallas, he had the damn thing—”

  “The damn thing,” I says repeating. “The goddamn thing.”

  “He had it tore down.”

  The fella finishes his story and stands there, looking from me to the empty land and back again.

  “You ain’t from around here,” he says.

  “No.”

  “You maybe went to that church once,” he says, “that was, at least on one Sunday in your life, your place of worship, and here I am calling it a eyesore and whatnot,” he says.

  “Call it what you want,” I says.

  “I go to First Baptist,” he says. “My church ain’t much to look at neither. My wife is wanting to convert, you know, she wants to be a Catholic like that President Kennedy. But what do I want with some I-talian pope fella all the way over in Italy telling me when to sit and stand and whatnot, I tell her.”

  I close my eyes and open them. My church is still gone.

  “All right then,” the man says going. He walks down the road with his lunch bucket creaking as he swings it.

  I keep standing there. It weren’t just a church. It was my church. I made it myself out of slats of pine wood. I rented and cleared the land. I was going to preach in a church like I’d done for years along the rivers. Me and June showed up here. God had been quiet from the moment I turned our borrowed car around, from the moment I put my foot down and reminded June that I was the husband, and the wife would bend to the husband’s will because I’m my own man which means I didn’t want to go to California and live under her daddy’s thumb. I just turned around, I told God, it ain’t like I ditched my wife in some ditch by the road. But God stayed quiet and I stayed turned around and we showed up here. Pastors wanted us to join their churches. Not build a new one. They guarded their congregations like money. And God was silent in my ear, but June didn’t know that, she just thought building a church made me tired. She didn’t know my calling had gone and I thought, if I could just build a church, my own church with my own hands, then my God would come back into my ear like he had been since I was small. A man gived me a good deal on the wood and I remember kneeling down with them pine boards and the smell of the pine and thanking God for making it possible for me to rent the land and buy the wood outright and I didn’t need help from nobody. I could make it on my own all right in Tryler. I set the boards flush. Tongue and groove. It was as tight as a boat. No light shone through except in the spaces I had left for the windows. Me and June painted the church together. We painted it white. And it was ready. I would preach every day of the week. Loudly. There was a few people who liked what I had to say and folks who knew me from my river days would make a trip to hear me. But my calling—. And then it turned out that the pine boards was green. They hadn’t been cured and, after a year or so, they buckled and bowed. Eyesore, the fella called it. I guess it was.

  When I say I lost my church I let folks think I’m talking just about the structure. I talk about how the bank came and kicked us off the land cause, try as we might, we couldn’t pay the rent. That version of the story’s easier to tell. I tell how the bank took my church. I don’t tell about God leaving my ear. All and all, I still expected the church to be standing. Maybe weathered and worse for wear, but if not standing, then at least a pile of tumbled-down slats and crushed windows, cause we did put windows in, one on each side made of blue- and yellow- and red-colored glass. I expected to walk up here and see the church or the remains of the church or at least, at the very least, the place where my church had trampled down the ground.

  I move a little to the left. The worst is coming. I can feel it coming. The path that led down from the church steps is growd over too. And worse than losing my calling, worse than losing my church, worse than seeing the grass green and not brown and trampled down, worse than all that, is that I can’t recall exactly where it stood. Where, say, the front porch started. If I walked right now into the empty field, and spanned my arms out, I wouldn’t know, for certain, where the door or windows was. The land has forgot it and I’ve forgot it too.

  There is nothing to look at no more. I go back to the jail. I got my silver dollar in my pocket. It’ll go towards breakfast.

  June is there, awake earlier than all the others and a little sleepy-looking from laying all night in the truck. She’s sitting on the front stoop, rubbing her one knee like she do when she’s feeling her artharitis.

  “You gone to visit your church,” she says. Not asking cause she knows where I’ve been.

  “That’s right,” I say and I smile. “It looks better than it did when we left it.”

  “How bout that,” she says, smiling with me.

  “Someone fixed it up. It don’t bow no more.”

  “Maybe it’ll be yours again someday,” she says.

  I look at her square in the face. “Let’s hit the road,” I says.

  BILLY BEEDE

  I’m riding with Cousin Homer in his car. About twenty miles west of Tryler. Teddy and June are up ahead in the truck. We’re letting them take the lead. I got the directions to Uncle Blood’s writ out, but we ain’t gonna get nowhere near there for a while yet. We lost a whole day on account of that jail.

  “Uncle Roosevelt says you going to keep me from going too fast,” Homer says.

  “I can’t keep you from doing nothing,” I say.

  “You ever go fast?” he asks.

  “I’m a married woman,” I tell him and he just sticks his bottom lip out and nods his head. I can tell he don’t believe me.

  We ride along looking at the road. I got a scarf on my head to keep my hair down.

  “What you need are some sunglasses,” Homer says, “then you’d look like a movie star, heading towards Hollywood in her convertible.” We both smile at that and before I know it I start singing one of Mother’s songs. I say it loud, not really singing more like yelling. Homer laughs.

  You may not want me, riding in your car

  You may not want me, while you smoking yr cigar

  But I’m your jewel, Daddy, I’m your most precious jewel.

  “You planning on being a singer?”

  “I don’t got the talent.”

  “Singers make good money.”

  “I got a talent for hair.”

  “You got more going for you than that,” Homer smiles.

  He puts his hand on my thigh. I don’t move it. It feels warm. His hand is smaller than Snipes’, but heavier.

  “Maybe you could be my woman,” he says.

  “I don’t know about that,” I says.

  He keeps his hand there, moving it inch by inch up my leg and when he gets to my crotch he shovels his hand in between my legs and right up against my thing. The baby don’t seem to mind.

  We ride without talking. We pass a little house right on the side of the road. A man and his wife sit in lawn chairs in the front yard watching the cars pass. They got an oil pump in the back.

  “How come you’re named Billy with a ‘y’?” Homer asks. He’s still got his hand down there.

  “It’s after Billie Holiday.”

  “Her name has an ‘ie’ not a ‘y.’ ”

  “Willa Mae had her own way of doing everything,” I says.

  “My mamma told me about your mamma,” Homer says. “What she told me is pretty remarkable.”

  “She loved to sing,” I says. “Even though she’s passed, I feel like she still wants to be a singer.”

  Homer hears that and takes his hand away. He looks at me, lifting up his eyebrows. “That’s an interesting theory, but it doesn’t hold water,” he says.

  “It’s just something I feel,” I says.

  “I’ve got a whole year of college under my belt,” Homer says smiling. “First t
hing you learn in college is what holds water and what doesn’t hold water. Yr ideas about yr mother being passed and still wanting to be singing, they’re nice ideas, but they don’t hold water,” he says.

  “I knew her pretty good,” I says.

  “I’m just saying,” he says.

  There’s a Texaco up ahead. The red star with the big green T.

  “Now, that treasure she’s got waiting for you, that holds water,” Homer says. He takes my hand, lifts it to his lips. Kisses it. His kiss feels better than Snipes’s. Smarter maybe.

  He lets go of my hand and pets my titty. It feels good.

  “You’re a hot and wild mamma,” he says.

  “No I ain’t.”

  “You and me and that treasure could have some hot and wild fun,” he says.

  I shrug my shoulders and he moves his hand off. He looks mad.

  “Let’s stop and get gas,” I says.

  WILLA MAE BEEDE

  Lucky day,

  Oh lucky, lucky day

  All day long the day that I met you.

  Sunshine and roses

  And Valentine-proposes

  Lucky, lucky-ducky-lucky day.

  My hey-day

  Hey, this is my hey-day

  How long is such a good day gonna last?

  You turned my head this evening

  Wore my bed all out, then you set me dreaming.

  I woke up alone, I guess my lucky day’s done passed.

  BILLY BEEDE

  This filling station here is better than what we got. The bright Texaco sign, the big clean office with a garage next door to it and, across the road, a place to eat.