His For Keeps: (50 Loving States, Tennessee) (33 page)

“No,” I say. “I’m fine.”

I look around at the crowd. People filling up the church from front to back. Family members. Friends. And a bunch of other people I don’t recognize. As far out in the country as grandma lived, she had a way of bringing folks together, whether it was for a Sunday Dinner, or to say good-bye.

“Thank you for doing this, for making all the arrangements,” I say to Beulah Mae.

Beulah Mae reacts like I’ve spit in her face. “You better hush, child. You know you don’t need to be thanking me for putting the last call together for my favorite cousin.”

Her answer makes me realize how deep family love goes. It’s the kind of love that makes you want to put together a funeral for the woman who snatched your wig and burned it in front of the whole county.

“Well, I know Grandma wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t thank you properly, so I’m doing what she’d want me to do.”

Beulah Mae’s shoulders slump when she finds herself caught in the complex politeness trap that is a Southern family with any kind of manners. “I know she would have, but…”

She trails off, looking away from me toward the church doors. Then she freezes. I follow her gaze and freeze, too, when I see who she’s looking at.

It’s my mother, in a fur coat, huge leopard print sunglasses, and a tight red dress that barely makes it halfway down her thighs. She’s easily the brightest, most inappropriate thing at this funeral, but she barely seems to notice all the heads turning and jaws dropping as she makes her way over to me and Beulah Mae.

“Hi, Aunt Beulah,” she says, taking off her sunglasses and dropping a kiss on each of the shocked old woman’s cheeks.

Her eyes then go to Beau, only the barest flicker giving away any surprise, before she says, “Beau, it’s nice to see you again, even if you can’t see me.”

“Miss Val,” he answers with easy Southern boy charm. Then he adds, “Always a pleasure,” in a tone that makes it sound like the exact opposite of what he’s saying.

My mother’s eyes finally find me. She looks my plain black dress up and down like it’s me, not her, who’s dressed inappropriately for a funeral.

“So,” she says, like it hasn’t been over a decade since we last talked. “I know
you’re
not singing Mama’s favorite song, so I guess it will have to be me.”

MY MOTHER CONTINUES TO THINK the thing standing between us now, the only thing standing between us now, is the fact that I have refused to go back on stage to sing. In her mind, the only reason we’re not as close as the
Gilmore Girls
is because of my stubborn refusal to get back on stage. Because I’m weak. Because I’m scared.

Her dropping me off with Paw Paw and Grandma like a sack of potatoes and heading on to L.A. without me has nothing to do with it. The chicken most definitely did come before the egg. In her mind.

My mother would have to be steamrolled dead before she stopped wanting people to look at her on stage, and I honestly don’t think she can even fathom not using every asset you have to your advantage. I can feel her heavily mascaraed eyes on me during the wake, still judging me for letting that incident traumatize me out of possible fame. She hasn’t seen the videos of me singing online, I know for sure now, or she would have already asked me about them.

Instead, she swans around the room, hugging folks like she just saw them yesterday last, and receiving congratulations. Most of my family didn’t see the documentary she was in,
Standing Back,
but they saw the clip of her that they used during the Oscar presentation. And when you live in back country Tennessee, just seeing your relative on television for something not associated with a crime scene is cause for wonderment.

The only thing my mother has to say to me when she finally circles back around is, “Everybody’s saying you were dating a country singer. Colin Fairgood. Is that for real?”

“For a little while,” I mumble, feeling like I’m fifteen again. “Not anymore.”

“So he dumped you?” My mother looks me up and down with my now long past due for a re-dye, faded blue hair and the same black dress I’d worn to Paw Paw’s funeral, and seems to silently agree with Colin’s decision.

“It was his loss,” Beau says beside me.

“I don’t really want to talk about it at grandma’s funeral,” I say to both of them, before my mother can respond.

Which is true. But since my relationship with Colin is pretty much the only thing that would make me remotely interesting to a person like my mother, she soon moves on again. Talking loud and flirting with distant cousins and friends of the family alike.

I wonder, not for the first time, what a man like Mr. Prescott would have ever seen in her. But I guess he had a southern debutante at home. In my mother, he got something else.

Thankfully it’s not too long after that before we’re told it’s time to begin the service, which turns out nicer than I thought it would. Short and to the point, just like my grandma. The people who get up on stage keep their speeches, mostly sweet memories of things my grandma had done for them or said to them, short, under threat from Beulah Mae, who had it from my grandma herself that she couldn’t stand long speeches at a funeral. And Beulah Mae’s husband even temporarily comes out of retirement to deliver a powerful sermon about the roots from one small, strong tree holding an entire community of trees together.

I dab at my eyes, thinking how much Grandma would have liked to be compared to the same trees she could stare at for hours towards the end. My mother, on the other hand, doesn’t shed a single tear. In fact, she looks a little bored throughout most of the service. And at one point I catch her discreetly checking her smartphone and typing a short message back.

Why she’s here, I have no idea. It’s obvious her heart’s not in it. Maybe she just wanted the attention. I know my mother has done worst things than get on a cross-country flight in order to get some attention.

But it makes me want to scream. When Beulah Mae calls her up to sing during the final viewing of the body, I want to grab at the back of her too-tight dress and tell her butt to sit back down.

The only thing that keeps me in my seat is knowing Grandma wouldn’t have wanted me to. Her youngest daughter coming back to sing her favorite song at her funeral would have pleased her mightily. My grandma had cursed Valerie, and regretted not taking a harder hand with her, but I knew she’d never stopped loving her or missing her.

So instead of grabbing my mother, I grab Beau’s hand. And I keep my tongue trapped tight behind my clenched teeth as I watch her take a place on the raised dais. Even when she gives everyone in the pews a little bow, like it’s obvious to her that they all really came here to hear her sing.

Only after she’s scanned the church and made sure she has everyone’s attention does she launch into a big-voiced version of “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” And of course she manages to put in a couple of runs before she’s even through with the first verse.

Her overly dramatic singing sets my teeth on edge, and I’m almost happy when a lady in white touches me on the shoulder to indicate I should go with the rest of the row to view Grandma’s body first, because it gives me something to do, other than fume. Beau, who of course will be staying behind, squeezes my hand before letting it go, so I can say my last good-bye to Grandma, which is already feeling pretty dang tainted by the peacock singing on stage.

The sight of Grandma’s body softens my heart, though. Her face is relaxed with the same little satisfied smile I’d seen her wear after everyone has left and the dishes are clean and the house is once again quiet after Sunday Dinner. Now I can see what I couldn’t when I found her dead on our porch. She’s at peace. She did good work here on this Earth, and now she is completely satisfied, because she served a one heck of a Sunday Dinner.

Tears fill my eyes as I lean down to kiss her cool forehead.

Up on stage, the singing suddenly stops, and when I look up to see why, my eyes go wide.

My mother is on stage, her shoulders caved in, doing the only thing she knows how to do quietly. Crying.

It’s not so much a decision to go to her, as an automatic response. I’ve spent most of my working life as a home health aide. And she’s my mother.

When I reach her, she grabs on to me like a buoy in a stormy black ocean. “I can’t—I can’t—” she gasps. Her sobs sound like choked screams inside her throat. Barely able to get out, they’re so intense.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mama,” she keens, looking toward the sky. “I’m so sorry for everything …” She looks at me, then, her face a crying rictus of strangled regret. “I never got to tell her.”

“Mama…” I say. Holding her, comforting her, despite everything that’s come between us before.

The organist is still playing, either unable to hear that the singing has stopped or so used to singers breaking down he’s made it a policy to continue on to the end of the song no matter what.

Everyone is looking at us. Including Grandma, whose body, I can now see, my mother has had a clear view of the entire time she’d been on stage. Me kissing Grandma’s forehead, that’s what broke her. That was her tear cue.

“Mama, I know you’re sorry,” I say to her, my own voice choked with tears. “That’s why you’ve got to finish. For Grandma. It’s her favorite song.”

But Mama continues to shake her head. “I can’t… I can’t.”

And suddenly I know what I must do. I take the handheld microphone from Mama, and put a hand around her shoulder. “Stand up with me,” I tell her, pulling her to her feet.

She’s like me in some ways. As soon as she finds herself back on her feet, she tries to run, her body twisting toward the steps at the end of the dais. But I keep her there, arm squeezed tight around her shoulder. She’s smaller than me now, I’m surprised to realized. And in that moment, I feel like the mother to her child.

I even give her the “don’t you even think about moving from this spot, heifer” look that black mothers have been using in black churches for centuries.

Then I launch into the second verse of “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

No runs, no flourishes, no tears even. I just sing the song, meaning every single word as I hold my crying mother who, even after everything she put me through, I did not leave on the floor.

In the audience, I can see Beau’s face turned toward us, like a flower toward the sun. And it makes me feel strong. Like I can do this. Like I can get through this song and this life. Even without my grandma.

My mother surprises me by joining me on the third verse. Voice small at first but growing stronger on each line. By the end of the song, we are mother and daughter again, singing together like we used to. Voice effortlessly blending to finish the song. For Grandma.

By the time we are done, both are faces our streaked with tears, and from what little I can see through the blur, everyone down to Beau and the pastor is crying.

It’s a strange scene, an almost unbelievable end to me and my mother’s story. Which is why I’m sure the person I can now see standing at the back of the church is a hallucination. I scrub the tears out of my eyes with the side of my hand, because I know it just can’t be real.

Except when my eyes are clear, I see he’s still there.

It’s Colin.

He’s here, standing in the church’s open doorway. Looking impossibly handsome in a dark suit, and for once, no cowboy hat. Just his shoulder-length hair hanging down in golden waves.

And somewhere in the distance I hear my grandma’s voice say, “Well, it
has
been half a month of Sundays.”

38

Maybe it's been half a month of Sundays, but Colin doesn't seem to have gotten the message about not being mad at me anymore. He's already gone by the time I make my way to the back of the church, and by the time I see him again, at the actual burial, he's so deeply engrossed in a conversation with Rhonda, he barely glances at me when I arrive.

I suddenly wish Rhonda wore a wig. So I could snatch it and burn it. Just like Grandma did.

“So you two still have some unfinished business, huh?” my mother says beside me. She slid into the back of my car after the service, and has been hanging on the free arm Beau's not occupying ever since, as if she's suddenly too scared to leave my side after our performance at the church.

Like a scared little girl. It makes me wonder how much of her was really the diva she presented to the world and how much of her was just a child, trying to raise another child on her own back when we lived together in Alabama.

“That's what I was trying to tell her last night,” Beau says on the other side of me, bringing the subject back around to Colin.

“No,” I answer both of them, unable to take my eyes off Colin and Rhonda. “He's… just being nice. He's here for the same reason everyone else is, because he liked Grandma.”

My mother double takes. “What do you mean he liked Mama?”

I look both ways. “I mean, she was really nice to him when he came to Sunday Dinner and he really liked her.”

My mother stares at me, the look on her face saying she plainly thinks I'm telling a bold-faced lie.

“You ain't talking about my mother, because my mother has run off every boy I ever dared to bring to Sunday Dinner. In high school, she once offered to make my boyfriend a plate, then salted it so bad he could barely choke it down. I got ex-boyfriends all around this county, and not one of them is here because she treated them so bad.”

I shake my head, stunned, not knowing what to say. “I don't know. Maybe she mellowed with age.”

“Maybe…” my mother says, but her eyes narrow on Colin. “You sure this thing between you two is over?”

“Yes, it's over,” I say at the same time Beau says, “It's not over” on the other side of me.

“I mean has it been half a month of Sundays yet?” Valerie asks.

“Now you sound like Grandma,” I grumble.

I'm sure even a week ago, my mother would have taken that as an insult. But today… today, she blinks back more tears and says, “Really? You think so?”

The burial goes quickly and I spend most of it trying and failing not to sneak looks at Colin. He's standing toward the back of the small crowd, but it's still too easy to find him because he's about a head taller than most of the other funeral attendees, and also because he's the only white person other than Beau at the gravesite.