The Murderer's Daughters (12 page)

I hoped people’s brains stopped when they died and that they couldn’t think. I hoped life after death was a myth. Grandma shouldn’t know she’d waited so long for someone to find her that she was practically rotting.

Everyone ignored Merry and me as we sat in the small chapel waiting for the funeral service. We were in the corner of the overheated room. The carpet looked so worn it might as well have been linoleum. Too-bright lighting emphasized the too few people in attendance.

Merry held my hand so tight you’d have thought she breathed right through my fingers.

After endless minutes of watching old people watch us, Uncle Irving came over. He placed a hand behind each of our backs and pressed us toward the little room off to the side where I knew they had the casket.

“Say good-bye to your grandma,” he said. “Before they close the box. Jewish people don’t have open caskets at the service, so once they get her ready, she’s locked in and you’ll never see her again.”

Merry opened her Tootsie Pop eyes so wide that I thought she might fall down and die of fright. Could nine-year-olds have heart attacks?

“I’ll say good-bye for both of us, Uncle Irving.” I pointed Merry to one of the dirty ivory-colored chairs lined up against the wall. “Stay there.”

Everyone watched as I walked to the casket room. Uncle Irving opened the door, pushed me in, and then he closed the door except for a little crack, leaving me all alone. It was cold and so bright I wanted to shut my eyes for the rest of my life. My arms and legs felt numb.

Nothing will happen, nothing will happen,
I chanted.
It’s okay.
I thought of how brave Anne Frank had to be.

Grandma lay on top of shiny white satin lining the coffin. Thick makeup covered her face. Could her closed eyes pop open?

Looking at her so close seemed like stealing secrets. Did people know they were being stared at when they were dead?

“She looks good,” Uncle Irving had said as we walked over, as though assuring me. “Pretty.”

Was he nuts? She looked like the wax apples and bananas she’d kept in
a bowl. Grandma would say they’d made her into a hootchy-kootchy dancer.
Imagine schmearing all this on me,
she’d say. The only makeup Grandma ever wore was China Rose lipstick. She kept the old tubes, so at the end of the month, while waiting for her check, she could scrape out a sliver of color.

Too broke for beauty,
she’d say to us as she poked out the last bit of lipstick.
Your grandma is too broke to look pretty.

You always look pretty!
Merry would say, hugging Grandma tight. I’d roll my eyes, but Grandma’d seemed pleased. I should have been nicer. Like Merry.

I barely moved my lips as I whispered over the casket, “Uncle Irving is right, Grandma, you look really pretty.”

Merry’s feet dangled over the deep seat of the funeral limousine. The car smelled of wet carpet and the pinecone-shaped air freshener swinging from the rearview mirror. Merry crossed her ankles in an effort to cover the hole in her pilled black tights. I’d wanted to find decent mourning clothes for her, for both of us, dresses that Grandma wouldn’t have called
a shandeh un a charpeh,
but I couldn’t, and what we wore was a shame and a disgrace.

Dingy clouds followed us down the highway. I wanted to rip off Merry’s gray dress, which exactly matched the depressing March chill and made her look like a tiny prison matron. Oily-looking stains marked where food had probably dripped from the previous owner’s mouth.

“Who’ll take care of us now?” Merry whispered.

“Grandma didn’t take care of us.” I stared out the window, watching the road wind farther and farther out of Brooklyn. “We only saw her every other week.”

“I saw her every week,” Merry said. “Because I went to visit Daddy with her. You didn’t go with her even once.”

“Be quiet, Merry.” I didn’t want Uncle Irving and Cousin Budgie, sitting up front, to hear me, so I covered Merry’s ear with my mouth as I warned her, once again, to stop mentioning Daddy’s name.

Merry twisted the edge of her skirt, ignoring what I said. “Who’s going to take me to see him now?”

“Just shut up about it, okay? Be respectful; it’s Grandma’s funeral.” I wanted to smack her. “Do you want Uncle Irving to think we don’t care about her?”

Merry pursed her mouth the way I hated. “Seeing Daddy would have been
respectful
to Grandma.”

I squeezed my own hand until I couldn’t anymore, then I pinched her arm.

“Ouch!”

Uncle Irving turned around. “You girls okay?” Mama would’ve said his black suit looked older and uglier than dirt. When Uncle Irving had come to tell us Grandma was dead, I didn’t even remember he was Grandma’s brother until he told me. I’d hardly ever seen him or his daughter, Cousin Budgie, who wasn’t a cousin age but more of an aunt age.

Cousin Budgie’s shoulders tightened, but she kept quiet. When they’d come to pick us up, she’d barely kissed us, just offered her stupid cheek like some sort of fat prize. I didn’t want to put my lips on her slimy, makeup-covered skin. Cousin Budgie smelled like the inside of Grandma’s pocketbook.

“We’re fine, Uncle Irving.” I gave my most responsible girl smile.

“Just be careful.” He turned back to staring at the trees lining the highway. We were going to a cemetery in Long Island where Uncle Irving said we had a family plot.

“We don’t need any trouble from you girls,” Cousin Budgie added, not even bothering to look at us. She glanced at the limousine driver as though worried what he thought. I stuck my tongue out at her back, not caring if the driver saw.

Merry and I were the murderer’s girls to them. Just like we were to the old ladies at the funeral home.

The limousine pulled into the cemetery. There were even fewer people here than at the funeral home. Grandma’s old-lady friends had made a million excuses as to why they weren’t coming.
It’s too cold. My feet are killing me. The worst dampness is in March.

I hoped Grandma couldn’t look down and see that hardly anyone would watch her get buried. Five counting the rabbi, but he didn’t have much choice. It was his job.

The limousine slowed beside a greenish iron gate woven with Jewish stars and scrolls. We turned in to the cemetery and bounced slowly down a narrow road lined with headstones, some clustered together, some all alone.

“You wouldn’t know it,” Uncle Irving said as we drove, “but when we bought the family plot, everyone was closer than a box of crackers.”

We turned left on Jerusalem Road, driving until the path stopped. The hearse parked, and then we parked. Next, we had to bury Grandma.

“Put on your gloves,” I ordered Merry. I pulled on my own clumsy wool mittens, shivering as Uncle Irving opened the heavy limousine door and let the cold cemetery air creep in.

Merry took out her stretchy red and pink striped gloves. They were too small for her, a real bottom-of-the-bag pair of gloves, but they were all she had. We wore ballerina flats Mrs. Cohen had dug up from somewhere. She’d been the one to help us get dressed, coming in special just because we were going to the funeral.

“Look,” Merry whispered. “Someone else is here.”

“You don’t have to whisper. We’re allowed to talk.” I spoke loud enough for Cousin Budgie to hear, consumed by hatred of my too-good-for-us, old-lady cousin. Merry pointed at a big car, not as big as our limousine but long and dark blue. A man leaned against the hood, his arms crossed over his chest, while another stood ruler-straight next to him.

“I think it’s the rabbi.”

“Isn’t
he
the rabbi?” Merry pointed to a lumpy man wearing a yarmulke and a shawl draped over his suit. He waited by an open hole, watching, nodding, as two men carried Grandma’s casket. They lowered her into the hole using some sort of ropy thing.

Uncle Irving and Cousin Budgie walked toward the open grave, leaving us by the car, expecting, I supposed, that we’d follow.

“Should we go with them?” Merry’s voice was soft and worried.

“I guess.” I fumbled for the pocket pack of tissues given us by Mrs. Cohen.

I guided Merry slowly and carefully over the winter brown grass. A body might be anywhere. The family plot had few headstones. Empty
spots waited for us. Uncle Irving had said that Merry and I, and our children and husbands, we all had future graves here. Just what I wanted, to be lying for all eternity next to stupid Cousin Budgie. We crept closer to the open grave.

“Merry? Lulu?”

I jumped at the voice.

“Daddy!” Merry dropped my hand and pulled away. She threw herself at our father. His handcuffed wrists prevented him from hugging her back, and Merry ended up slamming into his chest. He twisted into an awkward curve, resting his cheek on her wool hat, an apple red hat that Mrs. Cohen had insisted Merry wear. Even a kid could see it was inappropriate at a funeral, but I wouldn’t argue with Mrs. Cohen.

“Daddy,” Merry cried. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“They didn’t give me time to write you.” He watched me as Merry pressed close to him, staring until I kicked at the frozen ground. “Come here, Lu. Come say hello. It’s been a long time.”

Yeah. Sure has been a long time since you killed Mama.

The man with my father, his keeper or guard, whatever you’d call him, stood close behind.

“Come on,” my father urged.

My teeth chattered hard enough to shake out of their sockets. I pressed my lips together so he couldn’t see.

“Lulu, we don’t have much time,” he said, his voice as ordinary as if we were going to the movies and he was afraid we’d be late.

Merry looked at me, her eyes pleading, begging me to come over. I shuffled the short distance to where they stood, stopping just out of reach. He seemed so different. Not thin, not fat. Thicker. His body appeared hard, even in his baggy suit. His glasses made him look like Clark Kent.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Thirty-two.”

Mama would have been thirty-one.

He cocked his head and inspected me. Merry leaned against him, her head buried in his suit. “And you’re thirteen,” he said. “You’ll be fourteen in July. Wow.”

Wow.
My throat filled up at the word, and I didn’t know why.

I squirmed as he studied me.

“You’re tall, like my father.”

I tried to remember the photographs Grandma kept on top of the television.

“Your hair is nice,” he said. “I like the color.”

I touched a mittened hand to my hair.

“I dream of Jeannie with the light brown hair,” he sang. I’d forgotten what a nice voice our father had. He’d sung to me when I was little. Never children’s songs. He liked to croon, not recite, he’d explain.
Don’t expect any “Hickory Dickory Dock” crap from me,
he’d say. At bedtime, he’d sing “Only the Lonely.” When Merry was born, “Oh, Pretty Woman” had just come out, and he would go around the house singing that. Hearing Roy Orbison sing always made me think of my father. I turned off the radio whenever one of his songs came on.

“Lulu’s lost her voice, huh?” my father said to Merry. Then his face changed. “Come on, girls. Let’s go say good-bye.”

We walked together, the cold wind stinging my nose, my father swaying a bit, maybe having a hard time keeping his balance since he was handcuffed. How did he walk with his hands locked in front of him? My hands twitched. I wanted to try it.

Cousin Budgie moved as far from us as she could, as though Daddy might reach out and stab her or something. I moved closer to my father, so close the edge of my coat touched his sleeve, and I shivered.

The rabbi chanted in a language I guessed was Hebrew. My father and Uncle Irving swayed with the words. As I listened to the foreign sounds, I wondered if I’d be allowed to lean on my father, if it was legal. Not that I wanted to.

The rabbi switched to English, and I tried hard to pay attention, but too many thoughts fought in my head.

“May you, who are the source of mercy, shelter them beneath your wings eternally, and bind their souls among the living, that they may rest in peace, and let us say: Amen.”

“Amen,” my father said, his head bowed.

Uncle Irving and Cousin Budgie murmured “Amen,” though Budgie might have been whispering,
This is so sick
for all I knew.

“Amen,” Merry whispered.

I wanted to say it. I wanted to be a source of mercy. I wanted Grandma to rest in peace, and maybe saying “Amen” was some special way of helping her, but I couldn’t speak in front of my father. Finally, I used my right hand to scratch the word on my left arm, repeating each letter in my head.

The rabbi picked up a shovel and lifted a small piece of cold, crumbling earth. He overturned the spade and dropped the soil in Grandma’s grave. Merry inhaled as the dirt hit the coffin. The rabbi passed the shovel to Uncle Irving, who repeated the ritual and then handed the shovel off to his daughter. She dug a spoonful of dirt, and then stood holding it, looking caught and angry.

“Why are they doing that?” Merry asked my father. She rubbed her striped gloves over her chapped, wet cheeks.

The rabbi placed a bare hand on Merry’s shoulder. “We do this to assist the journey of our loved one.”