Getting Mother's Body

by Suzan-Lori Parks

  “The grave’s over there,” I says to Laz and we leave Buster to go look.

  Dill sees us walking and leaves the tractor, crossing the field in her long-legged strides, beating us there. At the head of the grave there’s a mound of stones, chalk-red but white-painted, in a low pile. A sprig of cudweed, with its round papery-white flowerheads and its nice lemony smell, is wedged in the middle of the rocks.

  Dill snorts. “You put in them rocks?” she asks me.

  “Even done it,” I says. “She gathered and painted the rocks and puts a new flower there when the old one wilts.” Even was eighteen when Willa Mae and Billy comed through. She seen her sister Dill kissing a dying and bloody woman on the lips.

  Laz stands at the foot of the grave, looking at it. He takes off his cap and bows his head. His hair is pressed down and uncombed and a little long for my taste. “It’s a nice headstone,” he says.

  “Cept the head’s at the other end,” Dill says.

  I fight back the need to slap my daughter. Last time I hit her she was eight or nine. She was taller than me already and she hit me back.

  LAZ JACKSON

  I wonder when Billy and them will get here. Maybe she’s changed her mind and won’t come at all.

  Dill shows me what’s in her cloth bag. A pistol. She took my hearse into town and came back with a newspaper for Miz Candy, some peppermints for Even, and two boxes of bullets. Now we’re both at the grave, walking around it and looking from the grave to the office and the motel rooms.

  “Billy and them could come around either corner,” Dill says.

  “You gonna shoot them?”

  “I ain’t letting them dig,” Dill says. “You be my lookout. When they come you tell me.”

  I don’t want to be no lookout for Dill. She’s got a gun.

  “They probably ain’t gonna get here before the tractors start,” I says.

  “Line up them cans and bottles,” Dill tells me, pointing to a cement half-wall on the far side of Room 33. I line them up and she stands astride the grave and shoots. She hits them all but one.

  “Line them up again,” she says and I line them up again. She shoots them all down this time.

  Miz Candy comes outside to sit on the back porch and read her newspaper.

  “How come you shooting?” she asks.

  “Just passing time,” Dill says.

  After a while of Dill’s shooting and me resetting, Miz Candy goes in and gets a chair so Dill can sit while she practices her gun. Dill sits there, in a fold-down chair, right next to the grave. Me and Miz Candy sit in the shade.

  “Dill’s a good shot,” Miz Candy says. “If a man was sitting in that tractor, Dill could shoot his eye out from where she’s sitting right now.”

  The tractor’s at the edge of the already-sold five acres. From where I’m sitting it could all fit in my hand. Shit. “Dill’s planning a shoot-out,” I says.

  “She better not,” Miz Candy says.

  “I’m just saying what she said to me.”

  Miz Candy waves at Dill, catching her attention. “You kill Billy and them, you’ll get the electric chair,” she yells.

  “I’ll take my chances,” Dill yells back.

  Miz Candy stands up and puts her hands on her hips. Dill quits shooting. When she sits back down Dill starts up shooting again.

  “Dill and me don’t favor,” Miz Candy says frowning up her face at Dill like she knows they mother and daughter but ain’t sure how it happened.

  “She wants to kill someone,” I says.

  “She can want all she wants but she ain’t killing nothing,” Miz Candy says. Her mouth is set in a hard line. I relax a little bit, but just a little. “If you ever have children make sure you have more than one,” she says.

  “How come?”

  “You might not get it right the first time.”

  “That’s good advice.”

  “I got a second daughter, Even, she’s following in my footsteps. Not like Dill. Even’s a horsewoman, like me.”

  “I’d like to meet her.”

  “She don’t get up till after noon,” Miz Candy says.

  “More cans!” Dill commands me, and I reset the cans again on the cement wall. She shoots them down and I reset them, getting new empties from the trash when the ones getting shot get too full of holes. The bullets move faster than you can see them. You can hear the ringing sounds when they hit. You can see the cans jump up, surprised.

  “That bit of cement wall’s the start of Room 44,” Miz Candy says.

  Dill shoots. Buster, the horse they got, stamps back and forth.

  “I guess there ain’t gonna be no digging,” I says.

  “Billy ain’t had her say, yet.”

  “They might not get here,” I says.

  “They’ll get here,” Candy says.

  After a while, Dill quits shooting. She relaxes in her chair with her straw hat pulled down over her face. “When they get here, you tell me,” she says, going to sleep in the sun. Miz Candy’s nodding over her newspaper, falling asleep too.

  I go look around, peeking into the rooms from their windows that face the back. I peek in the window of the office. There’s some papers on the desk. There’s a kitchen with pots on the stove, and the sack of mints Dill bought when she bought her bullets sitting on the table. There’s a bedroom. One bed neatly made and in the other bed there’s a big gal sleeping. She’s about the size of two of me. A fan on the ceiling moving slow. Pictures of horses on the walls.

  Out front’s the pool. It’s painted blue so, from a distance, you would think it had water in it. If you passed the Pink Flamingo quick without stopping, you would, maybe in the heat of the desert, kick yrself for not stopping to take a dip. But there ain’t no water in this pool. There’s just a wooden diving board that looks full of splinters, sticking out like a dried-up tongue over the big blue-painted cement hole. I always thought the water made a pool blue, not the paint.

  The big gal comes out of the office to stand beside me. She got on a white dress and white sneakers with no laces or socks. She’s eating the mints.

  “Only guests can use the pool,” she says.

  “They got to bring they own water, too,” I says. She laughs and I like the way her body shakes.

  I tell her I come here with Dill Smiles and she runs, pretty fast too, around the house to see. After a minute she comes back to me, walking.

  “You my sister Dill’s friend?” the gal asks.

  “Kind of,” I says, and we tell each other our names.

  “You taking Willa Mae home in yr hearse?”

  “Dunno yet,” I says.

  Even takes a red-and-white peppermint out of the sack, holding it between her finger and thumb, letting the color melt off a little before putting it in her mouth and crunching down. The mint smell coming from her mouth makes the hot air smell good.

  “I’m bored looking at this pool,” she says. She goes around back again and this time I follow her. We stand there looking at the horse.

  She jerks some grass from the ground and holds a clump out. “Buster,” she says to the horse. He comes over. She holds the clump flat on her hand. “You gotta feed him like this or he’ll bite you,” she says.

  Buster mumbles the clump into his mouth. Stands there chawing.

  “My mom’s training me to ride bareback like she do.”

  “You gonna be in the rodeo?”

  “They’re coming to town in October. I’ma try out,” she says. She keeps feeding the horse.

  Buster stands very still, eating, pricking up his ears and turning them backwards and forwards listening to Dill sleeping and Candy sleeping and the tractors plowing the land even though they ain’t started plowing yet. But they will be. Come Thursday, first of the month. Maybe they’re making a sound right now that only Buster can hear. He pricks his ears east. If Billy and them are coming down the road the horse might hear them coming. He can hear Billy’s baby being born too, I’ll bet, even though that’s farth
er down the road than Billy and them getting here. I’ma ask Billy to marry me again. Maybe the horse can hear that too.

  Dill, stretched out in her chair, baking in the sun, draws a long line with herself.

  “Yr sister sure is tall,” I says.

  “Mister Dill,” Even says laughing. “But she ain’t no real man.”

  Yr sister’s more of a man than I am, I say in my head, not out loud.

  Buster’s skin shivers and he takes off, running back and forth.

  “He’s gonna break free and run off,” I says.

  “We’re getting a fence put up when the tractors start,” Even says.

  “If I was Buster I would break free and run off just for fun,” I says.

  “Where to?”

  “I would just run, you know, around,” I says. I take off my glasses wiping them clean on my shirt. The horse makes a nice white blur then I put my glasses on again. I see Even looking me up and down and I tuck my shirttail in and smooth down my cap.

  “Guess how old I am,” Even asks. I look her over and guess eighteen.

  “I turned twenty-four in May,” she says, cocking her head and looking womanish.

  “I’m twenty,” I says.

  She walks over to Buster and unclips his chain.

  “He’s gonna run off,” I says.

  She ain’t looking at Buster. She’s looking at Laz.

  “You was watching me sleep,” she says. She takes my hand. Her hands are nice and big and cool to the touch. I wanna get with her, but I don’t know how to ask.

  “Tell me something,” I says.

  “Tit for tat,” she says.

  “How much do a horse like that cost?” I ask instead of what I wanted to really ask.

  “Ma won him throwing dice,” she says.

  I asked first. I had tit. Now I got to tat.

  “How come they call you Laz?” she asks.

  “I was born not breathing,” I says. “Laz is for Lazarus.”

  “You wanna watch me sleep some more?” she says. I don’t say nothing and she leads me by the hand back into the office.

  We do it. I ain’t never done it before except in my mind thinking of Billy mostly and sometimes looking at a dirty picture. Even’s done it before and she knows what to do. She takes off her dress and lays on the bed. She’s got on a white brassiere and white underpants. Then she takes them off too. Her body is mountainy and warmish-cool and reddish-brown like the dirt. I take off all my clothes and my glasses and my wool cap too and I do what she tells me, getting on top of her soft warmish coolness and putting my thing in her and she don’t got to tell me how to move it cause somehow I know that so I’m moving it around while she says Lazarus over and over in my ear. Even is rocking me in her arms and I’m loving her with my eyes open, but when I close my eyes I can see Billy Beede with her wide smile. After we’re through, I close up my pants and she pulls her clothes back on. I’ve taken advantage of her, now I got to assume my responsibilities.

  “I guess we gotta get married,” I says.

  “I like you but I don’t like you like that,” she says.

  “I’m trying to assume my responsibilities,” I says.

  Even throws back her head and laughs. “We had some fun, but you don’t got to go to town with it,” she says. She sits up in bed and I sit up with her. We watch the horse out the back window. Loose from his chain he’s halfway across the field, almost to the tractors.

  “One day I’ma stand on his back and ride him. Maybe today,” Even says.

  “Want me to catch him?” I says.

  She lays her hand on my leg, to keep me from moving, then she whistles, putting two of her fingers in her mouth and blowing hard. That horse hears her calling and comes trotting back toward the clothesline just like a dog would.

  WILLA MAE BEEDE

  Deep down in this hole

  I got to thinking

  About the promises I made but ain’t been keeping.

  Deep down in this hole

  I got to drinking

  I got drunk and I done cried myself to sleep.

  Deep down in this hole

  It’s a cold cold lonesome hole

  I made my bed

  Now I’m laying in it all alone.

  BILLY BEEDE

  We’re about two hundred miles from LaJunta. Four more hours then a few hours to dig. I’ll ride with them back to Lincoln and take the bus up to Gomez from there. Aunt Precious and Uncle Blood sent us on our way with three jars of Uncle Blood’s Block and Tackle to give as presents to Miz Candy and celebrate with a sip when we get the treasure. When we get rich they’d like to get rich too. Not more than they deserve. Just enough to get side-by-side burial plots, matching headstones, and white Cadillacs to take them to their graves. And maybe a marching band. I tolt them there’d be enough for everybody, but I don’t know. I don’t like spending it all before we even get it.

  Uncle Teddy and Aunt June are following behind in Homer’s car. I’m driving the truck with Homer riding shotgun.

  “Yr mad at me,” Homer goes.

  “No I ain’t,” I says.

  “Yr mad cause I was looking at that filling station gal.”

  “You was doing more than looking,” I says.

  West of El Paso there’s groves of pecan trees with their slim brown trunks planted in perfect lines along either side of the road and rolling like a thousand-spoke wheel as we pass by.

  I drive along, reading the road signs. Vado and Chaparral. Through Las Cruces and across the Rio Grande where it cuts up through Mexico and Texas heading north. When I came out here with Mother I could read some of the signs but not all of them. Now I can read them all.

  Homer’s got a piece of paper folded on his lap. He unfolds it, studies it, then folds it neatly back up. “I have a strong feeling for you,” he says. “You turned me down so I got mad.”

  “And then you went with that gal,” I says.

  “I was just trying to get you jealous,” he says. “Are you jealous?”

  “I’m driving,” I says.

  “You’re driving me wild,” he says smiling. I smile too. I can’t help it.

  He unfolds his paper, holding it up to the dashboard and pressing it to the inside of the windshield so I can see the figures he got written down without taking my eyes off the road. “Here’s the amount the jewelry will bring,” he says. He points to a figure on the paper and I glance a look.

  “All I see’s a X,” I says.

  “That’s because we don’t know the exact amount,” he says.

  I want to ask him how come he just don’t write question mark instead of X but I can tell the way he’s holding the paper that he learned to write that X in college. Uncle Teddy, when he writes his name, makes a X too.

  “Here’s everyone’s name and here are the percentages that they’re due,” Homer says. “Your name is at the top. You get the lion’s share. That means more than half. Let’s say fifty-five percent. The remainder will be divided up between the rest of us.”

  “How much you getting?”

  “Fifteen percent,” he says. “That’s pretty fair.”

  “We can’t afford to give you but five percent,” I says. He smiles and cocks his head, looking at my belly then looking back at his paper, but not saying nothing.

  Mother said she was gonna get rid of the baby she was carrying. It was big in her belly already. She had bought some herbs from somebody. She didn’t say who. We left Dill’s in the middle of the day. We took all our stuff so I knew we were going for good. She ate the herbs while we was driving and she would pull the car over every once and a while and get sick. I was ten years old and thinking every time she bent in two and spat up that the baby in her she didn’t want would come out of her mouth with her puke, like it was in her stomach and all she had to do was spit it up. But the baby didn’t come out. So she got a better idea. She said when we got to Miz Candy’s she was gonna fix herself. It weren’t hard, she said. She told me to say “good riddance
” to the baby while we drove along. She said we’d be free of our troubles and looking at palm trees by the end of the week.

  Homer wedges his hand gently between my legs.

  “I can’t give you more than five percent,” I says.

  “I could live with that if you gave me something to go with it,” he says.

  “I don’t wanna get with you, Homer,” I says.

  “Don’t play holy, honey, I know you got a wild nature,” he says.

  We pass a sign.

  I twist my hips and make a face at him. He takes his hand away. We get through the town then I pull off the road. I put my head down on the wheel but I don’t cry.

  ROOSEVELT BEEDE

  Up ahead Billy pulls the truck over and we pull over behind her. She’s got her head on the wheel and Homer’s saying he’s sorry.

  “Lemme drive,” I says and Homer gets out the truck and goes back to his car. I open the door and Billy scoots over and I get behind the wheel and we head on out that way. After a minute, Homer, with his foot heavy on the gas pedal, cuts around us to lead the way even though he don’t know where the hell he’s going.

  “What’d Homer do?” I ask, but Billy ain’t listening. She’s got that picture of Willa Mae out of her purse, studying it, looking from the young woman in the picture to the young woman in the truck’s side mirror.

  My father died in World War I. I was four years old. Willa Mae was two. I got a picture of him wearing his uniform. His hat looks like a tin plate.

  “I bet there ain’t no treasure,” Billy says.

  “Sure there is,” I says.

  “You mind digging her up to get it?”

  “I done resolved myself to it,” I says. “Maybe we’ll take her back home with us. The truck’s got room.”

  “Maybe,” Billy says. She puts the picture away and reaches underneath the seat, taking out a loaf of bread wrapped in wax paper.

  “You want me to stop and get you something to go with it?”

  “I got a taste for it plain,” she says.

  She’s already opened it up and she’s eating a slice with nothing on it. When Willa was pregnant with Billy, Willa had a taste for dirt.