Getting Mother's Body (2 page)

She only told me a few things about herself—that she had a talent for hair and used to do hair in town. I kept my cards close to my chest too. I only talked coffins. I coulda tolt her how I got a mother and father living in Dallas. I coulda tolt her that. I coulda tolt her other things. But I wasn't wanting to let too much of my life loose cause letting yr life loose can turn a good time bad. Just goes to show, cause now the little bits of my life I done let loose at her has gone and made a mess.

Maybe Doctor Wells will go for my doctor-bag coffin. He wants to go out in style and I'll give him a good price.

I'ma have to cross Lincoln off my list. It don't bother me. Jackson's Funeral ain't never gonna buy nothing from me no way. Still.

Shit.

I don't know how I get into these messes.

LAZ JACKSON

I wished I coulda caught them doing it. If I coulda caught them doing it, then my anger woulda come up and I woulda tolt Snipes that Billy Beede belongs to me and I woulda been so mad I mighta maybe kilt him. I seen them in the car. I got all the way up to the windows without them seeing me. But they was through doing it already and when I seen them sitting there I didn't feel mad I just felt sick.

Now I can hear Billy walking in her shoes. Clop clop. Like a horse. Walking down the road. I'm laying flat on my back. Flat on the ground and right alongside the road. I got my hands acrosst my chest, I'm all laid out to rest. When she walks by she's gonna pay her respects. She'll have to.

“I'm getting married on Friday,” she yells out to everybody, to no one. “Billy Beede's marrying Clifton Snipes!” It would be nice if she yelled out how she was gonna be marrying Laz Jackson.

Now I don't hear nothing. No more clopping.

I could get up but don't. Billy's on her way towards me and I'm gonna lay here till she passes by. Her man left her on the side of the road and now she's walking home. But I don't hear no more clopping. She got off the road and is walking in the dirt or she took her shoes off and her feet on the hot ground must be burning up pretty good about now.

I can smell her coming: 12 Roses Perfume, sweat, hair grease and something else. A thick smell: the smell of almost-milk. Now her smell is right on top of me. Pressing down against my smell of sweat from running from the rock Snipes threw. He hit me on the back of the head. It hurt but it ain't bleeding. I keep my eyes shut but I know Billy's standing right above me looking.

“Whut the hell you laying there for?” Billy goes.

“I'm dead,” I go.

“No you ain't,” she goes.

“Am too,” I go. “Laz Jackson is dead and you oughta be crying.”

“If you dead how come you running yr mouth?” she goes.

I open my eyes looking up at her. In one hand she's holding her shoes, pink-colored pumps against her blue housedress. Her other hand's holding her dress tight to her leg so the wind don't lift it up.

“Your feet hurt?”

“No,” she says.

“They look like they hurt,” I says.

She bends down, putting her shoes back on, her eyes holding on to mines, making sure I don't look up her skinny black legs and see nothing. She stands on one leg while she puts the first shoe on, then, balancing hard, she puts on the other shoe.

“I'm getting married Friday,” she says.

“To me?”

“Hells no,” she says. Then she looks to Midland. “Clifton and me been planning our wedding for months now.” She says it loud, like she's saying it to me and to Snipes too.

I sit up, rising from the dead. If I had me a car and was sitting in it, the way I'm sitting would be towards Midland. My car'd be faster than his, as black as his is yellow. I'd go down there and run him off the road.
Who bigged you?
I wanna ask Billy but I know who: the one she calls Clifton Snipes.

“You think yr mamma'll give me a good price on a dress?” Billy asks me.

“You gotta ask her yrself,” I says.

She looks down the road, towards Midland again, then she looks towards Sanderson's filling station where her and her aunt and uncle stay at. They run the filling station and live in a mobile home out back. Sanderson's ain't theirs though, they just run it.

She starts walking, in her shoes again. Clop clop clop clop. I get up and walk after her. I seen up her smock.
Where yr panties at?
I ask her. Not out loud, just in my head.

“I was reading in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
that there's more dead in the world than there is living,” I says out loud.

“So whut,” Billy says.

We come up on the station. Four hundred yards. She throws her shoulders back and lifts up her chin. Someone on the porch, her Uncle Roosevelt, is standing there with Dill Smiles. They wave at us but Billy don't wave back.

“There's more Negro in the world than there is white,” I go but she ain't listening.

“I want that wedding dress your mamma's got in the window. The one with the train,” she says.

“That dress is high.”

“Snipes is paying for it. He gived me enough money to get any dress I want. Plus shoes.”

“Mamma closes up around five,” I says.

She glances up at the sky. It's after four.

“Shit,” she goes and takes off running towards the filling station, as fast as her shoes and belly lets her, one hand still tight down at her hem, the other hand balled in a fist and working like a piston.

I keep walking, taking my time, looking at the sun, at the dirt, towards Midland, towards Sanderson's. My fly is buttoned wrong. I button it right. My glasses are dirty. I clean them. Without my glasses on everything is a blur like I'm standing still and the world is moving. I got six different suits. Snipes, he got one or two but don't never wear them together at the same time. He comes around every month to show my daddy his sample book and him and my daddy talk. It's always the same.

“We don't know nobody who wants to be buried in no coffin that looks like a banana,” my daddy tells Snipes.

“I got an appointment with Doctor Wells over in Midland. Doctor Wells says he'd like to be buried in a doctor's bag,” Snipes says. “And look here, I got Cadillacs, guitars, Egyptian styles, and this here's an airplane,” Snipes goes, turning his picture pages. “I made each one myself,” he says.

My daddy can't be moved. “Jackson's Funeral Home ain't the most respected in Butler County for nothing. White or black, we the most respected. You seen the sign out front. ‘Established in 1926.' We'll be fifty years come ‘Seventy-six,” Daddy tells him.

Snipes got on a yellow shiny shirt to match his face. He's wearing a suit jacket that don't match his pants. That's his style. His shirt is dark with sweat and when my daddy turns him away he will fold up his sample book and stand outside at his car, taking a clean shirt out and tossing the sweated shirt in the trunk. I seen him do it last time he came through.

“Jackson's Funeral is gonna be fifty in twelve years,” Snipes says smiling, still trying to make a sale. “That's a heritage to be proud of.”

“Thirteen years,” I says, correcting him. So far I ain't said nothing but that.

“You all planning for the future,” Snipes continues, not embarrassed by his wrong adding. “Custom coffins is the future, I'm telling you.”

“You talk like you know it all but you can't even count,” I says.

“We thank you for stopping by,” Daddy says, shaking his hand and Snipes goes. I know where he's headed. He's going over to see Billy Beede. She won't give me the time of day but she'd fly to the moon for Snipes. I watch him go.

Ten years ago, when I was ten years old, my mother and dad told me all the facts of life. They divided life into its two basic parts, Life and Death, and each took a part, explaining it all while we ate dinner. Mother took death, Daddy took life. They'd took the opposite parts when they'd explained it several years before to my brother Siam-Israel, but Siam-Iz went bad, so they switched around their parts when they got around to telling me. Neither of them went on too long. The whole of it was through before Mamma got up to get what was left from the night before's pecan pie.

Roosevelt's on the porch with Dill. I can see them both good now. Dill is holding a letter, working it like a fan.

“Billy oughta want to hear this letter,” Dill says.

“June'll read it when Billy gets back,” Roosevelt says.

“June oughta read it now,” Dill says.

“She says to wait,” Roosevelt says.

I stand there looking at them. I tip my hat to both. “Mr. Beede. Miz Smiles,” I says.

“How do, Mr. Jackson,” Roosevelt says.

“Ain't you hot in that wool hat?” Dill asks.

“I'm all right,” I says.

“Billy's out back washing up. She says she's gonna pick out a wedding dress,” Teddy says. Roosevelt Beede goes by Roosevelt and he goes by Teddy too.

“She marrying you, Laz?” Dill asks but Dill knows Billy ain't marrying me so instead of saying nothing I just give her the finger. She makes her hand into a gun and pretends to shoot me dead.

“Yr ma might close her shop before Billy gets there,” Teddy says.

“I'll hurry home and ask Mamma to wait,” I says.

“We thank you,” Teddy says. And I walk on.

I got six suits. Snipes got that yellow car. I got Billy's panties, though, in my coat pocket. I move them up to my breast pocket, letting them poke out just a little, like a handkerchief.

“Oh, Laz, why was you born, why was you born, Laz?” I ask myself.

“To find Billy Beede's panties by the side of the road,” I says.

JUNE FLOWERS BEEDE

I never seen Billy wash so fast. Come running up in here, standing out back, pumping water into the tin bucket.

“Get me my special soap,” Billy says. That's easy for her to say, but I only got one leg. Billy's got two. I crutch inside the office, getting down on my only knee to reach a little shelf underneath the counter where she keeps her soap, her perfume, and her small tin box. All her treasures lined up there. Right underneath the shelf is where she stores her pallet every morning. The tin box got a lock on it. Billy wears the key around her neck.

When I crutch back outside, Billy got all her clothes off and is hunched over the bucket, splashing her face and armpits.

“I'ma get me that dress in the window. The one with the train,” she says.

“How much it cost?” I go.

“I dunno but I'ma get it,” she says.

“Don't go stealing it,” I says. She stops her washing to look at me, cutting me in two with her eyes.

“Snipes gived me more than enough money,” she says lathering on the soap, using too much even though she's in a hurry. The white soap against her vanilla-bean skin makes her look like a horse that's been running.

“Your mother woulda stole it,” I says.

“I ain't no Willa Mae,” Billy says. She lathers soap on her face then rubs it off hard with a rag. She don't favor her mother. Couldn't be more different looking. Willa Mae was light and fine featured. Billy is dark. But on the good side, Billy got a way with hair and could make a living at it if she wanted whereas Willa Mae didn't never amount to nothing.

“You went out with your Snipes and you forgot about my hair,” I says.

“I'll finish it after I get my dress.”

One side of my hair is nicely pressed and the other side's still wild. Billy's hair is nice on both sides.

“Your mother woulda loved to see your wedding day,” I says.

“Why you gotta keep bringing her into it?” Billy says. She wipes herself down with her dirty housedress as I hand her a clean one, one of my castoffs, green and faded, but clean and with a good zipper up the front. I'm a size or two bigger than her but the dress fits her tight, especially around the middle. Willa Mae had plenty of “husbands” but weren't never really married, and now here's her one child, Billy, only sixteen with a baby inside her and no husband yet. When I was sixteen I lost my leg. I'd like a new leg, but even if we could get the money together for it, I ain't yet seen one in my color. Me and Roosevelt don't got no kids. Billy's soap smells like roses.

“The apple don't fall that far from the tree,” I says, just to bring her down a notch.

“I ain't no goddamned apple,” Billy says.

ROOSEVELT BEEDE

“I used to be a preacher but I lost my church. God is funny,” I says.

“Sounds like you preaching now,” Dill says.

“You gonna give Billy her letter?”

“She's in the back washing,” Dill says. Just then Billy comes running outside. Dill waves the envelope at her.

“A letter for you,” Dill says.

“Let's read it when I come back,” Billy says, jumping over the two porch steps and going down the road.

Me and Dill watch her go. She left a smell of soapy roses. June is out back. I hear the bucket splash. She's watering her flower garden with Billy's wash water.

Dill holds the letter up to the sun, trying to get the news through the envelope.

“You know that letter ain't to you,” I says.

“The letter's from Candy and Candy's my ma,” Dill says.

“It still ain't to you,” I says.

Dill's voice gets sharp. “It's addressed to Billy c/o me but in all these years these letters been coming I ain't never opened one yet,” Dill says. Dill's long-legged and coffee-colored with Seminole features and soft hair cut close. Straw hat pulled down low and always wearing mud-speckled overalls and a blue work shirt and brown heavy boots. Dill's a good head taller than me and a bulldagger. I wouldn't want to fight her.

“Candy's probably just asking for payment like she always do,” I says.

“Probably,” Dill says.

I dip some snuff, holding out the tin to Dill after I've had mines. Dill don't dip but I offer it anyway. Dill don't never ever dip and Dill don't hardly ever drink. Willa Mae's buried in Candy's backyard so Candy writes asking for money to keep up the grave. She sends the letter to us by way of Dill. Candy's Dill's mother but she don't never write Dill nothing.