Getting Mother's Body

by Suzan-Lori Parks

  A skinny white gal comes out. She’s got on a Texaco uniform that fits her close and long yellow hair swinging free. She looks us both over then gives a sly look at the restaurant across the road.

  “We’d like some gas,” Homer says.

  “Yes, sir,” she says.

  Homer holds out a five-dollar bill. I see it’s the last bill in his wallet, but the yellow-haired gal ain’t seed it. He takes it out slow and confident like there’s plenty more bills where that comed from.

  “This yr place?” Homer asks.

  “You betcha,” she says.

  I wanna ask who Rude is, but I don’t say nothing.

  She takes Homer’s money. Her and him look each other in the eyes, then her eyes slide down his body, looking him all over.

  “We’ll take two dollars’ worth and you can keep the change,” Homer says. His voice sounds nervous.

  “I thank you,” the gal says.

  I cough and she looks at me quick. She don’t see no wedding ring, so she looks back at Homer.

  “Nice car you got,” she says.

  “It’s a Park Lane,” he says. Her and him smile at each other.

  “How bout that gas?” I says.

  “My cousin and I are out for a ride today,” Homer says, his voice sounding deeper now, deeper than it did when he was talking to me. The white gal peels herself off the car, going to pump the gas and clean the windows. Homer watches her as she works.

  “Our place is bigger than this,” I tell Homer.

  “They’ve got a restaurant,” Homer says.

  “We got a restaurant too,” I says.

  “I’ll come visit sometime, little cousin,” Homer says, patting me on the head. Patting me on the head like he ain’t felt my crotch and kissed my hand a mile ago.

  I get out the car. “I’ma go get some sandwiches,” I says.

  The gal pipes up quick, “Rude don’t serve—well you know, you’d best be getting food someplace else.”

  I head across the road anyhow. The diner’s got a sign in the window saying

  I peek through the screen and don’t see no one. There’s a radio playing Elvis. I turn back to see what Homer’s doing and a truck is passing. When the truck clears I see Homer sitting on the top edge of his seat talking to the gal while she checks his oil.

  Inside the diner is quiet. No one around. A list of the specials on the back wall above the grill. Three tables, all of them empty except for salt and pepper shakers and bottles of hot sauce and menus. Out back, sitting in the sun, there’s a lean white man, wearing shiny black lizard-skin boots and a white apron and a paper cook’s hat. He’s reading a newspaper out loud.

  “Jesus has been spotted in Dallas!” he says.

  There are two pies on the counter, both covered with glass cases.

  “Legless woman gives birth to twins!” he says.

  One pie is pumpkin. The other cherry. I take the cherry pie, the whole thing, and head back out front, hiding it behind my back. Homer ain’t at his car. Probably went to the restroom. I’m making a shovel with my fingers and scooping the pie right out the tin plate. It’s still warm. One of them, probably the man in the white apron, cooked it. I got five slices left and I leave them on the front seat of the car to go look for the restroom, around the side of the building where the sign points to. They got one for ladies and one for gentlemens with a “Whites Only” sign that’s been crossed out, rewrote, and crossed out again. The ladies room got yellow tile on the floor and a yellow-colored toilet and a yellow-colored face bowl with a tap for the hot and a tap for the cold and a slim, almost-used-up yellow-and-white bar of soap. I take my time in there, using the toilet then washing my hands and patting my face and neck with water and fixing my hair. I lift up my dress and look at my belly. It looks bigger than it did last week. Maybe Homer touching me made it grow. I don’t know what to say to the baby so I don’t say nothing. I think of it with Snipes’ face and that makes it easy to hate.

  I look in the office. It’s neat and clean, twice the size of ours. They don’t got no pallet under the cash register like we got, just a desk and a chair and a cash register and pictures of tires and a calendar with a pin-up gal on it.

  Through the back of the office door, where we got our trailer at, they got heaps of junk. Anything you could want. Seats from a movie theater, the purple velvet fabric gone blue-gray in the sun. A tricycle. A baby buggy with big wheels. Three or four rusted-out cars with they broken windows and they hoods up and no engines and no seats. A row of plastic dwarfs riding reindeers, the kind of decorations people like Mr. and Mrs. Jackson put in they yards at Christmas. Piles and piles of old tires. A sign that says “Mobil Gas” with the red flying horse. A shed with a door with a cut-out crescent moon on it, the old outhouse. The door’s closed. I’m about to go back to the car when I hear the moaning sounds. More like whimpering, like a dog caught in a raccoon trap.

  I look through the slats of the shed. There’s plenty of sunlight coming through so I can see them. Homer’s leaning up against the wall and the gal is kneeling in front of him. She got his thing in her mouth.

  Back in the car I sit on the top of the seat back like I seen Homer do. I eat as many pieces of pie that I can. Three more pieces then I’m full. Homer comes striding through the office with a grin on his face.

  “They got a good-looking restroom,” he says.

  “How so?” I says, but he don’t say. His zipper is opened and he sees me noticing it and turns around and zips up.

  The gal comes out of the office and, after looking over at the restaurant and spitting, leans her tight pants in the doorway, trying to look bored.

  “Come see us again sometime, hear?” she says.

  “Will do,” Homer says.

  When we’re out of sight of the filling station, he takes up my hand again and gives me another kiss. I don’t say nothing. He stretches and yawns and falls asleep and I keep my eyes on the road.

  DILL SMILES

  Me and Laz are almost to El Paso. He drives good and steady. I told him we gonna try to get all the way there without hardly stopping and he don’t mind that.

  “There’s a good-looking car,” Laz says. We pass a Texaco belonging to Birdie and R-something. A red convertible parked out front with nobody in it.

  “That car ain’t for me,” I says.

  “What kind is it?” he asks.

  “How the hell I know,” I says. Willa Mae had a Bel Air.

  “That’s the car for me,” Laz says. He watches it in his rearview and then pulls his eyes back to the road. “I’ma get a car one of these days. My own car.”

  “With what money?”

  “I’m my daddy’s right-hand man,” he says. “What kind of car you think would best suit me?”

  “Lemme think on it,” I says.

  I look him over. His black smooth skin. High cheekbones and pointy chin. His wool cap, sitting on the back of his head. Head forward, concentrating. Plaid shirt, black suit, clip-on tie, hands not gripping the wheel but pressing hard against it, working hard at doing just a little bit of work. A slow wit but not lazy with his eyes on the road.

  “Whassit like?” he asks.

  “What’s what like?”

  “Women,” he asks. He looks steady but sounds a little jumpy.

  “You got to find that out on yr own,” I says and that quiets him, leaving me free to think.

  Willa Mae. She went and told whoever would listen, North and Little and them, that I weren’t a man. She didn’t mean to. Son Walker had her under his thumb. When he showed up and told me he was staying, I told Willa she could do whatever she wanted with him but she was gonna have to do it in my house and in my bed and I weren’t sleeping on no floor. So they would do it right there while I read the newspaper. I didn’t like it but at least I could keep my eye on her. Someone heard about Son and Dill Smiles in bed with Willa Mae and called Son sissified and cut him in the street. He couldn’t hold his head up. Wanted to leave town. That’s how come Will
a started talking. Cause if Son was in bed with Willa, and Dill weren’t no man, then Son weren’t no sissy. Shit. He left her anyway.

  Me and Willa Mae. We started up quick and we ended just as quick. That’s how we went. Quick.

  “I gotta take a piss,” Laz says. And I nod cause I do too and he pulls over to the side of the road. The sign, “Welcome to El Paso,” is just ahead. He stands there, with his back to the road, taking his thing out. I walk a distance, so I can have my privacy.

  LAZ JACKSON

  She pees standing up.

  UNCLE BLOOD BEEDE

  I ain’t got much of a place but at least it’s mines. Blood’s Bucket, established in 1943. Me and Precious been running it since then and we gonna run it until we die. We do all right. We could do better if we sold a variety of drinks and a full-course dinner, but all we sell is my Block and Tackle. Could do better, but we do all right.

  They come in about an hour ago. Cousin Teddy and June first, then little Billy and Homer, Estelle’s son. The first thing I get them to do is stand up against the wall so I can mark they heights. Teddy and June ain’t been here in twenty years and they’re a little shorter. Billy, all growd up’s taller than she was in 1957. I ain’t never met Homer so his mark is fresh. I show them my best table, the one furthest from the front door and closest to the back exit. They pull up the chairs and, the four of them, all hunched over, count they money. Me and Precious stand behind the bar, giving them they privacy. They count and recount a pile of coins.

  “You shouldnta gived that policeman that twenty,” Teddy says to Homer.

  “I was trying to get us out of a scrape.”

  “And it only got us into one.”

  “He was trying to help,” June says. She looks over at another table where she got four different kinds of flowers, pulled up off the side of the road by the roots and brought in from the sun.

  “How much we got?” Billy asks.

  “Twenty-four cents,” Teddy says, and they all lean away from the table. The little pile of money looks lonesome.

  Precious comes out from behind the counter with a pitcher of ice water and four jars. She stands there serving them and Billy looks at her ring. A big fake bunch of rubies.

  “Uncle Blood gived me this ring when him and me got married,” Precious says.

  “I don’t remember it,” Billy says. She was small when her and Willa Mae stopped here on their way to Hollywood.

  “I need more than water,” Teddy says.

  “I was waiting for you to ask,” I says. I go underneath the bar and come out with a big jar full of my famous brew. Drink this, walk a block, and tackle anybody.

  “We don’t got enough money for gas,” Billy says. She looks from me to Precious while she says it.

  “I’d give you what I got cept I don’t got nothing,” I says. And it’s true.

  “Maybe some customers’ll come in tonight,” Homer says.

  “It’s the end of the month and the beginning of the week,” Precious says, coming back to the counter as I go over to the table to pour drinks for Teddy and Homer.

  I stand there watching the men drink. Teddy swallows his and smiles. Homer throws his back and stands up hollering.

  “I got one of my two Josephs working for me,” I says, “I could ask them for a loan on your behalf.”

  “We only need about ten dollars or so,” Teddy says.

  “Ask him for more if he can spare it,” Billy adds, “just in case.”

  “I’ll see how much he’s got,” I says.

  “And tell him,” Billy adds, “tell him we’re only borrowing it till we dig up that treasure. We’ll pay him back by Wednesday at the latest.”

  I go on outside.

  Directly in back of my juke is a cement windowless shed where I keep my Brew. When I found that the heat in the summer had a way of turning the taste I took to leaving the door open then had to hire the two Josephs to guard the place on account of spies and thieves. A man named Joseph and another man, not his brother, who also goes by Joseph. They look Mexican but they say they are Indians. First Joseph says he is Comanche, second Joseph says he is Seminole. The two men, while not claiming to be related, look a lot alike.

  “Inspection?” Joseph asks. He stands up straight, making himself as tall as he can, even though he only comes up to my shoulder. I would not cross him, though, small as he is.

  “Let’s take a look,” I says.

  Inside the shed the hard red-dirt floor is clean with all the jars neatly stacked. There’s a little place in the center of the room. Long enough for a man to lie down.

  Outside the door Joseph stands like a soldier on watch, his shotgun, with the butt in the ground, next to his foot and the barrel slanting out.

  “How’s it looking tonight, Mr. Joseph?” I ask him.

  “Looking A-OK, Mr. Blood Beede.”

  “Seminole Joseph, am I right?” I says, guessing.

  “Comanche Joseph,” he says.

  “It’s the light,” I says, making an excuse.

  “You got customers tonight? That’s fortunate.”

  “Not customers.”

  “I heard two vehicles. A truck. A Chevy truck and a new car that my ear can’t place.”

  “They’s family. Come to visit.”

  “Family is fortune, Mr. Blood Beede.”

  I stand there, agreeing with him without saying nothing. I stare at the back of my juke joint. I can see through the back door. They’re hunched again over the table. Still and quiet like an oils painting. Joseph is looking in the same direction that I am looking but I can’t tell what he’s looking at.

  “They need money and I ain’t got none to give them. End of the month beginning of the week,” I says.

  “My pockets are empty too, Mr. Beede. Last night the wife made dirt soup,” he says and we laugh.

  “Thanks for letting me ask you, Mr. Joseph.”

  “I am always willing to entertain the possibility of anything,” he says. The other Joseph told me that between them, they’d had seven years of college.

  I walk inside, standing in the doorway.

  Inside Billy turns from looking at the money pile, knowing all them looking at it won’t make it grow. She takes Precious by the hand, looking at the ruby ring, turning it this way and that, watching the flash of the fake stones in the dim light of the room.

  Family is fortune.

  PRECIOUS BEEDE

  Billy’s looking at my wedding ring. I let her look as long as she likes. June’s at a table by herself with her flowers. Blood, Teddy, and Homer are at the bar. Blood closes one jar bringing out another, older one. He gives them each a spoonful. They sip it like medicine.

  “We don’t got enough gas money but I bet the cars could run on this,” Teddy says and the men laugh.

  “Yr ring’s got nice rubies,” Billy says.

  “They just glass,” I says.

  “I’ll call my mamma to wire us some money,” Homer says getting up.

  “That’s an idea,” Blood says.

  “I don’t want Estelle lending us nothing else,” Teddy says and Homer sits back down.

  Billy is looking at my face, searching it, feature by feature. I know what she’s thinking. I’m light. Lighter than her mother.

  “You could pass, couldn’t you?” she asks me.

  I tell her how me and Blood was in town the other year and there was this Klan rally marching through like they do, marching in they white robes and waving they flags. They was handing out handbills and they handed out one to me, wanting me and other good white women like me to join them. Me and Blood laughed over that for about a year. “I guess I could pass,” I says. “I ain’t never felt the need, though.”

  Billy looks at my ring again. “We could try something,” she says. The way she says it makes everybody look at her. She looks around the juke at all of us, then takes a glance at the door, making sure no one else can hear. Her eyes got a kind of fire in them. We all see it. “Willa Mae and me used to
pull what’s called a ring trick,” she says.

  “What’s a ring trick?” Homer asks.

  “We’ll need yr ring,” Billy says.

  I twinkle my rubies and I look at Blood. He gives his OK so I slip off the ring, laying it on the table. It sets there between me and Billy. She don’t touch it.

  “I’ma need something different to wear and something like a hat and some sunglasses. We’re gonna pull it at that filling station where me and Homer was before and they can’t know me,” Billy says. We all nod, like we know what she’s talking about but we don’t. None of us ain’t never done no ring trick before.

  “Is it a scam of some kind?” Homer asks. His voice is higher than usual.

  Billy don’t say nothing. June looks at Roosevelt who looks like he’s gonna cancel Billy’s plan but he don’t say nothing neither.

  “I got things you can wear,” I says.

  Billy picks up my ring, holding it to the light.

  The day me and Blood got married, when he gave me that ring, his chest was puffed way out and he was grinning. It was a perfect fit without me ever telling him my size. The red of the ring matched the color that his hair used to be. His hair’s gray now.

  “Hold it up to your eye and it’s like rose-colored glasses,” Blood tells Billy.

  Billy does like he says, holding the ring to the light. “We might not get this back,” she says.

  WILLA MAE BEEDE

  To pull the ring trick right, you gotta pick the right Place. That’s the most important part. If you don’t pick the right Place, then yr just wasting yr time. It can be a filling station or a restaurant or a store. Of course, it’s gotta have a cash register with some kind of money in it, but most important is that it’s gotta be run by a man who got a Hole in his pocket. He makes decent wages, he may own the Place hisself or he may work it for a richer man. He makes his pay on Friday but on Friday night he’s down at the track, or around a card table or he got dice in his hands, using his little bit of money to get hisself some more. He is the kind of man who would steal outright, if he had the guts to steal. This is the kind of man you want running the Place. Someone who looks himself in the mirror each morning while he shaves his face, who looks at his wife and tells himself and her too that he is the most honest hardworking man in the whole world and what is the world coming to with all these robbers and thieves about. But, of course, he would cheat and lie and steal if he only had the guts. You pick a Place run by a man like that and you got your ring trick pretty much done for you.