Getting Mother's Body

by Suzan-Lori Parks

She sees me walking up to her and lets me keep coming. She tells me the headstone’s at the wrong end but she didn’t lay it. I say her truck rode good and that I’m sorry for using it without permission. She folds her arms acrosst her chest. I ask who she’s got watching them thirteen piglets. Joe North, she says.

  She sits in her chair. I sit on the ground. Not at her feet but close by. “I’ma have to go head back to Lincoln tonight,” I says. “I gotta get back in time to clean up the place and whatnot.”

  “Laz’ll be happy to drive you,” Dill says.

  “We’ll have to drive straight through to make it in time, cause you know if I ain’t there for Sanderson’s inspection, that bastard’ll fire me for sure,” I says.

  Dill looks over at the tractor. “A man needs employment,” she says.

  Me and Dill have, over the years, had long conversations about Sanderson. The actual amount of money in Sanderson’s bank accounts, the “fairness” of Sanderson’s forefathers who treated their share croppers, once a month, to hotdogs and picture shows instead of just giving them good wages. Me and Dill together have calculated the smallness of Sanderson’s dick. But not today. Not as long as we’re in LaJunta and disagreeing at this grave.

  “I said grace over dinner. It felt good.”

  “You told me you’d never preach again,” Dill says.

  “It was just the blessing,” I says.

  “Maybe you’ll build yrself another church,” she says. There’s a snarl in her voice.

  “We all got dreams,” I says.

  Her and me sit there quiet. The horse, at the far end of his clothesline, evacuates.

  Dill shifts her gun in her lap. “I don’t got no dreams of nothing,” she says.

  We sit there for a minute more. Even comes around and feeds the horse then brushes him down. Then the rest of them trickle out through the office and onto the back porch, watching us. Laz and Billy sit close together, talking.

  The day has gone. From morning to afternoon. From afternoon to evening. The sun slips behind the western hills.

  June stands up. She taps her crutch on the cement steps. She taps just once. I know what she wants to know. If we’s going home we better get going, right? I shrug my shoulders at her without moving. My wife heads inside. A minute later Billy, Laz, and Even head in too. Candy’s still out there watching us.

  “It’s late,” Dill says. “You’ll have to drive hard.”

  “I know that,” I says.

  The lights go on in the office. Billy and them, clustered together, watch us from there. In Room 22, the light is pink from the lampshade. June stands in that window watching alone.

  “I’ma turn the Bird on,” Candy says, and goes inside. A minute later the pink flamingo, all rimmed in matching neon, lights up, making the ground look pink and silver-blue.

  Someone comes stumbling around the corner drunk and talking trash. He opens his pants and urinates. It’s Homer.

  “I’ma kick your bulldagger ass,” he shouts.

  Dill goes over to where he’s zipping up his pants and hits him square in the face. She stands there, waiting for him to get up. He don’t. She walks back to her chair and sits down.

  “There ain’t gonna be no digging,” she says.

  “I guess that’s it then,” I says. I get up, brushing the dirt from my pants, and head back inside. I thought if Dill turned me away that I would feel lost, but I don’t.

  From the window June watches me cross the field, but when I come in the door of number 22, she’s got the lights off and’s in the bed.

  “Dill didn’t budge,” June says knowing.

  “Nope, but we had a good talk,” I says. “Maybe she’ll change her mind in the morning.”

  “We got to head back tonight,” June says.

  “Why you in the bed, then?” I ask.

  “It’s a nice bed.”

  I don’t take my clothes off but I get in the bed too. It’s soft but not too soft. And it’s king-size and new-smelling.

  “Whatchu think?” June asks.

  “It is a nice bed,” I says. I get up, undress to my undershirt and shorts, and lay back down again.

  “Candy’s got all them letters I wrote her saved,” June says.

  “Howabout that.”

  We lay there quiet.

  “Whatchu thinking now?” June asks.

  “I’m thinking maybe we should chance it,” I says. Maybe Dill will change her mind and we’ll use our share of the treasure to start over. June knows what I’m thinking of, but she don’t say nothing and I don’t neither. We lay there, looking at the ceiling. The next words are on me and we both know that.

  When I do speak, I apologize to June for turning around. I apologize for losing my calling. I apologize to her for making her old, and for never coming through with her leg. I don’t talk for long and I end things on a question.

  “How about we go to California?” I ask her.

  “I got a husband who’s a preacher,” she says. “You sound like him.”

  “I am him.”

  “You could be anyone, laying up here next to me in the dark,” she says.

  “Whatchu think of California?” I ask again.

  For a minute she don’t answer. I imagine living out in Oakland under her father’s thumb. Maybe it won’t be so bad. I’d miss Texas, though.

  “Tell me what my daddy tolt you, that time you two was in the river,” June says. She turns to look at me but I keep looking at the ceiling.

  “It was complicated.”

  “I ain’t stupid.”

  I breathe in deep. What her daddy said was simple. “He made me swear I’d love you,” I says.

  We both lay there just breathing.

  “California’s California, but Lincoln’s where yr from,” June says.

  “You think I could try preaching again, in Lincoln?” I ask.

  She takes my hand in the dark. “Let’s chance it,” she says.

  CANDY NAPOLEON

  Only me and Billy are still awake. We’re sitting at the kitchen table. Dill’s out there in the dark lit pinky-blue by the flamingo. Laz is sleep in the corner on the floor. Even’s gone to bed. We got the lights off in the office so we can see Dill but Dill can’t see us.

  “We oughta get Dill drunk,” I says. I tap my nails against a mason jar full of liquor. It’s quiet cept for my tapping on the glass.

  “Good idea only Dill don’t drink much,” Billy says.

  Outside Dill stands up, stretches, and sits back down. She raises her hand in our direction. Maybe waving at us to come dig, maybe giving us the finger.

  “If she don’t drink much, getting her drunk’ll be easy,” I says.

  “You go out there with that mason jar, she’ll be suspicious,” Billy says.

  “I got some special whiskey glasses,” I says. “They’re collectibles. Dill thinks they’re real interesting.”

  “I dunno,” Billy says. But I’m already up, going over to the cupboard by the sink. There’s plenty of spill-light from the sign for me to see what I’m doing. Billy pulls up a chair for me and I stand on it, towering over the room, my head almost at the ceiling. I hand her down the glasses one by one.

  “They’re of every state in the union,” Billy says, looking at each glass.

  “I don’t got all the states but I got quite a few. I got them when I was touring with the rodeo,” I says.

  I put the glasses all on a big round tray. I got about thirty. Billy pours each one full. “I’ll take the tray out to her,” I says. “I’ll make like it’s a party in celebration of her triumph and you all’s defeat.”

  “Dill might be meaner drunk,” Billy says. But Billy don’t know Dill like I know Dill.

  I head on outside.

  “It’s just me,” I says, crossing the back porch and walking towards the grave. Dill can see I got something on the tray.

  “I ain’t hongry,” she says.

  “They gave up,” I says. “You and me are gonna celebrate.”
/>   I put the tray on the ground and take up the Minnesota glass, sipping from it.

  “I ain’t drinking,” Dill says.

  “You gonna let yr mamma drink alone?”

  “You got yr special glasses out,” she says.

  “Cause we’re celebrating,” I says. I take another sip.

  “Willa liked to travel just like you,” Dill says. Her voice sounds like my little Deliah but I don’t tell her that.

  “Here I am drinking alone,” I says.

  “I’ll have one with you,” she says. I raise Minnesota a little higher. She picks up what looks like Oregon.

  “Here’s to Mr. Dill Smiles,” I says.

  DILL SMILES

  She called me Mr. Smiles. I’ll drink to that. Just one or two. I deserve that much. I been out here all day doing what’s right. I kicked that fool’s ass. Not Laz. The cousin that come out here with them, he come around here whipping his dick out and pissing in the yard, thinking he could beat me and he got beat instead.

  “My glass is from Minnesota,” Ma says.

  I’ve picked a glass that’s nubbly blue with one of them tall wide pine trees on it. It says Oregon.

  “There ain’t gonna be no digging here,” Ma says. We drink to that.

  I ain’t never been to Oregon. I left Dade County for Texas and I ain’t never left there except to come out here. I moved away from home. That was enough moving for me. Not like Willa Mae or Ma. They was both always moving.

  “How you been keeping yrself?” Ma asks.

  “I been all right.”

  Maryland next. Marry-land. Maryland with a crab and a black bird wearing an orange sash. The glass is full. Nothing spilling.

  “Shit,” I says. It burns going down my throat.

  To keep her I let Willa Mae do whatever she wanted but what kind of life is that? It weren’t so bad. She respected me. Respected me enough to say that the first baby she was carrying might be mines. She sat in our front room telling me that. Shaping her hands around her belly that after seven months of growing she couldn’t hide no more.

  “This baby might be yours,” she said and I nodded appreciating the respect she was giving me even though it was just a shambles of a real respect, not no way completely genuine. We both knew the baby was Son’s but still I nodded to what she said. I nodded in thanks. Ten years later, when the second baby came along, Willa tried saying the same thing and I beat her for it.

  Ma’s lips are wet. I can out-drink my ma. She picks up the empty Maryland glass, running her tongue around the inside.

  “You and Willa ever get married?” she asks.

  “Oh sure, quite a few times,” I says.

  Ma turns the tray around, putting each new full liquor glass in front of me so I won’t have to reach.

  She’s got two from Florida. One with its green alligator. One with its pink flamingo.

  “Dade County,” I says. We both drink to that. She asks how my pigs are and I tell her I can’t complain but I don’t tell her about my thirteen piglets and no runts. I tell her instead about this pig I read about in the newspaper. A pig who was trained to count, but one day turned on his master and ate him up. They had a picture of the pig in the paper next to a picture of the man that was ate.

  “Shit,” Ma says.

  “Shit is right,” I says.

  I get up. “You take the chair, Ma,” I says.

  “I’ll drink to that,” she says. She raises Florida again but don’t throw it back. She takes the chair and I sit on the ground.

  Georgia is busting with peaches. Idaho’s got its potato. There’s no glass saying Texas. Not yet at least. Willa Mae said she loved me. She said the first time she looked at me she loved me. What was she looking at.

  I’ve heard of Idaho but I ain’t heard of it in a real way, the way you can hear of something and match it with something inside of you that you already know, something inside of you that makes sense. But the potato helps. I seen plenty of potatoes.

  “Did you love my daddy?”

  “No.”

  “Did you love Even’s daddy?”

  “John Henry Napoleon, King of the Cowboys,” Ma says.

  “What kind of answer is that?”

  “All the answer yr getting,” she says. Her voice is thicker and her nose is large with a pointed tip. She is pretty far gone. I ain’t never been much of nowheres but Dade County and Texas and here. I go all the way through Idaho. Ma turns the tray. Now I’m in Utah. The orange shapes Ma says are mountains. The painted square of blue that stands for the sky, the skull of a cow. Drink Utah. Drink Colorado with its snow-white mountains. Drink Missouri, the show-me state.

  “There’s folks that shoot theirselves for love,” Ma says. “I hope you don’t end up like that.”

  “I’ll end up like I want.”

  “You was always so hardheaded.”

  “That’s cause you thought you could train yr daughter like you trained yr damn horse.”

  There is a squat glass with a chip on the rim. I have got as far as Ohio. Ma has on a wig. When she takes off her cowgirl’s hat, her wig comes off too. Underneath the wig she’s got little gray plaits. They got something painted on Ohio that looks like a bean.

  “That’s a buckeye,” Ma says.

  Texas has a picture of itself and a boot. Tennessee has a guitar. I drink.

  I spent the pearls but I still got the diamond ring in my pocket. I could give it to Ma to give to Billy and them right now and they all would leave me be. I put my hand in my pocket but don’t take the ring out. I just feel the ring sitting there inside the dark pocket cotton that’s softer and more private than the outside of my pants. I fiddle the ring around.

  Maine has a red cockroach with whiskers.

  “I ain’t drinking from no red cockroach cup,” I says.

  “That’s a lobster,” Ma says.

  I lay stomach-down in the dirt, my feet resting on the white-chalk grave-marking stones. I know what Ma is thinking. She’s thinking there’s my daughter topping her woman one last time.

  “There’s worse things,” I says. But I don’t know what is worse than whatever I was thinking before I went to Maine or Tennessee.

  Ma’s teeth have disappeared and her skin has grown smooth. She looks young, like a child. I am a man, but an old old man, and Willa Mae, six feet underneath the top of the ground, unfolds her hands from where I laid them crosst her chest and, with a smile, takes me in her arms.

  WILLA MAE BEEDE

  This song’s about someone who didn’t have much but gived me all they did have. I call it “Promise Land” and it goes like this.

  My man, he don’t got nothing

  So you must understand

  He never takes me nowhere

  Cept to the Promise Land.

  When he takes me there,

  We may be walking

  But love ain’t secondhand

  When me and mines is heading

  To that sweet Promise Land.

  You keep your riches

  You keep your castles

  They’ll turn to dust and sand

  Me, I don’t want for nothing

  Cept my old Promise Land man.

  I went down to Blackwell County once. I met Old Daddy Beede. He had married Willameena Drummer around 1875. They was married fifteen years before they had they first child, then they got going and had sixteen altogether. Twelve boys, four girls. They named them after presidents and philanthropists, you know, rich folks that like to give money away, and they named them after words they liked saying. Old Daddy had the name of every one of his children wrote out on the side of his house.

  Beede and Willameena

  Washington

  Jefferson

  Adams

  Pierce

  Quincy-Adams

  Buchanna

  Liberty

  Freedom

  Prosperity

  Lincoln

  Johnson

  Grant

  Rockefeller


  Carnegie

  Justice

  Fortune

  Don’t do whatcha see me do

  Don’t walk nowhere I lead

  My middle name is Trouble

  First is Sin and last is Greed

  Wise up, child, turn yrself around.

  Can’t tell you right from wrong

  Cause wrong looks right to me.

  The game yr Mamma’s playing

  Keeps her full of misery.

  Wise up, child, turn yrself around.

  Once, when me and Billy went to Galveston, we had our shoes off and was walking in the wet sand. Billy walked behind me putting her feet prints where my feets had already made a mark. Good Lord, I thought, my child’s following in my footsteps. But I tried not to worry. The way I see it, you can only dig a hole so deep.

  BILLY BEEDE

  It’s early. Not light yet. Dill’s laying facedown on the grave. I was gonna run out here when Miz Candy got Dill drunk but I fell asleep and Miz Candy didn’t wake me.

  I stand over Dill looking her up and down. I kick her gun away. To dig I got to move her so I pull at her feet. She wakes up, wiping her face and steeling it, making her features bullet-hard, like she wants to shoot herself at me, but she don’t move or reach for her gun.

  Dill’s got a Hole in her heart.

  “When them tractors start working they’re gonna dig Willa up and scatter her all which away,” I says.

  “Serves her right,” Dill says.

  “Her legs’ll be over there, her head over there, her body someplace else.”

  “She won’t feel it.”

  “She might.”

  “So what if she do?”

  “My mother don’t deserve to be scattered to the winds like that,” I says.

  Dill rolls over to lay on her back. She looks at the sky. In an hour or so it’ll be daybreak. She gets up slow. Her body’s stiff from sleeping on the ground. Her whole front’s covered in dirt but she don’t make no move to brush it off. She’s got her hand in a fist. I close my eyes cause I know what’s coming next. She will hit me.

  “God damn her,” Dill says. She kicks the gravestone rocks. I hear em scrambling and scattering. I open my eyes to look. Dill’s already picked up my spade and started digging.