Suzan-Lori Parks - Getting Mother’s Body

“She might,” June says. June reads and knows things.

“I know Willa Mae better than you and I heard her dying wish,” Dill says, making a fist and bringing it down slowly on the arm of her chair. That ends that.

“Dill Smiles, you the most honest person I ever met,” I says.

June says “shit” to that and gets up, with more difficulty than usual, to go clumping back inside.

“You the most honest person I know,” I says again and Dill nods her head in thanks. Dill Smiles don’t open no mail that ain’t addressed to her and Dill Smiles don’t flout no dying wishes of the dead. Dill Smiles is the most honest person I know, even if she ain’t nothing but a bulldagger.

Mrs. Jackson stands beside me. She got a tape measure hanging around her neck and one of them red pincushions, stuck full of steel pins and shaped like a tomato, tied to her wrist. We both looking at the dress in the window, the one with the train. It cost a hundred and thirty dollars.

“How much it cost without the train?” I ask her.

“The train’s on there for good,” she says.

“What if it weren’t?” I says. “How much would it cost if the train weren’t on there for good?”

Mrs. Jackson looks at the dress then at me, sizing me with her eyes. Except for my baby-belly I’m on the narrow side. Her eyes hang on my belly and when I catch her staring, she looks through her front show window and up into the sky. It’s after five o’clock. When I came up she was standing at the door waiting for me. While I was washing up, Laz had told her I was on my way. I wiped the toes of my shoes fast across the backs of my legs, left then right, to get the dirt off. She let me in then turned the “Open” sign to “Closed.”

“I don’t think it’ll fit you,” she says softly.

“It’ll fit,” I says. “But all I got is sixty-three dollars.”

“Mr. Jackson don’t like me spending all my time making these dresses then losing money by selling them cheap,” she says.

“Sixty-three dollars ain’t cheap,” I says. I want to tell her how I’d have more money if her husband woulda bought one of Snipes’ coffins and how, since her husband keeps turning my future husband away, she owes me a deal. I want to say all this but something in me tells me to stay sweet.

“It’s all hand-sewn,” she says. “That’s not a machine-sewn dress and it’s not some dress from the Sears catalogue. That there’s a once-in-a-lifetime dress.”

I see something in her, something I’m not sure of at first. Something my mother might call The Hole. It’s like a soft spot and everybody’s got one. Mother said she could see The Hole in people and then she’d know how to take them. She could see Holes all the time but I ain’t never seen one. Until now. Words shape theirselves in my mouth and I start talking without thinking of what I need to say. It’s like The Hole shapes the words for me and I don’t got to think or nothing.

“When you got married, what’d yr dress look like?” I ask Mrs. Jackson.

The hard line of her mouth lets go a little.

“It musta been pretty,” I says.

“That dress is an exact copy of my wedding dress,” she says smiling. “I was fifteen. One year younger than you are now.” She looks at the dress then back at me then at the dress again.

“You make your dress yrself too?” I ask.

“My mother made mine for me,” Mrs. Jackson says. And then she goes quiet.

The Hole shapes more words in my mouth, all I gotta do is let them out. “Willa Mae, you know, my uh—”

“Your mother,” Mrs. Jackson says, saying “mother” out loud for me.

“Yes, ma’am, well, she’s passed, but she sure woulda loved to see my wedding day, seeing how she was always jilted and never lucky enough to get married herself.”

We stand there quiet, both looking at the dress.

“Let’s see what it looks like on you,” Mrs. Jackson says. She hurries to get a stool then stands on it, pulling down the window shade. I take off my clothes while she strips the dummy. By the time she gets the dress off I’m ready. With the shade down it’s dark inside her store. She can see my baby-belly but not too good. She holds the dress for me and I put my hand on her shoulder and step into it. A row of seed buttons up the back. High collar and long sleeves, blind-you white satin with lots of lace. Plus the long train with a hand loop to hold it off the floor. Be small, baby, I says, talking to my baby without opening my mouth. Be small, baby, be small.

The dress fits.

“Look at you,” Mrs. Jackson says. Her voice is thick like she is about to cry but I can’t tell for sure in the dim light.

I look down at my pink pumps. “I used to wear these when I worked over at Miz Montgomery’s,” I say. “I guess they’ll do.”

“Pink shoes with your wedding dress will not do,” Mrs. Jackson says.

“I can’t afford no nice ones,” I says.

“You wear size 6?” she asks.

“Size 5,” I says.

She goes to the back, walking backwards and turning her head this way and that to get a good look at me. When she’s out of sight I do a slow twirl. Snipes didn’t say nothing about the rings and he don’t know what size I wear but I guess we’ll get them when I get up there. I can’t expect him to think of everything. He had his new coffins on his mind today, plus that dying old Doctor Wells.

“The baby looks like it’s growing pretty good,” she hollers from the back.

“Yes, ma’am,” I says. No one has said nothing about the baby but I guess, since she knows I’m gonna have a husband to go with it, it’s OK to mention now.

“You lucky you got such small feet,” Mrs. Jackson says coming back into the main room with a shoe box. “I don’t carry many shoes but I did have these.”

“I don’t got enough for shoes,” I says.

“Try them on and hush up,” she says.

I pat myself on the back for having the intelligence to wash up before I came here. Sometimes smelling good can make all the difference. Mrs. Jackson brings me a chair and I sit, trying on the shoes like a lady would. When I get them on she helps me up.

“Look at you,” she murmurs.

“Do I look all right?”

“Your poor mother,” she says.

“I only got sixty-three dollars,” I says.

“And here it is 1963,” she says.

I pick up my pocketbook, fish through it and hold the bills in my hand.

“Can you promise me something?”

“Whut?”

“Don’t go telling all of Lincoln, Texas, how you got yrself a hundred-thirty-dollar dress and a pair of twenty-dollar shoes off of Mrs. Jackson for sixty-three dollars. People would accuse me of playing favorites.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She takes the money from me, counting it quickly, then sticking it underneath the pincushion on her wrist. “And when I say don’t tell no body I mean don’t tell no body, you hear? If word gets back to Mr. Jackson, Lord today, I won’t never hear the end of it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now turn around and style it for me,” she says.

I tell the baby to stay small again. It stays small. I turn all the way around one way then around the other way.

“I look all right?”

“You as pretty as you can be,” she says. “Just as pretty as you can be.”

This next song I’ma sing is a song I wrote about a man I used to know. It’s called “Big Hole Blues.”

My man is digging in my dirt

Digging a big hole just for me.

He’s digging in my dirt

Digging a big hole just for me.

It’s as long as I am tall, goes down as deep as the deep blue sea.

He says the hole he’s digging is hole enough for two.