Suzan-Lori Parks - Getting Mother’s Body

“You wanna go for a ride?”

“I’m supposed to be watching the place. My aunt and uncle’s getting groceries in town.”.

“We’ll only go down the road,” I said. And we went.

I thought it would be hard to get her. But it was easy. Right on the side of the road the first time and on the side of the road, every other week or so after that, whether I had business in Lincoln or not. From March until today. The first time I went slow. I told her I loved her and that she didn’t need to worry about nothing cause couldn’t nothing happen the first time.

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.

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.”