Suzan-Lori Parks - Getting Mother’s Body

“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.

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.

“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.

“Ma could be saying something new this time,” Dill says.

“I doubt it,” I says.

“You never know,” Dill says.

“Sounds like you do know,” I says.

“Yr saying that I opened it,” Dill says. Her left arm goes stiff, with her hand making a fist. She knocked down someone with that fist once. They didn’t get up for two days. My sister. But for what I can’t remember.

“I’m just running my mouth, Dill, I don’t mean to mean nothing,” I says.

She shakes her fist free of whatever made her want to hit me.

“I coulda opened it and read it seeing as how it’s partly addressed to me and I can read. But I ain’t,” Dill says.