Suzan-Lori Parks - Getting Mother’s Body

“I could give her a ride,” Laz says. Texhoma is about four hundred miles to the north. Eight or nine hours drive.

“Billy,” I says, turning my head to holler through the office and into the trailer where June’s got her own hope chest open and is giving Billy things for her trip, “Laz says he’ll give you a ride.”

Me and Laz both sit there waiting for her to holler back.

“Good idea, Laz,” I says. “I didn’t want her showing up to Snipes’ people, getting off a bus.”

Billy hollers back, “I’d rather show up in a bus than in a hearse.”

Laz leans against the porch rail. “I’ll ask my father if I can drive the sedan,” he says, getting up to walk back home and ask even though we both know Israel Jackson ain’t gonna let Laz take the sedan nowheres.

A girl with a baby-belly and no husband makes folks sweat. Wives look sharp at they men, then, finding no fault related to the crime at hand, look even sharper at they sons. Men look at themselves and worry. They find relief in the facts of life: a lustful thought carries no spunk. Everybody looks in their doorways and nobody sees me standing there with my shotgun demanding justice. I wanted to know who I was after before I went shooting.

“Who the daddy?” I asked Billy. This was two months ago. If it had been Laz, he woulda taken responsibility already.

“No one you know,” she said.

“I’ll make him do right by you,” I said.

“Let it alone,” she said. “He loves me. It’ll be all right if you just let it alone.”

So I let it alone and I waited. Then I seen him come up in his yellow car and I seen her run across the road without looking.

I’ve always wondered what happens when you don’t got a mother. Without a mother you don’t get born. But after birth, what then? Over the past six years, watching Billy come up, I’ve had several different thoughts on the subject. Several things happen, and different people take them in different ways. Or maybe just one thing happens and it happens differently to each person it happens to. A mother helps a child learn the basics. Billy don’t know the basics. Basic: don’t go opening yr legs for a man who ain’t yr husband lest you wanna be called hot trash.

People will talk. Let them talk. I can bear it. I am a Beede. I am a Beede so I can bear the people talking. I can bear pumping gas for Sanderson, I can bear losing my church. June Flowers is a Beede by marriage, not birth, so what June Flowers can bear is another story. I guess what Billy do or don’t do, and what she get or don’t get, is no more than just part of the Plan.

Lots of buses pass by Lincoln but most don’t stop. Buses stop in Midland, two different ones at five A.M., one going east to Dallas and the other west all the way to Hollywood, California. An hour and a half after they go through, two more stop. One heading southeast towards Galveston and the other one, the one heading north, passes through Texhoma. The north one’s the one I need to get. There’s a old rattling bus that stops in front of Mr. Bub Atchity’s at six every morning, except for Sunday. It’ll get you to Midland in time for your connection. Miss that rattling bus and you gotta walk.

“Texhoma ain’t much bigger than Lincoln,” June says. She got one of her maps folded neatly to the spot.

Bub Atchity’s standing in the doorway of his store wearing his nightshirt under the white doctor’s coat that he puts on when he sells stuff like Scott’s Emulsion. Laz says it ain’t a doctor’s coat but a dentist’s, cause it has the buttons along the shoulder and it hangs just to his hip. Doctor or dentist’s coat Mr. Atchity’s wearing it over his nightshirt with his bare feet and legs poking out underneath. “I’m telling you it stops there,” Atchity says.

“June’s just making sure,” Uncle Teddy says. I stand between them, not saying nothing.

“Come on in and buy a ticket, goddamnit,” Atchity says, retreating inside to write it up.

I give Uncle Teddy my money so it’ll look like he’s treating.

“You be sweet up there with Snipes and his family,” Uncle Teddy says, “so when yr aunt and me come up there tomorrow, we won’t have to impress, we can, you know, just be ourselves.” He looks at me like me being sweet will be hard, but I’m gonna be married so being sweet will come naturally.

“Tomorrow when you get there, head straight to the courthouse,” I tell them. “Me and Mr. Snipes and every-body’ll be waiting for you.”

“That pearl earring looks nice how you’re wearing it,” Uncle Teddy tells me.

“We’re proud of you, Billy,” June says. She pets me on the shoulder and I smile. She’s got a straw hat on, hiding her hair.

“I forgot to do yr hair,” I says.

“I got a pretty scarf I can wear till you get to it,” she says.

“You gonna buy a ticket or you gonna let me go back to bed?” Atchity hollers from inside.

“We’ll take one to Texhoma. One-way, please,” I say into the darkness of his store.

“I’m writing it up,” Atchity yells.

“You want some candy or something?” Uncle Teddy asks me.

“I’m all right with the chicken,” I say, holding up the sack, already a little greasy from the two chicken wings Aunt June fixed.

“Some candy’d go good with it,” Uncle Teddy says and goes inside.

June and me stand there. June’s leaning on her crutch. She lent me her own grip to put my things in. A small brown suitcase with the leather sides all cracked and sun-burned, but the clasps and handle still good. The one she had her everyday things in when her family was traveling to California. I got my own pocketbook. It’s brown too.

“I’d like to get my grip back someday,” Aunt June says.

“Clifton’s gonna get me all new luggage for the honey-moon,” I says.

“Where’s he taking you?”

“It’s a surprise,” I says. I don’t tell her he ain’t mentioned the rings or the honeymoon. “He’s been talking about going someplace exciting. Up to Chicago maybe,” I says.

We stand there quiet, listening and watching for the bus.

“If this bus is late y’ll miss yr connection,” Aunt June says.

“It won’t be late,” I says.

The day is coming up, sunlight crawling up over Miz Montgomery’s House of Style, where I had me a job once. The sun gets to the top of her place and splashes down main street, what on maps is called Sanderson Boulevard but I only ever heard one person call it that out loud. Main Bully, most people say. When Mr. Sanderson comes by every month to check up on how Uncle Teddy’s pumping his gas, he says Sanderson Boulevard a lot. We drove down Sanderson Boulevard to get here. We won’t be taking Sanderson Boulevard home, though. Sanderson Boulevard used to be quite a street but now it needs repaving. Like he’s making up reasons why to say it. And Uncle Teddy nods at Mr. Sanderson and Aunt June looks blank and I want to tell Mr. Sanderson that him and his Sanderson Boulevard can go to hell but Uncle Teddy would just tell me to watch my mouth. Mother told me once that the street’s named for Mr. Sanderson’s father’s father, Gustav Sanderson, who founded Lincoln. Mother said that Mr. Gustav coulda named the town after himself but he wanted to show how fair he was so he named his town after Abraham Lincoln instead. When me and Mother was living with Dill, we seen the younger Mr. Sanderson walking down the sidewalk. He expected us to get off the sidewalk for him and his wife but Mother told him to kiss her behind.

Aunt June shields her eyes from the sun so she can see Main Bully better, looking for the bus. From inside the store I can hear Uncle Teddy paying for my ticket and getting some candy. “Spot me a Baby Ruth,” he says.